andcurve.weblog - The weblog of Kevin Teljeur. Somewhere within all the noise, there is a note you need to hear.

I’m frequently (too frequently, some might say!) posting on Boards.ie, particularly these days in the Politics section, where you’ll find no end of interesting ideas on a) Ireland and the EU and b) Ireland’s economy. Although there are some notably intelligent and articulate posters with some very interesting ideas and facts to present, there are also a sizeable group of people there who might be best described as baboons with basic Internet and computer usage skills. These are people who consider Ireland to be a proud and powerful nation, where the current recession (it’s actually starting to be referred to as The Recession, the capitalisation reflecting the realisation that it’s going to be sticking around for the best part of the next ten years or so) is just a small speed-bump on our accession to the throne of Rulers Of The Free World. With that goes ‘We don’t need the stinking EU’, ‘We should leave the Euro Zone’, ‘Immigrants Out’, ‘Germany owes us because without us the Euro is nothing’, ‘We have manufacturing up there with the best in the world, sure our butter is the best there is’ and of course that old chestnut ‘We’ll retake the North by force because it’s rightfully ours and we have the best army in the world, and it’ll employ people’. Hmm… Yes. Indeed.

Still, these things are a useful barometer by which you can judge the general mindset of people here. While the extremist views aren’t indicative, they give you an idea of where the general trend might be, and it seems that there’s still an incredible feeling of entitlement, of the idea that the rest of the world owes us, and the more we lose the more ‘they’ should all get a move on and give us what’s ours, which is generally lots more money, less working hours and whatever the hell else we want.

It’s not going to happen. Here’s why. In the general healthy scheme of things, in running your country’s economy when you are not totally self-sufficient, you would want a situation along the lines of the following:

I make half the food I eat. I buy the other half from you. Starvation! Except, I also make cars. I sell the cars to you at more than it costs me to make them. This pays for the other half of the food I need. In fact, if the value of the cars I sell to you is more than the food then in fact I’m working on a profit. At least, I can aim to break even.

Ireland isn’t terribly self-sufficient, and back in the 1980s was also very much in debt and had little in the way of native manufacturing. But we had an educated workforce which spoke English, and was willing to work hard:

I make half the food I eat. I buy the other half from you. Starvation! Except, I can work for you for very little, and I’ll let you build your factory in my garden, and turn a blind eye to what you do within that factory. This pays for the other half of the food I need. In fact, if you make enough stuff in my garden and give me enough work then in fact I’m working on a profit. At least, I can aim to break even.

But somehow that changed, probably because the profit part gave an illusion of self-sufficiency, which made costs rise and credit easier, and also the ‘turn a blind eye to what you do within that factory’ approach was applied to regulation within critical areas such as construction and finance. We have had a case here in recent years of:

I make half the food I eat. I buy the other half from you. Starvation! Except, I also make houses. I sell the houses to me at more than it cost me to make them, and I borrow to make up the difference, from you. This pays for the other half of the food I need. In fact, if the profit of the houses I sell to me is more than the food, then in fact it just makes my situation acutely worse, or if you decide to stop lending, or if I decide I can no longer afford my own houses. And I still need to get half of my food from you.

But this is what actually happened, and happened quickly:

You tell me to stop running my economy this way. I take my cock out and wave it at you. You stop lending to me. I stop buying my own houses, and my economy comes to a grinding halt. I decide on a strategy to pay you back, which is to be cleverer than you and sell you the difference in cleverness. Despite all the evidence to suggest the my situation is a symptom of an acute deficit of cleverness, and that you clearly believe at this point that I need to shut up and stand in a corner with a pointy hat until you’ve figured out what to do with me.

Oh, and the kids move to your place, which sort of gives you my cleverness for free. Starvation.

It would have been good for the ‘Germany should bail us out because we’re so special‘ thread on Boards.ie, a hilarious exploration of the Irish recessionary mind-set. I’ve over-simplified it a lot, I’ll admit, and I’ll be open to constructive amendments on this train of thought. It’s probably over-inspired by the ‘two cows‘ humour system (this has better actual examples. The previous one is a little… over-cooked).

I mentioned an analogy which I use for describing the choices we have in this election (as I see it, of course), and it’s a relatively simple one. However, I laboured the point somewhat in the writing of it, and I realised there was a much simpler way of describing the dilemma I face in my voting strategy.

The problem is simple. After this election, various parties will combine to form some sort of coalition government, and the choice will be Fianna Fail with someone, or Fine Gael and Labour with someone. Now, I came to a few conclusions about how these parties will operate in power, and it can be summed up as ‘Better the devil you know’ or ‘A fresh start with new faces’; these are the choices. And the way I see it, the machine, the system we have in operation at the moment, is not like some sort of child’s game where you can give it a shake and start again if you don’t like how it’s going. Once it’s started, you’re probably best to keep going and make improvements en route, rather than messing with it.

While Fianna Fail represents big business politics and property developer interests to many, and the epitome of corrupt government (A previous Fianna Fail leader and Taoiseach/Prime Minister, Charles J. Haughey, set some impressive benchmarks for outright corruption in Western European government) to some, or indeed also to many, they are also the experienced steady hand. They know how the system works, the rules of the game. The outgoing Taoiseach/Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, while clearly being far from clean as a whistle, is also a good leader and experienced international statesman. His Minister of Finance, Brian Cowen, is doing a good, if unimaginative, job of keeping the show on the road.

A good measure of this, I feel, is the pre-election promises made by the larger parties. They’ve all promised tax breaks. Vast improvements in Ireland’s infrastructure, particularly on a social level. And more tax breaks. It’s the usual set of promises made to win elections, to promise the Sun, Moon and stars to the electorate, everything you want to hear will be fixed, and a cherry on top. I realised that what separates Fianna Fail from the Fine Gael/Labour team is this: Fianna Fail make promises knowing what they can, can’t, will, won’t and might deliver. They’re in government right now, they’ve seen the figures, the costings, the trends. They’re not making any wild promises because they know what can and can’t be done. They didn’t promise anything wild with tax breaks or health care, they’ve already made the big infrastructure commitments, and that was that. They’ll break promises, of course, but they set about delivering on their plan for Ireland already within the last few years, and call me naive but I actually think they got a taste for delivering the goods. It’s not imaginative stuff by any means, it just needs to be done to build an Ireland that’ll still have something to offer in the future. Bertie and one or two of his team understand this, and have gone into the election knowing exactly how the country works, and with the intention of finishing the job.

Fine Gael and Labour, on the other hand, have no idea how any of this works. They’ve picked out what they think are weaknesses in the current government strategy and set about campaigning with promises to fix everything, and of course thrown in outrageous tax breaks for good measure. For example, the most dangerous and reckless promise they’ve made is to promise to do away with something called Stamp Duty. This is a government tax on the purchase of property, it’s sizeable and naturally a sore point with house-buyers because it’s a massive extra cost on the already staggeringly high price of buying a property in Ireland. A good way to get the attention of the voting public is to promise to do away with it altogether, because then a buyer’s home purchase will be much cheaper. Or will it? It’s been generally agreed that house prices will jump massively to the point where they would have been with Stamp Duty; so for the buyer, it will ultimately make little odds. Property will still be too expensive. But there’s something else there too, which demonstrates a deeper lack of understanding about how the economy works, and is the reason why Fianna Fail only very reluctantly agreed to match that election promise, just to give them a chance of winning (and it’s clearly an election promise they won’t keep, at least in it’s current form). The current government has found a way to keep all of the money coming into the country in circulation, and preferably to keep it staying in the country, as well as employing a quarter of the male workforce. That much is obvious; it’s the property market. Naturally, the government needs to take it’s cut of the booming Irish economy, which it does through… Stamp Duty! So the economy is cooking, the property market keeps it going, and Stamp Duty pays for the government’s plans to build infrastructure for Ireland.

Incidentally, I had heard an interesting theory a couple of years back (I pin that one on a younger, more cynical Kenny Leigh) which is that a desirable side-effect of the (over)heated property market is also to lock younger Irish people into Ireland. If things get shaky later on then they won’t emigrate en-mass like they did in times gone by, while locked into a thirty-year mortgage.

So Fianna Fail, while undoubtedly by and large in the pocket of the property developers and other big business, have actually figured out a way to make it all work for the State, and to keep the economy reasonably healthy. I don’t like it, I think they’ve done a lot wrong and not nearly enough of the right things that Ireland does need, but right now this is how it works. Fine Gael and Labour on the other hand have demonstrated a clear lack of knowledge on how the current economic model works, and how they’ll pay for any of their proposals. It’s real amateur stuff, promising everything while not having any convincing explanation of how they’ll keep the economy going, or how they’ll cover for the taxes they’re planning to axe.

I haven’t really touched on the Greens, the Progressive Democrats or Sinn Fein in all of this. In a nutshell, I think the Greens have a somewhat socialist approach. I think they’ll have a lot of trouble with the tough, messy reality of running the State, but on the other hand Ireland needs their ideas on Public Transport and environmental issues. The Progressive Democrats might come close to sinking without trace, and they’ll have Michael McDowell to thank for it. I have real trouble with their stance on health issues, and dismissing Global Warming… What can I say. ‘Bone-headed’ springs to mind. On the other hand, they certainly know how to single-mindedly deliver on their ideas. Sinn Fein are now in a peculiar place where they’re campaigning on issues other than Northern Ireland, and they seem to be in real trouble, Some very interesting pseudo-Communist talk, but it sounds like empty, very loosely thought out stuff, and I think they would have real trouble delivering on their ideas.

You can see where I’m going with this. I’m going to vote Green of course (even though my local candidate for the Green Party is inexperienced and won’t make the cut), I’ll vote for Socialist Worker’s Party candidate Joe Higgins, because he’s magic, and I guess I’ll vote for Joan Burton (Labour) because she does her best to organise transport meetings. I think that’s it. I can’t vote for Brian Lenihan (Fianna Fail) because I won’t be able to sleep at night if I do, and I can’t vote for Leo Varadkar (Fine Gael) for the same reason. Likewise for some of the other Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein and Progressive Democrat candidates.

Fine Gael candidate Leo Varadkar faces electoral meltdown. Or perhaps a lighter. 8th May 2007.. Click image to view larger version »

Voting for Joan Burton runs against the grain after all I’ve said, but I think she does do some good and works hard. I just fear her party getting into power (the Labour Party is all about protecting Civil Service and other unionised workers, which inevitably means pay rises for State workers ahead of the private sector), especially with Fianna Gael. I’ll never vote Fianna Fail unless the candidate gives me good reason, but they’ll do ok anyway by the look of the latest poll ratings. And if it comes down to the wire and Fianna Fail have to negotiate with, for example, the Greens (a very likely prospect, since it’s looking like they’ll be the decider for the next coalition) then I think that’s a very good thing.

I really do hope for Fianna Fail and the Green Party as the next Government of Ireland, and as I’ve said before I think it’s more than a bit likely.

So to Tadhg’s second question, which was about Fianna Fail’s chances for re-election. First, have a read of this page about the workings of the centre piece of the Irish political system, the Dail (or parliament).
I think there’s an even chance that Fianna Fail won’t be back in government after the election. For those of you who don’t know how this works here, Ireland has the highest number of elected representatives per head of population compared to almost anywhere else in the world. There really are a lot of them, all well paid I might add, and several political parties; the main ones are Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour, Green Party, Sinn Fein, Progressive Democrats, Socialist Worker’s Party. Now you’ve seen Wikipedia’s possibly somewhat shaky take on who is who (or indeed what) in Irish politics (and some of those entries are a little suspect; the Progressive Democrats have a very plain and uninteresting entry for a party which has had a colourful and occasionally controversial role in recent Irish politics), have a look at the most recent election results.

Fianna Fail has been steadily declining in terms of support over the last few years, requiring more and more support from other parties to form a stable government. They’ve been in power for ten entire years at this point, which is quite a run. Their main opposition has been from Fine Gael, who got a solid hiding in the last election because the economy was doing well and everyone agreed that the un-charismatic, unimaginative Fine Gael were the last people that anyone wanted to see in power, presiding over the new-found wealth. Labour has remained steady, since they always have a reliable and steady number of civil servants and working-class voters to rely on for support. The Progressive Democrats started well, but since they took on the hot potatoes of the health service and justice, they’ve dropped down in poll ratings. Picking a charmless oaf for a party leader surely can’t have helped either. Sinn Fein have been steadily rising, since they do a lot of work on the ground to improve people’s lives and since the peace process in Northern Ireland went well, they can slowly start shaking off the label of being the political wing of the world’s most successful terrorist organisation. The Greens have been seeing the benefits of both becoming a better, more organised political party and also because environmental issues are now genuinely important in the eyes of many voters.

After ten years, some of the fundamental problems that affect Ireland still haven’t been solved, and with that the opposition parties have been able to make some remarkable promises to fix that, Issues such as health, transport, housing, crime… As I wrote before, although things in Ireland are good, they could be better, and if you work hard and pay out a lot of basic living expenses then you’re more sensitive to the idea that you’re money is being misspent by the State you pay taxes to. Fianna Fail is generally seen to be corrupt and beholden to various vested interests; I think Fine Gael have as much to answer for in that way as Fianna Fail, but because they’re in opposition and a much smaller party it doesn’t tend to get noticed as much. I think people are interested in the idea of someone else running the show for a term, interested in the (sometimes outrageous) promises of those parties to make changes.

At the start of the campaigning, I really thought Fianna Fail would get back in to power because it looked like people wouldn’t buy the idea that Fine Gael, together with Labour and perhaps the Greens as coalition partners, would make a credible alternative government. I wasn’t too despairing of the idea, since it looked unlikely that any coalition partner that Fianna Fail would need to take on to get a parliamentary majority (and so, power) would agree also to having the Progressive Democrats onboard, and that would likely have meant the Green Party as a coalition partner for Fianna Fail (since Labour – previously having partnered with Fianna Fail – had made a pre-election agreement with Fine Gael, and no-one will partner with Sine Fein). That actually looked good to me. In the past I’ve been very despairing of the electorate’s continual choice of Fianna Fail as majority party because of their association with corruption and bad policies, but I’m coming around to thinking that they might be the best of a bad lot; they have the experience to do the job, and I’ll explain later on what has me thinking that.

It’ll be Fine Gael with Labour and possibly the Green Party as the next government. There might on polling day be a sudden shift in the way people will vote, but it’s likely that Fianna Fail aren’t going to get the votes they need to get back into power with the Progressive Democrats alone, and the Progressive Democrats are going to be wiped out. And you know, I’m not even sure that a change in government is going to be a very good thing at this moment in time…

David remarked on how it took too long for me to write posts, and he’s right. I do. I was a little surprised that he noticed, in a way, because a part of me always had this idea that David was really emoting with the sound made by the shapes of the letters in the text of my post, rather than reading all that shite and actually taking it in. Anyway, he let me know in his ‘I’m a fucktard’ manner but I like him so I figured I’d give it a go and start posting slightly more often. I need to edit before I start writing, that’s really the big problem at the moment. And have more time. I’m posting this from Romania, and there’s a kind of ban on me mucking about on the Interwebs after office hours.

Anyway, and so the race started weeks ago. I’ve never paid a lot of attention to elections before, because I had a vague idea of who to vote for even though it never had much apparent effect before, but now I really feel like I’m what is known as a stakeholder; someone with a vested interest in the outcome of the election. I’ve been born and raised in this country, and my taxes get paid here, which makes me a contributor to whatever direction this country takes in the future.

I had an idea for a brief ‘Kev’s take on the Irish political scene’ but instead I came up with an analogy which I like (always a bad sign, and taken in less civilised countries as a portent of doom) and which will maybe make it easier for people who aren’t in Ireland to follow, and I will post this as a follow on to this post. For those of you in Ireland, then you’ll almost certainly have your own opinion about the situation, and you’ll disagree with at least some of what I say.

In the comments for my last post, Tadhg asked me “so why do you think this election is particularly important? Do you think there’s any chance that it won’t be FF in charge again after it?” and although I had a somewhat whimsical answer, they are very good questions. I think that the forthcoming election is a big deal for several reasons. These reasons are less than scientifically arrived at, and are purely personal opinion.

First off, since the last election the country has changed enormously; to the point that on paper it is almost a different country altogether. And it keeps changing, the rate of change hasn’t levelled off yet. I don’t just mean wealth, but the demographics, the culture, everything. It’s a lot to take in for the indigenous population, it creates massive stresses and strains on society, and when the time comes to make some choices on the direction of all of this, then people will take this more seriously than when there isn’t so much at stake (at the time of the last election, the country was still in a fairly linear wealth-creation process, so there wasn’t a great deal of interest in ‘rocking the boat’; after all, if you’re making more money than ever before, why take risk with that?). People can now see the effect of all of these changes, and I believe that there is now more interest in deciding some of the issues that these changes have created with housing, education, transport (both public and private) and taxation. And let’s not forget immigration, now that ten percent of people in the Republic of Ireland are not natively Irish. That’s a huge population shift in a short space of time. A welcome one, I believe, but one that has been badly handled at a local government level in terms of integration of cultures and adaptation of policies.

Secondly the public’s satisfaction with the current government is relatively low. It’s a combination of a number of things, from the publication of reports in corruption of past (and occasionally current) members of the current governing party, to unpopular decisions by those in power, to pressures in people’s lives caused by the factors described above. For example, while life is generally good here for most people, and earnings are for most people higher than ever before, life doesn’t seem so good when you’re commuting for four hours a day to a job which you maybe not be enjoying a great deal which in turn pays for an ever-increasing mortgage on a house which you rarely do more with than sleep in, in between commuting to and from work. When you then hear that the members of the current government have possibly been lining their own pockets with public finances, or at least have been trading favours, your tolerance is a lot lower. After all, you’ll be much more acutely aware of how much tax you’re paying which is going to those same politicians. Throw in creeping privatisation of the health service and a general lag in the perceived quality of public services behind your expectations, and you’re already thinking that you might want someone else to have a shot at running the show.

Maybe you can add to that the perceived rise in violent crime. It doesn’t necessarily directly affect most people, but they feel that it does. That perception makes people feel less safe, and they start worrying about their safety and why no-one has done anything about it.

And next, there is at some level a feeling that this current prosperity won’t last forever. That’s the nature of these situations, they come and they go, the economy rises and it falls. This is something that most people accept, and indeed we’ve seen it here before in smaller degrees. But all the same, the current incumbents have been saying again and again that this will keep going, because they know what they’re doing, they’ve got control of the economy, and have such a good understanding of the economy that not only did they create this prosperity, they will also sustain it indefinitely. Provided that they get re-elected, of course. I don’t think that this washes with most people. I think people either can see through this, or have it in their nature not to trust such a self-belief. I think they’re right. There have been a number of crucial factors in Ireland’s surging economic growth, but a couple of factors that are going to cause for a problem are that Ireland partly has a circular economy (where, for example, growth in the building industry has fuelled employment, which has fuelled home buying, which has pushed growth in the building industry, which has… You get the idea.) and partly has an economy which was originally built on the premise of Ireland being the cheap location for a skilled workforce, with money coming into the country from the United States, for example, and which it definitely isn’t any more. It is not a cheap place to do business any more. There’s also the matter of massive European Union subsidies, and the Irish state subsidising foreign investment. As you can see at the following link, Ireland hasn’t done too badly from joining the EU. I believe that the free handouts stop this year, and will be directed instead to the twelve countries that recently joined the EU (which is only fair). So, these factors which make it seem like Ireland has a powerful modern economy and infrastructure are actually external factors; when they go, Ireland is better off than it was, but not nearly as wealthy as it appears, and a lot of people stand to lose out.

I have to point out that property is possibly the biggest issue at stake here. If the economy goes down hard, people can’t repay mortgages, people who bought additional property as investments will lose staggering amounts of money, and there will be a national collective trauma as a result. That really will be a bad situation to be in.

I believe that people are aware of these factors and that they’re concerned about what their lives will be like in five year’s time. Will life be as good as it is now, or better? Will it be even more of a rat-race, or will it all have been lost, and Ireland will be starting a humiliating and painful descent back to where it was in the nineteen eighties, with high unemployment and low wages… I don’t think it will be so dramatic of course, but the stakes are high, and whoever gets into government will be in a position to keep things going, prepare for the future or fuck it all up spectacularly. And they know that whoever fucks it up will never, ever be forgiven.

So to Tadhg’s second question, which was about Fianna Fail’s chances for re-election, another post.

First off, shouts out to Maddy, who is one of my multitude of housemates and who has promised to have a look at my blog tonight, in between managing a restaurant and whatnot, so that was sort of an impetus to actually write some stuff which I’ve been meaning to put up for… weeks, months possibly. I’ve been provoking Maddy probably a little bit too much for my own good recently, and while normally I’d expect to get back as good as I give, I’m starting to worry a little that I’ll wake up one morning and find the head of a Kakapo in my bed. Maddy, with me taking a real risk with my life. That was at my birthday lunch in Castleknock. Click image to view larger versionIt could happen.

You got the vote
Women have been asking me for advice about stuff recently for some reason, generally stuff to do with men, and what’s up with them anyway, why is he doing this or that, that kind of stuff; given the content of my previous post here (which was all about completely misinterpreting the thesis of young Elizabeth from Kilkenny and also trying to be as offensive about the whole sex versus gender roles debate as possible, which provoked a lengthy and thoughtful email from Elizabeth and also a heated comment from Tadhg. Heh heh.) I thought that was a very interesting co-incidence, and of course I’ve been gleefully taking shots at the whole gender equality debate. Ireland has come a long way in a short space of time, from being a country that would be frowned upon as being a bit hardcore by conservative Muslim states – we all know they used to lock up women here in what were known as the Magdalene Laundries (and they were still locked up until the early to mid eighties) for such indiscretions as having a child out of wedlock, or perhaps being molested by someone with authority – to being a country where men and women are reaching a state of equality, and becoming more and more equal all the time. I’ve heard this from women who go abroad with the ingrained view that Ireland is sexist, and come back seeing that, in fact, Ireland is quite advanced in that aspect of society. So, when women start to complain (I’d love to use the word ‘moan’ or perhaps ‘whinge’, maybe ‘whine’, but… Ah, it’s all politically incorrect now.) about how they want some guy to do something for them, such as ask them out, fix the car or whatever, I think ‘Hey, what is this shit I am hearing now, because you know, first you were asking for the voting so you could participate meaningfully in society, so you have it (and we are having the Mary Harney, so personally I am thinking, maybe is not so good idea), then you are asking to play golf which is like stupid but you are having the golf now and this is your own fault, and then you are wanting the same money to earn as men, so you are having this now also, and hey, what I am hearing, you still are wanting the guy to do all the hard stuff, because you know, at the end of the day women are not having the balls and you know it. It is true.‘. I don’t actually say it quite like that, but close enough. You wanted the vote, you got the vote. You wanted the ‘glass ceiling’ to go, and… It’s higher. Probably not gone yet, but getting there. And you still want guys to fulfill the traditional roles! Come on! This isn’t about equality, it’s about having your cake and eating it! So, ladies, now you have your legislation to level the playing field everywhere else, you’ll have to start doing some of the shitty stuff that men have to do too. You like him, you bloody well ask him out yourself.

Heh. I love a good venting like that. And women too, they’re cute when they try to grasp complex issues.

I meant to write a piece about something else too which relates to the gender equality issue, and this is that as a woman if you want to start a family and actually have kids yourself then you’re going to have to start before you are thirty five. That’s it. You can’t come back later on and change your mind about it. I think that the culture of equality now means that women can easily forget about this (since independence from a relationship is now socially acceptable for women) and only really start considering it as a possible problem when they’re too old to actually start a family themselves; I suppose a potential solution is to have the babies with some man, regardless of whether or not they’re in a relationship together. So, girls, if you need to pop one out soon let me know because I’ve got great genetic material, very gifted with… stuff, I’ll get back to you about that, and I’m very sexually frustrated so we’ll all be a winner here.

New layout sign in the Phoenix park, early one morning quite recently. Click image to view larger versionThere’s a rule for that.
Something else I’ve realised recently is that along with that sort of change in culture and society in Ireland is the rise of regulation; Ireland is now seemingly more heavily regulated than anywhere else I can think of. Here in Ireland people tend to subscribe to the idea that it’s a bit of an easy-going free-for-all, by which I mean that you have a lot of freedom to do as you please provided you’re not harming anyone else. This is clearly a myth. I complain about the Irish, collectively, but they are individually smart people with a good understanding of the mechanics of organisation, if not the actual collective implementation of it. The thing is (some might argue, and I’m still sort of on the fence about this point), for a society to move forward and to start being productive as a whole, then the people in the society need to start working together, and collectively understanding and applying rules; if that doesn’t come naturally to them, then the State needs to start making rules and enforcing them across the board. We have tended here to blame the European Union and it’s love of bureaucracy for the avalanche of rules but I see now that the Irish State is coming up with new and innovative directions to take with legislation, all sorts of stuff has rules applied to it here which you’re not likely to see in other Western European countries. During the last month I’ve been in England and Austria, and they don’t have as many rules for stuff as we do here, or perhaps they’re not as worried about breaking them as we are here. If I had more time I’d do some research, but I think it boils down to the fact that in many Germanic countries you can lay down some guidelines for society and people will follow them, by and large (in other words, they do what they’re told because it’s in the interest of the Greater Good). Ireland is not a Germanic country but would like some of that discipline in order to build up the economy, so they’ve applied a rule-making blitz and some sort of infrastructure for punishing those who break the rules. This doesn’t make people here law-abiding, but it gives them ‘training wheels’ until they follow rules and work together for the greater good out of force of habit.

As a contradiction to that, you’ll find that in Ireland there is actually effectively two countries, or indeed three of them. There is Dublin, there is beyond Dublin, and there is Donegal. Beyond Dublin is subject to the same rules as Dublin, but they don’t really adhere to, or enforce, rules like they do in Greater Dublin, and probably wait to see if people in Cork are paying any attention before they do. There is also the county of Donegal, which is not unlike Somalia, in that it is very far away and has no effective government of any sort. Things are looking up however, because next year U.N. peacekeepers are moving in to restore order and soverise them. Really, it’s pretty simple.

I’m not into hitting Ch1xx0rz, but if they’re bad ones then…
Right, one last return to ramblings about women. I had a peculiar dream last weekend which as far as I can tell was inspired by looking at some sites which had stuff about comics. More specifically, comics with superheroes, of varying degrees of quality, or just very bizarre. The upshot was that I was a superhero, one of a group, and we were battling to save humanity or something along those lines, and we had to fight some bad guys which we were afraid of because they were going to give us a pasting. Yeah, we were in trouble and pretty desperate. In fact, I was fighting girls, who looked suspiciously like girls I know personally! But humanity had to be saved and we had to escape or climb into a hole or something like that, so I had punch, slap and throw those girls around like paperweights to save out lives. They didn’t seem overly bothered or fight back too much, and there was someone else I know there, a guy, who was a little taken aback by the beating of the girls, but he wasn’t really getting with the program of beating the evil women and saving the world so I didn’t feel too bad about it. I woke up as things were getting messy, so I don’t know if we won of not, which is unfortunate.

I wonder what Freud would have made of that.

The ‘Media Wall Project’
I’ve been making good progress on my ‘media wall’, by the way. Taken a month or two ago. My bed, in my room, with my little ray of sunshine coming through my window. Click image to view larger versionIf you’re reading this then you may very well be up there already, or there’s a photo of you waiting to go up. I’ve nominated one area as family, another as close friends and family, people I met while travelling, and ‘sexy chicks that bust my balls’. If anyone wants to nominated in that last category then please comment below.
My media wall, the side over the end of the bed Click image to view larger versionMy media wall, the side over the side of the bed Click image to view larger version
So, there are the nuggets for today. I’ve been working on a WordPress site for Keith, friend and former colleague, so that he’ll have a travelog and also been trying to find time to get up posts dealing with my trip to Devon, my trip to Vienna, Kenny’s thirtieth birthday, my trip to Kilkenny, my trip to Wexford, and a number of little events and what have you thrown in too. It’s all a lot of work, and I still don’t know a) where is my time going to and b) why am I doing this anyway? It is a conundrum, indeed.

(Edited on 4th May 2006 to point something out; that guy that was helping me fight the evil ch1xx0rz, was as far as I know none other than Ken Rooney! I’m not totally sure, but I think so. Gotta hesitate a bit less with hitting those chicks, Roonster!)