09.28.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:59 pm by
VHI and English
I have many issues with the VHI (Voluntary Health Insurance Company of Ireland). However, their recent press advertising campaign inspires one to blog. They are promoting their new dental care insurance product. A series of ads depicts various individuals of differing demographic profiles. Each photograph is over a headline stating “Here’s 32 reasons to buy this product bla bla” or “Here’s 26 reasons to get suckered bla bla”. Of course, every single ad contains the enormous and glaring grammatical error of using the singular where obviously the plural applies. Isn’t it slightly worrying that everyone in the company is illiterate and they paid a lot of money to an equally illiterate advertising company? My investigations so far lead me to suspect Ogilvy’s complicity in the campaign but due to their completely useless website (which through the global Ogilvy.com website simply indicates that there is an Irish office and gives an address and phone number) I can’t confirm this. However, I have written to one of their directors to complain.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 8:15 pm by
Bliar liar pants on fire
From his speech today:
“The evidence about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons, as opposed to the capability to develop them, has turned out to be wrong. I acknowledge that and accept it,” he said. [Gee, thanks. I acknowledge that the sun came out today]
“I simply point out, such evidence was agreed by the whole international community, not least because Saddam had used such weapons against his own people and neighbouring countries,” he continued. Eh, NO. The only people that ‘agreed’ any such thing were you and the Yanks. Everyone else told you it was nonsense. What exactly did you think those UN Security Council meetings were about? What did you think Hans Blix was saying to you?????
“And the problem is I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can’t, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam. The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power.” Try telling that to the Iraqis. And oh, yeah, Ken Bigley, Prime-doesn’t negotiate-with-terrorists-except-for-the-IRA-of-course-Minister.
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09.22.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:28 pm by
Scans in pregnancy
In my low maintenance midwifery led care scheme, just one scan is provided at 20 weeks. They are amazing things and one leaves afterwards clutching the printout showing a clearly defined baby (with alien features it must be said). Visible is a perfect spine in addition to clearly functioning organs like the heart, stomach and bladder. Fingers, toes, the lot. And yet, still I feel like I’ve been kicked and need to lie down afterwards. The terror of worrying what they might find (and about which absolutely nothing can be done anyway ) is so intense that I don’t realise I’m even feeling it until the relief starts to flood out when I get home. A quick perusal of pregnancy websites will show loads of messages about what people have discovered on the latest scan. Usually they’re terrified because the baby is bigger or smaller than it should be. I suggested to one silly cow that perhaps she should stop asking what weight the baby was because they grow at different rates and a spurt one week could result in a rest for several weeks (which would then no doubt result in a panic over the lack of growth). I got a snotty reply that she enjoyed knowing that her baby was making progress. But clearly she wasn’t enjoying it. Clearly she was using an estimated weight at one point to project forward to a monster baby at birth and what she actually enjoyed was fretting about whether or not she’d get it out. Anyway, I don’t see the use beyond the bare minimum necessary. Once there’s movement, there’s health.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 9:18 pm by
Twin Towers Replacement
An unseemly row is taking place in NY regarding the proposed replacement buildings for the Twin Towers. The architect who won the competition to design the new development Daniel Libeskind had his design rejected by the guy who actually owns the site, Larry Silverstein. Silverstein prefers the design of David Childs which appears to offer more office space (and hence more money) than Libeskind’s more arty design. Why do I care? On a recent chat show on TodayFM I was on a panel when an interview was conducted with Ed Hayes, Libeskind’s lawyer who was delighted to participate in an Irish chat show. As PO’Neill regularly demonstrates, the US is interpreting Ireland’s history in some bizarre ways to suit its ‘at war’ status. Hayes continued the analogy in a manner that left the panel back in studio in Ireland wide eyed and amazed. Hayes had huge praise for the large contingent of Irish firemen who died in 9/11 and commented on their bravery. But then, he remarked, running into a burning building and certain death was part of a great Irish tradition of being willing to die gloriously in battle for belief in one’s country and of course, God.
Off air, we wondered could this also be compared with piloting a plane into a burning building and certain death to achieve glory for one’s cause and one’s God?
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09.20.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:51 pm by
Dana and the Presidency
Dana’s been on forecasting the end of democracy as we know it because she can’t get 4 county councils to nominate her for the presidency. Her argument appears to be that because she wants to run, she should be allowed run. She is particularly bitter about the refusal of Fine Gael to endorse her and claims they are anti-democratic. It has escaped her notice that whereas the Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour and Green parties have elected parliamentary representatives and they all voted on the issue themselves they have democratically decided not to contest the election. Dana, on the other hand is the ‘unelect’ since Connact/Ulster declined the opportunity to re-elect her to the European Parliament and she also failed to get elected to the Dail.
If her point was correct, that she should get a nomination just because she wants it, then why bother with a nomination procedure at all? Just have an open day up at the Aras and anyone that wants to run goes up and puts down their name. I could run. And what a fine President I would make.
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09.14.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:36 am by
Presidential announcement
And they cancelled Dallas so they could cover her self-nomination live. That’s a bit OTT.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 11:30 am by
Ireland Presidential election
Despite the fact that I agree with Enda Kenny that FG shouldn’t bother running a candidate against Mary McAleese (why bother – it doesn’t really matter and she’ll win anyway) I do have a couple of problems with the current set up.
1. She can nominate herself
This seems grossly undemocratic. How can an incumbent nominate herself for the same job. Everyone else has to scrounge around for nominations while she does what she wants. On a political level its also unfair because as the Fianna Fail party don’t have to nominate her it makes her appear apolitical even tho she is Fianna Fail and is very much a Fianna Fail president. At the very least she should have to seek a nomination from them. What if (ok, a big if, but nevertheless) they wanted to put someone else in?)
2. She can leave it till the last minute
This screws everyone else around. Getting a nomination is difficult and takes time. By announcing today she has made it next to impossible for anyone else to secure a nomination. The September meetings of the county councils have been held and the October meetings will be too late. She should have been made announce a month ago and give other potential candidates the opportunity to seek nominations in a less panicky environment. I know they could have been making plans earlier, but without a definitive statement from her, everyone is operating in a vacum.
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09.10.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:37 pm by
George W funny stuff
This is worth checking out from Justin. It needs a few seconds to download but worth it.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 4:20 pm by
Tea, Mansergh and Chinese
What a few days. First I make the mistake of getting up before my husband sets off for work. Normally I stay in bed while he feeds the child having served me tea and toast in the leaba. It makes for a pleasant morning when low blood sugar does not to lend itself to either conversation or good humour. Something roused me into the kitchen before the usual hour where I was horrified to witness a mug of tea, milk added and a tea bag still in place. Before my eyes he added sugar and then removed the tea bag. I shrieked at this travesty of tea making when he revealed that this is his standard method of manufacture which I had been happily consuming for years. I had been prepared to sacrifice the teapot and tealeaves but assumed that he copied my custom of teabag + boiling water, remove bag, add sugar, then milk, stir properly (at least 3 or 4 full circles), tap the teaspoon twice on the rim (so the tea in the spoon drops off before you put it on the saucer/counter/table). I knew there was something different about his tea but I just thought he made it stronger and given that I was the grateful recipient of his morning generosity I thought it wise not to criticise. Moral of the story: stay in bed. At least it’s Barry‘s tea. Good Fine Gael tea.
Speaking of Fine Gael, Brutal got the job of EU Ambassador to Washington. He is most suited for the job; native english speaker, committed European, thoughtful, intellectual, former Taoiseach, and the Irish are well known for their influence on the Hill. The begrudgers got going and re-spun the old story that he was terrible for the peace process. They all forget that it was the Republicans who refused to deal with him and Spring was going to stay in government with FF as they had threatened to dismantle the process if they were forced to deal with FG. It was only when Spring discovered he had been lied to by practically the entire cabinet over the Duggan case that he finally realised he had to pull out. Bruton, a surprise Taoiseach and cognisant of the delicate stage the peace process was at therefore most generously asked Martin Mansergh, the Fianna Fail official (now Senator) and a crucial player, to stay on in his capacity as advisor on Northern Ireland to the government. Most unpatriotically, Mansergh refused, citing his credibility with Fianna Fail as the reason. So at this important time, Bruton was prepared to put party politics aside for the sake of the country but Mansergh put FF before the country. This is all accounted for in Kevin Rafter’s excellent book.
Further, the meeja like to claim that Bruton obstructed the PP by insisting that decommissioning be a precondition of SF involvement in an NI Executive – the famous Washington 3 speech. However, as Rafter’s evidence shows, Mansergh, who deigned to brief Bruton on the issues when the government changed, made it quite clear that decommissioning was on the agenda, as Bruton’s contemporaneous notes, undenied by Mansergh, clearly show.
Anyway, I’ll be sending Ferrera Rocher to JB.
Finally, some light relief with Leon who revealed that Dublin’s Moore St, the home of the fruit and veg markets, is now also the home of Ireland’s Chinese chinese restaurants. We arranged to meet for lunch at the more upmarket Epicurean food hall but he persuaded me to check out our new Eastern quarter. He waited outside while I very cautiously ascended the dingy stairs inside the even dingier entrance to one such establishment, past all the notices in Mandarin which appeared to mainly advertise poker tournaments, opportunities for extras in films and calling cards. Two rooms were either side of the first floor landing. To the left, the Chinese people were munching away on their tripe, hock and pig’s feet: to the right, trendy looking natives were tucking into chicken in pineapple. Everyone was using chopsticks. Still it looked relatively clean so I assented and we ordered the chicken and pineapple. I hope it was chicken. Leon is expert with chopsticks having spent time in Japan. I gauchely (?) requested a fork. They gave me two! (Two chopsticks – two forks!) The waitress keenly admired the child and the price was very kind to our pockets. I recommend to all.
On the chopstick front, I have to say I don’t see the point. Once the fork got invented, why bother sticking with the sticks?
Just noticed the split infinitive in the above paragraph. It’s a pretty bad one. I suppose …which mainly appeared to advertise….primarily appeared to advertise…..or just which advertised….. Making it simple is usually the best move.
5 to 5. Time to start dinner. Salmon with pasta in a cream, chive and asparagus sauce. Must be very delicately done or it’s all ruined.
Am appearing on TodayFm at 11am on Sunday, tune in if you’re in Ireland and then don’t forget to phone in to say I’m great.
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09.07.04
Posted in Irish Politics at 7:27 pm by
What to do with terrorism
Finally some sense…and not from a left wing source. From today’s IT, Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraph. I reprint in full as its subsc. only.
Terror tactics are having their desired effect
The terrible tactics used by the hostage-takers in North Ossetia to advance their aims may actually be working, writes Max Hastings.
Terrorism is getting nastier. Compare and contrast the anarchists and nihilists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, who shot kings and presidents, with the Chechen separatists who have killed 350 children and teachers. Recall the indignation which accompanied IRA failures to give warnings of their bombs, thus killing innocents. Palestinian suicide bombers are not noted for giving warnings.
It is hard for any of us who is a member of a bourgeois democratic society to pierce the mind of a terrorist capable of murdering children in hundreds to publicise a cause. Yet even if means become more hideous, the terrorist’s character has not changed much since the 19th century. Consider the description of Sergei Gennadievich Nechayev by the revolutionary Bakunin, writing to a friend in 1869:
“I have here one of those young fanatics who know no doubts, who fear nothing and who have decided quite definitely that many, many of them will have to perish at the hands of government but who will not let this stop them until the Russian people arise. They are magnificent, these young fanatics, believers without God, heroes without rhetoric.”
Nechayev killed only a modest number of people before dying in a Tsarist prison, but he advocated murder as an essential tool of revolution. Once the methodology of killing innocents is accepted, the question of how many may reasonably be liquidated at any one time becomes a marginal issue.
There are three obvious reasons for the 21st century terrorist escalation.
First, it is much easier to attack undefended civilians than military installations or rulers. Second, the Muslims responsible for most contemporary terrorism are untroubled by even such modest scruples as the IRA possessed. Finally, extraordinary outrages gain extraordinary attention. No conceivable action by the Chechens could have gained them as much attention as the massacre of children.
The massacre places immense pressure on the Russian government to identify targets for retaliation. Here is the purpose of the terrorist, defined by Lawrence Durrell in Bitter Lemons, a classic account of the 1950s EOKA insurgency in Cyprus: “His primary objective is not battle. It is to bring down upon the community in general a reprisal for his wrongs, in the hope that fury and resentment roused by punishment meted out to the innocent will gradually swell the ranks of those from whom he will draw further recruits.”
I have always thought this passage above should be framed above the desks of every politician and soldier charged with countering terrorism. If we assume that it is undesirable to accommodate the aims of our enemies, then the need seems paramount to focus vengeance solely upon the guilty.
Israel does itself relentless harm by venting its spleen for suicide bombings upon the Palestinian people. The Russians in Chechnya have adopted policies of ruthless repression, which appear only to have fulfilled Durrell’s dictum, by increasing support for the separatists.
The sole historical example I recall for the success of savagery in containing insurgency is that of the Nazis in occupied Europe. Only in Yugoslavia was the wartime resistance movement a real military success. To this day, many people in France possess reservations about whether armed opposition to the occupiers was worthwhile, when the cost of each German soldier killed was measured in the lives of dozens of innocent hostages.
In 1980, I interviewed members of the SS Das Reich division, which was responsible for several hideous French massacres in June 1944, most notably the killing of more than 600 civilians at Oradour-sur-Glane, following the resistance kidnapping of a German officer.
An old SS man, sitting in his comfortable retirement bungalow in Bavaria, demanded with a bewilderment which seemed chillingly sincere: “Why was there so much trouble about this one incident in France? In Russia, such things happened every day.” He went on to suggest that the Das Reich’s action at Oradour had achieved its purpose, since there was no further significant resistance activity in the region during the last weeks of German occupation.
It is customary to regard such extreme counter-insurgency methods as unique to the Nazi era. However, it is worth recalling a 1966 conversation in Vietnam between Neil Sheehan of the New York Times, and America’s commander, Gen William Westmoreland. Sheehan asked Westmoreland if he was troubled by the number of Vietnamese civilians killed by indiscriminate bombing and shelling. The general answered: “Yes, Neil, it is a problem, but it does deprive the enemy of the population, doesn’t it?”
Here was the ethos that made possible the My Lai massacre. When an enemy is faceless, the rage and frustration of soldiers charged with suppressing insurgency are readily vented upon the innocent. This happens constantly in Chechnya, while President Putin systematically suppresses those courageous Russian journalists who seek to expose its manifestations.
The difficulty for all governments in addressing terrorism is that this is best done by undramatic, even invisible means: intelligence, politics, diplomacy, special forces operations (though the world is today hideously aware of the incompetence of Moscow’s men). George Bush persistently abuses the word “war” to describe the task facing his own nation since 9/11, which also perpetuates a delusion that it can be addressed by fire-power.
Bush also seems willing to regard all terrorists, whether Palestinian or Chechen or al-Qaeda, as faces of a common phenomenon. He indulges both Ariel Sharon and Putin in any means they see fit to suppress those who use terrorist methods, without heed to the need for diverse political responses, as well as sensitive military tactics.
One suspects that Nechayev would have asked himself only one question about last weekend’s massacre: has it advanced the Chechen cause?
Whether we like it or not, it may have done. The cost to Russia in blood and treasure of continuing to hold Chechnya is high, and constantly rising. The Russian people seem to be directing as much anger towards their own government for what has happened as towards the terrorists.
Once the world’s surge of compassion for the victims has faded a little, the challenge for any responsible government is to assess terrorism, whether that of Chechnya or Palestine or al-Qaeda, without sentiment.
The only questions that should matter are whether the grievances represented by a given movement receive a political as well as a military response (e.g., the Belfast Agreement), or whether governments persist with exclusively military policies (e.g., Sharon, some people in Washington whose names momentarily escape me, and Putin).
The fact that what has happened in Ossetia this weekend is unspeakable does not make Putin any more likely to win his Chechen war. – (Guardian Service)
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