Via Armed Liberal, I see that George W. Bush appears to be on the verge of taking action to signal emphatically to Sinn Fein that they are personae non gratae, unless they get rid of the hard men in the IRA. I’d noted in a previous post that there was a political controversy over whether Sinn Fein would be specifically singled out for exclusion from the St. Patrick’s Day party in the White House, or whether instead all political parties would be disinvited from the party, so as to make the snub less pointed. Now, according to the Times it appears that no political party is going to get an invitation to the reception - but that the relatives of a recent victim of the IRA will be invited to the White House instead. If the Times is right on this (the story seems to have some legs, but rightwing British papers are frequently unreliable sources on Northern Ireland politics), the Bush administration is sending about as clear and unambiguous a signal as one could possibly hope for. Interestingly, the signals from the North seem to suggest that Sinn Fein and the IRA recognize that they’re in real political trouble - not only because of the frost in their relations with the Irish, British and US governments, but also, more importantly, because of protests from natural constituency in the Catholic working class communities in Northern Ireland (where the murder in question has been highly controversial). For the first time in my memory, there’s a serious internal challenge to the IRA’s ability to control its own community, and to the frequently brutal actions of its hard men. Getting rid of them would be a considerable step forward for democratic politics in the North.
Some interesting news just in from Ireland. Observers of Northern Ireland politics may remember the massive bank raid last December, where the thieves netted UKP 26.5 million. The dogs in the street knew that the IRA were responsible, but when the UK and Irish governments, as well as the body charged with monitoring the ceasefire said as much, they were met with vociferous and indignant denials from both the IRA itself, and from Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing. Now, Irish police have arrested seven men who appear to have been in possession of large quantities of Northern Ireland banknotes; it appears that those arrested include two Sinn Fein members, one of whom is a former elected representative. As the leader of the Irish Labour party, Pat Rabbitte has noted in a statement:
even at an early stage, it appeared that today’s events were particularly significant in the context of the Northern Bank robbery and subsequent denials by IRA and Sinn Féin.
At this stage, one hesitates to make any definitive pronouncements - the possibility exists that these jokers had a perfectly legitimate reason to be carting around UKP 2.3 million in Northern Ireland and British banknotes. But if it does indeed turn out that this is some of the missing cash, it puts Sinn Fein in an extremely awkward position. Everybody knows quite well that they’ve been lying through their teeth about IRA involvement in the bank raid - but there hasn’t been any smoking gun evidence that would put the lie to them. It’s clear to even a casual observer that the IRA and Sinn Fein are organically linked, and there’s very strong reason to suspect that Sinn Fein’s electoral successes in the Republic have been bankrolled in part by the proceeds of crime in the North. This has been having an extremely damaging effect on democratic politics in the Republic. It’s long past time for Sinn Fein to decide whether it’s a normal political party in a democratic system or the political wing of a particularly nasty private army that even during its supposed ceasefire has consistently demonstrated its keenness to maim and cripple innocents.
If the US government is willing, it has a very easy means of signalling how drastically Sinn Fein/IRA’s political options have narrowed. The annual St. Patrick’s Day parties at the White House have been an integral part of the peace process. When Sinn Fein leaders started getting invites as well as democratic politicians, it signalled the US government’s willingness to underwrite Sinn Fein’s role in the negotiations, and any subsequent political arrangements. The gossip around Washington has been that the entire occasion is going to be cancelled this year because the US government doesn’t want to meet and greet terrorists - but also doesn’t want to single them out for disfavor for fear of offending Sinn Fein’s friends on Capitol Hill. If the government wants to send out the right signals it should go ahead and hold the function - but invite only representatives of those political parties that are committed exclusively to democratic politics. This may sound like diplomatic niceties - but it would send a quite powerful signal, and, I suspect, have a substantial chastening effect on a group of people who are in sore need of chastening.
A number of journalists have gotten upset this week over the fact that my uncle Seán was invited to address the parliamentary meeting of Fianna Fáil, the main coalition partner in the Irish government. Together with a small group of like-minded people, Seán’s been responsible for building an organization devoted to social policy analysis in Ireland. He started twenty-odd years ago, when the country’s financial management was on the verge of being handed over to the IMF, unemployment was running at about fifteen percent and pretty much no-one outside the civil service was doing much in the way of policy analysis. By the mid-1990s, many of CORI’s ideas about social partnership and basic income had moved to the center of arguments about social policy and, particularly in the former case, become incorporated into collective bargaining institutions. So it gladdens my heart to see the likes of Ireland’s Sunday Business Post pulling out the stops to discredit him this week:
By any standards, it’s a harsh penance … to invite Fr Sean Healy … to address the parliamentary party in Inchydoney in west Cork tomorrow … Healy has been a constant, vocal and extremely irritating thorn in the side of the government … “I know backbenchers who would burn him,” said one … Healy is revered … by the left generally, and particularly by left-wing commentators … he’s good value in media terms - the controlled bluster … the quick soundbites … He has been described as “the only real opposition in the state” … he operated a back channel of influence through secretary to the government Dermot McCarthy, and through the Taoiseach himself …. “We thought that he was completely off the wall,” said a former official in Merrion Street. “He was the author of various mad harebrained schemes - that basic income scheme was totally mad” … not popular with the conservative wing of the Catholic Church, many of whom see in Healy the socially radical impulses of liberation theology … Healy’s reluctance to wear clerical garb … and the infrequency of his references to God, prayer and the spiritual dimension of man’s life are further irritations … His late father was a member of Fianna Fail (his brother1 is a former national chairman of the Progressive Democrats) … Some who have dealt with him consider him prickly … “He has no influence on policy. Sure, he has a great media profile and all that …” … He is perhaps aware that his views are open to caricature.
Open to caricature is right. So now you know Seán is a raving loon who is nevertheless a controlled debater and good with the soundbites on TV; he’s the author of various harebrained Marxist schemes who somehow has a secret backchannel of influence to the highest-ranking civil servants and the Prime Minister himself; and he’s a radical priest evangelizing liberation theology except he doesn’t wear a clerical collar or talk enough about the spiritual dimension of life in public. A classic incoherent hatchet job. And to top it off he has the cheek to be related to members of more right-leaning parties. Clearly he must be doing something right.
You can learn more about CORI’s role in Irish Social Policy, and their positions on poverty, taxation, the Irish housing boom (or crisis) and other issues at their website.
1 That’d be my father.
It’s not every day that Fine Gael, the Progressive Democrats and Sinn Fein agree on something. But they all say Irish should be an official language of the EU, and complain that the government (which the PDs are part of) hasn’t done enough to make this happen during the Irish presidency. Our presidency of the EU is at best a partial success because we haven’t managed to force the EU to spend an extra 50 million euro a year to translate speeches and documents into a language that no one actually needs them in. It’s the principle, you see.
Support for the Irish language is to Irish politics what honouring families, ‘our troops’ and ‘freedom’ is to Americans; something you hear a lot about in speeches, or occasionally as a sentiment invoked to justify highly dubious policies. Or to put it another way, supporting the Irish language is a bit like pornography; no one can really say what it is, but we all recognise it when we see it. It’s just that we all tend to see it a little differently.
But let’s take it as a given that supporting the Irish language is a good thing. I certainly think so (though I think that speaking it is even better). It’s a sign of huge cultural confidence that in the last decade or so, speaking Irish is no longer the preserve of an aging, dwindling and heavily subsidised minority on the west coast. The gaelscoileanna (Irish-speaking schools) movement is sweeping through the country, with dozens of new schools opening up and enrolling the children of Irish and non-Irish speaking parents alike. In the last couple of years, bi-lingual cafes have opened up in Dublin, and the Irish-speaking tv station is no longer hopelessly uncool. Purists may grumble that the phenomenon is bringing in all colour of faddists and poor grammar into the Irish language movement, but the biggest benefit of all may be that the language is finally becoming just another part of Irish life, rather than something we venerate and set to the side.
Or it was until this campaign to make Irish an official language of the EU. First off, what does it mean to be an official language? It means that parliamentary debates have to be simultaneously translated into that language, whether or not anyone who speaks it is there, and whether or not they understand the language of delivery. It also means that most official documents need to be translated into the language. The upshot of it all is that about 150 people are hired to support each new official language. If you (very unscientifically) divide the 1 billion euro a year translation budget by the current number of languages (20), then an estimate for adding a new language is E50,000,000. What, then, are the reasons to make Irish the 21st official language of the EU?
Because we can.
The motto of the official campaign of Conradh na Gaeilge is ‘The Irish Government has but to ask’. The logic seems to go that as Ireland has been riding high throughout its EU presidency, we should take the opportunity to shove through our own little demand. Or, as Dolores O’Riordan might put it, everyone else is doing it so why can’t we? There’s no counter-argument to this, of course, as it isn’t even an argument so much as a call to opportunism. So let’s consider the case for Irish on its stated merits.
The Maltese got it
Practically every flyer/letter/rant in favour of Irish mentions Maltese, an official language spoken by the same number of people as speak Irish; approximately 380,000. The situation of Irish is indeed similar to that of Maltese; it’s spoken by a small number of people who also speak English fluently. I’ve no idea what shabby little deal was done with the Maltese to give their language official status, but it is a silly and pointless arrangement that does nothing to boost the efficiency or credibility of the EU. As my father often points out, two wrongs don’t make a right.
It’s not that expensive, and anyway, we’d only pay a fraction of the cost.
Proponents of making Irish an official language generally say two things; the cost is trivial, and it’s spread out amongst all EU member states. Currently, translation costs work out at about 2 euros per citizen every year, or less than half the cost of a pint. And when you compare that cost to the ‘return’ we would get – dividing the cost of a new official language by the total number of Irish speakers yields a return of 131.57 euros each per year; dividing it by the number of people who’ve signed the petition supporting Irish (70,000) would give a return of over 700 euros each per year – it’s clear that the Irish would be coming out way ahead of most other contributers to translation costs. (except, of course, the Maltese)
If the main reason we’re in the EU is to milk it dry for every nonsense reason we can think of, then I suppose this would be a good argument. Though when you look at it that way, 50,000,000 euro a year is not expensive at all. It’s actually a cheap price for our self respect.
Nonsense calculations aside, what about this point that we alone enjoy the benefits of Irish being an official language, but share the cost of it with all the other countries? Well, it’s perfectly true. Pork-barrel politics is not a term most Irish people are familiar with, but it’s a well-known concept in US politics. Congressmen tacitly agree to support federal spending plans, or ‘pork’, for individual districts as long as no one questions anyone else’s spending. So a state or district directly receives all the money and pursuant jobs for a particular project while contributing only a fraction of its cost to the overall federal budget. Sounds like a win, right?
Wrong. Everyone then sees that it’s in their interest to add more to the budget – no point holding back, you’ll pay for everyone else’s pork anyway – and so it goes higher and higher until before you know it, somebody’s voted in a Republican president because they think he’ll lower federal spending… So, to get back to the Irish language, raising the overall translation budget for our own direct benefit might seem a good idea in the short term, but ultimately we will suffer along with everyone else as budgets keep climbing and we lose all authority to block anyone else’s pork.
(Of course, you could argue that as the Maltese have already got their own expensive boondoggle, we gain nothing by sniffily refusing to lower ourselves to their level, and should actually shove our snouts into the trough with everyone else. But if you’re arguing on the merits of Irish as an official language, this argument unravels back to ‘everyone else is doing it so why don’t we?’, the non-argument that is simply a salvo of opportunism.)
It would create jobs and get more Irish people into cushy EU positions
Yes, 150 jobs would be created; 110 interpreters and 40 translators. But to whose benefit, other than the job-holders? Irish people in the European Parliament and other institutions already function perfectly well using the English interpreters and translations. Nor would other member states benefit as they are already able to communicate quite effectively with the Irish in Brussels/Strasbourg. So the only direct benefits would be to the happy 150 new employees, whose joy seems dearly purchased over 300,000 euro each.
Then there’s a related argument that runs; Irish people are put at a disadvantage because they can’t count Irish as a working language when applying for a cushy EU job. To which the only sane response is; no shit, Sherlock. Speaking Irish is a wonderful thing, but it does not help you get your point across or understand that of someone else in a meeting room in Brussels. (Though it can be very handy for whispered negotiations with compatriates when you can’t leave the room.) If you’re applying for a job in an EU institution, it is very important that you can communicate with as many different Europeans as possible. These institutions don’t exist to make us feel good about ourselves and our lesser known languages, they exist to produce work.
But underlying the whole debate seems to be the belief that Irish is somehow a second class language unless we have 110 interpreters speaking it to a half-empty parliament session in Strasbourg. Or the idea that Irish isn’t a proper language unless other countries officially recognise it. Are we really so insecure? Do we really need other people to tell us that our language and culture are worthwhile and important?
The actual merits of the case for Irish as an official language are weak. And the hard done by posturing of the people pushing it cuts right against our national self-respect and the very cultural confidence that means Irish is alive and well. Ireland is justifiably proud to be kicking away the training wheels of structural funding and becoming a net contributor to the EU. We were right to throw away the begging bowl and the mendicant sense of entitlement that went with it. Let’s not take it up again.
Or maybe weaseled out of military duty. Naw, that’d be puissant quit-scutage majeur. So I think the following definitely supports John’s point. Maybe.
Never forget that tenure by sochemaunce seisined by feodo copyholds in gross and reseisined through covenants of foeffseignory in frankalpuissance –The Plain People of Ireland: That sounds like dirty water being squirted out of a hole in a burst rubber ball.
- is alienable only by droit of bonfeasaunce subsisting in free-bench coigny or in re-vested copywrits of seisina faci stipidem, a fair copy bearing a 2d. stamp to be entered at the Court of Star Chamber.
Furthermore, a rent seck indentured with such frankalseignory or chartmoign charges as may be, and re-empted in Mart Overt, subsists thereafter in graund serjaunty du roi, eighteen fishing smacks being deemed sufficient to transport the stuff from Lisbon.
The Plain People of Ireland: Where do the fishing smacks come in?
Myself: Howth, usually.
The Plain People of Ireland: No, but what have they got to do with what you were saying?
Myself: It’s all right. I was only trying to find out whether ye were still reading on. By the way, I came across something very funny the other night in a public house.
The Plain People of Ireland (chuckling): What was it?Myself: It was a notice on the wall. It read: ‘We have come to an arrangement with our bankers. They have agreed not to sell drinks. We, on our part, have agreed not to cash cheques.’
The Plain People of Ireland: O, Ha Ha Ha! Ho Ho Ho! (Sounds of thousands of thighs being slapped in paroxysms of mirth.)
Myself: Good. I knew that would amuse you.1
1 Myles na Gopaleen (Flann O’Brien), The Best of Myles
Devises charged with consolidated quodwrits of quitbar or seigny-poke subsist thereafter in fee of grossplaysaunce, notwithstanding all copyholds of mesnemanor, socagemoign, interfee, mortlease, grand bastardy in copygross, subescheats of scutage, quousque, refeoffed disseisor of sub-seisin and a pony in seignyfrankalpuis and vivmain of copycharged serjaunty.
is another man’s freedom fighter. Today’s New York Times carries a gushing apologia for Gerry Adams, in the form of a book review, and a more obsequious or dishonest piece of selective memory I have not seen in a long time.
It starts out with the hoary old chestnut beloved of some Irish Americans; an assumption that the IRA has simply pursued a reunification struggle which would have never arisen if only the British had thrown the 6 counties in as a job lot when the Irish Free State was founded 80 years ago. A question or two, then. If the Northern Ireland conflict is so reassuringly simple that people living 3000 miles away and with the most superficial understanding of it can prescribe a solution (why, Britain should withdraw of course.), then why has the South been so reluctant to embrace the North? Why, indeed, when arch southern republican Eamonn De Valera was offered Northern Ireland on a plate by Churchill, who was desperate to use Irish ports during World War II, did he refuse point blank? Perhaps these questions are too tricky to be addressed, if doing so would admit complexity, boody-mindedness and sheer skullduggery into the story, and transform the IRA from cheerful and plucky freedom fighers into evil and blood-thirsty terrorists.
Brian Lavery’s review of Adams’ new book skims over the book’s beginning, when Adams was released from prison in the 1970s (what for - tax evasion? dope-smoking? peaceful protest?), insisting that it isn’t important that Adams still denies having been a senior decision-maker in the IRA;
“His critics dwell on whether that denial undercuts the reliability of his account, but the distinction is largely irrelevant. Top Sinn Fein politicians like Martin McGuinness have publicly admitted being former I.R.A. leaders, and the connection between the organizations - including Mr. Adams’s role - is well documented elsewhere.”
So you see, it’s not important that Adams continues tolie about his terrorist past, because that information can be established from other sources, allowing us to get on with the business of rehabilitating the unreformed criminal into the political mainstream.
Let’s put the shoe on the other foot, given that this review is printed in a newspaper whose readers suffered the worst terrorist attack in recent memory (and bearing in mind that the IRA is itself responsible for the deaths of 2000 people, most of them civilians). Can you imagine reading a similar article in 10 years’ time about Osama Bin Laden or one of his cadres? It might read; ‘it doesn’t really matter whether the man was a member of Al Qaida or not - after all, the organisation is so murky and fragmented, who can ever really know? - just that he’s smooth, articulate and plausible, and almost sounds like ‘one of us’. How might that play in New York?
Is it simply the case that only atrocities committed against Americans are vile acts of terrorism to be condemned to the end of time? Do atrocities against others have a time limit beyond which we should ruefully admit it’s time to put all of that behind us and pretend the un-met consequences don’t leak into and poison our political discourse? Or maybe it’s just that white, English-speaking people with the same surnames as us can’t really be terrorists.
Lavery accepts almost unquestioningly Adams’ account of the winding road to the peace process, when only thanks to Adams’ tenacity and courage did the process kick off at all. Those who lived through those years may have a different memory; the reams of tortuous doublespeak from the IRA and its spokesman, Adams, the atrocities that would not stop, and the breathtaking perseverance of Mallon, Hume, the Church, and countless functionaries in the British and Irish governments. And still, to this day, no guns to show for it.
How can people who have prosecuted two wars in response to an appalling act of terrorism seem to assume that other countries who have been victims of terrorism should just get over it?
It’s not that there is no possibility for redemption or rehabilitation of former terrorists. Of course there must be, if we are to move forward. But it isn’t sophistry to point out the difference between saying ‘I am regretful and sad, but was powerless.’ and ‘It was wrong and we are sorry.’. It’s not a pointless power struggle to insist that guns and bomb-making equipment be surrendered, and that terrorist training programmes be stopped for good. For peace to truly obtain, the line needs to be drawn between the past and the present, with no deeds ignored, and no moral truths fudged. Articles like that in today’s NYT, which combine cheerleading for an unrepentant ex-terrorists with a facile optimism for the future, don’t really help.
I wonder how many of the target audience for this book review will think of Jean McConville when they brush quickly over ‘the struggle’ and look blithely forward to a golden era of peace? Jean McConville was a widowed mother of 10 children who made the fatal mistake, one day in 1972, of tending to a British soldier who lay dying outside her front door. She was ‘disappeared’ by 12 burly members of the IRA, taken to a beach and shot in the back of her head. Jean McConville’s reputation was subsequently blackened by her killers who tarred her as an army informer. For 30 years, Jean McConville’s children, separated and put in homes, begged the IRA to at least say where they had buried her. Last year, Jean McConville’s body was discovered on a beach by a man out walking with his children. Peace at last.
The image of Hogarth’s Gin Lane comes to mind after reading three pieces on Open Democracy on the booze culture in England , Ireland and Scotland . Central Bristol on a Friday and Saturday night is very much as Ken Worpole describes the centre of many British cities: full of inebriated teenagers, casual violence and, eventually, vomit. Dublin — a destination of choice for young Brits seeking to get smashed out of their brains — also has a big problem:
The results of this behaviour are alarming –- doctors, from a variety of hospitals, estimate that from 15-25% of admissions to accident and emergency units in 2002 were alcohol-related. In March 2003, representatives of the medical profession highlighted some of the horrendous consequences of excessive drinking. Mary Holohan, director of the sexual assault treatment unit at the Rotunda Hospital in central Dublin, said the pattern of alcohol consumption had changed greatly. One shuddering statistic that emerged was that in the past five years there had been a four-fold increase in the number of women who had been so drunk they could not remember if they had been sexually assaulted.
That last could be a dodgy statistic (if the number rose from one to four for example) but it sounds like there’s a serious issue.
I’ve just reached Amartya Sen’s chapter “Famines and Other Crises” in Development as Freedom . He has some discussion of the great famines that depopulated Ireland from 1845 onwards. The potato blight had destroyed the crop but the Irish peasantry lacked the resources to buy alternative foodstuffs which continued to be exported:
ship after ship — laden with wheat, oats, cattle, pigs, eggs and butter — sailed down the Shannon bound for well-fed England from famine-stricken Ireland. (p.172)
Sen argues that cultural alienation (or even hostility) meant that
very little help was provided by the government of the United Kingdom to alleviate to destitution and starvation of the Irish through the period of the famine. (p. 173)
Interesting, because Natalie Solent , who has been writing about famines recently links to an essay in the National Review Online by the awful John Derbyshire on the subject. Derbyshire asks why the
British government did not organize adequate relief, or prevent the export of foodstuffs from Ireland while Irish people were starving.
and answers
it was not within the nature, philosophy or resources of Anglo-Saxon governments to do such things in the 1840s.
Contrast Sen, who knows the facts:
… by the 1840s, when the Irish famine occurred, an extensive system of poverty relief was fairly well established in Britain, as far as Britain itself was concerned. England too had its share of the poor, and even the life of the employed English worker was far from prosperous …. But there was still some political commitment to prevent open starvation withing England. A similar commitment did not apply to the Empire — not even to Ireland. Even the Poor Laws gave the English destitute substantially more rights than the Irish destitute got from the more anemic Poor Laws that were instituted for Ireland.
So contra Derbyshire, who is probably just making it up as he goes along (but then gets quoted and circulated around the network of misinformation that is the blogosphere) it was “in the nature” of Anglo-Saxon governments, even in the 1840s to do “such things”. Just not for the Irish or the Indians.
Sen also provides us with this striking portrait of Edward Trevelyan
the head of the Treasury during the Irish famines, who saw not much wrong with British economic policy in Ireland (of which he was in charge), point[ing] to Irish habits as part of the explanation of the famines. Chief among the habitual failures was the tendency of the Irish poor to eat only potatoes, which made them dependent on one crop. Indeed, Trevelyan’s view of the causation of the Irish famines permitted him to link them with his analysis of Irish cooking: “There is scarcely a woman of the peasant class in the West of Ireland whose culinary art exceeds the boiling of a potato.” The remark is of interest not just because it is rather rare for an Englishman to find a suitable occasion for making international criticism of culinary art. Rather, the pointing of an accusing finger at the meagreness of the diet of the Irish poor well illustrates the tendency to blame the victim. The victims, in his view, had helped themselves to a disaster, despite the best efforts of the administration in London to prevent it. (p. 175)
Blaming the victim, bad choices, poor diet — I’ve heard those explanations before somewhere. And cultural alienation from those suffering from acute poverty? Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose .
The Irish Labour Party has produced an excellent report on the flawed introduction of electronic voting in Ireland. Shane Hogan and Robert Cochran, both labour members and IT experts, show with elegant precision just what is wrong with how e-voting is being introduced in Ireland.
It is depressing that in Ireland we often wait till a public policy has been introduced and discredited/heavily criticised elsewhere, and then implement it ourselves, taking no heed of others’ criticisms and the obvious problems. Tower-block public housing in the 1970s and the current push for healthcare centralisation come to mind. So too with e-voting.
All the problems that have arisen elsewhere in the last few years are present in Ireland, but with no clear plan to address them;
- absence of proper system testing, meaning the first ‘test’ will be next summer’s local and European elections.
- lack of paper trail for votes
- no formal, specific ‘on the day’ security measures for the software or voting computers.
It seems that in the rush to punch our scorecard on e-government, some basic questions have not been answered;
- is electronic voting better (i.e. more accurate, reliable, faster, cheaper) than hand-counting?
- if it’s not better on all fronts, then are the trade-offs worth it?
- if so, then what are we doing to make sure it really works?
The answers so far would seem to be ‘not sure’, ‘maybe’, and ‘diddly squat’. Hardly the ringing endorsement we should need for fiddling with tried and tested democratic processes.
The Labour report suggests that there won’t be any actual cost-savings on e-voting, because each machine will require a supervisor (what that does for anonymous voting, I couldn’t say.). It’s probably too early to say, but it looks like any cost savings may be marginal. So we’re not saving money. We might even lose some. What else are we going to lose?
I don’t know how other countries run things, but in Irish elections, the votes are counted in public. It’s actually quite an event. In a public hall, the votes are counted by the official counters, sitting at a large table which is cordoned off but visible to the public. Anyone can go and stand within three or so feet of the counters and count over their shoulders. And they do. Each political party or candidate makes damn sure to have their own ‘tallymen’ doing their own count. It means that at the end of the day (or more like 2 in the morning), everyone knows just how many votes and transfers each candidate won, and democracy lives to fight another day. Tallies are also an invaluable source of information for political parties and candidates, as they can let you know exactly where and how many your and your opposition’s votes were. They’re also extremely handy if your electoral system is the rather complex proportional representation with a single transferable vote in multi-seat constituencies. Multiple counts, eliminations and transfers are usually called for, and the wealth of experience and knowledge that passes from hand to hand goes a long way to ensuring the system works.
Foul play still happens of course, but it is easier to ferret out because you don’t have to be a statistician or a computer genius to spot it.
So again, the question, what do we gain with e-voting? Not to be too much of a luddite about it, but I don’t see that current e-voting systems add much to the democratic mix. They introduce what Mr. Ashcroft might call ‘unknown unknowns’, reduce transparency, have a marginal effect on costs, and create a whole new host of security concerns.
Shane Hogan and Robert Cochran propose a number of recommendations for the successful Irish adoption of e-voting. I support them all, and add that any such system should be independently run by an agency that is fully compliant with the security standard BS7799 / ISO 17799.
But above all, I would love for someone to tell me - ‘what is so wonderful about e-voting that we ditch a system that works, and works well, in favour of an unproven unknown?’
The results from Northern Ireland’s Assembly elections are filtering through, albeit slowly; it looks as if Sinn Fein has won a big increase in its share of the vote, and the SDLP, the moderate nationalist party, is going to suffer very serious losses. The Ulster Unionist Party, which represents the more accommodationist face of Unionism, has suffered a substantial loss of votes, and is likely to win less seats in the Assembly than the Democratic Unionist Party. The Alliance Party, which is neither nationalist or unionist, has done very badly. As usual, Slugger O’Toole is the best source of up-to-date information on what’s happening.
What does this mean for the peace process? Hard to say. The moderates on both the Nationalist and Unionist side have lost out to those on the extremes. This means that Northern Ireland is likely in for a bumpy ride for the next several months, and very possibly a crash landing. On the other hand, if the Democratic Unionist Party is able to hold its nose and negotiate with Sinn Fein, it may be able to pull off a Nixon in China deal, that will seem legitimate to the Unionist population. This doesn’t look likely any time in the near future; we may have to wait for the Reverend Ian Kyle Paisley (doctor in theology, honoris causa, Bob Jones University) to be kicked upstairs before real progress is possible. Here’s to hoping that he gets called home soon …
I went to see Joel Schumacher’s Veronica Guerin on Saturday night, and left the cinema with mixed feeings. On the one hand I’d spent a reasonably enjoyable evening watching a moderately exciting film; on the other, I felt that justice really hadn’t been done to an important true story. The characterization was pretty weak and the whole thing had a made-for-TV feel about it (it wasn’t). Cate Blanchett as Guerin was all gloss and pressure and her portrayal of the journalist was very one-dimensional (driven obsessive with a side interest in football to give the appearance of depth). Ciaran Hinds as gangster-informer was a bit better, but most of the gangster characters were straight from central casting. The key moral dilemma of the story, Guerin’s choice to put her child at risk for the sake of her cause, was far too quickly and easily dealt with. There’s another film covering the same material - When the Sky Falls - I hope it is more convincing.
À Gauche
Jeremy Alder
Amaravati
Anggarrgoon
Audhumlan Conspiracy
H.E. Baber
Philip Blosser
Paul Broderick
Matt Brown
Diana Buccafurni
Brandon Butler
Keith Burgess-Jackson
Certain Doubts
David Chalmers
Noam Chomsky
The Conservative Philosopher
Desert Landscapes
Denis Dutton
David Efird
Karl Elliott
David Estlund
Experimental Philosophy
Fake Barn County
Kai von Fintel
Russell Arben Fox
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