EU Elections – East

I realised today that I haven’t seen any Google Adsense delivered Libertas ads in a while – hopefully they started costing them too much and they had to pull the plug. I suspect that they’d simply set a fairly small budget aside for it and the valiant efforts of those of us who piled on the clicks had the unexpected benefit of actually getting rid of the damn things.

Anyway following that wonderful success I figured I had to go and see who was actually putting themselves up in my constituency to see if there’s anyone at all I’m going to want to vote for.

Elections Ireland is the place to go for the lists. And we have some class suspects lined up for our consideration.

Ray O’Malley: Libertas. Complete loon. Actually he seems like an opportunistic political wannabe in addition to being a Catholic Fundamentalist and part time xenophobe. Apparently he once ran for leader of the IFA but now is happy to cosy up with a party that has almost no policies apart from eliminating the CAP which is the lifeblood of those he wanted to lead in the past. Anyway as a Libertas candidate he gets my absolute final preference. And when you see the rest of the list that’s saying something.

http://raymondomalley.blogspot.com/ – Worth a laugh. Ray wants the Turf Cutters of Ireland to have the right to cut their own turf which is good to know. More importantly he’s on the side of the “No to Pylons” campaign which would have put him in the total fruitcake camp for me even he hadn’t been buried up to his nostrils there already.

Tomas Sharkey: Sinn Fein. I think the two things that most strongly inform my opinion of him are “Tomas Sharkey has been active in the Republican Movement since he was 9 years old” and “I was 11 years old when I set myself the goal of getting into the all-Irish class in the Christian Brothers Secondary School in Dundalk”. Oh please, when I was 11 years old I set myself the goal of being a cynic and escaping from the Christian Brothers, thankfully I succeeded. Anyway if you feel up to it you can read more about how brilliant he thinks he is in this interview in An Phoblacht if you want but for me if Ray O’Malley wasn’t running he’d be bottom of my list.

http://www.sinnfeineu.com/en/sf-eu-candidates/entry/18 Well the party built him a nice home page, just like everyone else’s but there is stuff in there.

http://www.sinnfeineu.com/en/entries/18/0/campaigns – Yeah now we get to the improtant stuff his Blog is  – “Work in Progress” AKA “Somebody else does all that web stuff for me”

Kathleen Funchion: Sinn Fein. One of the new crop from the SF youf activist movement. Apart from my basic distrust of SF’s rather simplistic nationalist fundamentals she seems far too chirpy about last years “No to Lisbon” campaign for my liking and I dunno about the rest of you but being part of an “SF delegation to Colombia” last year is monumentally bad style, even if she was over there to adopt orphaned bunny rabbits. Sorry Kath you’re going to be lumped down with the FF’s although you’ll be glad to know that Ray is definitely going to get a lower preference than you. You can get a pretty good flavour of her from the interview in An Phoblact linked above.

http://sinnfein.ie/elections/candidate/206 – Your top hit on Google delivers a 404 a week before the election. Epic Techno Fail.

Liam Aylward. Fianna Fail. Sitting MEP. A TD since 1977 who had to step down from the Dail after winning an EU seat at the EU Elections. He seems to be a low key fundamentally uninteresting lifer in the FF establishment with lots of family connections in “The Party”. That alone puts him fighting for the lower places in my preferences.

http://www.liamaylward.com . Dig around and you will get a flavour of the man. Loves his meat [industry] obviously. And hats off to him for delivering speeches about Israel and Palestine as Gaeilge.

Thomas Byrne: Fianna Fail. Sitting TD it appears (since 2007). So what’s up with that? Anyway he’s even worse than a FF lifer in my book – he’s one of the latest crop who wanted to get on the gravy train only to discover that all the good scams are now busted. Bottom third. Apparently rumour has it that he drew the short straw as FF felt they had to put up some candidate to run alongside Aylward but nobody really wanted it and Byrne ended up on the list although nobody really wants him to win as that would trigger a by-election in Meath and the Government really don’t want that. That might be enough to want to get him elected out of spite.

Hey he has a Blog!  http://thomasbyrne.blogspot.com/ which is very promising however I found this there:

“I agree with Deputy Beverly Flynn on the issue of mortgages” - Aaargh!! run for the hills.

Paddy Garvey: Independent. Basically all I can find out about him is that nobody knows who he is and there are supsicions that he’s taking the piss. Well frankly if he’s not a member of Opus Dei and hasn’t been abducted by aliens he might get a vote because the rest of the field is piss poor.

Micheal E Greely: Independent. Again bit of a mystery candidate. Some rumours that he is “anti-establishment” which could be code for “total nutter” but then again who knows? Hopefully I’ll run into him on the street and find out more.

Jim Tallon: Independent. Now this guy is total class. He’s run in almost every election since 1981 and never got more than 163 votes. I don’t care how much of a nutter he is, frankly he could be running for Libertas and I’d be tempted to give him a vote just for his persistence. Some great videos up on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQX2bi0TFEY.

John Paul Phelan: Fine Gael. Sitting Senator from the Agricultural Panel. I strongly suspect that I have basically nothing in common with the man, even if I am a culchie. Gotta see what his policies are but I suspect he’s also heading for the bottom third. http://www.johnpaulphelan.com/ is a fantastic website JP – there is no mention at all there that you’re actually running in an election. Yep he definitely isn’t getting my vote.

Mairead McGuinness: Fine Gael. Sitting MEP. I quite like Mairead and she seems to actually be doing a decent enough job in Europe however she catastrophically failed to take the direction I wanted my MEP’s to take on the Telecoms Package. As it happens that sort of worked out (or at least it hasn’t been a complete disaster yet) so I might give it a skip. She is Fine Gael though and there’s an uncomfortably strong link between that party and the Catholic Hierarchy. For the moment I’ll put her in my undecided bucket.

http://www.maireadmcguinness.ie/ Nice website for a politician. I’d like to see a list of votes too BTW but not bad.

Nessa Childers: Labour. Local Councillor in Blackrock. A psychoanalyst, former Labour Party then Green Party and then she switched to Labour after she resigned from the Greens last August when they asked her to run for this election nomination (as far as I can make out). Daughter of Erskine Childers. Interesting background and although I’m always a bit suspicious of people who change party political allegiance she might actually be a politician who believes in principles more than parties which would be pretty goof. Anyway personal speculation aside she seems worth checking out to see if her policies are OK and to make sure she’s not harbouring some nutty granola bar flavour of greenery. With any luck she might be all right. In any case she’s the only person guaranteed to be considered for a vote.

http://www.nessachilders.ie/ It’s pretty basic to be honest and frankly it doesn’t exactly tell you what she stands for. Oh well.

I’m now adding another question to my standard list for candidates – who the fuck are you and when did you last actually update your website with information that tells me real stuff about what you stand for. I’m amazed at how bad most of the above pages are.

Libertas Again

So where do they get their money from? They appear to be fielding candidates in almost all countries in the EU and are certainly presenting a campaign here in Ireland that is on a par with the usual supects. That must cost a pretty penny.

Anyone know where they get their funding from? It can’t be from individual donations of a grand or two from their members – fair enough that Ganley & co might cough up that sort of cash but to generate the amount of money required to run national level campaigns in 10+ countries requires an awful lot of donors if they are limited to a couple of €k per head. I’m intrigued, I have to say.

Oh and I find the marginally xenophobic party line completely hilarious – come on how seriously can you take a party that wants to close out borders when they are running candidates in the very countries where the people they want to keep out actually come from?

No doubt they will get people elected – I just wonder what exactly the people who vote for them think they are actually voting for because for the life of me I can’t see much in their manifesto beyond rehashing the Lisbon thing and a bit of a rant about expenses abuse in Brussels. To be fair to them it’s now a hot topic given the shenanigans in the UK and it will probably win them some votes there but for all that it might be a reasonable thing to complain about its hardly the stuff that the future path of Europe will be built from. Then again, maybe that is the plan.

Libertas Redux

Libertas had some folks handing out election bumf outside the train station this morning - I asked the nice lady who The Foundation for European Democracy were but she wasn't able to help me, I think she thought I was a bit tapped to be honest which is fair enough. I decided to hold off on my question about their funding disclosure issues with the SIPO committee for my next encounter which was good because later I had a chance to reread their EU campaign "policies" - they have very few but they are listed here. (Odd that they make it an image - don't they want them to be indexed??). Anyway one stands out:

Full Disclosure: All EP & Commission expenses MUST be published.

It's certainly something I'd like to see addressed but frankly knowing the detail of the expenses (however outrageous) of a thousand or so politicians isn't going to change the world. But it is a good principle and I like to see people being scrupulous about where money goes. That's why I wonder so much about the €700k The Foundation for European Democracy effectively donated to Libertas last year. I'm certain, you see, that while I'd like to see how politicians spend money we give them I am adamant that we must always have full disclosure about money other people spend on them - so we can keep an eye on special interest groups trying to mess with democracy and so on. It's a thing we've had lots of problems with after all.

Anyway in the interest of helping out in the keeping track of expenses front I've been diligently clicking through on all the Google Adsense delivered Libertas ads I've been getting. I think I see one about every couple of minutes at this stage and they all get a click or two. I wonder what they pay for each one? €0.10? €1:00? €10:00 ? I've no idea but I do know that they do pay something, Google takes a big chunk (fine by me) and the sites I like get some ad revenue (even finer by me). Maybe we should all do it - Declan will be delighted when he sees he has the highest click through of any political campaign on the net. 

Questions for Politicians

Election Season is upon us. The Economy is doomed but I’d rather not just ask any politicians about the current local debacle because they are unlikely to be able to convince me that they genuinely have any real answers. However I do have some questions that interest me.

For EU Parliamentary candidates:

What is your position on the Citizens Rights Amendments to the Telecoms Package? How have you voted on this, and\or how have members of your party voted on this?

With regard to accounting\financial regulatory standards – how should financial instruments like CFD’s (Contracts for Difference), CDO’s (Collateralized Debt Obligations) , CDS’s (Credit Default Swaps) and so on be regulated and which bodies should be responsible?

What is your position on the revote on the Lisbon Treaty and have you read it? Explain the changes to the rules for commissioners. If Ireland wanted to leave the EU without Lisbon being passed could we do it? If Lisbon was passed could we do it?

What is your position on the current security protocols for air travel especially the liquids ban on planes? Can you tell me how many terrorist plots have been thwarted by by these protocols so far? Why were they implemented and what sort of review process do they include? What review process should any future changes to such protocols include?

For Local Government Candidates:

What do you intend to do about taking responsibility for maintaining and unifying the cost of local services for all people living in the county? (Things like estate maintenance, street lighting, water\sewage, refuse collection..).

What will you do to help local residents of Estates\Apartments where the Management Company has gone bust or is at risk of going bust?

Given that Local authorities facilitate or directly finance almost all activity by Construction firms what will you do to ensure that companies that are not acting fairly in their handling of existing estates do not benefit from future contracts\planning decisions?

What do you plan to do to develop unified public transport services?

For Libertas Candidates

Why haven’t you comprehensively answered the requests from the Standards in Public Office Commission after 8 months?

Who are the “Foundation for European Democracy”? Name one director\executive\major funder and tell me how I can find out what their agenda\policies are?

If the EU is fundamentally non democratic in its structure then in what way does that differ from our own Government where the majority party then gets to pick the Taoiseach and he then gets to nominate the Cabinet without then asking the voters to ratify those decisions?

What is your position on Irish Neutrality? How is that balanced with the strong ties Libertas has to individuals and companies that are deeply involved in global military contracts (Rivada).

(For a laugh) What is your position on Global Climate Change?

More Libertas Shenanigans

What is Naoise Nunn up to? He was on Sam Smyth’s Sunday Morning show on Today FM today and I finally caught up with some of the John McGuinness story as a result.

I was amazed to find out that Mr Nunn had, for whatever reason, executed a full 180deg U-turn on the Lisbon question and is now making some cash as a “political consultant” but otherwise I was not surprised to find that Nunn was behind at least some of Mcguinness’ rather extraordinary activity of late. The “create some smoke” and everyone will assume there really is a fire type of thing. Now I’m pretty sure that some (and maybe evan all) of McGuinness’ issues are both valid and true it’s the style of the thing that had me bemused, until now.

One of the other guests totally called out Nunn on this – specifically describing the scenario as indicating that McGuinness had been given some spectacularly bad advice. I didn’t get they guys name but he was obviously a Fianna Fail activist\member\whatever so the comment was certainly highly subjective but I couldn’t agree more, it all seems to me to have been a spectacularly badly “managed” attempt to get McGuinness press coverage at all costs.

Anyway this all leads me in to remarking that the fact that Libertas have been noticeable lately is clearly related to their attempts to get elected to the EU Parliament. Despite the obvious hilarity of this (the parallels with UKIP immediately spring to mind) it does raise a serious problem – these neo-cons might actually generate enough smoke by repeating their strategy of last year to fool enough of the electorate into electing one (or more) of them in June.

So in the interests of directing folks at places where they might find some direct information on Libertas, what they stand for, who they are and most importantly how they behave politically here are some useful links:

Libertas Nein Danke.

Say No to Libertas

Declan Ganley and Libertas

Libertas – The Pan European Political Party

And just in case anyone is concerned that these are all negative – feel free to spend some time on Libertas’ own sites. If you actually read the content they should serve to scare you off enough too.

http://www.libertas.eu/

Oh and as a reminder – Libertas has still not explained the funding of their Anti-Lisbon campaign last year. Given that they are now running for an office where they themselves claim corruption and cronyism is rife we would hope that they could at least adhere to some basic standards in this regard before getting tempted if they manage to get elected.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0314/1224242848259.html

Edited to add: Of particular interest to me is who exactly is “The Foundation for European Democracy” who apparently donated €700k worth of their free book “The Lisbon Treaty : The Readable Version” that got distributed to Irish voters last year. You will notice if you follow the link that Google (and any other search engine you try) has never found any links to them which is decidedly odd, and makes me suspect that they don’t exist. [End Edit].

And it would be a good time to note that here is strong evidence that Libertas (or possibly Ganley himself) is actively editing their Wikipedia entries to remove any items they don’t like, no matter how solidly based in fact those items are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Declan_Ganley

And finally one of my reasons for this post is that after the last Libertas rant I posted, Google’s [blog reading] AI based ad-serving system saw fit to flood me with Libertas ads everywhere I went online. So I have happily been clicking into each one just to make sure that Ganley and crew get good ad-conversion and click through stats. I would love if more people did the same – it’d be terrible if they all the advertising they paid for went unused.

You know you’re a sad Geek when..

Following some links about the new Gnome Network Manager included in Ubuntu 9.04 I found a blog by Dan Williams who was responsible for much if not most of the underlying work that has made it such a pleasure to use with 3G network devices.

This article where he complains about the firmware on one of the new Huawei 3G cards brought a smile. Been there dude! I often had exactly the same reaction when testing my own cellular device discovery code against various hardware. Then I realized just how sad it was to be able to fully understand and sympathize with a comment like:

…the response to AT+GCAP is simply “+CIS707-A, +MS, +ES, +DS, +FCLASS”.  No, it’s not prefixed with “+GCAP: ” like every other modem on the planet that I’m pretty sure the relevant standards (TIA/EIA/IS-131, TIA/EIA-602, and V.250) require..

I need to give this new Network Manager a proper try out on some diverse hardware now as it seems possible that it finally gets Ubuntu up to a level where it is as good an experience as that seen on the best Windows systems.

Libertas still banging on.

Just noticed that Libertas are clearly still chasing their “Vote No to Europe” agenda. I just got this Google ad piped into my Slashdot RSS feed:

I’m still waiting for an adequate explanation on precisely what their links to fundamentalist Catholic groups is, what exactly Declan Ganley’s personal agenda is in relation to EU politics and well what exactly they actually stand for because nothing is really clear when it comes to Libertas.

For an outfit that is relatively small they certainly seem to have a lot of money and for a group that implies that they espouse a libertarian agenda it would be very appropriate for them to clearly state where that comes from on and how they spend it. It might also be nice if they explained to the general Irish population what their flavour of libertarian thought actually stood for.