David Cochrane

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Dublin City Council recently began a “bus gate” on College Green – between 7am and 10am each weekday morning and 4pm and 7pm each weekday evening College Green is only accessibly by buses and taxis. In the run up to this, they installed new information signs along the roads approaching Christchurch and elsewhere (don’t know where – the route I normally take into town goes via Christchurch). Here’s one of the information signs on Nicholas Street (as you’re coming up to Christchurch from St Patricks’ Cathedral.

The information sign on High Street (as you’re coming from Thomas Street onto Christchurch) is a bit out of date.

A simple mistake, of course. But this has been like that for over 24 hours (I saw it at precisely the same time yesterday morning). Did nobody cycle, drive, walk past that who works in the City Council? (about 200 metres away) and get someone to fix it? Nobody?

This may be a small issue (and it is) but it doesn’t instill confidence in Dublin City Council if they can’t get the small  things right.

The USI are calling for action against the implementation of third level fees, but surely this anti-fees brigade needs to change the record in this day and age.

It’s great to see the USI can afford to pay for a full page ad in today’s Irish Times, yet their website is currently down.

If a fees system is to be implemented (despite the high “registration” fees presently in place, think of it as a VRT for college education annually), surely the USI will have greater impact and influence ensuring the fees system is in the best interests of students, rather than potential leaders (as could be suggested of other financial dealings currently at hand).

Nobody expects students to be able to pay up front for their college education (unless you get an education, that whilst recognised by HETAC, is a provided by private college that charges thousands annually) – surely a fee based system if put in place needs to ensure that students are able to repay the (small) debt on their terms.

I also think the drop-out rate will fall dramatically if students reflect on having to pay fees in the future. A student may be more responsible in selecting the course they apply for before sitting their leaving, and should they accept a college offer, I do think they’d be more likely to take their education more seriously rather than considering college as an extension of school, but with beer.

The USI need to cop on and frame the debate, not follow it. If fees are to be brought in – and it was an issue in 2002, well before the celtic tiger was assassinated – the USI have the opportunity to feed into the debate and make suggestions that ensure the ability to repay is the most important issue, not a catch-all oppose-all. Social partnership is falling apart, the USI never came to that table, they’ve the opportunity to build the next one – and sit at the top seat.

The infighting between the Yes camp has kicked off, rather inadvertently, with an off-the-cuff remark by the leading campaigner (so far) for Lisbon, Pat Cox, criticising comments made by EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy. From today’s Irish Times.

THE CLAIM by Ireland’s EU commissioner Charlie McCreevy that people in most EU countries would have voted No to the Lisbon Treaty was “sweeping, false and entirely groundless”, according to the director of Ireland for Europe, Pat Cox.

The former president of the European Parliament, whose independent people’s campaign is advocating a Yes vote in the forthcoming referendum, said that selectively pointing to negative referendum results in France and the Netherlands on the constitutional treaty in 2005 wilfully ignored the corresponding positive votes in Spain and Luxembourg.

During the first Lisbon Treaty campaign I was at a few debates where Pat Cox attended to speak on the Yes side – his involvement in Lisbon 2 has been especially welcomed (even if cynically by many as part of a very long job application to appointed to the European Commissionby the Irish Government). Cox is a good debater, and lest people forget, was at one stage President of the European Parliament. It’s unfortunate however, that (especially by the pro-Lisbon Irish Times) would cover such an off-the-cuff remark.

The appearance of disagreement over people on the Yes camp over elements of detail is more likely to cause damage to the Yes campaign than any involvement by the no side, even if the No side is only likely to be made up of Coir, Sinn Fein, and a few other lefties.

There’s a huge need for discipline and coordinated between the Yes groups and individuals, comments such as this don’t help. They simply confuse a divided electorate.

Earlier in the year the European Commission tendered for a 1.3m contract to communicate the European Union.

Of the bids submitted,the selected bid compromised of Edelman, EPS Consulting, PHD and Zoo Media.

Last night, the first of what I assume will be a significant activiy by this consortium began with a listening event in Dun Laoghaire.

The entire program is entitled, “Talk To EU”. Last night was the first of 50 listening events planned for around the country (there’s one in Fermoy tonight and Longford tomorrow night, check the Politics.ie calendar for details of them).

There was about 34 people in attendance in Dun Laoghaire Town Hall last night, I’d say about 8 of them were Fine Gael people (at least – Senator Eugene Regan and Cllr Mary Mitchell O’Connor were amongst them), over 10 would have been anti-war (Cllr Richard Boyd Barrett and Roger Cole from PANA). I also recognised FF’s Cllr Cormac Devlin who arrived towards the end.

Whilst at the event I was posting message up onto Twitter. You can see them below in chronological order.

So this @talktoeu event in DL is a bit light on turnout. Seems to be a mass photo-op for local politicos with the paid photographer.

The event didn’t start until at 8.20 and turnout was quite brisk.

The event began by Eddie McVeigh from the European Commission introducing Peter Brennan from EPS who McVeigh said would be chairing the event.

In fact, Brennan spoke about ten times as much as the European Commission guy, and for the duration of the meeting stood and took notes, whilst Eddie McVeigh sat.

One of the @talktoeu tender winners seems to be chairing the event. Peter Brennan from EPS

Now I found this quite extraordinary, for one of the tender winners to actually take such a prominent and front-of-house role is a bit unprecedented. Brennan has associated with the Institute of European Affairs, is a Fine Gaeler, and in the past worked for IBEC.

The event kicked off after McVeigh and Brennan spoke, and Roger Cole was the first from the floor to speak.

@talktoeu EU Commission representative now defending Lisbon from criticism by Roger Cole, EC chap says EU brought an end to communism.

@talktoeu 34 people here in audience including me. Lots of FGers here including Eugene Regan and Mary M O’Connor. Rich Boyd Barrett too.

There was a very blueshirt and anti-war feeling to the evening, a few questions initially from people from each and that’s pretty much how it was going to be for the rest of the evening.

@talktoeu ZZZZZzzzzz

There’s a journalist here at @talktoeu writing for a German magazine, clapping at anti-Lisbon speakers, I think he’s fallen off the fence.

You can take it I was not missing U2 though.

@talktoeu bored out of my tree here, but it still beats being at U2

Peter Brennan from EPS spent the entire duration of the meeting on his feet, I’d say he spoke about 90% of the time from the top table, with Peter McVeigh (looking utterly bored in the picture below) speaking the other 10%. At one point McVeigh tried to speak, only to be tapped on the shoulder by Peter Brennan in order to shut him up.

EPS guy talking Lisbon, EC guy tries to speak, EPS guy taps him on the shoulder to shut him up. Odd. Is this @talktoeu or @talktoeps?

Lots of anti-war people giving out about, well, war, a few of them talking water charges (more of that later), but the meeting was too tame, earlier in the year, you couldn;t attend one of this without crazy taxi drivers (slamming copies of Bunreacht around the place) or members of life-lovers Coir shouting about that god dude.

Peter Brennan has equipped himself with treaties and IIEA papers. Not about Lisbon eh? This is too tame. Where’s the anti-eu pro-god peeps?

@talktoeu Richard Boyd Barrett says we should review *everything* regardless of what treaty is being addressed. now talking neutrality….

Richard Boy Barrett got up to speak, and I have to say he was very reasonable, came accross very well, made a point that despite the economic crisis and unemployment, that Europe was spending money forcing the Lisbon treaty down people’s troats.

Lots of buzzwords being bandied about, my favourite of them is “elite” – I used to play buzzword bingo in a company I worked with years ago, I may get one for these Europea/Lisbon meetings.

Next @talktoeu I come to, I’m going to make it a drinking game on buzzwords.

@talktoeu senator eugene regan now speaking, says top table aren’t talking about the topic of discussion, says top table getting sidetracked

Senator Eugene Regan had a pop at the top table for failing to stay on topic, allowing the audience (or some of them at least) to keep the discussions focussed on Lisbon, saying that people were there to find out what the European Union was doing for them.

Peter Brennan then picks up a leaflet that one of the tender people have produced, eight pages with details on everything that European has contributed to, funded by the EU taxpayer.

@talktoeu Peter Brennan ‘eaten bread is soon forgotten’ talking about grant aid funded by the ‘EU taxpayer’.

@talktoeu Peter Brennan: Irish gov would not have introduced employment rights if it wasn’t for the EU.

More people from the floor want to talk about the Lisbon treaty, one in particular wants to give out about a specific article, to which Peter Brennan responds by lifting up the IIEA Consolidated treaty and a copy of the DFA information leaflet.

Peter Brennan picks up treaty and dfa leaflet and tells audience they can read hard version of treaty or the easy one. @talktoeu @talktoeps

So yes, he basically tells people all they need to read about the treaty is in the Department of Foreign Affairs information leaflet.

Mary Mitchell O’Connor, former PD now FGer in Dun Laoghaire gets up to speak.

@talktoeu Mother, Teacher, Councillor (her self-intro) Mary Mitchell O’Connor asking who’ll think of the children. Well pretty much.

I think I summed up Mary Mitchell O’Connor pretty well in my twitter message, she basically went on Helen Lovejoy on the room. Mentioned Dell, mentioned erasmus, mentioned EU languages. YAY EUROPE basically.

Peter Brennan now saying there are consequences of a no vote, says international media have now turned on Ireland. @talktoeu @talktoeps

One particular thing I noticed was that Peter Brennan was doing most of the talking. I know this was a listening event, for the EU (or the European Commission Representation in Ireland) to find out what people’s views are on the European Union. I assume this is all going to be feedback to the commission and will influence the rest of the €1.3million being spent on our behalves, well, on the EU taxpayer’s behalf.

Mary Mitchell O’Connor’s points were dreadful, ‘eu nationals are here’ ‘our kids learn eu languages’, ‘we’ve good american jobs’. @talktoeu

@talktoeu, if I recall, part of the commission tender said each of these events was supposed to be webcast, there’s a camera but no webcast.

There is a camera recording the event, but it isn’t being streamed online, I’m pretty sure European Commission required each of these events to be streamed online.

An old lady gets up to pick Peter Brennan up on his repeated use of the term “EU taypayer” in reference to infrastructure projects, she points out to him that €200bn of Irish fish has been taken from our waters. She quotes this figure from an Irish farmers body.

@Talktoeu lady quotes figure of 200bn being estimated value of irish fish stocks. Peter Brennan now saying fisheries policy will be reviewed

@talktoeu EU commission guy interjects saying 200bn figure is wrong. Surprised Peter Brennan let him speak…. @talktopeter

At this point I’m starting to get tired of listening to Peter Brennan, he’s speaking about his experience dealing with the EU (particularly from an IBEC perspective), and is answering every question (almost) from the audience. I think it really would have been more helpful for Eddie McVeigh to lead the speaking, he was the EC representative at the meeting.

@talktoeu commission guys asks for more questions from the floor, Peter Brennan interrupts to talk about the treaty…..

@talktopeter really should be @listentopeter. Christ……. @talktoeu

More people ivnited to speak by Eddie McVeigh, but before they can speak, Peter Brennan interrupts to pick up on points from the floor. This starts to get a bit ridiculous, although may very well be the brief, but I really do think the meetings should be called “Listen to Peter”.

Once the questions from the floor resume, there are queries about the water framework directive and asking why the EU is making schools pay water charges. Eddie McVeigh replied by saying it can’t be the case that it’s coming from the EU.

@talktoeu eu commission guy says there’s no way the eu is responsible for schools having to pay water charges.

And then with a final comment Mary Mitchell O’Connor who says that Dun Laoghaire was one of the few places to have voted for the treaty, and seeming to grasp to that point looking for some validity – she then says she’s just gotten a text message from her dad with a question about farming.

Mary Mitchell O’Connor’s further rant – if Ireland votes no who’ll buy Irish beef? @talktoeu

Madam, – I expect to hear a lot in the coming months about the consequences of Ireland not ratifying the Lisbon Treaty.

It’s easy for the Yes side to talk about the negative consequences of a No vote, and they always seem shocked when they get accused of bullying and threatening behaviour. This is an unfortunate truth, and one which did play a part in the first Lisbon campaign. Even this week, reports covered comments by German Socialist MEP Jo Leinen about the consequences of a No vote and Ireland being moved to a second-class status in the EU. This simply isn’t possible, and it is important that the Yes side seeks to reassure voters of what is possible and what isn’t possible. This is not to say that it should be seen as giving oxygen to the No campaign, far from it – a successful treaty result will be tied to a need for renewed trust in what our politicians tell us.

Comments about the consequences of a No vote need to be seen as unhelpful. It’s all too easy to play to those comments and give them coverage and airtime. These kind of comments also run the chance of giving credence to the possibility that the people may in fact vote No. This is a big mistake. The Yes side need to work from an assumption that the people will vote Yes. This doesn’t mean resting on laurels, but it does mean giving little or no credibility to the chances of losing the second time around.

A successful Yes campaign must be on the merits of what is good about the Lisbon Treaty and what’s good about Europe. Any successful campaign must be based on talking about how Lisbon will fix Europe and, by focusing on areas that are in effect broken, to make it work better.

Classing Yes voters as pro-European and No voters as anti-European didn’t work last time. I doubt whether it will work this time. The Yes campaign can own the argument (unlike last time) by focusing on what’s good; focusing on voting No means being against the positive reform as brought about by the Lisbon Treaty.

Those who voted Yes last time are likely to do so again, thus the focus must be on how to turn the Nos into Yeses. This can be done by focusing on the primary arguments of the No campaign which Ireland has secured guarantees on, and making them arguments in favour of a Yes vote. This may be difficult for those who campaigned for a Yes vote last time to stomach, but they did not win the argument last time — it’s imperative that they do so this time.

But we’re already seeing the same faces with the same language and rhetoric, with the same arguments. This isn’t going to help the Yes campaign. Lisbon 2 must be a fresh campaign, with fresh faces, fresh energy and fresh passion for convincing the No voters to cross the floor – that means telling them their vote did something positive as brought about by Lisbon 2 and urging them to agree by voting Yes.

In particular, I believe the right to retain a commissioner is a massive change, and one which should be overwhelmingly applauded. During the first campaign, many on the Yes side said it wouldn’t be possible, but some of those people have secured that for Ireland.

Focus needs to be put on that leadership, and the ability to secure a better deal, which has been done. Not only has a victory been won for Ireland, but concessions have been given to each member-state with regards keeping a commissioner – this is a victory for everyone across Europe.

People who voted No should be proud of securing not just a better deal for Ireland, but for all Europeans. I believe this is an important aspect to a successful second Lisbon campaign for the Yes camp.

I voted No to Lisbon last year to keep Ireland’s commissioner and am proud of that vote. I’ll be proudly voting Yes in October for precisely the same reason. – Yours, etc,

DAVID COCHRANE,

Editor, Politics.ie

(Former Libertas Lisbon

Campaign Director),

Celbridge, Co Kildare.

Madam, – I expect to hear a lot in the coming months about the consequences of Ireland not ratifying the Lisbon Treaty.

It’s easy for the Yes side to talk about the negative consequences of a No vote, and they always seem shocked when they get accused of bullying and threatening behaviour. This is an unfortunate truth, and one which did play a part in the first Lisbon campaign. Even this week, reports covered comments by German Socialist MEP Jo Leinen about the consequences of a No vote and Ireland being moved to a second-class status in the EU. This simply isn’t possible, and it is important that the Yes side seeks to reassure voters of what is possible and what isn’t possible. This is not to say that it should be seen as giving oxygen to the No campaign, far from it – a successful treaty result will be tied to a need for renewed trust in what our politicians tell us.

Comments about the consequences of a No vote need to be seen as unhelpful. It’s all too easy to play to those comments and give them coverage and airtime. These kind of comments also run the chance of giving credence to the possibility that the people may in fact vote No. This is a big mistake. The Yes side need to work from an assumption that the people will vote Yes. This doesn’t mean resting on laurels, but it does mean giving little or no credibility to the chances of losing the second time around.

A successful Yes campaign must be on the merits of what is good about the Lisbon Treaty and what’s good about Europe. Any successful campaign must be based on talking about how Lisbon will fix Europe and, by focusing on areas that are in effect broken, to make it work better.

Classing Yes voters as pro-European and No voters as anti-European didn’t work last time. I doubt whether it will work this time. The Yes campaign can own the argument (unlike last time) by focusing on what’s good; focusing on voting No means being against the positive reform as brought about by the Lisbon Treaty.

Those who voted Yes last time are likely to do so again, thus the focus must be on how to turn the Nos into Yeses. This can be done by focusing on the primary arguments of the No campaign which Ireland has secured guarantees on, and making them arguments in favour of a Yes vote. This may be difficult for those who campaigned for a Yes vote last time to stomach, but they did not win the argument last time — it’s imperative that they do so this time.

But we’re already seeing the same faces with the same language and rhetoric, with the same arguments. This isn’t going to help the Yes campaign. Lisbon 2 must be a fresh campaign, with fresh faces, fresh energy and fresh passion for convincing the No voters to cross the floor – that means telling them their vote did something positive as brought about by Lisbon 2 and urging them to agree by voting Yes.

In particular, I believe the right to retain a commissioner is a massive change, and one which should be overwhelmingly applauded. During the first campaign, many on the Yes side said it wouldn’t be possible, but some of those people have secured that for Ireland.

Focus needs to be put on that leadership, and the ability to secure a better deal, which has been done. Not only has a victory been won for Ireland, but concessions have been given to each member-state with regards keeping a commissioner – this is a victory for everyone across Europe.

People who voted No should be proud of securing not just a better deal for Ireland, but for all Europeans. I believe this is an important aspect to a successful second Lisbon campaign for the Yes camp.

I voted No to Lisbon last year to keep Ireland’s commissioner and am proud of that vote. I’ll be proudly voting Yes in October for precisely the same reason. – Yours, etc,

DAVID COCHRANE,

Editor, Politics.ie

(Former Libertas Lisbon Campaign Director),

Celbridge, Co Kildare.

The Irish Times Letters Page

Damien Mulley has been doing the rounds over the past few days on how many Irish people are using Facebook.

It’s just crossed the 400k mark.

That means almost 10% of the Irish population is on Facebook , slightly over the EU average. But that’s still very low, according to some figures I’ve been playing with, almost 25% of everyone in the UK is on Facebook.

So let’s look at why the figure is higher in the UK than it is in Ireland. Firstly, 69% of people in the UK are online, compared to 50% in Ireland. So look at the number of Facebook users as a percentage of the total online population, you can see that almost 20% of Irish people online are Facebook, whereas almost 36% of the online population in the UK are on FB.

I’ve done some number crunching, to look at the number of registered facebook users in each country, as a % of the population of each country in Europe, and it’s quite interesting.

What’s particularly interesting, is the % of the online population that are using Facebook, essentially pointing out the national reach of Facebook relative to those who are online.

Facebook does give user number for Estonia and Latvia, so that’s why the cells for those two countries don’t have any Facebook data, I still thought they should be left in, being part of the EU zone.

So which country has the most number of users on Facebook in the EU? That would be the UK – this would appear to be a no-brainer, biggest English speaking country and all that – and Facebook is predominantly an English (as in language) brand, though I accept it’s in other languages, so work with me for a moment………..

…. because whilst the UK has the most number of people on FB, Facebook doesn’t have the highest EU reach in the UK, it has the second.

It’s Denmark, just over 47% of the total online audience, followed by the UK on 35.72, but the UK, being a bigger country, has a higher number of actual users.

Ireland ranks tenth for % of users online at just under 20%, and 11th for most number of users online.

Lewis Black is one of my favorite comedians, sharp, witty, political, profane and *always* angry. I was brought to his attention from a segment on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart called Back in Black.

I’ve alot of Blacks’ comedy downloaded onto the ipod for long car journeys (particularly the Galway to Dublin return trip I used to do each week). In one of Blacks sketches he talks about finding the end of the universe – at a place where there is a Starbucks right opposite another Starbucks.

The Simpsons have played this joke too, where Bart goes into a mall where every store is a Starbucks, except for one, which becomes a Starbucks just as Bart walks out of it (holding a coffee).

Over in Blanchardstown Shopping centre there are 5 Starbucks stores, let’s list them out.

1. One in Blanchardstown Centre itself (opposite Debenhams)
2. One in the foyer of the UCI Cinema
3. One in Borders Bookshop
4. One in the Blanchardstown Leisureplex
5. Near the Crowne Plaza

Now, I know Blanchardstown Shopping Centre is the biggest shopping centre in Ireland, but 5 Starbucks within 5 minutes walking distance might seem a bit much. And perhaps Lewis Black did believe he’d seen the end of the universe. Personally, I do feel the end of the universe is in Blanchardstown, but not because of Starbucks…..

If you can see above, at the Yellow entrance to the Blanchardstown Centre, there is a Meteor store right opposite a Meteor store. Not a 5 minute walk way from another one (The two 3G stores (one called ‘3G Mobile’ and the other simple called ‘3G’ but which also sells mobiles (lest you think they don’t!) are about 1 minute apart).

But the two Meteor stores are literally right in front of eachother. How can this make commercial sense? How can eircom (ultimate owner of the Meteor stores) justify having two stores competing with eachother *literally*.

The mind baffles.

Huawei 220 USB Modem

Since moving to Galway in February two years ago I needed an ok internet connection, and was attracted to the offering from three mainly because it was cheap, only €19.99 a month with a download cap of 10gb. This is cheaper that the offerings from both Vodafone & O2 (€24.99 and €30.11 per month) and the download cap is much higher (10gb compared to Vodafone’s 5gb and o2’s 7.5gb).

I had the first broadband usb modem three came out with, which was the Huawei E220 – the one criticism I would have of this device, was that it is a bit big and has a small usb cable running out of it, this makes it hard to use if you’ve a laptop (or netbook) on your lap, as the weight of the modem pulling down on the usb cable can be enough to cause the connection to disconnect, which can be annoying.

Thus I decided to get a new mobile dongle, I was concerned about trying to upgrade, as three pretty much said I’d have to pay the full economic cost of a new modem (over €200). So I decided to simply take out a new contract, pay €49 for the E160G – it’s more stick-like and thus is much easier to use on the go.

But what to do with the old modem?

Well I had two options really, firstly I could cancel the earlier contract and just bin the old modem, or I could look at ways of using the usb modem, which I did.

I used the older usb modem and turned it into a mobile wifi connection.

Dovado UMR Broadband Modem

After a good bit of Googling, and finding a commerical interaction thread from a company called Dovado over on Boards.ie, I realised you can buy a piece of gadgetry that can turn a usb modem into a wifi connection.

So I have a wifi connection in my apartment, which I use my main laptop off, along with my iphone and netbook, and the housemate is free to use the wifi too (that said, he has the Vodafone mobile offering himself).

The Dovado UMR modem is sold in Ireland exclusively by Subnet Zero, though when I tried to buy it off them two weeks ago they fecked about a good bit, so I bought it from Infoferenda, which arrived in under a week.

* I know that Damien and Michele have worked extensively in looking at the area of mobile broadband, arguing that it really should be skinnyband, but whilst they all advertise big connections, with the exception of a bit of FTPing and watching the occasional Youtube video, I have no issues with speed, although the three connection does have a habit of a bit of downtime, particularly over in Islandbridge.

Piaras tweeted during the week

1 reason why Obama won’t be replicated to the same success in Ireland – would people wear a t-shirt with 1 of our politician’s mugs on it?

Well I only have one answer to that.

I Love My Willie