Posts from — November 2008

Sometimes you just want to grab politicians and shake them until they stop blabbering and start showing some skill.

Fine Gael TD Leo Varadkar did himself no favours this morning on RTE One’s Morning Ireland, where Cathal MacCoille rightly eviscerated Varadkar over his call for Mary Harney’s resignation over a hairdo as part of the wider Fásgate scandal. The scandal has already seen Rody Molloy resign, and rightly so. Harney, then acting as minister for trade, enterprise and employment, confessed that she may have accounted for part of a bill at a beauty salon, when she got a cut & blow dry before appearing on behalf of the state in 2004.

MacCoille tried valiantly to point out to Varadkar that in the greater scheme of things, her part in a €400 bill for a haircut was perhaps not the big issue in this, and that it was, in fact, trivial in the extreme, making his call for her resignation seem, well, rather silly. Like a dog with a bone, Varadkar refused to back down, and MacCoille’s tone became more and more mocking.

After some analysis, the Fine Gael TD’s comments, and the fact that no-one in their PR machine reined him in before he could expand on them on national radio, could be used to show they lack an appreciation of what is important in business, and the importance of timing in communications. The message that comes across is that Fine Gael do not understand that impressions are important, that the perception of professionalism and the presentation that goes with that is not really important. Although I didn’t vote for her or her cabinet colleagues, I would prefer that Mary Harney went into meetings with potential investors in Ireland Inc looking smart and professional. Were I doing her accounts, I would sign off on that receipt as a legitimate expense given her reason for travelling.

But rather than retraining their gaze on the more pertinent issues, i.e., the other €642,600 on the bill (or the remaining 99.94% of it), Fine Gael have tried to squeeze some tenuous political capital out of a fine print issue, a childish exercise in grasping straws. Kenny’s call yesterday, that Molloy’s entitlement to any severance pay or final payment should be withheld until investigations are complete, was a rare moment of clarity from the Fine Gael leader. But Varadkar balanced things back out this morning with his petulant squabbling. It’s pretty obvious he’s keen to promote himself and his image with this matter – his profile page has already been updated to include mention of his key role in Fásgate. No time lost there.

Damien reckons that Fine Gael should be milking this for all it’s worth. Perhaps, but should they not be doing it more sensibly? Asking for Ms Harney to turn in her piece and badge over this so early, and indeed, asking for her head over every infraction, no matter how tiny*, reduces politics to a game of Mallett’s Mallet, where you mustn’t pause, mustn’t hesitate, or you get a bash on the head like this. Fine Gael, for their part, are Timmy.

Premature, self-serving bickering over the minutiae means time lost that could be best used trying to take care of the big picture and probe deeper. Ms Harney’s share of a €400 bill for haircare is a relative trifle.

More investigation of the bill might shed further light on the expenses, and then allow the opposition to use even greater leverage on the government in this regard, but firing off half-baked missives ranting about 0.04% of a total bill, and calling for the head of a senior minister based on those premature assertions, makes Fine Gael look like a transition year project in politics. In poker terms, it’s going all in on just two cards. In filmic terms, it’s akin to William Wallace exposing his spears too early. The advice I’d give to Fine Gael: HOOOOOLD.

It’s another case of the opposition rashly playing the man instead of the ball. They have had innumerable opportunities to pull the rug out from under the current government, and have squandered every one of them by going off on tangents like this. If they get in, I’d seriously consider leaving the country. I’d rather have Louis Walsh preside over selection of the next Taoiseach via a public phone-in than have Enda Kenny warm the chair at the cabinet table.

*Harney has, let’s be clear, been responsible for some WHOPPERS, but this isn’t one of them.

Is there a more ineffectual politician in Ireland than Enda Kenny? Bet you a 99 with strawberry sauce that you can’t point one out by the time this sentence is finished.

As Fianna Fáil’s approval figures show a lemming-like trajectory, Kenny once again seems intent on taking a now-banned political handgun and pointing it at his toes.

If an election was called in the morning, it seems almost certain that Fine Gael would be the new puppetmasters, riding high on a wave of newfound bonhomie. And thank God, thank the Lord, says everyone, that Enda Kenny has Richard Bruton riding shotgun.

In today’s Irish Times, Enda Kenny effectively wrote a 1,000-word treatise on why he shouldn’t retain the leadership. In it, he says absolutely nothing, with his trademark flourish, about his chosen topic – how to survive the financial crisis. He bandies about a few clichés and platitudes, states the obvious a few times, but makes no effort to put forward any structured policy. (Does he realise how much this space would cost to buy at commercial rates? If so, why does he squander it?)

“The differences between Fine Gael’s putative approach and Fianna Fáil’s current approach could not be more stark. Fine Gael has a plan, a different one to Fianna Fáil, and we set that out in July, and again before the Budget,” says Kenny.

Yes, a different plan. Does Enda elaborate on said plan? Does he f*ck. He continues, in flowery language, to complain about Fianna Fáil without saying a substantive word about what his party plans to do, apart from a cursory mention of a pay freeze in the HSE (pictured).

Kenny is about to be found out. Richard Bruton appeared on Primetime this evening, giving a calm and spin-free analysis of the new Finance Bill, appearing every bit like a man with his hand on the steering wheel. Enda, meanwhile, is barking directions from the passenger seat, where he has the wrong map out. Upside down.

The article ends on an explanatory note.

“Enda Kenny is the leader of Fine Gael”.

They left out two words. “For now”.

(Pic courtesy of Murphy’s)

Originally uploaded by la ol´skull

Times are tough in the newsrooms of the nation. The Irish Times is letting people go, Independent News and Media are rationalising an already stripped-out outfit, and Newstalk and Today FM are looking at ‘sharing’ journalists to ensure Denis O’Brien can still afford flights to his tax haven.

If you’re a student in one of Ireland’s many journalism courses or, like me, someone who’s taking a hiatus from journalism, but hoping to make a return, prospects look bleak.

So is it any wonder that aspiring hacks are looking for alternatives?

From the Village Voice’s always-entertaining sex column, Savage Love, comes this question:

Should I Be a Journalist or a Fetish Model?

Answers on a postcard.

Originally uploaded by ehoyer

Bloggers are genii.  Or, at least, bloggers are generally closer to genius than those who take to firing pot-shots at them.  The reason is simple. Genius isn’t something that is plucked out of the ether, it’s something you wipe from your brow.

In Saturday’s Guardian, Malcolm Gladwell looked deeply into the concept of ‘innate’ genius and found it wanting. Genius isn’t born, it is learnt, he said.
Drawing from a study on virtuoso violinists by psychologist K Anders Ericsson, Gladwell came to a conclusion that reads glumly for anyone who is waiting for their inner light to spontaneously shine through. It ain’t about flicking a switch, it’s about generating electricity.

For those with talent, the difference between the good and the great is firstly opportunity, but more importantly, effort.
“The curious thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals” – musicians who could float effortlessly to the top while practising a fraction of the time that their peers did.”
Gladwell continues: “Their research suggested that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. What’s more, the people at the very top don’t just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”

All of which is good news for bloggers.
[Read more →]

Uploaded a few podcasts from my interview with Mark Pollock (pictured), who went blind ten years ago, and started a career as an adventurer/professional speaker, taking on some of the world’s most incredible challenges.

He’s run the North Pole marathon, the Everest Base Camp Marathon, and plenty more besides, including New Zealand’s gruelling Coast-to-Coast race. But being blind, his appreciation of the mountaintop is slightly different from yours or mine. In the first podcast here, he talks about what’s going through his mind when others are taking in the view from the top.

[audio:http://expad.ie/audio/Pollock2.mp3|titles=Blind Perspective]

His next challenge is the Amundsen Omega 3 South Pole Race – more than a month of sub-zero slog to the south pole, the first time since the original race people have taken on each other, as well as the elements, en route to the pole. In podcast two, Mark opens up about the question of what it’s going to be like, and whether or not he can actually finish the race, and become the first blind person to do so.

[audio:http://expad.ie/audio/Pollock4.mp3|titles=Is It Possible?]

And to wrap it up, he gives us a brief description of what it is that drives him to do the things he does. Enjoy!

[audio:http://expad.ie/audio/Pollock3.mp3|titles=Possibility of failure]

Mark’s website, where you can buy space on his South Pole flag.

Over the Christmas season, while most of us are munching turkey and passing the cranners, Mark Pollock will be preparing for a race to the South Pole. It’s the first time it’s been done since Amundsen and Scott raced there in the early 1900s – the race which made Ernest Shackleton famous.

Pollock is retracing Shackletons’ steps – but he’s at a slight disadvantage, being totally blind, but believe it or not has done this sort of thing before, running marathons at Everest Base Camp and in the Arctic.

I wrote about Mark Pollock’s entry to this race in August (here) and below is a brief snippet of the interview in which he describes racing against, then meeting the world’s greatest living explorer, Ranulph Fiennes, who unloaded a few harsh truths on him during an interview after the North Pole marathon. Ice Cold.

Check out his website, where you can get your face on the flag he plans to plant at the pole.

[audio:http://expad.ie/audio/Pollock1.mp3|titles=Ran Says 'Go Home']

More from Mark’s interview in the next few days.

I’m fully behind Red Mum’s campaigning on cervical cancer, and the sentiment behind it. A good friend of mine was diagnosed this year and had to undergo surgery – hugely traumatic for a girl in her early twenties, and something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.

But I have to take issue with something utterly trivial – the common pronunciation of the word ‘cervical’.

With the word referring to the cervix (pron: SIR-vicks) I can’t for the life of me see why politicians and the media are pronouncing ‘Cervical’ as sir-VYE-kel instead of SIR-vickle.

It’s driving me mental. Am I alone in this? Can anyone explain it?

A company that has recycled Irish 8,116 computers by wiping, refurbishing and adding open source software to them scooped a major entrepreneurship award last week.

Congratulations to Camara, based in the Digital Hub, which won €80,000 worth of consultancy and mentoring service by clinching the David Manley Emerging Entrepreneur Award.

Camara bypassed the social category (read: NGO) to win the overall business award. Cormac Lynch, CEO, was a college colleague of mine, and featured in a Sunday Business Post feature of mine which I’ve blogged about here.

Camara reckons that businesses and individuals chuck out around 1million salvageable computers every year. If you know anyone responsible for the disposal/replacement of computers in any firm, you might jot their name down.

We’re not there yet, but we’re getting there, as the saying goes, after a moment of panic last night when I though the whole blog had evaporated.

The blog has now migrated, for the most part, from WordPress to Blacknight, with posts and links imported (had to leave my theme behind), but still isn’t showing up where it’s meant to be, and that’s http://expad.ie

Instead, we’re at http://expad.ie/wordpress/, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to do the redirect,  I’m getting a Redirect loop message whenever I try to log into the admin panel directly, and I can’t even figure out where my wordpress files are on my host server. It’s no-one’s fault but mine. Ftp? Sql?  These are all new things to me. I’m lost.

In any case, a Tuesday push for Blacknight, to whom I’ve migrated, tempted by their November offer and because I want to be able to host audio files for a project I’m working on. A word in particular to company MD Michele Neylon who answered a tech query personally at 00:40 this morning, sorting out my domain. That’s service folks. If I only knew how to use the tools they’ve given me with any aplomb, I’d be laughing.

For the real reason why a black man moving house to Pennsylvania Avenue is big news for Ireland, don’t go looking in Moneygall, take peek into Roddy Doyle’s back catalogue. Say it once, say it loud. I’m black and I’m proud. The look on Glen Hansard’s face when he’s told he’s a minstrel is beautiful.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxWLrO2Fbsw]

Next job – to get an Aboriginal Australian into the top job over there. Plenty of Irish blacks over there – prime example here.