Busy postering bees

Someone, or indeed many people, were up early this morning plastering every available pole with Lisbon Treaty posters. There is something distinctly disconcerting about it though.

Imagine there was a general election on, and you walked the length of your street, and every single poster had the same face and the same name on it. You’d assume you had wandered onto the set of the latest 1984 rip-off and you wouldn’t be far off.

Instead we have green posters saying ‘YES’, yellow posters saying ‘YES’, and, in the name of balance, blue posters saying ‘YES’. They’ve chosen slightly different reasons, but the creepiness remains.

I haven’t read the treaty in full yet, so for that reason I’m not going to comment on the merits of the Yes/No arguments. But on face value, it’s more than a little disturbing seeing such one-sided ‘debate’ in the public sphere. I know Libertas are doing all they can to even things out, but the fact is that they aren’t being taken particularly seriously, which, no matter what the reason, is a bad thing in terms of the standard of debate around the issues.

One of the main faults I can see with the information being distributed so far, is the implicit assumption that everyone knows what the status quo is. So the form being taken is “Vote Yes, for these wonderful improvements”, when the reality is that many voters are likely to have very little idea what we’re trying to improve upon. It’s an obvious weakness, particularly in the case of the supposedly unbiased information.

I can’t help but get the feeling that nobody cares if we understand what we’re voting for, as long as we vote YES - and while that may seem slightly unfair, it’s a case of calling it as I see it. I would gladly be proven wrong.

Brian - or is that Briain?

Brian Cowen has done an awful thing.

By actively engaging in bilingual debate in the Dáil since he was made Taoiseach, he has made me… jesus I can’t even say it… he has made me wonder if I could in some parallel universe… vote for Fianna Fáil.

I know.

What has been particularly interesting is the press coverage of all this public Gaeilge.

Breaking news on ireland.com gave the full text of his speech on Wednesday, the first half of which was in Irish, and blissfully enough when he started speaking English he didn’t simply repeat himself thereby engaging in crass tokenism… I may be in trouble here, my heart did in fact skip a beat…

Yesterday’s Irish Times seems to have skipped over that part of the day.

Now, I can understand them not wanting to print the whole speech - in fact if they were going with the “sure why would we report that, it’s the first language of the country, of course the leader of the country can and does speak it” I might even buy them a pint or two. But it doesn’t feel like that’s what’s going on. Not least because every other paper I saw seems to have taken the same approach.

Which leads to an interesting, and in my case mildly amusing question - if Mr Cowen persists in speaking that mad language with all the CHHHHH sounds… at what point will mainstream media say “oh, right, eh… does somebody have a dictionary?”

What’s the policy, will they simply translate as they would from French or Russian? Or will they have the good grace to respect our language enough to print it? Or better still (and we’re strolling right into fantasyland here) will they print the original and the translation, with a bit of a foclóir, and take the opportunity that is clearly being presented to help everyone develop their language skills?

If nothing else, it will be an interesting little development to keep an eye on.

What is your attitude to ageism?

Better question: what is your definition of ageism?

‘Say No to Ageism’ week has been launched, and bus stops are being plastered in delightful posters that ask us to question our ageist attitudes - as long as we only do it in one direction.

Once again, the ‘equality‘ authority asks us to remember that older people are people too. Personally I hadn’t forgotten, but I appreciate that some people might. What I don’t appreciate is the way them equality folk supposedly aim to challenge that view, every year.

This year’s posters feature four portrait images - for example: three old men, in grey/b&w photos, with words like ‘grumpy’ and ‘over the hill’ stamped on them; and the fourth is a full colour image of a young woman, where the caption is simply ‘Lucy’.

I got angry enough to design my own version of the poster.

But then I decided being sued wouldn’t be ideal so I’m not going to post it. Probably.

The point is, this isn’t “Say No To Ageism” this is “Say No To Old-Ageism, but go ahead and keep stereotyping young people”. It seems particularly ironic in the context of this alternative initiative - but it says a lot that this is separated from the general ageism campaign.

Look at the latest drinkaware ads - there were four different scenarios where someone was too drunk and thus ruining society - and every one of the drunk people were of the under-30 variety. Because we’re all drunks, without exception - and more importantly, there are no drunks over 30. They’re just lovely social drinkers who not only drink responsibly at all times, but have a fundamental human right to drink a few pints then hop in the car and drive themselves home.

Can you imagine the reaction if rural students (a fundamental evil, how dare they be young while also working hard to get a decent education, clearly they are up to no good, ever!) had reacted to the new licensing laws by announcing that there should be a dispensation for 18-24 year olds because if they didn’t go to the bar with their classmates and then drive home after pints they’d be socially isolated??

I’m not trying to belittle the importance of appreciating older members of society - in fact, as I’m confident I’ve mentioned before, I think the lack of a widespread ‘respect your elders’ attitude is nothing short of disgusting - but the fact remains that if you are claiming to address ageism, then address all of it!

So it’s not just me!!

This afternoon on Newstalk/Lunchtime, Bertie’s “HISTORIC” speech was being discussed. Again.

Thankfully this time around there was less text-in-your-tale-of-weeping-to-the-sound-of-Bertie’s-voice nonsense, but the discussion did centre around what a miraculous moment this was for all of us and how proud we should be, not to mention how proud Bertie should be of himself(???!!!!!).

Then, the moment of sublime intervention from one of the panellists.

What’s all this nonsense lads, it was a crap speech.

Or, to quote the man (didn’t catch the name, I’m thinking Michael something?),

“It was statesmanlike - it said nothing”

And he’s right.

Before the speech, George Hook was talking about the Gettysburg address. Ahern himself referred to JFK.

But, while the speech was a perfectly reasonable synopsis of Irish history, there was nothing worth talking about - nothing worth debating, and certainly nothing worth quoting.

Admittedly his impending departure took a lot of the punch out of the speech, but given that at the very least some coverage of the speech was inevitable, surely it would have been the perfect opportunity to say something worth saying?

Make it stop…

Before he even gets started on his speech… can someone just stop him?

Or at the very least, can the BCI, or some similar all-powerful types, decree from on high that on a certain date in the relatively near future (can we say May 30th?), we can all stop talking about the man?

I’d almost like to count the number of times I’ve heard his name on radio in the last day/week/month/year/decade. My head is spinning at the thought of it.

Let’s just get on with things.

Love him or hate him, he’s done now.

What’s next?

On a lighter ‘note’

JD Salinger thought Raiders of the Lost Ark sucked.

Seriously - take a look, or if you’re so inclined, buy the proof… and maybe send it to Messrs Lucas & Spielberg as a memento.

And then two weeks went by…

Last night I ended up in a two hour long discussion about the impending doom of it all, and how none of us can really afford to flippantly quit jobs on the grounds that it’s not perfect and there’ll be another one around the corner. This is prompted by multiple friends who are currently making that exact plan, and multiple others (mainly of the generation who have seen a recession first-hand) gently suggesting that they re-attach their booties to reality for a bit.

The point? Maybe there wasn’t one. Even the government is admitting that the economy is getting a bit slower. I’m not yet convinced that it will be a ‘proper’ recession, but I am convinced that whatever correction (that’s the buzzword, isn’t it?) occurs will be difficult for a generation who, for the most part, have grown up with everything they wanted, and have never gotten around to developing coping skills for when things go wrong. It makes me wonder how those who never got to ‘have it all’ in the first place will be treated and/or cope. It also makes me deeply suspicious of the government.

Is it just me, or are they all suddenly using a lack of cash as the best new excuse for their consistent mismanagement of every possible area of public service?

Last year we had six solid months of ‘there’s no recession coming, that’s crazy talk’, then they got re-elected, then they made a few more messes, then yer man resigned and now in his last week he finds the cojones to admit that the health and education systems in this country are circling the proverbial drain. It counts as news only because of the admission. Nobody in this country needs to read the latest report from the OECD, because we’ve been living that particular dream for years.

Apparently there is no more money for mental health services. And there is no more money for suicide prevention. And, in fact, according to some people, things are just fine as they are.

Look at the papers. Look at the front page of every paper in the country (try to ignore the utterly counter-productive tone of many of the headlines) in the last four days and then tell me that things are just fine as they are.

There is no money for mental health services. But the taoiseach is urging his successor to buy a new government jet. It’s like a very, very bad joke - one that is actively going horribly, horribly wrong.

Somebody hire a PR pro… please..

In the worst PR move since Pat Kenny first used the phrase “squatters’ rights“, Aer Lingus have cancelled around 100 flights book by opportunistic types who found business class seats to the US on sale for €5.

Above and beyond issues of contract law or the lack thereof, you’d wonder why they couldn’t just bite the bullet and turn it into a decent gesture rather than shooting themselves in their PR department’s foot.

In the name of pure comic timing, it was Pat Kenny himself that made that suggestion this morning. While politely ignoring his own little faux pas against the little people earlier in the week.

¡Viva España!

More good news from Spain - the country where they studied women’s clothing sizes in high street shops, proved it’s all nonsense, and have now sat down with the major retailers to start making sense of such things!

There are now more women than men in the Spanish cabinet. The fact that in this supposed age of equality that shouldn’t be news can for now be ignored. The fact that we in Ireland are so far down the list of the percentage of women in parliament is something that can’t be. But is.

I wonder how long it would take us to achieve that same level of representation? Another 50 years? Longer?

And perhaps a better question: How many of those nine women in cabinet are named Maria?

[Answer: One]

In related news, Berlusconi’s first act since his election seems to have been to pour scorn on this new cabinet of women. I’m going to hope it’s a case of misinterpretation. What are the chances?

PD’s new leader is…eh… the other guy?

The ‘other’ leadership ‘race’ is over, and Ciarán Cannon has been elected by a very slim margin as the next leader of the Progressive Democrats.

Maybe this shouldn’t come as a surprise to me, or anyone, but it does. Mostly I feel bad for Fiona O’Malley - though some might argue we should all feel worse for poor Ciarán who has, to say the least, a tough time ahead of him.

It speaks volumes that this isn’t even the top story on the news today. I know the PDs could never truly be compared to FF in terms of ’significance’, if only for mathematical reasons, but considering the whitewash of all media outlets last week over a leader who didn’t even need to be ‘elected’ and who won’t take over (officially at least) for another few weeks, it’s fairly impressive that they just can’t get the air time.

It will be interesting to see what plans Cannon has to bring the PDs back to life.

Possibly time to try the tactics of one Victor Frankenstein.