Dubious Data Practices...

According to this doc from the Data Protection Commissioner the Irish Insurance Federation uses a fairly strange definition of 'you' when deciding whether to give 'you' insurance or not. They have a database which to my mind has a fairly serious design flaw:

The entry in the Registry comprises the first three letters of the applicant's surname, the first five letters of the first name, the date of birth, together with the date and codes for the relevant insurer and the type of policy.

So If my name is "MICHAEL GOLDSMITH" and I share a birthday with a deeply unhealthy "MICKEY GOLDSTEIN " I can be turned down for life insurance because of him or his policy history. Not only that, if I make a data protection act request I will be given his information....

The really bizarre thing is that the Data Protection commissioner is aware of this but doesn't seem to find it odd...

Morgan Kelly and his proposal to default

Sent the following to the Irish Times. Didn't get published. Ho hum...

Madam,

The Irish State was founded by a group of individuals who believed in demonstrating the reality of Independence by throwing the new nation into a ruinous trade war with Britain and its empire. A happy willingness to antagonize its neighbours and harm its own interests simply to prove the fact of Irish independence continued for more than half a century, with mixed results for people who lived here.

Ireland now appears to have gone to the other extreme and is busy sacrificing the nation to avoid upsetting anyone in Europe. Let us not make the mistake of assuming that our selflessness will be reciprocated by France or Germany, both of whom promoted the concept of the Euro, insisted that their nationals had critical positions in the running of it and are now blaming the users of their currency for the for the terminal problems it now faces.

The government needs to make a conscious shift back towards the self-centred politics of the thirties and forties. At an absolute minimum the it should start publicly making contingency plans to implement the "Kelly Option" and other equally radical scenarios such as approaching the United States and asking to join if a catastrophic loss of sovereignty becomes inevitable. Such plans do not have to be put into action to provide benefits. Their mere existence will strengthen our position and turn us from supplicants into participants in the current process.

David Rolfe

Enda kenny and the Siege of Leningrad...

Had a letter in the Indo about this:

ENDA Kenny's comparison of Ireland's economic problems with the siege of Leningrad is bizarre. A far better historical analogy would be with the Treaty of Versailles. A single country is being accused of being solely responsible for a European disaster and is now expected to make financially unsustainable 'reparations' without any consideration of the long-term consequences for everyone involved.

Not only does Ireland now face a prolonged period of economic chaos ending in a default, but, like Weimar Germany, it has a deeply dysfunctional political system that is ill-equipped to handle the challenges it will soon face. The bottom line is that Ireland didn't invent the euro, but is expected to shoulder the blame for its failure.

It is now obvious that this country was run into the ground by an incompetent political elite, with not one single TD of any party attempting to stop the madness.

But while Ireland has an entire parliament building full of culprits, none of the architects and managers of the euro are being asked to explain why they stood back and did nothing while ludicrous quantities of debt flooded the periphery of Europe.

Until this issue of fiscal mismanagement is resolved, the future of the euro -- and the entire European project -- will remain in doubt.

Yesterday's Green party press conference was bizarre in that the Green TD Paul Gogarty insisted on keeping a small child on his lap throughout:


Presumably he did this so there would be at least one person in the room who would believe them...

Theft of Sandbags...

Apparently the economy is so bad that people are stealing sandbags intended for flood prevention:

“On Sunday morning, in the region of 1,000 sandbags used to provide defences in these coastal walls were discovered to have been dismantled and removed.

...

The spokeswoman said it was difficult to see how members of the public might have mistaken the sandbags as being available for general use as it was “fairly obvious that they were there to protect the gaps in the coastal walls”.

I sent the following letter to the Irish Times, which doesn't appear to have been published:

Madam,

Who in Dublin would have a need for a few thousand sandbags and be self-centered enough to put their own welfare before that of the public? Possibly Government TD's preparing their constituency offices for the aftermath of the next budget....

Airtricity claiming non-existant 26% discount?

In today's Irish Independent Charlie Weston says that Airtricity is claiming to off a 26% discount off Gas and Electricity:

Yesterday the company claimed that the combined discount of 26pc would mean a bigger overall energy cost saving for households who sign up for both electricity and gas supplies with Airtricity.

In fact they are offering a 20% discount for Gas and a 6% discount for electricity with a 1 year lock in and a 100 Euro exit fee, but someone at the Indo appears to have decided to add the two percentages....

D B Cooper Was An Amateur

Saw an interesting article about D B Cooper in Air and Space mag.

Added my 10c:

While everybody wants to believe that D.B. Cooper got away I think he died on the night. I'm a former skydiver with over 450 jumps, including one from a a Boeing 727 at the World Freefall Convention.

The first odd thing is that D.B.Cooper was apparently wearing slip on shoes. No skydiver in 1971 would have jumped wearing such shoes - landings were fast at the best of times and you needed ankle protection. Any experienced jumper who was planning this would have had footwear with proper ankle protection.

But the part which makes it obvious to my mind that Cooper wasn't an experienced jumper was that he didn't bring a parachute with him. Skydivers are understandably picky about equipment and any jumper planning a hijacking would prefer to bring his own equipment rather than rely on the government to provide it to him. Not only did he create a dependency his plan didn't need, he also telegraphed his intentions. If, instead, he had disguised the parachute as a bomb and then left a suitably fractured and psychotic suicide note before jumping out the back with the money it would have taken people days - if ever - to figure out what he'd done.

The third thing I'm not so sure about - apparently he was seen using paracord to tie the money bag to himself. You need to be extremely careful about attaching anything to yourself and especially an object that is loose or can move. Simply failing to secure the chin strap on your helmet results in agony as it beats against your skin in the 120kt airflow. Attaching a large object and then being able to fall cleanly and not tumble - which is essential for a safe opening - would require practice. Instead he was almost certainly an amateur who left the plane, lost his shoes, tumbled wildly while trying to open his borrowed parachute and then spent the rest of his life regretting it...