Ireland's Health Service costs more than NASA...

I sent this as a letter to the Irish Times but they didn't bite...

Sir, This year the HSE is on course to overspend its budget of E13.4 billion by several hundred million Euro. To put this sum in perspective NASA's 2013 budget is only E12.5 billion. So why is the Taoiseach leaving an under-performing Minister for Health in place while devoting his finite time and energy to abolishing the Seanad, which can save a maximum of 20 million Euros per year at the risk of a constitutional crisis in the future? Or is setting appropriate priorities 'rocket science' for this government?

 

David Rolfe

Rathgar's Runaway Reptiles...

"Floerentine", a local Tortoise attracted significant media attention after doing a runner from home. The Irish Times published my helpful idea:

Sir, – The owner’s of Rathgar’s runaway reptile (Home News, May 8th) could learn a lot from recent reports of a lost budgie in Tokyo that was returned to its owner because it had been trained to recite its entire address. While teaching Florentine to talk would probably be an insurmountable problem, his shell would still have plenty of space to write his full address. There may even be space left for sufficient postage to cover his return home. – Yours, etc, DAVID ROLFE, Leinster Road, Rathmines, Dublin 6.

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

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....

BOOK OF THE DAY: Climate Wars

Since when has a review of a two year old book qualified as an 'Opinion' piece?

Having apparently run out scary global warming pieces for the moment the IT has presented a review of a two year old book in the slot that has been used before for this purpose.

Climate Wars was first published in 2008 as for all I know may well be a very readable and credible but hypothetical examination of the effects of a significant increase in Global Temperature. But given that it was published in 2008 why should a national newspaper of record use up editorial space on it now? Why editorial space instead of the book review section?

The review itself doesn't really add much, and seems to have been written before the publication of the book itself - some quick googling revealed that the text of the review has been around for ages, if it's URL is anything to go by:

http://coraifeartaigh.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/climate-wars.pdf

Given that ClimateGate has revealed that thanks to poor data management and politicized science the millions of euros invested in global warming research has failed to produce quality results and that we have no way of verifiying either the extent or cause of climate change I have to wonder if this book is still relevant.

More Climate Skeptic bashing at the IT...

Following hard in the heels of John Gibbons attack on Bjorn Lomborg the IT's environment reporter Frank MacDonald makes no attempt to understand the arguments advanced by skeptics in an opinion piece which is just as full of venom and short of facts as Gibbons. The title - "A dialogue of the deaf with US climate sceptics" pretty much says it all, but neglects to mention that Frank is the one who's hard of hearing...

The key questions to ask here are:

Why does Frank think the Heritage Foundation are representative of US Climate Sceptics? What not speak to Anthony Watts or the Canadian Steve McIntyre? These guys are asking hard questions which climate scientists either won't or can't answer. Why ask a bunch of DC Republican lobbyists?

Any bets on whether any letters on this are printed? I think not...

When I put it to him that the World Meteorological Organisation had identified the past decade as the warmest since records began, followed closely by the 1990s, Lieberman dismissed these findings as “grossly exaggerated” – even though they were grounded in scientific measurements taken all over the world.

This head-in-the-sand approach is reminiscent of the Birthers, a daft grassroots movement that believes Obama has no right to be president because he “wasn’t born in the US”. It simply doesn’t matter that he has a birth certificate from Hawaii and can point to a contemporaneous birth notice in one of the local papers.

Ah yes 'grounded' in 'scientific measurements'! Given the ongoing arguments about data quality in this area this is something which deserves a discussion but doesn't get it. And why the comparison with the Birthers, an openly political movement with nasty overtones?

“We care about the environment,” said nuclear specialist Jack Spencer...

Ooooh! Jack Spencer is a nuclear specialist, which presumably makes him untrustworthy by definition....

John Gibbons and Bjorn Lomborg

The IT printed a deeply unbalanced opinion piece by John Gibbons the other day. John had a fairly serious go at Bjorn Lomborg, who has had the temerity to question the status quo on human induced climate change. While one expects opinion pieces to be opinionated one doesn't expect a national 'newspaper of record' to allow a writer to falsly accuse a public figure of lying about his academic qualifications. Gibbons gave the piece the title "Exposed: Climate change doubter with a PhD only in spin". John describes Mr Mr. Lomburg as "someone without even an undergraduate degree in a physical science", when in fact he has a Phd in Political Science.

John's argument is that people without 'relevant' qualifications don't have the right to criticise people who do. I sent the letter below to the IT, which didn't get published:

Madam,

The title of John Gibbons opinion piece 'Climate change doubter with PhD only in spin' (April 30) directly challenges the validity of Bjorn Lomburg's academic qualifications, yet nowhere in his article does he substantiate the serious allegation made in the article's title that Mr Lomburg is lying about his 1994 Phd in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen.

The fact that Mr. Lomburg does not hold a Gibbons-Approved qualification in climate science is not relevant and does not deny him or anyone else the right to question the reasons for climate change. I would be very surprised if the staff of your newspaper included anyone with postgraduate qualifications in Creationism, Canon Law or Eugenics, but thankfully that does not prevent your writers from casting a critical eye over such disciplines.

Carl Sagan once said that 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. The exteme sensitivity to criticism that climate scientists display, along with their documented use of dubious sources of information means that their evidence is indeed extraordinary, but for all the wrong reasons.

David Rolfe

The interesting thing is that no letters on this Opinion piece have shown up, which considering how provocative and inaccurate it is makes one wonder what goes on in the mind of the editor. It;'s a bit like the truly crazy report on the "Spirit of Ireland" scheme, which never got discussed on the letters page either despite being an announcement that coastal valleys all around Ireland were to be dammed and filled with Sea Water by vast shoals of windwills.

"Spirit Of Ireland" - Coming to a Valley near you?

"Flooded valleys key to huge power plan"

It's not often you see a newspaper headline with such amazing potential to induce panic. But Frank McDonald, the IT's environment editor has succeeded with today's unquestioning puff piece about "Spirit Of Ireland", a suspiciously named scheme to make Ireland an exporter of energy. The piece immediately grabs ones attention by implying this is government policy:

PLANS TO build a new electricity generating system, combining large-scale wind farms with huge hydro-power storage reservoirs in valleys on the west coast, are at an advanced stage, The Irish Times has learned.

“Spirit of Ireland”, billed as a national project for energy independence, has been under discussion for several months with the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, as well as other agencies.

It would involve identifying up to five coastal valleys from counties Donegal to Cork, building dams on their seaward side and flooding them with sea water. These would provide a hydro-power back-up for the wind farms.

Obviously this story is of considerable interest to anyone who lives in a coastal valley and doesn't own scuba gear.....But it gets better:

Fifty potential sites along the west coast were identified, but he said many of these were not suitable for environmental or geological reasons. “We’ve now reduced the number of sites to 10, of which five will be studied in micro-detail,” he added.

The bowl-shaped valleys, created during the Ice Age, are located in areas with some of the best wind conditions in Ireland.

“Many are in areas of low population density, where land is of marginal or no use for farming,”the project’s website says.

Presumably the population density will drop to zero and agriculture will cease once the place is flooded? Given that people's homes and quite possibly entire communities are going to be destroyed the obvious question is "Which Valley?":

Dr O’Donnell said he was not in a position at this stage to reveal which were the most likely locations. “There’s an enormous amount of geological investigation and mapping involved, and we have a total of 18 teams of people working on the project.”

Not to mention such issues as Property Rights, Human Rights and the wisdom of holding vast quantities of seawater inland where it can get into the water table. Or the number of turbines required - one estimate is the entire western seaboard saturated with windmills to a depth of 10KM..... Or how this is supposed to happen in a country where you can't run a gas pipeline 10Km without having to deal with violent and illegal protests...

An alternative to "PIGS"...

Down at the IT today a Mr. O'Connor is unhappy with the use of the term PIGS to described troubled eurozone countries:

Madam, – Why does the Irish media insist on using the ridiculous and insulting “P-I-G-S” acronym in its financial reports, when referring to Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain? The term has been actively denounced by the Portuguese and Spanish press, and perhaps we should follow suit.

It seems the acronym is more aptly suited to the British and American bond and currency traders who coined the term. – Yours, etc,

JOSEPH O’CONNOR,

Ashtown,

Dublin 15.

So here's my suggested alternative:

Madam,

People who think the term "PIGS" shouldn't be used clearly haven't considered that any alternative could be much worse. If Britain's finances deteriorate to the point where it qualifies for membership of "PIGS" we might see a new acronym coined - "Fringe Europeans who Can't Keep their Economies Running Sustainably".

David Rolfe

Did joining the Euro cause the crash?

We appear to be seeing something of a pro-Lisbon propaganda campaign being launched. Today's IT reports that David O'Suillivan, the EU Commission's Director General For Trade made the bizarre claim that:

IF THIS country had remained outside the euro zone, the Irish punt would have “crashed through the floor” creating a far worse crisis than the present one, the European Commission’s top trade official has said

...

“The recent financial crisis and the recession it has provoked only further reinforce this argument. Without membership of the euro zone, the former Irish punt would have crashed through the floor, creating a major crisis for the economy well beyond this crisis we are currently experiencing.”

There's a slight problem with this reasoning - If we hadn't been in the Euro the retail banks wouldn't have been able to get their hands on Other Countries Euros to back their insane hundred Billion Euro lending spree. The recent property bubble couldn't have happened. In fact if we still had the Punt it might well have dropped like a stone, but it would have restored our competitiveness as it did so...

Defending Sean Russell...

It never ceases to amaze me how people are still willing to try and defend the 'Useful Idiot' Sean Russell. The latest comes from a Mr Tom Cooper:

Madam, – The latest attack on the recently re-erected statue of the late Irish republican leader Seán Russell in Fairview Park is a most sinister development. ( “Vandals deface memorial of republican leader Seán Russell”, July 9th). Graffiti proclaiming that Russell was “Nazi scum” which was sprayed on the statue, is just as inaccurate as the reported date of his death....


I've sent this to the Irish Times:

Tom Cooper is no different than other defenders of Sean Russell's reputation in that he hides behind patriotism instead of addressing the facts. The fact is that Russell was not an elected leader and had no authority to represent Ireland, yet traveled to Nazi Germany and on his own initiative invited a violant fascist state that had proven contempt for the rights of small nations to militarily intervene in Irish affairs.

In order for Russell's plan come to fruition he would have needed more help from the Nazis than a couple of boxes of rifles. Any aid he received from them would come with enough strings attached to ensure that he would be their puppet should his tiny group somehow manage to drive the British out of the North and overthrow the Irish Free State.

Sean Russell was a man who despised the Irish Free State and who actively conspired against it. It's very easy to underestimate the threat he posed to Irish society because nothing ever came of it, but then nobody in Norway took Vidkun Quisling and his two thousand followers seriously until they received the same kind of 'help' from outsiders that Russell was looking for.

Blasphemous Libel

I sent a letter to the IT about this but it didn't get published:

Madam,

Fianna Fail has many of the attributes of a religion - irrational faith in its leaders, delusions of infallibility, a profound sense of entitlement, eccentric financial arrangements, unusual relationships with certain groups in society and a view of the past which is inconsistent with the historical record. Will they come 'out' as a religion when the libel proposal is made law?

David Rolfe
Leinster Road
Rathmines, Dublin 6

ESB Creating 'Jobs' with your money

Why are the media so uncritical of the ESB? We pay some of the highest electricity rates in Europe. I now pay three times what I was paying in California, and that was with Enron on the rampage.

Today the Semi State monolith announced it was going to 'create' 3600 jobs. Bear in mind that this will be done with taxpayers money. Why couldn't they just give the money back to their long suffering customers?

In the short term the ESB is doing the government a favor but is also improving its profile with the public, who are starting to ask questions about its punitive charges of over 14c/Kwh.

In the long term the ESB also wins because it makes itself larger, thus justifying its charges and can also hold these jobs hostage when a future government sees sense and tells it to reduce its prices.

If you doubt me on this hear it from Mr McManus himself:

Padraig McManus, ESB chief executive, said job-creation needed to be a priority for companies that had the resources to invest.

I'm sorry - what did he just say? Since when has creating jobs been a priority of private enterprise? Or is this a public enterprise engaged in a turf war?

By engaging in this kind of meddling the ESB is sending a clear signal to enterpeneurs that it will muscle in on them if they set up here. If you were going to invest in alternative energy and had a choice as to where you do business would you do it in a country where semi state agencies like Dublin Bus get away with using their state-backed monopoly status to strangle competitors at birth?

Vincent Browne Thinks 'Retail Deposits' Are From Supermarkets...

Does anyone edit Vincent's stuff before it goes out? In today's Irish Times the great man says:

We got a glimpse of who the Anglo Irish depositors and lenders were, courtesy of Brian Lenihan on January 20th last. Anglo Irish had 300,000 retail depositors, of whom only 72,000 were Irish. The number of corporate depositors was 12,000, of whom 3,500 were Irish and 8,500 non-Irish.

So, to be clear, the beneficiaries have been these high-net-worth individuals, then the depositors who had deposits of over €100,000, retail depositors (mainly supermarkets of whom only a few are Irish) and corporate depositors (a large number of whom were non-Irish).

Which is fine, but I always thought that a "Retail Depositor" was someone like your or me who uses a bank. If, as Vincent says, the "Retail Depositors" are 'mostly supermarkets' then Anglo appears to have held a global monopoly on supermarket bank deposits as it held 300,000 of them....

Media failure to cover Civil Rights aspect of Picturegate

Neither the Irish Times nor the Independent are covering the most alarming aspect of Picturegate today:

A garda visited the offices of Today FM yesterday afternoon looking for email contacts the Ray D'Arcy Show show had with the artist who painted the nude portraits of Brian Cowen that were hung in two Dublin galleries.

On his show this morning, D'Arcy said the show’s producer Will Hanafin had spoken with the garda who had told him that “the powers that be want action taken”.

Mr Hanafin said he was told that the Gardaí wanted the name and contact details of the artist so they could caution him and when he declined to pass the information on, he was told a warrant might be sought to get access to the show’s emails.

Gardaí visit radio station in Cowen painting inquiry - The Irish Times - Wed, Mar 25, 2009

Let's get this right shall we? The Gardai have been sent - by someone - to harass an artist for the non existent crime of 'Insulting the Prime Minister'. Even though most Gardai are educated men who in theory understand the law it was possible for someone in 'the powers that be' to give such an order and have it obeyed without question. None of the alleged criminal acts - obscenity, incitement to hatred or 'criminal damage' have a hope of holding up in front of a Jury. If the picture in question was of anyone other than Cowen this would not have happened.

Yet they still went to the offices of a national radio station and threatened the staff as if they were employees of a third world secret service.

This is the story of the decade. Never mind the economy. Our civil rights are being threatened by 'the powers that be'. One would expect blanket coverage by the two major newspapers. Instead we get silence. Why? What have the 'powers that be' said to them?

Fintan O'Toole wants to know how much money you make...

Fintan has come up with a great idea to raise the standard of debate when it comes to the economy:

Those of us who take part in debates on the financial crisis should declare our incomes

Why? Because apparently everyone else is richer than Fintan. Not only that, but being rich makes them insincere and makes them argue dishonestly. So Fintan's fix is to make everyone disclose their incomes up front so we can tell up front if they are evil rich bastards:

IN A PERFECT world, the journalists, broadcasters and commentators who set the political agenda would be paragons of absolute objectivity. We would be able to completely separate our views from our interests, to put forward ideas that are not, even in their subtlest shadings of nuance or emphasis, influenced by our own private circumstances.

Most of us, I think, genuinely strive for that ideal. Equally, though, we are the first to point out the naivety of similar claims made by, for example, politicians. We never tire of telling Ministers or TDs that they live in a bubble because they earn so much more than most of those they represent.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been fairly prominent in debates on radio and TV about the current crisis in the public finances. I’ve been struck by the stark fact that every single person involved in those debates (including me) earns much more than the vast majority of those who will be affected by our prognostications. Every contributor is earning at least twice or three times the average wage.

...

All human beings have a limited perspective. We should stop pretending otherwise. In the first place, those of us who take part in debates on the financial crisis should declare our own incomes, and, where relevant, our pension arrangements.

It is not for us to judge whether these facts create perceived conflicts of interest, but for the listeners and viewers. Secondly, the range of voices in this debate needs to be broadened.

So if we want to argue with St. Fintan about why the public sector does rather better than poor schmucks like me when it comes to pensions we now have to produce a P60 and a balancing statement from the Revenue Commissioners. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried....

Newton Emerson outrages the IT's readership...

Newton Emerson's did a tongue in cheek article on how working women are responsible for the credit crunch. The article itself was one of his weaker ones and the responses from outraged IT readers were to be honest more entertaining, but maybe that's what he had in mind all along. A typical response was Dr Julie Mullaney's:

Literary history tells us that satire is often a poor mask for the expression of populist prejudice, fuelling bigotry and discrimination, especially at times of social tension and unease. Such “satire” has real social effects – in this case promoting the denigration of Irish women, whose battle to take their rightful place in work has been hard fought.

Yep, that's right! Newton Emerson is Ian Paisley in disguise!

But she ends with a totally untrue statement:

Racist hate speech wouldn’t be tolerated in The Irish Times , so why is it OK to retreat into silly, sad sexism? – Yours, etc,

Actually it is. You can say pretty much anything you want about Jews or Americans without fear of criticism. This is what I sent to Madam Editor, without fear of publication:

Madam,

Dr Julie Mullaney is wrong to say that racist hate speech wouldn't be tolerated in the irish Times. On January 19th this year you published a virulantly anti-American Opinion piece by Finan O'Toole which includes such statements as "Bush and his neoconservative ideologues didn’t invent the barbarism long intertwined with US civilisation". You wouldn't normally allow any national, social or gender group to be described as 'barbaric' but apparently American citizens are treated on a 'seperate but equal' basis by your newspaper.

Dublin Bus: Get people out of their cars? We compete against the Luas!

More Lunacy from Semi State bodies. This time John Lynch, the man in charge of Dublin's bus service, explains why having increased bus services in the past few years in line with the government's stated goal of encouraging public transport over private motor cars they are now cutting services:

These increases were delivered in a more competitive environment, including the introduction of Luas (tram) services, and the growth in private bus operators, and reflect the success of, amongst others, quality bus corridor development, enhanced commuter services in our cities and regions, and the improved quality of our fleet.

However, the economics of public transport are simple – if there are fewer people working, if there are fewer people shopping, if there are fewer people socialising and making discretionary journeys, there is less demand for public transport.

The key phrase, in case you missed it, is "a more competitive environment, including the introduction of Luas services, and the growth in private bus operators". Even though public transport is a classic example of a network effect and the Luas is in fact good for bus services Mr. Lynch appears to think that other providers are the competition he needs to worry about. And there was I thinking that his government mandated role was to compete against the automobile. Surely now, with many families realizing that they can no longer afford several thousand a year to own and operate two cars this is the time to be pushing the benefits of affordable public transport?

And don't think Dublin Bus is a customer focused organization either. For readers who aren't from Dublin and haven't alreadty encountered this Kafkaesque piece of customer service this is the procedure for getting change back when you get a bus ticket:

Q. How do I collect my change?
A. If you pay more than the exact fare on any bus, the driver will issue you with a refund ticket for the overpayment. This passenger refund ticket, together with your travel ticket, must be presented to Dublin Bus headquarters (59 Upper O’Connell Street, Dublin 1, Ireland) in order to claim refund for the overpayment. Note that we cannot refund without both tickets being presented.

The primary purpose of most semi state bodies in Ireland is self-perpetuation with occasional outbursts of empire building, and if the taxpayers somehow see a benefit then good for them.

A great of example of this is that until the music stopped a couple of months ago Irish Rail was promoting a truly lunatic scheme to build an underground railway between the capital's two main train stations. Which is a great idea if you ignore the fact that such a tunnel already exists....

Why I'm tired of writing to the 'Irish Times'.

Those of you who read the Irish Times would probably recognize my name from the letters page. Over the past decade or so I've had about 20 or so letters published, which puts me in the same league as Tony Allwright, another frequent scribe.

But over time certain patterns have become clear:

• The IT doesn't have much of a sense of humor. In particular humor directed at causes they hold dear or which violates the norms of political correctness doesn't get far.
  

• They appear to have pigeonholed me as some sort of neo-conservative right-wing loony who is a allowed a look-in whenever things are a bit quiet. I am openly very right wing by Irish standards (or rather the standards of the Dublin 4 elite who run the media) but that doesn't make me a neo-conservative.
  

• In order to get a letter published it has to be short. All good writing should have a strong signal-to-noise ratio but in practice the space restrictions constrain my ability to advance an argument to a couple of sentences.

• They rarely print my responses to people's responses to my letters (got that?).

• They have a built in bias in favor of such dubious causes as the so-called Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who get a slightly different version of the same letter published every second week.

As a result I've decided to devote my energies to this blog for a while.

Since I have a rich vein of unpublished letters to mine as source material expect a series of articles on subjects which are no longer current.