An Píopa/The Pipe

The Pipe, The Film website

Update: the video has been removed from YouTube for copyright reasons

#ge11 is the Twitter tag for the Republic of Ireland’s general election 2011

Boards.ie 2011 General Election Poll Brilliant take on the ballot paper, allowing you to make a virtual vote, and better, to acquaint yourself with your candidates in your constituency. Its current overall vote appears to be closely tracking conventional polls in newspapers etc, which is interesting in itself. Whether it is accurate for each constituency remains to be seen.

Some candidates you might not have been aware of (with links to boards.ie/vote)

Declaration of interest: I’m a friend and Aosdána colleague of Mannix Flynn. I follow Kate Bopp on twitter.

. Vote Mannix Flynn. running in Dublin South East
It has become a universal truth of General Election 2011 that “the people want change”, but, as citizens, we need to reflect on the nature of that change. Do we merely want to “modify” the way we are governed with a tired reshuffle of the personnel and values that have served us so badly? Or do we want “transformation”? Transformation requires courage and hope. Don’t do the same thing, expecting a different result

Mick Wallace, running in Wexford

We need political reform to bring a new politics, an end to political donations which separate the electorate from the legislature by allowing those with the most money to have greatest influence, a smaller Dáil with accountability and transparency in all its workings, a genuine effort to provide a decent State Health System for all, a greater emphasises on education including access to pre-school education, an end to expenses and pension abuse, and real local Government that works.

Kate Bopp running in Tipperary North

I believe we must pass power & responsibility to local Government at local level. Introducing directly elected mayors and giving local councils more executive powers. This will allow national legislators to focus on National Issues. The identification and abolition of cronyism is a top priority. I will also strive for shorter terms in office allowing for a regular influx of fresh knowledge and ideas. I will promote a greater accountability of those in office.

Gerry Kinsella and Pat Kavanagh of Fís Nua, running in Wicklow

Fís Nua is an all-Ireland federation with a political structure that seeks to bring together, under one umbrella, all those disaffected with the corruption in politics and government and who feel that they have been left without a voice within the political arena in Ireland.

Egypt

Perhaps, and perhaps not, relevant to #ge11, but a thought-provoking essay nonetheless. The Egyptian Revolution: First Impressions from the field. , a deeply moving essay by Mohammed Bamyeh.

At this moment, out of the deadweight of inwardness and self-contempt, there emerged spontaneous order out of chaos.

Some 2.8 million of us, two thirds of the Irish population, are younger than 44 years of age. Our politicians, civil servants, bankers, business men and women, decision makers and media commentators are predominantly over 40. As Prof Ray Kinsella said on these pages last week: “We have screwed up – that’s the truth of it.” My generation of 20 and 30-somethings do not identify with the tired voices that have failed us and endowed us with a future choked with their mistakes: mistakes fuelled by mediocrity and downright incompetence without consequences; mistakes that are homeless, absent of acknowledgment or apology.

I may be wrong, but I think it may well have been the generation of 20 and 30-somethings which predominantly voted for the present and last governments. But the past is past. If the younger generation of voters does not in fact relate to the current politics and political practitioners, what is to be done?

Perhaps radical new policies should be discussed. In the words of Paul Sweeney (again the Irish Times, May 7) We cannot go back to cosy Irish capitalism after this recession

And now Village is talking about a new departure.

Well, this website, alternativeparty.org, has been dropping hints for years, but it’s nice to see the need has entered the zeitgeist, and people are actually saying it out loud.

I’m going to muse about a mythical radical new party and give it some policies. Alternative Party of Ireland, or API, with an url of www.alternativeparty.ie

Note: it isn’t a simple thing to form a political party for national elections. Scroll down the discussion Anyone interested in putting together a ‘political party’??? at face.boards.ie to get the details.

It could be called anything, so long as the party itself is radical in the sense that its members and voters think outside the box. Indeed, it could be a current party for all I care.

The first thing it should do is think big. Voters are tired of small parties who only stand in a few constituencies. What’s the point? Even if several TDs are elected, they will only ever be the rump of either of the conservative parties. API should have at least two candidates in every constituency, even three seaters. It’s the pre-requisite to being taken seriously.

It would have to be done on a shoestring, of course, but that’s where technology comes in, as Elaine Bynre realizes. Okay, here’s a skeleton outline, which can of course be improved on.

Purchase the domain alternativeparty.ie. Make sure you do it with my excellent host, Letshost.ie, as you can have 999 sub-domains and MySql databases for the price of one account, ie for less than €100. There are 43 constituencies, so we probably won’t require all 99!
So, for example, http://galway-west.alternativeparty.ie, http://clare.alternativeparty.ie, http://kerry-north.alternativeparty.ie etc.

We’ll use a reliable, democratic and opensource software like WordPress (which runs this site).

I don’t know about other providers, but O2 offers 250 free webtexts per month. Texting via the web isn’t everyone’s preferred method, but it’s easy to type and 250 is a literally powerful amount of texts, if you have ten volunteers in each constituency texting everyone they and their friends and family know about the alternative party website and its consituency subdomains. If you ask those who are interested to text their friends who might be interested, suddenly its viral. As a new way forward is very much in the zeitgeist, perhaps this is an optimum time to intrigue people about such a party.

Each constituency discusses its own problems on its own website and arrives at solutions. These solutions are fed to the main site. www.alternativeparty.ie, and become the bedrock of national policy.

Okay, so that’s the bones of structure, to be fleshed out by those who are interested.

Where will the candidates come from? My guess is that many will come from community groups. Affiliations with groups like The Irish Senior Citizens’ Parliament might prove fruitful.

And what about policies? Several will be suggested in the next post.

Al Gore’s speech
apologies, I’ve had to remove the actual embedded video as it crashed IE browsers

We Can Solve It

The EU is to consider introducing automated border-crossing facilities within the EU for EU citizens and the electronic recording of entry and exit dates of third-country nationals in and out of the Schengen area.

When will they ever learn?

EU proposes biometric border clampdown at Silicon Republic

I’ve good reason to be pro-European. In fact I’ve many good reasons, and I am all for the European project; but it appears that our mainstream politicians are being profoundly undemocratic in asking us to vote for something we couldn’t possibly understand.

The ball is in their court. Persuade me with reason, not obfuscation.

With maverick flair and a strategist’s disdain for accepted wisdom, Jaime Lerner re-invented urban space in his native Curitiba, Brazil. Along the way he managed to revolutionize bus transit, awaken green consciousness in a populace accustomed to litter and blight, and change the way city planners and bureaucrats world-wide conceive what’s possible within the tangled structure of the metropolitan landscape.

With maverick flair and a strategist’s disdain for accepted wisdom, Jaime Lerner re-invented urban space in his native Curitiba, Brazil. Along the way he managed to revolutionize bus transit, awaken green consciousness in a populace accustomed to litter and blight, and change the way city planners and bureaucrats world-wide conceive what’s possible within the tangled structure of the metropolitan landscape.

If we had something like what is shown in this video in Dublin, I would happily say bye bye to my dream of free-at-access transport. as this would cover many of the benefits I had thought of.

Actually, we could do it very quickly, combined with some of the ideas in the video below. An 18 metre streetcar, manufactured by Wrights of Ballymena, is supposed to have been on test for the last year or so, though I haven’t seen any sign of it. See my Streetcars of Desire.

Anyway, Jaime Lerner does my heart good. I hope he does yours too. (Yes, it’s another TED video ;>)

Note: Search for Transported to bring up all my posts on transport

The full list is:

Brian Cowen – Tánaiste, Minister for Finance
Mary Harney – Minister for Health and Children
Mary Coughlan- Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
Seamus Brennan – Minister for Arts, Sport & Tourism
Noel Dempsey – Minister for Transport and the Marine
Éamon Ó Cuív – Minister for Community Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs
Willie O’Dea – Minister for Defence
Mary Hanafin – Minister for Education and Science
Micheál Martin – Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment
John Gormley – Minister for the Environment, Heritage and local Government
Dermot Ahern – Minister for Foreign Affairs
Brian Lenihan – Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform
Martin Cullen – Minister for Social and Family Affairs
Eamon Ryan – Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources
Attorney General – Paul Gallagher SC

[Courtesy RTÉ]