We can all rejoice the twitter generation has arrived, and I wonder if twitter didn't exist would we all go round talking to ourselves in little sound-bytes like 'I would love to stop for coffee but got to rush.'
I have no doubt that twitter's popularity is due in no small measure to it's female users,women can now comment safely on every area of their lives yet not give a hoot if anyone is interested, I see loads of 'night, night all,' tweets from women who are valiantly sending their extended family ie, the whole world to sleep.
Men use it for different reasons of course there is the hard edged business guy who tweets common sense with his hard nosed business values, he is out hunting and he will make a kill. Also there are the more shy retiring types who are slightly embarrassed by the technology so they reluctantly try and be funny, or quote from some Greek philosopher!
The one thing that strikes me about twitter is of course it's reinforcment of the worlds middle class agenda, I cant imagine poor people tweeting, 'going begging today, hope it goes well?' later of course they would recieve lots of tweets from their followers, 'how did you do?' with my hard nosed business guys asking, 'how much did you make, nice profit!'
So I resign myself to another day of blandness reading lots of silly notices with links to web-sites and photo's etc, I will hear from both men and women about business the state of the world with news and sports, breaking news before it has even happened that is the magic of twitter.
Yet can anyone enlighten me I thought that twitter was a tool to facilitate discussion well I dont know but have you ever tried to discuss anything on twitter?
People run scared hide behind their little icons one can sense their tone change, the bland stuff like, ' Meeting Ryan Tubridy today, cant wait,' is replaced by a deafening silence.
When one persists in probing an individual as in a recent case I took exception to her term 'Breaking News,' during the Japanese disaster, she blocked me from following her silly tweets. It was this journalists way of tweeting and discussing the world today, and the way the media works.
Of course I know I am an annoying tweeter I write in the early hours of the morning and sometimes subject to fatigue I can be a little sarcastic you know and sometimes people read tweets and take them at face value, and I go to sleep all smug congratulating myself on how clever I am, and how the silly Dublin fourite will miss the point!
Come to think of it that is actually the only good thing I can say about this forum for tweetering twits, I am off now with my little bowl got some begging to do!
Thursday, 14 April 2011
Monday, 7 March 2011
The Great Fairytale that is Democracy
Now labour have abandoned the left we will soon have a new government, they as the media keep telling us will need time to warm up, reduce the interest rate on our debt, fix the health service the public service and generally strike the very poor with stealth charges. Watching the week in politics told much about what it is we can expect going forward. Firstly all the serious poiliticans wear suits, you wont find any of them prancing around in football shirts like Mick Wallace, even Sinn Fein now the largest party on the left had their representative beautifully turned out.
The suit as always is a statement of respectability and of business, a fellow wearing a nice shirt and tie knows his business, and moreover he can be trusted. There now are so few women in politics don't be surprised if many take to wearing pin-stripes themselves with false moustaches. Thinking of that did Wicklow elect a cast member of Bugsy Malone?
Which brings me to my contoversial views on democracy, safe to say that it doesn't really sit that well with me, you see I don't trust it. For it to work we must all agree that the voting public are intelligent and well informed and not at all tainted by the hysterical media surrounding us.
Now that is hardly a given, so I will move on to my second point, remember Northern Ireland and Margaret Thatcher, 'When the majority of people in Northern Ireland want a united Ireland,' this island went through decades of war due her government hiding behind democracy, for a start the majority she was refferring to stood over the most unequal and sectarian state in the world, they also were only a tiny minority, if you take these Islands as one entity.
Well lets concentrate on our little country and not be minding past wars, I propose that in order to vote you should first sit an exam, one of the questions that will disinfranchise you will be , 'Has the candidate ever fixed anything for you personally, or in your region, so as to give you an advantage,' or 'Did your father or mother ever vote for these idiots?"
Another idea is to take the vote off the over 40's and give it to twelve year olds instead as they will have to live with the fall out over a longer period.
Alternatives to democracy would be to randomly pick thirty people from the phonebook to handle Finance, Education, one Bank and our natural resources the civil service could do the rest and they probably do. Maybe a dictator like Eamonn De Valera, or one of the bishops, or we could be run directly from Rome by the pope, now there is an idea.
I am off tomorrow to buy a nice suit, its about time people started taking me seriously!
The suit as always is a statement of respectability and of business, a fellow wearing a nice shirt and tie knows his business, and moreover he can be trusted. There now are so few women in politics don't be surprised if many take to wearing pin-stripes themselves with false moustaches. Thinking of that did Wicklow elect a cast member of Bugsy Malone?
Which brings me to my contoversial views on democracy, safe to say that it doesn't really sit that well with me, you see I don't trust it. For it to work we must all agree that the voting public are intelligent and well informed and not at all tainted by the hysterical media surrounding us.
Now that is hardly a given, so I will move on to my second point, remember Northern Ireland and Margaret Thatcher, 'When the majority of people in Northern Ireland want a united Ireland,' this island went through decades of war due her government hiding behind democracy, for a start the majority she was refferring to stood over the most unequal and sectarian state in the world, they also were only a tiny minority, if you take these Islands as one entity.
Well lets concentrate on our little country and not be minding past wars, I propose that in order to vote you should first sit an exam, one of the questions that will disinfranchise you will be , 'Has the candidate ever fixed anything for you personally, or in your region, so as to give you an advantage,' or 'Did your father or mother ever vote for these idiots?"
Another idea is to take the vote off the over 40's and give it to twelve year olds instead as they will have to live with the fall out over a longer period.
Alternatives to democracy would be to randomly pick thirty people from the phonebook to handle Finance, Education, one Bank and our natural resources the civil service could do the rest and they probably do. Maybe a dictator like Eamonn De Valera, or one of the bishops, or we could be run directly from Rome by the pope, now there is an idea.
I am off tomorrow to buy a nice suit, its about time people started taking me seriously!
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Will the real Irish labour party stand up?
We are on our way to national government the people have spoken,both Fianna Gael and Labour have a mandate to carry this little nation out of the mire and lead us on the road to recovery. Labour will posture and they will present whatever deal they negotiate to their party faithful and it will be ratified then they hope to secure some key cabinet positions in the next government and the job as they say is done.
Yet as I see it this is probably the greatest opportunity ever presented to the left in Ireland to once and for all establish itself as a serious player in future generations, and the labour party have now got the opportunity to change the course of Irish political history. I have no doubt they will fail miserably in this task as the lure of government offers its sticky hand, some will argue that their duty lies in calming the expected excesses of Fianna Gael and their new role is to protect from within.
Yet what if labour crosses the floor into oppositon, this will leave Fianna Gael courting some obscure and other popular independents, or will they end up relying on their true brothers the mighty Fianna Fail. Labour have it within their grasp to create an almost exclusively left wing opposition of considerable strength in both numbers and experience. Let the centre right lead the fight, let them find out the new untold secrets of the banking crisis, they can model and sell austerity to the middle classes who can afford to absorb these measures, reduce the public service and maybe even eliminate social welfare while there at it. Labour can fight against all of these measure in the knowledge of huge support on the opposite side of the house they can constantly challenge the excesses of the right and represent the poor, the disabled, the ordinary people.
If labour choose goverment which they will the stakes in the eternal game will be very high as austerity bites and a system which is by its nature flawed will crumble, and so possibly labours future support along with it.
Yet as I see it this is probably the greatest opportunity ever presented to the left in Ireland to once and for all establish itself as a serious player in future generations, and the labour party have now got the opportunity to change the course of Irish political history. I have no doubt they will fail miserably in this task as the lure of government offers its sticky hand, some will argue that their duty lies in calming the expected excesses of Fianna Gael and their new role is to protect from within.
Yet what if labour crosses the floor into oppositon, this will leave Fianna Gael courting some obscure and other popular independents, or will they end up relying on their true brothers the mighty Fianna Fail. Labour have it within their grasp to create an almost exclusively left wing opposition of considerable strength in both numbers and experience. Let the centre right lead the fight, let them find out the new untold secrets of the banking crisis, they can model and sell austerity to the middle classes who can afford to absorb these measures, reduce the public service and maybe even eliminate social welfare while there at it. Labour can fight against all of these measure in the knowledge of huge support on the opposite side of the house they can constantly challenge the excesses of the right and represent the poor, the disabled, the ordinary people.
If labour choose goverment which they will the stakes in the eternal game will be very high as austerity bites and a system which is by its nature flawed will crumble, and so possibly labours future support along with it.
Sunday, 27 February 2011
What do the election results mean!
Well blow me down the people have spoken and we have elected a majority of centre right politicians to sort out the mess that is this state. It is hard not to laugh at the prospects despite the spin and the sound-bytes.
What passes for proper media analysis is often just bland counter arguements followed by a spineless surrender as time runs out.
How refreshing to see that Fianna Fail is now trying to position itself as radical, and soon it wants to spread its poison in Northern Ireland, hard not to think these people exist without shame or morality, like they live in a fantasy world consisting of politics, political interviews, and the occasional back slapping.
Of course for the rest of us it will be business as normal, struggling with debt, our sons and daughters leaving us for foreign shores, and we wince at every mention of further austerity. No mention will be made midst the intial hysteria that our whole democracy is based on a corrupting system of over representation and the stark fact that many of the candidates we watched cheering and screaming as they were carried shoulder high around the count centres will fade to distant memory, as the whip system slowly strangles their ideology and we realise we could have elected a dummy instead.
There are lots of reasons why the Irish people are not radical and why we constantly rely on the spoofers in suits to serve us, one of course is the lack of organisation on the radical left and cohesion between the various groups involved. Labour did quite well to capture the most seats in their history but at what price, well they sold any sense of radical leftest policies for a slice of the middleclass vote.
It leads one to wonder after the dust has settled how disturbed people actually are by the political events of the last few years, they threw Fianna Fail to the wovles but then replaced them with Fianna Gael who sat back and watched as the fatted calf was slaughtered, are the middle classes not suffering as much as the poor?
I suppose anything is better than the dangerous crew from Sinn Fein, anyhow the new Fianna Fail Radical party are heading over the border to take them on!
What passes for proper media analysis is often just bland counter arguements followed by a spineless surrender as time runs out.
How refreshing to see that Fianna Fail is now trying to position itself as radical, and soon it wants to spread its poison in Northern Ireland, hard not to think these people exist without shame or morality, like they live in a fantasy world consisting of politics, political interviews, and the occasional back slapping.
Of course for the rest of us it will be business as normal, struggling with debt, our sons and daughters leaving us for foreign shores, and we wince at every mention of further austerity. No mention will be made midst the intial hysteria that our whole democracy is based on a corrupting system of over representation and the stark fact that many of the candidates we watched cheering and screaming as they were carried shoulder high around the count centres will fade to distant memory, as the whip system slowly strangles their ideology and we realise we could have elected a dummy instead.
There are lots of reasons why the Irish people are not radical and why we constantly rely on the spoofers in suits to serve us, one of course is the lack of organisation on the radical left and cohesion between the various groups involved. Labour did quite well to capture the most seats in their history but at what price, well they sold any sense of radical leftest policies for a slice of the middleclass vote.
It leads one to wonder after the dust has settled how disturbed people actually are by the political events of the last few years, they threw Fianna Fail to the wovles but then replaced them with Fianna Gael who sat back and watched as the fatted calf was slaughtered, are the middle classes not suffering as much as the poor?
I suppose anything is better than the dangerous crew from Sinn Fein, anyhow the new Fianna Fail Radical party are heading over the border to take them on!
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