Democracy

The Irish Examiner today quotes Eithne Fitzgerald at the Mahon Planning Tribunal yesterday, where she said:
"Dublin County Council conducted the business developers wanted done rather than being driven by regard for the wellbeing of the people".

This seems to be the norm nowadays.The idea that our public representatives are there to represent us and enforce laws and regulations for the betterment of society , seems to be a naive view.The notion of democracy , i.e. government by the many, seems to have fallen by the wayside as our so-called representatives spend more time with builders' lobbyists than they do asking how they can help the little guy, or actually doing their job.

We, the electorate , are to blame.We vote every 5 years or so, then hand over all responsibility to the TDs, who hand over all responsibilty to the government.Every act then undertaken by cabinet is rubberstamped by a compliant backbenchers.TDs trot through the lobbies, voting for the government, rarely consulting their constituents on how they should vote.When was the last time your TD asked you how he or she should vote on an issue ?

Existing paraliamentary procedure is archaic in these days of electronic mass communication. We perpetuate the old ways of doing things , too busy to take an interest ourselves.Then we blame the politicians when we don't get what we want.

It doesn't help that there is virtually no choice at election time.FF versus FG, with Labour making up the numbers.As if Fianna Fáil actually differed from Fine Gael on anything substantive.Looks like we will be stuck with this lot for the foreseeable future.

Irish Government Website

http://oasis.gov.ie/

Lots of good information here

Lesbian

http://www.youtube.com/results?tag=di&sort=rating_sort

Scroll down to the song " I wish I was a Lésbian" by Loudon Wainright III - a classic :)

Risque cartoon video clip

Smart Telecom - 4k Broadband

4.04 k just now

for a BROADBAND service :)

Hello Smart Telecom, anyone at home ???

I have a broadband service provide by Smart telecom.According to the invoice which I receive promptly every month, the speeds are 2MB/128 , which I understand is for 2 MB download speed and 128 k upload speed.The following are the download speeds I measured today using Smart's own speed tester at

http://support.smarttelecom.ie/bbspeedtool.htm


Mon 29 May 2006

92.5 k 10.30am

10k 11.05am

2.36k 11.07am

45.4 11.12am

48.1k 11.14

I rang Smart months ago about this.They were going to get back to me.
They have not contacted me since.
The problem keeps recurring.

Have to put up with it I suppose.There is no technical support offered as their Support line does not respond to calls for Ballygarvan i.e. problems either do not appear to be reported to anyone who can actually correct the faults, or they are reported and nothing is done about it.

The problem appears to be with the Wi-Fi technology they are using here in Ballygarvan.A friend of mine in Dublin has no problems with their DSL service which works over the copper wires of his telephone line.He regularly gets 3 MB or higher.

Smart Telecom - 25 k broadband

Current speed 25 k

woeful

Books - a quote

From Groucho:

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.Inside of a dog it's too dark to read"

like it, like it....

found that one in the brochure for the West Cork Literary Festival (Bantry, 2nd - 7th July 2006).

Engineer for hire

Hi I need a job and am available immediately in the Cork area.

20 years experience of I.T. and Telecoms including

- Project Management skills
- Training course design , development and delivery
- Management skills
- Certified Accountant (C.Dip.AF)
- Experienced Internet user
- Mac and PC user
- Wide knowledge of telecoms and ICT
- Website design using FrontPage and HTML
- Presently studying for a Masters Degree in Internet Systems (MSc.) by distance learning

I am not looking for a large salary and am prepared to work at anything.My concern is to get back into employment.

Leave a comment if you are interested.

Smart Telecom - S-L-O-W Broadband

The dreadful service from Smart Telecom continues.While speeds are usually around the 700k mark, they have never reached 2 MB as measured on my PC.

Speeds measured on my PC this morning, using Smart's own Speed Tool at:

http://support.smarttelecom.ie/bbspeedtool.htm

11.00 51 k
11.24 18 k
11.25 73 k
11.43 4.72 k , yes..... 4.72 k

This drop in speed - now a regular occurrence - means I cannot access certain websites as they timeout before the page loads.As there is no other provider in this area, I am stuck.

See this recent article in the Sunday Business Post on Ireland's failure in the broadband area:

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2005/02/20/story2505.asp

Broadband - Ireland in the relegation zone

http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=9650270

From 21 October 2005

"This time the survey comes courtesy of ECTA, the European association of alternative telecom service providers, which positioned Ireland 14th out of the 15 European Union Member States. Embarrassingly, the report shows that Ireland has been overtaken in terms of broadband penetration by some of the new EU member states, like Hungary, Slovenia and Lithuania. "

It goes on:

"ECTA outlines the damage that has been done to the Irish broadband market by the slow processes in place for unbundling the local loop.

It concludes that the leading broadband countries are those where competitors have been able to come in and build a share of the market using competing technologies. In these countries there is competition in broadband from DSL, LLU, and from cable networks.

"The evidence is clear: in France and the UK where action was taken on local loop unbundling and bitstream, they moved up three places in the broadband league table in 18 months," said Tom Hickey, chairman of ALTO, which represents ECTA in Ireland. "Italy also rose two places in the past two years as a result of its policy of building a path towards competition through bitstream and local loop unbundling; the countries at the top of the table are those with the highest LLU rates," Hickey concluded."

Jesus

http://www.temsgroup.org.uk/JesusandBuddhism.htm

Interesting documentary last night on BBC4 about the possibility that Jesus spent some time in Kashmir between the ages of 14 and 30.This would explain the 'missing years'. The tomb of Yus Assaf , in Kashmir, is believe by some to be the tomb of Jesus.

Also considers the idea that Jesus got many of his ideas from Buddhist philosophy.

Satire

http://www.socialscrutiny.org/

Very funny UK site.
Check out the Tax Forms.

Kevin Myers

I see that Kevin Myers has departed from The Irish Times.I have mixed feelings about this.A bit like watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your brand new Lambourghini ....
He is very entertaining at times but then drives me around the bend with things like his pro-Iraq war stance.He went down in my estimation when he tried to justify the use of the term "bastard" for children born out of wedlock.He received the backing, on that occasion, of another stalwart liberal-basher Mary Ellen Synon, (deliver us from.....).

Anyway, he's gone and the top right corner (how appropriate) of the letters page will be the duller for that.

Newsflash!

I am hungry and I am going to eat something now.Hows that for a zeitgeisty , up-to-the minute , cuting edge blogosphere self-centred post!

Smart Telecom

Does anyone know how to get Smart Telecom to actually respond to customer queries ? I have called them , emailed them etc. but no result. I got one email response telling me to call their Customer Service number.When I did , I was waiting for 20 minutes in a queue before I decided to leave a voicemail message .No one came back to me.That was weeks ago.What a joke!

"Its not magic, its Smart"

Well they're half right anyway.