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A New President (of Ireland)

Posted in Biographical, Politics with tags , , , , on September 4, 2025 by telescoper

Yesterday the official Presidential Election Order was tabled which means that an election for the office of President of Ireland (Uachtarán na hÉireann) will be held in the Republic on Friday 24th October 2025. The incumbent Michael D. Higgins will have served his second 7-year term by November and since by the Constitution nobody can hold the office more than twice, we will have a new President of the Republic.

The Irish media have been trying to make news about the presidential election all summer, which has been pointless and tedious to put up as no candidates had even been nominated then. Actually nobody has yet either, as nominations don’t officially open until tomorrow; they close on September 25th. Still, at least the process has started.

In order to progress to the election, a candidate has to receive the support of at least 20 members of the Oireachtas or at least 4 local authorities (i.e. councils). Former or retiring Presidents can nominate themselves but this is not relevant here.

The way the election works is that voters rank all candidates. In the first round of counting, first preference votes are totted up and if one candidate has more than 50% he/she is elected. If not an Instant Runoff method is used, with votes of lower-ranked being reallocated until there’s a winner (ie until one candidate gains a majority).

I just checked the online electoral register to confirm my status:

I will wait to see who has acually been nominated before deciding who to vote for. In the last Presidential Election (2018), five candidates opposed the re-election of Michael D. Higgins, three of them businessmen best known for having appeared on the Irish version of the TV show Dragon’s Den. There’s ample evidence from elsewhere that the products of reality TV shows do not make good presidents. Neither do rapists, so let’s hope Conor McGregor does not get nominated. It is likely that there will be more than six candidates this time and the election will be more closely contested that last time. In 2018 the turnout was very low, no noubt because many people assumed – correctly – that Higgins would win. In the event he got over 56% of the first-preference vote so the transfers were irrelevant. That might not be the case this time.

The Presidency of Ireland is a ceremonial rather than an executive office, and it has little actual power associated with it. It is nevertheless important in that the President is the guardian of the Constitution as well as representing the Irish Nation as a kind of ambassador and as patron of many good causes. Surprisingly, some of the people who want to put themselves forward don’t seem to know anything about what the job entails. Hopefully, the more obvious fruitcakes who put themselves forward will fail to get nominated. I think Michael D. Higgns has carried out his duties in a very dignified and diligent way over the years, and will be a very hard act to follow. I’ve been proud to have him as my President.

It’s hard to believe that seven whole years have passed since the last election. There’s another reminder of that coming up on Friday September 12th when I will be going to the National Concert Hall for a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra that marks the opening of the 2025/6 season. On September 15th 2018 I went to the season opener for that year. That was also my first ever visit to the National Concert Hall. To mark the occasion we were in the presence of the man himself , Michael D Higgins, and his wife Sabena. The President attended as Patron of the National Symphony Orchestra. I don’t know whether he will attend on Friday 12th September, but if he does I’m sure he will get a good ovation. As well as many other things Michael D. Higgins has been a very strong advocate for the Arts in Ireland. I’m not sure his successor will live up to the standard he set.

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A Poem by Alice Oswald

Posted in Politics with tags , , , , , , , , on August 24, 2025 by telescoper

I was shocked to find out yesterday that the poet (and former Professor of Poetry at Oxford University) Alice Oswald has been arrested under the UK’s draconian anti-terrorism laws at a peaceful protest for holding up a sign supporting Palestine Action, an organization opposed to the ongoing genocide being committed by Israel against the people of Gaza. Among the others arrested were an 89-year old woman and a blind man in a wheelchair. I expect these absurd and unjust actions will achieve the exact opposite of what the Government intended.

Anyway, I am an admirer of the poetry of Alice Oswald. I posted one of her poems here, and have four collections of her poems:

I thought I would post another now to express solidarity with Alice Oswald. This one is from the first of the collections shown above, in which it is simply titled Sonnet, though it is not a form of sonnet I have ever seen before!

Spacecraft Voyager 1 has boldly gone
into Deep Silence carrying a gold-plated disc inscribed with 
       whale-song
it has bleeped back a last infra-red fragment of language
and floated way way up over the jagged edge
of this almost endless bright and blowy enclosure of weather
to sink through a new texture as tenuous as the soft upward 
      pressure of an an elevator
and go on and on falling up steep flights of blackness with 
      increasing swiftness
beyond the Crystalline Cloud of the Dead beyond Plato beyond 
      Copernicus
O meticulous swivel cameras still registering events
among those homeless spaces gathering in that silence
that hasn't yet had time to speak        in that increasing sphere
of tiny runaway stars notched in the year
now you can look closely at massless light
that is said to travel freely but is probably in full flight

by Alice Oswald

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The Importance of Taking Liberties

Posted in History, Literature, Politics, Television with tags , , , , on August 18, 2025 by telescoper

The last episode of Simon Schama‘s BBC TV series A History of Britain, called “The Two Winstons”, follows the story of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath through the eyes of two very different Englishmen, George Orwell and Winston Churchill. Near the end of the programme Schama talks about the year 1948, when a very sick Orwell wrote his last major novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. I’ve reconstructed this section from the subtitles on my DVD of the series.

It starts with a direct quote from 1984

In our world there will be no love but the love of Big Brother, no laughter but that of triumph. No art, no science, no literature, no enjoyment, but always and only, Winston, there will be the thrill of power. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.

It continues with the voice of Simon Schama as narrator

To clear his head of the static hum of postwar London, Orwell went as far away as he could without actually leaving Britain, to the very edge of the kingdom – the Hebridean island of Jura. No electricity, no telephone, post twice a week, maybe.

And it was here, in the remotest cottage he could find, typing in bed with the machine on his knees, knowing he hadn’t long to live, that Orwell concentrated on what mattered most to him, and to Britain – the fate of freedom in the age of superpowers. As Churchill issued his grim warnings, Orwell created a common or garden plain man’s Winston – Winston Smith. The year was 1948.

When we think of 1984, most of us think of the tyranny of drabness and mass obedience ruled by Big Brother, a world of doublespeak where war is peace and lies are truth. But Orwell’s last masterpiece is most powerful and most lyrical when it describes Winston’s resistance to dictatorship, a guerrilla action fought, not with guns and barricades, but by literally taking liberties, a walk in the country, an act of love, the singing of an old nursery rhyme.

Winston Smith did all these forbidden things, prompted by a dim memory of a time when they were absolutely normal. The last refuge of freedom against Big Brother is memory. The greatest horror of 1984 is the dictator’s attempt to wipe out history.

I thought of the last sentence when I read about Donald Trump’s plan to rewrite American history for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but that’s just one example amid the rise of authoritarian regimes around the world. In the context of the TV programme, Schama was making a case for the importance of history as a discipline, but there is something else important to say: we should not forget the past but, perhaps even more importantly, neither should we forget about the future we wanted to see. The present is not the future I hoped for when I was younger, even in 1984, but the story isn’t over yet.

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Online Safety In The Dark

Posted in Politics with tags , on July 29, 2025 by telescoper

According to my blog analytics, some of my several readers are based in the United Kingdom, or use a VPN that makes that seem the case. For the reason that much of my content is inappropiate for adults, I am taking the opportunity to outline the measures I am introducing on this website, for the benefit of these readers, to ensure compliance with the new Online Safety Act. The principal requirement of the new legislation is that there be online age verification, to prevent adults accessing platforms designed for children. (Is this bit right?, Ed.)

On this website, age verification will be carried out by requiring potential readers based in the UK to submit all (not some) of the following through the comments box below this post:

  • Personal Information: Full name, mother’s maiden name, father’s maiden name, name of first school attended, pet’s name, pet’s mother’s name, any other memorable names that may be relevant.
  • Biometric Information: age, weight, height, hair colour, eye colour, hair size, eye size, shoe size, inside leg measurement and any other measurements likely to be of interest to a pervert.
  • Photo identification: all your private pics and videos (yes, those ones) or, preferably, those of someone more attractive than you.
  • Financial documents: credit card information, including card number, valid from date, expiry date, and CVV number, plus a photograph of the card of sufficiently high quality to make a copy.
  • Proof of Residence: 37 recent documents (dated no later than last month), such as bank statements, utlility bills, high court summonses, eviction notices, etc, showing evidence of home address, and postcode, plus photographs of your house and a list of dates and times when it is expected to be unoccupied.

The use of this information will be strictly limited to compliance with the Online Safety Act. I guarantee that I will not use any of this information for illegal or immoral purposes, though the companies I sell it do may well use it for either or both of those things.

I hope this clarifies the situation.

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Norman Tebbit: a Nation Mourns

Posted in Politics, R.I.P. on July 8, 2025 by telescoper

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End Unnecessary Redundancies at Newcastle University!

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , on May 26, 2025 by telescoper

A petition is being circulated to halt a programme of redundancies at Newcastle University. Academic staff positions are being cut while the University, like so many others, suffers Death by a Thousand Managers. I understand that staff in Physics are directly threatened by the plans.

Here is the description of the issue you can find on the petition:

Newcastle University staff are in dispute with their senior management over the threat of ill-considered and unnecessary redundances that are imperilling the future of our institution. We call on the University Executive Board (UEB) to abandon this destructive policy.

On Thursday 8th May 2025, 153 academic colleagues were summoned at short notice to meetings with UEB where they were told they have been placed in ‘redundancy pools’ with 38 of them to be laid off. In an unpleasant twist, they will be forced to compete against each other in an academic equivalent of ‘The Hunger Games.’ 

To add insult to injury, on the day staff were threatened with redundancy they were also invited to a ‘Doodling for Wellbeing’ session. ‘Let your pen dance across the page,’ they were told, as ‘a perfect escape from the everyday hustle and bustle.’ 

Such crassness is emblematic of the disregard for genuine staff wellbeing that has dogged this unhappy episode. For example, for migrant staff members recruited only months previously, after paying for skilled worker visas, the NHS surcharge, and moving young families from abroad, dismissal threatens the loss of all that, and even deportation. 

For many more, these redundancies will be career-ending. But even for those not immediately at risk, the climate of uncertainty and fear unleashed by UEB is demoralising. As one academic put it, this ‘callous’ policy shows ‘no thought to people as people; we are just figures on a spreadsheet.’

We recognise that this is a tough financial environment for universities. But Newcastle has a relatively strong cash and borrowing position. Through voluntary redundancies and other cost-cutting measures, we have achieved £15.8m of savings against a target of £20m. Nevertheless, UEB is pressing ahead with compulsory redundancies, even though other institutions have stepped back. 

There are other options. Debts could be renegotiated and the pace of cuts slowed. Recently announced capital expenditure projects – including a £274m student accommodation block replete with luxuries like a cinema and gym, and even plans for a campus in India – should be reviewed or delayed. 

Costs could also be cut by pruning management salaries and structures. Since tuition-fee rises in 2012, the number of staff drawing six-figure pay-cheques has mushroomed. 

Worried about their own futures and the future of the university, hard-working frontline staff are taking industrial action. As a result of the turmoil unleashed by what the UEB euphemistically calls ‘Workforce Resizing,’ many academics are looking for jobs elsewhere and students are seeking to transfer to other universities. Reputational damage will make future staff and student recruitment harder. Current redundancy plans risk forcing our great university into a death cycle. 

We urge the University Executive Board to abandon these cuts and work with all their colleagues to secure the future of Newcastle University.

Please sign the petition here.

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An Island of Strangers

Posted in Literature, Politics with tags , , , on May 13, 2025 by telescoper

In the light of Keir Starmer’s deplorable Faragist rhetoric about Britain becoming an ‘Island of Strangers’, and the obscene deportations and detentions without legal process of immigrants in the United States, I thought I’d repost this speech from the play Sir Thomas More which is widely attributed to William Shakespeare. It’s from Act 2 Scene 4, at which point in the drama Thomas More (who was then London’s Deputy Sheriff) is called upon to put down an anti-immigration riot in the Parish of St Martin Le Grand, that took place on 1st May 1517. In reality  More’s intevention wasn’t effective, and it took the arrival of 5000 troops to disperse the mob.

As well as being powerful for many other reasons, this speech especially fascinating because a hand-written manuscript (thought to be by Shakespeare himself) survives and is kept in the British Library.

The backdrop to this story is that, between 1330 and 1550 about 64,000 immigrants from all across Europe came to England in search of better lives. Locals blamed them for taking their jobs and threatening their culture. Tensions reached breaking point in 1517 and a mob armed with stones, bricks, bats, boots and boiling water attacked the immigrants and looted their homes.  Five hundred years on, and we still haven’t learned.

Here is the text of the opening part of the speech ‘This is the strangers case’. 

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another….

                                       Say now the king
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? this is the strangers case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity.

Better an Island of Strangers than an Island of Starmers, I’d say…

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Corroding Ireland’s Public Institutions

Posted in Education, Maynooth, Politics with tags , , on April 30, 2025 by telescoper

There’s an article in yesterday’s Irish Times with the headline Irish universities take millions of euro from big business. Are they too close for comfort? and the lede Many higher education institutions now rely on industry-sponsored professorships, research and scholarships to plug State funding gaps. The piece is behind a paywall, but it is based on public policy document by colleagues at Maynooth university that isn’t. In fact you can read it here. The abstract is

This policy paper explores private sector funding of higher education institutions in Ireland. Large corporations are providing financial support to Irish universities in multiple ways including supporting research projects and research centres, establishing professorships in the company name, funding physical infrastructure, and providing scholarships and other supports for students. A lack of publicly available data about the scale and scope of industry funding of Irish universities constrains a comprehensive understanding of how the private sector is engaging with and influencing Irish universities. While industry funding of higher education is often framed as a benefit to Irish society, the risks associated with private sector funding of higher education appear not yet widely considered in the Irish context. International research on industry funding of universities shows that these risks include: (1) an erosion of support for academic endeavours that may not be perceived as having commercial value, (2) corporate capture of the public-good mission of universities to legitimise profit-seeking priorities in policy discourse, and (3) the distraction of academic attention away from social and economic policies that prioritise human health and ecological health. This paper warns of the challenges of preserving the integrity and independence of academia in a higher education landscape increasingly shaped by profit-seeking objectives and market-driven priorities. Policy recommendations include a renewed commitment to strong public investment in universities and greater transparency about the scale and scope of industry funding of higher education in Ireland including a publicly accessible database of all private sector funding. 

This article elucidates many of the worries that I’ve had for some time about the corrosion of Ireland’s public universities. It’s not just that going cap-in-hand to the private sector inevitably means a focus on applied research but also that our lords and masters seem to think university teaching is simply about preparing graduates to go and work for Google. There is much more to university education than skills training.

It also occurred to me reading the piece that what it says about universities is also true about other public institutions. The one that sprang first to mind is the Irish public service broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). This is funded by a license fee, as is the BBC. Unlike the BBC, however, its TV broadcasts also carry advertisements to supplement the income generated by the fee. To attract advertising it has broadcast content that is more like what you would expect from a commercial channel, including imported soap operas and the like. The management of RTÉ has also been involved in a number of dodgy practices, including sponsorship deals and secret payments, that have led to a corrosion of trust in the organization.

I think RTÉ would be far better off concentrating on the current affairs, documentaries, culture and sports programming that it does well than try to compete with other channels for advertising revenue. Then it would truly be a public service broadcaster, funded by the public to serve the public. Universities should be like that too, funded by the public to serve the public, rather than commercia,l interests or the vanity of those in charge.

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Crisis at NASA

Posted in Euclid, Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on April 23, 2025 by telescoper

The scientific community has been waiting for several weeks to find out precisely how heavily the Trump/Musk axe would fall on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); this article reveals the shocking scale of the proposed cuts.

Under the proposal, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) would receive almost a 50% reduction in its Budget. Within the individual SMD Divisions:

  • Planetary Science would have its budget cut from the current level of $2,717 Million to $1,929 Million;
  • Earth Science would see a cut from the current budget level of $2,195 Million to $1,033 Million;
  • Astrophysics would decrease from its current level of $1,530 Million to $487 Million;
  • Heliophysics budget would decrease from its current level of $805 M to $455 M.

It’s very bad news all round for NASA science, but the worst hit is Astrophysics (which includes cosmology) where the proposed cut is about two-thirds, which would be truly devastating. According to the American Astronomical Society,

The proposed cut to the astrophysics budget is likely to result in the cancellation of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a Great Observatory that would revolutionize our understanding of dark matter and dark energy while also detecting hundreds of thousands of planets in other solar systems. As the Roman Space Telescope is already fully assembled and on budget for a launch in two years, a cancellation of the mission would be a significant waste of taxpayer dollars. 

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (formerly known as WFIRST) is in many ways complementary to Euclid, though it will survey a smaller area of sky it has an telescope twice the diameter of Euclid so will reach fainter magnitudes. It has been threatened before, in Trump’s previous administration, but it survived. It is not clear that it will do so again as the current composition of Congress is not weighted favourably.

Those of us outside the United States can do little, but in case anyone reading this is in America the AAS has an Action Alert for you to contact your representative(s) to vote against the proposal.

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When you’re invited to a conference in the US…

Posted in Biographical, Politics on April 22, 2025 by telescoper

I’ve been hearing and reading lots of stories over the last month or so of people being denied entry to the United States like this one in the Guardian about a French researcher who was travelling to a conference. It seems that immigration officials are likely to confiscate and search phones and laptops for evidence of unacceptable opinions. And that’s just the start – you’re liable to be detained and deported if the goons at the border don’t like the cut of your jib.

Ireland is one of several countries (including France, Germany and Denmark) officially advising those travelling to the USA to use a burner phone instead of their usual mobile and leave their normal laptop behind. That goes for tourists just as much as people on business or travelling to meetings.

A more sensible alternative (for those of us who have the choice) is not to go there. It’s worth neither the hassle nor the risk. You can probably give your talk remotely anyway. For the indefinite future, this will be my response if I’m invited to travel to a conference in the USA:

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