Archive for the Politics Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Hondootedly John Cole…

Posted in Biographical, Politics with tags , , , on May 30, 2019 by telescoper

I mentioned that Pat Kenny mistakenly called me `John Cole’ at the start of my interview on NewsTalk Radio a couple of days ago. He admitted that he was thinking of the late and much lamented BBC Political Editor of that name. John Cole was born in Belfast and his voice was frequently heard in pieces to camera as he talked about the great issues of the day. This sparked Private Eye to run a piece in almost every issue, mocking his strong Ulster accent, entitled John Cole writes. Here’s an example, from Issue No. 641:

This one is fairly topical as it is on the subject of the 1986 Divorce Referendum in Ireland which was on whether to remove the constitutional ban on divorce. That vote failed, but the vote held on Friday went completely in the other direction with 82% in favour of removing the ban.

 

 

Leave a comment »

Winners and Losers

Posted in Biographical, Crosswords, Politics with tags , , on May 30, 2019 by telescoper

Hopefully the hecticity of the last week or so will now begin to die down and I can get on with the rest of my examination marking, which I hope to complete today.

Now to a couple of updates.

Yesterday I took delivery of the above book. Regular readers of this blog will probably not recall that I won the Financial Times Crosssword competition way back in February. The prize never arrived so I contacted them to ask what had happened. It must have got lost in the post, but they kindly sent a replacement which arrived promptly. The book is not a dictionary, but is about the story of the creation of one – the Oxford English Dictionary to be precise. I look forward to reading it!

The other matter to be updated concerns the Irish Elections to the European Parliament. The counting of these proved to be a slow process but watching the regular updates on the web as votes were transferred is actually rather fascinating. It’s surprisingly difficult to predict where second choice votes of eliminated candidates will end up. The Green Party seems rather `transfer-friendly’, for example, whereas Sinn Féin is not.

In my own constituency of Midlands-North-West it took thirteen rounds of counting to pick the four MEPs: one for Sinn Féin, two for Fine Gael and one strange but probably harmless Independent. The turnout was about 50%. I think Fianna Fáil made a tactical error by fielding two candidates: neither had enough first-preference votes to make the cut.

I was worried that the dreadful Peter Casey might sneak in in fourth place but he fell well short of the required transfers, though he still got a worryingly large number of votes. The Irish Media are making the same mistake pandering to him as they have done in the UK with Nigel Farage: he gets far more airtime than the other candidates despite being obviously unfit for office.

Elswhere, Dublin elected MEPs from the Green Party (1), Fine Gael (1) and Fianna Fáil (1) and one Independent standing under the banner of `Independents for Change’ (I4C). The incumbent Sinn Féin candidate Lynn Boylan lost her seat. The 4th candidate here will only take a seat in the European Parliament if and when the United Kingdom leaves the EU.

As I write there’s a recount going on in Ireland South, but it looks like the winners will be Fine Gael (2), Fianna Fáil (1), I4C (1) and the fifth (who will only take up a seat after Brexit) will probably be from the Green Party. It looks like incumbent Sinn Féin MEP Liadh Ní Riada (and unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency) will lose her seat, but the count is very close: only a few hundred votes are in it, hence the recount. UPDATE: in fact there will be a full recount of the whole ballot, which could take weeks.

Overall it’s clear that the losers are Sinn Féin, who lost two MEPs (and also about half their councillors in the local elections). After appearing to improve their vote share in recent years this is a definite reverse for them. The party that gained the most is the Green Party, with (probably) two MEPs and a strong showing in Midlands-North-West. I wonder if they can keep this momentum going for a General Election?

Interestingly, unlike the rest of the `United’ Kingdom Northern Ireland uses the Single Transferable Vote system for European Elections too. There Sinn Féin came top of first preferences and won one seat, with another for the Alliance and one for the DUP. That’s two-to-one in favour of `Remain’.

7 Comments »

Talking and Marking

Posted in Biographical, Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on May 28, 2019 by telescoper

I’m taking a short break from my examination marking to have a cup of tea before I resume and make an attempt to finish it this evening. I’m late today because I had to go into Dublin to do an interview on NewsTalk Radio with a chap called Pat Kenny.

I was supposed to go on about 11.15 and was told to get to their HQ by 11am. I got there a bit earlier in fact and had to sit around a bit in the offices before going into the studio and then my bit was delayed because they wanted to play an audio recording of some bloke called Tony Blair pointing out, with devastating insight, that the United Kingdom is a very divided country.

After a bit of a delay  for that and a commercial break we finally got going nearer to 11.30. The subject of the interview was, of course, the Einstein-Eddington-Eclipse-Extravaganza taking place tomorrow. Pat Kenny introduced me as `John Coles from Maynooth University’, obviously thinking of John Cole, the former BBC political correspondent. Remember him? Anyway, I corrected him it and it went reasonably well from then on.

Unfortunately I’ve got a bit of a cold so I’ve been coughing and spluttering a bit and was a bit worried I would sneeze into the microphone but got through it reasonably well. I’ve done one or two bits of radio before, including an encounter with John Humphreys on BBC Radio 4, which that was about the anniversary of the publication of Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time.

Anyway after this morning’s interview was finished I was asked if I minded recording a little video about the topic I’d been talking about so I went with a nice young man into a very small  but very brightly lit room. I think it will probably look like a hostage video, but I’ll post it here if and when I find it. I gather they will put it up somewhere tomorrow, along with a podcast of the Pat Kenny show.

Now back to the marking.

 

1 Comment »

Exercising the Franchise

Posted in Biographical, Politics with tags , , on May 24, 2019 by telescoper

First thing this morning I cast my vote in Maynooth, the polling station for which is in the Presentation Girls School, a Catholic Primary School. It wasn’t amazingly busy inside but there was a steady flow of people coming through. There were 8 desks dishing out ballot papers, more desks than you usually get at a polling station in the UK. There were three ballot papers, one for the European Parliament, one for the Local Council, and one for the Constitutional Referendum.

Anyway, Polling Card in hand I eventually found the right desk. Having done my homework last night I ranked all 17 candidates for the European Parliament Elections and all 9 for the Local Council Elections, copying my preferences from a piece of paper I had taken with me. The Single Transferable Vote system must making counting quite a lengthy process so it will take some time before the results are known.

At least I got to vote, which many EU citizens in the UK were unable to do. There’s a major scandal brewing about what looks like deliberate disenfranchisement. These things shouldn’t happen in a democracy, but apparently in the United Kingdom they do.

I had a very busy morning after arriving at the Department so I’ve just discovered that Theresa May has resigned. Part of me is delighted as I thought she was callous and mean-spirited as well as being useless. Apparently she cried when she read out her resignation statement. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to burst out laughing.

The feeling of happiness that the current PM is leaving is however tempered by the very high probability that whoever replaces her will be even worse…

So I’m now heading off to Dublin again for the second session of IQF 2019 after which I’ll be going to the Gaiety Theatre for a performance of the Magic Flute, an Opera about Particle Physics.

6 Comments »

Should students be (financially) compensated for strike action by lecturers?

Posted in Cardiff, Education, Politics with tags , , , , on May 22, 2019 by telescoper

Regular readers of this blog will know that last year I was still employed part of the time at Cardiff University and during that period I was participating in strike action called by the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) over pensions. As a result of that action students on my module on Physics of the Early Universe missed quite a lot of lectures (and I was docked a large fraction of my pay).

I refused to do extra lectures after the strike was over to make up for those lost, as it seemed to me that defeated the point of the strike action, but I did make notes available for the students (which I do anyway). Students were also given access to recordings of the previous year’s lectures on the same module. I know some lecturers also adjusted their examinations and/or other assessments to exclude material that had not been covered.

It seems practice for dealing with this (admittedly difficult) situation has varied from institution to institution, and some students who feel that they missed out as a result of the strike have apparently asked to be compensated by their University. Institutions could of course pay compensation to students out of the money saved by not paying lecturers, but that wouldn’t go very far because only a small part of the £9000+ students pay in fees goes to the salaries of teaching staff. Another issue is that I recall one or two students didn’t come to lectures even before the strike started. Should they be compensated too?

Anyway I thought this might be an interesting topic for a poll, so here goes:

As always views are welcome through the comments box too!

13 Comments »

Voting Matters in Ireland

Posted in Politics with tags , , , , on May 21, 2019 by telescoper

Arriving back in civilization last night I discovered that my polling card for Friday’s voting has arrived at last along with instructions on the Referendum to be held alongside the Local Council Elections and the European Parliament Elections, all held on 24th May.

I’m looking forward to casting my ballot. It is a new experience for me to vote here in Ireland. Both elections are held under Proportional Representation (Single Transferable Vote) which seems to me a very sensible system. One ranks the candidates in order of preference with votes progressively reallocated as the lowest-ranked candidates are eliminated. You can rank all the candidates or just some. In the system employed here one ranks the candidates in order of preference with votes progressively reallocated in various rounds until one ends up with the top n candidates to fill the n available seats. Surplus votes from the top candidates as well as those of eliminated candidates are reallocated to lower-preference candidates in this process.

The Local Elections involve filling 40 seats on Kildare County Council, with five councillors representing Maynooth. The nine candidates are listed here, in case you’re interested.

For the European Parliament Elections things are a bit more complicated. For the purposes of the EU elections Ireland is divided into three constituencies: Dublin, Ireland South and Midlands North West. I am in the latter, which elects four MEPs. There are 17 candidates for this constituency, listed here.

As a relative newcomer to Ireland I first sorted the candidates into three groups: (i) those that I would be happy to see elected, (ii) those that I don’t really like but could tolerate, and (iii) those that I wouldn’t like to see representing me under any circumstances. There are plenty in the latter category. There seems to be a law in Ireland that there has to be at least one deranged simpleton on every ballot paper, and there are several in this election. I will choose my lower-preference votes to ensure that none of these dickheads, especially racist gobshite Peter Casey, benefit from my vote in any way.

Although the STV system seems very sensible to me, it does lead to a rather lengthy counting process – especially if everyone does what I plan to do, i.e. rank all the candidates instead of just their favourites.

6 Comments »

Fascism is coming..

Posted in History, Politics with tags , on May 19, 2019 by telescoper

Rally for Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, Earl’s Court, London July 1939.

Beer-brandishing ‘Man of the People’, Oswald Mosley.

Fascism is coming; probably a slimy Anglicised form of Fascism, with cultured policemen instead of Nazi gorillas and the lion and the unicorn instead of the swastika.

George Orwell, from The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937.

2 Comments »

Local Election News

Posted in Maynooth, Politics with tags , , , on May 3, 2019 by telescoper

As results come in from the local elections held in the Disunited Kingdom yesterday, I see that the results have been so bad for the Conservative Party that one Tory MP has been reduced to tears. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to burst out laughing. It’s also rather hilarious to see various factions (including the BBC news) spin the big gains of the Liberal Democrats as a message to `get on with Brexit’, but at the same time it’s also sad to see a country so gripped by madness that it is reduced to such a state.

UPDATE: With 218 out of 248 English Councils having been counted, the Conservative Party has lost an impressive 1072 councillors, but not to Labour who have lost 110. The big winners are the Liberal Democrats (+582), the Greens (+152) and Independents (+505). UKIP are also down by 99 to just 29 councillors. Both Labour and Tories are still claiming that this sends a message to get on with Brexit. Bizarre. I wonder what they think a message to stop Brexit would look like?

Anyway there were no local elections in Wales yesterday so I didn’t vote. I am still eligible to do so, of course, as I pay Council Tax on my house in Cardiff. I would have had a tricky problem deciding what to do if I had. As a lifelong Labour voter (and member until recently) I can no longer support them because of their `policy’ on Brexit, so probably would have voted for Plaid Cymru. That’s who I would vote for in the European Parliament elections.

I am eligible to vote in both the United Kingdom (Wales) and Ireland for the forthcoming European Parliament elections (assuming they go ahead), but one is supposed to vote in one or the other rather than both so I’ve decided to vote here as this is the country in which I am `normally resident’. The European Parliament elections take place here in Ireland on Friday 24th May (three weeks from today) at the same time as the local council elections here.

Kildare County Council will have 40 councillors of which five are elected in Maynooth. For the purpose of the European Parliament elections, Ireland is divided into three multi-member constituencies: Dublin, Ireland South and Midlands North-West. Maynooth is in the last of these, which stretches from Kildare across to Galway and up to Donegal. It will elect four MEPs. The same voting method is used in both elections: the single transferable vote.

(The UK has multi-member constituencies for the European Parliament elections too, but uses the D’Hondt system in which one votes for a party list rather than an individual.)

I’m a relative newcomer to Irish politics, and am yet to decide who to vote for in these elections. I certainly won’t vote for either of the two leading neoliberal/conservative parties, Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. Sinn Féin will probably be top of my list of preferences in both ballots. On the other extreme, tax-dodger, racist gobshite and failed Presidential candidate Peter Casey is sure to be bottom of my list for the MEP elections: he’s unfit for any kind of public office, in my opinion.

Apart from the different voting system(s) and dates, there is another noticeable difference between the UK and Ireland at election time:

Posters like this pop up everywhere on lampposts during election (and referendum) campaigns in Ireland, as opposed to the larger billboard-type posters that seem to be favoured in Britain. At least these show you what your candidates look like, which is not the case if you vote for a party list. Such posters are specifically permitted by law but most be taken down within a certain time after the election, otherwise the party responsible is fined.

2 Comments »

University News

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , , , , on April 28, 2019 by telescoper

As we stagger towards Week 11 of this twice-interrupted Semester I’m back in the office preparing stuff for another set of lectures. This term seems to have gone on forever, largely because of the two breaks (one at half-term around St Patrick’s Day, and other other for Easter). Now, though, the end is in sight. Or at least the examination period is: there are just two more weeks of lectures, ending on 10th May then a short break, then examinations start (on 17th May). Then, of course, there is marking, checking, conflating exam grades with coursework marks, examination boards, and all the other stuff that go on behind the scenes.

I noticed that this weekend’s edition of the Irish Times included a hard copy of a report called Delivering for Ireland: The Impact of Irish Universities which was produced by the Irish Universities Association. In fact the thing given away with the paper is just a summary report (you can download it in PDF format here). The full report (all 86 pages of it) can be downloaded here.

The report is full of interesting information, including this (which I didn’t know before):

The report was produced with the aim of making the case for further investment in Ireland’s universities. It remains to be seen whether the current Irish government will be persuaded. I’m not holding my breath. right-wing governments never seem to be interested in investing in the future. I think the best we can hope for is that Ireland does not continue its policy of slavishly copying English Higher Education policy, especially with the introduction of student loans and high tuition fees.

And talking of the idiocies of the English University system, there is a story going around that the UK Government is planning to make EU students pay full `Overseas’ fees after Brexit. Actually, Higher Education policy is a devolved matter so this can only be directly enforced on English universities. It will, however, be hard for Scottish Welsh and Northern Irish institutions to resist the consequences.

In fact I’ve long felt that the existing system – in which Home and EU students have to be treated the same way as a matter of law but non-EU students can be charged different (i.e. higher) fees is completely immoral. Once at university students are all taught the same way so why should some be charged more than others because they happen to come from China? What would you think of a shop that tried to charge people different prices for the same goods depending on the nationality of the customer?

This decision is of course an inevitable consequence of Theresa May’s interpretation of the EU referendum result as a mandate for policies of extreme xenophobia, as is the withdrawal from Erasmus. It is just another symptom of the UK’s descent into narrow-minded insularity. The message this decision sends out is that Britain hates foreigners but it likes their money so the rich ones who can pay extortionate fees will be graciously allowed to come here to get fleeced. Does the government really think that EU citizens are daft enough to come to a country that identifies itself in such a way? I don’t think they are. They’ll just find somewhere else to go, and the consequence for UK universities will be severe. I am confident this will push more than one UK higher education institution into bankruptcy.

Anyway, even if the the Irish university continues to be under-resourced, it will at least continue to welcome students from the EU on the same basis as before. So if you’re a European student who was thinking about studying in England, why not come to Ireland instead? It’s far cheaper, and we even have the same weather…

2 Comments »

Der Englische Patient

Posted in Politics with tags , , on April 7, 2019 by telescoper

I couldn’t resist sharing this brilliant cartoon by Jürgen Tomicek

Leave a comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »