If Martin is best Fianna Fáil can do, they should fold up the tent now

Micheál Martin is a political lightweight, which was made all too obvious the past week. He's always been too keen to be seen as 'having his finger on the pulse' and this week he probably thought he was going to look really clever when he opted to ignore party stalwarts and try to hitch a ride on Gay Byrne's coattails.

Last Wednesday on Tonight With Vincent Browne, RTE's Derek Davis summed up why he thought Byrne wouldn't run. Everything Davis said made perfect sense. Davis said he didn't know Byrne that well, yet he was able to see that Gay Byrne was unlikely to run. How is it Micheál Martin didn't have the sense to put out feelers even to people like Davis, never mind those who know Byrne better, before he endorsed Gabyo?

My favorite part was that Martin had barely jumped onto the Byrne bandwagon before Byrne fired off his anti-EU broadside that proved that Martin had no idea who Gay Byrne, potential Presidential candidate, was. Right away Martin looked silly.

Three days later and Martin looks stupid. He backed a man whom he hadn't spoken to, whom he didn't know and in the process made it obvious that no one in his party was worthy of support. Even if a Fianna Fáil candidate were to emerge at this stage, why should the public support him/her if Micheál Martin considers him/her unworthy?

If this is the best they can do Fianna Fáil may as well call it a day right now.

Note to Fergus Finlay: serious social problems need realistic solutions

Fergus Finlay is asking why are young children and teenagers becoming increasingly violent. He doesn't cite any stats to show that teens and younger children are getting more violent, but I'll go along with him anyway because I suspect this is the case.

So who or what's to blame? Finlay says there's no easy answer; he wishes we could "just blame the parents, or society, or the Gardai."

Finlay then sets out the case that poverty is a big part of the problem and he then mentions the fact that most of the inmates in Moutnjoy Prison come from a few postal districts.

Those postal districts are associated, indelibly, with deeply embedded, multi-generational poverty. Ghettoised poverty. Stigmatised poverty. The kind of poverty that breaks down parenting, and that all too often turns the presumption of innocence into the assumption of guilt.

I can sort of go along with Finlay, but what's his solution? More social workers and playgrounds.

More playgrounds sounds doable. We should defund all programs that funnel money to professional athletes and use that money to build playgrounds. Celebrating an Irish gold medal at the Olympics just ain't all that important and even if we only get one playground for the money it will be worth it.

What about the social workers Finlay wants? They're expensive and there can be no extra spending. In fact, Finlay would have provided some service if he'd identified some aspect of public spending that could be cut to allow for the additional social workers he wants.

It's all well and good identifying the problem, which Finlay does. However, everyone living in Ireland could identify the problem. It's the solution that requires real insight. All Finlay has to offer is spend more money. Great. This is not 2004. Again, we are BROKE, which means this is one problem that will be put on the longest of long fingers as it will be YEARS before we can increase spending as Finlay suggests.

In the toughest of economic climates we have the Presidential candidate who has only pie-in-the-sky suggestions for a serious social problem. Yes the President is not where the action lies economically or politically, but we still need one who is realistic.

Tremendous pressure on Moriarty get it 'right'

I just read this on Twitter (from @CharlieFlanagan):

Why would Judge Moriarty stitch up O'Brien, Lowry and Ben Dunne? This report is so scathing a criminal investigation should be held.

Now I'm not saying that Judge Moriarty took any of this into account, but let's face it he knew what the press and the public wanted. He knew what the mood of the country is given our economic collapse.

The word "stitch" is highly charged, but I could well imagine that Judge Moriarty knew the pressure was on to deliver a fairly damning report. This was not like hearing a case where a jury will deliver a verdict. He was judge and jury here. The pressure to provide a "result" must have been tremendous.

I have great sympathy for him and think the process is flawed, not the man. I believe Moriarty is beyond reproach, but I also will not be surprised when there are no prosecutions and the key findings are watered down following court action.

Are women safer drivers or do they drive less?

"Women are safer drivers." That's the mantra in the Irish press these past few days following the ruling by the European Court of Justice that insurance companies cannot use gender to determine insurance rates. That's the mantra, but is it true?

Both David Quinn and Kevin Myers make this assertion in today's Irish Independent, but they're not alone. This is stated as a fact, but I've never seen any real data that backs up this statement. Sure women file fewer claims, but is that because they're safer drivers or because they drive fewer miles?

For a short while in the 1980s I worked at an actuarial firm that provided the statistics on which many car insurers set their rates. I remember how my boss showed me stats accumulated in an academic study of drivers in one or two states (might have been North Carolina & Virginia). Among the statistics collected was miles driven, which turned out to be a better determining factor with regards to claims than was gender.

However as my boss explained, getting accurate information from drivers on the number of miles they drove annually was really impossible. Gender was easier to ascertain and, well, women drove fewer miles than men. On average.

I don't know if it's still that case that annual mileage is not used as a factor in determining car insurance rates in America, but I'd like to know. I also don't know much about how car insurance rates are determined in Ireland, but I'd like to know that too.

What I do know is that I've played with insurance brokers' web sites, changing various factors to see how the rates are affected. What I've noticed is that it doesn't matter if I indicate annual mileage (kilometer-age?) of under 10,000 km/yr or 25-40,000 km/yr. The rates on offer are the same.

However, if I swap genders, I get a lower Comprehensive rate (3rd Party Fire & Theft are the same for male/female of my age/married/etc). Now why would this be? I presume it's because women file fewer claims than men do, which makes them better risks for insurance companies (but not necessarily "safer drivers.")

I find it a more than dubious assertion that a woman who drives 35,000 km/yr is a better risk than a man who drives 7,000 km/yr, all other factors being the same. Yet, that's what the insurance rates tell us, but I'd absolutely love to see the stats that back that up.

Labour cannot go into opposition

Okay, so Labour had their best election ever. I get it, but it would be a huge mistake for them to go into opposition now. They went into the election hoping to catch the mood, build momentum and come out the biggest party with Eamon Gilmore as Taoiseach. It didn't happen.

Half way through the campaign they changed tack, admitted defeat and pleaded for votes on the basis that Fine Gael couldn't be trusted with an overall majority. That was the new pitch: we need to be in coalition with Fine Gael to ensure they don't do all these 'nutty things they're promising.'

That seems to have worked as Fine Gael's upward movement stalled around the same time. So, credit to Labour for adjusting the message and managing to come out of the vote with lots of positives.

However, if they now decide to opt out of coalition with Fine Gael on anything other than the most solid, irrefutable grounds, they will be doing just as they did after the '93 vote when Dick Spring put Fianna Fáil back in power. Those who wanted a left wing opposition grouping have that, but I would bet that most Labour voters thought they were voting for a party they thought was actually going to serve in government, was actually going to do something other than complain and debate.

I can see the attraction, but if being the biggest party in opposition was their goal they should have campaigned against Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and the ULA and not Fine Gael. They didn't do that and any move towards that now will open the door for Fianna Fáil to reclaim that space as the populist, center-left movement they've been for most of their existence.

An education in Croke Park nonsense

My son startled me this morning. He declared that he "hates Croke Park." Seeing as he's never been there and has no reason to be anti-GAA I was taken aback.

"Why do you hate Croke Park?"
"Because, thanks to the Croke Park deal we have no more half days."
"Ahh."

I'd forgotten. Until last week my son had a half day on the first Tuesday of every month. The students were dismissed early for teacher meetings. Now, however, thanks to the Croke Park deal, all teacher meetings must take place outside school hours.

Why is this? What benefit accrues to the state by insisting that all these meetings take place after school hours? I can't see how the state saves one penny from this. All I see is that my son, his classmates and children up and down the country can no longer look forward to the little treat of a monthly half day.

I know there are some educationistas out there who want their kids in school 9-5, M-F, January through December, but I'm not one of those. Yes, I want my children to get an education, but that doesn't only come in school.

I want my children to enjoy life too and half days are a part of that enjoyment. I see no benefit to my children from this 'deal' that forces the school to cancel these little treats for kids.

Children are the losers here and maybe the GAA. They may rue the day that they allowed the name of their stadium to be the nickname for extra time in school when kids would rather be out kicking a ball.

Poster vandalism is a denial of democracy

It kills me to say this, but I agree with Dick Roche. Not about everything, but about one thing: those who are defacing his posters don't have a firm grasp of what a democracy means.

The poster was vandalized, a new one attached and that too was vandalized.

This happened during the Lisbon Treaty too. Roche's posters are being targeted by those who have some vendetta against him.

And it really is only Roche. This poster is not isolated, but in an area full of posters, including big ones like this from Labour & Fine Gael. Only Roche's poster has been damaged.

Does Minister Ó Cuív understand the bank guarantee?

Éamon Ó Cuív has a really interesting letter to the editor of the Galway Advertiser. Ó Cuív's letter is in response to one published two weeks ago in which the letter writer describes Ó Cuív as "a high ranking member of the FF/Green government which has made the ordinary taxpayer suffer as a result of a banking crisis caused by individuals with greedy gambling habits."

Ó Cuív 's response to that was to defend the bank guarantee.

I would agree with Mr. Walsh's characterisation of some bankers. However, I cannot agree with his idea that we should have allowed, depositors (including depositors in Credit Unions, etc.), people with pension contributions and insurance policies of all types lose their money. To allow this to happen would have caused untold hardship to people over and above the present difficulties.

Or is Ó Cuív just spoofing or does just he have no idea what he's talking about? Bank deposits (including credit union deposits, I believe) were already guaranteed to €100,000 before the bank guarantee. If that was too low, why didn't the government just up the level to €500K or even €1m?

Ó Cuív's reference to pensions and insurance is even more baffling. Did we need to guarantee all those bank liabilities because some of the pension and insurance funds were invested in bank bonds? Surely pension funds and insurance companies are just as likely to be invested in Ryanair or CRH. Or even Diageo. Are we now going to guarantee every possible investment opportunity?

This is a cabinet minister. This is why we're in such trouble now and why Fianna Fáil needs to spend a long time in opposition weeding out all this dead weight.

Micheál Martin was impressive last night

I don't like Micheál Martin, although today I can't remember exactly what it is that caused me to dislike him. I know I was really fed up with his reaction during the Gaza flotilla, his righteousness, his anti-Israel bias, but I didn't like him long before he became Minister for Foreign Affairs. I didn't like him when he was Minister for Education or when he was Minister for Health either. Just don't like him.

However, I was impressed with him on Vincent Browne's program last night. I thought he gave a commanding performance and even when he gave answers I wasn't all that happy with at no time did I think he showed himself to be out of his depth discussing the budgetary and banking failures, which I've often felt with Brian Lenihan. Compared with what we had with Brian Cowen he was cool under pressure and a more than able communicator. (Although I really wish Browne had asked Martin if it was a mistake to join the euro and how in the euro will we prevent the rapid influx and outflow of capital that gave us the boom/bust we have.}

If I had any quibbles I think Martin should have answered Browne's question as to why should anyone vote Fianna Fáil in this election by telling Browne, 'Fianna Fáil is going into opposition, but the incoming Fine Gael government will need to be watched by a strong, capable opposition and that is what Fianna Fáil will provide.' Would have been an honest answer and one that anyone watching might have accepted a Martin-led Fianna Fáil in opposition would be.

I'm still not going to vote for them.

Phony Euromania has bitten the dust

If there is one big casualty in the financial mess / bailout it's Ireland's love affair with Europe, the EU. That's over. People have had the wool removed from their eyes.

Even the nation's most committed Europhiles no longer refer to 'our partners in Europe'. Partners! That was the word used by everyone in the main parties for the past two decades or more. Partners.

Partners don't do to a partner what's being done to Ireland, unless they're going through an acrimonious split. That's what this feels like only we're not splitting but being forced to eat dirt and say "Please sir may I have some more" after each whack of the stick across our national back.

We have no "partners" in Europe. Quite clearly we're on our own. On our own to pay off the debts incurred in Ireland by private banks across the EU. We're being punished for not regulating what the ECB also spectacularly failed to regulate. This is not how partners behave.

We have no partners. We had competitors, but they're gradually morphing into enemies. Every politician who calls to my door will have the same question put to him/her: Do we have partners in Europe? Anyone who says yes, will NOT get my vote.