The Leaving cannot be the be all and end all of college admissions

If it weren't so darned important, it would be easy to dismiss the Leaving Cert. The reason it's important is simply because it's the sole measure used to decide on a student's 'application' for college. Nothing else about the person matter, only the test scores from one three week period during June of their last year in school.

Nothing else matters.

Did they underachieve? Could she have done better with different teachers? Is there a potential scholar inside that girl who only did a middling Leaving Cert? Could he be a world beater as a geneticist but for his English & Irish scores? Was the fact that she was ill or he lost his mother during May a factor in their lower scores? Could they have done better?

None of that matters.

All that matters is that the student's Leaving Cert scores. It's well past time that was changed, but the Leaving Cert's a sacred cow.

Spread out the state exams over the last three years of school. Include other factors, including aptitude tests, in college entrance requirements. Encourage (compel?) students to make a case for their admission to a particular course. That might help weed out all those who choose courses just because they "got the points."

Scrap the points system - or at least lessen its importance - and we might actually get a better second level system and more devoted, more capable third level students studying for degrees that suit them rather than in programs for which their collective Leaving results direct them.

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.

A Marshall Plan is not what the EU needs

A column in the Guardian calls for a new Marshall Plan to save the EU, but unfortunately the EU's dominated by leaders who believe in unconstrained free market capitalism, according to Mark Mazower. That's a load of twaddle.

The EU's problem right now is that EU enthusiasts ran too far out in front of the citizens of the various nations. They pushed for an integrated EU that required a lot more solidarity and a lot less nationalism than the people of the EU were ready for. Unfortunately they ended up with a fudge - a unified currency stretched over loosely unified national economies. It's stuck in between integration and a loose confederation, which is a disaster.

Mazower's call for an EU Marshall Plan is only a band-aid. The only solution now is for there to be one polity and one economy. The national identities need to be buried in favor of a new overarching European identity, one that accepts that the problems of Athens, Madrid, Rome, Berlin, Paris, Dublin - are everyone's to share.

I just don't see that happening. It will have to be forced on people or as the integrationists have done for the past 20 years sold to them under false pretenses. That's not a winning formula.

Oh, and as for Mazower's history, he talks about Truman and the Marshall Plan without once mentioning the USSR, which the plan was designed to thwart. Methinks his love of central planning blinded him to this side of the central planners' history.

National coffers boosted by training corrupt regimes' armed forces

So the Irish government got money for training the armies of dubious regimes. Isn't that one of those charges that's always flung at America - they're "America's creation" or "America's puppets."

I wouldn't want you to think that I'm criticizing the government for this decision. I just like the fact that this muddies the water for those who 'blame America first.'

Aer Lingus in T2 - better leave plenty of time.

I know Dublin Airport's Terminal 2 is new and this is the first time they've had to deal with the busy summer season and there are probably a few kinks to work out, but really the lines to check-in or just drop your bag at Aer Lingus this morning were ridiculous.

I would not be surprised if the people in this picture had to wait 30 minutes to do a 'bag drop.' I presume this has more to do with Aer Lingus than anything wrong with T2, but I'm not sure. I didn't see too many unmanned bag-drop desks – I didn't have to go to check-in desk – so maybe it's just that Aer Lingus was not allocated sufficient desks? Or maybe Aer Lingus has decided that T2 means fewer employees on duty?

Whatever the issue, I hope they get it straightened out soon. The only lasting impression for T2 made on departing tourists this morning was chaos and mismanagement.

Is the state considering confiscating church property?

A report in the Independent says the Department of Education will "take action on the divesting of schools if there was a delay in reaching agreement on a handover from Catholic-run schools to different patrons." What the report doesn't say is what action the government will take if the Forum on Pluralism and Patronage doesn't come to a speedy resolution of the issues that are currently being discussed.

It is intriguing to consider whether the state will simply confiscate church property in order to meet this "urgent" need for providing more diversity in primary education. I can't see any other option because to simply start opening new schools in temporary facilities while the Forum does its job would mean hiring a whole load of new teachers, which I would imagine our EU/ECB/IMF overlords would frown upon.

Until now I thought this process was going to be a voluntary one, but maybe not? Would Fine Gael back such a move? This could get interesting.

NY Times - American soccer's number 1 cheerleader

Another NY Times article on how hot the MLS and soccer generally is in America. This time the NY Times reports on the "hottest ticket" in Portland – the Timbers. I'm sure the Times isn't about how popular the Timbers are seeing as there's no NFL, MLB or NHL team there so competition is light. Only the the Trailblazers  offer major league competition. I don't know much about Portland so I can't say whether college football and basketball draw fans in Portland as they do in many American cities and towns.

The Timbers are a new franchise - this is their first season in the league - which helps make their games a bid faddish. This phenomenon is repeated in every town that suddenly finds itself with a new sports team.

The key is how popular the team is after the fad wears off. We won't know that about the Timbers for a few years yet. At the moment, revenue wise and franchise-value wise they're still far behind the local NBA team, the Trailblazers.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I don't wish the Timbers ill. I hope the franchise succeeds. In terms of weather and demographics - it's actually a pretty big market for so little major league focus - I would imagine soccer in Portland is a good fit.

It's just that the Times annoys me on the topic. They were too busy cheer-leading to offer much of a discordant note on the team's owners Peregrine Sports, LLC, which is controlled by Merritt Paulson. Merritt Paulson is the son of  Henry M. Paulson Jr. - ex-Goldman head, ex-Treasury Secretary, who we got to know very well during the financial melt-down in 2008. Henry Paulson owns a chunk of the team himself.

I guess I'd have expected a bit more of a critical eye on the Paulsons than the Times offers. The most Times offers is that the Paulsons "raised eyebrows" in the " left-leaning and sometimes insular city."

Peregrine roped the city into spending a $30m to renovate the stadium - it had been renovated at a cost of nearly $40m in 2001 to accommodate the the local minor league baseball team, the Beavers. Peregrine bought the Beavers at the same time as it acquired the franchise rights to the Timbers, but when the city didn't pony up for a new baseball stadium in addition to the renovations at Timbers' home field they sold the Beavers, which then relocated to Tucson.

I would have imagined some of that possibly jiggery-pokery would have merited a bit of attention from the Times, but no. The Paulsons basically get a free pass because they're running the "hottest ticket" in town - a soccer team. 

Leasing vs selling iPads for school

A Lisburn school is leasing iPads to parents for £170 (€190) per year. The Mayo school in the news at the end of last month is selling the iPads at €700. I think I'd be happier with the leasing arrangement, but really I don't see the need for them at all. I'm happy knowing my children will still be using dead tree products for their schooling.

By the way, despite all the hoopla over that St Coleman's in Mayo, Rathdown in South County Dublin introduced iPads months ago.

No kidding - where are the missing goats going?

Goats missing in Waterford may have been used to make bodhráns. I have half a memory of hearing of goats going missing before. Is this what's happening to them? Is this the dark side of one of Ireland's traditional instruments?

Irish newspapers back to free online

I don't think I've seen it commented on elsewhere, but in the long running battle between free and paid for online newspaper content many Irish local papers recently rejoined the ranks of the 'free' after another failed effort to get people to pay. Local papers on the Independent.ie platform were "premium" options, but are now simply free to all. The Bray People, Drogheda Independent, Sligo Champion, Enniscorthy Guardian, etc. are among the titles that can now be read online without charge.

America is not riven by hatred

Walter Ellis has followed up his Irish Times column from earlier in the week with a letter to the editor in today's paper. Ellis says Ireland looking to America for help would be a mistake because "the US is in desperate straits itself these days, uncertain of its place in the world, riven by internal hatreds."

Okay, I agree with the first point and can see the argument for the second (although I don't think this issue is much different than it has been since 1900), but the third point? Is America "riven by internal hatreds?"

I get over to America quite a bit and I haven't noticed any sudden surge in hatred. Political debates seem a bit more heated than was the case 25 years ago, but that's more a new media (talk radio, cable tv as well as online) phenomenon rather than anything all that real.

Too many people make that mistake, confusing the media world with the real world.

I would have thought Ellis, who lives in New York, wouldn't be one as I doubt he encounters anything like the hatred he must have experienced in his native Belfast. No, I would wager that the hatred Ellis is talking about is the excited language used in ratings-driven radio & television programs or in Facebook, Twitter and blog posts.

Real hatred would lead to real violence, but that seems, if anything, to be down from 25 years ago. Violent crime is in decline. Racial tensions are certainly in decline, although, again, politically motivated newspapers would never want that truth to be admitted. And general politically motivated violence? America experiences less of that than you'd get in Athens on what seems like a monthly basis.

America has been riven before and that led to 1 million dead. We're way short of that today.

Obama 2011 & Reagan 1984

I still cannot get over how so many Irish people found President Obama's speech inspiring or moving or just great. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. I mean, it's not like everyone here hasn't heard the same tale a hundred-thousand times from all the Irish-American visitors over the years. {I've actually been relieved to see some letters to the Irish Times expressing the view that the speech wasn't much.}

Anyway, the President's speech was never intended to be taken all that seriously so I don't have any real problem with it. I do wonder why the Irish government was so keen to organize a pep rally for the American President, but whatever.

It's not a great comparison, but just as a point of interest if you read (I'm sure there has to be video somewhere) President Reagan's 1984 address to the Dáil you'll hear a man who engaged in some blarney/banter, but who also addressed serious topics of the day. You'll hear him acknowledge that the people of Ireland disagreed with him on some matters, but he made his points as a respectful democrat in the manner of a man who believed he was addressing freedom-loving adults with whom he could engage in debate.

I'm only saying this because in the run-up to President Obama's College Green event I heard many commentators refer to Reagan's visit as if it was all Ballyporeen fluff. That clearly wasn't true.

I don't believe all I've heard about Osama hit

Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I don't believe the story about following the messenger who led the CIA to bin Laden. What I suspect is that after a good few years the CIA is now well and truly inside al Qaeda and that there was some definite, hot tip from a live body high up in the organization which led to bin Laden.

Funny enough, I'm also more willing to give Pakistan a bit of a pass than are most Americans. Yes, bin Laden was living near a military school and not far from Islamabad. Yes it seems kind of unlikely that he lived there for so long with no one in the Pakistani government or intelligence services knowing he was there. BUT, that same government and intelligence service delivered Khalid Sheikh Mohammed into America hands, although that was 8 years ago. Have things changed that much inside Pakistan? Maybe they have. Besides, I don't believe the story we've been told

The other thing to consider is that we didn't want bin Laden alive, which is what we would probably have had if Pakistan had moved in to capture him. If bin Laden was taken alive it would have meant (a) he would have to have been moved to some secret prison, (b) no formal announcement of his capture and (c) either a military tribunal to convict him or a circus trial where the host city was under constant threat of attack.

No, bin Laden could not be taken alive, which means from September 11 onwards the United States was doomed to lose the good opinion of Mary Robinson and the Archbishop of Canterbury. A tragedy.

Microtechnology revolution was foreseeable

Kevin Myers says no one in 1981 foresaw that "microtechnology was going to transform the world." I understand what he's saying, but my math teacher foresaw exactly that.

Our school had Apple IIe machines. I still remember some kid asking the teacher why we had to 'learn how to use these things' and he responded, "Because these things are going to take over your life. Your children will not understand life without them."

He could hardly have been more right nor was he the only one. Many people could see where this was going, which is obvious given all the investment in the 'new technologies' in the early 1980s.

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.

Wild horses couldn't drag me to Jesse Jackson event

If I wasn't so busy tomorrow night cutting my toenails I might have tried to get to see Ryan Tubridy interviewing Jesse Jackson at UCD.

Actually I can't imagine anything worse. Are students so starved of political ideas these days that they're willing to listen to a discredited ex-"radical" like Jackson? And Ryan Tubridy asking the questions? Have they no self-respect?

At least I could hope that the cringing would keep me awake.

Irish Mirror's stupid front page

I'm still shaking my head at the front page of yesterday's Irish Mirror. I only wish I'd taken a photograph of it so that I could relate it to you verbatim, but my memory will have to do. The front page was an attempt to paraphrase Japan's Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, with this, "The worst day since Hiroshima".

What the Prime Minister actually said was:

I think that the earthquake, tsunami and the situation at our nuclear reactors makes up the worst crisis in the 65 years since the war.

I have tried to figure out what drove the editor to make such a change to what the PM said. More drama? Maybe, but tens of thousands dead, entire towns missing, nuclear plant teetering on the edge of meltdown ain't enough for the Mirror's readers? If that's it then all I can say is that the Mirror's readers must be the kind who love jumping off a bridge with a frayed rope attached to their leg.

I don't know. Then I thought it was probably just an attempt to add to the editor's pacifist chic credentials. I guess that could be it too. I also toyed with the idea that it was a dig at America, you know, those war-mongering Americans who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

I have no idea what drove the decision to change the tone of the PM's statement, but I do know it was 100% stupid. Yes, stupid because whatever the motivation there is no way the Prime Minister of Japan would have been as ignorant of history as yesterday's front page showed the Irish Mirror's editor to be.

Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, 1945 three days before Nagasaki was hit with an atomic bomb (August 9, 1945). The editor either didn't know about Nagasaki or didn't realize that it was the second city destroyed with an atomic bomb.

Still the dates of the two bombs make yesterday's headline laughably stupid. Of course the Mirror's readers won't have had time to notice this; they're probably too busy playing chicken on train tracks to worry about historical accuracy.

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.