Random Ramblings

All quotes from Ireland.com

The Catholic Church says it has no desire to be the sole provider of education in individual communities in Ireland.

That’s a good thing right? Well it would be if it actually meant anything. But …

In a policy document, published today, the church acknowledged the need for greater diversity in the primary school system but insisted children of Catholic parents had “first claim” on admission to Catholic schools.

The church, which manages over 3,000 of the 3,280 primary schools in the State, said the enrolment policy of the school was an important means of implementing its Catholic ethos.

So in other words, let’s play lip service to the idea of secular schooling which will never happen in FF’s lifetime. Let’s face it - it’s good PR from the RC church.

But while they do that they basically say that heathens can fuck off. And they’re the good guys right? Hell no. The Catholic church and it’s school system is the most regressive one around. There are CoI schools, Jewish schools - they accept anybody. But RC schools - no chance - not if there’s a catholic nearby.

Which is strange if you think about it. If you use Catholic thinking they should take the heathens first - they’re the ones who need saving. The Catholics are saved already right!

But it said the policy should also incorporate the Catholic school’s commitment to diversity and inclusivity while at the same time protecting the integrity of the school.

You really have to laugh don’t you. Commitment to diversity from the most sectarian church in the world! Mr. Ratzinger even said recently that all other churches are false and have no apostolic succession. Way to go! Let’s get the Pope-hat then piss off all other Christian religions. (non-Chrisitan religions don’t count to Mr. Ratzinger in the slightest - they’re all heretics - except the Jews - they’re worse than that. Never forget he served time in a POW camp as a Nazi - what a guy to have as Bishop of Rome).

So diversity eh? Did I mention lip-service already?

“Wherever possible, in keeping with their ethos, and provided that they have places and resources, Catholic schools welcome children of other faiths or none,” the church said.

Wherever possible. What they mean is “where there aren’t enough real people aka Catholics to fill the school and keep the funding coming”. Am I cynical - probably. Why - well my twin daughters aren’t inducted into any faith. They have been registered in the Educate Together school in a neighbouring town. Which means no school bus of course - they only serve the Catholic schools in the town we live in. Still, it’s better than sending them to be indoctrinated which they would probably not get into as non-Catholics anyway - yes the schools are Catholic - I’m in Maynooth after all; the bloody priests are trained here.

Chairman of the Bishops’ Commission for Education Bishop Leo O’Reilly insisted that it was internationally recognised that faith schools make a very valuable contribution to the common good.

That may be true. And I have no problem with faith schools per se. I do have a major problem with them being funded by public taxes. Public schools (especially primary schools) should be religion free. Let parents who want to teach their kids their faith send them to a Sunday school, or a private faith school. Or go crazy - teach them themselves.

The latter is the best option. If religious parents have to teach their own kids about their religion they actually may have to think about their faith. They would have to understand it to teach it. Lots of people just pay lipservice after all - try thinking about what you believe for a change.

RTE News
Breaking News

Very significant finding by the High Court. An unmarried father who’s children were taken from the country by their mother has had his rights vindicated. The children were in his custody and he had initiated guardianship proceedings when she did this.

For those that don’t know it already unmarried fathers had no natural rights whatsoever over their children. I’m one myself so I know this to be true. A court order or signed and notarised declaration of guardianship (the latter has to be agreed by the mother) is required to acquire any guardianship rights regardless of being named on the birth cert or not. Now this has changed. The High Court has ruled that the abduction of the children by their mother was unlawful and in breach of the Hague Convention.

There is bound to be some immediate fallout from this - not least being that the Government now must implement the provisions of various reports over the years recommending changes in how unmarried fathers are regarded in the eyes of the law. And not before time. No father should have to go to court in order to be regarded as a father. The default position should be the other way around - a court order must be granted to restrict rights - unlike the present position where there are none. Until now.

BBC Focus mag has a very good article on the science behind the carrying out of the death penalty over the years. It’s worth a read. However I had one crib with the article so I wrote to them. This is a lazy blog entry so I’m just gonna paste the letter.

This month’s article on execution is bound to generate some criticism for glorifiying the death penalty. I look at it the other way as feel that if more people understand the death penalty they will be more opposed to it and your article could well be valuable towards that aim and the history and science behind it is very interesting reading. However, I would have preferred that you describe lethal injection as the least inhumane rather that the most humane as I don’t believe there is any humane way of taking another human life; but that’s mere semantics.

Regards,

It was holiday time so I didn’t really give much of a crap about the EU deal. Well I did - it sucks… a lot. The EU has proven that it is beholden to our US masters just like the UK is. But you can read about it elsewhere cos I was off having fun in Mallorca. A week in the glorious sunshine while all you suckers were here in the rain. The kids loved it - never seen them have so much fun. 29-30 degrees the whole time there. Oh it did rain of course - can’t escape that. There was this thunderstorm on the Tuesday which lasted all of 5 minutes and then shagged off and the blue sky reappeared.

For anyone with kids of any age Cala D’Or in Mallorca is fantastic. Lots for kids to do. Every hotel has a kids club and evening shows to amuse them. Highly recommended for families. We’ll be going back next year anyway.

Some pics are available here

Normal disgruntlement will resume next week :p

From the Irish Times breaking news:

EU and US officials reached a deal today on the transfer to the United States of private data on transatlantic air passengers for use in the fight against terrorism, an EU spokesman said.

Interesting. It now has to be approved by the 27 member states. I look forward to reading the details of this ‘deal’. Why the quotes? I’m betting that ‘deal’ is not what it is - more likely dictat from the US officials - sign it or ground your planes. And I’m also betting that I won’t like what I read.

Well I’ve built my new PC. Core2Duo, 8800GTS, 2Gb, 2*750Gb on RAID1 all in a full tower Thermaltake Armor case. It’s a beauty

I made the decision long ago to go FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) when I finally got around to this build. And I have. Ubuntu 7 Feisty Fawn is the only OS on it. It was ridiculously easy to install. Everything worked first time. Of course I need to install the video drivers - but Alberto Milone’s Envy made it easy. And that was it. Fully installed Operating system that is so much faster than anything Microsoft have provided. Full productivity suite and various software installed by default. And any other software I want it available with a simple terminal command or if you want the slow way through the Synaptic GUI. And all free!

Then on to the hard stuff. I’m a gamer. But all games are Windows games right? Nope. Unreal Tournament has a Linux port - it’s on the DVD. So that one was easy. World of Warcraft is the other one I play at the moment. Now that one’s Windows only. WINE to the rescue. Installed Wine with apt-get and installed WoW inside it. Took about 10 minutes to get it installed. Then the acid test - patches. Kicked off Wow - patches downloaded and installed automatically - no problem. And getting a framerate of 60-70 in game so Wine not causing any problems there either. Happy days.

Then the other stuff I needed. Cisco VPN was a bit of a problem. I need it for work but the current version is not directly compatible with the current Kernel. A little googling and I found a patch and step by step instructions to get it working. Wasn’t too hard - just took a little research. And that’s it - machine with a whole new OS (to me) working perfectly. Now I just need to learn how to do everything in the terminal. You can use the GUI for a lot of stuff but where’s the fun in that

So I’m Microsoft free at last. No requirement for proprietary software anymore. And the performance increase is high using software that doesn’t feel the need to give you value for money by including crap you never will need. I’m happy anyway.

Well two winners actually. Firstly it’s been a while - I’ve been lazy - so sue me :p

Common sense - and the law - won out in the case mentioned below. The High Court not only granted that Miss D had a right to travel without asking permission they castigated the HSE for their actions. Good to see that some sense prevails in our justice system.

And the second winner is …. Fianna Fail … again! Bertie’s back in it seems with the support of the Green Party. I emailed the Greens weeks before the election. I’ve been a Green voter all my voting life yet I wasn’t voting for them this year. Why? Because they said that they would consider coalition with Fianna Fail. That’s a bridge too far for me. I got an email back from Trevor Sargeant himself saying:

If you are seriously interested in change to benefit Ireland as the Green Party is, then ruling out Fianna Fail weakens the leverage the Green Party will have in forming an effective government with Fine Gael and Labour. I share your view that Fianna Fail needs to be put out of office and I believe that most people in the Green Party would see this as a preferable option. The Green Party has decided, however, to be independent of any pre-election arrangement and this is ensure that the voters have a clear choice between green policies and non-green policies, given that the policies of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, in that both depend on corporate sponsorship, are not hugely different if examined closely.

Is he right? Not in my opinion. I’d rather see FF returned with out them truth be told. Trevor menions corporate sponsorship - that’s one of the bugbears they let FF keep in the cage. Banning corporate sponsorship is off the table. What else have the Green’s been adamant on? M3 through Tara … they’ve conceded that. Private hospitals on public land … they’ve conceded that. US troops using Shannon … they’ve conceded that. These were the main policies of this party. And a dog on the street could have told you that there was no way Bertie would concede on them.

And what did we get in return? A climate change commission. A taxation commission. An electoral reform commission. New building standards. Accelerate growth in renewable energy. A carbon tax. Let’s look at these. Carbon tax is an EU directive - it’s happening anyway with or without the Greens. Renewable energy growth? The ESB are at it already - it cheap and they can charge at least the same price for it - why wouldn’t they? And the rest - there’s a lot of commisions there - whoop-dee-doo. More tax money spent on hot air (and that hot air isn’t even captured to power houses).

And for some reason the PD’s still have a pull with Bertie. Harney was offered Foreign Affairs instead of Health. This was one of the conditions of the Greens. She turned it down outright and she’s won. What the hell? My maths is pretty good. 78 (FF) + 6 (GP) = 84 which is a majority. Add the mercenaries … sorry Independants … like Lowry, Healy-Rae, Flynn, McGrath - and the 2 remaining Progressive Dictators aren’t even needed - but Harney is still getting Health? For fricks sake guys - the HSE hate her, the nurses went on strike under her, the consultants won’t talk to her, and she’s giving public land to corporate health care! Plus the fact that her party lost 75% of it’s seats - including the party leader! There’s a message there somewhere. Nobody wants them Bertie! If she said no to Foreign Affairs then show her where the stagecoach is and get her out of town. She has no pull - you don’t need her. Or do you? Does she know something? Something that hasn’t hit a tribunal yet? I can’t think of another reason why a decimated party can hold such sway over a Teflon Taoiseach.

The case continues. Gotta love the HSE’s complete disregard for the little blue book aka the Constitution! In court today they said that they would ‘allow’ the girl travel to England. They would apply to the District Court to allow her to travel if some conditions are met. Hmmm. How big of them. They would allow a person to leave the country - as if they have the right to stop her! Of course this is after they wrote to the passport office telling them that they had not consented to her getting a passport. The fact that they couldn’t consent to it - because they have no say in it - was irrelevant.

Let’s look at those conditions:
Condition 1. The District Court judge must be satisfied that the girl had considered the decision carefully. Excuse the language but what kind of patronising bastards work in the HSE? I’ve read the interviews with her - she knows exactly what she’s doing - after researching the prenatal condition carefully. Her boyfriend - the father - is taking the case on her behalf and her mother has given full support. But the pen-pushing muppets in the HSE aren’t satisifed that she is making an informed/deliberate choice?

Condition 2. The judge is satisfied that the travel is lawful. Article 40.3.3 anyone? The fact that we are not a communist state possibly? The accepted fact that anyone in this country has the freedom to travel where they please and no self-righteous civil servant can do a damn thing about that!

Their SC said that they are not objecting to her travel but only if she travels without court approval. I must make sure to apply to the court when I head off on holidays in July - just in case I’m breaking some law that I’m not currently aware of. You never know - I might just have to prove that I’m not living in 1970s Russia before I’m allowed leave the country.

So let’s look at two other things:
1. They told the Gardaí that she was legally forbidden from leaving the country on foot of a court order. This was a lie. In fact, this is contempt of court.
2. They told the Passport office that they had the authority to deny consent to a passport. This was a lie. This is also false representation.

So who wrote those letters? And exactly when are they going to be fired for this?

RTE News

In short - a 17 year old girl has had the police called on her by the Health Service Executive to prevent her from travelling to England for an abortion. What the hell? I voted in the referendum that gave us the Thirteenth Amendment. “This subsection shall not limit freedom to travel between the State and another state.” That’s fairly plain and simple - “shall not limit freedom to travel”! Who the hell gave the HSE the right to overturn the decision of the people of Ireland?

And that’s without even going into why she wants to do it. The baby has a condition called anencephaly, which means the baby’s brain is not developing properly. It will only lives days after it is born. And this young woman has decided that an abortion is what she wants. Of course it’s not available in this country so she has to take the Irish solution - aka the boat.

Not good enough already? The HSE made the decision that she couldn’t travel unless there was a risk that she would commit suicide. X case all over again. So now she just has to say that she’s suicidal to be allowed to travel. Well done boys and girls in the HSE. Make a 17 year old girl express suicidal tendencies - nice move. Thankfully she has more sense and is pursuing it through the Courts instead - bet you never thought she’d do that.

[UPDATE 1 May]
The first stage is complete. The High Court has given her leave to bring a legal action against the HSE. It’ll be heard on Thursday. The Attorney General’s counsel has stated that the HSE have no right to direct the gardai and the gardai have no right to restrain her from travelling. Her mother also appeared in court and gave the young woman full support. Hopefully sense will prevail on Thursday.

Finally Bertie has called it. It wasn’t just the opposition that were getting fed up with the delays. Everyone knew it would be in May but he had to wait until the last minute didn’t he? So 3 weeks for the campaign.

And what are the choices? FF/Green, FG/Labour/Green are the two main ones it’s looking like. The PD’s are screwed - so that’s a good thing anyway. Despite what’s happening up North I still can’t see SF making it into government - regardless of how many seats they get. The main parties just aren’t ready to … party.

I’ll be watching the campaign closely personally. We need a change of government badly. FF have been there too long and they’re just getting cocky. As if they can get away with anything. Well, let’s face it - they can. We let them. An Taoiseach can do anything at all and nothing seems to stick. Time to change that. Not that Kenny is a great alternative to be honest. But at least he is an alternative.