Democratic revenge: a dish best eaten cold

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As I write this at 22:46 GMT, it’s clear that the Irish electorate has handed out a really severe thrashing to Fianna Fail, the party which has dominated Irish politics since the 1930s and which was the architect of the country’s current economic predicament. And what a thrashing: the Deputy Prime Minister, for example, has just lost her seat in Donegal — something that nobody believed would happen.

What’s going through my mind is all the prior journalistic speculation about why the Irish people seemed so passive in the face of what was happening to them as they were forced to pay up for the stupidity, venality and criminality of the people who ran their banks and their politics. Why were there no riots in the streets, like there were in Greece? Why were people apparently taking it lying down?

Well, now we know: my countrymen were biding their time, waiting to hand out the punishment in an impeccably democratic way — through the ballot box.

It’s an awesome moment. Though not perfect: Gerry Adams has just been elected to a seat in the Dáil.

The road to Classiebawn

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The road to Classiebawn, originally uploaded by jjn1.

On the Sligo coast, the castle (distant, on the left of the picture) that once belonged to Lord Louis Mountbatten before he was killed when the IRA blew up his fishing boat in August 1979, defies the elements.

I had often wondered how Mountbatten could afford such a magnificent holiday home. It turns out that his wife Edwina, who was the daughter of the banker Ernest Cassel, one of the richest men in Europe in his time, inherited it. The castle was begun by Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary famous for gunboat diplomacy, who was notorious in Ireland for the way he cleared his estate of tenants during the Famine.

As a summer visitor, Mountbatten seems to have kept a low profile. “The Mountbattens”, wrote a local historian, “were absentees”.

“Their visits created no stir among villagers, who were well used to visitors of all types. For most here, the only indication that the Mountbattens were in residence was the house flag flying from the roof. Or they might see the ill-fated Shadow V [Mountbatten’s fishing boat] leaving the harbor, or returning.

Sometimes, the old man could be seen puttering about with a shrimp net in the harbor. For the most part, he and his wife minded their business and villagers minded theirs. Most had no idea of his close relationship to the Royal Family, nor cared.”

The Boy Scouts who often camped in the woods on castle grounds flew the Irish tricolor over their camp. The story goes that the flag was spotted by Mountbatten’s wife when she was being driven down to the village. She complained to the chauffeur that it shouldn’t be flown on their property — with a view to getting him to do something about it.

Mountbatten, however, disagreed. ‘Why shouldn’t they fly it?” he said. “It might be our property, but it’s their country'”

Quote of the week

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“If the Queen asks you to a party, you say yes. If the Italian prime minister asks you to a party, it’s probably safe to say no.”

David Cameron.

Scarecrows out!

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Scarecrows out!, originally uploaded by jjn1.

I’m in Ireland and it’s Election week. There’s a palpable sense of anger with politicians of all stripes, neatly expressed in this farmer’s field. He’s a supporter of one of the many ‘Independent’ (i.e. non-party) candidates running in this campaign.

The Middle East and our addiction to oil

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Terrific OpEd column by Tom Friedman in the NYT.

For the last 50 years, America (and Europe and Asia) have treated the Middle East as if it were just a collection of big gas stations: Saudi station, Iran station, Kuwait station, Bahrain station, Egypt station, Libya station, Iraq station, United Arab Emirates station, etc. Our message to the region has been very consistent: “Guys (it was only guys we spoke with), here’s the deal. Keep your pumps open, your oil prices low, don’t bother the Israelis too much and, as far as we’re concerned, you can do whatever you want out back. You can deprive your people of whatever civil rights you like. You can engage in however much corruption you like. You can preach whatever intolerance from your mosques that you like. You can print whatever conspiracy theories about us in your newspapers that you like. You can keep your women as illiterate as you like. You can create whatever vast welfare-state economies, without any innovative capacity, that you like. You can undereducate your youth as much as you like. Just keep your pumps open, your oil prices low, don’t hassle the Jews too much — and you can do whatever you want out back.”

It was that attitude that enabled the Arab world to be insulated from history for the last 50 years — to be ruled for decades by the same kings and dictators. Well, history is back. The combination of rising food prices, huge bulges of unemployed youth and social networks that are enabling those youths to organize against their leaders is breaking down all the barriers of fear that kept these kleptocracies in power….

Friedman thinks that the first thing the Obama administration should do is

to impose a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax, to be phased in at 5 cents a month beginning in 2012, with all the money going to pay down the deficit. Legislating a higher energy price today that takes effect in the future, notes the Princeton economist Alan Blinder, would trigger a shift in buying and investment well before the tax kicks in. With one little gasoline tax, we can make ourselves more economically and strategically secure, help sell more Chevy Volts and free ourselves to openly push for democratic values in the Middle East without worrying anymore that it will harm our oil interests. Yes, it will mean higher gas prices, but prices are going up anyway, folks. Let’s capture some it for ourselves.

It’s a good idea, but can you imagine the current US Congress passing that?

Confessions of a (reformed) petrolhead

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Here’s a terrible confession from a Prius owner: I was once a petrolhead. Worse: towards the end of my student days I had a 3.8-litre Mk II Jaguar (like the one in the photograph and the one owned by Inspector Morse in the TV series, but not in as nice condition as either of those). It was wonderful for a while. But then came the Yom Kippur war, and the OPEC oil-price hike and suddenly it cost £20 to drive to the end of the street and so, sadder but wiser, I sold it and bought a VW Beetle.

But back then I used to think that maybe it’d be fun to be a motoring journalist.

Reading Sam Wollaston in the Guardian has cured me retrospectively of that illusion: I just wasn’t a witty enough writer. Witness his latest piece — about the Volvo V60 D3 SE Lux Premium:

Do I know how to start it, asks the man from Volvo. Hey, come on, I’m an experienced motoring journalist – of course I know how to bloody start it. Leave me alone. So he does. And within half an hour or so, I’m on the move. You have to insert the key fob thing into the key fob dock thing, put your foot on the brake, then hit the start button. Remember when cars had ignition keys? Wasn’t that so boring? And straightforward. Anyway, thank God I’m not a getaway driver. I wouldn’t have got away.

Some of this car’s toys are more useful, such as the safety ones. So you’re driving up the M1, distracted by something (the kids or the dogs fighting in the back, say), you start to drift into the neighbouring lane… beep beep, beep beep, says the car. That’ll be the Lane Departure Warning kicking in. Or you actually want to change lanes, but you’re too old and stiff to look over your shoulder. You can’t see anything in the wing mirror, it’s probably clear… except suddenly there is a yellow light in the mirror, the Blind Spot Information System telling you another car is there. More lights appear on the windscreen if you get too close to the car in front. There’s also a City Safety System, which makes the car automatically brake if the vehicle in front slows down or stops: this car is constantly sending out radar and sonar and what have you to keep me out of trouble – it’s like driving a bat.

He’s intrigued by the “Pedestrian Detection” system that looks out for person-shaped things on the road in front, warns you, then brakes if you decide not to do anything.

I want to test it out, with my girlfriend as the person-shaped thing, but she won’t, unsportingly – says she’s worried that after all the Christmas bingeing, she won’t be recognised as person-shaped. How embarrassing would that be?

Oh — and another thing… The Jag had a ‘Start’ button in its veneered walnut dashboard. Just like Windows 95.

Picture credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Arnaud_25

The WikiLeaks phenomenon reviewed

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From my review of two of the current wave of books about WikiLeaks.

Experience showed, however, that often mere revelation was not enough: the world yawned and turned away. Often the leaked material was complex and unintelligible to the lay browser. It needed expert interpretation – and corroboration. So gradually it dawned on Assange and his colleagues that the best way of making an impact on the world might be to collaborate with journalistic organisations, which could provide the interpretation and the checking needed to ensure that people believed what was being leaked. This is the value that the Guardian, the New York Times, Der Spiegel and the other media partners added to the vast troves of documents that Assange brought to them.

But if it turned out that WikiLeaks needed conventional journalism, it has also become clear that conventional journalism needs what WikiLeaks created, namely a secure technology for enabling people to upload confidential material that they believe should be in the public domain. So it's important that serious media organisations now build that kind of technology themselves, just in case WikiLeaks is overcome by the fragility of its finances, its managerial problems or the legal vulnerability of its founder. In a world increasingly dominated by secretive, unaccountable corporations and in which authoritarian regimes continue to flourish, we will need robust technologies for ensuring that some secrets cannot be kept…