Continue reading Exercises in Bile.
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An interesting and timely new campaign from Greenpeace, called 'Green my Apple'. As a recent convert to the Apple cause, I'm a big supporter of this idea. I truly, deeply, madly love my new MacBook but was rather surprised by the amount of wasteful packaging that came with it. But the problem, it seems, is rather worse than needless packaging.
Continue reading Green your Apple.
Election promises. We've all heard them. And sadly, it appears, many of us still fall for them. But, it would seem, one elderly Italian woman has had enough of the bullshit and is getting litigious.
'A 78-year-old Italian woman is suing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi because her pension has not been raised despite his pre-electoral pledge five years ago.
Back in 2001, when he was leading the centre-right opposition, Berlusconi said during a television talk show that if voted into office he would boost pensions to at least 516 euros ($624) per month as part of his "contract with Italians"'.
This makes for a fascinating little conundrum. Could I, for example, sue Bertie Ahern (the Irish politician) for lying to the people of Ireland about not joining the Partnership for Peace without a referendum and then doing just that when he came to power? I'm quite sure that any of you reading this, could probably think of other examples of politicians telling bare-faced lies before elections...
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Nervousness abounded this afternoon as loads of police huckled a couple of hundred people all over town!
The "Carnival for Full Enjoyment" (don't you wish Anarchists would get a marketing bod to shimmy up snappier event names?!) began around midday today and i strolled along rubbernecking with a load of tourists and journalists. Who seemed to have formed a crowd as substantial as the autonomous groups who organised this little reclaim the streets kinda shindig. Nothing untoward seemed to be happening short of seeing a carload of people getting their bags & car searched in the city and the fact that the place was SWARMING with police. This news report pretty much sums up what I saw in the early part of the day.
"And then they'll EAT YOUR BRAINS!!"
Wage slave that I am, I had to cut this short and go off to work. Over the afternoon i heard a slew of hair-raising rumours which subsequently transpired to be guff. One told of staff cars being set on fire in a large financial institution! Another of garages being attacked and petrol pumps chained up!
Much ado about huffing
Nothing of the sort has actually happened. People were a bit freaked out, Princes Street was buzzing with security and shop staff all craning their necks out the front doors of the shops to see what was going to happen. They were all eventually told to close.
Ultimately, what did happen was that a small group of bampots threw a few bottles around in a Scottish city centre when everyone else was trying to go about their business. In short, just like Glasgow after a particularly fiery Rangers v. Celtic game.
Doing ma pan in
Mark Ballard from the Greens was on the radio complaining he'd got a wheech in the heid from the polis during the kerfuffle.
"Police seemed to be inflaming the situation by letting innocent bystanders wander into the areas of trouble, then not let them exit."
In another interview he said they should be more "chilled out"(!) like the police from the Faslane blockade across the country.
Yay! Hippies!
Earlier today saw much more heartening scenes at the Faslane naval base on the west coast. A big crowd went up and blockaded the submarine base where the UK's nuclear deterrant lives. No trouble, no fractiousness, just an anti-nukes demo with a couple of arrests. The Man with the Tan (Tommy Sheridan, former Scottish Socialist Party leader, new dad, himself arrested FIVE times at Faslane!) got on the telly to tout his cheerful, beatific socialist message against the arms industry and everyone went home happy.
Apart from Mr Ballard. Who went home to a whack on the napper!
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The march in Edinburgh was an enormous success. Over 220,000 people on the march through the day. Had excellent fun waiting around in the Meadows for HOURS waiting to get on the march route. Organisers seemed a bit overwhelmed and many people spent three or four hours standing around before they got moving. The atmosphere was great and the much-vaunted "chaos" on the streets never really materialised.
A small scuffle on Beuccleuch Street between police and some of the black bandana brigade after the latter decided to leave the march start point and go for a wander en masse was as fraught as it got, resulting in no arrests.
Have some photos although having some problems getting them onto the computer for upload.
The crowd was quite young with a great cross-section of views across the political spectrum. From the dour, red-t-shirted international socialists to glaikit wee laddies with their "Sunday Mail- Make Poverty History" banners people of all persuasions turned up to make a positive political point. One which is suggesting something rather than expressing opposition for something.
Also went to a fundraiser for the NO2ID campaign at the Bongo Club later where some of my pals were playing. Grooved around, but not too strenuously, it was michty hot and stuffy.
Missed all the Live 8 concerts as a result.
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A special broadcast from wayward Globaleyes punter, Shakabu.
So. Here we are. It's the 21st century and the city of Edinburgh is back in full-on witch-hunt mode. The G8's around the corner, Geldof's been sticking his oar in and the papers are chock full of stories from the "Oooh! Monsters!!!" school of journalism. The Edinburgh Evening News in particular has been whipping the good citizens of Edina into a grand old frenzy about our "mad God's dream" being besieged by molotov-wielding Mickey-D hunters.
Disaster plans and morgues
My favourite rumour circulating was told to me by a taxi driver the other day who said that the Cooncil were going to block off Chambers Street to make a temporary morgue! The best bit is that this has some foundation in truth as Edinburgh, like any responsible British city in the sights of swarthy no-good terrsts, has a Disaster Plan which requires Chambers Street to be used for just that purpose. And some bright spark has decided that if the authorities are planning for it, it must be going to happen.
The anarchists are coming
This type of silly, conspiracy-driven negative thinking, along with sandwich boards like "ANARCHISTS PLAN REVENGE FOR GENOA" (Evening News) and "BLOOD CRISIS FOR G8" (Scotland on Sunday) has whipped up storms of clucking and oching at the prospect of the city reverting to the fiery bloody times of yore. It has also provided us with the unintentionally hilarious spectacle of politicians asking where we're going to find enough portaloos at such short notice.
Camping out
There is also the very live issue of where all these protestors/demonstrators/raggle-taggle-gypsies-oh are going to stay. Being as they're not the usual hundreds and thousands of free-spending young professionals we're perfectly happy to welcome to Edinburgh to get rat-arsed over Hogmanay or the braying London fucks who come and clog our streets in the August festival (Both are times when I, and many of my fellow 'burghers despair as the streets literally run with rivers of piss at all hours of the day owing to the aforementioned portaloo shortage, which appears to be acceptable so long as the al fresco tinklers keep buying booze and stuffing their faces) they're unlikely to be staying at the Balmoral, or any of the other more salubrious hostelries in Edinburgh.
Early doors
And, with the residents of the new town being unlikely to open their doors (or even offer up the keys to their locked gardens) to such types the Cooncil in their wisdom have decided to site the campsite for demonstrators in Niddrie. The Meadows, Princes Street Gardens and Holyrood Park are all larger sites, more central and closer to the march routes. But they're in the middle of town. Fuck that.
It's better to sling the 15,000 that will be camping there out to a deprived scheme out of town, then march them ringed by thousands of police around their march site and march them straight on back again. Hopefully the local delinquent element will have all the digital equipment chored by the time the whomping squad are inevitably called in to suppress "troublemakers".
Somebody burn something
See!? All this eye-rolling conspiracy nonsense is contagious. Maybe the streets will run with blood! Maybe there will be "flashpoints". Maybe anarchists will roam the streets turning over cars and setting them on fire! But one thing's for sure. In the search for sensational revelations about events in Edinburgh already the messages from all sides are becoming incoherent. Are we marching against poverty? For Africa? Against war? For peace? Against unfettered captialism? For fair trade? No one seems particularly interested.
Watch the Edinburgh Evening News/The Scotsman keich its pants about what "might" happen.
Now, this is interesting...
According to a breaking news feature on the Indo, a new public watchdog, which is privately funded, has been established in order to provide tenacious journos with the readies to investigate the Ray Burke's and Michael Lowry's of our fine nation.
It will be called The Centre for Public Inquiry. The executive director is journalist Frank Connolly and the chairman will be - wait for it - Justice Fergus Flood, the former chairman of the Planning Tribunal
They
"It's an investigative journalist project, it's independent and it is being funded by an international foundation which has put something in the order of �600 million in the university sector in Ireland over the past decade or more."
"They have given us the funding for first five years."
So, who's paying for all of this? Well, it seems that the benefactors are Atlantic philanthropies, who according to their website, are a group dedicated to 'bring(ing) about lasting changes in the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people.' says Connolly.
So who are they? Well, some of the members include well-known, heavyweight academics and buisnessfolk from both sides of the Irish-American community. Take a look at the Directors page of their website for a detailed list. The organisation has offices globally: London, Bermuda, Belfast, New York and at Tara House, 32 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin.
We'll get more on this as it arrives.
This is it. This is the blog that I never thought I would write. Ever. The blog where I actually stand up and say that I admire the behaviour of my Government. Frankly, i thought I would find myself in bed with Angelina Jolie and Famke Jamsen before I wrote this one...
So, why all of a sudden have I turned coat? Well, truth be told, I haven't. I still despise them with every inch of my little, black heart, but, I do have to say this: the Government's tactics in dealing with the Sinn Fein/northern bank robbery have been flawless.
by the throat
Quite simply, Ahern, Harney and notably McDowell have had Sinn Fein by the throat for over a week now and show no signs of letting go. The rhetoric aside, one incredibly important statement was forthcoming from the Taoiseach yesterday after the meeting between the Government and Sinn Fein:
"There must be absolute clarity. We cannot continue with criminality being the order of the day, whether that be the Northern Bank robbery or anything else. We cannot have those issues affecting the peace process all the time - and they are."
I've been waiting for about five years to hear Ahern say that.
whoa nelly...
Now, before anyone gets carried away and accuses this blog of being hijacked by a Fianna Failure activist, let's remind ourselves of a few other stories in the media today....
� Ray Burke (appointed by Bertie) goes to jail
� Hundreds lying in hospital trolleys due to lack of beds
� Council of Europe's report says that drug use in Ireland is among the world's worst
� 320 jobs lost at Greencore
� Clare Co. Council rejects a plan for a wind farm just in case it threatens the performance of jet planes which burn unquantifiable masses of fuel and fill our sky with filth...
A thread on the p45 discussion forums has picked up on the subject of Freedom of Information Requests within the Republic of Ireland. It transpires that Fianna Filth have been at it again.
It seems that McCreevy et al, not content with lying through their teeth with a regularity only comparable with the laboured breathing of an asthmatic gofer, have decided to make it even more difficult to get solid information on the internal workings of our Government. They are doing this by slapping a hefty levy on anyone who has the sheer gall to make an FOI request. It can now cost you up to €150 to make one. You can read about this at this article.
Continue reading The complete lack of Freedom of Information.
