This mornings Irish Times reader poll is about the proposed increase in University registration fees, and remarkably, it is a 50-50 split at present; I guess the folks who want it all for free are still in bed.  I’m in favour not only of bringing back fees, but of actually charging every student full economic fees matched with a comprehensive loan scheme, and a proper scholarship system. I’m probably in a minority, but I am quite happy that my poistion is the right one.

Continue reading ‘Fees For Degrees’

Well, faith and begoraah but isn’t it great to be Irish today? The government actually made a decision (quick - when was the last time an Irish cabinet made a decision?) to guarantee all savings in Irish banks and now cash is flowing from the UK into Dublin; to such an extent that Alasdair Darling is very upset and the UK banks are up in arms.  Aside from the “yeah sucks boo to you”, I actually think the blanket guarantee to all depositors, which probably should only be a short term measure, is better than the US bailout which tries to protect shareholders as well as depositors.

Continue reading ‘Swop Finance Ministers and we’ll fight again!’

The EU and its allies are now losing 50% of the votes in the UN Human Rights Commission to opponents of basic human rights led by an “Axis of Sovereignty”; a group of states who value the rights of the state over the rights of the people.  Ratifying the Lisbon Treaty wouldn’t have automatically stopped this slide in the defence of the human rights agenda, but it would certainly help. The sorry story of the EU’s failures is told in a report today from the European Council on Foreign Relations, which can be downloaded from its website.  It is sobering reading, and it brings home just how serious the threats to democracy and human rights are on a worldwide scale.  Of course, the fact that the American Empire is willing to ride roughshod all over some of the freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn’t help the EU to defend those rights. on the world stage, or assert a foreign policy based on those values. It is clear from the research behind the ECFR report that the struggle for democracy, for ‘libertie, egalitie, fraternitie’, or to  “guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally” is at a tipping point and if we if we don’t work for those values, they will become a minority and endangered position. Right now, at a practical level, it comes down to Europe not being able to provide enough helicopters for peacekeepers in Chad and Sudan; next month it will probably be some other shortfall of effort someplace else. Stop moaning about your house values for a moment, folks, and reflect on how important it is to have the right to moan about them without fear of being arrested by the local secret police for criticising the goverment.

There is no doubt that Hasbro owns the IP on Scrabble, and are within their rights to force Scrabulous off Facebook, but legal rights don’t always make things right.  If I ever create something worth loadsamoney, I would like my childern and probably grandchildren to enjoy some of the windfall, but I’m not impressed with the way suits who’ve never invented anything use IP law to make money out of other peoples ideas.

Continue reading ‘Scrabulous and intellectual “Property Rights”’

Warcraft really is the noughties version of the old windows solitaire game. From about level 15 to level 55, it is boring, timewasting, grinding through levels doing the same old stuff.  I installed  a promising, but flawed, Solitaire on my mobile phones which I now play when I’m bored or to get to sleep at night. When I realised how many dead five minute slots were filled grinding through the deck waiting for the right card to come out, I was struck by how equally mindless the two games can be unless you have a social dimension to them.