'Ireland RIP' image marks a new lowpoint for the Irish gutter-press

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. They may have a point.

Even for the most seasoned of tabloid readers, there's an element of shock to today's Irish Daily Star leading with the headline 'Ireland RIP: our future killed by wanker bankers and stupid politicians'.

How low does a tabloid have to stoop to sell copies that it will splash 'wanker bankers' over its front page and superimpose such an inscription onto a sepulchral image of a gravestone? The answer is very.

Although I've probably not mentioned this on IrishCentral before, I run a small student news website in Cork (CorkStudentNews.com), and for that reason crossed paths with this very tabloid's editor, Ger Colleran, just two days ago.

He was speaking at the university's Law Society and I attended to cover the debate for the website.

He seemed a very intelligent man, an articulate and clearly well-read debator, and, you'd assume also a capable editor, yet obviously shock tactics rank higher in his priorities than conveying meaningful and well-written news to the general public.

Perhaps its not surprising, though.

Recalling his speech at the Law Society a few days ago there was a fanatical dislike of 'power' and 'the judiciary' throughout, an archanist's jaundiced eye of 'the powers' that be.

Arguing in favour of mandatory sentencing in the criminal justice system, he railed against the judiciary's attire, their gowns, even their accents, points, which in retrospect, were moot, to borrow the legal term.

Perhaps that same mistrust of the 'powers that be' was what led him to consider 'wanker bankers' a byeline fit for publication in his tabloid.

I've made the point several times before on this blog that Ireland needs to think well to get well.

The point is obviously not my own, borders on the cliche, and has been made far more eloquently than I've ever put it, yet stories like these remind us that unfettered negativism is still a real threat to the Irish public.

Yet news, I realize is not created in a vacuum.

The 'shock value', level of 'scandal' and, of course, entertainment element of any given story are factors which all weigh heavily on a journalist or editor before he or she decides to publish a particular piece.

Good news - they say - doesn't sell many papers, yet there's a certain limit called common decency which should not be crossed.

For the better or worse the media has the power and capability to control the thoughts and feelings of a huge section of society.

And with great power should come great responsibility.

People editing tabloids shouldn't be held exempt from their basic journalistic responsibilities simply by virtue of the trashy nature of their 'newspaper', tabloid, broadsheet, or otherwise.

The morbid image of a tombstone emblazoned with Ireland RIP and bearing the inscription 'wanker bankers' is an image not fit for publication in even the lowliest of rags, which in truth is what the Daily Star is, and does nothing to help a country that's struggling with a daily onslaught of pessimism and bad news headlines.

And it comes at one of the most delicate and fragile moments in the history of the Republic, with the simmering Anglo fiasco and the plummeting AIB shares sending the country into a renewed wave of chaos and volatility.

At such a time the last thing we need to hear or see is that Ireland is dead and buried.

Fine Gael makes promises on Irish emigration disaster

Union of Students protest lack of employment and mass emigration

Yesterday’s news that Fine Gael will make tackling the emigration crisis a cornerstone of their policy if elected is encouraging news for both myself and other Irish students long fed up with the incumbent government’s policy of laissez-faire on this issue.

Two things stand in the way of Mr Bruton’s statement, though: the fact that politicans have a habit of breaking their promises, and the fact that they’re not yet in power. Otherwise there’s hope on the horizon.

Student bodies have had their plaints fall on deaf government ears for far too long, and perhaps a change of leadership can lead to a change of policy.

Students unions from the umbrella-style USI (Union of Students in Ireland), to the lower-level individual institutions, have collectively been unable to get the government to ‘wise up’ on the issue of student emigration and unemployment despite a huge press and social media campaign.

So Fine Gael Enterprise and Job’s spokesperson Richard Bruton’s acknowledgement that “over 80% of the jobs lost have hit those under the age of 30” shows an awareness that was acutely lacking in Irish political circles about the students’ current crisis.

As satire of Brian Cowen nudges into the US media the feeling builds in Ireland that the government has had its day, and is running on borrowed time.

And although I think the radio interview issue was blown out of all reasonable proportion, I couldn’t deny that it’s caused Fianna Fail a continuing and protracted political fall-out.

“It is clear that the Government is unravelling,” said the same party’s environmental spokesperson on the same day.

If it does so unravel, let’s hope they take care of the students before they’ve all left.

Could Ireland legalize medical marijuana?

Despite the story having been pushed out of the Irish media limelight by the Brian Cowen 'Gargle-gate' fiasco, there have been several very important movements in the Irish medical cannabis question over the past few weeks, which have led many to believe that Ireland could be set to legalize medical cannabis within a couple of years.

The first significant development took place on the 10th of September, just over 10 days ago, when Ireland's Minister for Health, Mary Harney, said that she would be 'open' to the question of medical marijuana and would solicit expert opinion on the matter with a view to making a decision on the issue by the end of the year. This was in itself a huge jump from days previous, when the Tanaiste had explicitly told the Oireachtas that she would not consider the idea of legalizing cannabis in any form.

This was followed, shortly afterwards, by a meeting between Gordon McArdle,perhaps the country's most outspoken cannabis proponent, and Minister Pat Carey, the man with overall responsibility for Ireland's drugs policy. By the end of their sit-down, McArdle said that he was pleased by how 'open' the Minister was to the idea of introducing medical cannabis to treat a number of health problems, which furthered the notion that there had been a government-wide softening on the traditionally frigid medical marijuana stance.

The biggest move of all though, is the drafting and submission of the Compassionate Use of Marijuana Act 2010, drafted by McArdle himself, which has been submitted and received by the government, and has attracted considerable media attention in itself, both on Irish television and radio. Although the exact provisions of the Act may not yet be workable, they're based loosely on a similar law in the United States, and it's believed that - if passed - the new Act would pave the way for the treatment with cannabis of various forms of cancer, MS, etc, but most importantly allow for the first time ever cannabis to be used for medical interventions in an Irish setting.

And although deadlines don't seem to have been set yet, the fact that the necessary legislation is already in draft, while at the same time the government solicits opinions from experts in the field, together point to a shorter rather than longer timeline for all this to work out.

So will Ireland legalize cannabis? Who knows, but check back before 2012!

Irish knowledge economy doomed as education fails its youth

News that an Irish engineering representative body is offering high school students free after-school tuition (grinds), for free, shows just how bad Irish math has gotten.

It’s one of Ireland’s lesser-known problems, but looks set to become one of the main impediments to growth in Ireland’s upcoming economic recovery unless educators find a way of teaching the subject which yields better results.

This latest announcement is just the latest in a long series of calls from Irish educational, political and scientific bodies to improve the teaching of math in Ireland’s high-schools in order to produce the sort of math-literate and proficient graduates that companies crucial to Ireland’s future are looking for, but are not finding enough of.

Just yesterday a Fine Gael TD called the teaching of Irish math at second level ‘just not good enough’, terminology which has already been iterated several times this year alone.

The latest solution tabled to help resolve the problem of Ireland’s math shortage is bonus points for students taking Higher Level in Ireland’s national second-level finishing exam, the Leaving Certificate. The move has been agreed upon by a number of Irish universities.

Yet amidst all the praise for the raise in bonus points - from a number of universities and most recently UCD - there’s been an equally growing concern over a rising failure rate in Ireland’s slightly more junior second level examination, the Junior Certificate.

7.4 percent of students failed the exam at the Ordinary level, a figure which was well in excess over the other two compulsory subjects in the exam, English and Irish.

Prominent amongst the Irish economic and scientific community lobbying for an improvement in the math standards is IBEC, an employer’s union, whose spokesperson Tony O’Donohue said that: "The current over-crowded, rigid and subject-based curriculum dominates secondary school organization and teaching practice’.

The math illiteracy issue extends far beyond just school-level age, though, a recent study of the adult Irish population found that 40% of those surveyed had difficulty with very simple mathematical calculations

The recent news about Irish math illiteracy, between school age and after, shows that the problem will have to be tackled head-on, before another generation of school leavers leaves school with only basic or rudimentary mathematical skills.

If Ireland is going to make scientific and high-tech advancement one of the hallmarks of its planned economic recovery, then it’s going to have to sort out its math teaching!

Cowen drinking episode is much a-do about nothing.

Much noise has been made in the Irish press over the past couple of days about Brian Cowen and the allegedly drunken interview which he gave yesterday morning after what must have been a fantastic night out at the Fianna Fail conference in Galway.

There are already many versions of what happened, that night, and the back and forth between Fianna Fail and the Opposition parties would put a game of tennis at Wimbledon to shame, but I think that without doubt too much is being made out of it.

For me, it's clear as daylight that Cowen was a little tipsy when he took the mic on that morning. We've all had a few too many at least once in our lies, and that morning after slur is something we're probably all too familiar with. It's not to be confused with 'exhaustion' which at least in my mind doesn't cause the sort of drawl with which Cowen addressed the nation, though his followers are trying to make out as such.

That aside, though, is it really such a big deal if Cowen did have a few units of drink left to metabolize in his system when he took air? Politics and drinking are close and kindred friends, and can we not forgive a man once in his life for making such a slight misdemeanour. As our publisher Niall O'Dowd wrote in another blog post for this site - though not in these exact words - there was an element of McCarthyism about the way in which the media and the Opposition pounced on this interview to insinuate that Cowen had a drinking problem.

Whatever about the stupidity of getting on national radio in an either exhausted or drunken state, though, surely an even bigger farce is the Justice Minister threatening to bring a defamation suit on the back of a Twitter message from Simon Coveney that 'Biffo' was somewhere between 'hungover and drunk'.

Then again though, do bear in mind that this is the same genius who concocted the plan to deter kidnappings by increasing bank fees, so perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised.

Despite my law education having extended no further than two undergraduate years at UCC, I'm aware that opinion is a defence to defamation, and let's be honest, Coveney had quite some basis for Tweeting what he did. It's therefore a bit of a joke that Ahern should be riling for a defamation suit, and a bit too reminiscent of a time when you couldn't even criticize the government to begin with.

Breifne O'Brien: the Irish Bernie Madoff

If you haven't heard of the name Breifne O'Brien before, I wouldn't blame you.

He's a man who's elaborate pyramid scheme has earned him notoriety in Ireland, made him a poster-boy for the post Celtic Tiger era, yet who, unlike his approximate American counterpart, Bernie Madoff, is neither serving time behind bars or showing much in the way of repentance for his extraordinary financial misdeeds.

O'Brien and estranged wife Fiona Nagel were one of the Celtic Tiger's love couples. An investment adviser and a PR magnate respectively, they became known nationally for their lavish dos and lifestyle which often included government Ministers and entertainment tycoons on the guest list. Yet their extraordinary largesse was all coming from one not so legitimate source: O'Brien was running a pyramid scheme.

If, like me, you're not too au-fait with what one of these 'pyramid schemes' are, besides knowing that they're bad news, let me fill you in via Wikipedia.

According to the encyclopaedia website, they are - euphemistically - a 'non sustaining business model' which involves the con-man, in this case O'Brien, heaping promise a-top promise, and occasionally keeping baying investors at bay by taking others' money. Ultimate, like a deck of cards, the whole thing comes tumbling down, yet unlike in America, there seems to be little consequence when that happens.

Compare and contrast the experiences of O'Brien and that of former American stockbroker and current jailmate Bernie Madoff.

Madoff was sent to prison for 150 years for his role in mounting a massive Ponzi scheme which ultimately amounted to approximately $65 billion in losses to his defrauded victims. And although O'Brien's ill-got gains were nothing as staggering, his impunity certainly is.

In conservative Ireland, where defamation laws are still considerably tighter than those in the US, a recent article by the Irish Independent begins by calling O'Brien an 'alleged' society fraudster, but then goes on to recount how he has admitted to calling his victims 'suckers' as he lured them in to his elaborate scheme.

Which then beggars the question: is he an 'alleged' society fraudster, or just a plain old gangster?

The extraordinary thing at the bottom of the whole O'Brien saga is that media coverage in Ireland is dedicated to discussions of how O'Brien's bust taxi business' liquidation won't be enough to pay off his creditors, or how his estranged and now broke wife had been forced at one stage to raise money from her mother as her life collapsed around her.

Yet for those who have been defrauded by O'Brien, and who have faced the fresh disappointment of learning that the taxi company won't earn them a cent, there is the seemingly unanswerable question of why criminal investigations haven't been strongly pushed for, which is ultimately why the newspapers remain forced to tack on an almost farcical 'alleged' to an offence which by his own admission O'Brien is guilty of.

Minister for Justice suggests ATM charge to deter kidnappings.

It's a story that could have come straight from the back page of the Irish Examiner, the space on one of Ireland's broadsheets reserved for ridiculous stories such as 'man escapes from prison through toilet', yet the story involves an Irish Cabinet Minister and a very real suggestion to deter kidnappings by increasing ATM charges.

If you're scratching your head at how on Earth this proposal was supposed to work, I think everybody but Dermot Ahern, Ireland's Minister for Justice and Law Reform, is wondering precisely that.

The context is that Ireland has suffered a spate of so-called 'tiger kidnappings' in recent years. Incidents in which a bank official's spouse or partner is held up until the bank official hands over a substantial sum of cash to the kidnappers.

Such incidents have increased dramatically in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, and are now a staple of broadsheet crime and court reporting.

The immediate impetus for the Minister's unexpected suggestion was a tiger kidnapping which saw a Dublin robber making away with €300,000 in cash after terrorizing a bank official and his unfortunate wife.

While the tiger kidnapping could unfortunately have been expected, I very much doubt that anybody was expecting to hear the Justice Minister's colorful suggestion: to increase charges at ATM machines.

The logic - according to the pundits - was this: greater ATM charges deter people from withdrawing money from ATMs; in turn, people use 'plastic money' such as bank cards mor often; in turn there is less cash in circulation; and finally, there's less cash about the place for robbers to try rob, so tiger kidnappings are reduced or entirely obliterated.

This might be the sort of earnest suggestion to a problem that you'd expect from a grade-schooler, yet it's somewhat worrying that it comes from Ireland's Justice Minister - and was discussed, if the headlines are to believed, with various high-ranking bank officials. The Minister's afterword that Ireland was lagging behind the rest of Europe in becoming a cashless society is very true, but not in the way Ahern intended.

Perhaps a better suggestion on the part of the Minister might have been to ensure that local police forces have more than batons to combat the increasing numbers of armed and dangerous robbers plying their trade by the doors of the country's banks.

Above all the Minister's suggestion is telling of an Irish government who's idea of solving problems involves heaping on more tax and making the majority of the population pay for the misbehaviour of a minority.

The Criminal Justice Psychoactive Substances Bill was cut from the same cloth. Make all psychoactive plants illegal because a few people take mind-altering drugs was the logic; unfortunately it became law.

The Minister's ATM proposal throws an already wounded and limping government even further into ridicule and disarray.

Let's hope that the Irish people can elect a Justice Minister who can come up with a better idea for stopping tiger kidnappings than increasing ATM fees in the next general election.