Month: March 2008

Categories
education

University of the South East

Noel Whelan’s article in The Irish TImes on March 22nd provides a fair view of the contents of the Port report on WIT’s section 9 application for redesignation as the University of the South East. There’s nothing in the way bar an ambiguous government policy. We don’t need another report, another review; more time, money and effort wasted. We especially don’t need the government to pander to a glut of me-too applications when groups in the region have been calling for a university SINCE 1969. As Jim Power illustrated so well in his recent Irish Examiner article, the South East is lagging behind economically and the government has to power to change that.
I sincerely hope the government don’t decide they can buy off the 450,000 + citizens of the South East with a cut-price Technical University name change together with a placatory upgrading of any other IoT. Critical mass is needed here and that means 20-25 million euro / year for USE in addition to the redesignation.
If the government pay lip service to regional development, if they insult our intelligence with a derisory gesture, if they cling on to a favourable paragraph in the OECD 2004 report and if they fail the citizens of the South East, I sincerely hope those same citizens remember on voting day.

Categories
technology

El Reg kicks Freetard ass

Some of the articles in the reg are good, some are very good and others fall into the category of historic. Andrew Orlowski’s thorough bashing of freetardedness is definitely in the historic category. The article is notionally about his experiences at a London School of Economics hosted debate on “Music, fans and online copyright” which according to the author degenerated into a farce. It’s certainly believable that such an event would put forward such a one-sided view with little consideration to the rights of artists to profit from their work. It’s funny how artistic effort is devalued by so many people when they have to value it. It’s something I’ve experienced first hand but a desire to have free to amazingly cheap access in perpetuity to various art works (especially music tracks) is not particularly reasonable. There’s a non-sequitur often purported by the comedy of the commons advocates that suggests that because it’s good and enriching to the community to share knowledge (and various other works covered by the term intellectual property) that it’s value should always be accessible. Painters are lucky in the sense that owning an original painting by Pollock, Rothko, Van Gogh etc. is not considered an entitlement by the masses. However, owning an “original” from a recording artist (exactly the same inherent “stuff” as the original anyway) is considered an entitlement, something so self-evident that any peskily intruding law should be circumvented to do so. Maybe I’m just biased but I don’t think that the great popular (or otherwise) recording artists of their day should be denied royalties because technology makes it easy to rip-off their work.

Categories
art

Manifesto Auction

I’m so excited about our first Important Irish Art Auction in manifesto on 4th April 2008. We have work from over 80 artists committed and it promises to be a great night. To find out more visit manifesto.ie.

Categories
politics

love cars, hate politics

I’m kinda hopeful that the recent changes to the VRT system are going to be challenged. We’re still being taxed on the theoretical Open Market Selling Price (OMSP). The idea that a 36% levy should be placed on performance cars is absolute nonsense. The buyer has already paid VAT. Is it so wrong to want a fast car? The greens seem to think so in their unearthly way. It would be much better to ride a bike of course or some other entirely daft suggestion. I find this environmental moralism very irritating. High taxes on cars lead to increased personal debt which affects national competitiveness and makes us more susceptible to interest rate increases.
But we’ve lowered the VRT rate on some cars they say.. I don’t want a 2 litre or less diesel unfortunately. You see, I actually LIKE CARS and I want a car that overtakes quickly and safely. It helps if it doesn’t smell like shit and chuck out dirty smoke I even like automatic gearboxes which increase c02 output based on the imperfect metric calculations and an assumption about the clutching habits of manual drivers which is not borne out by 15 minutes experience driving on Irish roads.
It’s funny that the government ministers who ride around in S-Class Mercs don’t want me to driving anything wilder than a 320d.
I find it reprehensible that an already excessive VRT system has been increased for “environmental reasons” to penalise those bad people who actually like cars. Ya know, those weirdos who don’t get up every morning and hug a tree. Freaks, obviously….If the VRT system actually made a positive contribution to consumer spending then the country wouldn’t be full of people driving X5’s for the price of Ferrari’s in the UK. I’m willing to bet if the government changed the system there’d be a blip but the majority of well-heeled individuals would pocket and reinvest the change rather than swap their beemer for a ferrari.