Conor’s Bandon Blog

relies on an informed electorate.

Now you can be informed.

What John Handelaar has done over at kildarestreet.com with the help of some other great people is deeply important. Quite simply, the Dáil record is now properly accessible rather than just available. The site enables you to do the following:

• Read a dramatically-more-legible version of the Dáil Record going back to January 2004
• Search that record by speeches or written questions, or by speaker, or by date or date range
• Sign up for email alerts for when a search query you’re interested changes
• Sign up for email alerts whenever a TD of your choosing says something or asks a question which generated a written reply
• Subscribe to RSS feeds for individual TDs or for search queries

This isn’t just important for the content you find but also for the content that you don’t find. I will not be voting for any sitting TD in any future election unless I see continuous active engagement by them in the Dáil. If they don’t have anything to say, they shouldn’t be there.

The days of some gobshite getting elected because he got your daughter a job in the Civil Service or claims to be responsible for every penny spent in your constituency have to come to an end. kildarestreet.com will hopefully help usher the beginning of proper national politics involving those who care about our country and what it can become.

We all sat idly by as those running this country ran it into the ground. It’s time we started paying attention.

UPDATE:

I just used the site to check on our three TDs in Cork South-West. Summary as follows for the past year:

• Christy O’Sullivan (FF): Has spoken in 5 debates in the last year — well below average among TDs. Has received answers to 8 written questions in the last year — below average among TDs
• PJ Sheehan (FG): Has spoken in 81 debates in the last year — above average among TDs. Has received answers to 101 written questions in the last year — average among TDs.
• Jim O’Keeffe (FG): Has spoken in 51 debates in the last year — average among TDs. Has received answers to 173 written questions in the last year — above average among TDs.

After seeing this, I take back any ageist comments I made in the last election about PJ Sheehan and I’m disappointed to see my predictions about Christy O’Sullivan have proven true.

You don’t need to be an economist to know that media companies are suffering hugely in this recession. Their reliance on advertising makes them incredibly sensitive to downturns.

When you have a radio show that addresses a focused engaged specific audience, you would think that it would be a gift both for the broadcaster and those advertising to that audience. Thus C103′s decision to axe David Young’s “West Cork Today” programme frankly boggles the mind.

Radio broadcast licences have been a goldmine for companies like UTV over the past few years. But at the first sign of a downturn, it looks like they take the short term view and run for the hills? With those licences come legally binding terms and conditions.  Perhaps the BCI would like to use this case as an example to Comreg on how a regulator should actually conduct itself.

Having said all of that, the idea of one company having the sole rights to broadcast to a particular niche or geography belongs in the 20th century. The internet makes a mockery of this partitioning. If C103 is  unwilling to meet its customers’ needs then the customer needs to take back control.

I’ll be honest, I rarely listen to “live” radio any more. I download podcasts and music in which I am interested and then listen whilst driving with them playing back to my Lidl car stereo. Everything from food to technology to politics. Many of them are actually radio shows, mainly BBC Radio 4 and 5. I’d happily pay for a daily or weekly roundup of local West Cork information that I could listen to when it suited me, not the broadcaster.

How many of David Young’s listeners would be willing to pay maybe €3 a month to subscribe to an internet version of his show (and other West Cork programming)? Both live-streamed and available for download to iPods, mobile phones or PCs? Of course traditional broadcast is the most efficient way to get to the maximum number of people but needs must when the devil vomits into your kettle (to quote Edmund Blackadder).

I love bread. Can’t put it any more simply than that. So when I hear that someone who lives just up the road from me is now making craft and organic breads and they are selling them at the Bandon Farmer’s Market every Saturday, well that make me very very happy.

Check out the alphaomega blog for a list of their current products. I’ll be checking out the bread.

The ‘Bandon – Working Together’ group seeks to promote the strengths of the town through communication and activities. Their first activity is the creation of a ‘What’s on in Bandon’ newsletter. If you want to get a mention in it, head on over to the Bandon.ie blog for all the details.

I’m shooting them a quick email now about doing a blog and email list.

I was enraged on Thursday whilst listening to the latest Restaurant Guys’ podcast. They were interviewing a New York restaurateur who is being picketed by fois gras protestors. These ugg-boot-wearing idiots think they can intimidate a small business owner and effectively put him out of business. These cowards don’t have the balls to go after large fast-food chains who sell industrially produced chicken and figure they’ll go for easy marks instead.

Unfortunately for these hypocrites, this restaurant owner is Irish and (like the rest of us) he doesn’t like people telling him what to do. I was then thrilled to discover who he was. The restaurant is Knife + Fork and he is Damien Brasel. He was made head chef in Peacock Alley in Dublin at the age of 20! Two of my top ten meals of all time were in Peacock Alley in its heyday before it all went pear-shaped.

His response to these lazy cause-of-the-week nitwits? Put a fois gras tasting menu on! The outcome? His business has improved. Result

If you are in New York and wondering where to eat, can I recommend you try Knife + Fork? Bring some chicken nuggets with you to throw at the wastes-of-oxygen picketing outside at the weekend.

Many of you have seen this video on YouTube where investment expert Peter Schiff is shown many times on US TV in 2006-2007 explaining why the US was in a property bubble and why it was all going to collapse. If you haven’t seen it, it’s hilarious and depressing at the same time.

I don’t claim to know much about investing but when we were moving from Dublin to Cork in 2003 and saw that our house had increased in value more than 400% in 9 years, we took the money and ran. Even in 2003 the valuations seemed idiotic. By 2007 they were in the realms of fantasy land. Of course many people told us we were stupid and if we’d rented the house out in Dublin we’d have made another €200k minimum when we went to sell. But when would we have sold? 2005? 2006? Or, gawd ‘elp us, 2008? Did I mention we sold our Eircom shares after 2 weeks? Maybe we do know what we are doing!

Then today I listened to this podcast of Peter Schiff speaking at the 2009 Austrian Scholar’s Conference. It’s long but utterly riveting. You think the worst is over? You think G20 is going to sort it all out? Listen to this and be afraid, be very afraid.