Bernie Goldbach in Drogheda | Photo in the back seat
IRELAND LOOKS LIKE going with a "yes" vote in a referendum for a balanced budget, Facebook looks overvalued, and the Hero Go Pro Camera is a winner. That's the thrust of a seven-minute audio and video clip summarising Sunday news from Ireland.
As viewers will notice, I converted our car into a sound booth and made my short newsround under the confused gaze of our 10-month-old son.
Continue reading "Back Seat News" »
Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Image of Sindo
THE DUST HASN'T SETTLED from the biggest mistake made this century by Ireland's national broadcaster. Today's Sunday papers continue their coverage of the official Broadcasting Association of Ireland report, released to coincide with the May Bank Holiday Weekend.
I doubt short-term public interest about what happened will subside because the sheer costs (libel payment and fine) will suck away a significant portion of money earned by RTE through licence fees. The settlements help redline the broadcaster's budget. And the Minister for Communication hasn't had his much-anticipated exchange of views with the RTE board, another place where there's likely to be blood on the carpet.
In the official report, the lead journalist in an episode of Prime Time Investigates, Aoife Kavanagh, comes under fire for several reasons. She relied on the primacy of the word-of-mouth testimony by people thousands of miles away, discounted the integrity of Father Kevin Reynolds as she accused him of fathering a child in Kenya, did not contenance Reynolds' offer to take a paternity test, and did not pass emails from solicitors to the RTE Legal Department. It didn't help that the Irish national broadcaster did not have a written framework for investigative journalism in place, thus ceding power to Kavanagh's journalistic instincts.
Continue reading "Aoife Kavanagh Takes the Fall" »
Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Image shot with Xperia Arc
PERHAPS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT news item to emerge as Ireland trundles through a great period of austerity is the working files of the deceased Minister for Finance. It's covered by the Sunday Independent (click image to run video).
Back in 2008, with the threat of no money available in the Irish banking system, the Irish government made the bold move to cover the losses of a zombie bank. The result of that decision meant an entire generation of Irish citizens would be forced to pay back the bets made by global investors in a Irish property bubble. At the time of the decision, quick executive action meant Ireland would start down a path more favourable to large international investment houses than its own citizens. Pundits can only speculate about the facts the former Minister for Finance (Brian Lenihan, RIP) had at his disposal. If reports emerging from national broadsheets run their course, the Public Accounts Committee may use a process of discovery to totally unpack the fateful decisions taken in late 2008, one many in Ireland do not appreciate.
Continue reading "Breakfast Reading at McDs" »
Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Photo by Xperia
WE EXPECT TO PAY 1000 euro of additional taxes to live in Ireland and part of that taxation comes in the form of water charges discussed in Irish newspapers.
Several Sunday newspapers cover the confusion surrounding this issue (i.e., amount of charge, type of meter, installation cost) and when I extend the conversation from the paper and move it into the local shop, other factors emerge. For example, not all homes will be easily fitted with water meters. In our case, the brass stopcock for our water is frozen solid. This means we had no way of shutting off water until we paid a construction worker to turn off the water for 88 other homes while he fitted a makeshift spigot on ours. We live in a seven-year-old home and believe others uphill from us might have the same challenge when installing their meters.
I flicked through some other issues in the Sunday papers, reducing my reading to a six-minute audio clip and a companion video on YouTube below the break.
Continue reading "Papers, Kindle and Wind" »
Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | 130 words
MY SUNDAY NEWSROUND invoked the sodshow rule: if you've spring sunshine, meet your garden. So I didn't even get through the Sunday papers while annotating a few audio footnotes.
I listen to Brian Greene and Peter Donegan's Sodshow every week, learning how to approach our leafy front garden (partially shown in the photo), sodden shady soil, and freshly planted vegetables. Like any other living ecosystem, our green patch needs nurturing. More accurately, it needs mowing and weeding. We're blessed with a redhead daughter's green thumb and started the spring of 2012 with her learning how to put her shoulder behind an adult's rake as she helped tidy up a hedgerow full of baby robins. I stood behind the gate in the photo to make a short audio clip about footnotes I found in both the Sunday Business Post and the Sunday Times.
Related Links:
Easter Sunday Newsround with Femen (insideview.ie)
Baby Steps into Gardening & The SodShow (speltforchoice.wordpress.com)
Subscribe to the Sodshow (iTunes)
Part of Bernie Goldbach's curated news links.
Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Image by Guillaume Herbaut |155 words
FRONT PAGE CRONYISM features in several Irish Sunday broadsheets today, proving a major feature of politics remains intact in Ireland. [1] [2]
This time, it's a rewarmed story about Big Phil Hogan, a government minister who knows how to win elections and raise money. The ethical problem arises because Deputy Hogan criticises unseemly behaviour in one sound bite while cultivating open contact with those unseemly characters, as his diary records show. Reporters wonder if the deputy's contacts extend beyond his official calendar entries because it's easy to find him awarding rewards to cronies all across the spectrum. [3]
The opening keyframe of my Sunday newsround comes from the cover story of The Sunday Times Magazine, explaining "militant feminists in Ukraine have gone further than burning bras in the fight against patriarchal repression." [4] If you search for "Germaine Greer" you'll find a million results on Google. Look for "femen" and you get 23.5m results (more than a million just looking for the images).
Continue reading "Easter Sunday Newsround with Femen" »
Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Image from my Irisheyes | 501 words
IRELAND'S SLIPSHOD MANNER of attempting to impose a household charge reflects serious deficiencies in the executive scoping skills of the Minister for the Environment. The whole thing is poorly conceptualised.
A quick scan of national news items reveals the entire issue is muddled, largely because of shortcomings in how the charge (tax) would be collected. In Ireland, you get a bill presented on paper (or online with an option to print) along with at least three methods to pay (i.e., walk your cash to the Post Office, deduct from a plastic card, or conduct a banking transaction). None of these was possible because nobody knew who was liable to pay their charge.
For me, a blow-in who has signed the deeds on two pieces of real estate, it's a little confusing why the Property Registration Authority's records could not be accessed. Both the national office and a local county council have my name and address attached to a piece of property. Once the data protocols are set up, relevant data could be culled, a database set up, and a bill issued. Then homeowners would decide to pay instead of finishing the work around their homes (evidence of our unfinished work in the photo).
Instead, the current situtation smells like a bag of soggy chips that were dipped in bad oil, then cooked for too short a time. It feels like a rush job. It discredits the Department of the Environment. And yet, I don't think it's a departmental rush job because only elected politicians are rolled out to explain the process and encourage people to pay. In the meantime, opposition to the charge is much more dominant.
Continue reading "Ireland's Botched Household Charge" »
Download Mahon Report [56 MB 3270 pages]
Bernard Goldbach in Clonmel | PDF from Flood Tribunal | 150 words
FOR NEARLY EVERY YEAR of my life in Ireland, the Mahon Tribunal has been churning along. Today, its final report dropped.
Even though the Mahon Report Word Clouds might not show this directly, terms like "corrupt" and "payment" feature prominently. But since this is Ireland, expect no perp walk. The politicians identified in the report were often re-elected with full public knowledge of what they had done. Grateful to their constituents, they built bridges, secured funding for schools, and proposed lofty construction projects that often never came to fruition. Most importantly, they proved that "all politics is local" and that ardent locals will always welcome politicians who bring home the bacon.
I honestly don't believe anything will change in the way Ireland does its business because the political will isn't strong enough to impose an inviolate code of ethics on those elected to national office.
You can get the official report at http://t9.ie/mahon. Or just Download Mahon Report Unlocked
Bernie Goldbach in LIT-Clonmel | 163 words
ONE OF THE easiest things you can do with a smartphone is to share your surroundings and I try to do that every week with a short newsround from my back garden. This week, I asked some third level students for comments during the recording session.
The cover shot features the Duchess of Cambridge, dressed in green, meeting the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. I omitted the other meeting between England and Ireland because the English scrum totally demolished Ireland's rugby team in Twickenham.
The Sunday Times splashes green images from St Patrick's Days events in Dublin, Pisa, Moscow and Belfast. You can see those images by clicking on the video link (below or by clicking the photo) or imagine them by playing the audio clip that features in this blog post. And if you're hard pressed to imagine what green looks like, Jonah Lehrer has the book just for you (recommended below).
Reviewing Sunday News with Students
Watch on http://youtu.be/lDGdxwmf0_M
Bonus Link: Jonah Lehrer -- Imagine: How Creativity Works
I NORMALLY MAKE A short video clip that summarises Sunday news items but this week I'm limited just to a short audio clip. The reason lies in the image attached to this blog post.
We used the lovely springtime weather to best effect today, walking three times around the Rock of Cashel. Amazingly, our two kids were running at full speed at 9pm. So if you want to see what passed in front of my kitchen table newsround, glance at my Flickr photostream from today for the faces of several clever guys who know the mobile app development business.
Beyond that tech stuff, I think the story of Ian Bailey and Jules Thomas will find its way into Irish, UK and French publications because it's filled with corrupt murder investigtion techniques. And I think the relentless shelling of Syrian citizens by their military will receive passing coverage as well but no meaningful global reaction will follow.
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