Ron Paul deserves a proper graph

I like Ron Paul. I also like proper display of data. So I just couldn’t resist this one.

It looks like the mainstream media in America really don’t like Ron Paul, they don’t even like mentioning him when he gets high public ratings in debates. Not too long ago he came second in the poll taken after the Republican debate in Iowa and hardly got mentioned as a possible front runner at all.

A couple of days ago we had another Republican debate with Ron Paul performing strongly again, so strongly in fact that on NBC’s poll a whopping 57% of the public had said that Paul was the winner, not too shabby eh? Below is the poll they display on their site to show this crushing majority.

Oh, but wait a second, something is wrong here… can’t quite put my thumb on it… perhaps the proporations look a little off? Last time I checked 57% was more than twice that of 14%. We better go in for closer inspection.

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Let’s take a closer look at the top three candidates, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry

Below is how NBC would like you to see the results.

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And below in blue we have the real proportionality between these results, no bar-stretching involved.
When you see what the results actually look like it makes you realise the extent to which NBC are deciding to inflate the poor vote counts of both Romney and Perry.

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Finally, below we can see the True and exaggerated results overlaid.

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So the media now have a new way to ignore Ron Paul’s success, graphically.

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I don’t think it’s funny, and the blame game has to stop

Recently I ended up watching a documentary over on RTÉ called Departure Day, which showed in detail the extent and effects of emigration in Ireland. In particular, as we all know, it is the younger generation that are being forced to move abroad in the search for jobs.

Keeping an eye on the Twitter stream for the show I noticed that most people’s comments were for the most part sympathetic with the families’ situations as they waved goodbye to their loved ones. However other comments annoyed me so much that I have been driven to write this little rant.

The one tweet in particular that got me angry was this:

This semi-joking anti-Ireland sentiment can be heard day to day in conversations all the time, and the internet is rife with people bemoaning the country as a whole.

On Boards.ie a while back, a comment posted on the topic of “Why is Ireland regarded as a scenic country?” read: “Well we’ve feck all else going for us, so may as well exaggerate what we do have.”

I don’t think it’s funny.

These are not entirely original jokes of course, few of these down-talking references are. It seems to have become very common, if not quite trendy, to badmouth Ireland as a whole. I know comments like these are made in a flippant manner, but all the same it makes me angry.

We live in a great country and we are a great nation of people. We have been subjected to shoddy, incompetent and disastrous management from political parties that have sought popularity and re-election rather than a better Ireland. But the past is the past and we need to get on with it. Playing the blame game – while fun – achieves nothing for our future.

It seems quite trendy nowadays to label Ireland as a ‘shithole’, as being ‘doomed’, ‘wrecked’, and of there being ‘no opportunities’. I don’t think that Ireland deserves to be referred to in these terms. Feel free to call the politicians what you want. But lay off dismissing the entire nation as some sort of laughing stock. Life in Ireland will go on. It may be less prosperous than before, but unless we get taken up in the rapture from above by the flying spaghetti monster, we will still be living here.

And a fine thing that is, because Ireland is a great beautiful country filled with equally great and beautiful people. It is of course unfortunate that some of us will be forced to leave over the coming years, but that is the way it has to be for now. We all know whose fault it is. But this is where we are. The blame game and the slagging of our fine country doesn’t help, it just stops debate on the important stuff. The future.

So my one plea is this. Stop putting so much effort into bitching about those parties and their past actions and put more effort into becoming involved in what they do in the future.

‘An orgy of bad news’

We are all still addicted to recession porn.

I really thought we would be over it by this stage but we aren’t. As a nation we take far too much pleasure in hearing about, and dispensing, bad news, I think we always have done. But now we get an orgy of bad news on a daily basis on pretty much any news stream you’d care to listen or watch. The country is doomed, finished, about to get swallowed up into the centre of the earth etc etc etc.

Of course, good news isn’t as attractive, good news doesn’t sell papers and it rarely makes for good headlines, but we need to find a way of spreading good news as much as is possible. So make sure when you do hear some good news that you tweet it, tell it to a friend or call it in to Joe ‘the Grim Reaper’ Duffy: he probably won’t feature it, but that’s no excuse for not trying. Do whatever you have to but we need to give good news a fighting chance.

Ireland is not a joke and it’s not doomed. It is flawed in ways, but no things in this world are ever perfect.

If I were to try and encapsulate what I have been trying to get across it is this: Ireland is a great country, we are great people. But we really need to stop putting so much of our efforts, thoughts and column inches into blame games and whinge sessions – these actions do nothing to improve our situation, and it’s a national mindset we have to try and stamp out.

Let’s instead put the same quantity of time and effort into thinking about ways to improve our situation, and doing things that help our communities survive and grow. I’m not saying we need to put more effort into how we talk about the country, we just need to redirect it.

Do that and we can make Ireland a country which the poor folk featured on RTÉ’s Departure Day, and the thousands like them, can return to some day in the near future.

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So that's my first piece here folks. To be fair it is reposted from my blog, which was reposted on the journal.ie here (check out the comments on it!)

If you tweet add me at www.twitter.com/clearpreso

Are the Irish people idiots who get what they deserve – i.e. whatever they are spoon-fed?

Irish people are from Ireland.
To have an inability to do something is the opposite of having the ability to do it.
Connect four is a game where one tries to get four in a row.
Please sign on the dots and initial here.

If you got what I was trying to say there, congratulations, you might be more intelligent than the average unquestioning member of the Irish public.

Two major news events have bombarded the newspapers, the Internet, television and radio stations over the past month. The first was the investigation of Rupert Murdoch and how disgraceful behavior and practices can run riot when one corporation has too much power, especially when that power is over the world’s most valuable asset – information. It was revealed how much control huge media corporations can possess and how they can essentially ruin your life if they so wish or protect you if that is in their interests. They can help put someone in office or remove them. He who has power over information, it seems, is the effective ruler.
The second thing that happened was that Independent candidate David Norris, withdrew from the presidential campaign, after consistent attacks eventually got the better of him. The final straw, a letter he wrote 15 years ago, dug up by someone who didn’t want him in there and plastered across the various news outlets.

It seems amazing to me that on looking at our closest neighbor and its long overdue confrontation with monopolistic media that we didn’t for one second question ourselves and our own situation. Our situation is in fact worse than the U.K. Our situation is so bad that you won’t even hear how bad it is because there is hardly anybody to report on it, as there is in the United Kingdom.

In this country, if you source national news you almost certain to get it from only two eventual sources, whether it is television, radio, in the newspaper or on one of the main news websites. If you don’t get your news from a radio station, television station or Internet news site run by RTE(Radio 1, 2fm, RTE1, RTE2 and TG4, rte.ie etc), our national broadcaster, you almost certainly get it from a paper, Internet site or radio station owned in part or in full by one man – Denis O’Brien.

Yes, Denis O’Brien’s company Communicorp Group Ltd owns Newstalk, Today FM, 98FM(now called Dublin’s 98), Spin 1038 and Spin South West(42 stations in total across Europe) and Denis is a leading shareholder in Independent News & Media(with Tony O’Reilly) which owns the Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Evening Herald the Irish Daily Star as well as 14 regional papers, two free newspapers and a magazine as well as independent.ie. It also owns the Sunday Tribune and a myriad of titles and stations worldwide.

So do you want your news from Denis O’Brien or the Government? Without thinking too much about it you might prefer that your news doesn’t come from the Government. So who is this Denis O’Brien character? While at UCD I met Denis O’Brien when he came to my business school (Quinn school of Business) to be awarded an honorary Vice-Presidancy of the UCD Quinn Society.
Estimates put his net worth at between two and four billion dollars. He made his fortune after being gifted the Esat Digifone contract by Michael Lowry. The Moriarty Tribunal found that it was almost beyond doubt that this was due to payments given to Mr Lowry. And where is he now? Well apart from the bribing of ministers, Denis O’Brien has more in common with Rupert Murdoch than you might think. Like Rupert Murdoch, he is not registered for tax here or resident here in the country that gave him his fortune. He is registered in Malta for tax purposes and yet remains one of the most powerful controllers of Irish media.

So when you hear adverts on Newstalk say “News: without the state run spin” you know that it is the Denis O’Brien run spin, a man who bribed his way to billionaire status and left the country to a tax haven yet still controls the media and therefore the power in Ireland.

So hard luck David Norris, you never stood a chance. Until the media in Ireland is in the hands of more than just a tiny elite the future of every citizen is in the hands of that same tiny elite.