Lads, does anyone know the law on candidates being within 50m of a polling station?

I understood it to be that candidates and canvassers may not come within 50 metres of the entrance to polling stations from 90 minutes before voting begins and they must not attempt to make any appeals to voters as they enter polling station.

At 6:30 yesterday evening, I saw a Fianna Fáil candidate in the carpark of the local school. Now I can’t say whether he entered the building or not, but I did see him within about 10m of the door. It was not the station where he would be casting his own vote. What business would he have there? Checking on the turn out? Surely he should have remained outside the 50m limit and dispatched his driver to do this.

Should I report him? What do you think? Okay, I am biased here as his son got extremely aggressive with me the day before when I pointed out the sign he and his father were erecting was damaging an area of ground the Tidy Towns volunteers had put so much hard work into. I genuinely thought he was going to pull on me.

Update: The useless witless eejit got elected. This county’s electorate are pure fekin mule! I give up.

Euronews are running a piece on the Irish elections this morning. A clip showing Enda Kenny casting his vote in the company of (that gorgeous creature - his words, not mine) his wife has the following voice-over:

Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, has said she will do everything in her power to prevent Sinn Féin playing king-maker in the new government.

For regular readers: This is a temporary disruption to the temporary disruption to service … because something is really bugging me.

Last year I had a visit from a local County Council official as part of Minister Dick Roche’s clean up of the electoral register. I invited her in, made tea and laid out some nice biscuits. She was cute. But as well as that, I wanted to finally get my family’s records straight.

Okay, I said, see this woman here on your list. Well that’s my mum. She’s been dead nine years now. I’ve written to, and emailed the Council in the run up to every election and referendum to tell them this. I’ve filled out forms. I’ve phoned them. Yet she’s still on the list. Can you finally put this right?

Sure, she said, writing deceased beside the name with her biro and a custard cream.

While we’re on the subject, I added, this man here. My father. He died the summer gone, so you can mark him off too and save me wasting bits and bytes and bandwidth trying to tell the Council.

Deceased was marked on her list in blue ink and dark chocolate.

Now to me, I said sitting back. I could sense her thinking this could take a while and having a slight panic attack at the thoughts of the bikkies running out.

I want to be taken off the list that’s made available to marketing companies. This is something else I’ve been trying to get the Council to do since cosmetics were called make-up. Done, she said, all pleased with her efficiency.

Then the tone changed. I knew this would happen - were down to a broken custard cream and plain digestives.

I have a question for you: You are on my list as Mr. Sneeze, in the townland of Knockadollie, Ballybeag. But we are sitting here in the townland of Knockanudder, Ballymor. Can you explain that?

Ah, I explained, it’s really simple: This is the only house on the road in Knockanudder. The Ballymor postman would have to come all the way over here for just one house. But the Ballybeag lad passes the door. So years ago, the P&T (yes, it was that long ago), decided the sensible thing to do would be for us to use a postal address of Knockadollie. Clear?

Eh, yeah. I think. Soooo, which would you prefer on the register?

At this stage, she was down to licking the wrappers so I knew she wouldn’t stay any longer, and rather than saying it didn’t matter, which might prolong things, I just said, Knockadollie’s fine.

Grand so. I’ll look after all of this. You’ve been very helpful. Thanks for your time. Oh, and the bikkies were lovely.

To make a long story longer, this week, polling cards arrived for both my parents. I got junk mail for Readers Digest. And to cap it all, I got two polling cards for myself - one for the polling station in Ballymor and one for Ballybeag.

There are now three cards, surplus to requirements, and a prize-draw entry sitting on the hall table. Any takers?

So much for Dick Roche’s big clean up. And as for the Council official - well she really took the biscuit.

ps. Normal temporary disruption now resumed.

pps. New blogroll category added to the side bar: Useful Links. First one is an Irish language spell-checker for Mozilla (Firefox/Thunderbird). Cool! Bock, Eolaí, MacKozer - you guys will love this.

MacKozer has been doing a fair amount of bitching about Irish banks lately. In his last post he surmises that AIB stands for Absolutely Incompetent Bank-staff.

Well it’s my turn now. Step away from the keyboard, Mac.

Let’s face it. The AIB runs the Financial Regulator. Just as eircom runs ComReg. AIB are the big boys. They can do what they want and get away with it. They pwn the regulator! Extrapolate that and you realise they pwn the government too.

When other banks offer better rates and deals to attract customers, the AIB just might, if they feel they can spare 0.00001% of their billion euro profits, do the same, months later.

Because AIB are the biggest player they can offer the biggest range of services. With the exception of BoI the other banks are just credit unions with alloys, spots and go-faster stripes. AIB has it all and that’s why I’ve stuck with them this long.

When AIB announced they would be offering free banking I looked into it immediately. All I would have to do would be to pay one bill online or by phone once a quarter. No problem. I do that anyway. And I would have to make one purchase per quarter using my Laser card. Oops! A snag here. I didn’t have one. I had an old fashioned Banklink card. But the nice people in AIB knew this and wrote to me telling me how to replace my Banklink with a Laser. So I phoned the nice people and asked them to go ahead. No problem, sir. You will have your new card in two weeks.

That was so long ago I can’t remember what year it was. God was still sporting short trousers then. And I know we’ve all passed a lot of water under the bridge since.

I do remember calling six weeks later for an update. We are unable to process you request over the phone, sir. You will have to visit your branch. My account was opened at a branch in another town 24 years ago. With internet and phone banking there was no point transferring it to a local one. I couldn’t be bottomed visiting my branch so I left it at that.

This gave me time to think. I pay a government stamp duty of €10 on my Banklink card. I would have to pay €20 on a Laser card. Well, not exactly. I could pay €10 if I used the Laser only in ATMs or if I used it only for purchases, but if I used it for both I would pay €20. But to qualify for free banking I would have to use it for purchases and it would be no use to me if I didn’t use it at ATMs. So free banking was going to cost me €10 extra. The difference between the extra duty and the savings I’d make wasn’t great enough for me to bother switching.

The nice people in AIB wrote to me again this week. I am being automatically switched to a Laser card. I have no choice. The letter was dressed up to look like AIB were doing me a favour. I would have greater protection against fraud with chip and PIN technology.

I can’t help wondering if AIB are pandering to the revenue commissioners on this one. Here lads, how’s about we get you €10 extra from all our customers and you can owe us a favour?  We have a few things in mind.

The thing that’s really bugging me is the government stamp duty was brought in by Charlie McCreevy as a tax on banks. Not on customers. Or at least that’s what he told us at the time. But neither he, nor his successor, batted an eyelid when AIB et alia passed these taxes onto the consumer. But then, AIB pwns the government.

The HSE are running ads encouraging hospital visitors to wash their hands as part of a drive to reduce the spread of infection, mainly by MRSA.

Now, forgive the pun, but there are a few things bugging me about this campaign:

There is a line slipped in at the end of the radio ad reminding hospital staff to wash their hands too. Is this not a given? Are they not the professionals? Did all those years of study and training teach them nothing about basic hygiene?

Perhaps it is aimed at staff other than doctors and nurses. I hope it is. Last year, when our father was in God’s waiting room there was an MRSA outbreak.  We, doctors and nurses included, wore gloves, masks and aprons, and washed our hands thoroughly going in and out of the ward. On one occasion we were there at lunch time. The caterer came in, distributed the trays and left for the next ward. No gloves. No mask. No apron. No hand washing. We freaked and complained to the ward sister that all our precautions were for nothing if this woman could be allowed to ramble throughout the hospital spreading infection. We were told she was an external contractor and they had no authority over her. (He died of MRSA. They put pneumonia on the death cert but that’s for another post on another day).

There are infection threats other than just MRSA in our hospitals: Clostridium difficile is a major one. You can read more about it here, or here if you have more time, but the basics are as follows. It is called C. difficile because it is extremely difficult to treat. The antibiotics which do work are among the most expensive. It is most prevalent where a patient is being treated with antibiotics for other infections. Catch 22. It can kill those who are weakened by age or serious ailments.

Why don’t we hear about it? Because the HSE are legally obliged to collect and publish statistics on MRSA but not C. difficile. For all we know it could be more common than MRSA.

This is yet another example of the lack of joined up thinking we have come to expect in our state services.

From the Irish Independent (and fek their copyright - this is too important ).

Other Bloggers, please link to this, or to any other Irish blogger’s post on this subject. e.g. The Swearing Lady; Twenty Major.

If you are Irish, berate your local T.D.s and Senators to change the law now! If your are not Irish, berate your own government to, in turn, berate the Irish government to change our law now! This may be the first time Bloggers actually change something. If you can’t phone, or meet them in person, eMail addresses are usually formatted as firstname.surname@oireachtas.ie or go to the Oireachtas website for the correct one.
A WOMAN who was raped in her home has waived her right to anonymity in seeking an appeal against a suspended sentence for her attacker.

Mary Shannon (33) said she felt the entire justice system had let her down after the man convicted of raping her escaped being sent to jail.

Ms Shannon’s call both for the sentence to be appealed and for the introduction of assessed sentences for rape was backed by anti-rape campaigners and by Fine Gael’s Olwyn Enright.

Ms Shannon described how, when travelling to Dublin for last Monday’s sentence hearing, her attacker had been on the same train and how, after he was set free by the court, she again had to walk past him on the train on the return journey to Ennis.

She spoke of the “devastation” she felt when, at the Central Criminal Court on Monday, Mr Justice Paul Carney imposed a three-year suspended sentence in place of a jail term. “I was a victim yet I was made to feel like a criminal. Justice was not done.”

Ms Shannon said she could not understand how the judge could justify his decision, particularly as earlier in the same court on Monday he had imposed a 15-year sentence on a man convicted of raping a 74-year-old woman.

Ellen O’Malley-Dunlop of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre said last night that the suspended sentence sent out a “a really bad message” to both the perpetrators of such crimes and their victims.

“This sends out a very dangerous message to rape victims - that even if the rapist is found guilty there is no guarantee they will be locked up,” said Olwyn Enright.

Mr Justice Carney said on Monday that his decision to impose a suspended sentence was based on a previous ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeal in relation to a sentence imposed by him in a previous similar case by the Director of Public Prosecutions. Mr Carney said that appeal had been lost and the sentencing set aside.

It was in May 2005 that Adam Keane, now 20, of Barnageeha, Daragh, Co Clare, broke into Ms Shannon’s house and raped her while her children slept in the next room. Keane claimed he did not remember anything and had been high on drink and drugs.

“I really thought justice was going to be done and it was only a matter of how many years in jail he was going to get,” Ms Shannon said yesterday. “Who would want to report this type of crime now?” she told RTE television news.

Earlier, on Radio One’s ‘Liveline’ programme, she told presenter Joe Duffy that she was unable to return to her home and was back living with her children in her parents’ house.

Fiona Neary, director of the Rape Crisis Centre network, said she was concerned about the message that a suspended sentence sent out to other sexual predators.

Eugene Moloney