To be honest. I wasn’t particularly interested in their contents. I felt letter-gate had been well aired and not forgotten – people in the privacy of the ballot boxes would make up their own minds’ on his explanation.

But then along came this legal advice crap. Speaking on the radio with Pat Kenny this morning he said:

I am absolutely restricted by questions of privacy,” he said. “I understand people’s interest but I’ve been told by my lawyers that these letters are subject to professional legal privilege and I’ve been told I cannot publish them.

Huh. Professional legal privilege. Professional legal privilege. What the hell does that mean? He’s not a solicitor advising a client. Nor a doctor advising a patient. Where does privilege come into it? I cannot possibly fathom how it could be covered by data protection.

He wrote multiple letters seeking clemency for his ex-partner – either in a personal capacity or abusing his position as a Senator. These are not letters to constituents who would have an expectation of privacy. I cannot see where professional legal privilege comes into this. So, I’m forced to wonder – is he protecting the recipients or himself? I suspect the latter. What is David Norris hiding now?

Publish the letters or publish the legal argument and advice in full. I’m sick of politicians quoting some intangible legal privilege to protect themselves. In that same interview, Norris claimed he was about the most transparent person in politics today. It doesn’t feel like it Senator, it doesn’t feel like it.

I recently migrated my company’s mobile phone account over to Vodafone via The Carphone Warehouse. We had two numbers to port but when I got my first bill, there were three subscriptions on it – one for an unknown mobile number.

I rang Vodafone on 1907 and the agent’s first response was to ask me to return to Carphone Warehouse. This irked me. Yes, the sales agent in Carphone Warehouse most likely made the error. But I’m not their customer. They are not billing me. Vodafone are. This seems pretty cut and dry – there’s a subscription I’m not using, don’t have and don’t want and one that I did not receive any phone discount for on my bill. Just remove it and refund me. Take it up with Carphone Warehouse on your time, not mine.

So, after explaining to the agent that I am Vodafone’s customer and expected them to sort it, she said she would and put me on hold. Eventually she got back to me to let me know that she had left a message for the agent in Carphone Warehouse who would call me within an hour. I had a sunken feeling. This should just have been dealt with. The how and why and means of it being dealt with are not my problem and I don’t want to know about it.

As expected, one working day later and no word from anyone. I ran Vodafone up again. This time the agent checked the notes and let me know it was with the agent in Carphone Warehouse and they were waiting on them to get back to them.

I made some simple points:

• I was promised a call within an hour which I did not get;
• I made the point that I did not not want to call Vodafone every day for an update – I just expected that it would be done;
• I was told that I could assume it would be done. To this I replied if I did that, I’d be looking at the same charge on my bill next month.
• The reply was that I could then call in to have it really taken care of. I explained I’d then be €100 out of pocket and not €50.
• I was advised to call in a week.
• I explained this was not my mistake – can it not be diary-ed in there for someone to follow it up in a number of days and for me to be called when it was done. No, this is an inbound call centre only. WTF?!?

So, it’s still not solved and still my problem. Why?

Oh yeah, rather than asking if I’d like to take a quick seven question survey on your phone service, why not just answer the bloody phone by a human within three rings? Then you wouldn’t need to do surveys!

UPDATE (~4 hours later): I tweeted this to @VodafoneIreland after writing it up. They got back to me (here and here):

I’ve DM’d the details and gotten further replies which is great.

I just hope the real issue has not been lost in the quick resolution through the public forum of Twitter: Vodafone’s problems / procedures / relationship with agents / etc is not the customer’s problem. Don’t make it the customer’s problem and don’t expose it to the customer. Just fix it.

I would like to point out an interesting observation regarding ballot papers.

When filling in your ballot, do not assign a number to someone you don’t want to see elected! Giving someone a 6 or 7 could get them elected! I’ve seen it happen, believe me.

If you only like two candidates just give them the 1 and 2, if you like three candidates, give them a 1, 2 and 3 – you get what I mean.

I’ve had a few candidates at my door saying ‘ah sure, give him a 3 or a 4,’ knowing full well that this could get them elected – don’t do it, people! You have the power.

Mr. Democracy (Metro-Herald, Wed 16th Feb 2011)

This is spectacularly bad advice from the inappropriately named Mr. Democracy. We use an electoral system called PR-STV – Proportional Representation – Single Transferable Vote. What this means is that when you vote, you number the candidates in order of preference (but are not required to place a preference against all candidates ).

When your candidate has exceeded the quota or has been eliminated then your vote may be transferred. By following the above advice, and especially in four and five seat constituencies where the latter seats come down to a small amount of votes, you are effectively giving up your influence on who may fill those final seats.

If we take the Dublin Central constituency (not mine) as an example (four seats). In 2007, this constituency elected Bertie Ahern (FF) on almost two quotas, Cyprian Brady (FF) (Bertie’s running mate where they quite literally ambushed Mary Fitzpatrick (FF) with a midnight hour leaflet drop influencing voter transfers which got Brady elected on only 939 first preferences!), Joe Costello (L) and Maureen O’Sullivan (Ind.) who won the by-election following the death of Tony Gregory (Ind).

Now, if for example your thinking in this election (not necessarily mine) is that you’d like the FG candidate win and would live with Labour as well, you may rank your preferences as follows following the above advice:

1. Donohoe, Paschal (FG)
2. Costello, Joe (L)
3. Clancy, Aine (L)

It’s a fairly safe bet to assume that Donohoe (FG) and Costello (L) will get elected. It’s unlikely Clancy (L) will.

Here’s the problem with the above advice - by not continuing your preferences you have given up any and all potential influence about who fills the remaining two seats. This is why it is spectacularly bad advice and shows a complete mis-understanding of PR-STV in multi-seat constituencies.

Very few people would not have a preference of the remaining thirteen candidates. Or certainly at least a reverse preference. We have for example seven independents. You may be an anybody but Sinn Féin (personally my head may feel like exploding every time I hear Mary Lou MacDonald (SF) on the radio). You may want to finish off the Ahern (FF) dynasty by giving a transfer to Fitzpatrick (FF) and not preferring Brady (FF) at all. You might be able to live with Kearney (GP) over the ultra-left candidates Steenson (WP) and O’Loughlin (CSP). O’Sullivan (Ind) took Gregory’s (Ind) mantle who was very popular and you may wish to give her a nod. So your ballet paper may now be shaping up as follows:

4. Kearney, Phil (GP)
5. Fitzpatrick, Mary (FF)
6. O’Sullivan, Maureen (Ind)

Voting is often as much about strategy as about preference. For example by continuing to preference candidates you don’t want but could live with over another, you keep them in the race longer and may force the exclusion of those you don’t.

However, it’s important to understand under what circumstances your vote can be transferred:

• if your first preference candidate is the first to exceed the quota, then his surpluses will be proportionally transferred based on the next available preference;
• if your (currently) preferred candidate is eliminated, then your vote will be transferred based on the next available preference;
• distribution of surpluses after the first candidate is deemed elected is done proportionally from previously transferred votes only.

You only have one vote and it can only be applied to one candidate. If your first preference is not elected to the first seat but is elected to a subsequent seat, your vote will never transfer. I understand this is complicated – perhaps a dedicated blog post on this is warranted.

Remember, voting is a privilege. Candidates work hard to make themselves known to you. Walk into the polling booth informed with what the candidates in your area are advocating and preference accordingly. Without being too technical, if you do not preference all candidates and if your vote is transferred on your last preference then it is possible that you will have lost your influence in the proportionality of that bundle of surpluses (Christ I see how that reads – a new blog post on the process is required!). As you may guess from this paragraph, a good understanding of the process and strategy may increase your influence when others do not complete their ballet paper in full. Of course if you haven’t informed yourself of all the candidates and can’t genuinely preference candidates, only do so as far as you can. Don’t randomly preference towards the end of your ballot paper!

Martin resigned as he lead the soft heave against Cowen – proper order (more than can be said for the two-faced Hanafin who apparently has confidence in Cowen to run the country but not the Fianna Fail party – so for her it’s party first rather than country; and as for the cute hoor Lenihan… well I suspect some back benchers may wait in the long grass for him).

Harney announced that she will not contest the next General Election and hence felt it inappropriate to stay in cabinet. But it was appropriate to stay after her Progressive Democrats party collapsed around her leaving her without a mandate? It was appropriate that five years on from declaring the country’s A&E service a “national crisis”, this January there was a new record for patients on beds? It was appropriate after a number of diagnostic disasters? Despite her well aired declarations of achievements, Harney’s tenor at Health has been shameful and a disaster for the citizens of this country. But none of that was enough for her to resign. No, she waited until there’s about 40 days left in this disastrous Government to jump ship to make way for some other parish pump hack to try and build a profile in advance of the general election.

It then seems that through some background co-ordination, Messrs Ahern, Dempsey and Killeen all followed suit opening five positions at cabinet for Cowen to promote some loyalists as a reward for their vocal support during the heave. Besides the cynical and farcical nature of it all, one wonders what these new ministers can possibly achieve in 40 days? How much mandarin time will be wasted briefing them and bringing them up to speed? How many policy inititives in train by the resigning ministers (if any!) will be interrupted? And how much will new stationary for all the new ministers cost us so that they can blanket their constituencies with letters From the Office of the Minister of…

I don’t know if it’s constitutionally possible, but it would be nice to see President McAleese refuse the resignations. (Update: On a quick read of the constitution, it’s not possible. On the advice of the Taoiseach, the President shall accept the resignation of a Minister).

That’s unlikely to happen. What’s more unlikely to happen is for Cowen to realise that the game is up, save us the time and money, call the general election and let us vote in some TDs who can be chosen as ministers that we might have confidence in.

What will Gormless Gormley and the Green Party do? Nothing. But then that is what we have come to expect. To say that I’m disappointed in them is an understatement after I publicly declared for them and gave my reasons to vote green.

But the dodgy ones definitely all have one big attribute in common: they send unsolicited CVs with (and here’s an example from this morning that had four CVs) some attempt at legal binding in the footer:

The acceptance of C.V’s, interviewing or engagement by your organisation of a candidate introduced by A.N. Other Recruitment Ltd is an acceptance of our Terms and Conditions.

Excuse me? An extract from my response:

We absolutely do not accept in any way or form any of
your terms and conditions. If you choose to email CVs to
us prior to any engagement or agreement, that is entirely
at  your discretion and how we use them is at ours.

When dealing with other people while representing my company, I generally try to be a nice and polite person but it irks me no end when I am sent unsolicited CVs with some assumption of binding to the senders T&Cs.

Recruiters take note – if I want your services I’ll deal with the many good ones as I have in the past and will never deal with unsolicited invitations.  If you’re in my industry and that good, word will get to me or I’ll find you myself.

Alas, no. I remember using it two years ago and it was shite then. Today, trying to advertise a job vacancy, I tried it again. It’s still shite. It’s unintuitive, riddled with errors, uses ridiculous autogenerated usernames for which I have to ring for a reminder and, worst of all, fails to let me submit a job:

I rang the first time for my username and reached a very helpful lady. I then rang a second time because of the above(to a different lady) and I was met with complete dis-interest: I’ll let the IT people know. Any further questions were not tolerated.

So, here I am, an employer with a job, and FÁS – Where Jobseekers Go – couldn’t care less. Job seekers, maybe you should go elsewhere…. And, from the pathetic state of the portal, it seems like FÁS haven’t cared in two years. I shudder to think how much it cost them…

The first problem is that AWS only distribute the tools as an RPM (really guys? I mean FFS). Convert and install with alien.

# apt-get install alien
# alien -k ec2-ami-tools.noarch.rpm
# dpkg -i ec2-ami-tools_1.3-15283_all.deb

Make sure you also install libopenssl-ruby.

Set your Ruby path as the RPM places them where RedHat expects to find them:

# export RUBYLIB="/usr/lib/site_ruby"

Now when you run the utility, you’ll probably get:

$ ec2-bundle-image -r ... -i ... -k ... -c ... -u ...
sh: Syntax error: Bad substitution

Aparently Ubuntu switched from invoking bash to dash for sh somewhere along the line. Just relink it (temporarily or permanently as suits):

# rm /bin/sh
# ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh

And you should be good to go.

One other issue I encountered was that the permissions of the directories were for root only (i.e. /usr/local/aes, /usr/lib/site_ruby/ and /etc/aes). A very sloppy chmod a+rX on each of these will resolve that. Although I suspect it’s more to do with the fact that I used rpm2cpio and cpio rather than alien the first time around.

http://www.pcuf.fi/~pjt/pink/software-architecture.html

People have asked how I’m voting and the answer is Green. The reactions are often skeptical or surprise. “Green? They won’t win.” They won’t win? Of course they won’t bloody win! Heck, they don’t even have enough candidates to form a Government!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no a sandle wearing hippy; I voted Fianna Fáil last time (but to be fair – there was no credible opposition at the time). I’m voting Green because:

1. I want Green policies implemented by the next Government: the only way to make that happen is to ensure that enough Green deputies are returned to the Dáil to put them in a position to help form the next Government;
    
2. I don’t want to sound clichéd but I want a change in Government. Whether it’s small social organisations, multi-national companies or Government departments, they all have a leader. In our case, it’s the Taoseich and the Ministers and Junior Ministers that form the Government cabinet.
    
   And just like any walk of life, when the same people steer the ship they become complacent, lethargic and (as we’re seeing more and more) arrogant. That complacency and lethargy seeps through the ranks all the way to the bottom. Waste, mis-management, bad processes and “sticking to the status quo” become common place.
    
   A change of Government will put new Ministers in place. They will be enthusiastic and hands on. They will question the status quo. They will make new demands with new energy and vigor. Yes – it may take them some time to learn their brief in full but it’s at that enthusiastic time that they will question and poke the mandarins and the accepted norm.
    
3. I’m worried about our economic future. Fianna Fáil would like us to believe that they are the only party with the credentials to manage the economy. They forget to mention that it was a labour Minister for Finance that gave us the first budget surplus in the nineties. They remind us that they had nine surpluses in ten years – is a surplus not as much of a mis-management than a deficit?
    
   But it’s not the ability to deliver a realistic budget that worries me – it’s our deadly dependency on petroleum. Did you know that we are dependent on imported fossil fuels for 90% of our energy requirements? Did you know that the cost if a barrel of crude oil has doubled in the lifetime of this Government? Did you know that we, the Irish tax payer, will pay over €500 million for carbon credits between 2008 and 2012? We’re the fourth more dependent country in the world on fossil fuels and our economy couldn’t currently exist without them – a commodity that is volatile, ever-decreasing in availability and ever-increasing in cost – we need to get away from fossil fuels.
    
   Through a variety of measures, the Greens will help reduce our carbon footprint. By reducing our carbon footprint, we reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. These measures include: new building standards which include heat efficiency; promotion (not advertising but through policy and financing) of renewable energy sources; pay as you use tax on car fuel (see below); real investment in public transport both in Dublin and around the country; joined up thinking for urban planning and, most importantly, they have an understanding and enthusiasm for tackling this dependency.
    
   My only concern here is that I’m not doing them justice in the above paragraph. Read their manifesto and energy policy yourselves.
    
4. I’m sick of stupid planning decisions with out thought or regard to schools, public transport and other essential facilities.
    
5. The end of car tax and VRT with the introduction of a pay as you go tax on petrol. This doesn’t seem to have gotten the public debate it deserves but it sounds ingenious to me. Cars cost so much money – both with VRT at the beginning and with tax, maintenance and insurance annually – people feel they have to use them. By reducing the annual cost and taxing on a per-use basis people may start reconsidering the car for some short trips.
    
   You know, I was out walking last night (strolling – not canvassing; I’m not a member of any political party) and the numbers of houses trying to cram three or more cars into their driveways was starking. I was walking in Dublin 16 and 18; places where public transport should be effective but it simply isn’t for a lot of people. Many of these cars were impeding the footpaths and straggling already narrow roads. The owners of these cars are no doubt wasting their lives away sitting in traffic this morning. A lot of these owners are also the children of the home owners who cannot afford to get a home of their own. These are bad legacies of our current Government (they do have good legacies too; I’m not blinkered). Hopefully with the Green’s combined policies and a role in Government, this situation will help reverse itself.
    
6. Here’s a great one from their manifesto: carry out a feasibility study into the State re-taking control of Eircom, divesting any commercial operation, and maintaining the fixed line network as an open access infrastructure to all operators. As someone who has worked in the telecommunications sector for an OLO (Other Licensed Operator), I see first hand the disastrous decision it was to sell off Eircom. Think about the assets and infrastructure – at a minimum you have a copper pair into every premise in Ireland that has been built up over more than a hundred years. And we now have a commercial organisation more interested in their profits that the countries badly needed broadband infrastructure for the growth of our “knowledge economy”. Green Party, I hope you find a way to CPO their asses!
    
   By the way – if any member of Government defends that decision remind them that they are now trying to do it the correct way with the ESB: sell off the retail arm but retain control of the infrastructure and assets. Once bitten, twice shy? Or have they simply learnt from their disastrous mistake.
    
7. Just to finish up, there is one more policy that I think is long overdue: no more corporate donations to political parties. For a modern, honest and impartisan Government, this is a policy that is long overdue. I am a strong democratic. I believe in politics and I’m not apathetic or ignorant to the very very hard work that politicians do. I believe the political parties should be 100% funded by the public exchequer. Then they’ll really work for us free of outside influences.

By voting Green you will help ensure that have a mandate sufficient to put them in a coalition Government and the stronger the mandate they receive, the greater their negotiating position for their policies.

Voting Green doesn’t get you a Green Government, but it does get you some Green policy implemented in Government. If we can even get some of the above implemented, I believe we’ll all be better off.

Now, the obligitory party political broadcast. The theme is clear: