The President is the first citizen of this nation. They are a representative of that nation, not just abroad, but at home. As such, they should reflect the people of the nation – not just the young people and most certainly not just the Fianna Fáil voting ones.

It is incumbent upon us as citizens to elect to that high office the best person for that job. That is determined by looking at that person’s record – this is why the “Quango Queen” tag has so destroyed Davis; her record was, to a large extent, a fabrication. Gallagher’s record was tissue paper thin to begin with – a z-list rte celebrity and Fianna Fáil insider, who has never once stood for publicly elected office. The spin about an entrepeneur has also been exposed as untruthful, as has his nonsensical claims about Independence.

Its isn’t just non-politically correct to state that Michael D. Higgins is “too old” – it is frankly nonsensical. There are 70 year olds working in the local shops, there are 70 year olds coaching sports across the country. 70 isn’t clapped out – to suggest otherwise is simply disgusting. I haven’t always agreed with Michael D’s political stances, but I massively credit him for having them.

Your closing paragraph is simply nauseating. The Presidency is not the X-Factor, it is a largely symbolic but nonetheless vital part of our Democracy. It would appear that a significant number of the electorate have lost sight of this, as you have, and are instead expecting to “Text Sean to 51010″ on Thursday. One can only hope that they and you can be proven wrong, and instead we see a proper President, one who accepts the privileges and the limitations of the role, elected into office.

I suspect I shared the view of many of those who have supported his bid to get on the ticket, namely, that ” letter-gate” was water under the bridge. That it had been dealt with and that David Norris should now be judged solely on what would make him the best Presidential candidate.

Irrespective of whether or not one was in harmony with his views or philosophies, to deny him the opportunity to enter the race,  would in my opinion, have denied the electorate of the opportunity to judge him on his merits. Therefore it was with much relief I learnt on Tuesday evening, he had finally received the support of the four councils required to enable him to have his name entered on the ballot paper.

This state of mind though, was severely dashed the following morning as I listened to his interview on the Pat Kenny show. David Norris himself had now reintroduced “letter-gate”, only this time with a completely new twist. Instead of simply agreeing to either publish or offering alternatively independent verification of his contention that they contained nothing new, David Norris had shifted tack.

This time his reason for not publishing took on a new veil. On the advice of “unnamed lawyers”, “legal privilege” precluded him from revealing their content.

Really ? “And who exactly were these unnamed lawyers I asked myself” ?.

The term “lawyer” is a very loose term. In Ireland and the UK it includes a broad range of legally trained individuals. It could for example, refer to someone who was trained in conveyance or it could also be a reference to a judge sitting on the bench of the supreme court.

As I listened for clarification, expecting that the identity of these unnamed individuals to be revealed and as such lend credibility to his “legal privilege” argument, it became clear that this would not be forthcoming. Instead, it was simply underpinned with more and more of David’s ability to pontificate about nuances of little substance and his desire to move on and discuss other issues which in his opinion were more pertinent to the debate. Indeed they may well be, but as Pat Kenny was forced to inform him, he was not on the show for that purpose but specifically to deal with the question of the letters. Despite that nothing further was revealed during the rest of the interview.

To be honest, my view of David Norris was changed during the course of that interview. He was shallow and lacked credibility. Indeed it had nothing to do with the fact that he had written a letter or letters. This was simply do with his continued attempts to hide from some issue or issues which most obviously if revealed, will again put into question his suitability to be the next President of Ireland. Yes I am sure that if all candidates were put under the same scrutiny issues would be revealed which could put their candidacy into question. In this instance however, it is not the other candidates which are being asked to provide an explanation about letters. It is David Norris and it David Norris alone who must convince people that he is bona fide and that he has nothing further to hide.. His continued attempts to circumvent this fundamental question is severely damaging his credibility.

Either he deals with it immediately or his attempts to be elected are doomed.

The current estimate of broken clients is somewhere between 0.15% and 0.35% – that’s about 1 in 300 visitors. For ‘average’ sites, that’s not a problem. For Google and Facebook, where 0.15% could mean millions of visitors then it’s a different story.

One of the main goals of World IPv6 day is to accurately measure this.

For sites that aren’t quite in the Facebook / Google category, enabling AAAA records is not an issue and is something to be encouraged. Until people start moving, clients will stay broken, ISPs will ignore and hosting companies will remain unmotivated.

There’s already some significant and popular Irish sites available over IPv6 and a growing list can be found at:

http://www.ipv6ready.ie/statistics/first-hundred

Also, just on the point of many home routers handing out IPv6 addresses – is is true that some do but those that do should work as they only do this if they have some IPv6 over IPv4 mechanism built in.

It’s for this reason that none of the big guys have enabled it by default, and only make it available to whitelisted IPs and on specific subdomains such as “v6″ or “ipv6″. Just a warning to not just plough ahead and add AAAA records without knowing that you could be excluding a percentage of your users by doing so.

Also, http://isoc.org/wp/worldipv6day/how-to-join/ <– June 8th 2011 could be a good day to test. Might be worth mentioning in the post.

If you’re thinking of the level to pitch it at, think about how you might explain pr-stv surpluses to Mr. Democracy.