High Five - You've been tagged!

Ann over at the lovely transatlantic blog Inkpots n'Quills recently tagged me for this High Five 2009 meme, so I will try to trawl memory for five good things that happened in the last year. I don't really do much with memes or chain awards - either getting them or passing them on - and while I don't rule them out completely as some bloggers do, I admit I haven't been great at passing on the few I did get. Apologies to those who tagged me and found me wanting. I don't pass on chain emails but this is different. I kinda feel guilty at passing them on to others as it imposes an obligation on them to pass them on to their friends - and then there's often a tiresome task attached. Not this one - I like the idea of picking five good things from 2009.

In no particular order - my selection includes the following highlights:

1. Election Success
Hubby Jan's first election to public office! He was elected as the Labour Party Town Councillor for Lismore in June's local election and this was a cause celebré in our family - he had already been a Councillor for 3 years since he was co-opted, but this was entirely on his own merit and reflected his success during his term both as a Council member and as town Mayor in the run-up to the elections - he has lobbied for issues that are important for the town and has tried to avoid party politics above the interest of the town and people. His achievement is all the more notable as he was one of only four foreign candidates elected to Irish office and he was on national radio on Newstalk's Global Village panel about this rare species. I wrote about his election here.


2. Grandparents-in-Waiting
The imminent arrival of our first grandchild - Jany and Shayne will become proud parents in the coming weeks and we were told in a phone call from Spain in June that we would be grandparents in 2010! This has to be the best news of the past year and we wait in trepidation for the birth sometime in February. Watch this space for live updates and photos!

3. The Homecoming
Shayne and Jany moving to live in Ireland from Spain was a great event for us as we missed him over the past eight years since he went to Spain and even though it was great to have a holiday destination every year it is lovely to have them here now and to see them grow into a real family.

4. Holidays revisited
Down memory lane - a reunion with my old friend Anne for a short break in Spain. She and her two daughters were in Barcelona for a break when we were visiting Shayne and Jany in Malgrat de Mar. We spent four days together and relived the hectic pace of the holidays of our youth in India and Nepal - seeing all the sights in Barcelona and catching up on the news of the past years - spanning decades! You can read the post about that holiday over here.

5. Leaving the Nest
Seeing the progress in our children over the year gave me a lot of pleasure and are collectively worthy of inclusion! Shayne and Jany are already mentioned. William returned from his semester of college exchange in Tennessee, and ended the year doing teaching practice in Lismore's Blackwater Community School as part of his final year of PE and Geography in Limerick; Martin got accepted on a Masters' programme in Graphic Design in Dublin, and Maeve survived her first year of Secondary school and is getting on with Second Year as cool as a breeze. She is growing fast and has already passed me out! She went on her first parent-free holiday after her Spanish trip when she went to England with her good pal to aunts and cousins of said pal, showing that we are able to cope (a bit!) with cutting the apron strings. Mind you - not without some trepidation after watching the scariest (unlikeliest I hope!) film of the year in Spain - Taken with Liam Neeson. (confession - I had written Harrison Ford and Ann pointed out it was Liam - that'll teach me to blog late at night and get my action heroes mixed up!) Worst nightmare scenario for every parent - teen daughter gets kidnapped for the white slave traffic on her first holiday sans parents with wild child pal in Paris! Still, life's not all like in the movies - thankfully - and they came home safe and well from England.

So that's my high five selection for 2009. Good cause for reflection and I could probably make a high ten if I put my mind to it!

Do I have to pass this on to friends? Ok if so I will notify the following - and hope you enjoy filling out your High Five of 2009!

1. Jeannette @ Mysteries
2.Stephanie V @ Hookin', Knittin' & Livin'
3.Susan @ Stony River: a Writing Life
4. Peggy @ Organic Growing Pains
5. Rudee @ A Knitting Nurse

I look forward to reading your highlights and if you like - pass it on to your blogfriends!

Post Election Euphoria and Exhaustion

Phew - what a weeked! It's all over in Lismore for another five years and hubby Jan has been elected and returned to the Town Council! We are delighted and very proud of him, he is thrilled and feels that it was a real baptism of fire to go before the electorate and to get their votes, he will have a busy time now with the issues that are outstanding in the town that he has been lobbied on and that need resolution. This was his first time to canvass and face the electorate as he was co-opted onto the Council in 2006 when the incumbent Labour Councillor resigned his seat. So now he feels vindicated as he got voted in rather than be selected by the Labour Party to be co-opted onto the seat.

I had never been to an election count prior to this weekend and I really found it fascinating. Jan was keeping a cool exterior though he must have been a nervous wreck like me until it was all over! We voted on Friday in the local primary school, which means the kids have a day off, something good about the democratic process as far as the youth are concerned!

Our son in Spain got a polling card in the post as he is still on the register here, but of course it was no good to him as he couldn't get a postal vote - you must live in the State unless you have a special exemption like being in the Army or other services, and I think Diplomats can vote from abroad as well. I suppose an Embassy is technically Irish territory overseas so is valid. It's a bone of contention for expatriate Irish that they can't vote and I do think there are certain criteria that should be met but some expats should be allowed vote, especially if they are on short stints abroad, and not Irish citizens under the so-called "Granny" rule.

I will briefly explain - the Granny rule is often used by British-based soccer players to enable them to play for Ireland, and there were lots of South Africans who had Irish passports in the heyday of Apartheid under the Granny rule. If you had an Irish-born grandparent you could claim Irish nationality and as many were born to British citizens working here in colonial times the passport would have been purely expedient, and few if any would have had any emotional links to Ireland. I met quite a few of these distant Irish "citizens" in Tanzania who openly acknowledged their total lack of knowledge or interest in Ireland other than the ease of access afforded by the green passport to countries worldwide that deemed South Africa a pariah nation in the apartheid era.

Back to this weekend. We tried to have a normal day on Friday after voting - I had taken the day off - and yet it was foremost in our minds. Saturday dawned dull and cold - a far cry from the lovely weather of last weekend. We were down at the Courthouse for the Count at 9a.m. and it was a very complex structured system which I tried to explain to one of the bloggers who read my previous post on Election Fever. I don't think I'll try here! It is a Proportional Representation system which involves numerous counts after the first preferences are tallied and then eliminations and transfers of surpluses according to mathematical formulae to ensure equity and accuracy, and then the tensions of the counts which can leave a candidate sweating up to a 10th, 14th - even a 16th count as happened today in one electoral area where there were slow transfers.

Blurry pic of two of our sons and ourselves after the final count!

A summary of Lismore's status

The town is small and has a total electorate of 1,138.

There was a total poll of 820, with 8 spoilt votes, leaving a valid poll of 812.

There were 9 seats, and 12 candidates.

Therefore the quota was 82. (= Divide the valid poll by 10 and add 1)

So the count is manual, no electronic voting here in Ireland after a debacle in 2002 which left people determined to stick to what Bertie Ahern called the stupid oul' "peann lua" (= the stupid oul' pencil) with a degree of contempt as he was the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of the day who pushed hard for Ireland to enter the 21st Century with Electronic Voting and not be the "Laughing stock of Europe"! They were trialled in one by-election and people didn't trust them, there was no facility for a re-count and the immediacy of the result ruined the tension of the normal counts and famously left one losing candidate in floods of tears. With the current system the candidates who won't make it have time to regain their composure and prepare gracefully for defeat.

Those infamous machines have become an albatross for the beleaguered government and have cost the taxpayer a fortune in storage costs as well as purchasing costs and perhaps we could flog 'em to Robert Mugabe or some like-minded tinpot dictator who would love the lack of accountablity inherent in these machines. They were made in Holland but the Dutch voters don't use them and it was admitted that there were flaws in the system.

The blackboard for Lismore Electoral Area in the County Council count centre

But I digress. Jan got 57 first preferences and there were 4 candidates exceeding the quota on the first count so it was down to 8 for 5 seats. 4 of these had between 53 and 59 first preferences so it was tight. Jan didn't get transfers from the surplus of those past the quota as they went on party lines, and he was the only Labour candidate. So he struggled to stay ahead and the boys and ourselves couldn't relax till the 7th count when he was likely to be the 8th elected. Even then there was a tension till the final 5 surplus votes were distributed, bringing him to 77, when he was in without reaching the quota - that didn't matter at this stage as all the votes were distributed. There is a weighting formula for the earlier counts which I still don't quite get - maths were never a strong point - but it ensures all transfers are done fairly. It was all over in Lismore by 1.30p.m.

We didn't have long to celebrate at this point as we had to get to the County Count Centre in Dungarvan to see how the County Council candidate was getting on in his quest for a seat for Labour. John Pratt was running in Lismore Electoral Area and was hot-tipped to get a seat, and he didn't disappoint, though it was after 10p.m. before John was elected, getting the first Labour seat in the Lismore electoral area in fifty years. We stayed until all the Labour seats were secured, as Ger Barron from Kilmacthomas was elected just before John, but it was nearly 1.30a.m. before the final Labour seat was filled in Tramore by Paddy O'Callaghan. Waterford City Council had a good Labour return, as did Dungarvan Town Council, where Labour got a second seat when newcomer Ciara Conway romped home on the first count, a great feat for a first-timer who looks set to have a good political future.

Labour has done very well in the European elections in Ireland with Alan Kelly who got the 3rd and final seat in Ireland South constituency (formerly Munster). Alan defeated a sitting MEP (Member of European Parliament) Kathy Sinnott (Independent - non-party) who was elected in 2004 as a single issues candidate for disabilities and has since lost some of her gloss over dubious expenses in Europe and her open support for Libertas who are allied with some of Europe's most odious far-right political parties, and is trenchantly anti-Lisbon Treaty.

Always a tricky one, to steer clear of the corruption of power. Ironic then that the poll topper in Loughrea electoral area for Galway Co. Council, Michael "Stroke" Fahey, was convicted of fraud last year and is appealing a jail sentence and hefty fine for defrauding the very body to which he was elected - Galway County Council. Also Michael Lowry TD from Thurles keeps topping the poll in General Elections despite having to leave Fine Gael for shady dealing over a decade ago during the height of one of our many Tribunals investigating planning scandals.
Makes you wonder about the electorate, there's definitely "nowt as queer as folk" and in Ireland we often attribute the elevation of the "cute hoor" or maverick who bucks the trend and gets away with it as anti-establishment and something to be lauded - a type of knee-jerk reaction to authority that harks back to the colonial era.

In the European elections in Dublin Prionsias de Rossa MEP was returned, and in Ireland East (formerly Leinster) newcomer Nessa Childers got the 2nd Labour seat in Europe, despite some nasty sniping from Fine Gael's outgoing MEP Avril Doyle who berated her for being a "Foxrock girl" - the ultimate put-down, epitomising the wealthy suburban "ladies who lunch" brigade, and gloating in Nessa's self-confessed lack of knowledge of agricultural affairs. It seems to have backfired spectacularly - the voters aren't stupid and the irony of this coming from plummy-toned Avril's well-heeled horsey background wasn't lost on them, and they showed their contempt at the cheap shots in the polling booth. Avril had form in this, as she showed in 2004 when her party chose another candidate to contest with Avril in the same Euro-constituency, Mairead McGuinness, who also secured a seat then and topped the poll this time around.

Overview of the count in Dungarvan - the tension mounting!

Thankfully the far-right extremist Libertas and Declan Ganley bit the dust and I hope we have seen the back of them. Europe is reeling from the upsurge in neo-fascism in these elections and in national local elections, it's like in the 1930s after the Depression when fascism rose to prominence and dictators flourished, like Franco, Hitler and Mussolini, with Oswald Mosley and Eoin O'Duffy leading Blackshirt and Blueshirt fascistic outfits in the UK and Ireland.

There were two by-elections on Friday also, in Dublin South and Dublin Central, after the deaths of the sitting TDs (MPs) last year. Tony Gregory was an Independent in Dublin Central whose former election agent Maureen O'Sullivan ran and won, and Séamus Brennan was a government TD whose son Shay ran for the seat and lost, breaking the dynastic tradition of children walking into family seats that they feel they own. Labour's Senator Alex White was the hot favourite until a month ago when Fine Gael parachuted in a celebrity candidate in the form of George Lee, who spectacularly resigned his high-profile media post as RTÉ's (the national broadcast station) economics reporter to join the party and apply for the nomination. It was coup for Fine Gael and Lee was a formidable reporter and widely regarded, so it was no surprise when he topped the poll and got in at the first count. As Pat Rabbitte, the former Labour leader renowned for his wittty repartee said on the count morning "Looks like he'll be assumed into Heaven before noon" and he was right - if Heaven has its earthly manifestation in Leinster House!

That's enough reflection on the elections for another five years - though the mood of the opposition and much of the electorate which showed the government what they thought of them could mean there will be a General Election sooner rather than later - certainly before the due date of 2012. I leave you with this funny link to Miriam Lord in the Irish Times with her very own Election Awards!

The count centre in Dungarvan Sport Hall - the count in progress - closely scrutinised by the tallymen and women!

Labour Party Conference - a weekend in Mullingar

We have been in Mullingar, Co. Westmeath in the Irish Midlands, this weekend for the Irish Labour Party Conference, which was attended by around a thousand delegates from all over the country. It was a lively event, as these occasions generally are, with plenty of debate on the hot topics of the day and an excellent speech from Eamon Gilmore, the Party leader, last night, which gave a realistic message to the country in these straitened economic times. There was a great positive buzz at the conference, and while there is recognition that it might be a thankless job to be in government at this time, with the economy in shreds, house prices crashing thanks to the over-inflated property bubble, and jobs crises, the present government have to do a whole lot better at rebuilding confidence or they might be looking down the barrel of a ballot box in the near future.



This June we will have local and European elections in Ireland, so there was a lot of interest in the various candidates, who have already been selected. As hubby is running for the Lismore Town Council, he had a special interest in that whole area, and he is in campaigning mode with canvassing starting in the coming month or so. He is currently the Mayor of Lismore, and he had to wear the chain at the Leader's address as did all the Councillors who hold such office, either at town or county level, so there was a lot of bling on display among the chain gang! I won't go into the complexities of local government where the various Parties rotate the position of Mayor on an annual basis, but if you are driven by curiosity you could check out the Town Council.



There will be a mini-budget in two weeks which promises to be tough; we have no idea yet what form of cuts or increases it will bring but it will be a hairshirt one. The trade unions called off a national day of strike/protest tomorrow when they agreed to accept a government invitation to recommence talks on a national recovery plan. The current Social Partnership agreement took a hit back in February when pension levies on the public sector workers was unilaterally announced, leading to the massive protest march which I wrote about, and threatening industrial unrest unlike any seen since the 70s. I wasn't looking forward to the day of action which would have been a work-to-rule rather than a work stoppage in the nurses' case, but it would have been inevitable if talks were not resumed.


So this weekend was a chance for the Labour Party who have not been in government in over a decade to lay out their stall for economic recovery and I am not going to go into the detail, as it is all on Eamon Gilmore's Leader's Address here. Suffice to say it was a blend of pragmatism and realistic and workable solutions for the recovery, which would raised taxes for the high earners, without penalising those on lower incomes. It would also see an end to the conflict of interest links between banks and developers and the cronyism that has been exposed in various Tribunals of Enquiry in recent years and particulary the massively inflated salaries and bonuses of the bank chiefs. The capping of salaries of bank CEOs in the wake of various revelations of vulgar excess has led to some candidates rejecting job offers, as they seem to see it as an affront to their dignity and a compromise on the lifestyle to which they became accustomed to have to live on up to €500,000 a year. (Yes, that's half a million Euro, about $665,000 or £465,000 - you try getting by on a pittance like that!)




The diversity of Labour members breaks the stereotypical mould, as they represent every sector and walk of life. Yes, there are a lot of trade unionists and student activists, and public sector workers, and academics, but what strikes me is their integrity and passion, and genuine indignation at the state of the country now, how the boom was wasted by not investing for the rainy day that is now well and truly here! Just so you know it's a party true to its Labour roots, they rounded off the Conference, as usual, with a rousing rendition of The Red Flag - the anthem of the International Labour Movement, which was written in 1889 by an Irish man, Jim Connell, and was the British Labour Party's anthem for years.


I don't want to give the impression that the conference was merely a collective of worthy sandal-wearing, bearded sackcloth-and-ashes types, as there was a lot of enjoyment and socialising (as befits Socialists!). It was unfortunate that the clocks went forward last night, as we were deprived of a much-needed extra hour to either party or sleep. It meant that the dancing to a local band (The Tennessee Breakdown Country Band, in case you're wondering!), which kept us all on our toes with their jiving country sounds, ended at 3a.m. instead of 2a.m. There were a lot of bleary-eyed delegates around at this morning's session! The Leader's Address, broadcast live on national TV and via the web, coincided with Earth Hour, which was just grist for the mill of the anti-Labour media. They were gleeful about the fact that people would miss the speech if they actually did what Labour endorse as ardent supporters of Earth Hour, which would be to turn off the telly and uneccessary lights!


In case you think I spent every waking minute in the conference hall listening to speeches and motions - I didn't! I took time out on Saturday afternoon to visit Belvedere House outside Mullingar, a lovely 18th Century house and gardens, which was given to Westmeath County Council by the last owner in recent years. It is now a major tourist attraction and I took a lot of photos of the house and grounds. It is beautifully situated on the shores of Lough Ennell, and the park has been themed as Narnia, with the follies given a new identity as various Narnia locations and settings. I will either post them separately or return to edit this post tomorrow!