JC Skinner's guide to PR-STV tactical voting

Sorry, should have got this up earlier. Hopefully it'll still reach a few people before the voting closes.

1. As John Waters says, vote all the way down the list of candidates to potentially maximise the use of your vote.

2. In practice, you actually do the opposite. This means counting the number of candidates on the ballot and then voting all the way up from that number to 1. If there are 12 candidates, you find the one you hate the most and least wish to see elected and put the number 12 next to their name. Then you find the next most loathed, and they get number 11. And so on, till you get to number 1.

Do this carefully, and if you get it wrong, ask for an eraser or a new ballot paper from those in the polling station, telling them you made a mistake. Don't put a messed up ballot or an ambiguous one in the box or it will be discounted. Check over your vote to make sure all numbers are accounted for and each one only once. Don't miss out preference number 3 and have two number 4s for example.

3. If you want to vote tactically, do your homework. Check out bookie odds, like Paddy Power, or constituency profiles such as are in local papers, the Irish Times, etc, to see who is most favoured to be returned.

Let's say you want to punish Fianna Fail and they're running two candidates in your constituency. Obviously, you want to put them last and second last on your ballot. But in which order? In the order so that the least likely of the two candidates is higher placed. So do your homework to establish, within parties, which candidates have the best chance of election.

But what if one of them is likely to get a seat and the other has little hope? Then you reverse the order. Only do this if you're sure that one of them is getting in, though. In cases (FF in Dun Laoghaire is one) where there is going to be one candidate elected from a party but it's unclear which, vote according to your own preferences.

4. This works positively too. Let's say you're a Labour voter. If they're running two candidates in your area, you want to put them 1 and 2. But in which order? Put the least likely candidate higher, since the preference will keep them in the game longer. If he does drop out, your vote will then drop down to bolster the other Labour candidate.

5. Consider saving the deposits of brave independents who have no chance of winning a seat. They've done what you and I didn't have the stones to do - put their money and neck on the line, and tried to take on the big boys in a David and Goliath struggle that they cannot win, just to make their point. If there are two or three of these in your constituency, they'll be the first ones to be eliminated.

But if they get sufficient preferences, they'll at least get their deposit back. Once they are eliminated, your vote can then drop down to the candidates you actually want to see elected. So consider giving your number one to the brave independent with no chance of election. It costs you nothing, voting wise, as your vote will remain in play. But it could save them their money.

6. Don't think locally - think nationally. These are Dail elections, not a popularity X-factor vote on which gombeen is most likely to fix the road. Currently, this means your choice is between three options - Fine Gael, Fine Gael and Labour, or Fine Gael minority with Independent support. (Fine Gael and Green or Fine Gael and Sinn Fein are both extremely unlikely, and anything involving Fianna Fail is a non-runner.)

So, if you want to see a Fine Gael government without Labour, Labour candidates should go below Fianna Fail ones and everyone else on your ballot. Equally, if you want to see Labour in government and do not wish to see a Blueshirt only government, you want to put Labour candidates as high up as possible, and the Fine Gael ones below Fianna Fail, Christian Solidarity and everyone else.

7. Punish incompetence, corruption and criminality. If one of your local candidates was part of the last corrupt government that sold out the nation to benefit bankers, punish them for it. If your local TD is a known Independent gombeen man who propped the government up in order to play the big shot locally, punish them for it.

Only if we punish these people, not only by de-selecting them but also by giving them the smallest number of votes possible, will they begin to understand that such venality is no longer to be tolerated by the Irish electorate.

8. Don't be too concerned about giving higher preferences to distasteful parties. If you follow the tips above, you may disconcertingly find people like Christian Solidarity or Sinn Fein unusually high on your ballot. Don't worry too much about this. They're not getting elected (caveat for those dozen or so constituencies where there is a Shinner in the mix) and it's actually more important to make your vote work for you hard in the manner described above than to be overly worried about giving a looney your number 6 preference.

After all, mad as a brush and potentially dangerous they may well be, but they aren't getting elected and even if they did they could not do as much damage to this state as was just done by the last government.

9. As we say in the North, vote early and vote often! Exercise your democratic right today, because if you don't you've no right to complain later. Make sure others do too. Give people a lift to the polling station if you can. Help old people out to vote (unless they're FF tribalists, in which case, feel free to barricade them in for the day!)

Most of the planet don't have the democracy we do. They're on the streets risking their lives for it all over North Africa right now. So don't let the incompetence and corruption of our politicians jaundice you and make you apathetic about the system. It's a good system but you have to use it and you have to make it work for you. Hopefully this post will help you do just that.

Rumours from the campaign trail

Some great rumours out on the campaign trail so far, most of them libellous and likely untrue and probably all of them being spun by rival candidates about each other.

My favourite election yarns so far -

* Not one but two candidates in Dublin are allegedly hiding secret illegitimate children. Extra points for candidate A for his secret illegitimate child apparently being black.

* A candidate who supposedly has more than a passing acquaintance with the gay porn industry in their past.

* Straw grasping award goes to a number of Fianna Fail incumbents who are telling anyone who will listen that people should vote for them to ensure a 'strong opposition', which is apparently 'essential' for a healthy democracy to function.

* The candidate allegedly telling voters not to give Joe Higgins a preference because if he's elected Clare Daly will become an MEP for Dublin.

* My "Avril and Mairead' award for the best internal party spats so far - the evergreen rivalry between FF's Mary Fitzpatrick and Bertie's bagboy Cyprian Brady in Dub Central. Silver medal position for the battle of the outgoing ministers Hanafin V Andrews in Dun Laoghaire. Bronze to Fine Gael's Derek Keating and Frances Fitzgerald in Dublin Mid West.

* The Dublin South West candidate who reckons that his rivals are taking down his posters is mistaken - it's actually a craze among the local kids who are making Halloween type masks out of them!

* The Nigerian ministerial advisor on integration to the Lenihan brothers was so impressed by their understanding of migrant cultures that he quit his job in disgust to run against Brian in Dublin West.

* Oh, and could someone tweet or poke or (forgive my retro-ness) even just tell TV star Dylan Haskins that the real election is held in voting booths around the country and not on internet discussion boards? The poor lad apparently thinks he's got it in the bag because he topped an online voting poll, bless him. The bookies think otherwise in a big way, needless to say.

As you can see, I don't get out of Dublin much. I'm reliant on ye all out beyond the big bollix to let me know what great yarns you've heard about the candidates in your area.

Don't get pissed at me if I have to moderate them though. I don't want sued.

The good, the bad and the ugly

What's good about the US elections tonight? None of the multi-millionaire big spenders managed to buy themselves political power. The kerrazzee wrestling CEO didn't manage it, nor did the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who exported jobs out of America, nor the eBay CEO.

It seems that the day and hour when you can simply purchase power is not today and not this hour. Not yet. Thank goodness for that. It's a small mercy.

The bad? Stalemate in US politics for the next two years. Looks like a Democratic Senate and a Republican House. But the Republicans are riven between the GOP old guard and the Tea Party, which is itself riven between the likes of Marco Rubio and the likes of Christine 'not a witch' O'Donnell.

The tea partiers want smaller government, but they don't know what to cut except Obama's healthcare programme, his one achievement which he won't give up. The GOP wing, as demonstrated by Bush, are as big spending as the Democrats. And the Democrats have just been viciously pasted.

The ugly? Proposition 19 seems to have been voted down in California. This was the proposal to legalise and tax cannabis in the state. It would have brought billions in revenue to the bankrupt state. And it would have set in process a much-needed wave of legalisation across the world had it passed and been demonstrated to work.

The war on drugs has failed utterly. Cannabis is one of the most benign of psychoactive substances, rated only this week by prominent medical journal The Lancet as much less damaging to individuals or society than alcohol.

America's demand for drugs won't recede just because cannabis remains illegal. People will continue to die by the thousand in Mexico and elsewhere to feed that appetite. And the civil liberty to choose freely a favoured intoxicant has again been denied.

According to exit polls, the vote broken down by age was as follows: 18-29 59%, 30-44 50%, 45-64 44, 65+ 32.

So it was voted down by grannies. Boomers are slightly opposed (what utter hypocrisy) and younger voters (under 45) are in favour. It's inevitable that cannabis will be legalised in California, then America, then the rest of the world, in future years. But during each of those years, criminals will pocket billions and thousands will die as a result of this ludicrous prohibition.

All that glitters

It's US mid-term election night.

The exit polls are predicting a hammering for the Democrats. That should mean good news for the dollar and bad news for precious metals on the markets.

After all, the perception is that the Obama socialists (US perception, not mine) are flagrant tax-and-spenders, while Republicans are fiscal scrooges.

But of course, these aren't ordinary Republicans. These are people who have to issue ads telling the electorate that they aren't witches. These are ill-educated, small government looneys who have, with the support of frothing-mouthed cheerleaders at Fox News, successfully eaten up the GOP.

The markets like Republicans. But they don't like looneys. They probably like Obama better than they like looneys. (After all, he did bail out Wall Street.)

That fact, coupled with the inevitability of Ben Bernanke's great dollar printing machine going back into overdrive tomorrow, is driving the dollar back down and precious metals up.

Today, the Aussie dollar smashed through parity with the greenback. Expect the Swiss franc and the Canuck dollar to do likewise shortly.

What does this all mean for Ireland? Well, firstly, we're still screwed. The Germans are keeping the euro high in the ongoing currency war, meaning we're buggered on exports outside of the EU (ie to two of our nearest and biggest trading partners, Britain and America, who are both printing money like it was going out of fashion.)

Secondly, a bunch of Tea Party nutjobs won't look outside their narrow national interests. There will be more rabble-rousing about illegal immigrants, and more demands to repatriate jobs back to America. Either President Hopey Changey concedes to some of this rhetoric or he kisses a second term goodbye over two years of lame duck administrating.

The gelding of the Obama administration in conjunction with the destruction of the GOP by Tea Party malignants is not and cannot be good news for us.

Right now, Ireland is so far gone that we need a white knight to save us, and the Germans won't play ball, and the Americans are taking off their armour and hiding in a cave. And for all the Fianna Fail rhetoric and ass-kissing in Beijing, I wouldn't expect any help from the Chinese.

After all, they made their money playing a rigged currency game for the past few years, leading to the current beggar-thy-neighbour currency wars.

In 24 hours, America will look inward. It will look bankrupt. And it will look stupid.

And our Uncle Sam won't be playing sugar Daddy to Ireland possibly ever again.

Gordon's last stand

I bet Brown doesn't read this blog. And that's going to be something he'll regret, because I know how to save his career and his legacy.

He needs to call Nick Clegg and offer him the following improvement on the existing offer - two seats at cabinet for him and Vince Cable, one of them being that of the Prime Minister. And insists that he or Darling, with Cable's assistance, ride out the financial crisis.

Brown then makes a public speech acknowledging he has been rebuffed as PM, and offers the public change they can believe in - a Clegg-led administration, heavy on the Labour ministers, but with the addition of Clegg and Cable.

And he offers his own expertise as Chancellor to steer Britain out of the crisis with Cable's help.

He then steps down to cabinet and does just that, the one thing he does well - manage the economy, alongside Cable. The markets would believe in that team.

Gordon could step down, and will do if Cameron puts a deal together. It will be the cruel end that most politicians suffer. But there is the chance to stay in the game, redeem his reputation and do the state some service.

He should offer Clegg the poisoned chalice of sitting in Number 10, holding together a rainbow alliance, and the chance to implement their policy in Government.

He should enjoy this one last victory over the Tories and over Mandelson, who would take no part in such a cabinet and would be banished to the Lords, which would then be immediately overhauled.

And he should take this chance, this last stand, to redeem his legacy with one last masterful stint at the job he's good at, rather than the job of Prime Minister.

Stop voting like your Grandad did

One of the many problems with the Irish electoral system (whose PR-STV system is pretty excellent) is that too many people vote tribally.

Not tribally like in the headcount that passes for political elections in the North, but tribally nonetheless.

Even stupider is the fact that there is no overriding sovereignty issue dividing the tribes in the South. It's an antique inheritance from the civil war. Why else do people continually vote FF and FG? Primarily because they consider themselves of the respective tribe.

I always find it fascinating when people cut loose from inherited opinion and think for themselves. To this end, the extension of VoteMatch to include Northern Ireland is fascinating.

My results didn't surprise me:
SDLP 51%
Sinn Fein 45%
Alliance 37%
UUP 35%
DUP 28%

What did surprise me what how little I agree with ANY of the parties on major issues. Hence I shouldn't be surprised when half of what the SDLP choose to do infuriates me, and more than half of what the Shinners do.

I'd love to see a version for the Republic. I think probably three-quarters of the electorate might be surprised to find how little they agree with the people they vote for. Perhaps they might even change their voting patterns as a result.

Wouldn't that be revolutionary?

Well, it would beat holding a sit-in with five mates at the Anglo-Irish Bank on a Saturday.

I'm voting against Fianna Fail today

In the locals, in the by-election and in the European elections.

I will carefully arrange my preferences to insure my vote doesn't come within an arse's roar of benefiting any Fianna Fail candidate.

Thankfully, given the abysmal candidates they have offered me, there is no confliction whatsoever for me in doing so.

Were Seamus Brennan Sr running, for example, there might be a slight twang of regret at putting his preference bottom, below non-entities like George TV and kerazees like that O'Gorman punter.

But thankfully they've made it oh-so-easy for me to punish them completely and properly for their corrupt mismanagement of this nation to their own selfish ends by running some of the most unqualified, shirking, gombeen eejits one could ever dread to meet.

These people are the wannabes (or in Eoin Ryan's case the hasbeen) in an institution that has lined its pockets and those of its wealthy benefactors at our expense.

They are the party that beggared the nation, who destroyed the economy for generations, and who are still doing so. A party so bereft of morality that, far from apologising for their many, many corrupt and shady deals in government with developers, rapist papists, and giving away our natural resources, they are still in utter denial of having done anything wrong.

These are the people who stole our gas, who let rapists away with it and paid for their sins with our money, who puffed property to the sky for their developer funders so that ordinary couples are now in debt for generations with only a shoebox in a dormitory burb to show for it, who took brown envelopes to rezone sites of national heritage for motorways.

Vote Fianna Fail LAST. Give them the very dog-end of your preferences.

Go right down the ballot, past the fringe parties, past the Shinners, past the single issue candidates, past the kooks, the loons, the anti-immigration nutjobs and the psycho Catholics, past even the Green lapdogs all the way to the end. And then vote Fianna Fail with your bottom preferences, or no preference at all.

It's time they were held accountable for their crimes. Let it start on Friday with a ringing rejection of all they've done to us. Let's get off our knees and kick the gombeen bastards in the bollocks.

Mystic Skinner foresees again

You thought I'd forgotten, didn't you?

There I was, getting all carried away with my new Axis of Evil. I'd gone and forgotten to make my 2009 predictions. Nope. I hadn't. It's just that they're so depressing I was in two minds about posting them.

Make no mistake, this isn't going to be the best year for the vast majority of people on the planet. There will be economic upheaval, recession, war, famine, epidemics, poverty and the continued denial of human rights and democracy.

But specifics. You want specifics, right? Okay.

1. A severe crash in the housing market of Britain and Ireland, even worse than what's already occurred. The governments forced to intervene with banks to prevent massive scale repossessions and defaults.

2. The credit card lifestyle bill finally lands on the mat. Plenty of people with no assets other than a few payments on a 08-D car are going to find themselves defaulting on some very expensive credit loans. The problem of arranging refinancing, from semi-bankrupt banks who themselves cannot get credit, for these unsupported loans is going to stretch the banking sector beyond breaking point.

3. Multinationals use the excuse of recession to relocate to Eastern Europe. Cue 100,000 redundancies next year in Ireland.

4. Euro or no euro (and given that 40% of our trade is with the sterling zone even today, the euro is not currently helping), we might actually have to call in the IMF if the government cannot raise the funds to deal with their income shortfall AND that of the banks, especially if the credit card bill arrives too.

5. Empty shopfronts in high streets. Cars with for sale signs. Travel agents, estate agents, motor retailers all going bust.

6. A general election in Ireland after either the Greens grow stones and pull out of Government or they lose a crucial Dail vote, an election which Fianna Fail lose quite significantly to a Fine Gael-Labour coalition.

7. Obama's Clinton re-run presidency gets off to a poor start with a series of foreign affairs crises that even Bill and Hill can't solve for the noobie. For potential flashpoints, think Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, Indonesia and as usual most of Africa.

8. Britain definitely starts pulling out of their occupations. Troops to start leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. As recession bites, there will be a further round of culls in the Northern Irish public service sector.

9. Chelsea for the league, with Liverpool nipping their heels in second. United a distant third. Fergie to quit at long last. Perhaps Wenger to join him in walking from the Premiership.

10. The beginning of the end of low cost air travel. As airlines consolidate, and routes decrease, and more and more craft are parked in the Nevada desert, the consumer ends up with the worst of all worlds - prices like the luxury days of the 1970s with service of contemporary Ryanair.

JC Skinner wants your vote

There is a large proportion of the American electorate who are unconvinced by either Obama's vision thing or McCain's maverick conservatism.

Reluctantly, I have finally agreed to put my name forward following a massive groundswell of appeals that I enter my candidacy in the forthcoming election:

The American presidential election digested

From the inimitable Fred Reed comes the most succinct summary of the choice America faces in the forthcoming months about which leader to choose:

We’ve got Obama, an empty suit with a good line of patter and a past few write about, and McCain, a pugnacious senile temper tantrum who can’t remember whether Al Qaeda is Sunni or Shiite.
Not too promising.
That leaves Clitler, a strange visitor from another planet probably and crooked as kite string in a ceiling fan, but neither stupid, ignorant, nor crazy.

Needless to say, he's a Hilary supporter by default. Though given he resides in Mexico, she's unlikely to benefit from his vote.

He's pretty good on current and former presidents too:

Bill Clinton was said to be the first black president. W is the first kinky president, which is a whole new approach to democracy.
All sorts of countries torture people, because intelligence agencies naturally attract cowboys, assassins, incorrigible juveniles, and sadists.
But W’s S&M operation in Gitmo is a first. Whipseys and Cheneys. It’s because he’s a Christian. Poor Jesus.
His followers act like the Marquis de Sade—torturing, burning old women at the stake, turning water into water boards. I’d love to know what movies you might find on hard drives at the White House.

There you have it - the five minute lesson in US presidents past, present and future. Perhaps they should lure Fred back across the Rio Grande and stick him in the White House. Not that he'd do it, of course. He knows Washington too well:

Washington is a curious city, separated from most of the rest of the United States by a gaping cultural chasm. It is probably the nation’s best educated town, and it is certainly a place where people know the score.
The population consists of politicians, reporters, beltway bandits attached to Uncle Sucker’s well-worn mammaries, wonks from policy shops, or outfits supplying all of them with one thing or another.
In a country that doesn’t, they travel.
It doesn’t make them better people than others. It means that they know it’s all a game, a matter of whose rice bowl gets filled by what contract and who gets re-elected how.
Things are dirty and rigged and one either hides things from the public or misrepresents them to gull the rubes. This of course is no secret. It doesn’t have to be. It works anyway.

But if Fred was, somehow, to assume the reins of power, he does have a plan, a single idea to put an end to the war in Iraq. I like his plan. It's neat, and it just might work:

I will strap the mothers of the graduating class of Harvard to the front bumpers of Humvees in Baghdad, and see how long support for the war lasts.

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Mugabe: the endgame

It's the endgame for Mugabe.

He may have been asleep at the wheel for years, ruling Zimbabwe via syphilitic spite and paranoid oppression as it collapsed into a downward spiral of economic and social disaster.

But no one's prepared to tell him to leave just yet.

Strange to think that this year, these few weeks actually, will have accounted for the passing of Ian Paisley, Bertie Ahern and Robert Mugabe. Historians will have fun making sense of that list in years to come.

At this point, of course, Mugabe, the great survivor, has outlasted the Irishmen. While the Western media, briefed by the MDC, are announcing that Zanu-PF have lost the parliamentary elections and Mugabe the presidency, it's worth looking at what the Zimbabwean media are saying.

They're saying it's a hung parliament and that the presidency will require a re-run, as neither candidate surpassed 50% of the vote.

Of course the Herald is a government-run mouthpiece for Zanu. We know this. But that's why it is informative at this time when we're being informed of MDC victory by breathless foreign correspondents who are actually in Johannesburg and nowhere near the ground.

It's very likely what the MDC are saying is correct. It's most probable they did win both elections. It's certainly likely that Zanu sought to rig the results.

But if Zanu had really rigged the results, as they have done in the past, we wouldn't still be at this political impasse in Zimbabwe.

So what is really happening on the ground? What can we understand by this long, drawn out count, by these gnomic reports of ties from the government media?

Simply this: Zanu wants power-sharing in government, and none of them have the balls to tell Mugabe he's lost. They want a second ballot to confirm it categorically, but only after they have obtained concessions from Tsvangirai.

What concessions? The ones he has already offered. No witch hunts. No prosecutions. National unity.

And if they don't get them? Well, there's always force of arms.

But there is not the appetite for a civil war on any side. The country is too beleaguered, too ravaged by hyperinflation, unemployment, the collapse of the farming and tourism industries, by the madman's stubbornness.

Once he's gone, things can get better. Zanu are happy to dispense with him in order to have a say in restoring this beautiful land to something like its former prosperity.

It's just that no one yet has the balls to tell him he's got to go.

Previously: Everyone waits for the madman to die

How much democracy would you like?

How much democracy do you have? And how much would you like?

If you're reading this, chances are you live in a 'democracy'.

That's because a founding pillar of democracy is freedom of speech. It's also because liberal democracies encourage optimal economic circumstances, leading to more widely spread affluence, and by extension, greater computer ownership and internet access.

Or so we're told.

I live in Ireland. It's a 'democracy'. Most of the people who read this blog are from Ireland and other Anglophone countries like Britain, America, Australia, Canada and so on. They're all 'democracies' too.

But are any of those places truly democratic, and what do we mean by the word 'democracy' anyway?

I'm a democratic fundamentalist myself. I believe in the primacy of the will of the people. From where else does executive power draw its legitimacy?

But is voting once every four or five years for local representatives, who then subordinate their wills to those of rigid party structures in order to secure advancement, really an assertion of your will?

Do those representatives truly represent the views of those who elect them? Is the ability to remove such representatives once every five years genuinely sufficient to ensure that they act upon the will of those who elect them?

Of course not. And this is the fundamental problem with Western Democracy as we know it.

Let's consider Ireland:
An unelected President.
A head of government that the people didn't elect (and never do), who is mired in dodgy financial dealings.
Inconvenient referendum results ignored by the executive, and re-run until their chosen result is obtained.
Licorice all-sorts coalitions in control, composed not by the people but by the political party structures.
Support for a war that the people marched in their hundreds of thousands on the streets to reject.

None of that truly represents the will of the people. It is undemocratic to the core.

Then there are the undemocratic elements we share with other Western democracies. Things like irregular elections, executives that are elected by parties not the people, lengthy periods where the public are unable to challenge any government decision except through protest or the media.

Not to mention the vested interests that subvert democracy here and elsewhere. Everything from the overtly corrupt - like big business lobbying and cosying up with the politicians - to the structural, such as the internal party structures that inflict governments on the public that they never chose, such as the FF/PD coalition, or the current incumbent government.

A true representation of the popular vote any time in my living memory ought to have elected a FF/FG coalition. But it never did.

Democracy as a word comes from Greek roots - demos, meaning the people, and kratia, meaning to rule. Democracy literally means the system through which the people rule themselves. By that definition, we don't have a democracy in Ireland. Almost nowhere actually has a democracy, in fact.

There's a reason for that, plenty of reasons in fact. Liberals tell us that true democracy is dangerous, as it amounts to the tyranny of the majority. Given true democracy, like neanderthals we would all vote to disenfranchise gays, ethnic minorities and so on. Everywhere would be like Stormont once was - rule of the majority for the majority only.

The right also hates true democracy. That's because the people get in the way of important economic decision-making. People want to keep national resources and not give them to private enterprise. They want costly, bloated public services like health and education that private enterprise can deliver more efficiently. Basically, they get in the way of profit-making.

Is it any wonder then, with such opposition, that democracy has never been permitted to flourish?

Except in one place, that is. One tiny country, with almost no natural resources, and difficult geography. A country that, without military power, has managed to remain one of the most peaceful and affluent on Earth for centuries, despite internal divisions of geography, language and culture.

That country is Switzerland. You'd have thought such a successful system would have given other places food for thought. But apparently not. The rest of us cannot be trusted with the direct democracy enjoyed by the Swiss.

The Swiss are the living example that the early American constitutionalists who first iterated the fear that true democracy leads to tyranny of the majority were wrong.

In Switzerland, if you don't like a law, you consult your fellow citizens about it. If 49,999 others don't like it either, you can challenge that law and a referendum is automatically called on the issue. Same deal if you want a law introduced.

Ancient Athenian democracy was so concerned about the potential of the rich and powerful hijacking elections and garnering power to their own ends that they eschewed voting. The government was decided by lot instead, on the assumptions that everyone (alright, everyone who was a native, and wasn't a woman or slave) was equally qualified for public office purely by virtue of being a citizen.

That's an intriguing concept to ponder in this age of Hilary Clinton spending $100m (and counting!) on her US presidential campaign. Where did all that money come from, and why? If she is elected, how beholden will she be to those funders? The same question can be asked of any of the candidates in either party, of course. They're all tainted.

I'm not suggesting a return to Athenian democracy, not even one based on universal suffrage. The fear of Roisin Ingle or Steve Staunton accidentally becoming Taoiseach is simply too much.

But we could definitely go down the road that Switzerland has, with many more decisions being turned over to the people to decide for themselves. A referendum on the war would have shut Shannon to US warplanes. A referendum on the health service would have rejected Harney's transparent privatisation plan and insisted on proper funding of beds and services. A referendum on the M3 would have ensured the road went nowhere near the Hill of Tara.

You can begin see why the powers-that-be don't want you to have too much democracy now, can't you? The pesky people would get in the way of making the decisions they want - decisions that enrich them and their funders and pals at the expense of the rest of us.

I'd like to see a lot more of the decisions in Ireland made by the people. We really aren't as stupid as the professional political class think we are. Usually, we're well ahead of their curve.

And I'd like to see regular referenda as a prelude to much more democracy, including a strong right to impeach any member of the Oireachtas or indeed the President, by way of popular vote. Don't like the Minister for Transport? Get the petition together, and we'll have a vote on removing him from office.

We don't live in a real democracy. We live in a land, like most other lands, run by a political class for their own benefit and that of their funders, occasionally influenced by the fourth estate, who themselves aren't shy at posing to represent the people while peddling their own agendas. Here's what Fred Reed has to say about democracy and the press in an American context.

So how much democracy do you really want? How much do you deserve? And when are we going to get up off our knees, remove our collective mouth from the peckers of those who rule us with contempt, and demand the right to rule ourselves?

Fine Gael unleash secret electoral weapon

One shouldn't be cruel. So I'll spare the barbed remarks, other to point out that no JFK is he.

But seriously! Is this the future face of the blueshirts?


Apparently, he runs the young Fine Gael show in the Dublin area. Which might partially explain the repeatedly poor performance that party has had in the capital, especially among younger voters?


But at least he knows Inda. That's nice, he'll have someone to discuss the pain of electoral defeat with.

Michael McDole

As promised, here are some pics of Michael McDowell at the recent general election count at the RDS, during which he made his speech resigning from political life.

There has been some debate in the media and online about whether McDowell was mobbed and jeered by Sinn Fein supporters as he made his speech. This first pic clearly indicates that it was the media who did the mobbing.

McDowell was no sooner in the RDS than he was surrounded by photographers and hacks, as this pic indicates.



Here he is giving his speech about loving his country and so on.



And following his departure, where he was indeed jeered by a People Before Profit member carrying a sign reading 'Michael McDole', John Gormley of the Green Party arrived in time to be declared elected.



Finally, some people might be pleased to know that the 'Michael McDole' sign, a piece of history from this particular general election campaign, was retrieved for posterity and is now in a safe place. Here's me posing with it!

I'd just like to add that I was not the person waving it about at McDowell, nor was I the person who retrieved it from the trashcan. Neither a protestor nor a bin-dipper am I! (But special thanks to those who did retrieve it and who let me borrow it for this snap - you know who you are!)

Back from the Orient

I'm now back from the far east, and have quite a number of observations to make about China. But I'll do that next week, as it's impossible to ignore the small matter of a general election this week.

It looks like Bribeable Bert's in real trouble over the small matter of receiving free houses and maintenance buy-offs from shadowy businessmen in Manchester. This doesn't exactly fill me with hope for the nation, since he's still neck and neck to form the next government.

What does it actually take to convince the rump 35% or so that the current batch of Fianna Fail are a ragbag of crooks and incompentants? Do they actually need to see them exiting the Bank of Ireland wearing stripey pyjamas and masks carrying bags with 'Swag' written on them before they understand?

Anyhow, there is at least cheering news that the neo-cons who've actually been running the country for the past decade, while the Fianna Failures were busy lining their pockets, are set to be wiped out.

At least the nation seems to have copped on to the PDs at long last. Perhaps it was Harney's presiding over ever deteriorating health services, while trying to sell off the best bits to her mates, or perhaps it is the perennial frothing mouthed anti-democratic insanity of McDowell that has led them to this pass.

But since those two are the only ones likely to be returned to the Dail, it's more likely that the public have finally copped that there is no PD party. It's just a flag of convenience flown by a truly bizarre bunch of right-wing fellow travellers, each with their own personal reasons for wishing to be a big fish in an ever-evaporating pond.

On the other hand, the Shinners seems set to consolidate a lot of gains, perhaps even enough to force a hung Dail or minority government. In which case, the question is will bribeable Bert be persuaded into bed with the gunmen?

Labour are continuing to insist that they won't assist a Fianna Fail coalition, but that rather depends on them making up the numbers with Fine Gael and, perhaps, the Greens. Which it's looking dubious that they will.

The bookies still like the look of a FF-Lab coalition despite Rabbitte's rantings, and if that does transpire, you can expect to see Pat hoist by his Mullingar petard, leaving the way clear for Brendan Howlin to become Tanaiste.

In short, it's the most exciting, and crucial, election held in Ireland for well over a generation.

Make sure to play your part by casting a vote this week, even if it's only for the Christian Solidarity or Immigration Control candidates.

Actually, I'm joking. If either of those appeal, you shouldn't be allowed to vote.

Coming soon: why Irish builders should move to Tibet.

Vote Skinner!

I was a bit late registering as a political party, so I'm a 'write-in' candidate.

I'm running in your constituency.

You have to write in my name, though. Just scribble out any name you recognise and write JC Skinner instead, or go for my preferred option of writing it in at the top of the list and drawing a separate wee box and putting the number one in there.

If I get elected, I intend to introduce a private member's bill making cocaine mandatory for Enda Kenny, introduce a law declaring Michael McDowell illegal, and I will personally host a dinner in Manchester every week for any of Bertie Ahern's mates who want to give me £30,000.

I will also cull Mary Harney and process her into food for starving economic migrants.

The Green Party will be relocated to Rockall, which will be made independent and given to them to live underground on, like hobbits.

Sinn Fein members will be made to fight the Irish Rangers to the death in special gladiatorial bouts to be held in Croke Park. They will be armed with pikes and copies of Danny Morrison's novel, 'West Belfast.' The Rangers will be issued with Uzis.

Ian Paisley will be stuffed, mounted and glued onto the side of Croagh Patrick to make a nice Mount Rushmore type national monument.

The Hill of Tara will be placed on giant stilts so the motorway can go under it. We will also build a tunnel to Iceland, to reduce commuting times to Dublin from the Arctic Circle.

A new Luas line will be routed through Bono's living room, so that we can all 'see where he lives', like he said we should in one of his songs. It will feature a loop-the-loop section.

Vote Skinner. Better than the other shower.

Dail dissolved

Well, it was getting embarrassing.

First telling our unelected President to cancel all appointments for Friday afternoon, then bottling it at the last minute.

Then hapless Bert gets a quick graft of backbone from the party, who are fed up at watching their coalition lead erode in the polls.

And it's a dash to the Aras this morning to get La McAleese's autograph before she goes walkies abroad again, as is her wont.

So the Dail is now dissolved. A pity that couldn't be taken literally. Every five years, we could douse the lot of them in a strong hydrochloric acid bath for being useless, pocket-lining chancers.

It would certainly winnow out the less altruistic candidates for election, that's for sure.

Well, folks, you now have until May 24th to decide which chancer running in your neck of the woods is less likely to shaft the economy and you personally than the other chancers.

Don't let apathy win. Your vote counts. Quiz them on the doorsteps, question them on the issues that matter to you. Tell them about your shoddy health service, overpriced public-private partnerships on what should be essential infrastructure and your concerns about the housing market.

Demand costed plans for their manifestos. Seek evidence that they are not the corrupt, pocket-lining time-servers that we have so long suffered in this country in place of public representatives.

Consider voting for candidates that highlight issues you believe in, even if they won't form a government. People who espouse green issues, father's rights, a united Ireland, the preservation of your local hospital.

But make sure to give a preference high up to the candidate of the government of your choice.

Make your say count. There's no mandate for moaning if you didn't vote in the first place. This is your opportunity to hold politicians to account. It only happens once every four or five years. Use it.

Vote for Parents' Rights

Voters in four constituencies in Ireland will get the chance to vote for parents' rights in the forthcoming election after the Fathers Rights-Responsibility Party became the state's newest official political party this week.

Candidates include former MEP candidate Liam O'Gogain, a veteran campaigner for shared parenting and founder of campaigning organisation Parental Equality, and Alan Beirne, one of Parental Equality's leading members who came to public prominence when he featured in RTE's groundbreaking documentary series on divorce some years back.

Unlike our current Taoiseach, who had wealthy pals to buy him a house and bankroll his marital separation, many divorced and separated fathers in Ireland suffer real financial hardship when their relationships break down.

And unlike our current Taoiseach, they do not always gain unlimited or even any access to their children following separation.

The creakingly antique laws relating to parenting in Ireland are predicated on the outdated belief that a woman's place is in the home and the children's place is at her apron-strings.

Hence the phenomenon of so many children who are now being raised in Ireland without meaningful influence from their fathers. Around 40% of all births in Ireland are now to unmarried parents, but what those many fathers often do not realise is that the state gives their relationship with their children absolutely no protection.

They are not granted automatic guardianship of their children, and if they split with their children's mother, they must petition for access via the courts. They must also seek 'custody', that odious phrase with all its connotations of children as possessions.

Instances of bitter women denying fathers access to their kids, and being facilitated in doing so by our outdated legal system, run into the thousands. In fact, Irish fathers face the worst discrimination in Europe.

The adversarial, Kramer Versus Kramer, format pits mother against father on a queered playing pitch which ensures only that fathers must empty their pockets to finance their former partner's lives, while being simultaneously unable to have meaningful relationships with their children.

The result is that we are raising an experimental generation of children with no paternal input into their lives. Forget the media lie of deadbeat dads. We have a deadbeat system, and it is no wonder that it results in an ASBO generation where the Department of Social Welfare has become husband to lone mothers and father to their children.

The Fathers Rights-Responsibility Party advocate a mediated, shared parenting system that benefits all, especially the children.

To all voters in constituencies where their candidates are running, I urge you to offer these candidates a preference in the forthcoming election, a first preference if possible.

That way, you can send a message out to the incoming government, whoever they may be, that it is time we dragged our legal system out of the dark ages for our children's sake.

Gambling is a mug's game

Gambling is a mug's game.

Paddy Power didn't announce record profits for the umpteenth year in a row due to the amount of cash he's giving away, you know?

Nevertheless, gambling gets more and more popular every year. Now, I have an unusual perspective on gambling. I once worked as a professional croupier. I used to see all sorts come through the doors of the casino, blinded by the neon lights and the sheer James Bondness of it all.

And this in a sleepy South of England town! Most would leave a few hours later, down a few quid but having in many cases enjoyed themselves. After all, if they'd kept their punting to a certain level, they'd have spent less than they might have otherwise in the pub, and at least they wouldn't be waking with a blinding hangover the next day.

But there was always one or two who couldn't let it lie. A former soap star used to drive up to our casino in order not to be spotted in the plush London clubs. He'd regularly blow most of his not insubstantial wages on a single Saturday night.

He could've and probably should've been down the Ivy or some other West End glamspot, trying to score with vampy wannabes and sipping Cosmopolitans. Instead he was up with us, in the quiet hush of a regional casino, handing over his hard-earned.

The saddest case was a little old lady who'd come in every Friday evening with a plastic bag full of used notes. We used to wildly speculate on where she got the cash, which often topped three grand.

She never left till the early hours, and usually with virtually nothing left. Her game was roulette, and the little ball just didn't seem to favour her one bit.

One day, I was in a distant part of town, hoping to hook up with a guy who was selling some concert tickets. I stopped off in a little corner shop to buy some smokes and there she was, behind the till. Throughout the shop, the shelves were mostly empty.

She looked sheepish, and I couldn't meet her eye. Clearly, she was losing the shop's take on a weekly basis. I bought the smokes, attended the concert and then left the job within a couple of weeks.

I used to play poker long before it was online or popular. My friends, even my acquaintances, won't play me anymore, even though it's very likely they'd take my money these days, as my interest in the game waned in indirect proportion to its popularity. I haven't played much since they started televising it and sticking it online.

But I used to like the game. It's a cold hard mix of luck and skill. And it's beautifully karmic, unlike most gambling.

If you've got a lot of chips in front of you, somewhere across the table, someone you know has lost them. You've got to be able to look them in the eye and accept that, even as you have to look them in the eye and accept it when they've got the chipstack and you're the one on your uppers.

Back in 2000, a pal and me decided to find out could we make a living as professional gamblers. Not at poker, but by punting on sports mainly. We reckoned we knew as much about the games as the odds layers, and had a good eye for a decent bet.

We kept detailed and accurate accounts of all bets for a year exactly. At the end of it all, I was up about six hundred quid, my pal back around four hundred. We'd actually done the bookies out of a grand in cash!

However, when I worked out the hourly rate of income, ie how many hours had I spent reading, researching and thinking about my bets that it had taken to make that six hundred quid, it soon became apparent that gambling would never replace going out and earning a living.

Then a couple of years afterwards, I was in a pub in Rathmines, (South Dublin for the uninitiated), and met a bloke who worked as an odds setter for one of the big bookmaking firms. He told me, in tedious detail, about the form, home life and personal circumstances of even youth team members of Irish football teams.

He had to know that detail in order to set the odds, and he wasn't the only one employed in that capacity. A few times a week, he and his peers would gather and argue the toss over every soccer and GAA game, discussing likelihoods of certain players taking the pitch and so on.

It quickly became apparent that I'd never know as much about the games I had a punt on as the guys laying the odds. In other words, I'd been pretty damn lucky back in 2000.

So it seems to me, having been both sides of the table and lived through it without losing my shirt, that gambling is a mug's game. I'll still go out and stick a few quid on a football game that I'm attending or watching on telly, just to heighten the interest as it were.

But I've long dispensed with ideas of making money out of the passtime. I never frequent card clubs or casinos now, don't play any poker, and crucially I bet buttons rather than serious amounts of money.

I view stories of people suffering from gambling problems with dismay. Medical research shows that gambling is as potent an addiction as cocaine. I consider the development of 'super-casinos' in Britain as short-termist and highly dangerous. I'm very concerned about the proliferation of card clubs and online gambling in Ireland.

But I wouldn't ban it. It's unbannable. Gambling would only go underground, back to the shady criminal class who once oversaw all punting. Instead, I place my few quid on the odd game or event I have an interest in anyway, and permit lady luck to do her best and worst, safe in the knowledge that the rent is never at risk.

If only everyone could obtain the same perspective on gambling, I'd feel a lot better about giving money to and taking money from the bookies.

People sometimes ask me for tips, as if I have any great insight into the wheel of fortune from having spun it professionally for a while. I don't generally offer any, because I don't want to be anyone's enabler.

But just this once, I'll mention a bet I've placed. I think the odds are good, and I think it could come off. But if it doesn't, please don't blame me. And whatever you do, don't chase your losses if it or any other bet you place loses.

The SDLP are being priced at 2/1 to retain their 18 seats in the Stormont Assembly elections this week. I think those are generous odds. I've put some pin money where my mouth is. We'll know on Thursday if I'm up or down. But either way, it's just a bit of fun.

After Thursday, when the results are all in and the parties sit down to decide whether to go into power sharing again or not, that's when the serious business begins. And if ever there was some future event I'd love to influence, it's that one, not any bet I've ever made.

If you have a gambling problem or if you thing you might do, please click here.

Direct rule scum start squeezing the pips

It comes as no surprise to see that the direct rule paperpushers are seeking to implement a truly outrageous 20% hike in local housing rates.

This of course comes on the back of a previous 12% hike, and the fact that water charges were removed from the rates to be made their own separate charge, the injustice of which I have previously mentioned in recent times.

By my basic maths, if someone was paying around £500 in rates for their average Belfast house (see image) two years ago, then they're looking at a combined rates and water charges bill of somewhere in the region of £790 this year, a whopping increase of over 50% in only two years for a service no better than it was before.

Oh, and of course that would increase to £1,026 by 2009 (a doubling of costs in only four years), and probably by a minimum of 30% or more again in 2010 when houses are again revalued for purposes of assessing these charges.

These increases are not aimed at providing better services to NI householders. The water charge wheeze in fact will almost definitely result in worse service, according to research into previous examples of water provision privatisation in other locales.

No, these charges are simply aimed at reducing Northern Ireland's resource drain on the British taxpayer. In short, London is tiring of us and intends to tax us out of the United Kingdom if necessary.

However, devolved authority in the Assembly would have the power to overturn these appalling attempts to extort money out of people who simply cannot afford it, especially those who are asset-rich and cash-poor as a result of their family homes rocketing in value in recent times.

It is now essential that all the Northern Irish parties come out and categorically state what they think of these arbitrary and scandalous hikes in charges, and what they'll do about them if elected.