Writing for life

Ah America — leaders of the free world — a model for other governments to emulate… or perhaps not.

Pretty unreal stuff — and the scary thing is, most of it’s utterly believable.

Kind of makes you wonder about the much touted public/private partnerships the Irish government’s so fond of, and just how much priorities get skewed when you outsource public services to commercial entities out to make a fast buck.

Outsourcing the Government on Yahoo! Video

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Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 12/03/2008

Henry Kissinger, America’s National Security Advisor during Nixon’s presidency, once remarked that “ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation”. Surveying the Irish political landscape today you’d be hard pressed to disagree with that assessment. We’ve got tribunals coming out of our ears, accusations of corruption flying left, right and centre, a government that nobody really trusts, and an opposition that’s basically woeful.

Did our esteemed government win the last election on the merits of their own policies? Did they cruise back into power, perhaps, on the back of public confidence in their performance? Or did they endure purely and simply because the electorate baulked at voting for even more unpalatable alternatives?

The competent politician appears to be an endangered species in Irealand today. Try picking one out the next time you catch a glimpse of the sparsely populated Dail Eireann on the telly. It’s a task that seems to be much harder than it should be, given that these are the people we’ve selected to represent our best interests at the very pinnacle of public office. Isn’t that disturbing?

So you have Bertie, Brian and Co. sitting pretty, knowing that they don’t really have to excel to retain their primacy. All they need to do is perpetuate the general perception that they’re a wee bit better than the alternative “team” across the floor of the Dail. Let’s face it, that’s hardly a tall order at present, is it? Continue Reading »

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The little “Quote of the Day” gadget in my Google Desktop sidebar threw up this classic today — and I thought “how appropriate” given the current state of Irish politics.

The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’
Larry Hardiman

Now, can anyone think of an Irish politician who might fit the definition… hmmm?

Technorati Tags: Larry Hardiman,Politics,Irish politics,blood sucking parasites

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“Working it” column published in the Career Moves section of The Evening Echo on 18/02/2008

After years of waiting I finally got hooked up to a broadband internet connection just before Christmas. I was over the moon. No more clunky dialup, no more dropped lines, no more waiting around for sites to load, no more being tethered to the phone line when I wanted to check my e-mail.

I was delighted with my 1Mb/sec fixed wireless connection – at last I could experience what this much touted “Web 2,0” had to offer. Then my wife’s sister and her family, who live in France, came to visit for New Year. I was waxing lyrical about the joys of my new broadband connection, when her partner took the wind from my sails. He told me that in France they enjoyed a 24Mbit/sec unlimited download connection for just €15 per month. My contract, for something 1/24^th of the speed with a download cap of 15GB, costs me more than twice that at €37.50… and it’s the only game in town.

Suddenly my enthusiasm began to wane.

When I couldn’t get broadband I was complaining about lack of availability. Now I have it I’m relieved… but not satisfied. Why should we have to endure sub-standard connectivity compared to our European neighbours, especially when the Irish government is touting this country as a centre of technology excellence, and harbours ambitions to become a leading light in Europe’s emerging “knowledge economy”?

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Published as an opinion piece in The Evening Echo on the 06/02/2008

Take a human being and scratch away at the thin veneer of civility, and before long you’ll reveal the true nature of the beast beneath. For all our trappings of a sophisticated society, culture and civilization, at our very core we’re driven by a much more basic set of rules. The instinct to secure the resources we need to survive; to protect ourselves, our families and the members of our particular “tribe”.

Every now and then you’ll notice our thinly veiled tribal roots bubbling to the surface. It happened last week, when former Archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Desmond Connell, secured a temporary injunction to prevent a State inquiry into clerical abuse from accessing Church documents. This was in spite of a promise by current Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, to allow the inquiry “open access” to church files.

To the layperson this turn of events is incomprehensible. It flies in the face of reason, but then the urge to protect members of one’s “tribe” is a base human instinct that can sometimes by-pass reason, common sense and even common decency.

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"Working it" column published in the Career Moves section of The Evening Echo on 17/12/2007

For most of us the old adage “you get what you pay for” will certainly hold true this Christmas. There are exceptions of course, but by and large if we pay more for something it’s reasonable to expect better quality, more refinement or additional features in return for the extra cash. It stands to reason, doesn’t it?

In the private sector the same thing holds true for salaries – in any given field market forces dictate that the better your experience, training and performance the more your services are worth to your employer. Generally if you want the best people you have to offer them the best package, and broadly speaking the more you’re prepared to pay the higher the calibre of employee you’re likely to attract.

That’s in the private sector. When you enter the murky world of public sector pay you can throw the “get what you pay for” argument out of the proverbial window. It seems that the concept of having fair and equitable pay linked to levels of performance and job competency – concepts that have dictated wage increases for the vast majority of us for some time – is something our elected representatives are non too keen on. Given their track record I guess that’s hardly surprising.

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Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 28/11/2007

Last week the most extensive process of consultation with Irish children ever undertaken culminated in the office of the Ombudsman for Children publishing the results of their national “Big Ballot”. The ballot polled children and young people under the age of 18, and involved some 69,000 primary and post-primary pupils across the country.

The results I guess, could hardly be called ground breaking. For instance, the thing highlighted by children as their most pressing concern was the topic “Family and Care”, while last of the five issues they were asked to vote on was “Education”. So no real surprises then.

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"Working it" column published in the Career Moves section of The Evening Echo on 15/10/2007

Gravity issues – that’s what they called them.

This was back in deepest, darkest 1996, when I was working with Transco, the UK infrastructure and pipeline utility that was part of the former British Gas. In an effort to boost morale, promote team-building and foster innovation (sound familiar?) they’d decided to send all employees on an American style “soft skills” training programme called “You make the difference”. It was all very touchy feely, group huggy kind of stuff. Still, quite a lot of it made sense – especially the message that every individual employee has a significant contribution to make.

But I digress. I was talking about gravity issues.

Gravity issues are things that happen that we have absolutely no control or influence over. We can’t do anything about gravity – it’s just there. We learn to live with it, we work around it… we accept it. In short, unless we’re about to head over Niagara Falls in an oak barrel, or dive head first out of an aeroplane, we tend not to worry about it.

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It’s summer and it’s raining again.

OK – perhaps that’s not such a great example of climate change. Soggy Irish summers are hardly a new phenomenon. But whether you think climate change is the single biggest challenge humanity has ever faced, or just an “inconvenient truth” that’s wreaking havoc with this year’s holiday plans – most people now acknowledge that climate change is, in fact, happening. What they can’t seem to agree on is how quickly it’s happening, and just how much of it is our fault.

Whether you subscribe to the idea that human influence is accelerating climate change or not (and popular opinion certainly supports that assertion), over the last few years big business has started to take notice, and green credentials have become valuable corporate currency.

Reading between the lines, of course, this green façade owes little to a desire to do the right thing, a deep seated environmental concern or even a desire to redress the inequities of the past. It’s more about image, and projecting the right image to consumers who are more environmentally aware – and concerned – than ever before. Being green is in vogue, and in an effort to appeal to their target markets big companies are quick to adopt the veneer of environmental propriety.

Of course it’s not just their customers that these organisations are trying to appeal to by turning over a new, greener leaf. Today’s well educated, highly skilled employees are ever more conscious of the impact their activities are having on the world around them. While green credentials don’t necessarily dictate a candidates choice of employer just yet, they are certainly starting to factor into the decision for a growing number of bright young candidates.

The popularisation of environmental issues brought about by climate change has also spawned a slew of new jobs, and lifted others from relative obscurity and thrust them into the limelight. One of the most visible examples of this is in the media. A few years ago your average environmental correspondent would be wheeled out once in a blue moon. Today they’re hitting the front page and prime-time airwaves on a practically daily basis.

It’s the same elsewhere: in industry, academia and across the public and private sector environmentally related positions carry more weight, have a higher profile, attract better salaries and offer improved career prospects. No matter which way you look at it there’s little doubt that the environment is now big business, and it’s growing all the time.

Which begs the question when is Ireland inc. going to cop on and realise that to maintain growth in our economy, preserve jobs and generally continue along the prosperous path we’ve all become accustomed to we need to take environmental issues much more seriously?

In the past our environmental record has been woeful, and current agricultural and industrial practices, coupled with a widespread apathy when it comes to changing our ways, hardly inspires confidence for the future. Still, with a new green party environment minister at the helm, and environmental issues topping the international agenda, perhaps we’ll finally start to get things right.

Technorati Tags: climate change, Ireland, jobs, careers

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Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 16/05/2007

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am. Then I read another article in the paper about the endless cycle of commute-work-commute that’s wreaking havoc with the lives of so many young parents, and breathe a huge sigh of relief that we abandoned the rat-race when we did.

For too many couples today the arrival of a baby is fraught with more than the usual parental dilemma’s of dirty nappies, sleepless nights and colic. Baby has no sooner arrived, than poor mum and dad are racked by financial concerns. They’d love for one of them to stay at home to look after the little one – but the numbers just don’t add up. As soon as mum’s maternity leave is over she’s off back to work to help make the exorbitant mortgage repayments. After all, they have to keep a roof over the new arrival’s head.

Of course, the new baby has to be looked after while both parents are in work and the provision of – or more to the point the lack of – quality childcare and nursery places in this country has become a hot political issue in the run up to the current general election (although interestingly not much has been said about it during the campaign itself).

For busy working parents it’s one of the most important issues on the political agenda. In a nationwide childcare survey by the website Recruitireland.com back in November 2006, more than 72% of respondents said that their vote in the 2007 election would be influenced by progress on childcare issues. 66% believed the current government had performed poorly on the issue, and 80% said that the annual payment of €1,000 to offset childcare costs was an inadequate response. For many young parents this is a crisis issue.

Now it’s crunch time – the election is upon us, and if the November survey is anything to go by, parents around the country will be voting according to the availability and cost of childcare in their constituencies. But are more childcare places really the answer?
So many parents are caught on the wrong side of the work/life divide that they don’t stop to think whether what they’re doing is necessarily the best thing, for them or their young families. They’re entrenched in a never ending cycle of commute-work-commute – struggling to maintain a standard of living that’s destroying their quality of life.
There has to be a better way!

In the UK parents are beginning to have second thoughts about putting their babies and toddlers into childcare. Since Labour came to power there in 1997 they’ve introduced a staggering 1.2 million new childcare places for the very young – but a report by market analysts Laing and Buisson shows that last year nearly a quarter of UK nursery places went unfilled. Mums, and the occasional dad, are electing to stay home to take care of their own babies and young toddlers. They’re sacrificing income for something infinitely more valuable.

Children need love and attention – and they need it from their parents above all. Encouraging young parents to abandon their children and re-enter the workforce to generate more tax revenue and pay for more childcare isn’t the answer. Parents need help: help like extended parental leave, tax breaks and incentives that make it viable for a family to survive on a single income for at least the first two years of a child’s life. Now there’s a policy that would win any party the parental vote!

Technorati Tags: Irish politics, parenting, childcare, Evening Echo

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