Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Professor Norman Fenton is a professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London.

I want to clarify a couple of things that Norman said there. First off, Klaus Schwab is the founder of the World Economic Forum, this is basically an annual event where the captains of politics and business get together to hobnob. This organisation is the centrepiece of a whole slew of the craziest conspiracy theories, I’m not going to go into them here, but the core claim that Norman made was that Schwab and the WEF are making decisions that he doesn’t like.

This is nonsense. The WEF has no legislative function, and no executive function other than to manage its own event. It doesn’t have the power to decide anything much bigger than what’s on the menu for their shindig. Now, I’m sure that Schwab is a pretty influential person, given who he probably has saved in his phone contacts, but that means soft power, access to decision makers, the ability to persuade them. Neither he nor the WEF have any authority over them.

It’s certainly true that politicians meet at the WEF, it’s probably also true that to some degree they make plans there to coordinate their policies, but what Norman is claiming, that the WEF as a body is making legally binding decisions is just nonsense. It’s the equivalent of claiming that the manager of the Inchydoney Island Hotel is in control of Ireland, because political parties often have their think-ins there.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Dr Geraldine Simmie Mooney is a senior lecturer in education at the University of Limerick and director of EPI STEM, the National Centre for STEM Education.

*****

One thing that, I thought, the Green Party had that left wing parties didn’t, was an understanding of how taxes could be used to modify behaviour. The Greens are often lambasted from both left and right for this, people saying that they want to tax everything, but that’s unfair.

They had recognised, I thought, that taxation is often a better way to modify behaviour than banning or regulating things. A good example was the plastic bag tax. This started out at 15c per bag, Its purpose wasn’t to raise money, it was to change behaviour.

And it worked. Use of plastic bags collapsed by more than 93 per cent when it was introduced. That tiny amount of money was enough to change mindsets and encourage people not to be wasteful.

I got in a brief Twitter spat with some people including the former Green Party TD and Senator Dan Boyle, about what was announced in the budget as a measure to ease the housing crisis, a three per cent tax on zoned land. This idea has been kicking around for years, not least from the Green Party, because they had recognised the bottleneck in the supply of housing.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Dr Karen Keaveney is Head of Subject for Rural Development, and an Assistant Professor in the School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin.

*****

A short update on the last podcast about the conflicts of interest and poor academic and ethical standards at the Active Consent Unit in NUI Galway – we will be doing a follow-up on that, because we have got large tranches of information, from the press office at NUIG and their Freedom of Information department, and we’re battling for more. One thing that I can say right now is that a spokesman for NUIG essentially conceded in an email to me that the study, that led to them claiming that 29 per cent of all female students and 10 per cent of all male students are raped while in college, they have conceded that those figures do not apply to the wider student body, only to a small non-representative sample of people who answered an online questionnaire.

“The statistics, as presented in the SES 2020, relate to those students who completed the survey. At no stage does it purport to be research detailing the level of sexual abuse in society, reported or unreported…”

NUIG Spokesman

In fact, they said that they had never claimed that those figures applied to students as a whole, and they did a sneaky edit on their website taking down the page where they in fact claimed just that… which was a bit awkward because I had taken the precaution of making an archive copy of that exact page, and when I tweeted out a link to it, they restored that page and most of its content.

Preparing these podcasts is a huge time commitment, we’ve been working on that story for more than a year and there is still more to do on it, and for that reason I want to say a huge thank you to all the patrons on Patreon, that makes it easier for us to put time into researching podcasts and hopefully making them interesting to listen to, and if you could do the same and chip in a euro or two per month, that would really help to do this more often. The Patreon website allows you to do that automatically.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Dr David Ellis is Associate Professor of Information systems at Bath University and a member of that university’s Academic Ethics and integrity committee.

The Active Consent Unit has its own section on the NUIG website, and its media page posts inaccurate media coverage of its work without comment. (Update: They appear to have now hidden their media page, but not to worry, I have it archived. Update 2: Since I posted on Twitter that I had the page archived, it seems to have been restored, with some, though not all of the links to false coverage removed.) What appears to be their YouTube account incorrectly claims that the research applies to all students, and posts on their twitter account make the same false claim.

The Active Consent Unit offers on its website ‘workshops’ targeted at second- and third-level students which address the problems their research purports measure. Dr Caroline West offers similar workshops on her personal website. There is no mention of this conflict of interests in the report they published.

The report claims that, of students who have been raped, just 4.5 per cent of female students, and three per cent of men report this to the gardaí. This is not consistent with other research on this topic which suggests that between 36 per cent and 20 per cent of rape victims make a police report.

The report claims that, of the 29 per cent of women and 10 per cent of men, 4.5 per cent and 3 per cent make a garda report, meaning that 1.3 per cent of all female students and 0.3 per cent of all male students report being raped to the gardaí.

With almost 250,000 students in the country (about 5 per cent o the total population, skewing slightly female), if that figure really did apply to all students, there would be more than 2,000 reports of rape by students to the gardaí.

As can be seen in this data from the CSO, the entire population typically reports 1,000 or fewer rapes to the gardaí per year, so this claim is clearly impossible.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

So then this happened.

And with no notice at all, in the space of a single day, AA Roadwatch disappeared off our airwaves.

According to their own announcement, this was a decision made by the AA, which “decided to move away from this service and instead focus on growing other areas of [their] business”. That’s corporatespeak for closing down an unprofitable business.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

John Lyons is the Independent Left councillor on Dublin City Council for Artane–Whitehall.

*****

I want to talk about a scandal.

Actually, it’s not so much a scandal, it’s not even a scandal about a scandal, it’s a scandal about a scandal about a scandal. A third order scandal, if you like.

The first order scandal is about how gardaí handle 999 calls, or more accurately, don’t handle them. an inquiry, led by Assistant Commissioner Barry O’Brien examined several thousand 999 emergency calls about domestic violence in the two-year period, finding that about half of these calls were cancelled when they should not have been.

Basically, what happened was that someone rang 999, the operator asked what service, fire, ambulance or gardaí, and because they witnessed a crime, or were witnessing a crime or were the victim of a crime they asked for the gardaí, and were put through, and the garda who answered the phone typed into his computer system the details of what the caller reported. They typed it into their computer, that’s important, I’ll get back to that in a moment.

Then the garda had to make a decision. They had to decide to send a hoard of officer in a fleet vehicles, backed up by the armed response unit, and the garda helicopter; or they had to decide whether to send a patrol car, or an officer on foot, or to inform the local station to check up on something when they got the time.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Dr. Roslyn Fuller is an author and founder of the Solonian Democracy Institute

*****

We have an expectation of a rules-based system of international order. Some of these rules are very famous, they show up in popular media, thing like diplomatic immunity, basically if you send an ambassador to another country, they can’t be arrested, their bags can’t be searched, you can’t even give them a parking ticket.

That gives us some anomalies sometimes, again, more often in fiction than in real life, but it does happen; the wife of an American government worker in England drove on the wrong side of the road, killed a young man a while back, she was whisked back to the US to escape justice. It’s not clear that she did have immunity, it’s not even clear what her husband’s position was, probably because he was a spy.

But countries almost always follow these rules, because they want to benefit from them sometimes too. Diplomatic immunity is one, but there are lots more, some of them are explicitly codified, some of them are just understood conventions. At a high level, there are rules against one country trying to prosecute rulers of another, and it goes all the way down to how leaders are treated when they visit another country, who gets a red carpet, who gets the national anthem and all that.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Holly Cairns is the Social Democrats spokesperson on agriculture, food and the marine, and further and higher education and disability.

In the interview, Holly questioned the source of figures that indicated that the difference in earnings between men and women was concentrated in the over-40s, with no statistically-significant difference in earnings for those under 40. This information comes from the same Eurostat studies that Holly draws her 14 per cent earnings difference from; the Journal have an excellent article on it here, which includes this graph:

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Nicolas Šustr is the city development and transport editor for the German newspaper formerly known as Neues Deutschland now known as ND.

*****

We’re going to have a new leader of the DUP. Leaders of the DUP are generally not anyone’s favourite person, unless that anyone happens to be a DUP supporter. As an aside I have to say that much of the criticism of Arlene Foster on social media that I see has more than a tinge of sexism, but that’s a story for a different day. And, if you are looking for things to criticise Arlene Foster over, there is surely enough to say without having to scrape that barrel.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Daniel Long farming activist and running for president of Macra na Feirme.

*****

Things that seem good aren’t always good, things that seem bad aren’t always bad, and things that really are good or bad can sometimes have the confounding outcomes.

If you get three education spokespersons in a studio, they’ll usually come out with at least four plans to reform the Leaving Certificate. There might be a lot of proposals out there, but they all use the same buzz words and phrases. Too much stress, continual assessment, can’t judge someone by an exam grade, credit for coursework, judge the whole student, no job interviewer will ask for it, reduce exam pressure.

Mix in all these cliches with a few badly thought-out ideas, half-bake them for a three minute interview, and hey presto, you’ve got an education policy.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Eoin Ó Broin is Sinn Féin TD for Dublin Midwest and his party’s housing spokesperson.

*****

A topic which I am interested in is ageing and demographic shift. Ireland was, until quite recently, the youngest country demographically in Europe. However, as Ireland’s baby boomers, the generation that David McWilliams calls the pope’s children, push onwards towards retirement age Ireland’s relatively youthful demographic profile will change at a rate we might find quite surprising. We don’t have that many older people now but we probably will relatively soon.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Brenda Power is a journalist for the Sunday Times and Irish Daily Mail, and whose work has appeared in many other publications, and is frequently heard on broadcast media.

*****

Maybe I’m giving away my age if I mention my nostalgia for the pirate radio stations of the 1980s. I’m just about old enough to remember Radio Nova, Q102 and Sunshine Radio, and I know that there were many more of them in Dublin, and dozens more around the country. Some of them were more professional than others and they were run by enthusiasts, sometimes by businessmen, sometimes by shysters.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Jim O’Callaghan is a senior council and Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin Bay South.

*****

I want to talk about a coup. A coup attempt. A failed coup attempt. It was a ridiculous affair, viewed by some people as little short of comical, despite the fact that several people were killed. The coup attempt was carried out by a barely-credible bunch of thugs who had a habit of dressing up in quasi-military uniforms and showing off their weapons in the streets.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Kate McGrew is the main spokesperson for the Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland. In our interview, I referred to my interview with Sarah Benson, then of Ruhama.

*****

I have a big project on at the moment, so this, I’m sorry to say, will be the last Here’s How podcast of 2020. I hope to be back bright and early in January 2021, and with that, a couple of announcements.

The first is that I’m open to having a collaborator on the podcast. If you are interested in doing that, or know someone who might be, get in touch, the email is podcast@HeresHow.ie. This isn’t a paid position, but it doesn’t require too much input. A good knowledge of Irish current affairs would be helpful, not to mention a bit of fire in your belly, but there is no need to be in ideological lockstep with me, I don’t even think that would be possible.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

John Hamill is a long-time secular campaigner and participates in the Free Thought Prophet. We talked about his epic Freedom of Information request.

*****

You can see there that John’s story tells a pretty damning tale about the attitude of the Department of Education and Skills, as it’s now called, towards the Freedom of Information laws. And I really don’t want to single out that one department, this attitude is pervasive right across government.

Nevertheless, I did send a list of written questions to the Department of Education’s press office that related to this case. The main question I asked was about this culture of seeking to frustrate the proper implementation of the law. The department refused to answer.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Peadar Tóibín is the leader, and only TD of Aontú, having previously been elected for Sinn Féin.

*****

I don’t normally do pre-buttals on a podcast interview, but I think that in this case it’s important, because in the context of the coronavirus, and Covid 19, it’s just not acceptable to allow incorrect scientific claims to go unchallenged, even for a few minutes. There are a couple of things said in this interview that I wasn’t able to correct in the moment, and I don’t want to leave the correction to the end, because that runs the risk that people hear the incorrect claim and not hear the correction.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Dermot Lacey is a Labour Party member of Dublin City Council for the Pembroke ward.

*****

That’s what he said

He, by the way is Brandon Lewis, the UK’s Northern Ireland secretary, basically their minister for Northern Ireland.

What he’s announcing there is the UK government’s shirking from the treaty that they signed last December for them to withdraw from the European Union. He immediately created a million memes of people planning to tell judges that they might be had up in front of that yes, they had broken the law, but only in a very specific and limited way.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Linda Ervine is a Unionist and Irish language rights activist from East Belfast, and is the president of the recently-formed East Belfast GAA.

I talked to her about last year’s Ashcroft polling indicating that support for a United Ireland is increasing towards a tipping point in Northern Ireland.

****

I was sitting down to do an editorial piece for this podcast, and I had been particularly struck by the apparent arson attack on a house in Carnmore in Galway which, it was believed locally, was about to be allocated to a Traveller family.

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Larry Donnelly is a native of Boston, He teaches law in NUIG. He has published law journal articles in Ireland and internationally, as well as being a regular media commentator. I talked him about an article he wrote for TheJournal.ie.

*****

Two minds are better than one.

That’s a fairly obviously true saying in most cases; whether in a work environment or elsewhere, most people will be familiar with a situation where people in a group contribute suggestions that together get a solution to a problem that was better than any one member of the group could have come up with.