TURKEYS VOTING ELECTRONICALLY

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Apparently market research company Censuswide carried out an online survey of 994 Irish adults on behalf of Pure Telecom in June and according to themselves, they found that 40pc of eligible voters who didn’t vote in the last general election in 2016 would “definitely” vote if remote e-voting was an option.

This is of course, bullshit on several levels. Firstly, the devil is in the detail. That so-called 40% are actually forty per cent of those who ‘didn’t’ vote the last time, not 40% of the eligible vote. So these couch potatoes are the ones that couldn’t be bothered getting off their arses to toddle down to their nearby voting booth. I reckon that instead of asking them would they like to vote electronically they should be struck from the register permanently. After all, they obviously don’t give a shit about who gets into power.

But the article goes on to explain that 42% are saying the e-vote should be an option. They are not saying that it should be the only option, that’s an important caveat. Then it says that, “A fifth said they would like to vote using a mobile.” A fifth of what? Is it a fifth of the eligible vote or a fifth of the 42% who want to vote electronically, or a fifth of the popular vote the last time? Mind you it could be just a fifth of the 994 people participating in the survey, (199 people), in which case it’s meaningless. Famously, a polling company can get any answer they want if they phrase the questions a certain way, always remember that.

The danger of e-voting is how open it is to corruption. It is no exaggeration to say that the company/organisation given the license to run the e-voting system could give any really interested/vested party any result they wanted/paid for ………. after the vote has been taken. If two million votes were registered, it would not be a problem to announce that Fine Gael got all but one single one of them because there is no paper trail but there would be the facility for a laughable re-count.

For the uninitiated, there would be a simple back engine for each count centre with a list of the candidates. a live counter would run as votes were being cast for these candidates. A computer timer would decide when the voting ended and what would be left is a small database file, (think Excel), where in theory, you would just run a macro to put the names in descending order of votes cast. This, incidentally, would not happen at the traditional count centers. Instead, the data from all the outlets around the country would fed into the servers of the organizing company or organisation, probably in Dublin. At this point, the operator, (under instruction), could just go in and take a couple of thousand votes from the winning Fianna Fail candidate in the constituency and add those votes to the second-placed Fine Gael candidate and they would change places on the sorted database. The total count would remain unaffected, not that that matters. Equally you could obliterate the Independents leaving their vote in single figures. That would certainly tidy up the Dail. But the point is that the election outcome could be decided before a single vote is cast. You cannot do that with ballot papers.

Then there is research bias, the biggest one of all being the ‘funding bias.’ You will note that this piece of so-called research was carried out by ‘Censuswide’ on behalf of Pure Telecom. To operate an e-voting system the Government would need to contract an, ahem, Telecoms Company, maybe even a “Pure Telecoms Company.” So no surprise then that Pure Telecom should find that people are getting interested again in e-voting. It would be hugely in their interests if that were so.

But I don’t believe a word of it. Those who exercise the franchise, particularly at General Election time, are no fools. They know instinctively that anything electronic is wide open to being corrupted. There can be no electronic accountability because there can’t be. The party in Government can stay in power as long as they like through e-voting because they have the giving of the e-voting contract, (to Pure Telecom?).

Beware the snake oil salesmen.

THE SNOBS

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THE SNOBS

A couple of little items about my home city of Cork caught my eye this morning.

As a boy, my daily journey to school took me into the city centre and even then when I knew little of alcohol, there seemed to pubs everywhere. Today I learn that indeed, Cork had the most bars per capita in the country but has also seen the biggest drop in the number of them with 25% fewer pubs now than in 2005. To put that in perspective, the number of bars in Dublin has remained the same during the period.

Well, I can explain this. On the quayside running from the main bus station to Patrick’s Bridge, there used to be six bars in total. That whole block was flattened years ago for a shopping centre and all six bars disappeared in a single year. Each of these pubs were tiny, as in they could possibly accommodate ten drinkers before becoming full. Three of them at the time were side by side and two of them were early opening bars, (7.30am). Cork pubs have always been small cosy places whereas Dublin pubs by comparison always looked like huge empty converted factories. They were barn sized with massive numbers in attendance daily.

Back in the seventies and eighties, thousands of people around the country moonlighted as barmen, (bar people), and the money was paid under the table. Many students were able to afford to live in Dublin bedsits, working three to four nights a week for cash while attending full time lectures during the day. The pubs were a cash business, (as were the bedsits), making all of this possible and official Ireland turned a blind eye because it could never have stepped into the breech to come up with the necessary money instead. Today though, such under the counter money is impossible and with the ban on bedsits, the crazy rental rates and high taxation, it is a wonder anyone of our youths can afford a third level education.

Another headline this morning announces, “Cork City centre quayside branded ‘TentsVille’ as more homeless pitch tents.” Now I need to explain that Cork is a very class conscious city and our version of the upper class speak with a very plummy, (and amusing) accent not heard anywhere else in the country. The wealthy in Cork have great pride in the city they consider their own, (as in it belongs to them), and several years back in recognition of the number of bridges spanning both channels of the River Lee, they christened Cork the, “Venice of the North.” Nothing could be further from the truth of course but it gives you a flavour of how far up their own arses these people are. So no surprise then that in response to Tentsville, Fine Gael councillor and former Lord Mayor Des Cahill said the makeshift encampment presents a “poor image of the city”. He called for the tents to be classed as litter and torn down.

Tentsville, such as it is, is purely a reaction by the homeless themselves attempting to put some class of a roof over their heads. The same city council ceased building social housing in 2008 and with the growing population since then and the influx of Poles Nigerians and assorted immigrants, something had to give. It isn’t good enough to sit on your pompous ass in the sponsored warmth of City Hall and call the shelters these people are forced to erect as just litter and the homeless themselves an eyesore. Here’s a little about the snooty councillor. The lad looks well-heeled and lives in the prosperous suburb of Ballintemple. One doubts that any of his clan will know homelessness.

So if the lad Des gets his way then the tents will be torn down, the homeless will disperse and in a couple of days time some other outraged middle class group will call on the authorities to move them from their neighbourhood where they will recently have resettled. It is akin to being hunted and persecuted for the crime of poverty.

I often wonder would these well off people like to see starvation on the streets? Would they disdainfully step over the dead bodies on their way to their secure jobs and elevated place in society? Perhaps they’d want those dead bodies classified as ‘litter’ and demand they be swept up. They are the same voices who destroyed the pub trade and got rid of those black economy jobs that so helped the poor but ambitious to climb the ladder.

This country is changing drastically and not for the better either.

A POST-TRUTH PREDICTION

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Today, Tuesday the 4th of September 2018, I will make a prediction. Within the coming days there will be yet another chemical attack in Syria and the Government of Assad will instantly be blamed for it by the so-called ‘International Community.’

I predict this because the Syrian army with the aid of Iranian land forces and the Russian Air Force in support, are readying to drive the last of ISIS and Al Qaeda out of the country. Both the US and some European Governments have been warning Assad all last week that any use of chemical weapons by him will be met with force by them. But the simple truth of the matter is that Assad has no need to use chemical weapons to win this last battle. In fact, under UN supervision, all of Syria’s chemical weapons were destroyed several years ago and officially they don’t even have any.

The previous two incidents where chemical weapons had been alleged to have been used in Syria were never proven to have been utilised by Assad’s army. In both cases they were accusations without the necessary hard evidence. But the western media repeated the accusations often enough until ordinary people believed they must be true. In both cases in the past, it would have been no benefit for the Syrians to use chemical weapons, (that they didn’t have at the time). The opposite is the case. They knew that if they could use such weapons they would invite unwanted interference from the US with everything that entails. On top of that, their use of conventional weapons was, and is, having the required effect anyway.

So the reality today is, that if the US proxies in Syria, (both ISIS & Al Qaeda), are not ordered to set off some chemical ordinance in Syria before the end of the week, then their last bastion of terror in that country will be overrun by forces of the elected Government and the US plans to oust Assad will come to come to an ignominious end. The public in America will view it as a defeat and that is what is electrifying President Tramp today.

According to the Journal this morning, “The US President has warned Syria against launching an attack on the country’s last rebel/islamist terrorist stronghold.” Laughingly he said that, “The offensive could trigger a “human tragedy”. Ah! How do I put this? If you want to see real human tragedy, look no further than Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Lebanon and the plight of the Palestinians, where each of these human tragedies were instigated by the United States in recent years wither directly or by proxy. Indeed there is mounting evidence that the CIA started the whole Syrian war as a proxy war using Saudi money and Israeli intelligence and if so, the tears they are shedding about the coming battle are crocodile tears.

Shortly after 911, General Wesley Clark was shown a top secret document in the Pentagon. In it he learned that the US planned to ‘take out’ seven countries in five years, Syria included. So as early as 2001, the military strategists of the US were making plans to destroy Syria by covert means and that is why we are where we are today. What the yanks did not plan for was the Russian and Iranian support for Assad. Without them, Assad would be hanging by the neck in Damascus long before now.

So mark my words lads. Either Tramp will leave it alone and pull out his troops as he said he’d do, or some poor unfortunate Syrians will be murdered by chemical weapons this week in that war torn land. If so, it will be the opening gambit of the next Global war.

ONE OR ZERO, ON OR OFF!

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In any computing program/application you use on your PC, Mac, Pad or smart phone, what you are looking at on screen is called the front end. Behind that lies the engine made up of ones and zeros. As a typical HR system is a set of interlinked records and histories, they are mostly built on an existing database module and then customized for individual use and differentiation from competitors.

So you might describe the average HR system, for example, as follows. “Workforce Ready by Kronos is a human resources (HR) platform that combines workforce management with human capital management (HCM) capabilities and is suitable for businesses of all sizes. Kronos Workforce Ready is a single cloud-based solution that incorporates recruiting, onboarding, performance management, compensation planning, time and attendance, scheduling, absence management, payroll and more.

Workforce Ready features a single employee record shared across all its applications. All employee data is maintained in a single database, with a single user interface to pull reports and launch workflows across the organization. Data is updated in real time, so managers can make decisions based on the latest, most accurate information. A mobile application is also available.”

There is nothing too complicated in any of that. The supplier of the program/s sets it up for the customer as a blank set of records and it is up to the HR department of that customer to learn to use the software and then go live with it by entering the information daily. There may be hiccups in the first couple of weeks but then it should run smoothly and without hitches, (saving the electricity goes off). Most such HR packages come with a maintenance contract that includes a number to call if there is a problem.

In purely software terms then, it’s a no-brainer. There isn’t any complex multi-media stuff like video, animation, graphics, sound or music to consider, all huge files by nature. Instead, there is a boring text based database to update and query. How then can the, “The National College of Art and Design (NCAD),” have to abandon a HR software system on which it spent €138,000 over three years? Apparently, it was because management failed to properly implement it. “NCAD management did not manage the project competently and consequently management never fully implemented the project,” a statement on internal financial controls states.

In private enterprise, that management would be fired, full stop. They’d be out of a job with little in the line of a decent reference and looking for the dole. There is no way in hell that such incompetence could have any other result. But the NCAD is not private enterprise. The inner-city Dublin college in question, which has around 1,000 full-time and 600 evening students, received €6.6m of its €18m income in 2016 from State grants, as well as around €5m in tuition fees paid from public funds. So €11.6m out of a total €18m comes from the taxpayer and presumably the rest comes from the students.

And that really is the end of the story folks. Nobody from management will lose their job, nobody will be busted down a couple of grades, nobody will get a final warning and in fact, it is more likely that normal promotions will continue as if €138k of public money has not needlessly been pissed down the toilet because lazy fuckers couldn’t be bothered doing their permanent and pensionable jobs.

There are thousands of such examples each year in this country where waste and stupidity run in parallel to homelessness and poverty and n’ere the twain shall meet. The poor will be punished and the lazy incompetents promoted.