Here is the link to the latest D15 community council meeting in Oct 09.
Archived for the ‘politics’ Category
link to Dublin 15 community council meeting
Saturday, November 7th, 2009Guest post-Great Places to Learn about the Lisbon Treaty
Friday, September 11th, 2009This post was contributed by blogger Hannah Watson, and focuses on where to keep updated and informed about the important up and coming Lisbon Treaty. Hannah also who writes about the taking educational classes online on her website onlineclasses.org. She welcomes your feedback at HannahWatson84@ yahoo.com.
Great Places to Learn More about the Libson Treaty Debate
The Treaty of Lisbon, otherwise known as the reform treaty, created in 2007 was intended to change the inner workings of the European Union, modifying them from the Treaty on European Union that first brought European nations together. The first drafts of the treaty were created in 2001 but were rejected by both French and Dutch representatives. The revised Lisbon treaty was originally intended to be ratified by the end of 2008 so that it would be in place for the 2009 elections, yet the treaty has not been ratified by all EU member states, even as the end of 2009 is nearing as Irish voter objections have held up its adoption. While the first vote in 2008 shot down the treaty, a second referendum is expected to be held in early October to further address the matter.
Those who want to learn more about the ongoing debate over the adoption of this treaty and whether or not Ireland will join with other European nations or remain on its own can check out these great news resources.
·Treaty of Lisbon on Wikipedia: You can learn about the history of the treaty from it’s beginnings to the present day through this site and even find country specific information.
·BBC Q&A: The Lisbon Treaty: Read through this to find answers to many of the questions you yourself might have about the treaty and the possibility (or not) of its ratification.
·The Lisbon Treaty: This site is created and maintained by the Irish government. On it, you’ll find an explanation of the treaty, legal assurances, white papers, speeches and pretty much everything you could possibly need to keep up with and understand the ins and outs of the treaty.
·The Lisbon Treaty for dummies: If politics aren’t really your thing, not to worry. This article breaks down the treaty into easy to understand portions so you can stay educated and informed as a voter.
·Independent.ie: This news site is a great place to check regularly to find updates on the latest news about everything Irish, including the debate over the Lisbon Treaty.
·Battle Lines Drawn Over the Lisbon Treaty: Read through this article from the Irish Times to get a better sense of who stands where and why.
·Lisbon Treaty.org: If you still feel like you don’t know enough about the treaty you can visit this EU site that explains all the relevant information about it, as well as links to blogs where you can read current commentary on it.
Growing Hemp locally in Castleknock
Thursday, June 25th, 2009There are wide beneficial uses for industrial hemp in Ireland and it could be used as a future fuel here.
These were some of the findings carried out in a study over 10 years ago by a scientist who works in a government funded and run agricultural research center. The study was conducted by Dr James Burke, who works for Teagasc, who has grown hemp on 3 acres under license from the Department of Justice. Burke also said that the plant had flourished in Irish conditions, even growing to an height of 14 feet from a strain developed in France for industrial use.
Our own irish attitude towards the plant known as 'Cannabis Sativa L' is strange given that it is the same plant grown by users as a narotic but modern science has removed its addictive chemical substances. According to Burke 'you would have to smoke around 5 to 6 acres of the stuff to get any sort of a high'.
Opinion:The Need for Land Transfer in Castleknock
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009I recently wrote about the need for county councils to look at the length of their allotment waiting lists and stop all the legal wrangling.
Now, I believe it is necessary for all such as farmers, private landlords/developers, for example the developer owners of luxury gold resort and hotel Luttrelstown Castle and even the Catholic church for example, religious orders such as the Carmellites to consider asset land transfer. Granted there have been assets transferred to the state, there is still room for religious orders to give more to the state. The main orders in Ireland were given their present land on which they own church/boarding schools through the local community which came together through fund raising efforts particularly at a time when the money in the 1980s in Ireland was like now, non-existent. Many years have passed since those days, money has treated Ireland well, and we have been deserving up to a point. However, only up to a certain point. The church has still taking generous donations through community funding. But now we don't have the same level of income or at least we as the public don't want to spend it. Obviously the church also needs to raise revenue to sustain itself.
I think that ironically we, as the Irish public, may actually give more donations during these recessionary times in order to make us 'feel' that we are contributing something to a greater cause. Trends support this, e.g greater church attendance, volunteering goes up, but we feel (or are taught/indoctrinated) that if we please 'God', we will be a 'better' person.
I want to finish my point about transferring land from the church/developers back to the people. The land is ours. We,as the people of Ireland, 'own' the land. Our ancestors died fighting to reclaim it from its colonial past. The local county councils such as Fingal and Dublin City Council and the Church of Ireland only got the land through us, the people of Ireland giving them the power. Through the power of community, we can also bloody well take it off them again with the power of the people, like for example, a petition to set aside allotment land for the people.
We need to start fighting for that precious land before it is too late, given the need for precious resources locally, to sustain ourselves in term of water supplies, renewable energies, waste water treatments, fish stocks, and food supplies. We are undergoing a change in society and we need to be prepared long term for it by taking action now, by pressuring or at least negotiating on civilized terms.
Opinion Piece: A Need for Education Collaboration in Castleknock
Thursday, June 11th, 2009I think that the old system of mass education is slowly dying.
The present system has done very little for us ,and only brought about a unequal two tier state. The present educational system is out-dated and will be done away with soon, given the speed with which technology is changing. Technology is reinforcing positive steps to help users generate their own interactive learning environment, such as e-learning. Users will soon be able to access these virtual games through their TV with internet access, mobiles and other mediums.
The question is no longer how but when.
The current education system is based on points in the current system. The best and often most wealthy get the best that the education system can offer with money paid to elite feeder schools, grinds schools, specialized grind tutorials, and outside lessons to help them succeed.
The current situation serves governments, research and development hubs in campus and universities. Government spends a couple of million into a new university research program with backing from another semi-state government body, Enterprise Ireland. The money is concentrated in a special circle and within the most well known universities.
The current technology revolution as seen with e-learning and the rise of social networking means that people can go to college or just study online. There will be a stage where people wont even have to go to university in person as they can just register online, sign an e-sheet in a tel-conference, sign in or dial in to confirm attendance seen today in corporate environments. Issues such as no-attendance will be addressed and a solution will be found in time clocking, virtual assistants to help the student, large group project management database based on sharing a virtual server with I.P tracking, cookie tracking if example one is not concentrating fully on class while online/enforcing virtual lock down while in tele-conference mode, all possible now, thanks to technology.
The question now is, 'will the government embrace technology and work with this change in tandem with universities or will the present situation continue to maintain the status quo?'. My feeling is that initially resistance will be strong but people will have to change with the technology. It is as inevitable as the rise in mobile tel-workers in sales, marketing and online distance learners. The fact is that the idea of mobile home workers will increase long term. All a web designer needs now is to be mobile,, and have a wireless net connection. If they learn a programing code language, they can just teach themselves and set up their own contact list, sales pitch, and company name. In fact the most equipped people to deal with the present recession is the mobile web technology guy. He can learn in another country and still make work commitments, meeting virtually, out-source his manual work abroad, send invoices, accounts figures digitally or electronically, get salary into his bank account, send faxes and meet and greet clients by deadline end of the week. This further strengthens my case that the old education model is dying and the government in most western countries are clueless what to do, and have not prepared for it.
Recently, I heard a story in the news about the current coalition Fianna Fail and the Green party talked about introducing third level fees as a revenue earner in the last mini-Budget in a few weeks back. This will make the idea of getting into colleges such as Trinty and UCD even more elitist and the financially well -off will benefit. Only now, even the high income earners are complaining and making their kids go to protests outside Government offices (no point in my opinion) as it is hurting their pocket now that their own job is under pressure.
So it may be time for the government to form their own digital education board/advisory board around them telling them how best to embrace the rapid change in technology. The government should work closely with more technology-related boards.
The recent financial system collapse has told us, the public, that we are not rational beings with rational decision making abilities. Again, this system of core classical economics as a rational science taught in secondary schools has reinforced the same dogmatic message.
Economics as a subject needs to be changed and looked at. Things need to be looked at again in a new light, updating school subjects since they were mostly originally formatted in the 19930s . The passive student needs to know more about interaction with his own subject, his own practical examples and experiences with the subject. This will be reinforced with the new system of virtual learning.
I see a more interactive student-to-student model emerging. In fact, I see a less teacher-model influencing the class. The new 'wiki' open source model will emerge whereby students can go online to a cloud computing scenario, log into their class Google docs file, share a virtual server, work on a project management software package ,have instant messenger/chat (IM) facility, filtering of group files, online chat based on certain specific keywords, search facilities, instant search tools, and interactive widgets on their user interface desktop.
Each student can add their own piece onto the saved document/file, share it with the group, or save for later. Other users can add their own piece, or edit the original piece as an open source file. Other interactive features uploaded as a power point file might be video on demand, or posted virtually in private network room, and virtual collaboration projects for practical examples. This final project can be saved on the network cloud and later passed for exam purposes back and forth for updating between students.
This is already happening amongst young web savvy technology students/pros who are not attending any colleges. The best web savvy self taught teenagers can teach themselves new programming and 3rd party applications themselves, and don't even need to go to college.
One thing is to certain, student-to-student in a virtual cloud computing environment is the only way forward instead of old rehashed learning environments. The future is going to be interesting!
