A Burton Bounce ? August 16, 2014
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.4 comments
Sunday Times B&A poll- State of the Parties:
FF 18 (-1);
FG 24 (-2);
Labour 14 (+7);
Sinn Fein 19 (-2);
Green Party 2 (unchanged);
Independents 22 (-2)
That is some jump for Labour , remains to be seen if it will be reflected in other polls. Interesting too that the 7% gain looks to be coming from everywhere (that is of course assuming each of the other parties/categories drops in support went to Labour). More on this later in the week after details of the poll are published.
Woman refused an abortion… August 16, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.5 comments
…is the news on the RTÉ website. The details emerging are absolutely grim as regards the process she was forced to endure.
Science Fiction television: A for Andromeda August 16, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.2 comments
I recently picked up a late 60s paperback of Fred Hoyle’s October the First Is Too Late, an interesting but flat little tale, very characteristic of the author’s output. But you know there’s something about him, and he was a crusty contrarian in the less toxic sense of the term, that I kind of admire. I’d forgotten until I looked up his wiki page that it is he who coined the phrase ‘Big Bang’ in cosmological terms, and was a staunch opponent of that theory until the end), I was reminded of this – the television series A for Andromeda which he wrote, and which appeared in 1961.
I never saw this back in the day – given that it was broadcast before I was born. However I did see the reworked version in the late 2000s which was… well, so so. Read the book, too, though that wasn’t written by him. Again, Hoyle would not be one of the greatest writers in the world in any genre (I’ve mentioned Hoyle before, not least in this overview of his rather strange, and Irish related, Ossian’s Ride) but the ideas were often intriguing, and the fact he was a scientist no doubt lent them greater credence.
It’s another fairly thin little tale, with stuff thrown in one suspects because the main plot line wasn’t sufficient, or not enough could be done with it. The basics are that a signal is received from another galaxy containing instructions to build a computer. The computer once built has further instructions to build a human like organism (a woman – natch!) who is named Andromeda. And from there on it’s all about whether Andromeda, or the computer, are a threat to humanity or the Earth itself (the SF writer John Barnes later wrote a sort of solution to the Fermi Paradox in a short story which riffed on some aspects of communications by radio telescope in an amusingly unpleasant sort of way – the story is called Enrico Fermi and the Dead Cat whose text you can find online if you so wish, and arguably Sagan’s Contact was a massive inversion of the plotline).
The 1961 version much of its time in its own way – some worrying gender politics – though the more I think about it that’s built into the very structure and concept of the story from start to finish, and it’s entertaining to pick out more…erm… modern elements, hair styles and so on, as well as the sense that this truly was a pre-digital era. This version saw Julie Christie’s first significant television. The 2006 version, with Kelly Reilly and Tom Hardy, is equally of its time, though perhaps less entertaining.
Marxism Seminars: Marxism in Practice part 2: Neoliberal Latin America – Lessons for Ireland? August 16, 2014
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Time: Saturday 23rd August, 6pm.
Venue: Chaplin’s Bar (Upstairs), 1/2 Hawkins Street, Dublin 2
(south side of new Rosie Hackett Bridge)
Continuing the series of political education seminars / discussions, Barry Cannon from NUI Maynooth will be introducing the topic:
“Comparing popular resistance to neoliberalism in Latin America in the 80s and 90s to the situation in Ireland in the current context of crisis.”
Here are a couple of articles by Barry, if you are interested in reading up on the topic beforehand.
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/CUSyUnHPNnaZPdW5zkdC/full
Look forward to seeing you there.
Dublin Left Forum
This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to… Chrome Hoof August 16, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to....add a comment
Prog, punk, soul, dance, electronica, metal, experimental chamber rock orchestral tracks – it must be Chrome Hoof. They’ve been around since 2000, and were established by Leo and Milo Smee, the former of whom is a member of the late and very lamentedCathedral, purveyors of doom metal, who themselves took a prog turn (though not too much of one) an album or two back. Their sound is eclectic and filled out by trumpet, bassoon, saxophone, violin, viola and more. There’s a crossover with some personnel having been in Knifeworld and associated groups.
So if you think they’re like Cathedral, well, they ain’t. Their latest album, released last year, Chrome Black Gold, is to my ears amazing. As noted on emusic, by having a range of female lead vocalists, including Chantal Brown and Shingai Shoniwa of the very excellent Noisettes it ‘offer (s)a defiantly un-macho take on prog, traditionally the hoariest of rock sub-genres’.
Sure, there’s the straight ahead prog of When Lightening Strikes, until the point where Shoniwa steps in and suddenly it’s not straight ahead prog at all. There’s Knopheria which surely must be a disco hit in another universe completely (and those of us partial to Cathedral may recognise one familiar keyboard sound in it). Tortured Craft reminds me just a little of Rip, Rig and Panic, and is none the worse for it. Instrumental Kestrel Dawn comes over initially as a sort of electropop/EBM before… before… before… what might be a beefier take on hauntology, meets some prog and then fades out – all in the space of a minute and forty eight seconds. Varkada Blues has fantastic doom rock vocals, from I’m presuming Leo Smee, tricksy keyboards, a great female vocal which wanders in from another song entirely but is entirely appropriate to the track and ends in neat electronica and Exo-Spektral is strange and great, a weird cross between ELO, Siouxsie and Kurt Weill. It’s that kind of an album.
Highly, highly recommended.
Nopheria (ft. Shingai Shoniwa)
When Lightning Strikes (Live)
Kestrel Dawn
Tortured Craft
Varkada Blues
When Lightning Strikes
Answers to Quiz from o’er the water… August 15, 2014
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Again, many thanks to NollaigO for the quiz and here are the answers.
Q1 Famously, Napoleon invited the Pope to his coronation as emperor in 1804 but seized the crown out of the hands of the Pope and crowned himself. In which famous venue was the ceremony held and what was the name of the Pope? [Just the regnal name will do; not the number!]
Answer: Notre Dame Cathedral; The Pope was Pius (VII).
Q2 On 17th December 1985, 15 MPs of the British House of Commons applied for the Chiltern Hundreds and for Steward of the Manor of Norstead [aka “resigned their seats”].
What caused this?
Answer: 15 Ulster Unionist MPs resigned in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
Q3 Following the establishment of the Irish Free State, three deep water Treaty Ports were retained by the United Kingdom in accordance with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921. As part of the resolution of the Anglo-Irish Trade War in the 1930s, the ports were returned to Ireland in 1938.
Name the Treaty Ports.
Answer: Berehaven (Castletownbere); Cobh/Haulbowline Island and Lough Swilly.
Q4 What is the link in the following 16th century, chronological list:
1 : Peterborough Abbey; 2: Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London;
3: St Georges Chapel, Windsor; 4: Westminster Abbey;
5: Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London; 6: Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire.
Answer: Burial places of the wives of Henry VIII.
[Three clues: 6 / 1500s / Tower of London mentioned twice (Divorced, beheaded, ......)]
Q5 The origin of the phrase “Your name is mud” is often wrongly attributed to a Dr Samuel Mudd because he sheltered and medically treated a famous fugitive at his home in Charles County, Maryland in April 1865. Who was the fugitive?
Answer: John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin who injured his leg escaping from the theatre. [Again the date is intended to give a clue]
Q6 Which famous people were killed by the following assassins:
i. Prince Felix Yusupov
ii. John Bellingham
iii. Ramon Mercader
iv. Marcus Brutus?
Answer: i) Rasputin ii) Spencer Perceval [on 11 May 1812. He is the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated]. iii) Trotsky iv) Julius Caesar.
The “ too easy” question ?
Q7 James Hoban was born in Callan, in County Kilkenny in 1762. He studied architecture at the Royal Dublin Society Drawing School. In 1781, he emigrated and in 1792 he won an architectural competition to design a still world famous building. In 1814 he was appointed to rebuild the building after it had been deliberately destroyed by fire.
Which building and who burned it?
Answer: The White House which was burned by the British during what was described as the War of 1812. [The more “young at heart” among us may remember the 1959 hit record, The Battle of New Orleans by Lonnie Donegan and His Skiffle Group]
Q8 What was the controversial publication, allegedly written by Gregori in 1924, that enabled Stanley overcome Ramsey?
Answer: The (Gregori) Zinoviev Letter which aided (Stanley) Baldwin in the 1924 UK general election against (Ramsey) Macdonald. The letter, which appeared in the Daily Mail just before the election, has always been regarded by the left as a forgery.
[ For more details: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/1999/feb/04/uk.politicalnews6 ]
Q9 The 1912 American presidential election was contested by the incumbent president, a past president and a third candidate who won the election.
Name all three.
Answer: Incumbent President William Howard Taft was renominated by the Republican Party. After former President Theodore Roosevelt failed to receive the Republican nomination, he called his own convention and created the Progressive Party (nicknamed the “Bull Moose Party”). It nominated Roosevelt!! Woodrow Wilson was the Democratic candidate and won the election.
Q10 Former Irish Naval Services vessel, Muirchú was withdrawn from service in 1947. The ship then sank off the Saltee Islands while being towed to the scrap yard.
What was the previous name and controversial role in Irish History of the Muirchú ?
Answer: The British warship, Helga, which shelled Liberty Hall during the 1916 Rising. [Revisionists claim that “warship” is too grandiose a description!]
In Spain August 15, 2014
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No marks to the Guardian for the heading on this piece, but worth considering how familiar in a way the substance is, that of a ‘recovery’ that seems oddly rhetorical and with relatively little impact on the ground. Of course, the situation in Spain is significantly worse than that in Ireland, but even so… there’s much the same language ‘turning the corner’….etc. And some of it is weirdly similar. One economist notes that:
Half the battle had already been waged, she points out, with previous Spanish governments investing heavily in higher education. “But if you don’t have an economy that generates jobs for these educated kids, they have little choice but to leave the country.”
And:
Spain has turned into a net exporter of people, with just under 550,000 people leaving last year. Some 79,000 of these were Spanish nationals; the rest were departing foreign migrants, according to the National Statistics Institute.
While there’s very familiar hopes expressed, as the same economist notes:
…she had hoped for structural changes, making Spain “more of a knowledge economy, more of a tech economy, a higher-productivity economy”.
One wonders how many of those sort of economies the planet can actually support and more importantly sustain?
There’s a political effect too, the Guardian notes that Podemos is now on 15 per cent, with the Socialists on 21% and the People’s party on 30%.
Left Gardeners Corner – 15th August August 15, 2014
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Another week of growth…
This Week At Irish Election Literature August 15, 2014
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Irish Election Literature Blog.3 comments
Starting off with the above Fianna Fail postcard from some time between 1979 and 1982. Its unusual to see a picture of Leinster House with all the cars outside.
Then to the General Election of 1973 and ‘Election News’ from Official Sinn Fein
And finally something that turned up on the wonderful Hatful of History site …a pamphlet (probably) distributed by the Communist Party of Great Britain in the early 1960s defending the building of The Berlin Wall.
and apologies again over a lack of quiz….
