Brian Greene

GAMA managers have taken 230 striking workers off their payroll and are trying to starve them into submission.

The workers, who held a protest march yesterday afternoon to the Turkish firm?s headquarters in Santry, Dublin, said they have not received food yesterday and were also being threatened with eviction from their accommodation.

Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins, who is campaigning for the Turkish men, accused GAMA of ?vindictive bullying.? ?This brutal attempt to try and force workers into submission is reminiscent of the tactics of William Martin Murphy and the ruthless Dublin employers when they tried to break trade unionism in the 1913 Lockout.

?Gama has already vindictively said it is sacking over 230 workers who are on a work stoppage for the past three weeks. Disgracefully, Gama has also threatened to evict workers from their accommodation.”

Newstalk’s claim that the piece was an “evolving element” in the show is comic in itself. Do BCC decisions give leave to on air apologies? NT106 did get the Cardinal Ratzinger piece correct in historical(?) terms. I have not heard this piece of raido sketch, I wonder what Mitchell McLoughlin and Jeffrey Donaldson said on hearing the news.

Summary of Complaint:
Fr. Moriarty’s complaint, under Section 24(2)(b)(taste & decency) of the Broadcasting Act 2001, refers to a “newsflash” during an interview on the Northern Ireland peace process with Mitchell McLoughlin and Jeffrey Donaldson. The “newsflash” stated that Pope John Paul II was clinically dead and that Cardinal Ratzinger was in charge for the time being. Fr. Moriarty states that he rang the station and enquired as to the content of the “newsflash” and he was told it was a just a joke. Fr. Moriarty found the “joke” distasteful, anti-catholic and insensitive to people suffering from Parkinson’s disease and/or arthritis. It also displayed gross disrespect for the leader of the Catholic Church. It is Fr. Moriarty’s contention that any reference to the death of a leader of a world religion ought never to be viewed as potentially comic or humorous as it infringes good taste and decency.

Station?s Response:
NewsTalk 106 in their response state that the sketch Fr. Moriarty heard on the ‘Breakfast Show with Eamon Dunphy’ was a new aspect on the show and is an evolving element intended to add humour to an excellent current affairs programme. NewsTalk 106 however, accept that the Pope sketch could and did cause offence and apologise to Fr. Moriarty for any offence caused.

Decision of the Commission:
The Broadcasting Complaints Commission upheld the complaint made by Fr. Moriarty. The Commission was of the view that NewsTalk 106 did infringe Section 24(2)(b)(taste & decency). This sketch, in the format of a ‘newsflash’, started with an announcement that the Pope was clinically dead. The humour throughout the sketch was based on the failing health of the Pope with its ‘punch-line’ being a purported unintelligible speech made by him, during which canned laughter was used. Basing humour on the real illness of an individual, and announcing his ‘clinical death’ in a spoof newsflash is not acceptable. Not only is it insensitive, it is asinine and highly offensive. Also, the manner in which the piece was presented gave cause for concern. It was not until near the end of the ’sketch’ that a listener would have been aware that it was a ’spoof’ comedy sketch. Such crass treatment of the Pope’s grave state of health was unwarranted and in extremely bad taste. In the opinion of the Commission this sketch was extremely offensive to the Pope, to people and their families and relations with such illnesses and also, to people of religious faith. The complaint was upheld.

On Saturday afternoon I attended the ÉIST – Great Radio Debate “Radio in the iPOD Age”

speakers were
Celene Craig, Deputy Chief Executive and Secretary Broadcasting Commission of Ireland
Andrea Martin, Media Lawyer
Willie O’ Reilly, Chief Executive Today fm
Kieran Mc Geary, Chief Executive Beat 102 103
Fiona Stack, Editor Newstalk 106

The event was poorly attended (15 people) for I thought the topic was pretty hot. The debate was recorded for web download, odd that, the Independent Broadcasters Association will podcast a debate rather than broadcast it.

Eist put forward an experienced panel who gave and reflected the industry fears and wants around the future of their industry with the advent of iPOD type casting.

I hope to link to the Eist.org download as soon as its available and if not, I will host my own low level recording of the event.

In brief, there was an acceptance that the technology had arrived but varying degrees of understanding of its current uses. While not being totally fearful of its [podcasting] arrival, there is general unease at its potential knock on effects for traditional spot advertising on Irish radio.

Willie O’ Reilly (Today FM) had a Sci-Fi moment and mapped out what radio could be like in 2030, spreading fear among the assembled for the long term future on their careers.

I spoke from the floor from the podcasters point of view. The debate was lively and very interesting, the radio industry seem ready to embrace the technology and more importantly the social advance that podcasting is sure to offer.

The United Kingdom declares martial law in Ireland. (Wikipedia)
8<
The British worked slowly, unsure of how many they were up against, and put their efforts into securing the approaches to Dublin Castle and isolating the headquarters at the GPO, before the gunboat Helga shelled large parts of the city and burned much of it down.
8<
The Easter Rising has sometimes been described as the first socialist revolution in Europe. Whether or not such a statement is true is debatable. Of the leaders, only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause. Although the others nominally accepted the notion of a socialist state in order to convince Connolly to join them, their dedication to this concept is highly questionable at best… Many years later, the Soviet Union would be the first country to recognise the Republic of Ireland.
more

I said some really nice things about my XDA in my most recent podcast. Like it knows how to crash, no blue screen, it crashes and 99% of the time it just needs a soft reset and its back on track. Then tonight when I least needed it to crash it crashes big time. A slow flashing blue light (the bluetooth light) and zero screen activity and all buttons are dead, not even a hard reset would do it. Having learned how to recover from a hard reset (see here) I was more confident I would be back up and running in 20 minutes, so I didn’t bother recovering and decide to use it just to record a meeting. So I set the storage are to the card set a low codec and started recording. The memory area ran out after 2 hours of the meeting and without warning it fill 100% of the memory and flashed a warning and died. Back to square one no recording and in need of a recovery from the second hard reset in 3 hours.

I switched the sim of my phone to the old 6310i nokia as I really needed the phone to be working and found that yet again the Pockect PC on the XDA was letting me down. OK I might not be a novice user but Im hardly pushing the machine to the limit (apart from storage) but wouldn’t you think it would stop recording in good time to save its self from death by blue (O2) screen. Ive got all my data back except contacts and all extra progs and .net framework SP3 are re installed. I just wish it was a lot more reliable. I wish I didn’t say such nice things about it in the podcast. I’ve invested time money data and more time in this PDA and all I’m getting is more acquainted with being a power / data recovery expert.

Another thing that bugs me, it lives for about 7 hours of heavy use, when an business day of heavy use takes 9 hours. My fully charged spare battery is useless if the dying battery needs to be 50% full to do a safe battery swap. If the batts are low 20-0% you only have 20 minutes grace to get the back up battery in. I think I’ll mini disc the next important meeting and wait till Im more expert to try long file recording with this limited PDA.

Shite, blogger is down. This downtime will last half an hour from 4pm
- 4:30pm (PST).

Ok plan B, skype for PPC & PC has an update as does Firefox. Off to install.

ALSO

echo esat
just learned of this gem today, its probably more an old nugget than gem, email a test mail to echo@esat.net and get back an email with all the headers and results of the mail you sent out. I can see myself using this on buggy tests on & off site.

films wathced on someone elses Sky+ this week, 1984, The Dancer Upstairs, Boys From Brazil. Im really getting into theis time shifted living.

As a two thirds majority is needed, the Croke Park Grab All Association will decide today if Soccer & Rugby will be played on its turf. It has hosted Oz Rules and American Football, Neil Diamond, U2, Lou Reed, Simple Minds. A wonderful stadium part paid by our taxes (through the consent of the elected FF govt.) needs a set number of big fixtures per annum, the kind of gigs that the never built national stadium needed. Lets hope they break with tradition and also have a fair vote.

Anocht fm, RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta’s dedicated service for younger listeners featuring English-language songs, will be launched next month.

Described as a radical departure from mainstream RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta programming, Anocht fm begins on Monday 2 May 2005, broadcasting seven days a week between 9pm and 1am. more

It was Wednesday morning the wife is at the dentist and charlotte (aged 2) and I are trying to get around the shopping center in Donaghmede. The O2 shop had my XDA parts I ordered, and I failed to spend a €20 voucher for Golden Discs, as they had no CD-Rs and no mini-discs (I mean they really don’t want to sell blanks!!!) Anyway charlotte is going mental to ride on Bob the Builder, €2 for 1 ride, I end up dropping €5 to get 1 ride, and there is no refund button only a coin reject slot. So I call the plated number to complain (to the sound of “can we fix it” in the background), my number’s taken, my address the location of ride. and they promise to send refund by post. So euro coins taped to paper arrive in the post this morning from Northern Ireland company Oasis Retail Services. They did fix it, and the refund will be spent wisely. lesson of the day, standup for your (consumer) rights.

Around 400 Turkish employees of the construction firm GAMA have mounted a protest outside the Dáil today as part of their campaign to secure outstanding pay from the company.

more photos