Brian Greene

Launched in Dublin this morning – Show Racism The Red Card. The group launched their new web site & the DVD for distribution in Irish Schools.

The morning kicked off in Tolka Park home of Shelbourne FC at about 11:30 (30 minutes late) when Niall Quinn was welcomed by the crowd on over 120 to launch the Irish chapter of the successful UK ANTI-RACISM group Show Racism The Red Card.

What followed was the showing of the DVD to the 75 pupils attended from North Dublin primary & secondary schools and a energetic Q&A session from the school children to the panel on the core subject of racism in football & Irish society today.

(more…)

If Mc Dowell hadn’t listened to Garda Chiefs but the Kaiser Chiefs they could have told him about their prediction regarding rioting.

We live in a City where we are free to March, any day, any time with a permit (if granted) but we can not advertise these events on posters on city streets. BUT the Minister for justice thinks its ok to allow a “Love Ulster” parade to meet counter demo by nationalists in a BUILDING SITE! that is a permanent building site ‘O’Connell street’. it was as much a building site on Feb 15th 2003 when over 100,000 crammed down both side of the center median which was fenced off. Half that again crammed through on Dec 9th 2005 to support the Irish Ferries workers, and again it was a building site (but less of one to appease commercial sensibilities in the capitalist run up to Dec 25th).

With all that unprotected building material available, your decision to allow, or indecision to stop a rally / counter rally happen, your obvious lack of intelligence from street cred sources as to what was about to happen leaves your office in disrepute.

Minister McDowell resign, please, you have failed us. The thugs on our streets beat you, our city, its police force and beat your policies. You were wrong to let it go ahead as it did under the circumstances. Did you not get the memo, was it not sent? what did it say or do we need FoI requests to see any such memo?

As Chairman of the PDs, when you visit your party HQ at 25 South Fredrick Street Dublin 2 and reflect of Saturdays damage, think of what you should have done to stop our city falling into the hands of scumbags.

When Europe became 25 states, The Garda got water cannon from the PSNI to blast anti globalisation marchers, could Love Ulster or the PSNI not provide such cross border co-op on Saturday? where was intelligence? or did you want this carnage to happen to discredit the parties involved and put our city in the center of a war zone for a day?

QUESTION: Do Irish breaking news services [online] alter the timestamps of news stories without renewing the content of a story?

ANSWER : Yes

this is really annoying, it servers to dilute the importance of breaking news just like Sky News / BBC 24 and CNN do. Flashing breaking news every 15/20 minutes is aggressive, but altering the update time of a story that has not been updated [online] is dishonest. Surely there is better was to rank order than fake timestamps. There is a better way but news agenda is about being first to scoop not first to be right. If this was really the case then breaking news services with the oldest timestamps would have claim to being first, but its also about looking freshest even if you are not.

my favourite breaking news services in Ireland
1. Aertel Teletext not via http://www.rte.ie/aertel/
2. http://www.breakingnews.ie :fast regular and free
3. http://www.rte.ie :the AV links make up for poor text coverage
4. http://www.ireland.com :[better out of hours]

I do more news page lookups on Teletext than I do online perday, and I must be online 9+ hours a day. I could also live without the video, sound & text is luxury to me, apart from the big once a year events, News; need not have video, often it has ‘piece to camera’ crap or live link to sites, not because their is news there but the daily planners put a SNG truck there and rented the feed, but the story flew south hours before the fixed time news broadcast came on air at evening primetime.

Watch video news enter the mobile market; watch match box size anchor tell you nothing new today; watch them degrade our filters with abuse of BREAKING NEWS straps for “cat farting by fire place” stories.

This madness has to end – it starts with you, learn how to filter this noise, increase the S:N:R, read more, seek out more long form journalism, seek out more versions of the spin, even ones you would not generally be disposed to. seek out news from original source, shortwave radio is still doing it. read blogs; listen to podcasts;

Don’t let big business interest kill your news flow. do get bombarded with data smog. filter & learn.

saw this in the guggenheim last week and had to to buy it; buy the postcard not the installation! Nam June Paik – Family Robot – Grandmother left Grandfather right [1986] single channel video sculptures with vintage television and radio castings and monitors; colour silent.

RTE has a aertel page that explains wide screen, on pg 192. [they should have used the unused pg 169 aka 16:9 ah well] what I don’t get is WHY cant I get RTE on Digital Satellite for free, I have a licence, I have had one since 1993, I don’t have $ky, dont want it, but do have Digital Satellite in several rooms. If Minister Dempsey can designate sport to be FTA then he should make RTE FTA on 28°East. Perhaps this could become an election issue. I live in the Dublin area and indoor reception of TV signal is impossible, outdoor is 90-100% and picture is aspect ratio 14:9. I live in a cable area but gave up on it after 50% price hike inside 1 year, sanctioned by ComReg with only about 75 observations. I live outside or on the border of terrestrial UK reception where I would need 40′ antenna of roof top to get decent signal. So I ask again why has RTE been allowed to enter an agreement that has our National TV on digital satellite encrypted by the key holder BSkyB to their paid up customers only. I don’t want a partial fix of FreeView cards for Ireland, I want my National service which I fund, off the encryption system that BSkyB provide for free to RTE to prevent FTA viewers inside the footprint of Astra 2D see Digital RTE TV.

Noel Dempsey, Fianna Fail, RTE (their Board and Audience Council) and ComReg are you able to interfere with The Ryder Cup and not with RTE on Sky. At the moment I am funding a 16:9 wide screen digital format for subscribers of Sky, while I see scratchy 14:9.