This request for investigation, with accompanying documentation, will arrive with the Standards in Public Office Commission tomorrow or the next day.

Request
An Smaoineamh Mór Limited is a company having its registered office at Arthur Cox Building, Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2 (Company Record Number 478844). It was registered on the 16th December 2009 with the CRO. As of February 2010 it had received donations within 2010 with a declared value of approximately €2 million euro. [1]

An Smaoineamh Mór Limited is a ‘Third Party’, as defined by Section 49 Electoral (Amendment) Act, 2001.

As of April 2010, An Smaoineamh Mór Limited had not complied with its duty to register as a Third Party with the Standards In Public Office Commission. It is not known to the complainant, but is within the knowledge of the Commission, whether the company has since so registered.

All donations have been given for political purposes, as defined by Section 22(2)(aa) of the 1997 Electoral Act, as inserted by Section 49 of the the Electoral (Amendment) 2001 Act. The donors made their payments in the knowledge that An Smaoineamh Mór Limited intended to use the money to a promote or lobby for a change in the fiscal or legal or regulatory circumstances of Ireland via a competition and lobbying campaign under the style and title of Your Country, Your Call. [2] An Smaoineamh Mór Limited undertakes no activity outside this project.

Donations to Third Parties for political purposes may not exceed €6,348.39 in a single year from a single party. (per Section 23A of the 1997 Act as inserted by Section 49 (d) of the 2001 Act). An Smaoineamh Mór Limited has stated in the media that the total approximate €2 million donations received were made by only 13 donors[3]. In addition to these private donors, the state may have donated €300,000. [4]

The maximum aggregate amount which could be donated by 13 donors to a Third Party for political purposes in one year is €82,529.07. By their own statements, An Smaoineamh Mór Limited have therefore received approximately €1,617,457.93 in excess of the maximum sum of donations permitted under statute.

I wish to formally request the Standards in Public Office Commission investigate this apparent discrepancy between actual funding and that permitted by the Electoral Acts of a Third Party by private companies and/or individuals and the failure of An Smaoineamh Mór Limited to register as a Third Party.

Footnotes:

[1]“Dr [Laurence] Crowley said some €2 million had already been donated to the competition.”
- Your Country, Your Call What it is and how it works,
Irish Times February 18th 2010
http://bit.ly/9IwAyr

[2]“Prof Von Prondzynski: The nature of the winning proposal… won’t itself be a business but rather a process or for example a change in the fiscal or legal or regulatory backdrop which will allow others then, we hope lots of other people to put forward or to start business propositions.
Simon McGarr: Is it your intention to find a policy to lobby the government to change their proposal or policies on the back of?
Prof Von Prondzynski: Yes that would be a quite likely scenario.”
-
Extract from Audio Interview,
Newstalk 106, Monday 26th April 2010

[3]“McKeon said a cash fund of just under €2 million had been accumulated through donations from 13 companies and individuals. “-
McAleese Scheme down to 20 finalists,
Sunday Business Post, June 20th 2010
http://bit.ly/9wkKoT

[4]“My Department is currently examining a proposal to provide funding of up to €300,000 to the “Your Country Your Call” initiative from within existing resources. No funding has yet been paid by my Department in respect of the initiative.”
Minister Mary Coughlan,
Written Parliamentary Question 23rd March 2010
http://bit.ly/d7z5BU

At the end of My Liveblogged Year, I promised a follow up on my evolving opinion of Liveblogging’s form and promise.

This post is not that article. Instead I’m reacting to the announcement of the GoogleTV service. I was prompted to respond by what feels like Google’s profound misunderstanding of how and why people watch television. To start with, I’d like to point out that mostly, people do not watch the television so they can see a particular programme.

Image cc of Aieoux

If you work in Google this may seem like patent foolishness. If people want to find something on the Internet, they search for it. Why not bring the same sort of pinpoint accuracy to the television? Then we can all do a search for our favourite programme, thereby increasing Television Watching Productivity!

I make the reference to TV Productivity only half in jest. The unspoken presumption is that we have been watching these television channels in a frustrated state all our lives, chafing at the wasted seconds of our lives that every programme which was not exactly the one we want represented.

Sorry, but that’s not Telly Watching as I know it. And, though I understand you’ll have to take this on trust, I have watched a great deal of television.

Television, the jargon has it, is a ‘Lean Back’ activity as opposed to computers- which are ‘Lean Forward’ machines. Google even announced they’re calling their YouTube for TV service YouTube Leanback.

But this isn’t the reality of watching television. When watched in a solitary situation, it isn’t any kind of activity at all. It is the practically the definition of a lack of activity. Never mind whether you’re leaning forward, backward or slumped on the floor in a nest of cushions. With only two exceptional circumstances, watching television as an adult is a ‘Brain Off’ moment.

Of course, it is in the exceptions that all the most interesting stuff lives. For adults, I think those exceptions are when participating in what you’re watching or when what you’re watching is of such exceptional quality that it engages you fully in the same way a novel can.

Or, if you prefer, we only think about a programme when it becomes either a social or artistic event.

I don’t really have much to say about the latter category. It has always been what the best of television drama and documentary has aspired to. It has existed as the traditional goal of any television creator with an ounce of self respect since the creation of the medium.

What I do have something to say about is television as a social event. At the moment, the phrase “event television” is used to refer to a particular style of mass-audience blockbuster programme. X-Factor is the leader of this fleet of pumped-up gong show retreads. A drama can become a social event too- Doctor Who, when in good health, has always provoked discussions in offices and playgrounds alike.

But there is no reason that event television should apply only to programmes with mass appeal. Indeed niche programmes are more likely to call forth deeper levels of engagement the more niche they become. As the barrier to entry rises, so does the remaining fans commitment. Look at the fervour of any of the campaigns for the reinstatement of Joss Whedon’s cancelled series’ for an example.

Put bluntly, a bad programme with a good social element- where it is the jumping off point for shared references, jokes and ongoing stories- is simply more fun than a mediocre programme which stands on its own.

How much more bearable can a terrible programme be made? Why, here’s a lively discussion of the raw streamed feed from a Dublin City Council meeting. That’s how much extra enjoyment can be squeezed out of the least promising of material when people can join a peanut gallery.

GoogleTV as currently imagined wants to help us watch more TV. What it needs to do is abandon its internet-bred idea that the content is what is valuable about television. What is valuable about television is precisely that it is a mass medium. The internet is vast, but it isn’t broadcast.

Google needs to stop thinking about linking viewers with programmes and start focusing how to gently help viewers to link to each other.

Last month I wrote an article for the Irish Times asking some questions regarding the Your Country Your Call competition. As a result, members of the competition ‘Steering Group’, including Professor Von Prondzynski, the President of DCU, have elaborated on their previous positions both on those pages and in radio interviews.

Some questions have been answered. Some have been met with a blunt refusal to answer. But the most interesting thing to have emerged from those responses is how they lead to much larger questions in their turn. Let’s take a stroll around some of those issues.

Who has given what?
Thanks to Prof. Von Prondzynski we now know that everyone who has given money to YCYC is now named amongst their list of contributors on their website. Here’s the list:

Accenture, AIB, Alchemy Event Management Ltd., An Focal, Bank of Ireland, Bord Gáis, Business & Finance,Business Plus, Cawley Nea/ TBWA, Cisco, Clear Channel, College View DCU,Computers in Business, Computer Scope, Cork IT, CRH, Thomas Crosbie Holdings, Communicorp, Corporate PR Photography, Arthur Cox & Co, DCC, J C Decaux, Diageo Ireland, Digital Ireland, Digital Times, Drury, Dublin City University, Ernst & Young, ESB,Explicit Cork IT, Facebook, Glen Dimplex, , Google, Hotpress, HP, Independent Newspapers, Irish Computer,Irish Daily Mail, Irish Daily Star,Irish Examiner, Irish Mail on Sunday, Irish Mirror, Irish Sun, Irish Times Newspapers, Irish Voice, Kerry Group, Kinetic, Knowledge Ireland, KPMG, Loosehorse,Marketing Age, Mutiny, JP McManus, Ray Mac Mánais, National Gallery of Ireland, Neworld Associates, News of the World,Newstalk, Omnicom Media Group, Owner Manager, PC Live,Print and Display, PwC, Regional Newspapers of Ireland, RTÉTelevision, RTÉ Radio, Screen Scene, Silicon Republic, Sky Television, Smart Company, Smurfit Kappa, Sunday Business Post, Sunday Independent, Sunday Mirror, Sunday Times, Sunday Tribune, The Ireland Funds, Times Online, Today FM, Trinity News, TV3, John Walsh Tunes, University Observer, Wall Street Journal Online, Windmill Lane.

Leaving aside the question of whose parents thought the name Owner Manger a suitable one for a child, we are still left to guess who amongst this roll-call of the great and the good have actually put their hands into their pockets- and how much they’ve paid. For reasons they haven’t even tried to explain, An Smaoineamh Mor’s representatives have flatly refused to answer the question. UPDATE 28th June 2010 ValueIreland points out in the comments below that the Sunday Business Post report that only 13 of the above companies have given money. But An Smaoineamh Mor still aren’t telling which 13.

The closest we’ve got to solid numbers was An Smaoineamh Mor Ltd Director, and former Governor of the Bank of Ireland, Dr. Laurence Crowley saying at the launch of the competition in Feburary that €2 million had been donated. “We need a little more than that, but not a lot more”, he told the Irish Times. By the end of the competition this had become a development fund of €1 million and two prizes of €100,000. An Smaoineamh Mor Ltd’s refusal to discuss their finances openly means we can’t know how that difference of €.8 million arose, or whether its dispersal represents good value for money.

Did Minister Coughlan mislead the Dail in March of this year?
In contrast, this one has now been clearly answered.

When on Newstalk on Monday 26th April, Prof. VonProndzynski and I had the following exchange;

“Von Prondzynski: My understanding is that money was authorised by the government and I can’t really say more than that because I’m not knowledgeable about anything in further detail about that. But the government indicated to the promoters of the competition that €300,000 would be available. And that’s really the state of play as I’m aware of it.

Simon: And that was prior to the Minister saying that wasn’t decided?

Von Prondzynski: Yes, that was prior to that.”

Which is fair enough. There ought to be more questions arising from that, but they should be directed to the Minister.

Is Your Country Your Call legally sound?
Strangely, given how long the competition has been running, this one seems to have only unravelled over the last month. We’ve gone from a rather vague call for blue sky ideas- fresh, unpredictable and original- to something a lot more solid. The significance of the decision of An Smaoineamh Mor Ltd to accept donations combined with their intentions for the competition-winning ideas can now be more clearly seen.

From the Newstalk interview again;

“Von Prondzynski: We are not trying to set up a particular commercial enterprise or a particular commercialised prodect or process. what we’re trying to do here is to ensure that there are proposals that will create a backdrop in which others will then profit.

The nature of the winning proposal… won’t itself be a business but rather a process or for example a change in the fiscal or legal or regulatory backdrop which will allow others then, we hope lots of other people to put forward or to start business propositions.

Simon: Is it your intention to find a policy to lobby the government to change their proposal or policies on the back of?

Von Prondzynski: Yes that would be a quite likely scenario.”

Never mind that there is an entire judging panel which hadn’t even started its work when Prof. Von Prondzynski described in such detail what the winning submission will look like. Of greater significance is the meaning of this model for the legality of the competition as currently constituted.

An Smaoineamh Mor Ltd intends to become a pressure group. By its own admission it wants to lobby for a change in government policy. It has collected donations to pay for its actions to this end. The fact that it hasn’t yet decided what policy it will lobby for is irrelevant. Nor is the fact that the government has indicated that it is likely to be successful in its lobbying efforts. It has fallen squarely within the definition of a ‘third party’ under Section 49 Electoral (Amendment) Act, 2001

‘third party’ means any person, other than a political party registered in the Register of Political Parties under Part III of the Electoral Act, 1992 , or a candidate at an election, who accepts, in a particular year, a donation the value of which exceeds £100.”,

The problem is that, given the above clarification of the Your Country Your Call competition, its fundraising behaviour also appears to fall squarely within the definition of receiving money for ‘Political Purposes’ found in Section 22(2)(aa) of the 1997 Electoral Act, as inserted by Section 49 of the the Electoral (Amendment) 2001 Act.

The permitted upper limit of money which may be accepted for those purposes is not the €150,000 which An Smaoineamh Mor Ltd have self-imposed but rather €6,348.39. (per Section 23A of the 1997 Act as inserted by Section 49 (d) of the 2001 Act).

Helpfully, Section 23A (5) sets out what to do with any monies received above that limit. Within 14 days of the receipt of the excess money they must pay the balance back to the donor or to the Standards in Public Office Commission. When I rang them, SIPO confirmed that, as yet, An Smaoineamh Mor Ltd haven’t even registered as a third party with them.

All of which makes the idea that Minister Coughlan would have agreed to supply €300,000 of public money (in a time of financial crises) for the purposes of lobbying her own government to introduce an as-yet-unknown policy change even more peculiar- and questionable- than it was a month ago.

In the unlikely event that I wanted to run a national competition offering a cash prize of mysterious origin in exchange for total ownership of an idea of such staggering- almost mystical- potency that it could restore a nation of modern-day serfs to spectacular success, I think I’d have to go into it without a preconception of what that idea would look like.

After all, I’m looking for a ‘game changer‘ to alter society . How could I know what that is? Almost by definition, I don’t have a precedent. Perhaps the steam engine? Calculus? Gunpowder? The mathematical concept of Zero? Monotheism? The Novel?

Who can know what shape such a wonderous notion might take?

Apparently, the Your Country Your Call people know with surprising detail:

Ferdinand von Prondzynski

“we are assuming that a winning entry will generally be such that it would not involve serious IP issue” – on eire.com

Padraig McKeon

YCYC is not looking to find and reward an invention or a specific business idea… YCYC is looking to identify an area of identifiable potential to either create something that hasn’t previously existed or to turn something that exists but is not being exploited into something that could create prosperity and jobs at an entirely different level from what currently exists… it is less likely in our view that there will be much IP in such a broad concept – On tuppenceworth.ie

To be absolutely clear, this competition is not about identifying specific business proposals which might result in the development of one product, or growing only one company’s work force. It is looking for something that is still at the concept stage and needs to be worked up. Winning proposals will describe a significant preparatory process which could require legislative, administrative or procedural change before implementation can be effected.- On obriend.info

YCYC is “not [looking for] a business… [but] an industry” – On obriend.info

Take it that we have no desire to limit the possibilities and neither are we in any way seeking to cod anyone.- On tuppenceworth.ie

So there you have it. All you need to do is come up with an entire new industry- which is not a business or business idea, doesn’t create jobs for any particular company, isn’t an invention- as that would involve a lot of Intellectual Property (IP)- is entirely new or is old but not being used an will require laws, custom and/or practice to be changed if it is to work. Oh, and it then has to save Ireland.

It’s almost as if they were trying to describe something they already had in mind…

From Tuesdayoi 23rd March’s Dáil record, a Parliamentary Question about Your Country, Your Call.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)

Question 155: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if her Department has given, or undertaken to give, public money to An Smaoineamh Mór Limited, a registered company currently advertising a competition under the style and title Your Country Your Call; if so the amount of money from what budget or programme it was taken and under what statutory power it was transferred; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [12702/10]

And the answer from the Minister;

Mary Coughlan (Tánaiste; Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

Although it is not a Government-led initiative, the objectives of “Your Country Your Call” are to identify proposals which will have a significant positive economic impact on Ireland and which will help to secure sustainable employment. I view the initiative as being complementary to the work being carried out by my Department and its agencies. In this context, my Department is currently examining a proposal to provide funding of up to €300,000 to the “Your Country Your Call” initiative from within existing resources. No funding has yet been paid by my Department in respect of the initiative. However, if funding is made available, a key objective for my officials will be to ensure that the necessary financial procedures are followed and that mechanisms are put in place to ensure appropriate management and accountability of public funds.

Which is odd. Because it shows (a) the Minister hasn’t made a decision to give An Smaoineamh Mór Limited any money and (b) that the amount of money she is considering paying is any figure ‘up to’ €300,000. It also raises questions as to what conditions may be placed on any funding.

What is most odd about those facts is that Padraig McKeon- MD of Drury Communications and member of the Your Country Your Call ‘Steering Committee’- seems not to know that An Smaoineamh Mór Ltd remains an unapproved applicant.

Here he is on the 6th of March on ValueIreland.com outlining some of the strangely opaque funding sources for An Smaoineamh Mór Ltd, which is the company running the Your Country, Your Call competition.

A cash fund of just under €2m has been accumulated via donations from 13 parties (companies and individuals) which has been lodged in the accounts of the company, An Smaoineamh Mor, which is a registered charity…

You ask about Government or political involvement. There is no government or political involvement in either setting up or operating the competition. However YCYC is not merely ’suggesting’ it has Government support. The project explicitly has that support. Specifically, the promoters formally presented the project to government late last summer and asked for support in three ways – a contribution to the fund referred above, a request that the competition would have access if it needed it to the services of the state enterprise agencies in the evalauation process (if such help were required) and a commitment that government would engage with the process of developing the two winning proposals, particularly with reference to any legislative issues that might need to be addressed. It agreed to all three requests – it will be contributing 15% of the fund; there has been no requirement to this point for the involvemnent of the state agencies and clearly there is no need for development support at this point.-(Emphasis added)

So, has An Smaoineamh Mór got €300,000 of public money in a bank account today?

Or not?

This is more a question for the media, who have once again embraced the chance to print a ‘good news’ story.

Just in case someone would like to run against the grain (and aren’t turned down by their editors when they suggest blaspheming against ‘optimism’) here are some questions;

Who is funding the competition?
Padraig McKeon (Managing Director of Drury Communications and their “go-to’ guy for crisis and issue management”) tweeted

Am on YCYC Steering. It is as @darraghdoyle says; one of 13 contributors, in kind and €, all less than 10% fund #ycyc

Darragh Doyle had filled us in on AIB like so:

they’re one of the contributors, afaik, with Diageo, BOI, Cisco and other big names. Approx 130K each I *THINK*

Really? Is it possible that the two main banks- the main causes of our social and economic woes- are funding this competition (with money paid over from the state to keep them in business) with the stated aim to “help change the way we do things, allow businesses to grow, employment to be created and prosperity to flourish.” Can there be that much cynicism in the world?

Painfully, there is a bit of evidence that AIB, at least, are in the centre of the Your Country Your Call family.

Registrant:

Allied Irish Banks plc
Bankcentre, Ballsbridge
Ballsbridge
Dublin Co. Dublin
4
IE

Domain name: yourcountryyourcall.com

Created on: 2009-09-28
Expires on: 2011-09-28

Administrative contact:
eBusiness
Bankcentre, Ballsbridge
Ballsbridge
Dublin Co. Dublin
4
IE
+353 16600311
+353 16089675
******@AIB.IE

Who owns the Your Country, Your Call ideas?
The Competition’s Terms and Conditions have a section headed Intellectual Property. It is self-contradictory and unclear. Where it isn’t, it would give me pause before pressing the ‘Submit’ button as to what I’m giving away. The Chairman of Arthur Cox Solicitors (who, coincidentally, are advising the government on NAMA) is one of the Directors of Your Country Your Call. I can’t believe that this crucial section has been drafted with anything unintended left in.

Section 7.1
As a Participant, in consideration of entry into the Competition you grant to the Promoter, its representative and agents a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, unemcumbered, royalty-free, fully paid up, non-exclusive license under all of Participant’s Intellectual Property Rights in the Proposal (as defined below) to:
…
(c) revise, alter, modify, improve or otherwise make derivative works of the Proposal; and

(d) sublicense and authorize the granting of sublicenses by the Promoter of all of the license rights granted to the Promoter in this Section 7.1.

The above licence shall remain in effect for the duration of your participation and involvement in the Competition and shall automatically terminate at the end of your involvement in the Competition.. Notwithstanding the foregoing licence (and other than with respect to the transfer of all Intellectual Property Rights in the winning Proposals by the winning Participants to the Promoter, on the terms described in Clause 7.2 below), you retain ownership of all of your Intellectual Property Rights in your Proposal.

Look, why would you look for a ‘perpetual, irrevocable’ licence and then say it terminated in 63 days?

Section 7.2 is about what happens to the winner. I’ll come back to that in a minute. First, let’s look at Section 7.4, which applies to everyone.

You waive all claims to and shall receive no royalties of any kind, whether now or in the future, from the Promoter, its affiliates, licensees, successors and assignees for use of your Proposal, including, without limitation, intellectual property, public performance, digital sound recording, mechanical, synchronization or master use royalties.

So which is it? You own all your IP? Or you waive all claims to it? Even the steering committee don’t seem to know.

Here’s Padraig McKeown, our ‘go-to guy’ from earlier again via twitter;

Must be read with Sec 7,1 “Retain..all..your..IP” YCYC a charity, not a biz. Can use it for PR etc for no fee; U still own it #ycyc

There’s no sign in the T&Cs that one clause is subordinate to another. So we just have contradictory claims.

And if you win? Then you get the pleasure of Section 7.2

At Promoter’s option, in consideration of entry into the Competition the winning Participants (including, where relevant, all Team members of such Participants) shall irrevocably transfer, convey and assign to the Promoter (or such party that the Promoter may direct) all right, title and interest in and to the winning Proposal and all Intellectual Property Rights therein (excluding moral rights). The winning Participants (including, where relevant, all Team members of such Participants) further agree to waive all moral rights relating thereto and agree to execute all documents and perform all acts deemed necessary by the Promoter to apply for, register, perfect and record such transfer and assignment and/or waivers.

Or, take your €100,000 and drop dead. The About page makes this perfectly clear:

Please note that the prize is for the winning proposers – this is similar to architectural competitions where the winning architect may or may not be involved in the subsequent construction.

So, got an idea for some “truly transformational proposals so big that, when implemented, could secure prosperity and jobs for Ireland. Proposals that could help change the way we do things, allow businesses to grow, employment to be created and prosperity to flourish”?

This is your chance to give them away for €100,000.

Or, if you’re a member of the media, do you think there might be just the slightest issue worth asking questions about here?

That is the current President of Ireland on the front page.

Your Country, Your Call launched a week ago. Its self description “a competition to ignite your imagination and reward your thinking” might have you scratching your head.

Didn’t we already go though exactly this already? The Ideas Campaign was an almost identical effort run by PR firm AMAS’s Managing Director Aileen O’Toole in March of 2009. (AMAS counts the Department of Finance as one of its clients, along with 28 other public bodies)

That earlier effort to radically change the nation was launched in a blaze of publicity. Editors, journalists and producers, hungry for anything positive to report after months of misery uncritically gave the Idea Campaign space to promote its primary message- If only we could harness [insert noun of your choice] Ireland could rise again- without having to actually confront what had happened to the country. They described it as wanting to “focus on solutions, not problems”.

Radical ideas, it seemed, were required to avoid the pain of change.

Well, as you’ll all have noticed, despite boldly proclaiming on their front page “Ideas Campaign fulfils its goals” Ireland has continued on much as before.

The list of 17 ideas the Government declared it was going to implement are a mix of things already done (“Facilitate career breaks and shorter working week in public sector”) and things so vague as to be meaningless (“Make changes to job seekers’ allowance to incentivise placement of graduates”). This is not because the country has no ideas for improving. It is that there are no ideas that this government could implement, without self destructing.

Fergal has written better than I can on the paroxysm of Magical Thinking which has gripped Ireland for the last year. I hope he might even revisit the subject again.

Only vested interests, boosters and snake-oil salesmen demand we look to the future and not try to revisit (or identify) the mistakes of the past. For the rest of us, ‘Let’s do something to fix Ireland’ is an impossible position to take without defining what is wrong.

Aware of this, the government has enthusiastically embraced the catch-all responsibility avoiding phrase “we are where we are”. The Ideas Campaign and now Your Country, Your Call are a manifestation of the same empty demand. Other magical thinking projects come to nothing because there is no there there. These ‘official’ projects go further.

Nothing will come of them because nothing is meant to come of them. Nothing is exactly the aim.

1. Proposal: Introduce a policy of deliberate Professional Negligence in Criminal Defence.
2. Proposal: “The voting process will become a mere formality to sustain our sense of democracy”. Sold!
3. Proposal: “It would be a good idea for Europe to help by printing more euro.” Duh! Why did nobody think of this before now. Financial Crisis, Solved.
4. Proposal:“gather & use all the cattle manure in this country and have the nations artists sculpt them into giant statues resembling the Easter Island ones”
5. Proposal: Ireland to give a tax break/ tax free status to billionaires. “Let’s work our hearts out for them.”

The parish of Tuppenceworth has seen it’s best writing, and best thinking, in 2009. Unfortunately for me, all of it was produced by Fergal. I have bumped along, the Bez to his Ryder, cheerfully waving my maracas whenever I thought anyone was looking.

But that isn’t to say I abandoned the web this year. In fact, I probably have more posts with my name beside them than ever. They just all lived on my primary 2009 project, Liveblog.ie. That site is now 13 months old and I have some thoughts about what I think I’ve learned from it along the way. But, as the nature of Liveblogging is collaborative, I’d invite you to give your own considered observations below and on your own sites. I’ll copy a sample up into the post as you do. This is the first part of a two part extravaganza.

Part One: Why bother?

Firstly, Liveblog.ie was always an experiment. I started it after a few tries on Tuppenceworth. Here’s the first outing- a drifting solitary meander around John Waters. Hardly a liveblog at all- I’m on my own, talking to myself. Or Fergal may have joined in too. ScribbleLive at the time didn’t indicate who’s said what.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed it enough to do it again. There was no appointment to watch yet. I was just typing about whatever was on the television in front of me. As the technology underlying the ScribbleLive platform developed, so did my use of it. A core group developed, some of whom were unlucky enough to be pinned to a table in real life and who listened to me as I wrestled with what this funny new kind of webpost might do. Those people- Suzy, Alexia, Mark Coughlan and Cian, amongst the many others who joined in night after night setting the medium’s tone- shaped and added to my mental image of liveblogging’s potential. I don’t want it to seem as though I’m claiming any part in their work- a liveblog is a collaborative act. Imagining them was likewise.

As a medium, liveblogging is still only a shadow of what it could be. But even still, the faint sketched in lines are becoming clear. And, as usually happens with an internet technology, I think the real impact of liveblogging will be felt in places the inventors didn’t expect.

Since doing the Paper Round with Fergal and Ger, I have been struggling to absorb the meaning of what we found. Newspapers are failing. This is important because they are the primary source of original information for and about Irish society to allow it to understand itself. We regularly read references to the pressures on their business model- how ads are melting away. But Paper Round was done at the peak of a decade long advertising boom. It wasn’t a shortage of money that was killing the newspaper as a socially valuable medium.

They had simply forgotten what they were for.

Press Releases masqueraded as news stories. Property Developers had verbatim PR pufferies about their wives’ dresses printed in multiple newspapers to drown out unwanted actual news from An Bord Pleanala. The readership was forgotten- taken for granted as the dumb swallower of all the paid for placed guff and uncritical relaying of untruths. If advertisers abandon a newspaper, it can tighten its belt. If readers abandon it, it dies. Sooner or later, readers will abandon newspapers full of empty stories.

When I eventually realised that newspapers were going to fall, I was concerned. With them would go the possibility they could improve. The Irish Press waxed and waned in quality and influence, but when it was gone, it was gone. Replacing newspapers as a whole class of information source will be impossible if we simply attempt to recreate what was there before.

You might argue I’m being sentimental. Why worry about dead trees and their inky pulp when we have the bright world of broadcast and online news?

Well, if you think print is dead, you’ve never seen the production office of a radio or television current affairs programme. They are the initial source of almost all the discussions and debate you hear throughout the day over the airwaves. And as any one honest will confirm there is no Irish online only news source with the capacity to replace the entirety of even the weakest of newspapers.

A democracy, and a society, must have a way of reporting on events and their meaning to citizens if they’re to make informed choices about what direction it should take. If you work from the position that newspapers will vanish from Ireland within 6 years you’re immediately confronted with the problem of how to replace them.

So, I started with the intention of seeding, exploring and perhaps helping to nudge into creation something which could, in a basic way, meet some of that need after newspapers. That was a greater success than I’d even hoped for. Check out the coverage of the Party Conferences last Summer, or the Local Election counts to see the ‘mirror ball effect’ at work, reflecting and highlighting hundreds of different points of view at once.

The cash resources required to produce these excellent rolling reports- running live over multiple days and nights in some cases- was negligible. That’s because the medium allowed us to ape Wikipedia’s harnessing of the knowledge (I don’t go quite as far as wisdom) of the crowd. As citizens we weren’t told by a central source what was happening. Instead, with only gentle touch moderation, we told each other what we knew. The broader picture grew out of those individual tales.

When, (or if, should you wish to remain cheery), I am correct and newspapers shut their doors we will have built a safety net.

In Part Two: What Next? I hope to show that as a medium, liveblogging is already showing signs of becoming more than just a replacement for traditional media. It may yet turn out to play a part in refreshing our political system and breathing life into the stale world of Irish television.

Today’s Irish Times featured a column by Breda O’Brien headed “Internet Attacks on Church belie need for open secularity online”.

As I was recently involved in an Internet campaign to have the Papal Nuncio expelled, during which I debated Ms. O’Brien, the topic caught my attention.

My response to her column, which exceeds the 3000 character limit set by the Irish Times for comments, follows. I have numbered the paragraphs of Ms. O’Brien’s article for ease of reference;

The author states that;

1) She is against censorship in China.

2-3) Someone else (cited) is against Censorship generally.

4) The author poses a question, but does not provide an answer or indicate her own opinion.

5) The author declares her instincts are against censorship and indicates that she does not seek to uninvent the internet. She also without stating it directly, suggests that ethics need to be developed in preparation for currently non-existent technologies. She implies regret that such precognition had not been applied to the internet. She does not address how such magic might be performed.

6-8) The author complains that a news agency decided which parts of Papal statements were of interest to its readers, as opposed to relaying them the bits the Pope wanted attention drawn to.

9) The author then demonstrates that the news agency was correct in this assessment by using the example of an alternative news agency who did report as she, and the Pope, would have preferred. She presents her research to establish this.

10) It is not possible with the tools available to decide what the author was attempting to say or what point of view she was seeking to advance in para 10. Either it is that the Church is not ‘obsessed with sex and homophobic’, which seems contrary to empirical evidence, or that it is, which seems at odds with her being on first name terms with the Pope (see para 22). In either event, as it is not developed or referred to at any further point in the article, we may ascribe it to a difficulty with the MS Word wordcount feature.

11) ‘These kind of examples multiply across the internet’. The reader is now in considerable difficulties. No thesis has yet been advanced for this article. It has so far consisted of a series of discrete, unrelated events strung like pearls on the thin thread of their either relating to, or being referred to on, the internet. We have been given no way of intuiting what they may be examples of. The rest of the paragraph does not assist, being an observation of the political commonplace that a group of like-minded people banding together can hold more steadfastly to a point of view than isolated individuals. It is implied that this communality is to be regretted.

12) The author demonstrates that she owns a mouse and her computer has access to Google.

13-14) Apparently apropos of nothing precedent, the author attempts to paint the Vatican state and its Curia as naive innocents who continue to do things which look unforgivable solely because of a lack of awareness of how to use that self-same Google search engine. Given their millennium of experience in diplomacy, institutional warfare and actual warfare this seems an unhistorical explanation to advance for unpalatable decisions. Alternatively, the author ought to have offered them some lessons by now (see para 12).

15) To the mild distress of any reader who has been attempting synthesis of the preceding paragraphs the author now strikes off in yet another direction. She makes a series of unsupported contentious statements. These statements also lack connection to each other, as she does not specify whether it is the assumption of anonymity or a working internet connection which results in ‘people’ becoming base and abusive. Both are advanced, but neither is chosen.

16) We suffer a short digression on the moderation and publication policies of all newspapers everywhere.

17) “What can be found on other websites is even cruder”. This is an undeniable fact, as anyone who has had to research the Sex Pistols will attest.

18) The author advances the proposition that Atheist Ireland provides an example. Sadly, she still doesn’t choose to tell us what it may be an example of, so we cannot assess the validity of her claim. She then expresses her preference for the new blasphemy law to be challenged by means other than those used by AI. The reader can only await the author’s announcement of her participation or establishment of this currently non-existent campaign.

19) Surprisingly, no such announcement follows. Even more surprisingly, given the foregoing para 18, the author now declares that the comments published by Atheist Ireland were ‘not really the problem’. Rather she expresses her offence that people who object to the existence of a law criminalising blasphemy should blaspheme. The reader, a tolerant sort, is by now slightly concerned. The worry starts to gnaw that there may turn out not to have been any thesis being advanced in this entire article.

20) The author then extracts a quote from a person who does not believe that any good the Catholic religion inspires outweighs its more ignoble institutional representation. The quoted commenter expresses the regrettable, but not uncommon, view that ‘grubby old pederasts’ ought to be ‘wiped from the face of the earth’.

21) The author commits a failure of logic, equating all Catholics with the ‘grubby old pederasts’ the preceding comment suggested the world would be better without. Alternatively, she presents a bleak assessment of the faithful.

22) The author quotes the Pope, referring to him simply as ‘Benedict’. It is good to see informality of this sort in the frequently stuffy pages of the Irish Times. The quote appears to be a complaint that people ‘in certain countries, mainly in the West’ have been guilty of hostility and scorn. The reader may at this point reflect on whether a tradition of freedom of speech in Western countries might have inconvenienced the Pope. And if so, whether his preference, quoted with approval by the author, to be addressed by a different set of citizens to that which actually exists ought to outweigh those freedoms.

23) The author says she had a conversation with a representative of Atheist Ireland. She does not give any account of it so the reader cannot imagine for what purpose it is mentioned. The author commits herself to creating a set of opponents who will choose a form of expression more to the liking of herself and the Pope. She ends by warning the reader against ‘murky’ writings, such as may be found on the Internet.

As a reader, I can only look forward with interest, albeit tinged with trepidation, as to the methods the author intends to deploy in so altering those who do not share her views.