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VCP410!

2009-11-26T17:47:19Z

I managed to get through the latest VmWare VCP certificate yesterday, after about 6 weeks of effort. I was pretty much backed into doing it by work, which is blooding annoying when you're doing a level 2 OU Business Course simultaneously - these courses are already 2 hours a day and basically, they've eaten up a big chunk of my life.

Anyway hard to say how I feel about VCP. I'm very pleased to pass, since the only versions of VI I come across are older implementations, my own ESXi 3.5u4 server at home (yes I know how sad is that) and workstation (which I've used to isolate my own personal "desktops" for many years - great way to keep the peace in a relationship when one of you is ultra tidy by nature and the other isn't - I could create my own virtual mess while my partners PC stayed squeaky clean). Anyway about 9 of us did it together at work, with a lab and overview built by one of our in-house consultatants on vmware infrastructure, who did the vSphere update exam on the first week. The good news is that the pass mark has been dropped - it was about 70% out of 75 questions, now its 60% out of a 85 question pool, there are 10 unmarked questions.

I found the scenario questions the hardest - the ones where they show you a running vm or output from reports and it asks you what you should do next? Like add another cpu, power off a vm in the cluster etc etc. Performance issues basically. These can be tough to troubleshoot, especially if there is a lot of clusters. On the other hand, when I got the VCP 310 I shredded the manuals in the hhope of not revisiting for a few years. No such luck. However, this turned out to be a blessing, as the class manuals don't cover the material in anywhere enough detail to get a decent mark, or pass at all. What you really need to do is what I did, and base your study on the core documentation PDF set for vSphere. I also gave my desktop PC (which has a large 80GB hard drive hardly used) a new life as an iSCSI device using OpenFiler and got a Dell Poweredge 2650 from Hilco auctions for a mere 132 euros. Ok the cpus couldn't cope with ESXi 4, but they could happily run the last version of 3.5i which gave me a lot of practice with mucking about with resource pools etc. Ok a lot of the vCentre stuff and clustering stuff was not available to me but there is a good lot of detail in the manual, and if you clearly understand resource pooling on a single host basis, there isn't a huge gap to understand how this is then used in a clustered context.

If RTFM were not such a good mantra I'd have them tattooed on every persons head. Seriously folks, you wouldn't believe that I've worked with a few Gombeens over the years who thought they were too smart to follow instructions or take advice. Out of our group, we have just one colleague whose failed so far, with a fail mark poor enough for one of our experts to really question how he managed to do so badly. (I could tell him straight off that the lack of committment, not taking things seriously enough, pig-headed arrogance and a poor base level of skills carefully concealed by years of putting on the air of somebody mature and solid will be shown up at even basic cert exams).

I think one of the big difficulties that I had for many years was that entry level IT posts are so badly paid that if you don't have a lab or training programmes, its really difficult to get solid backgrounds on anything your job doesn't require. In fact a lot of places just refuse outright to offer any training over and above what is absolutely necessary - often meaning that they end up both with high staff turnovers, and have to hire more senior positions externally because they cannot bridge the skillsets themselves (which means they often end up havign to pay more for senior staff). It also has produced a whole generation of what I call Gombeen IT staff: seemingly competent staff, who have learned to "play the system" and bullshit past the basic requirements which they are often missing - solid server management skills, infastructure training on products such as DBs, Exchange, Active Directory, networking is a particular skill gap in a lot of the Gombeen IT men. A lot of them snuck into IT without qualifications and although they might raise to an A+ or an old NT or 2000 MCP, these were usually achieved through memorising vast pools of braindump questions, with little real world knowledge.

The trouble with these guys is that they are not so stupid that they cannot engineer their way into higher up posts and evade detection, sometimes for years. I was really shocked, for example, at one colleague, who it took me nearly 6 months to see through his deceptive but persistent campaign of being the solid "techie." His biggest problem, mind you, was a persistent refusal to follow other peoples instructions and advice, which sometimes had catastrophic consequences, as he has a "creative" streak, waywardly clicking on buttons that do something different rather than following instructions. As for women - like a lot of these techs, there is a serious belief that women cannot do IT. They are just intellectually inferior according to these Troglodytes. Years ago I had another colleague who (and this is a common ploy with Gombeen IT men) picked out a fringe application that nobody else knew anything about, and start signing off his emails with SME (Subject Matter Expert) on this application. Thats a very common method of deceit - find something you think nobody else knows anything about and claim experise. Of course, this generally doesn't work when you've got somebody like me around - I can spot an IT Gombeen from 10 miles away. My previous background included real world application support and massice enterprise support - some stuff of which really paid off.

But for me the key was working step by step through certifications and qualifications. I started with a Network+. Then I did ITIL 2 foundation. And then I got a CCNA. I did an A+ across 2 weeks on my lunchbreaks, at a point where I realised that this exam by then was easy enough to do just by reading a basic Mike Meyers book (I'd been supporting IT for 5 years by then and felt it was worth the couple of hundred euros). The benefit actually, was learning a little regarding SCSI. With this and networking, the next step was management of an infrastructure. My next job was just that - overall overviews rather than detailed stuff, problem management, pulling reports, delivering enabling information. Change management experience helped enormously too.

By the time I got to "pure" server support and delivery, I'd sufficient experience to not only just know the hardware, but also to really understand the dynamic of large corporate enterprises. I've rarely worked in a company with less than 50,000 employees. Most of my customers down through the years have been equally massive. This is where you really learn to stop being narrow minded and stop trying to focus on finding niches. The biggest danger facing a lot of IT people is that they push themselves into these "false dawns" - getting tied up with applications that vanish as so many get tied up in the new "next great thing."

My advice is this:

Get a good knowledge of hardware, operating systems, networking and storage. Don't concentrate on any one area without a reasonable knowledge of the other. A server admin is almost useful if he/she doesn't understand networking concepts and have some basis for storage administration. They won't be able to properly troubleshoot modern enterprise level applications without this knowledge.
Give time to application support if you get a chance but don't jump in at the deep end where the application requires high levels of programming knowledge in particular. If you haven't got a degree in IT or 10 years real-world experience, most employers and your peers will probably recognise you for the charlatan you most probably are, unless you really are genuinely gifted and can script anything rapidly and elegantly.
Get to understand the business, both that of your employer and your clients. If you don't understand that you'll have a hard time making sense of business requirements and design specifications.
Don't pooh pooh your colleagues in other technology areas. You don't know it all. If you think you are smarter on another subject area ask yourself why you are not working on that team? (Unless you've been promoted upwards). But don't sneer especially at people doing a very different job, even if you think you understand them. Especially don't jeer at their designs or ignore their instructions or advice. You might find that they are right.
Women in IT generally have to work and fight much harder to get on. As a result you will often find they are way superior to their male colleagues. Get over yourself on this, its a simple reality that women face massive stereotyping and discrimination in traditionally male roles and so have to outperform to get the same outcomes. Forgetting this may prove very costly when that girl who you thought was oh so dumb is now your manager. Especially don't even think of engineering retaliation against women who get promoted over you - they've probably earned it the hard way. If you can't see that, take the log out of your eyes and stop being such a pathetic bully.
Never be dishonest about mistakes you made or things you didn't do. Most IT systems have a detailed audit trail and you'll be found out.
Don't look down on global colleagues or stereotype them - same goes as women. You don't understand them and they have it harder than you. Get over your sense of superiority or it will bite your ass.
Don't sneer at qualifications, especially diplomas and degrees. People work hard to get these and employers regard them as a mark of discipline. If you haven't done one, consider taking night courses towards it. Modular courses are often a good and flexible low cost method to get recogniseable qualifications. A failure to do this may be seen as an indication of laziness and lack of commitment.
Be willing to share the workload. Recogonise others efforts, especially those over and above.
If you've read this through and recognise a colleague, the only real way to deal with them is to ignore them. They are a menace but if you let them play their mind games you'll only end up distracted and angry. Get over it for now, let them hang themselves and eventually you'll get promoted into a position where you can get something done. Employers eventually wise up to people like that and create rounds of redundancies especially for them.

Hungarian Rhapsody

2009-09-30T14:02:01Z

Just back from Budapest and really fascinated by one thing. Ok, there are several thousand Hungarians in Ireland, though well outnumbered by the Poles, who number from 64,000 to anything up to 300,000 (which I think is a gross exaggeration) and I met quite a few back in the 1990s when I was involved with the Kodály Society of Ireland, not to mention working with quite a few Hungarians, but I never realised what the people are like en masse. One thing that had struck me from my previous experience was sometimes that they were quite odd, and secondly that they seemed to have a strong sense of fun. What I had missed out was their glamorousness.

Everywhere, it seemed, everybody went out day-to-day in their Sunday best. Didn't matter if you are 30 or 60, fat or thin, good looking or an affront to the eyesight - the best clothing seemed necessary, along with lovely handbags, nice jewelery and well coiffed hair. And the men were the same - beautifully dressed up in shirts and ties, good leather shoes - even in the evenings on weekdays. It seems that appearance is very important to this culture. Manners were also striking - something I found very striking.

Earlier this year I witnessed what I can only describe as a charge of the light brigade from a bunch of Americans to get on the first bus on a sight-seeing trip in San Francisco. (Aside from being entirely unnecessary, I was really struck by the "me first" mentality). Of course, we in Ireland and Britain are every bit as bad. Try getting off a bus or train at rush hour and not only will you have to shoulder charge your way through people who block the ways on and off, people also literally try to walk through commuters trying to exit trains and buses. Rudeness is almost a common way of life - made worse by rugby scrum boarding patterns on Ryanair flights and dreadful pushing a shoving.

For example, an Irish man yesterday had two older children - to be honest, I cannot describe them as children but as piglets, who aside from trying to push past my semi disabled mother in the queue for the flight, tried to push and shove their way past us in the ailse of the aircraft as we packed our bags into the overhead lockers of the cabin. While their ignoramous of a caveman father (well dressed and seemingly respectable) didn't say a word. My mother has had 3 operations in recent months and carries a walking stick, but this clearly meant nothing to the Irish piglets and their hogmaster who clearly saw themselves as far superior to anybody else in the world and undeserving of respect.

Hungarians, in contrast, patiently wait for people to disembark, are quite unagressive and not in any way noisy. We also noted how few Hungarian youngsters drank openly in public spaces, and how less agressive and attention seeking they were on the one occasion when we did spy a group drinking outside the Astoria metro station - sure they were enjoying a can or two, but left passers by alone and kept to themselves. The vast majority seemed content enough to enjoy fast food and coffee in McDonalds, but didn't seem to feel the need to scream their presence to the world going by, unlike desperate for attention Irish and British teens (and adults).

This seems to fit in with the story that somebody called into one of the RTE radio stations with earlier this year about a bunch of Polish people enjoying a picnic in the Phoenix park while a bunch of Irish youths engaged in a booze-fuelled and aggressive orgy close-by. As somebody pointed out, the Poles would remember a lovely spring day in the park, the Irish piglets will remember nothing.

One thing I also noticed was the multifaceted nature of continental cafe culture. People seem to think that if you make the decor nice and continental in style, serve wine and throw in an expresso machine, you get cafe culture. But this is very different to whats on the continent. The "drinking emporium" mentality isn't there in the cafes (though no doubt its there in the industrial nightclubs), but also the strong emphasis on food, serving up until 11pm is one facet. Another is the fact that many of these styles of coffee bars don't open until 18:00 in the evening, especially if they stay open later. I recall many years ago drinking in one in Wolfenbüttel in Germany, and being served a drinking at the untimely hour of 3:55. 5 minutes later I was being shooed out the door - there is no concept of "drink up" time - the real curse of Irish binge drinking culture. You are out the door at closing time, no matter what.

Similarly, in San Francisco bars close at a relatively timid 2am, but here is the thing - many clubs just keep going without serving booze. That to me seems like a fairly good idea. In Australia there are lock-ins, but really this only spills the problem out onto streets. I would suggest that if club opening hours were reformed to allow clubs to stay open without serving alcohol (I noticed in Palm Springs that some bars would stay open and just serve soft drinks and water) it might help a little. Perhaps a continental style fixed closing style might end the rounds culture of buying several rounds 5 minutes before the bell goes just to have something to extend drink-up time as late as possible. Then we could consider allowing clubs and pubs to stay open but just not serve booze.

Another solution, perhaps, would be to control only the total opening hours per week then let individual establishments decide on how to allocate those hours. Then you could viably run a club say weekends only, but keep it open around the clock. Its just a suggestion (one that I think wouldn't really be viable as around the clock clubbing tends to be associated with pill use, and pill users often don't drink, which would make the clubs unprofitable).

One thing that does also assist the continental bars though, is locating in urban areas away from disturbing neighbours, while at the same time maintaining shorter opening hours for premises based in residential areas. For example it seems crazy to me that loads of bars are based on Douglas street and allowed wasteful late licenses that really are a waste as some residents just complain about the noise and the police more or less persecute the bar owners for using legally obtained permits to open late. (The gay bar of course, gets particularly heavy handed treated).

Ballymun Regeneration Gravytrain rides again

2009-09-21T14:21:56Z

I spotted this on the RTE news website this morning - I really gotta ask? Why do we need this?

Ballymun is probably the poster child in Ireland for how not to do development. Unlike the sister development in West Dublin, Tallaght, which was essentially a planned project which included schools, a hospital and a proper town centre (which admittedly was then kinda skewed when the "Square", a large shopping precinct, was built). But its actually not bad, aside from the large dual carriageway which effectively splits it in two, and sink estates on the periphery.

Ballymun, in contrast, used high rises, which through a combination of non-management (mismanagement is too strong a word since DCC effectively stopped managing the high rises decades before they were knocked and just left them to decay both physically and socially) and local impoverishment, became a rather unpleasant place to live. Rather than address the key issue - why did Dublin Corporation simply stop maintaining and managing Ballymun towers as they were bound to do in their stewardship as landlords - the government chose to "blame" the buildings. Over the last 10 years many of the original tower blocks and surrounding eyesores have been demolished and replaced with - well slightly smaller blocks and surrounding eyesores. Residents generally have been happy so far with the development, but lets be honest, its still being "managed" at present. What would happen if the corpo simply opted out, as they did previously with the old tower blocks, and stopped actively managing the estates? It would end up the same. And I suspect this is what may well happen if cutbacks resume.

In the meantime, the Corpo have served up a massive new gravy train for the construction industry on top of the 54 billion NAMA bailout last week - 800 million is the cost, not counting the inevitable overruns, and if I recall, Treasury Holdings is or was part of AIB.

Funny that.

Meantime some little spoilt uberbrat who was kicked out of BOI albeit with a 2.4 million payoff for viewing porn at work, has taken the usual swipe at "unmarried mothers". I took out my calculator and did some quick sums. On the basis that at any one time, there are around 60,000 lone parents on the welfare system, each running at a cost of around 20k per annum to the state. This represents a total figure of 1.2 billion euros per year - so effectively the NAMA bailout paid out in one week would subsidise the entire current body of lone parents for up to 45 years. Who is the welfare sponger now Mr Banker?

Community and Voluntary Pillar Fascists back with a bang

2009-09-14T16:51:09Z

Community and Voluntary Pillar today bleated away with impunity about the dreadful suggestions last week that would easily add 3000 euros a year to working families tax bills, suggesting it be diverted to the "most vulnerable." Now I am sick and tired of this sequaling away about the "most vulnerable" as in reality this group are often the most protected and sheltered members of society, sponging away while everybody else pays for it.

It was depressing to read last week that many of the new college places would be reserved for "long term" welfare recipients - in other words precisely the ones who opted out of the world of work while jobs were available, so now we are giving them the long term chance to opt out for a few more years. Why is the back to education schemes as they currently operate so open-ended that people appear to remain in welfare-funded full time education for as long as 5 years and more? Why is it made so much easier for social opt-outs to go back to college than people who are genuinely seeking work? Its not surprising to hear the consistent ignorance of Father Sean Healy, who clearly hasn't spent the many years of living in rented sector, where a large proportion of the welfare-sponger group are concentrated, and seen at first hand, the nice cosy lifestyles of many of those on welfare.

There was a couple of years I spent as the only working tenant in a house of maybe 6 or 7 flats. It was really amazing to see the great social lives and not at all uncomfortable lifestyles which the guys (they were all single males in the their 20-40s) enjoyed. Some even had cars at their disposals and a few seemed to have jobs on the black economy also. Yet they are considered "vulnerable" even though many of the newer taxes don't apply to them - for example I know of people working in public sector roles who are already 200-300 a month worse off than they were last year.

the Community Pillar has made this group into the untouchables. I live in a terrace in Cork city which is mostly rented and about 50:50 self-funded tenancies and welfare "rent allowance" tenants. The incredible thing I see is that there is a far higher proportion of car ownership amongst the welfare tenants than there is amongst the working tenants. This is astonishing considering the very high cost of petrol, car maintenance and insurance. Yet it seems to be relatively affordable for welfare tenants. The vast majority of the working tenants don't have cars, presumably because most of them are paying 120-150 per week rents out of their own pockets. If you consider many of them are only earning low wages - somebody on 1500-2000 a month will thus be easily forking out 500-650 a month on rents while the welfare brigade will consistently get 800 a month roughly. Add to this the cost of going to work - bus and train fares are easily 80-100 euros a month for those who work out of town so a lot of these guys will only have 1000-1300 left after paying rent. Take into account doctors fees, prescription charges, and you can see that a lot of the local tenants are only maybe 50-150 euros per week better off than the rent allowance tenants. Its no wonder that there is such a high proportion of RA tenants.

And interestingly, partially due to wear and tear and wanton vandalism by evicted former RA tenants, most of the RA houses are in horrendous conditions - some of them are the Cork equivalent of African shanty towns. The tenants leave the doors wide open all day, so security must be non existent. It seems crazy that there is so little knowledge of the real lifestyles of the so-called "poor" by the community fascists. Maybe they should come and live on Wellington Rd for a week and see the truth about the lifestyles of the people they are trying to "protect" - in reality they are creating a priveliged class of societal opt-outs at the expense the true vulnerable - low paid workers and non home-owners.

A Bit of Cop On

2009-09-14T15:42:47Z

It seems insane that Ireland burns while Cowen fiddles. Meanwhile the rest of the world is looking at extricating itself from the awful financial crisis we hit last year. Ireland, meanwhile, hurtles not only towards the horrendous spectre of having 500,000 adults on the live register, but the rarely considered and terrible consequences of massive levels of people unable to meet repayments on mortgages, loans etc, not to mention the loss of business which must be crippling companies right now cannot be underestimated.

It seems shocking that the current "NAMA" solution only deals with the twin peaks of banking and construction and effectively solely "bails out" these business sectors - ignoring services, manufacturing and retail, some of which are literally dying on their feet. There is a real lack of investigation of the way in which the credit crunch has damaged businesses - for example, a lot of businesses have lost lines of credit and flexibility which is squeezes them hard.

Meanwhile, obscene profiteering in commercial and residential rents seem unaffected by the crunch. Landlords are still looking for rent levels that are simply not justified in terms of real world profits. Its incredible that the "social dividend" suggested by hypocrite Dan Boyle (I call him a hypocrite because he is effectively shutting down Musgrave Park in Cork as a viable concern by helping to stymie the redevelopment of the site by voting against planning for apartments on part of the site that would finance the redevelopment while moaning on his website about sports facilities moving out of urban areas, as they are being forced to move out by policies such as his that deny access to mixed zoning in order to finance redevelopment costs, leaving the sports groups with no choice but to entirely sell off the land and purchase cheaper out of town facilities).

What is worrying is the lack of access to finance and suitable office/industrial leases at a reasonable cost. Likewise the current Fás scandal is terrible considering that this agency is so desperately needed right now and it is currently facing the spectre of total reorganisation. Too little, too late. What are the IDA and Enterprise Ireland doing? We are effectively financing also the removal of industry and services from Ireland by happily refunding the cost of "redundancies" where jobs are relocating to cheap locations. Why is the tax payer's money being taken in order to finance the relocation of Irish jobs? These are not true redundancies and the companies involved need to be forced to pay the full cost of relocation, not be subsidised in profiteering by exploiting tax laws in Ireland.

The end of the affair

2009-09-14T15:27:32Z

Well the good news is that I seem to have finally, by virtue of silence, gotten through to my stalkerette that I ain't interested her somewhat distorted form of friendship. It was a tough week, unnerving as when you don't know somebody you haven't really got the luxury of being able to take a chance on whether or not they are going to turn psychotic or not. Thats not a chance you can take. Easy talking about "be kind" as one or two people did say to me, when you are not getting uninvited calls from somebody while you are at work (despite having said "do NOT call me during working hours" when its not you. When you are not getting the "please please please please please" begging calls. When you are not getting the "pity me pity me pity me pity me pity me PLEASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSE" texts. When the pathos starts to taste even worse than the revulsion you already feel at the persistent desperate begging, the self-demeaning, the lack of a connection between the Dr Phil language of self-empowerment and the behaviour that is just ignoring the situation.

What I found rather odd was this lady constantly telling me"don't put yourself down." Well HELLO, I am NOT going to fall into the everso moderne trap of self-entitlement, ignoring ones faults and pretence of self-acceptance which is really just ignoring the need for constant self-improvement and effort. You cannot just sit there and take on the mantle of "self acceptance" instead of looking at what is really, really wrong and changing that. "Self-acceptance" is for suckers and for people who want to go on living a life of denial and self-pity. The truth might be painful, but it will at least start a reflective learning cycle which you will never get onto if you choose to live under the pretence and delusion of "self-acceptance." You accept things you cannot change, such as inevitable health problems, deaths of people close to you, or massive changes in your living environment which you don't have any influence over. You accept that you are a person with faults and failings. What you do not accept is bad behaviours or habits that you can change. What you got to learn is how to cope with these things and make minute constant changes that hopefully will improve your own situation, and perhaps minimise or eleiminate problematic behaviours. For example, I know I am horribly intolerant, so I need to constantly work on learning empathy and compassion. But I ultimately got to do it in a way that doesn't open me up to either exploitation or being hauled underwater by others who want me to "rescue" them. Likewise a lot of people suffer from clinical depression or are chronically overweight. To suggest that you simply accept yourself as overweight whilst ignoring that you take no exercise and eat like a pig is just leading somebody into even more misery as intermittently they will be forced with the reality of the consequences of their actions. It took me a long time to realise that "I can't lose weight" was more to do with the fact that I ate unhealthily, and took no exercise. Accepting that would not have achieved anything. The reality for me was poor health and I simply couldn't go clothes shopping except in sheer self-effacing misery as it was near nigh impossible at the time to get large clothes to fit me that were anyway attractive.

Like this lady really was really painfully self-conscious of her own role in her not having had any relationships (not even a sneaky little shag) by her forties. Yet, I would say, that for an awful lot of gay women living in Cork, there is a HUGE likelihood, if they are gay and conscious of this, that they may never meet anybody on the local scene because of the massive and powerfully exclusionary power bloc held over by a certain group of man-dykes who are determined to exclude anybody who doesn't meet their approval from the organized events which masquerade as THE lesbian scene in Cork. What fortunately has started to happen over the last 2 years is this exclusionalary quango has increasingly split away from most of the rest of the scene, leaving it open to use by normal, ordinary Cork women who just happen to be gay, but don't feel a desperate need to look like male builders, behave like the worst misogynistics pigs and run the womens scene like a miniature police state under the illusion of it being a democratic and censensus based community. It is nothing of the sort.

Like so many other women have described to me, this lady talked about going to these events and being simultaneously stared at and ignored at the same time. Basically, this is the power bloc which is created - you are subjected to blatant and obvious scrutiny, but not an iota of kindness, welcome, or even an ounce of compassion. Why has this become the dominant culture of the Cork bulldykes? Why is there a sanctimonious desire to provide suicide prevention courses whilst the very staff in some of the organizations involved have been heard to bitch about people who are part of a social circle where 2 people have taken their own lives in the last 4 years? What level of hypocrisy is necessary to carry out this pretence of "caring" whilst being at the very heart of the problem if viciousness, exclusion and bitchiness that is isolating and dividing the community?

My big question, however, is why there is so much fear of the power of this articifical quango. Is it the massive funding they've managed to squeeze out of the HSE and Equality Authority for the organizations that help sustain the structure? Is it the fact that they appear to be such a strong and settled group? Why is it that nobody aside from myself have ever dares turn around and challenge their intentions? Or is it the powerful image projected by the subtle bullying that goes on at Loafers and via the social network? Frankly I think its time that Cork women took back the scene from this crowd of self-serving bullies and enabled a proper social circle to develop that is genuinely welcoming, open and tolerant. And NOT just for certain focus groups, as is the current situation. Its really important that the Cork scene is let loose from the heavy handed judgementalist mentality and police state thought processes. We are not all 2nd wave radical feminists who are uncomfortable in male company and so feel a justification for their exclusion. I think there is a serious need to recognise the fact that the "scene" in Cork is not centred around just one pub, one social clique and one community centre and related activities. It is a living and breathing entity which extends into workplaces, homes, straight bars, clubs, political groups, cafes - lots of places.

There is a huge need to break the Ghetto mentality which I think is not only strangling the womens scene, its making it near nigh impossible for ladies like the lady who fell madly in love with me to do anything but stand helplessly by while she is systematically ignored by the great clique, which only adds to her sense of isolation and enables the kind of desperation that made her cling onto me for dear life. I think there is a real need to recognise that true diversity includes women who might not be feminists, who might be very uncomfortable in the wimmin-only hothouses so favoured by the clique, and even a need to outreach into non-traditional environments like straight social places.

I think it really says so much that part of Linc's "upgrade" to its website included letting go of the very useful forum. This enabled a lot of people from outside the existing user groups of Linc to discuss issues, seek advice and opinions of others and engender a sense of genuinely inclusive diversity. Until this happens there is a real risk that the existing social circle will die off completely as Cork women choose newer and more inclusive social groups such as those around the newer bars and non-gay specific groups.

Inside the mind of the deluded

2009-08-20T15:47:54Z

I think I'm delighted to report that now I'm at least 36 hours away from last time I heard from my "admirer." I really hate using the word stalker as it has connotations around it that are not maybe the case. What is the case however is that clearly this person is supremely deluded and I really should have noticed sooner. Its only when I check back, cringing at emails I got that I realise what I'd missed (or skipped) - that this woman truly believed that somehow I was the woman of her dreams and that if she believed hard enough it would become true. This is where it extended not just into begging, but in somehow managing to not offend me to an extent that I would cut her off. But unfortunately it became clear to me that no matter what she said, it covered over the deepset conviction that this seemingly perfect woman was "the one" and would eventually just succumb to the inevitable.

Unfortunately the fact that I am polyamorous didn't help me. That was interpreted as a Get-out-of-jail-free card by my admirer, who confused my idea of "friendship" with my occasional "friends-with-benefits" arrangements - in other words, that even if I didn't give her the commitment and adoration, she'd get the physical side of it. And convincing her otherwise wasn't quite getting through - though she used all the right words to respond, I still felt that she was only saying it to keep up the lines of communication.

I've read a little since then about obsessional stalkers and how they behave. By now she has surely noticed that I've shut down my match.com account to prevent her from contacting me, but you know, the strange thing, is the horrified fascination I've had with this. I am hoping that she isn't clinical classically obsessed and so won't behave for a day or two and start up again. My repulsion for the fact that she is about 7 dress sizes bigger than me (even at my worst, I've only ever been 2-3 dress sizes below my largest of partners, and only about 3 at most above my skinniest), is only matched by my horror at how she demeaned herself and repulsed me more by begging.

Well more anon. If I get 4 full days I'll be relieved!!

Delusions

2009-08-19T15:35:05Z

I have to admit my experiences this weekend have actually been quite educational to me. A couple of weeks ago I casually met up for a few drinks with a lady who I wasn't really sure about but said, what the hell, I'm single, I've nothing to lose. She had been texting me about 100 times a day but it was clear when I met her that she wasn't interested.

I am never one to beg. I was curious of there being any other reason for her not contacting me the day after so next day I said straight "was it something I said?" and she gave me what could have been a good excuse, had she then after that exchange not contacted me since. Course, I haven't contacted her either - I left the ball in her court, knowing that if the excuse was a valid reason she'd contact me, and if not, I wouldn't be hearing from her. I haven't heard from her, so I take it that is that and won't demean myself by trying to make anything of something that isn't there.

You see, desire is a funny thing - its either there or it is not. If its not, you cannot force it. If it dies its not easy to revive - thats why so many couples are in therapy. If something else happens - well things get complicated. To this day a former partner of mine's current partner harbours an intense grudge against me - I suspect not so much out of fear or jealousy but because we almost had a thing going at one point and dealing and working through the ramifications of that in her particular context would be well - complicated. Far simpler to just be really jealous of me instead.

But I'm seeing a brief insight into the other side of the coin - when somebody simply adores you but you don't share the feeling. Now generally if I like somebody and they don't like me, I just let it go - no point in flogging the dead horse or resorting to begging which will only breed their contempt and annoyance. Similarly if anybody ever took a shine to me but I said no, I've rarely, rarely ever had persistence. Not beyond one evening anyway. And usually in the context of plenty of alcohol. I've never had somebody who treated me as if I was their perfect ideal still two days after I'd explicitly said "it is never going to happen between us." I've never had somebody tell me that I am a "non judgemental" person (I'm anything but) and try to tell me their days problems before they still delude themselves into thinking a) I might actually want to hear and b) its not going to alienate me still further. Full stop I've never had somebody insist to me that no, they don't deep down still believe their dream will come true and I'll succumb eventually to their charms when its quite obvious that they actually think I already have.

Frankly, I've never been on the receiving end of this kind of obsessional, delusional behaviour and I'm extremely uncomfortable about it. So it looks as if I will have to be cruel to be kind and shut off all contact of any kind. Sad as I hate doing this.

On the other side of the coin

2009-08-18T16:44:19Z

Well I have to admit I've never really been infatuated with anybody who turned me down for more than a few weeks, although it took me years to get over some exes, but at the moment I'm on the receiving end of a form of transference I find really hard to deal with. We've all seen the Susan Boyle video and what most people ultimate now see and realise is very fragile people who might be brilliantly talented but actually haven't got and never will have the toughness and streetwiseness to deal with the challenges of the life above them. That is why a lot of people like that lead quite and sheltered, and mostly very happy lives. They are often more insecure and prone to anxiety, depression and stress related illnesses, because they just are not able to separate their emotions from their daily lives. These people often live entirely on their emotions, their lives a roller coaster of tears and joys, and they keep within safe limits and boundaries in order to protect themselves. That is why somebody like Miss Boyle has "never been kissed" and so some extent why despite prodigous talent, she remained unknown. She simply isn't able for the emotional straight of rejection, failure and heartbreak. You have got to be able to handle that in highly competitive worlds and so people like that tend to live quiet, small but generally fairly satisfied lives as long as they don't push boundaries they cannot handle.

Last week I met a lady rather like that. Sympathetically, I said "lunch can't hurt" and we had lunch together. She has become completely infatuated with me and even though I have said straight to her we can be friend but anything more is never, ever, ever going to happen I think that deep down she thinks that somehow if she hangs on in there I will "give her a chance." Which quite frankly, I just have no interest in doing - I am simply not attracted to her on that level. Nice woman, yes, but no chemistry for me at all.

But since then I've realised that its actually quite hard to reject somebody. Its not just how hurt they appear to be and how much you're dashing their hopes, but in the back of your mind, something says "this person doesn't actually hear what I am saying." For me this has been the big difficulty and worry - I've sat here contented that I've said the right thing and the message got through until then I get some message from her that makes me realise that she's still hoping against hope that somehow I'll change my mind and succumb. And thats difficult, because I always feel that unless its accepted clearly the first time, and the person doesn't try to argue it with you or "change your mind" or beg for a chance, then the penny hasn't dropped and they really still feel deep down, that somehow, they can make you change your mind.

Lucky for me the lady doesn't have my home address, my home phone and doesn't know where I work. Right now I am loath to let her even give me a lift home because I am increasingly feeling that somehow she still deep down believes that despite what I say, she's in with a shot. I find myself increasingly being wary of things - like not accepting a lift home, meeting in very public places, not in gay bars, no cinemas. I cringed last week when a quick peck on the cheek was to her a huge thing - the alarm bells went off loudly. So its sad but it looks like this lady is going to have to look elsewhere for her first big romantic encounter. Despite what she feels I am simply not the one for her.

Part 1 - history and laws

2009-07-28T23:23:09Z

Laws regarding the social behaviours regarding sexuality take us right back into the ancient world, and even there, distinctions are made between same-sex couplings for different genders. In contrast to today's opinions, these are frequently related to the social structures of the time, and constrast with today's patriarchal society.

So equally patrilinear societies such as that described in the Hebrew tradition, and many Greek city states share relatively different views on male/male sexual behaviour. In the case of the Book of Leviticus, there are a few passages that specify inter-male sexual activities, but there are no specific references to women. Only in the Christian bible is there a possible reference to sex between women, and it comes in 1:26 of St Paul's letter to the Romans. There are of course, plenty of differing views as to the role of male homosexual behaviour in Greek city states, but it mostly takes the place of relationships between older men and adolescent males. However this needs to be contextualized with the fact that marriages between older men and teenage girls were also commonplace. The exclusion of women from much of patriarchal male society is also a consideration. While there is literary evidence of sexual desire between women in the poetical works of Sappho, much of womens historical sexuality remains less documented and therefore more obscure than male behaviours. What is clear is that the patriarchal domiance of western society both provided a justification for and condemnation of male/male sexual activity. However it took many centuries before such practices were outlawed altogether, well into the 6th century.

There is quite a lot of dicussion on the appropriate nature of male/male relationships right through Greek antiquity and opinions vary. What appears to be clear is that is continued to exist as a part of society for many centuries without the kind of persecutions that became common later on.

Witch-hunting in the middle ages were a popular way to deal with difference and sexual deviants in particlar were vulnerable to the whims of the lynch mob. They did not benefit from the religious freedoms enjoyed by migrants from religious persecution in the new world: indeed, difference was quickly legislated for and punished mercilessly. By the early 18th century most European countries and newly discovered ones had implemented laws regarding crimes such as gross indecency and buggery, punishable for suitable punishments such as a life on the high seas or exile. That said, Jeffery Weeks uncovered a whole undercurrent of sexual difference in London's underground scenes, of cross dressers, male prostitutes and solaces for those who wanted their own. One of the biggest difficulties for writing the parallel history of sexually deviant women is that because of the lesser freedoms of women in society, there were no such places, and much of what is known about them is known as much from criminal procedings of the era, a fate less likely to be held by women not servicing the male gender.

France, however, stands out. In the anti clerical and first truly secular set of laws, the code Napoleon treats men who like other men as bedfellows with far more leniency than the English code. Ostensibly still morally villified, a two faceted society developed which lives to this day, whereby a French premiere can openly divorce and marry younger women with far less school marmish media scorn than Anglicised societies. However, lets not get too excited as this is also a society where women didn't get the vote until 1969 - even Catholic and heavily censored Ireland had it 50 years previously. The patriarchal nature of society had a double bind on male sexual outlaws - on one hand they had greater social freedoms to pursue their fancies, on the other hand, their difference was seen as a greater threat to the patriarchal world in which they lived and so punishments are frequently much more harsh.

There is a tendency to forget that by the 1950s in the UK post cold war paranoia in a parallel vein to USA McCarthyism was having a terrible impact on those in the UK who by now had developed a rather quaint if outlawish set of ways of handling the hungers of homosexual desire. Cottaging, not an entirely British phenomenon as public cruising happens all over the world, but with a particlarly British title for public lavatories, was not only permitting men to meet up in dark and quiet open spaces, but also a particularly vicious form of entrapment by police forces. Not only this, but otherwise innocent involvements with the police, as mathematician Alan Turing found to his misfortune, could end up turning into similar forms of entrapment, as any suggestion of sexual impropriety could land the victim into an entirely new role as criminal. Turing's severe and horrible punishment for simply reporting a theft by a previous boyfriend shows just how nasty the system in the UK could turn. What was nastier still was that despite Wolfenden and the changes to the sexual offences act in 1967, the witch-hunt and campaigns of entrapment continued right up until the mid 1990s. Even earlier in this decade there was still evidence in Northern Irish courts that law courts were permitting perpetrators of vicious attacks on gay men off lightly on the ground of provocation due to their victims being gay men.

While most people will realise that Scandinavia and the Netherlands had relatively liberal laws on sexuality from the 1970s onwards, post Franco Iberia was actually far more liberal than her British Isles counterparts. This is something that makes me sigh when I hear that "even catholic Spain" has gay marriage - some Spanish states had partnership laws going well back into the early 90s, a legacy of the realisation of the power of gay tourism into the region. There is no doubt indeed that money is power and as people who saw the sell off and overdevelopment of southern Spainish coastal areas and islands to powerful development interests at the expense of local farmers will note. While large gay resorts exist in places like Sitges in Barcelona and Playa del Ingles in the Canary islands, Madrid itself has a strong gay scene, and the value of the pink pound is not underestimated - for example the annual pride event in Maspalomas brings as much as 80,000 extra tourists into the region for the event, while places like Dublin are very happy to have 10,000 people out on parade day.

The dfference in the legal code for women and men has had a long term dramatic impact on the development of the gay community. While ostensibly only hitting gay men directly through the penal code, the law resulted in social stigma being applied to gay women, a lack of protection in employment and in terms of their family rights. A woman who left her jealous husband for a female lover had little or no hope of gaining custody of her children from that relationship, and discrimination against lesbians as women reduced their earning capacities and ability to build up viable social agencies outside of the normal social process. More so than men, gay women had few or no icons to look to - men had brilliant figures such as Oscar Wilde and tales of Greek antquity, but women had little to satisfy themselves that they were not freaks of nature.

The second world war seems to have somewhat assisted gay women in forging an identity for themselves. Many women from the UK and US went to war as servicewomen, spies and in medical services and those who stayed at home had opportunities available to them that previously were only available to either men or priviliged middle class women. While 3rd level education provided a small outlet for some American and British women, the war was a huge catalyst in changing womens lives. It was no longer possible to argue that women were unsuited or unable to do "male" work because they'd done it during the war when there was a shortage of men. It also, for the first time, allowed gay women the freedom to evade marriage and the subterfuge of heterosexual relationships.

Ireland's "neutral" (some say "neutral against the British") stance in WW2 not only excluded Irish women from the freedoms her British sisters were starting to uncover, but doubly so since Ireland's relative isolation copper-fastened and magnified the impact of a highly paranoid form of Catholicism which had emerged as a majority religion from centuries of siege under British dominion. Initially secular in nature, Ireland gradually adopted a more and more catholic set of lega codes, social controls and in some cases, entire social systems, such as health and education were almost entirely controlled by the major religions. Protestant forces barely squeaked, since it indirectly gave them smaller dominions to rule - until very recently, protestant private schools enjoyed additional funding as minority schools to ensure that poor protestants were not completely cut out of having a denominational education. More menancingly, the hardcore policing of the family via a comination of the ISPCC, relgious interests, families and local communities fed prison like institutions such as the Magdalen laundries for "fallen" women, reform schools and orphanages for children. Inmates, despite often being very small children, were treated like criminals in prision, routinely physically and sexually abused and their needs often neglected while the religious houses which ran these places forged themselves on the funding received. It took decades to uncover the truth, and will take many more for these groups to come to terms with the impact of the uncofmrtable truths uncovered by successive government reports from the Madonna House Report of the mid 1990s to the Ryan report in 2009.

While these issues may not seem to have real relevance to gay issues, in fact they do. It is rather unfortunate that so many Irish mens experience of sex will have started through forcible rape and sexual violation at the hands of carers, often men from relgious orders. It is surely significant that a huge percentage of older Irish men - tens of thousands, will have been forced to engage in what they would at some point relate to homosexual sexual activity by force from abusive adults. I think the combination of this reality, as well as years of heavy duty catholic indoctrination, will not have helped the case for freedoms for Irish gays, especially in the 1970s and 80s when a lot of these men would have been voting adults, badly traumatised by their experience in institutional care. I wonder did this cause a greater than normal level of hostility against homosexuals in the generations that followed the closure of the reform schools, which rapidly started to wane about 20 years after they started closing? I think it may well have.

The situation for girls was slightly different than that of men. In fact not just of girls but of women in general. It was more multifacted and lifelong than for men. First of all was the risk of being placed in an institution and possibly sexually assaulted by priests/a small number of nuns/other carers. If a girl managed to stay with her family and survive that, then she was quite likely to have been sent into service as young as 12 years of age. This meant being a servant in a strangers household. Many male householders saw female servants as ripe material for rape and I suspect a good number of children born out of wedlock were conceived in this way. No wonder so many young ladies joined convents! If you survived that, then there was the threat of sexual coercion. Now while this doesn't sound severe, from anecdotal evidence of friends, it does seem that especially in country areas, it does seem that a great many young men perceived of local girls as ripe fodder for their sexual needs, and many young women were likely to be seduced at best, to coerced or raped at worst. A friend who grew up in Kerry in the 1970s recalls the persistent sexual harassment and expectation of sex from men at the time. And of course the moment a girl gave in consensually to a young man, the whole town knew and she became "fair game." In the absence of legal contraception, again pregnancy and/or forced marriages were a likely outcome.

One of the most interesting studies of women from this era is Janet Nolan's book Ourselves Alone. In it she points out that from the end of the 1880s to 1920, close to 700,000 unmarried women emigrated from Ireland. While she doesn't mention the highly coercive social environment as a prime cause, she puts the blame on the nature of Ireland as an agricultural society - single women simply had no way to sustain themselves in a family-driven agricultral society. Nolan suggests also that remittances sent home from these women perpetuated outdated ways of life that simply led to even worse emmigration, as depopulation, especially in the west and south, weakened local economies further. However those who left enjoyed a freedom they never would have enjoyed at home, and were able to enjoy marriage until later in life, and often enjoyed vastly better living conditions. There is anecdotal evidence that by the 1950s, when postwar lesbian subcultures were thriving in major urban areas like Greenwich village in New York and Chelsea in London, many Irish women were drawn to it.

One very significant area however, remains. Irish gay men were more like most worldwide lesbians in that were not subjected directly to the forces of law in the numbers or ways that they were in the UK between the 50s and 90s. While the laws criminalising sex between men remained in place until 1993 in Ireland, it was rarely invoked. In fact the fact that it was not enforced was repeatedly used as an excuse by embarassed politicans, weighed down with the post 1979 catholic triumpahlist victories over abortion and dovorce, for not daring to touch the law, despite the obligations put to Ireland as a result of David Norris' efforts in the Irish and European courts in the 1980s. It was true: gay men were not jailed in Ireland like they were in England and Wales for petty and sometimes far fetched interpretations of gross indency laws. They didn't need to be. The threat to their lives by the shame, embarrassment and potential personal and social costs of losing job, income, face and the roof over their heads kept gay men in the shadows. Gay bars were not per se illegal instutitions but owners were routinely harassed for relatively minor violations of licensiing laws and drug raids were a regular thing, even in the 90s. In fact, even now they sometimes suffer harder from legal enforcement due to the fact that the once deprived areas they were based in are now "regenerated" and full of apartments dwellers waiting to be disturbed by noise from late night openings, etc. This is unintended consequences, but consequences nevertheless.

In some sense this made the divisions between lesbians and gay men in Ireland less obvious than they were in the UK, where lesbians were rarely, if ever, policed in the same way. The lack of a cruising tradition in lesbian circles may have caused this. By the 1970s there was at least one well known haunt for gay men (more of a bohemian hautnt, really - Bartley Dunnes on Chatham Row), as well as another premises where the Stephens Green centre is now. Cork saw Loafers of Douglas Street open its doors quietly in the early 1980s. In Dublin, the gap between a vibrant commercial scene for a mainly male audience was maintained by the Fownes St Centre. In later years, Cork followed suit with its own version "The Other Place."

Healing the Great Divide - Part 1 - Introduction

2009-07-28T12:42:16Z

As this is an ongoing issue that pops up in lots of different forms over lots of different issues, I've decided to hammer it out. Sometimes its different, sometimes unexpected, but always the same. The issue is the gulf in the gay community primarily between men and women, but also between the lesbian feminist movements and other groups on the scene, how it has emerged, where we stand now, and what can be done to improve the situation, if not repair the divide in a way that is productive and effective. Divided we fall goes the mantra. Well we are falling in places like California and Ireland and while there are lots of other forces that contribute to that fall there is no doubt that the factitious nature of our community is weakening us politically, socially and as a community. This weakness impacts negatively upon each and every one of us, whether we are hardened community activists or small town closets. No matter where we are in the world, this impacts upon us.

Communities are not homogenous by accident. They develop over time and as a result of a series of subtle changes or lack of changes which shape the directions in which they take. For example I am a member of a couple of choirs, and a former member of many more. Most of these are driven by the intentions and plans of those who initially set them up, though in one case, the membership drove the choir in a completely different direction (which to me was ceasing to be a choir - so I left!) and generally they tend to set up structures which drive the directions. Now this can happen even when a group tries to put into place polices and processes to deal with incremental change and consultation processes. This is why a lot of strong-willed groups, such as grassroots environmentalists, do not trust consultation exercises - they feel that they are created to deliberately skew their beliefs and to give greater weight to positions that support their opposition.

Very often, groups set up structures that make it hard for outsiders to intervene. Or sometimes, they response to attempts to intervene and colonize a group. A classic example is when Outrage dropped focus groups as a response to attempted entryist tactics by Trotskyist groups. Such actions show an insight into political processes that is rare. But all too often, a once powerful political force can become nothing more than a social life for a priviliged minority. And such groups inevitably, whether they intend it or not, can often end up alienating outsiders so such an extent once useful institutions wither and die. They also, like Midas, taint everything they touch - the bars they socialise in become "their" bars to the exclusion of others, the events they organise never really grow, relationships around them become rusted and corrosive and bitchfests break out.

But to even point this out introduces that paralyzing fear into the community - there are groups that its "ok" to criticize and those it is not "ok" to criticize. And all too often arguments are bitterly contested and only worsen the situation as they batten down the hatches and silencing opposing views. Its also become really difficult to find out policies - for example I can't find out anywhere whether or not the Irish womens summer camp is trans-friendly. They simply don't mention it, which unfortunately a lot of the time can suggest that its not. What is even more dubious is when such events portrary themselves as welcome to hetero women but exclude transwomen. That is a scary thought, when the discrimination is happening at the core of our community.

Anyway the whole point of this series is to explore the history of the gay rights movements and the womens movements and where they interesected and divided. I will look at the situation today both internationally and in Ireland, and finally will explore ways in which this can be ended. I will look at the issues of misogyny, misandry and trans-misogyny that are definitely key issues (though deeply taboo) and how they can be extracted. And heopfully open up the issues for further discussion.

Ryanair vs Aer Arann on the Cork route again

2009-07-24T11:18:07Z

It seems like Aer Arann has run out of ammunition against Ryanair on the issue of Ryanair's predatorial actions on this route. See the article on the Examiner for the end of the Competition Authorties investigation. The interesting thing is it looks as if all the Competition Authority looks for is evidence of unfair business practices, and of course, in the context of this particular route, it competes with road and rail as well as via air, and of course Aer Arann are the PSO contract holders on this route at present.

I think the key problem for Aer Arann is that prior to RA's entry to this route, they enjoyed a very considerable level of success and it was probably quite a profitable route. Indeed when I first moved to Cork and lived without a car for 1.5 years, I was very pleased to pay as little as 59 euros instead of the almost as expensive and utterly contemptuous service which Iarnrod Eireann spit at consumers on this route, again with little competition for many years. Of course the legacy of this is that for years, business people who didn't want to endure the then 3 hour plus drive to Dublin's only real option for a day doing business was to take the 5am train to Dublin. Aer Lingus did also have a stopover on the 5.30am flight which I think went on to Munich after stopping at Dublin. Since my company paid the airfare, and probably via a BA codeshare I have no idea how much this would have cost compared to what was at the time around 44 euros for a weekend return fare. Now the standard unrestricted return to Dublin is an eye watering 66 euros, but IE are doing a series of web deals which can bring this down to 20/25 euros return. Which to be honest is the least they can do considering how poor the service is.

I had the misfortune of being a regular commuter not only on the Cork/Dublin but also the Cork/Cobh route for this 18 month miseryfest and endured everything from wildcat strikes, unexplained last minute (or late) cancellations, substantially late trains, and eventually I finally gave up the ghost and after abandoning a trip to Dublin 2 years ago because the train sat in a siding near Charleville for 2 hours without explanation, leaving me 2 hours late for an appointment (I hoppe off the train at Limerick and got the next train back to Cork) I vowed I would never again use that service. I did apply for a refund and got back I think 30 euro, which was less than I had paid for the trip, and of course didn't take into account the 5 euros I'd also spent on the car park at the station. So much for "take the train."

Anyway I used to regularly watch out for AE "specials" and even not so special specials, since this was shortly before the LUAS ended the ludicrous situation whereby the last train trundled into Dublin 10 minutes after the last bus into town left the station. I was certainly happy to pay 70 euros rather than 45 as my family home is in Swords, and it was at the time far easier to spend 5 minutes on a bus to the airport than it was to trek across town to Kingsbridge.

I wouldn't have minded Ryanair coming onto the Cork route were it not for their previous attack on Easyjet on another Cork route - the Cork to Gatwick route which was instated in 2004. Shortly after, Ryanair, after years of a very pathetic service out of Cork, responded with an identical service on the same route. Easyjet lasted a while, but eventually packed up and left. And almost in response, Ryanair too almost pulled the route from about per day to a pretty mediocre 1, oh and the fares mysteriously increased also. Similarly, 2 other Irish routes which Easyjet had attempted to establish were also targetted aggressively by Ryanair, and this time Ryanair withdrew services entirely within 2 weeks of Easyjets withdrawal. Ill-fated carriers Go and MyTravelLite also suffered from attempting direct compeition.

But the difference with Aer Arann is that it didn't already compete with RA on any routes of real significance and therefore were of no real CURRENT threat to RA. However it was clear that the Cork route was a profitable and important route, and easy to attack. Ryanair initially undercut their fares by about 20-30 euros overall, but at the moment the compeitition is extremely intense with many seats on the Cork route going for as little as 13 euros. In fact right now it seems to be hard to find a flight priced much higher than about 20-30 euros on that route. But this isn't what I find suspicious. What I find suspicious is that the flights are consistently almost empty. Even on what I would consider to be very attractive flights for business travellers, are as little as 30% full. RA must be making a massive loss on this route, yet they continue to operate 5 departures per day each way. Why is that and why is the competition authority not looking into this aspect?

I would suspect that the reason for the direct attack on Aer Arann is to deplete its profitability and weaken the Cork base - and surely that is fundamentally anti-competitive? I would certainly suspect that further court action would be useful for AA but it will be very hard to get the truth out of RA on the losses and underbooking on this route, and why it maintains 5 departures per day on it. I think my fear, and the fear of others, is that RA's attack is a strategy to at least drive AA off this route if not out of business, but without actually replacing it, people could well end up left with nothing. RA's services otherwise out of Cork are extremely spartan. Shannon gets better routes, but you have to ask about political motivations for pushing Shannon considering Aer Lingus's near abandonment of it a few years ago in favour of Belfast (although the latter seems to be doing quite well for the airline).

Actually what I would welcome is for RA to institute more NEW routes out of Cork such as links to Brussels or Hahn. At the moment it is really quite difficult to go anywhere interesting and were it not for Aer Lingus, there would be very few, if any continental options out of Cork. Small airlines such as AA are good for regional airports like Cork as they don't need the same levels of high loads in order break even on these kinds of routes. There is a huge area for business development which is going almost ignored.

A Systemic View of Fixing whats wrong in LGBT Activism

2009-06-25T16:49:27Z

Exploring the bigger picture, from rage and anger to healing and systemic change.

Read this wonderful piece on The Villager about a HIV activist who is bumused by the current focus of the community on achieving marriage equality on legal terms. The interviewee was an activist who believes that we are focusing on too narrow a set of rights while there are much bigger societal wrongs that are creating the problems and thus generating the obstacles.

I personally have to agree. One thing I've noticed as a result of the pressure for marriage equality is a huge sense that we need to "please the hets" and create an "image" of ourselves that is sanitized, often completely desexualized entirely, away from the days when we were sexual deviants and rebels at the cutting edge of changing society. Well no more of that thank you. Now its an image of clean cut, respectable and responsible couples (its the couply image that bugs me the most as a single person). Effectively, the gay community is self-castrating itself in pursuit of a goal that its so far been unable to reach in many societies, meanwhile, hate crimes are on the rise, even in places liike San Francisco, once the bastion of liberalism. Far from creating "greater" equality, the campaigns for marriage equality may even be allowing delighted right-wing conservatives and the far right to stir the flames of hatred once more.

I certainly think that the campaigns in California to stop Prop 8 (though admitedly, these are the hardest campaigns of all, since we are not instigating the process, we are fighting the process of somebody elses attempts to take away our rights and make it really, really difficult to get them back) have not only polarised feelings, they have hugely rewarded and rejuvenated an anti-gay movement which may become bolder and start to replicate its success in California elsewhere, and on other human rights issues.

But really, I have deep, deep misgivings about selling out the achievements of several previous generations of activists by not only presenting a conformist, conversative image of gay life, but the way in this is increasingly being self-policed by the gay community itself in words against promiscuity, gender deviance, cross dressing, in short, everything we fought for we are now turning away from so we can be respectable men and women, just like you.

This is happening not against an assumed backdrop of increased respect for gay rights, but in fact the tide of homophobia is steady rather rather than crashing out to see: wins in some areas are countered by losses in others. But what worries me most is the rise of the self-policing within our own culture - in the early 1990s, a UK gay community, angered by the persistence of police entrapment designed to "catch out" what was admitedly a minority of gay men who only very slightly deviated from the perceived social acceptable norms (such as having more than one partner at a time, videoing sex, and sex in public places) rose up and fought without the self-moralising that I see now in the Irish community.

A common theme of the "attacking" writings of conservative journalists such as Brenda Power, Kevin Myers and John Waters is the accusations that in fact they are "victims" of bigotry from "gay bullies" intent on somehow manipulating a precept of "truth" in order to push personal agendas. In reality, Power, etc, are really just receiving the annoyance and anger at a community that is not really being served by government or community leadership alike. However, the standing anger over GLEN I suspect is as much to do with very generous grant aids given to the group by Atlantic Philanthropies, and resentment over this. In fact many of the mainstream community organisations get substantial funding from various sources, mainly the HSE and Equality Authority, and many of them concoct an image of "democracy" which is every bit as fake and non-consultative as GLEN are perceived to be. For example, there is one group which uses the duplicity of "community meetings" so that 30 knuckle-dragging man-dykes can make decisions which the group then falsifies as the "opinions" and "feelings" of a real "community" of as many as 9000 women-loving women in one region. Unsurprising then to hear opinions from that league that largely reflect the feelings of Solanas' SCUM manifesto.

Democratic feelings and beliefs are particularly difficult to guage in a distributed community that still faces rampant levels of homophobic, some of it on a day by day basis. The most persistent and obvious example of disputed democratic feeling and representation is with the spat over Galway Pride, which ended up resulting in the entire "pride" splitting in two, two different committies elected and one of them refusing to stand down. It is clear to me that there are a lot of people out there exploiting the lack of a genuine community driven democracy for their own ends, and almost every so-called gay community group in Ireland is at it in some form or another.

Of course, I cannot wait to see what happens when the funding dries up and all these groups are forced to go cap in hand to their supposed "communities" in order for support. I am sure we will see a brave new world then. The reality right now if that truly no group is genuinely consulting with anything outside a select group of cronies and no group is truly democratic or representative of what is becoming a hugely fragmented community.

Our only way around this as far as I can see is to allow nature to take its course. I think what has facilitated this development in the community is the easy availability of substantial income streams that permit groups to fund NGOs that really are just the brainchild of small fragmented groups. Once this disappears the groups that don't really have support will be unable to fund themselves and will fold. Those that do represent the communities they claim to speak for will find ready income streams from within those communities and sustain themselves on that. I don't really see any other way right now as there is just too much anger in the community and too much self-serving politiking happening.

The Case for Rent Controls

2009-06-23T14:14:12Z

NB LA=local authority, not the place in Southern California!!

I was reading today in the NYT a short piece on the problems that NYC landlords face with regard to rent controls. Its relevant to Ireland because although we booted rent controls more than 30 years ago, under a piece of legislation that still impacts a very tiny number of tenants, effectively the SWA rent subsidy scheme is acting as a form of rent control, albeit for a socially marginalised and financially deprived (in some cases wilfully) tenant body. There is a secondary effect on a class of tenant that probably includes myself, an above average earning tenant who for whatever reason cannot access purchasing, can afford what is obscenely described as "market rents" despite being well above the realistic disposable incomes of most tenants without bundling up, but chooses a lower standard of residential property due to cheaper rents.

This is the group that the NTC landlords associations are particularly moaning about - people who are living in rent controlled properties but can afford not to. Yet what it doesn't add is how many of these folks may have started out as more needy tenants. What is astonishing about the NY system is that effectively, most tenants would need to have been living in the building since 1993 at least if they are to qualify for rent controls already in place on the building and under a certain income threshold, while non-income related thresholds must be living there since 1971.

What this effectively means that for a "wealthy" person to still be under unconditional rent control, they need to have a tenancy dating back to 1971. In all honestly, this would mean they would have to be at 59 years of age.

This would indicate to me that most rent controls are going to start dying off with the tenants over the next 20 years, living only the income related group, who themselves will start dying out 20 years later.

So it appears to be that the landlords are whinging about something which is really only a temporary situation and likely to change dramatically in the future. Most genuingely rent controlled tenancies involve elderly tenants who are likely to die off and so the tenancy with them. The reality of this artificially engineered situation does the raise the question of how rent control can possibly be blamed for housing shortages in NYC over the last 10 years when clearly it is not impacting new developments or tenancies.

Lets shift over the Atlantic to Ireland where there is a similar situation that has developed via the highly destructive influence of rent subsidies to tenants who normally would have gone into social housing up to the early to mid 1990s when local authorities effectively ceased building new social housing developments. At some point along the way it was established legally that the responsibility to put a roof over the head of the homeless was not local authorities, but the then Health Boards (now the HSE). So effectively this permitted the LAs to bow out of building new properties, ironically making it far less attractive financially since restrictions on the level of LA tenancies would force down the quality of new tenants to only the move impoverished and desperate in society, thus eroding the value of rents paid and hiking up the cost of new tenancies as existing tenants exercised their right to purchase their homes at discounted values.

Homelessness thus escalated in Ireland in response to a requirement for "desperation only" in order to qualify at any reasonable length of time in the cities for social housing places. I certainly have seen lots of people who have engineered themselves into situations of total desperation in order to access social housing - indeed its an accusation constantly inflected against the lone parent community, who have little other choice than to remain on welfare until they are housed as market rents simply remain impossible for them to pay. Some of those who do this follow it up by qualifying for higher education, where curiously enough they then qualify for better jobs than the vast majority of private rented sector tenants generally have. But because there is now a ceiling on their rents, they are able to earn as much as they can while paying as little as 40% of the market rent. This is particularly prevalent in newer housing association developments, which tend to house more single tenants without dependants. Such organisations will no doubt claim that they've enabled such people to climb out of poverty, but there is a question as to how many such tenants have deliberately depressed their living standards in order to qualify for housing in order to qualify for long term cheap rents, in a similar situation to NY rent controls?

This is becoming a much bigger political hot potato as previous records for net unemployment are being smashed monthly - when I left university for the first time in 1994, unemployment stood at what was then considered a shameful all time high of 300,000 claimants. Now the figure is 400,000 (albeit with population growth). However the overall figure is expected to climb to 500,000 due to catastrophic job losses, I would suggest, often engineered by generous subsidies for statutory redundancy payments and a system that enables the positions to be reinstated 3 months later at whatever deflated salary the employer so wishes. I think in the short to medium term this will result in dramatic falls in average wages in the private sector exacerbated by genuine job losses due to loss of spending power of those newly laid off.

The other sadder side of the housing crisis - which is and remains a crisis, is not only appallingly poor standards in the rented sector, and abysmal standards in LA housing, but deflation of much of the existing housing stock due to hyperinflation of land values due to a lack of proper controls on a range of malpractices such as "rezoning" of lands designated as agricultural in order to inflate values, poorly controlled lending practices at all levels, poor implementation of planning guidelines and an appalling failure to cater for infrastructure needs. Worst of all was massive tax breaks for a range of developments including holiday homes, redevelopment of areas considered low demand, and absence of any kind of real property tax. Add to this non implementation of what are very, very basic rental standards and here is your disaster.

Skills Shortages in IT and a real world perspective

2009-06-23T13:24:15Z

I was reading with interest this study on IT skills shortages from an employer perspective in Cork. While it is clearly out of date one thing I couldn't help noticing was a blithe assumption that everybody working in IT would have a 2-4 year IT-specific certificate, diploma or degree. I find this curious as I spot an enormous mismatch between perceived/self-reported skills amongst IT workers in Cork, particularly bad amongst people holding industry certifications, many of whom seem to have either crammed their way through certifications in order to fulfil job requirements. The reality, I often find, is workers who are only certified on paper, and don't really have much skill levels.

Yet there are some fantastic workers, definitively a minority, but most definitely some very high quality workers with strong technical knowledge and sound business skills, whom it is hard to extract on qualifications alone. Yet an awful lot of these are frequently passed over repeatedly in favour of game-players who exploit the political structures and regional isolation of offshoots of larger multinationals taking advantage of what was perceived as Ireland's advantages a few years ago. The trouble is, without a 3rd level qualification, right now a lot of these workers are being completely disregarded by a jobs market that despite popular mythology, places no value whatsoever on transferable skills, and regards them with as much suspicion as their low-skilled peers without specific qualifications.

The problem is, I think, the low-skill brigade ruined it for everybody. Let me give you two examples.

I worked in a helpdesk of a French multinational for 3 years. They employed initially mainly self-appointed "experts" who'd blatantly lied on their CVs, the kinda human-ape who suddenly realised from their little jobs in security companies and shops that there was money to be had in IT, and despite a complete and utter lack of qualifications, skills and quite often even basic social skills, managed to get a foot on the IT ladder due to chronic skills shortages in the entry level ranks of IBM, HP, Dell and Gateway in the mid to late 1990s. I recall that of my own group in Dell in 2000, I was probably the only person who had no formal qualifications in IT, most entered with at least a basic certificate (and in fairness, I had a non-IT degree and 3 diplomas to my name, plus a level of practical IT skills that many people at the time were astounded by - for example I managed to get 100% in Gateway's entry level skills assessment). After I got a job there I noticed that manybe about 10% of the workforce there were uncertified - about half of those had alternate skills in various other disciplines, but the remainder were, effectively, professional bullshitters of the type above, who played the system in order to compensate for their own lack of skills.

As I gradually climbed the IT ladder over the following 7 years I rapidly discovered that this tiny group became disproportionately represented in the higher ranks. They took many forms - the non-IT but otherwise qualified seemed to do particularly well - a lot of them used high discipline levels and transferable business skills to get into good roles often in project management or leadership roles. But there was a tiny few of obstinate idiots who somehow, via the classification of an A+ or lucky cram on a MCP, managed to hoodwink future employers into a 3rd level support role which they in no way deserved. This company became rapidly infested with as many of 10 of these IT parasites, useless idiots who sat around and did at max 1 hour of work per days, scratching their arses and playing hard political games for the remainder of the time.

They were also well paid and so after about 1.5 years of revenue bleeding (these guys were costing the company about 1/4 million a year plus in salaries alone) the company engaged on a round of redundancies and particularly targetted this group. It was so bad that most of them were outskilled by level 1 analysts on as little as 2/3 of their wages.

Irish law permits you to rehire for exactly the same job within 3 months of a lay off, so sure enough the company started to refill the roles from well established, good skilled level 1 analysts - but with a catch - they were now paid only 80% of the bullshitters salaries - the lesson? How the bullshitters ruined things for the generally skilled. Many of those who replaced these guys were now IT graduates - after the earlier mistakes, the company set from then on to only employing 2-4 year graduates, mainly IT, or graduates in other disciplines with IT experience. But the horse had bolted, and the skilled and good workers were forced to pay the price of the bullshitters in salary cuts and poorer working conditions caused by heavy monitoring as to what they were doing. The trust was blown.

I was interested to notice that many of the bullshitters I've known have gone through at least 1 year of unemployment after taking generous redundancy packages, flying them into an environment that now recognises their deceit. And most of those were forced to take lower grade opportunities, back to desktop support for the bullshitters, where many remained for years before managing to deceive their way into a senior role once more.

A second example is another one. Left school early 90s, in the days when unless you were utterly clueless, you hit college for at least a year or two. Obviously this guy was too thick as he managed to get into security, basically the last resort job for the skill-less in Ireland - even those without any sort of school certificate could make their way into this career before security vetting came in to filter out those with criminal pasts!!

The pattern is usually the same. They fancy themselves as "clever" and "intellectual" but have all the intellectual capacity of a baboon. They generally are cute enough not to undertake any formal educational courses because they know full well that this will only expose their inability to pass even fairly basic courses, preferring instead an informal route which is still possible. Soon they have years of "experience" much of which consists of playing games on a subterfuged network at work built up of leftover equipment and looking up Wikipedia and Google for other peoples technical solutions. They often grab a bit of scripting experience, mastering the art by cutting and pasting other peoples scripts and copying out of books. A common thing I see these guys do (and its almost ALWAYS guys for some reason) is to surreptitiously change project requirements to suit their (very limited) technical ability. Which means all too often, you might (eventually) get a solution, but not the one you asked for. And all too often, something that is either a fault which another group won't take responsibility for or can be rectified more simply. But by the same they hmm and emmmm their way through meetings, you don't care, you just want them to shut up and move onto the next issue.

They generally survive short term cost cutting redundancies, but ultimately add to the lack of productivity that usually results in total closure. And its happening - all over Ireland. Once "state of the art" facilities opened with fanfares on RTE with massive tax breaks and IDA funding, are often very quietly closing down with barely a whisper. And these guys are culprits. All too often they hang on just long enough to bleed the company dry. People who are worth 20k but paid 40k. Its only a matter of time guys, only a matter of time.

So what do I think is the solution? Easy.

A formal framework and set of testing criteria for skills assessments for above entry level appointments.
Let this be substituted ONLY by formal 2-4 year full time or equivalent part time certifications.
Industry standard certs need to be backed up by formal skills assessments set by bodies such as the ICA or industry bodies.
I think this needs to be applied to current employees as well a potential ones to stress test and pick out bullshitters. Offer them upskilling or otherwise, but fact remains these guys lied on their cvs and need appropriate restitution. This way we can rid the industry of those who've ruined it for everyone.

The Mythology of the Affluent Queer

2009-06-18T16:25:46Z

This morning I was reading a very interesting book by Mary Virginia Lee Badgett called Money, Myths, and Change which effectively questions the assumptions that society have of the affluent queer. The affluent queer is basically a product of marketing surveys from commonly read periodicals which indicate that gay consumers are wealthy and educated. For anybody with extensive experience of both the activist communities, services for gays and the commercial scene will know is that this clashes hard with a lot of the community which often (but again, not always) appears to be quite marginalised. At the same time, I would personally question the counter-assumption that gays are fundamentally deprived (though I definitely think there is a very strong argument in her case that the closet can be just as discriminated against despite taking action to conceal their sexuality since they may have great difficulty in fitting into any society).

An interesting anomaly that Badgett finds is that when matching like-for-like in terms of educational attainment, location, etc, gay men earn significantly less than heterosexuals, while on the whole gay women earn considerably more. She makes a lot of effort to figure out which this discrepancy exists, though I suspect that, correctly, she identifies that lesbians are less like to have a male partner which would lead to pressure to have children and not work. Or more to the point, only 20-30% of self-identified gay women have children as compared to 70-50% of hetero women, which means that they will have a more continuous work record uninterrupted by child-bearing periods in their lives. I suspect that most lesbians who consciously co-parent are in most cases considerably more affluent than hetero women who consciously have children with a married or unmarried male partner. While there are a minority of dependent lesbians, this is probably less so than gay males who have a long standing tradition of looking for older male breadwinners, especially if the younger partner dropped out of education or worked in the sex trade. That is not to say that lesbians don't work in the sex trade - I am sure a few do, but represent a minority there.

That said, there would be a significant element of economically inactive lone parents amongst gay women who have children from previous heterosexual relationships - however - most of these are far more likely to be in the closet and so not represented in surveys on income. What I find curiously interesting though, is an extensive discussion on the effects of indirect discrimination on gay folk who are still in the closet. As the book points out, many will be unable to fully mix with colleagues because it would require disclosure, and this could disadvantage them at work. We find particularly amusing on the scene here, the particularly ghettoized phenomenon we call the "ManDyke" - hyper butch gay women who often turns out to be in the closet (or more correctly, believes themselves to be in the closet!!) These turn up all over the place, for example an ex of mine spotted one in the factory where she works, where groups of mostly male workers groups together and spit fire over "dykes." Some will be spotted by colleagues and potentially discriminated against, others may even be discriminated against for "looking dykey" even though they may not in fact be at all. Others may not be spotted, or will be able to "work the system" to their advantage (the ex appears to have managed this, but perhaps not).

For gay men this may depend on the sector in which they work. For example, a considerable number in Ireland either work in retail/services, but a very large proportion work in US multinationals, often in fairly skilled roles in non-production workplaces, rather than Ireland's overinflated construction sector, which is known to be not only enormously homophobic, but frequently unskilled. Either way there is an interesting debate there about who we are and where we are in life.

The Galway Pride Split

2009-06-17T16:30:33Z

After the online spat over the Cork Wimmins weekend, you'd think people would learn. But no. It seems not. A huge split has emerged in Galway over "Bród", the west's answer to Pride. It was a popular little pride, in a tightly knit scene that did attract a slightly more hippyish following than its slicker east and north-east coast cousins. It would appear that this initiated over disputes over payments owed to 2 of the main entertainment venues or promoters, and the non appearance of audited accounts for last year. It ended up with 2 entirely separate committees being elected, one of which seemingly is resolutely refusing to resign in order to reelect a single committee for August's event.

Instead, its a form of Pride doomsday - a miniature Dinah Shore style-split which is erupting into two entirely separately different sets of events. Some efforts appear to have been made by interested individuals who are concerned at the ability of the events to sustain themselves, not to mention the long term damage done by having two competing sets of events on a single weekend. In the case of the Dinah, what really happened in 2006 was a reversion to the older model where several different events occured, based on the demographic of the attendees (for example there was a bunch of activites for golfers, the "Lina Shore" and another event for women over 35, the ProSuzy Dinah. Each of these events is targetted at a particular age, level of interest in the golf itself, and the income level - ranging from a modest 500 dollars for the cheapest and well over 2000 dollars for the priciest. While people argue that this was only sustainable because the figures attending the Dinah by 06 had escalated to over 20,000 women, in fact most of these events started out at just hundreds and built up over many years.

The question so isn't just about whether or not it is socially desireable that Galway Bród remain a single unified event, but to what extent the bringing together of the growing number of disparate groups within the community is sustainable in the long term if forced. Many pride events in other cities - most notably London and Sydney - have almost fallen apart, but usually because of a problem with funding. London almost went bankrupt in the early 1990s due to a lack of financial support from both participants and commercial interests, and in fact if I recall on one year got huge criticism after an organised pride party charged a hefty entrance fee in order to attend. Sydney L&G Mardi Gras (considerably larger than the cities pride, which is a separate event) was bailed out by an unnamed benefactor after the event almost collapsed. While the parade remains a free event, the lavish after parties and annual Harbour party the weekend prior are funded by substantial ticket charges as well as a popular sleaze ball the previous autumn. Debates take place everwhere, with this years Maspalomas Gay pride publishing both a list of commercial operators who did and did not contribute to the pride events (under a general desire to "keep pride free"). Maspalomas has the unique position of taking place in a development that includes Europe's largest concentration of gay businesses.

However the situation is similar all over the world. There is a perception amongst some community activists that businesses make a fortune from pride events without making a contribution back to the community. Nobody seems to take into account that not all gay businesses make a fortune from concentrating on a gay clientele - obviously some of these people are too young to remember the unpleasantries over the transformation of the Parliment on Parliment St into the Turks Head Chop House, complete with what was at the time a perfectly legal new homophobic door policy that excluded the people who'd kept the business going for the previous ten years. There is frequently an accusation levelled at certain elements of the dyke community that don't spend much, how they expect to be catered for if they are unwilling to lavishly blow the cash in gay bars. And to be really honest, I really have to back that feeling - lesbians who moan and groan about the lack of venues catering for them really do need to consider the fact these places won't survive unless money is spent there.

The one thing I've really noticed, however, is a huge similarity between the stonewalling of debate on the CWFW and one lady on Facebook's diatribe on the facilitation group setup to try to "end the face" - this lady has even changed her name on FB to "Get Behind Galway Pride", I can only assume, in order to signify they "picked on" status of the problematic pride committee in a similar way that a few women semi-defended the CWFW policy on GC. The difference in Galway I think is that the impact on the wider community is much more obvious. In the case of CWFW, men are excluded anyway, a considerable number of gay/bi women marginalised, and most het women, and those like myself who just don't like it, don't go, withhold donations to organisations funding them as far as it is feasible to do so and realise quite well that hardcore groups like this eventually fizzle out due to lack of resources caused by their exclusion of others. But Galway is different. Pride involves thousands of people - from people who just come for the weekend to people who live out their social lives around the scene and need it. There are people there who care enough about Bród to want it to be genuinely representative.

The one thing I recognised from the Cork situation was the numbers involved in turning up to so-called "community meetings" and how public meetings are manipulated and used as representative factions to control communities. It would appear that different dates and times were circulated by different factions in the Galway feud in order to vote in representatives committees. You have got to wonder why the determination to refuse to step down and meet with other groups is there for any reason other than pure raw power-mongering. I notice a deep similarity with a particular other organisation who uses the vehicle of "community meetings" in order to hear the voice and take votes on decisions. The reality of this, as I've previously pointed out, is that 30 people turn up as "representation" of a community of somewhere between 4000-9000 and then lay claim to "represent" them. This is the kind of democracy that people riot about in the Middle East.

What is also similar is the vitriolic attacks on individuals and groups by those refusing to step down, and heat of anger at the fact that the dispute is made public. But you know, thats what angered the old order in CWFW also - the fact their dirty linen was hung out. Not because they don't want anybody to know, but because they don't want public debate - that will challenge the vice-like grip on power these groups depend on due to enforced silence ("we don't want to embarass the community do we?") I expect one thing we are going to see a lot more of in the future with so-called community groups in the LGBT community in Ireland is who they are, who they really represent and who gains what from them. For a long time, I've publicly highlighted the example of an "organisation" which calls itself "GISI". This "organisation" is in fact just one person, who's endless attention-seeking campaigns display all the sophistication of a mental patient on the rampage. Its unfortunate indeed that so many people are taken in by this rather sad and pathetic individual's outward charm and seeming simplicity and don't actually notice how all over the place the argument put forward is, or how damaging it may be to people on a rather confusing obstacle course in terms of personal gender identity. Should you encounter anybody, I would remind you, claiming to be a "consultant" or "expert" on GID, I would recommend you quiz them thoroughly on their professional credentials as this indivudal has none whatsoever.

Again we are back to the confusing road as to how unrepresentative community organisations in the LGBT community have become and I seriously wonder if the current government actually unknowingly did us a favour in hacking financial backing for the Equality Authority. Indeed what authority can any organisation have if it funds groups that are merely self-appointed advancers of a particular position in society?

Transdad Treading old grounds . . . yet again

2009-06-14T02:59:40Z

I saw a small spot in one of the US papers the other day (I LOVE US newspapers since you can skim them in about 20 minutes and they are only about 50c!, unlike the monstrosities that even the smallest Irish tabloids have crept into) regarding Thomas Beattie, the professional F2M who retained a few little female organs so he could become the "first" trans "dad." Well actually, incredibly so, since the age of the internet makes such things easy to find, he's been outdone by others and was by no means the first. It seems Beattie has become a parent one more time and given birth again. I sighed a breath of relief that there is a bit less of a hoo haa this time over what is really a fairly normal thing now.

A lot of people given the lifetime opportunity to transition at a much younger age are faced with an increasingly debate - what about children? 10-20 years ago this was less of an issue as many gender disphoric folks daren't risk their chances of transitioning by asking to hang onto a few bits for a while longer so they could produce children, the medical gatekeepers just were not quite ready for this.

But a lot of the community, especially in the F2M community, found themselves with far bigger challenges. One of the outputs of the closed and exclusive nature of the lesbian world, which I have already ranted at length about the deliberate exclusion tactics used to remove or dissuade males, bi women, political undesireables, sex radicals, and varies others considered in some way threatening to the usually very locallyized dyke establishment (be it radical feminist, butch and working class, or late bloomers, parents and lady golfers - there are always a handful of common bonds that determine who is "welcome" and who is social undesireable) is that the women who find themselves accepted into such communities find them very "safe" and comfortable, and generally are very unwilling to challenge the social status quo, even when they discover something about themselves that is "taboo" within their local society.

A common one I notice a lot is simply bisexuality. This is hugely taboo in such social circles and generally best handled by total secrey, as it is likely to received as a complete act of treachery. Therefore, most of such groups usually consist to the naked eye of exclusive lesbians. If bisexual women do arrive, they tend to be extremely marginalized, and often for reasons not exclusive to their sexual diferences. What can be amusing sometimes is that occasionally, groups that also function as resource centres make space for bisexual groups, but remain deeply uncomfortable on a social level about bisexual women. This is gradually changing as most groups mature and realise that cannot simply cater for a minority within a rapidly changing demographic.

Anyway, Thomas Beattie was in no way the first transman to have a child. Even the L-Word caught onto this years ago. Many years ago I used to enjoy the sex advice of S&M queen Pat Califa who had been living in SF for quite some time. In the late 90s, like my photographic idol Della Grace, Pat started to not only transition and become Patrick Califia-Rice, but also started to challenge his own sexual preferences and now regards himself as bisexual. His partner Matt also was in transition, and here's the clincher, over 10 years ago, Matt and Pat had a child together. Patrick wrote about this here. Yet the entire media for 2 years has conveniently ignored the fact that its not uncommon for transitioning people to have children while they still can. After all we all still live in a world where gay adoption is difficult and legalities surrounding reproduction complex. Basically Thomas Beattie was no big deal and the product of a bored media.

The reality is this - queer folk, trans folk, people who are different - we eat, we play, we read books, we have sex, yes. And we have children and raise them responsib;y just like any other parents do. We think about it more deeply because things like that are very much more rooted in carefully selected choices than two kids drunkenly fucking in a tent at a music festival (if you believe the slightly amusing ads currently on Irish TV for the not bad Think Contraception campaign). These things don't just happen for us, we move mountains to bring them about. There is somehow a mystique about gender disphoric people because no group of people has been more objectivised than the M2F, written off as sex objects for the gratification really, of deeply troubled men who cannot deal with the depths and caverns of their own sexuality and attitude to other men/women. This is why this form of pornography is in one sense distasteful - its somehow done in the same disempowering way that a lot of maintstream het porn is done - the woman's desires only exist for the pleasure of the voyeur. (In fact when I think about these, the one thing thats really disturbing is the deliberate lack of emphasis on the male pleasure-giver in mainstream porn - the viewer is clearly invited to take his place, to imagine, this is me. The transference is far less direct in porn involving transpeople, and utterly removed in the case of fake-lesbian-porn - this is the ultimate in voyeur purity. But I digress).

Ultimately, the sudden interest in the case of the "pregnant man" is about a decade out of date and totally out of kilter with any real understanding of the complexities of a gender disphoric persons life. The debate thats ensued has tended to see the issue as thats of sheer vanity and personal selfishness. Yet this is all happening in countries with huge levels of unwanted pregnancies and unhappy parenting among heteros. So why pick on a very small cohort of people who are making the most of what they have while they can?

Get off of my ass . . . a review of some old L-Word reviews, 5 years on

2009-06-05T01:34:22Z

The other day I was back home in north Dub and was in HMV buying a present for a sister when I spotted a real bargain - a substantial box set of seasons 1-3 of the L-Word for a mere 31 euros. As I recall still paying not only about 80 euros to get the preorder NTSC version straight over from the US for my then girlfriend, but also the rip-off Irish duty, tax and extortionate fees for collecting it (which I might add, they don't just tax you on the value of the items, they tax you in rip-off republic for the DELIVERY charges also!!) Fortunately the relationship didn't last beyond the 3rd season so I only managed to blow a couple of hundred on the series before I went off into the sunset of living alone and pleasuring just moi.

So I was pretty happy to pick up the lot for 30 bucks.

Anyway since I lost touch with the L-Word around season 4 I felt I needed to get back in touch before I play catch up with about 3 years of it.

I have to say, I really enjoyed it, just as much as I did when it first came out. It was glamorous, it was sexy, and whatever would happen next!? The whole Jenny/Marina thing REALLY broke ice I think - I think a lot of women probably do relate to accidental introductions to lesbian life the "practical" way rather than the hard old fashioned way I did it, i.e. coming out years before there was ever any joy to be had from it. So most significiantly, I think it put the "sex" back into homosexuality. People didn't just sit around talking politics, they interacted, they flitered, they socialised, and they got lucky! None of the old fashioned and still common "bad wedding" model that so many dyke clubs seem to cling onto, these were exciting looking places full of attractive people.

So I thought it might be interesting to revisit the key criticisms that L-Word got at the time. Bear in mind that this is hugely reterospective and I think a lot of the women who might have agreed a few years ago may now be huge fans. Things have changed a lot in our world, thankfully mostly for the better. So anyway here are the key complaints and where we stand 5 years later.

The women are all "skinny" and look like "models"
It is aimed at "men"
There is too much heterosexual sex
There seems to be some kind of problem with the idea of lesbians having hidden sex in public restrooms as the domain of "gay men"
Its not about "us" and it will "scare" heterosexuals who are already uncomfortable about "us"

What I find particularly offensive about these criticisms is that they come from an established political mafia of lesbians who seem, for whatever reason, to aspire to conform to the "butch stereotype" that L-Word at least initially tried to evade (the introduction of Moira/Max later on in the initially seemed to contradict this). I prefer to refer, both for simplicities sake, and in order to show the depth of my physical revulsion for such women, as "bulldykes", generally mannish, working class, all too often "victims of society". The real issue here, is why a) feminine women were so rare in many communities (and still in some of the more forsaken places today) and b) is there some kind of negativity or lack of belief regarding feminine or "straight acting" women that has driven them out of the old fashioned lesbians comunity? I think this can in many cases, all too sadly, be answered by a resounding "yes". Yes, femininity is taboo within some lesbian communities as it is seen as cow-towing to patriarchal values. The result of this is at best marginalisation of women who don't conform to the bulldyke stereotype WITHIN communities, and at worst such women may be excluded or driven out of communities by socially hostile bulldykes. And the worst scenario of all is the lack of credibility that such women face. Their integrity is questioned by those who are accustomed to the butch dyke patriarchy. Its a kind of reverse homophobia. I think Julie Serano writes extensively on the issue of marginalisation of femininity in the lesbian feminist circles well.

Is it really aimed at men? SHO is a channel which is relatively broad reaching, but all of those involved in the early days of the L-Word had a long and established set of credentials writing for the relatively narrow lesbian community. Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner were both involved with films previously. There was even a mock-up of the Doral hotel in Palm Springs done in confuction with the likes of Olivia, Club Skirts, etc for a Dinah Shore based episode. Numerous actresses with a history of parts in ground breaking lesbian films played parts from the beginning right through until the last series, even iconic series without a specifically lesbian maintext got included (for example Lucy Lawless has a small role in the last series). To suggest this is simply "for male gazes" is simplistic and insulting for women who deeply enjoy these shows and films of the past. I think though, the sexualisation of the entire series left a lot of viewers in shock. Lesbian lives have traditionally been extremely coy about sexuality. If anything many of the traditional community events are very desexualised and those that were not ran a gauntlet of extreme hostility from women who held a second wave feminist viewpoint on women as sexual beings. I think this is the real fear of the lesbian anti sex league - they are genuinely afraid of the consequences of being "gazed upon" by male viewers and thus objectified. I think this has roots in deeper sexuality issues with some women who may block out heterosexual pasts or feelings in order to meet a level of conformity demanded by a rather conformist community.

Too much hetero sex? Ah come on. This rapidly vanished after the first series.

The public restroom criticism goes back to the same sexuality arguement - lesbians don't want to be "seen" as "behaving badly" or even as "sexual" by men, for what is often deep and complex reasons, possibly relating to prior experiences of male sexuality, or perhaps a sense of need to conform to a rigid but confortable lesbian feminist ideology. I suspect it is for this reason lesbians have been so slow in general to embrace sex-friendly happenings, though this boundary is crumbling rapidly.

The last argument really does sum up a huge part of the problem. The traditional separtist lesbian feminist community were deeply alarmed by L-Word because they couldn't recognise their own "image." And their position was sometimes "this is not us" - the implication being made is that this is basically straight writers and actresses playing out for the camera. Actually the odd thing was, that from the late 90s onward, the womens scene was rapidly diversifying in most countries, helped in large by more relaxed door policies that I suspect led more to criticisms of gay venues not catering for women, a response to women who didn't have a lot of lesbian friends and who needed to socialise in mixed venues, and lastly, a real sense of embarassment at the hurt, offence and prejudice raised around "born-women-only" policies in larger events. These led to a gradual proliferation of "mixed" venues primarily for women but permiting men entry, many of whom to this day are the subject of massive vitriol, usually completely unjustified. This wasn't so strong in 2004 but was already well on its way in California and some of the larger worldwide communities. By now its only in very small communities that there is still discrimination against lesbians who "look straight".

The most fascinating thing about this entire debate is that no group LOVED the L-Word more with a passion than the good old fashioned butch dyke. These girls lapped it up more than anybody else, no doubt displaying a real hunger for a richer tapestry within the community and a desire for a bit of glamour. Lets hope it gets picked up by other producers.

The Strange World of the Closet

2009-06-03T15:56:01Z

Many years ago when I should have been working on a musicology MLitt thesis, I happened to pick up a copy of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's book Epistemology of the Closet and read it through, enjoying it very much. Basically, Sedgwick argued a systemic view of homosocial desire that recognises it as universal rather than simply something for a minority. This theme is regularly picked up in popular media, from jokes about rugby players to films (a good example is threads of sexuality in that wonderful film American Beauty). Sedgwick saw this as a result of separatism (not especially political either).

I have always found this an interesting view, moving away from sexuality as a binary choice to a series of different sensations, emotions, desires, experiences and visualisations. The ghettoisation of sexuality is something which clearly conflicts with a large proportion of fluid sexual beings such as bisexuals, swingers, polyamorous etc, which you inevitably encounter in large numbers in any "space" which is known or believed to be "gay friendly." Yet this group are hugely marginalised, especially in the hugely regressive and oppressive womens communities, where organisational structures and even language are designed to marginalise politically unfavourable positions and people. There is a particular fear within the womens community of categorising niche desire categories like there exists in the mens community - for example in bears, BDSM, uniform, practice communities - I suspect which is a deliberate effort to retain the reins of power in community groups which inevitably have a strong degree of power over even commercial events where women go. The main consequence of this has been the sanitization and desexualizing of womens events - the "bad wedding" model we've been all so familiar with - poor music, poor locations, often hardly any punters.

I notice that as commercial interests drven by wealthy girls with megalomania intent on branding the scenes for themselves continue to spread worldwide - like the Club Skirts and Girlbar "Dinahs", the L-Word, the Candy Bar brand, and burgeoning circuit events, this rapidly falls apart. The almost immediate impact is that the sex comes back into sexuality, in the form of cage dancers, strippers, go-go girls, sauna nights and play parties - interestingly, mostly aimed at an "executive" audience, often deliberately priced so as to exclude lower income women. In fact one London based promoter of one of these events recently quite openly described their high pricing as a deliberate means to exclude "chavs." Inevitably the knives came out rapidly as the harpies descended upon this affront on the essential "diversity" of the womens community, but in reality it reaffirmed the "superiority" of the working class, butch, separtist feminist dyke over the "exclusive" pro model. The reason I suspect, is the real fear of the massive disempowerment this is likely to have for the more traditionally social disadvanted of the womens communities.

A very good example of where this has already happened is in two of the larger gay friendly cities in the world - LA and Sydney. The really very best events are priced well beyond the reach of low income attendees, and are often criticised as a deterrent to "keep out" the lower social rungs. But the effects, particularly in Sydney, are astounding - a whole different kind of attendee emerges - one that doesn't bother normally with the scene, one that is often an "identity tourist" and increasingly, hungry for more of the same. As a long time scene goer my first (and admittedly prejudiced) reaction was "but these are not gay people." What I had managed to continuously forget over the previous 10 years was the deep marginalisation of considerable numbers of women and men from the gay "community" by the action of well-intended community groups who went out of their way to cater for very "niche" groups - the "hard" cases, rather than by trying to reach a wider demographic. This has led to massive levels of marginalisation in the previously ghettoised communities that is now widely recognised by those who now realise there is a hugely lucrative "market" previously ignored doe to ghettoization. This brings into play a conflict between traditional community based events and newer commercial events and businesses which cater to a wealthy, though argueably not powerful demographic who are less differentiated from the hetero community. Sedgwick would have been proud.

To a large extent, this really is the ultimate break through of the narrowing effect referred to by Sedgwick, and a move back towards a more broad demographic. This has reached massive knee-jerks within many traditional communities, most of whom have had their complaints muted by the fact that the "new money" in the gay family is now subsidising their institutions. Indeed faced with massive cutbacks in funding due to the global slump many organisations are either dying or being forced to cater to more commercial tastes. This ultimately means being forced to appeal to a broader environment than the group was previously comfortable with. This may lose the support of polarised stakeholders who are unhappy with the changes. However in the long term it offers the broadest involvement with the community, the greatest support, and catering for a broad church rather than a narrow and unrepresentative of minority who fall within the consensus group.

Latest Drug Strategy Report

2009-06-02T10:48:24Z

An interesting piece appeared in the Examiner today, on an issue now largely ignored by the rest of the papers, who prefer more recessionary topics - the continued increase in recreational to obsessional drug use in Ireland. Seemingly there has been a large increase in "drug debts" especially for coke use, and this is spilling over into intimidation of families as they are "held responsible" for family members debts.

What is particularly interesting is the hugely ineffective and naive "drug education" which even young people themselves are critical of, and of course, the fact that effectively all drug "education" ends once people leave second level education - nonsensical when you consider that a large proportion of drugs are "new drugs" that have only come into the scene in recent years and thus large numbers of people will be about 20 years out of date. Good examples are both ecstasy and crystal meths. These were unknown when I left school, and cocaine was very much a rich mans drug. So there was no information at all available about them, and very poor information later on.

Another issue not mentioned by the report on the National Drugs Strategy 2009-2016 is the negative impact of heavy handed legal policies on individual users, who are often hung out to dry in courts for relatively minor infractions and possession of often very tiny amounts. Individual Gardai get endless spiteful delight from discovering even a fingernail of cannabis in a drunks pocket at night, that can lead to a conviction that often will shadow over the person for the rest of their lives, and often discourage users from making any real effort to change their ways. Serious consideration needs to be given into the handling of users with small amounts, especially if it is secondary to what they've actually been arrested for.

The irony of course, is that Ireland became the main manufacturing centre for MDMA/E substitutes based on benzylpiperazine once it was outlawed in NZ in 2007, a pretty nasty drug which has the most horrendous side effects of any drug I've seen. It apparently became a controlled substance at the end of March, but I've still seen it around headshops, etc. No doubt some new synthesis will appear soon enough to replace it.

I definitely think there is a now a strong case for a reassessment and reassignment of illegal drugs based on knowledge that has changed since 1977. For example it is clear now that normal cannabis is far less harmful than most other substances, but stunk variations can be more harmful. This needs to be assessed and separate assessment considered. In fact with many EU countries gradually moving towards legal tolerance for cannabis, Ireland could be a good place to start a legal growing industry, something that would nullify much of the illegal trade and also stimulate what right now appears to be a dying economy.

VHI continues with a theme of extraordinary deceit

2009-05-26T11:31:48Z

I was quite amazed to read the reports on VHI's deficit this year, but in particular, the unashamedly political and blaming tone of the company.

For a start, the company starts out by insinuating that its losing money because its paying out "more" in claims.

But in fact, the companies income from premiums has dropped from 1.15 billion in 2007 to 1.03 billion in 2008. This is despite enormous hikes in premiums. So this effectively means there has been a massive withdrawal from VHI, whether defections to Quinn or Hibernian, who offer the same thing for about 15-20% less, despite an incorrect public perception that they also offer less, which isn't the case, or withdrawals entirely from insurance, which is likely in the wake of massive job losses in Ireland.

The company also managed to lose 43 million on investments, which unfortunately is inevitable in the current climate.

However the PR also suggested the "increase" in claims is due to "lifestyle diseases." This is hard to define, but usually indicates, narcotic abuse, diseases resulting from self abuse such as overeating.

But this surely cannot be the case since the main result of obesity is Type 2 diabestes - a disease which is on the long term health list and thus covered in full by the state at no cost to VHI. Asthma is another example, but coverage for asthmatics in VHI is zero since the main treatments are drug related and most patients don't see specialists, which means they get nothing from the standard VHI plans. Likewise, VHI are highly restrictive in treating most narcotic related illnesses, so what VHI means by lifestyle diseases is unclear.

Or is this yet another attempt to cover up the fact that VHI's long held policy of massive premium hikes is finally starting to backfire in the wake of increased competition and increased awareness of entitlement to the same treatment by other providers? For too long VHI have managed to get away with the argument that they hold most older (and subsequently higher claiming) subscribers, yet they've also been happy to not correct the perception that these subscribers are unable to transfer - which is patently untrue. Why? Because in fact they may not be the real causes of VHI's loss of business.

A comment on Newstalk's interview with National Womens Council

2009-05-25T16:11:27Z

I was quite shocked by the tone of the representative from NCW, who glibly dismissed the fact that the vast majority of people in Ireland are suffering as a result of the downturn. Apparently funding originally allocated for funding for womens groups to provide training in communities is being diverted to Department of Defense for Garda overtime. While NWC says these are provided to the most deprived groups, I know at least one group who are getting funding via this source and quite frankly, I would question its benefit. I think the money would be far better spent on the Garda overtime to which its apparently now being reallocated. Quite frankly, women ultimately will suffer from the potential increases in crime as a result of economic downturn more disproportionately, and I think the money is better spent.

While its really important to target women in deprived circumstances for training, I think its more useful to do this through specialist training agencies working in conjunction with groups to indentify areas of need. I have seen at least one groups plans to use this money and frankly I feel the money is only going to get to a very small number of women who in many cases are already benefitting from funding and care from other sources and in many cases are professional beneficiaries of such services.

In short, I am not happy at the self-appointed leadership roles being taken by a lot of these organisations, especially those representing minority groups, which use such funding to become power blocs in their respective communities. This is not in the interest of those communities as such groups are no longer beholden to those communities but are being effectively empowered to control people. Quite frankly I don't think this is a healthy situation. I think those groups are better able to support their communities when they are directly funded by the community they serve and therefore remain accountable to them rather than some government agency who may not really understand the agenda.

Writing the perfect dating profile

2009-05-22T15:27:29Z

Lately I've been reading Vicky Wagner's rather good online dating ebook. And I think its really reallly good.

Online hitch of course is, clearly she hasn't experienced the completely dysfunctional dating scene here in Ireland. I'd love to bring her over and see the horrendous reality for what it is.

One of the really good pieces of advice by Vicky is to use the best dating services. I cannot agree more. Only hitch unfortunately is that really, in the Irish context this can be terribly limiting. Gaydar is obvious and cheap, but quite frankly, even though it probably has more active Irish users than any other (and a really, really great radio station), it also seems to have a huge proportion of the loony element online - just drop into the simplest of chatrooms, and well, experience the joys of the dyke scene in virtual form - there ain't no passive-agressive here, its just plain agressive, provocations, really really questionable people online (many of whom clearly don't seem to be women or who more likely just escaped from Portrane) who seem to get endless entertainment from either a) wanking over an internet site or b) deliberately stirring up fights between people they clearly seem to see as vastly inferior to their sad little selves.

There is pinksofa - again with a dedicated women's site. Lovely. Wonderful. Nice women. Not particularly expensive. And unfortunately, decidedly southern hemisphere-centric. It will be nice if I ever do manage to get that work visa for Australia, but right now, there isn't huge point in transmitting messages with anybody in Perth.

There are the straight focused sites. Irish Times dating turned out to be anotherfriend.com which has one huge flaw - it doesn't distinguish if you are gay or straight so unless you specify on your profile that you are looking for the same sex only you'll be sent lots of messages from heteros who cannot really be blamed for not knowing any better.

Match.com looks promising, I might check this out a little more. It at least doesn't try to match you up into a hetero relationship and doesn't steer straight guys your way in order to waste your time.

Parship.ie is REALLY impressive looking, but very expensive, even though not as much as the anotherfriend.com ripoff, (quite frankly if a site doesn't clearly distinguish gay and straight members, it is NOT worth paying for, that should be very, very basic). It seems to make a good effort to filter out those who might really match you. There is only huge catch I find with this site. Shortly after I joined I was highlighted to a top ranking match, which was more than a little disturbing as it turned out to be (I'm fairly perceptive) my previous partner. Which was a tiny bit disturbing. Matching you with a failed relationship isn't exactly a good sign.

Gaylog ought to be a good site, but quite frankly, its incredibly overrun with extraordinarily stupid hetero males from 3rd world countries who perpetually bombard me with messages, friend requests and demands for my msn address. They don't even appear to notice the word "gay" in the site description and I've had to block about 10 so far.

So still looking for that elusive dating site with a decent number from Ireland that is actually even half likely to work. I popped an ad in the Times anyway just to see if I get some kind of response. Who knows.

The Slogan Generator

2009-05-22T14:37:36Z

What Happens in Laura, Stays in Laura

That pretty much sums you up!

The Slogan Generator