Slugger O'Toole

Latest posts from Paul Evans (see all)

Paul Evans has posted 78 times (0 in the last month).

AV Referendum: Don’t vote – it only encourages them! #meh2av

Thu 5 May 2011, 10:54am

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I hope you don’t vote in the AV referendum today. A while ago, I posted a general criticism on the use of referendums. As I put it then, using a referendum to choose an electoral system is like using trial-by-combat to pick the winner of a peace prize. The conduct of the AV campaign has [...] more »

Prediction competition – results #ge11: And the winner is….

Mon 7 March 2011, 4:23pm

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… one of only four of the 79 entries that ticked the no-publicity box. A free £150 bet with Betfair is in the post to the lucky insightful winner. Update: It seems that the winner – The Dissenter – ticked the ‘no publicity’ box by mistake. The actual result was: FG – 76. Lab – [...] more »

The Irish #cwc2011 gloating begins

Thu 3 March 2011, 9:08am

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I’m trying to work out whether Geoff Boycott’s use of the word “leprechauns” constitutes some kind of racist slur or whether it’s the self-adopted nickname of the mighty Irish cricket team following their historic victory over England in the #cwc2011 Cricket World Cup. Perhaps one follows the other? In the meantime, Philosophy Football (who diversified [...] more »

Is it Labour’s fate to be Enda’s mudguard?

Wed 2 March 2011, 10:51am

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This post is entirely a rip-off of a post from the under-rated Your Friend in the North blog in which Johnny Guitar acknowledges a … er… ‘third way’ strategic opportunity that leading the Irish opposition could offer to Labour. Aside from the obvious point that the next few years are going to be pretty horrendous [...] more »

Election day open thread #ge11

Fri 25 February 2011, 2:46pm

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The big day is here. Mick’s in Cavan at the moment (more on that soon) and will be in Roscommon & Kilkenny later – go along if you can. Update: We’ve added a ‘CoverItLive’ window in this post (thanks Mark McG!) – it’ll probably be fairly quiet until tomorrow but worth checking back to see [...] more »

AV: Yes, No or Meh? What are we being asked?

Mon 21 February 2011, 4:03pm

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I don’t know about you, but I find the outcome of the AV referendum less interesting than the fact that we’re being asked about voting systems at all. Like everyone else, I’ve got my own prejudices here – I particularly dislike the fact that it’s a question that is subject to a referendum in the [...] more »

Slugger Awards awards wash-up & prediction comp update

Fri 11 February 2011, 12:36pm

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Mick’s wandering around Dublin today and out of reach of a good wi-fi connection, so I’m stepping in here in his place to say a few things about last night’s awards. We’ll have some photos and videos up here in due course, but I’d like to get a few things on record before the hangover [...] more »

Reminder: Give us your predictions for #ge11

Mon 7 February 2011, 7:13pm

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Just a quick reminder about the prediction competition that Slugger is running on the Irish elections. There’s a £150 free bet with Betfair for the best prediction (have a look at the odds on their markets here), and they’ve got their own Election Predict site up with a good bit of detail on each constituency [...] more »

Latest comments from Paul Evans (see all)

Paul Evans has commented 366 times (0 in the last month).

1. Comment on Euro crisis: “It is a debt crisis but a crisis, too, of legitimacy.”
   on 15 September 2011 at 1:45 pm

   Pete,

   Annoyingly, it’s behind The Times paywall, but Anatole Kaletsky’s piece yesterday suggesting that the Eurozone could survive – but with Germany out of it – is worth a look (if only to get the brain turning over).

   Go to comment

2. Comment on POTD – Head of the Band
   on 21 August 2011 at 2:31 pm

   “Edwardian Britain was a remarkably free and civilised place.”

   Beggars were, indeed, remarkably free to drink Champagne.

   Go to comment

3. Comment on POTD – Head of the Band
   on 21 August 2011 at 2:29 pm

   Quincey / Millbag,

   I’m curious about this: my limited recall of this tells me that *all* militia in Ireland were formally illegal in 1912 and there’s little question that the UVF were a militia as defined in the act. That it wasn’t prosecuted as such was a different matter, surely?

   From what you’re saying, it seems I’ve got this wrong Quincey? When you say they weren’t illegal, are you referring to a bit of sophistry on the part of a government that had drafted general legislation to deal with a particular sort of (nationalist/catholic) threat, or is there something I’ve missed here?

   Go to comment

4. Comment on The future of Irish media lies in the evolution of new business models…
   on 30 June 2011 at 10:00 am

   I don’t completely buy this….

   “….misunderstanding the Journal.ie as a product. It does, and has, cannibalised some of the material from mainstream media. But as Susan says, that should be sending traffic to the Time and the Indo. If those papers are not picking up revenue from it, then the fault lies with the established papers, not the aggregator.”

   …it’s one of these things that’s been passed around so often without being intelligently challenged (by anyone with the resources to do it) that it’s become accepted.

   If I pay to produce content, someone else who takes a very liberal (in their own interest) approach to fair-use to ‘aggregate’ (i.e. take the essential information and appropriate it) on the grounds that it *might* generate some traffic to my website and it’s my problem to work out how to monetise that traffic….?

   Personally, I think that the paid-for-print media needs to come up with a dedicated browser similar to Spotify so that it can start licencing content properly – like Spotify, or even the offline equivalent, PRS with music. The reason this isn’t happening, I suspect, is that there’s a divergence between the interests of the people who actually do the work (journalists, in this case) and the people who appropriate their surplus value under the old models (people who own newspapers who have bigger fish to fry than to worry about good quality sustainable content).

   On the wider point of Kildare St (like They Work For You in the UK) opening out parliamentary proceedings, again, I don’t completely buy the argument that more transparency = a more participative politics. When Westminster started being broadcast in the late 1970s (on Radio) and later on TV, the net effect was that newspapers stopped covering parliament properly because they felt their public service obligation had been met elsewhere.

   We don’t have a duty to go along with every ad hoc or guerilla technique that the changes (mostly lower barriers-to-entry) make possible. I know it always seems a terrifically liberal thing to do, but it’s never that simple.

   I’ve gone into a bit more detail on this argument here if anyone’s interested?
   http://blog.localdemocracy.org.uk/2011/06/14/council-meetings-blogging-and-web-casting/
   and
   http://blog.localdemocracy.org.uk/2009/03/16/counterproductive-demands-for-transparency/

   Go to comment

5. Comment on Slugger’s Big Heid Coont Breakfast 2011
   on 10 May 2011 at 12:51 pm

   Apropos of Lee’s promo for The Political Brain, I’d also push ‘Don’t Think of An Elephant’ by George Lakoff. It’s expressly written for a centre-left perspective rather than the DUP’s target but I found reading the two together to be very instructive.

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6. Comment on AV Referendum: Don’t vote – it only encourages them! #meh2av
   on 5 May 2011 at 7:53 pm

   Hmm – “overstate the case.” I think that the slide into populism that’s biting a lot of places within the the EU is a potential catastrophe that is being ignored – maybe I’m wrong there, in which case you’re right.

   The way out of it is for people to make a positive case for the right kind of participative and deliberative democratic innovations.

   I don’t think the public will continue to buy the once-every-five-years democratic settlement any more and they have raised expectations of interactivity that are met in other aspects of their lives.

   So we’re going to be asked what policies government should be following more. Alongside the positive case, referendums highlight very real dangers that could become a much more regular phenomenon.

   Attacking referendums is an important part of that.

   On your ‘vote no to send the message’, it will only forestall ANY future votes on voting systems.

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7. Comment on AV Referendum: Don’t vote – it only encourages them! #meh2av
   on 5 May 2011 at 6:21 pm

   It was a rigged question. I wouldn’t respond to a rigged question.

   Reminds me of that scene in ‘No Country for Old Men’ when the killer forces the shopkeeper to call the toss of a coin. Why should anyone answer a question that they don’t want to be asked.

   If I were to concede that referendums are a legitimate way of asking for the public’s settled view on something (and I don’t) I’d want to be asked which voting system I’d prefer and not have only two barely-different options.

   And the Lib-Dems – we’ve seen how deep their understanding and concern for democratic reform is from three things here.

   Firstly, they were prepared to allow this question to be decided in a very anti-democratic manner
   Secondly, they were prepared to go along with a rigged question that didn’t include the options that even *they* wanted on the ballot
   Thirdly, they went into a campaign that they were certain to lose (if they’d ever thought about referendums, they’d know that this one was hopeless) in a way that will be allowed to rule out their central political demand for a generation.

   John Stuart Mill described the Tories as ‘The Stupid Party’. I suspect he’d find a better candidate for that title if he were around today.

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8. Comment on AV Referendum: Don’t vote – it only encourages them! #meh2av
   on 5 May 2011 at 2:00 pm

   Sorry – should have included this link: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2011/02/18/av-does-not-necessarily-produce-coalitions-and-may-not-help-smaller-parties/

   Can’t find John Curtice’s view on this quickly but I know that he made the point on TV.

   Go to comment

9. Comment on AV Referendum: Don’t vote – it only encourages them! #meh2av
   on 5 May 2011 at 1:14 pm

   DC: I’ve not seen much to suggest that AV will address “the issue of representation which is behind the Yes vote to AV.” The Yes2AV campaign focussed on an anti-politics argument that I don’t buy.

   If I were to concede that there may be marginal benefits I’d still ask why are we co-operating with a project that expressly excludes options that would improve it a great deal more? The fact that this is being agreed by referendum means that we *can’t* have the outcome that a more deliberative process would give us. I’m amazed at how relaxed people are about this travesty.

   If you don’t agree with this argument, maybe you will once the results are in?

   @joskipp I’d argue that it’s a great deal more apathetic to go along with this farcical exercise without challenging it. Putting a cross in a box is hardly activism, is it?

   @AGlassOfHine Thanks for reading the post before commenting. Oh wait… you haven’t. Why sour grapes? I’m agnostic on AV v FPTP debate. BTW, the jury is out on whether AV WILL result in more coalition government anyway – I think we’ve established that claims from the No campaign don’t bear much examination. John Curtice has argued that it it’s not a foregone conclusion and he’s probably the most authoritative commentator on this particular issue.

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10. Comment on AV Referendum: Don’t vote – it only encourages them! #meh2av
    on 5 May 2011 at 11:50 am

    There are plenty of alternatives to a referendum in making a decision. 99.9% of legislation is made without one. At the top of this article I linked to a post outlining why referendums were a less-good way of making decisions than those made by elected representatives.

    This vote (the fact that we’re having it, and the outcome – either outcome) will not extend our democracy at all. How will it do so? It will result in an unrepresentative minority imposing a decision on the rest of us and then the result will be framed by an unaccountable press into something that it isn’t. Many of those voting will be expressing a view on a question that they haven’t been asked in the first place.

    There are plenty of inclusive deliberative processes that you can use to legitimise decisions if you choose not to make them through Parliament. I understand the argument that the one thing Parliament shouldn’t vote on is the system of voting that elects it – declared interests and all of that. So lets use one of these processes. Citizens juries, athenian democracy, demand-revealing referendums – all alternatives to a highly framed question where a binary choice is offered but where a proportional system isn’t.

    In being asked to take part in this vote, we’re being treated as idiots and patsys. If you want to vote in such a plebiscite, I’m not stopping you. I’d just suggest that you stop yourself.

    Go to comment