O’Conall Street

The much written about crisis in the Executive hit the BBC today and all the fingers are pointing at Sinn Fein who appear to be on a political version of a go slow over the DUP’s refusal to agree to an Irish Language Bill and the devolution of policing and justice.

There is an Executive meeting scheduled for July 24.

Will they meet to discuss the future of the eleven plus, water charges, PPS 14, Social Housing or gambling to mention just a few. Or will they place an Irish Language Bill in a category above all other policy and one which must be addressed before anything else can happen?

I cant believe I am writing this.

Off to worry about house prices!

Wondering if anyone in the Executive is?

Advocacy has broken out in the Lakeland county ahead of the Ulster Final showdown with the other orangemen - Armagh. Two songs, two you tube videos and all from a county with a pretty small population. 

Last week the French Ambassador to the UK may have described his president as a political force of nature but this summer a man who has not even been elected to the highest office will cross the atlantic like a a great warm wind. Obama is coming to Europe.

The media tell us he intends to make a major foreign policy speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, an honour normally reserved for American presidents. He may be the presumptive nominee in the US but in Germany it appears he is already the presumptive president.

According to the International Herald Tribune:

Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit said the capital would be thrilled to welcome Obama, wherever he wanted to speak.“Of course the Brandenburg Gate is an important symbol and we would be delighted if one of the most promising presidential candidates, namely Barack Obama, would use Berlin as a platform, either before the Brandenburg Gate or elsewhere in the city,” Wowereit told N24 broadcaster.

Wowereit diplomatically added that Berlin would also welcome Republican candidate John McCain.

The prospect of an Obama presidency has excited many in Germany, where trans-Atlantic relations have cooled significantly during the tenure of President George W. Bush. A poll of 501 Germans conducted last Thursday for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper found that 72 percent would like to see Obama win the presidency, with just 11 percent preferring McCain. Bild am Sonntag did not give a margin of error.

In the past, only sitting U.S. presidents — not candidates — have had the honor of addressing a crowd in front of the Brandenburg Gate, which has symbolized both a divided and later a united Germany.

Ronald Reagan memorably stood on the former West German side of the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, exhorting Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to “open this gate” and “tear down this wall” — referring to the Berlin Wall that for decades divided the city in two.

In 1994, Bill Clinton symbolically spoke from the other, formerly Eastern, side, declaring “Berlin is free!” In 2002, the former U.S. president addressed a crowd of 1 million at the formal unveiling of the newly refurbished monument.

Although John F. Kennedy did not speak at the Brandenburg Gate, his declaration in Berlin of solidarity with besieged West Berliners in 1963 — “Ich bin ein Berliner” — is deeply remembered here.

With his message of hope, his relative youth and his trim figure, Obama has often been compared to Kennedy, especially in the eyes of many Germans.

Also on the trip will be visits to London and France. It is a terrible pity he is not coming here. I am quite sure the streets of Dublin and Belfast would fill to welcome a man who has put hope back into politics.

The BBC’s Dublin Correspondent Shane Harrison has posted an reflective article on the BBC websitesaying Brain Cowen has now put on the backboiler any suggestion that Fianna Fail will organise north of the border in the short term. This comes only days after SDLP Leader Mark Durkan said his party was not for sale, a move seen by many as distancing the the northern party from an early realignment with a southern one.

According to the BBC:

Taoiseach Brian Cowen has said there is no imminent possibility of his Fianna Fáil party organising in Northern Ireland.

His remarks are seen by many as putting the idea on the backburner, but the idea was never really on the front-burner.

Even before Mr Cowen took over from Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader, there was speculation he was less keen than his predecessor on the idea of his party organising in Northern Ireland.

This assumed that Mr Ahern was the main man pushing for Fianna Fáil, which translates as the Soldiers of Destiny, marching north.

But I suspect it was never the case.

In a BBC interview shortly after he announced his intention to quit as Taoiseach but before he left office, he advised his party “to be careful” about not making any major decision on Northern Ireland without “reflecting a good bit” on standing for elections and considering its relationship with the SDLP.

He said that while he was “glad” Fianna Fáil was recruiting in Northern Ireland there was “no rush” on organising north of the border.

These comments were echoed by Mr Cowen on a recent visit to Belfast.

June and July used to be dominated by parading, civil unrest and ’street politics’ which forced many to flee on early holidays, damaged business and did this island’s reputation abroad no good what so ever.

This year the first parading headline came with a very minor spat between the Orange Order and Larne Council over bunting - yes bunting!.

Instead of Drumcree, Ormeau, Ardoyne and Dunloy today’s headlines are dominated by banks, builders, liquidity and the now properly listed in the Oxford Dictionary - credit crunch.

The papers make unpleasant reading. The Daily Telegraph reports that Bank of Ireland in GB has frozen commercial lending and is closing its doors to new business for three months. The same paper also carries an interesting story about  Royal Bank of Scotland (NatWest) paring off senior managers with experience of previous recessions with small business customers who are carrying significant debts. There is concern in business circles that many of the new generation of bankers are too young to have experience full blown recession and are having to learn quickly about trading in a very different context.

The Irish business correspondents are reporting on the need for the banks to introduce liquidity (release cash) into the residential property market. This has received the backing of Construction Industry Federation. 

Back to the Twelfth.  

Things are moving along a pace and in the right direction, but can I make a very personal point. I live off a major arterial route in South Belfast. I am not going to take the position that Orange feet have no right to be on that road but I do believe that with rights come responsibilities. Ours is a little cul-de-sac which means we are ‘locked in’ during the parade.

Last year we were at home for the day. The morning procession passed off without too much ado but on the return walk back into the city things were pretty bad. I counted 56 people (some girls) using our little street as a toilet and the litter was simply unacceptable. All in all the parade took two hours to pass. After about an hour I gave up on the toilet count and retreated to the back garden to get away from the bands but had to confront reality when a group of young girls from a band came knocking on the door begging to use the loo. I would love to have spoken to the adult responsible for these young ladies. They should have been given access to proper facilities by the people who were leading them.

Surely the time has arrived when the Orange Order should be required to provide portaloos, litter points and properly marshall their flagship parade. Most of our neighbours have the economic means to leave on the Twelfth. This is a major reason why this part of Belfast has to date been happy to live and let live. That is no excuse for bringing tens of thousands onto the streets and making no arrangements for them.

We will be heading off again this year as I suspect will the vast majority of our neighbours and by the time we return the council will have tidied everything up again - at our expense. 

The Sunday papers were full of the sad story of the PD’s steady and apparently fatal decline.

The Tribune described new leader, Sen Ciaran Cannon as the invisible man of Irish politics and I suspect very many of the papers readers will have stared at the front page picture and scratched their heads wondering who the middle aged grey haired bloke was.

This all makes the SDLP’s woes look very small indeed. 

According to the reports the PD’s are not meeting as a parliamentary party and there is little or no organisational activity on the ground. Brian Cowan, who was already having a bad weekend with his own ratings more than halved since his election as leader tow months ago, could pick up Senator Fiona O’Malley (a future FF South Dublin candidate?)  and TD Noel Grealish. Speculation is that Mary Harney will remain a minister as an independent TD. As for Senator Cannon these fifteen minutes of missed fame may be all we ever hear of him.

It’s a sad end to a party which made such a splash when in 1986 Dessie O’Malley, of ‘I stand by the Republic’ fame and some of Fianna Fail’s best talent split from the mother ship and proceeded to shake out the centre right of Irish politics bringing some much needed choice on that side of the spectrum.

Mark Durkan was right to say the SDLP is not for sale on Saturday. 

He has clearly decided to continue carving out an SDLP niche in irish politics, providing a distinct analysis and real choice to the Northern electorate. The PD’s gave up on that ambition about five years ago and this year they will pay the ultimate price for it.

“The SDLP is not for sale”. Mark Durkan’s words (full statement here) this afternoon at the party’s youth conference will surely cast doubt over the inevitability of an early merger with any party in the South, including Fianna Fail.

I dropped in on the conference firstly to congratulate Cllr Niall Kelly, a friend, on becoming the youngest councillor on Belfast City Council when he succeeded Carmel Hanna this week and secondly, to hear what Mark had to say.

SDLP Youth is, as you would expect, the most radical part of the SDLP. No surprise then that they passed motions calling for more integrated education, the lifting of the Cuban trade embargo, supporting the rights of Guantanamo detainees to a fair trail and demanding the Republic’s Government to introduce a civil partnership bill.

As it happens many of its members are also vocal in their opposition to a merger with Fianna Fail.

Was Durkan playing to the gallery when he acclaimed the SDLP as a republican, social democratic and internationalist party before declaring that the party and its principles were not for sale? Only time will tell but with the RTE cameras rolling and Tommie Gorman hovering his words are bound to get some traction.

The All Ireland Review Group get an hour in private session with the younger members this evening. Me thinks they will call on the elder statesmen to report that the SDLP is the future. These do strike a group of young people who see no future for the SDLP.

Have been trying to get my head around the implications of yersterday’s court ruling in the States against Google, the owners of YouTube. TechCruch has an incisive and interesting and challenging perspective on the judgment which is reproduced below.

 The ongoing Google/YouTube-Viacom litigation has now officially spilled over to users with a court order requiring Google to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom. If the data is actually released, the consequences could be far more serious than the 2006 AOL Search debacle.

Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, issued the opinion and order.

That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.”

Meanwhile, the judge denied Viacom’s request that Google turn over YouTube’s source code as it could “cause catastrophic competitive harm to Google by sharing them with others who might create their own programs without making the same investment.”

I can understand why Judge Stanton, who graduated from law school in 1955, may be completely and utterly clueless when it comes to online video services. But perhaps one of his bright young clerks or interns could have told him that (1) handing over user names and a list of videos they’ve watched to a highly litigious copyright holder is extremely likely to result in lawsuits against those users that have watched copyrighted content on YouTube, and (2) YouTube’s source code is about as valuable as the hard drive it would be delivered on, since the core Flash technology is owned by Adobe and there are countless YouTube clones out there, most of which offer higher quality video.

YouTube’s core value is in it’s network effect - the library of content along with its massive user base.

The privacy fallout of this ruling is spectacular. The EFF has already chimed in, noting that the order is highly likely to be in violation of federal law.

Judge Stanton doesn’t seem to care much about that law, for now. And he clearly doesn’t understand that far more data is being transferred than is necessary to comply with Viacom’s core stated concern, which is to understand the popularity of copyright infringing v. non-infringing material. Viacom has asked for far more data than that, and there’s only one use for that data: to sue individual users (or shake them down via the threat of lawsuit, which has been perfected by the RIAA) who have watched a few music videos or television shows on YouTube.

I say this with the utmost respect, but Judge Stanton is a moron. And Google simply cannot hand this data over without facing a class action lawsuit of staggering proportions.

It’s with great sadness that we all wake up this morning to the news of SDLP Newry Councillor, Michael Cole’s death. He was a decent man and a solid councillor. Honest and hard working, this is a man who served his community first and never waivered in his commitment to the party he represented.

I am spending the day in Nottingham with the Directors of the British Geological Survey (BGS). Last night Dr Marie Cowan was bringing me up to speed with some of the BGS’s recent communications initiatives. Marie is one of a growing number of scientists who see the value in science communications and its role in attracting young people into Earth Sciences.

The BGS joined YouTube last week when it posted a short video on a role play day for sixth form students during which they consider the arguments for and against a planning application for a quarry in an area of special scientific interest. We used this role play model to great success back in Belfast. In our case the case application related to a gold mine in the Sperrins, very topical in the context of this weeks news from Conroy Exploration that they believe the potential for the Clontibret site is much greater then previously thought. The video is an excellent first step into YouTube for BGS. The potential to use social and digital media to platform science communication is immense and I am sure we well see much more where this came from.

In Colombia the family of Ingrid Betanourt will be celebrating her release after six years under FARC captivity in the jungle. Her cause was another examples of a cause which has been keep alive on facebook and other social networks as well, of course, as being a major international news story.

Finally less then a year after announcing the closure of its Limavady plant, Seagate Technologies has detailed a £120 million investment in Derry. I have not had a chance to see the full details of the announcement but hope this will see further high added value activities coming to the North.