Draw Breath

Well I just read this in the paper version and thought I'd post it, but I see that Slugger has beaten me to the punch not once but twice : the Irish Times is going subscription-free (er, subs required) from Monday coming. My sentiments lie somewhere between horray, about bloody time, and here comes another excuse for procrastination…

The new website for the paper will be www.irishtimes.com.

I know lots of people have this up already but it is hilarious. Consider this post to be for my records…

Well done to Conor McCabe, who reveals that the Indo's scoop this morning, alleging that a Eurobarometer poll pins the Lisbon result on anti-immigration sentiment and a naive impression that the treaty can be rewritten, was no such thing. It was either a very early (and worrying) leak or a work of fiction. Fiction in the Independent? Go figure.

I've just read that Esbjörn Svensson of EST died in a scuba-diving accident in Stockholm over the weekend. How sad. Not only was he an incredible mucisian (at the forefront of a very classically minded move in Scandinavian jazz) but he always came across on stage as a thoroughly decent guy. RIP.

Update: The Irish Times obituary is here.

I'm about to leave Atlanta Georgia for the long trip back to Belfast (via Newark). I flew in on Wednesday evening to attend a very interesting conference on Democracy and Extremism, populated mostly by political scientists. It was all very interesting and I learned an enormous amount. I gave a paper on the Parades Commission (generally on my predelictions for thinking of conflict resolution in Northern Ireland in a regulatory frame) and was part of the opening round-table on defining extremism (my contributions being to say that I'm not convinced that there are that many extremists in Ireland and a rather long ramble on the possibilities and profound difficulties involved in distinguishing between actions in conflicts and actions in relatively stable democracies).¹

Anyway, this morning was interesting. I wandered with a few fellow participants to the Martin Luther King National Historic Site. I have to say that, although the exhibits were interesting and MLK's house itself was worth seeing, a lot of the monument had a rather run-down feel to it. And while one end of Sweet Auburn was lovely, the downtown end was very poor indeed.

Atlanta seems to be the quintessential white flight city and while everyone is generally friendly, there is a vaguely menacing air in the downtown area once business close for the day. The local bums are of course black but the really stark thing about them is that they seem to be predominantly and very obviously mentally ill. That is, rather than coming across as having fallen prey to addiction, the homeless people I've encountered seem literally to be severe schizophrenics. I've no idea if the Irish and British end of Europe (if I can call Ireland and end of Europe any more) is any better in their treatment of the insane but this is really stark. Does anyone know if I'm just mis-identifying something here or is there evidence of a greater link between mental illness and destitution in American than in, say, the UK?

1 If you're bothered and you want to read either my IPS article or the conference paper (once I've updated in the wake of a very interesting respondent's remarks) just drop me an email.

I'm simply astounded at the amount of bullshit being talked about Lisbon, and at the profoundly inept yes campaign's pussyfooting around the shady character (and here and here) of some elements on the no side. Anyway, courtesy of a friend, here are the facts about what Lisbon does. Not opinions, not distortions: facts. Or, given what Stefan points out in the comments (apologies!), here…

And on it goes.

As I said before, the free speech distraction is the last (and very often first) refuge of the non-thinking rogue. People in a public role seem to believe that all sorts of remarks are fine (as long as an imaginary friend is invoked) and that consequence-free public statements can be made if everyone magically knows that you are – just for that moment – engaged in an very private articulation of your views. Out loud. In public.

And then they can respond with shock at those terrible liberals looking to take their rights to say anything that's in their heads away. So to be clear: nobody is questioning Iris Robinson's general rights to free speech. They are questioning her utterences in the context of her role as a public representative. If Robinson finds it difficult to do her job without proclaiming her revulsion at the behaviour of people for whom she works, why doesn't she make her own life easier, ditch her public responsibilities and resign?

Also, this sort of behaviour is of course neither unique to the DUP nor to Northern Ireland. Just as a point of interest however, are those of us who live here going to have to get used to a yearly jamboree as the people our taxes pay for take an opportunity to peer into bedrooms and tut-tut lingeringly at all the carry-on?