It’s no secret that I think that the Irish legal system is a serious rip-off. There is no value for money. The fees are massive, the service is so-so, the speed of execution is abysmal and the value-for-money is close to non-existent. I’m involved in an ongoing discussion on the Irishlaw mailing list about the topic.
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I ordered the free beach towel that SAP offered on its website about three or four months ago, maybe longer. I had given up hope of ever getting it. It finally arrived yesterday.

I think the lady in the SAP ad is going to have something to say to the marketing department. (To be fair to SAP they did follow through on their promise in the end, even if their supply chain left something to be desired.)

Yesterday, a revolution happened in Irish public transport. For the first time ever, someone did something that was both innovative, and in customers’ interests, rather than simply in the interests of employees or management.
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‘Fine Gael: A Family at War’ is a documentary about Fine Gael. Fine Gael is the second-biggest political party in Ireland and was responsible for founding the Irish Free State in 1922. It is traditionally a conservative party, but embraced social democratic ideals in the 1980’s. Unfortunately the party has been in free-fall in the polls since about 1987, when its popular leader, Garret Fitzgerald left coalition, resulting in a snap election in which Fine Gael lost very badly.

The underlying question in the documentary is: ‘What went wrong?’. Why was Fine Gael never returned to government as an alternative to Fianna Fail, the dominant party in Irish politics.
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The Daily Dublin Evening, formerly known as the Dublin Daily died last week. A lot of people didn’t like the paper, and they like to think that that’s the reason it didn’t matter enough and didn’t succeed. But there’s a lot more to it than that. It throws up some serious issues about what a newspaper needs to succeed.

It also prompts the question ‘what next for media in Dublin and Ireland?’
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I am just reading the comments of Phil Nolan, Eircom’s CEO to an Oireachtas (Parliament) subcommittee. Eircom is Ireland’s incumbent telco, and charges a ludicrous amount for its basic ADSL service. According to Nolan, the lack of uptake has nothing to do with the price – it’s just that the benefits haven’t been made apparent to the public, and that’s the government’s fault, of course -.
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Joi Ito in Japan has recommended this report about privacy issues. It has special sections describing the situation in different parts of the world, including Europe. The European section seems like a really good overview of what’s going on here. I haven’t read it in detail, but it seems like a comprehensive overview. Be sure to post or email Joi with your comments on it, as he hopes to get the funding in place to revise the report on a yearly basis.

The Department of Justice has gone off and gotten a report written about how they should sort out the Irish law on defamation. Basically, defamation is when you say something bad about someone that you can’t prove to be true. At the moment, it is very easy to sue anyone involved (the writer, the newspaper, the publisher, even the newspaper seller) for defaming you. You can win big damages. It’s a big problem on the Internet, especially for people (like Tom Murphy at boards.ie) who run online mailing lists or discussion boards.
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Basically, the idea is that a wide group of people spontaneously show up at a single spot. They hang around for 10 minutes or so, then scatter again. The whole thing is organised by email or sms. Like all the best things in life, there’s no profound point to it, it’s just for fun.
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