Usually right, often funny.
J'approve.

I see some of our TDs are doing their best to promote irony.

Remembering Dad - Julia Hobsbawm, Financial Times

Not what I expected when I opened the thread.
I am flying to Kenya next week though for a short visit.

R1 'will not' play full Thatcher song - BBC

The Wizard of Oz song at the centre of an anti-Margaret Thatcher campaign will not be played in full on the Official Chart Show.

Instead a clip of the 51-second song will be aired as part of a Newsbeat report, Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper has said.

Sales of Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead have soared since the former Prime Minister's death on Monday, aged 87.

Mr Cooper called the decision "a difficult compromise".

The song is set to take the number three spot in Sunday's countdown, according to the Official Charts Company.

INTJ

You have strong preference of Introversion over Extraversion (89%)
You have moderate preference of Intuition over Sensing (25%)
You have moderate preference of Thinking over Feeling (50%)
You have marginal or no preference of Judging over Perceiving (1%)

Keddy and Tallon are perennial candidates.

Mr Keddy's photo for the ballot paper.

We don't have anyone in the Dáil who can compete with that beard.

[Meath East]

Meath East

Dáil Results	2011	2007
Fine Gael	41	26
Labour	21	12
Fianna Fáil	20	44
Sinn Féin	9	4
Ind/Other	9	9
Green	1	3
Progressive Dem	-	2

The constitutency boundary was changed between these elections in 2009 to include the town of Kells (from Meath West), and to exclude some Drogheda hinterland (to Louth). These changes shouldn't have had very significant impact on the nature of the constituency (Kells being much in line with the county in general [if slightly more SF friendly]).


History suggests that it is unlikely that a Government party can win a by-election - that having happened only once (though he only lasted a month as a Government supporter) in 22 attempts since 1982.

One suspects though that Ms McEntee will garner a hefty sympathy vote. Family inheriting seats through by-elections being another of our traditions (Dublin South in the last Dáil being the exception that comes to mind).


And so from facts to (science-)fiction:
the current Jas super-guestimate* for the First Preference Vote for the by-election bist...

Fine Gael	33
Fianna Fáil	32
Sinn Féin	20
Labour	12
Green	1
Workers'	1
Direct Democracy	1

Ms McEntee gets the coveted Jas favourite tag in this by-election which really doesn't matter much at all.
 
Feel free to add your own predictions so that together after the election we can discuss where the voters went wrong in not living up to our expectations.

*_{Subject to change. Terms and conditions apply. What comes up, must come down. Don't bet your house on these, as I suspect the sun itself would reconsider things if I predicted it would rise again tomorrow. Etc. etc.}

Stat review on Slugger

So, was it worth it, Mr Nesbitt?

This just kind of shows that "evangelical" is kind of a silly term, as all Christian churches and denominations evangelize.

I'm open to correction but IIRC, the Amish disavow evangelisation.

I was born during the 53 days when the below was the case...

Prime Minister of Malta: Dom Mintoff
Prime Minister of India: Rajiv Gandhi

Discuss.

My views haven't changed...

No - not even close.

I think the process of making up crimes to charge people with, after the event, and then deigning upon them a sense of legal righteousness is very disturbing - it attempts to give the impression of upholding the rule of law but actually cynically undermines it.

I was glancing at the wiki article on the Trials and I think the quote of US Chief Justice Stone fits most closely with my own views:
"[Chief US prosecutor] Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg....I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas."

Couldn't help thinking of Bushie when I heard this story.

May be of interest...
The UK census: mapping languages -- FT Data blog (Financial Times)

http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2013/02/a_feminist_film_critic_defends.html

Why does it take 3+ days to hold a bail hearing?
Why is it going into the substantive detail of the prosectuion and defence?
Is this at all normal for RSA's justice system?

More important than all these polls... the Healy-Raes are split on the issue of gay marriage.

Vatican may bring forward conclave for next pope - BBC

Malaria

Fun fact: Liechtenstein is the last remaining state of the former Holy Roman Empire.

What of Luxembourg and Austria?

Candidate declaration from the London-Ecuador constituency

Dave's apathy is why there's unlikely to be much/any moderator turnover in the future.  "Poster confidence" has nothing to do with it.

But maybe it should.
Though, as noted before, Inks doesn't care for the opinions of posters in that regard.

It took us about six months to harass him into making Torie a mod.  How long has it been since he last  *removed* a moderator?  Years?  It doesn't actually matter if either Al or Inks "resign", as the chances of Dave de-modding either of them is negligible.

The last mod removal was Sam Spade in February 2012 - on email request by Nym to Dave.

This was done in the midst of a previous Inks moderation scandal when he, some might say disingenuously, offered his  resignation. He has since been very helpful in pointing out to people that to contact Dave they should email him - something he didn't care to do with his resignation.

At any rate, I disagree with the sentiment that a mod resignation is of no matter absent de-modding. Mods have resigned before simply by giving notice and abdicating responsibility for moderation (again Sam Spade comes to mind here).

Inks' position has become untenable. He has lost the confidence of the Posters. He (and preferably all the other moderators) must resign immediately.

During a previous scandal, Inks indicated that he doesn't care about poster confidence, and would only resign if Dave asks him too.

He made these comments at a point when his approval was relatively high, but still net negative (-2% - considerably above where he was polling earlier in 2012 at -19% and -26% net disapproval.)

It's not the most detailed publically available map of North Korea.
It's not even the most detailed publically available map of North Korea from Google.
See the 6 year old project North Korea Uncovered for that.

The two main components (the Irish franchises of the Committee for a Workers' International and the International Socialist Tendency) are, of course, circling each other like two tomcats at a barndance.

Indeed.
Socialists withdraw from ULA