The answer can be found here.

The video from the Irish Labour Party below is only three years old, but it might as well be a thousand for all the insight and relevance it carries.

The message, ‘are you happy?’, was aimed at what the party’s policy advisers saw as the real concerns of the Irish people: prosperity was here to stay, but the pace and direction of life was getting us down. We weren’t fulfilled in any way.

On top of this existentialist angst, the policy advisers saw education and crime as other areas of our lives where we just. weren’t. happy.

The government wasn’t doing anything about our general feelings of unhappiness, nor anything about criminals or schools. It was bad management, and what the Irish Labour Party could offer in coalition with Fine Gael was good management.

Nothing about the systemic problems in the economy, in the banks, in the political system itself - things that Irish left-wing bloggers were writing about on a weekly basis at that time.

I actually think the video is a brilliant piece of work for its superficiality and utter lack of any knowledge of the very real fault-lines in the Irish economy, which at the time this video was made were only 12 months away from breaking out from behind the haze and slap bang into our lives.

Something tells me, though, that while the Labour Party’s analysis has been completely discredited, the policy advisers who came up with this complete and utter shit are probably still calling the shots, still giving moronic advice, and still justifying their insights with the same level of bull as before.

Enjoy.

[Sonofstan left a comment on Chilton here.]

This comes via Democracy Now! (headlines clip, 17 March 2010, 12:05mins).

“A prominent Irish peace activist says he’s had his US visa revoked without explanation. The activist, Edward Horgan, is the co-founder of ShannonWatch, which has documented the use of Ireland’s Shannon Airport in the US kidnapping practice known as “extraordinary rendition.” Horgan is a former UN peacekeeper who has also served in the Irish military. He is currently scheduled to speak at North Carolina’s Duke University next month about his opposition to “extraordinary rendition.”

More on this story here.

All of this material will be broadcast on Dublin Community Television and will be made available for other community television stations both within Ireland and abroad. Thanks to the support of the Broadcasting Authority and Aontas, a production crew and director were able to engage with the community education sector over an extended period and develop not only an awareness of the story of community education but also the importance for community television of the practice and principles the sector had developed.

From the development of television as a learning tool and the transformative potential in our work to the very real yet important insistence of using circular studio designs as opposed to the simpler to shoot yet less inclusive designs we had been using previously, the nearly two years work on this series has been profoundly influential on DCTV. We think that these “innovative, creative, critical, educational, and entertaining programmes that focus on real people and communities” that form the Beyond the Classroom series not only capture the spirit of community education but also point a way for community television as it too is transformed by these important concepts.

In the second story Tallaght drugs activists talk about working with An Cosan.

Beyond the Classroom - The Communities -Ep2 from DCTV on Vimeo.

It’s 5pm and I’m walking down James Street, heading towards DCTV’s warehouse studio where there’s a launch reception for a series of programmes on cycling and the city. I’m hoping to catch the station manager to ask him about the next round of programme funding from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, and to take part in an audience discussion on transport. As always, I get there early - the idea of being late for anything stresses me out, which, along with the fact that I don’t drink, I swear makes me Irish in passport only - and I hang around drinking coffee and picking at the Mannings sandwiches laid on for the event. It is cold and I’m a little tired, but I get to talk to the manager for a couple of minutes before he’s subsumed into preparations for the evening’s shoot. I sit down and finish my sandwich, and while I’m there looking around the tiredness moves up towards me and places its hand on my shoulder. It has been a long day, even though it’s only 6pm, and I don’t think I’m up for hanging on. So, reluctantly, I make my excuses, head over to the exit, and shuffle off out the door.

(more…)

Links to the other 5 parts of the doc below :
Shellshock Rock - Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

[ De Jemser that time he didn’t go down too well Upstairs in The International / Photo Ottacaro WEISS pinched from www.istrianet.org ]

Conventional as Joyce’s poetry is, we have to at least give the man credit for its musicality. Syd Barrett spotted this and gave us his wonderful version of ‘Golden Hair’ from Chamber Music on his Madcap Laughs LP. By chance I learn from French radio that Barrett’s album is as old as myself this year and that as a tribute Mojo have put together an album of covers. On the programme I heard, they played REM’s version of Dark Globe and Hope Sandoval and the Warm Attractions’ take on ‘Golden Hair’. I think I would be able to listen to Sandoval’s voice for hours even if she was working as a talking clock - I suspect Joyce would be of the same opinion if the strains of it could get down to him into the ground there in Zurich.

(more…)

My obsession with this show is reaching Trekkie levels, I know.

At the end of episode twelve, season four Dukie is told that he’s moving school and there’s a scene where he’s sitting at the computer and looking around the classroom, knowing that it’s the end of what had become a safe haven in his life. For a split second the camera falls onto the PC screen before Dukie turns it off, but the entire shot is too quick for us to notice anything. We always see Dukie at the computer, but we never observe what he is doing, so we presume he’s just been on the internet or playing games.

One pause button and screenshot later, and we can see that Dukie has been working on a classroom newsletter.

Given Duckie’s story in The Wire, it’s a heartbreaking piece of detail.