By the time you read this there will be the usual whingeing in the media about our slow election count. But the fact is that we have the best electoral system in the world.
The count is not a trivial affair. Unlike other systems it explains how people voted, who they transferred to and most importantly, whatever their preference, their vote is never wasted unless they want it to be.
The political parties don't like it because it lets power slip from their grasp. In some other electoral systems voters are faced with just one candidate from each party. In others the parties draw up a list so that the voters don't directly choose their MPs. In Ireland each candidate is directly accountable to their constituents. They can always be replaced by those voters, even by someone else from the same party.
The calls to speed up the count should be paid no heed. Why speed up the count? So that the news machine can move on to other stories?
The slow feed of the count in Ireland does a huge service to the public as it helps explain the political system here in a way that draws out the soundbites.
The commentary from politicians is far more candid and revealing in the two day count after the election than in the four week campaign before it. They have nothing to gain from spinning the news.
That said I would be far happier about using gadgetry to speed up the count a wee bit than any relapse to electronic voting and the millions that was wasted on it.
In Scotland they have introduced our STV system for their local authority elections. Scandalised by the idea that their count might last more than a day they brought in counting machines and automatic readers. Then the fun started. They had to make a plea that voters refrain from folding their votes so that the counting staff wouldn't have to unfold them. Some voters took this to be an assault on the secrecy of the ballot in that they would have to walk around the polling station with an open ballot paper.
Then, of course, is the problem of handwriting which I've covered in this column before. No two people in the world writes their numbers in the same way. It like fingerprinting.
The machines were programmed to spit out any ballot which might be inconclusive. And so it did. So each one of these has to be checked by sight.
It all ended up that they might as well have had an entirely manual count.
And I note that the new govener of Florida has ordered that their infamous electronic punching machines be replaced by good old fashioned pen and paper. So hopefully the Irish election count will be with us for some years to come.
But the whole debate about the voting system misses out on the main democratic failing of our system and in really in the rest of the democratic. That is: we don't elect our government. We only elect a parliament.
Right now I'll bet that neither of the coalitions have a majority and the parties are jostling and jockying for position.
I think this is wrong. Cabinet seats should be apportioned according to the wishes of the people. That would be real democracy.

I have nobody to vote for

I would like to vote for some who is opposed to the smoking ban. And opposed to random breath testing. And opposed to the ban on cannabis and other drugs.
I would like to vote for someone who shares my opposition to compulsory safety laws like the seatbelt law or the helmet law, and the precedents that these set.
I would like to vote for someone who opposes the wholesale extension of the power of the state that is going on all over the western world, whether it is on grounds of security, the so-called 'war-on-terror' or the tabloid inspired over-reaction to crime.
What I want is a philosophy where people are allowed to take their own risks. It's called freedom.
But there is no candidate standing in this election, anywhere in the state, who is prepared to fight the growth of state power.
Now you may say that the big issues are the state of the health service, education, pensions or the economy, stupid.
Well they are indeed big issues. But I don't honestly believe that either coalition alternative is not going to make a lot of difference on these issues.
Look at the situation that will exist over the five years of the next government. Ninety-five percent of the laws of 2007 will still be in place. A huge swathe of laws and policies are determined by the EU. Most of our economic and social policies are determined by the partnership talks.
And if all that weren't true, the ideological ground in dispute has narrowed to almost nothing. All over Europe the concept of right and left is almost redundant as political parties compete to occupy the middle ground.
There's a great website online called politicalcompass.org and the purpose of this site is to determine your position on the political compass. It not only measures right and left but also the range between authoritarianism and libertarianism.
You answer a series of questions and the site places you on the political compass. You can see how you compare to people like Stalin, Thatcher, Mandela or Hitler.
They even have a page showing the positions of the Irish political parties.
We know that the western world has settled, more or less, on the social market economy model to run society. So there's really not much to choose from in terms of ideology. If people were honest the battle is mainly about personalities and banalities. Spin, a la Blair, if you like.
Meanwhile, the political movement along the other great political axis, between liberty and state control, is all going in one direction. We are sleepwalking ourselves into a police state.
And none of our political parties has anything principled to say about this. Over the next twenty years the ability of the state to gather information about people and to process it will expand tremendously with computing power, especially with wireless computer chips.
The usual thicko response is: "if you're not doing anything wrong, you've nothing to fear." The word 'wrong' here means a refusal to comply with laws on your personal safety that you have never been asked about or that are imposed by a majority on a minority. I don't want to live in a society like that but our political parties don't mind.
I think I'll have to start my own party for the next election.

Walking could be the new Luas

Why would you walk when you could take the car? For most of the last century the answer to that question was: you wouldn’t. It was a matter of logic.
We might, in our suffering, like to think that Dublin is unique in the gravity of its traffic problems. For sure, it’s worse than a lot of European cities in that we never cracked the public transport problem. And we’re mightily blighted by urban sprawl which makes designing public transport an economic nightmare.
But most cities, more or less, are in the same boat. A large part of their population is dependent on the car to get them to work or education.
And what is happening is that car speeds are getting slower every year because congestion is increasing. It’s now got to the point where walking is now competitive again.
But is there really scope for people to walk? And would it make any difference?
Well consider these numbers. Every working day in Dublin 33,000 journeys are made to school or college in a car over a distance of less than a mile. Can you believe it? And another 27,000 similar journeys are under two miles.
Going to work is pretty similar. 55,000 car trips to work are under two miles.
So walking, if it were a mass transit system, has the capability and market to shift a lot of bodies.
There has been a couple of developments in the last few years that might well make walking a mass transit system. This has been the evolution of fast walkways systems.
The first of these opened in Paris around three years ago in Montparnasse train station. This revolutionary system has the ability to move you along at 11kmph and if you were to walk on it at the same time you would be moving along at around 16kmph, quite a clip.
Of course, there’s a problem. In order to accelerate you up to speed the engineers used a system of rollers, each one moving slightly faster than the last. It works fine, as long as you have your feet on the ground. If you don’t, you’re likely to go ass over tit, as many poor unfortunates have. The result has been the need for staff to oversee people getting onto the walkway and the average speed has been reduced to 9kmph.
The new Pier F in Toronto has a similar system which moves along at 7kmph or 12kmph if you are walking. The system they have used is reputedly better at keeping you upright during acceleration than the Paris concept.
Nevertheless, even though these walkways extend only a couple of hundred meters, it shows that walking, as opposed to putting up massive expensive tram and train projects, can work.
Think, for example, if walkways had been used instead of the Luas. The average speed of the Luas is less than 20kmph and you’ve got to wait for it. If sections of walkway were built in 500m lengths, for example, it wouldn’t be long before a network could be built that would better replicate the journeys that people undertake.
Of course, it wouldn’t work in all situations and it would form a bit of a barrier in parts of the city but overpasses and underpasses should be easy to design as you’re only carrying people.
Remember, you read it here first. If technology can solve some of our problems then moving walkways have a future.

We need a new type of bus service

I admit that I do most of my travelling around Dublin in a car. The bus doesn't suit my trips. When you're sitting in Lucan behind a mile of cars the thing that strikes me the Dublin traffic disaster is the sheer waste of time of it all. Millions of human hours.
You can listen to the radio or make phone calls if you have the right equipment. However, as the road safety campaigners will tell you, making phone calls is distracting. It leads to poor quality driving and, conversly, poor quality calls.
This is one advantage that public transport could have over cars: you can work and travel at the same time. And yet in Dublin there is little chance to work in either bus or train.
When most workers are travelling to work you are lucky to get a seat, never mind sitting down and opening a laptop. So many of the people in this city who could be tempted to leave their cars at home at the prospect of working on their commute, continue to sit in their cars.
What is required is a different type of bus service that is geared to the working commuter. What I have in mind is this.
Let's say that Dublin Bus offer the new service. The fare structure is exactly double that of the ordinary fares. The bus runs the same routes as the normal services
The key would be single seating and a small drop-down tray to work on, like in an airplane. Instead of one aisle there would be two, upstairs and downstairs. Each seat would have a surface on which a laptop could be placed (or a notebook in the case of dinosaurs). About 30 people could be fitted on such a double decker bus.
On the bus would be a wifi service that would allow users to connect to the internet. The length of the commute wouldn't matter so much as people could get some work done, catch up with their emails or browse the web.
The advantage for this type of bus service is that is could actually make an impact on the all important goal of transport mode change. It would present the car user with the option of making better use of their time with the attraction of better personal space, which I think is a critical factor in keeping people in their cars.
In order to add to the reliability of the service, people could book a seat the previous night , in order to plan their day, to reassure them that a seat will be available and that they won't have to stampede.
It would be relatively easy to try this out as a pilot project. One of the leading busmakers in the world in terms of design and innovation, Wrightbus, is based up the road in Ballymena and the government has already lodged significant bus orders with them.
Might I suggest that they start with the 46A route. It crosses the city centre. It travels through a lot of territory (Foxrock and the like) where people work in offices. It's the busiest route on the system according to Dublin Bus, so it needs new buses anyway. It's famous being mentioned in that song. And, finally, I used to edit an august journal called '46A Magazine' so I have a soft sport for the route.
What more reasons could you need?

I’m glad I’m in debt

Here’s an admission. I’m in debt. Up to my (insert whistle here). We’re talking a six figure sum.
Now the questions is: is this good or bad?
The answer is: you don’t know because you are missing two vital pieces of information. One, can I make the monthly repayments? And two, does my assets exceed my liabilities?
Just for the record the answer to these two questions is yes, so the bailiff’s arrival is not imminent.
I mention all this because Fianna Fail have just announced the most dimwitted policy ever to be put in front of the Irish people. They have said that if they are elected back into government that they will eliminate public debt. (And, might I say, it is thoroughly dishonest).
Let’s think about how stupid this is. Imagine if all the people in Dublin waited until they had saved up enough money before they bought a house. Where would they live? How would they mind their children? How would they accumulate assets that people need to secure their future?
Imagine a young lad who is offered a job out of his area. Should he forego the opportunity just because he wants to avoid a car loan? Even if the job will pay for the car? It’s a total nonsense.
Now let’s look at the national picture. If Fianna Fail have their way our children will have to sit in overcrowded classrooms, our sick will have to sit in overcrowded A&E rooms, our housing estates will remain bleak wastelands. All because we don’t want to borrow money. Money that will pay for itself over time. This is utterly daft.
Our broadband infrastructure is amongst the worst in Europe. We could borrow a couple of billion euro and put a fibre optic cable into every house in Ireland. It would benefit every home, child and business and pay back for itself a hundred times. But we won’t do it because we don’t want to borrow money. A completely crazy policy.
And there are hundreds of other examples. Providing facilities for drug users is a no-brainer in terms of crime reduction. But we don’t have the money.
And the dishonest thing about this is that Fianna Fail are clever enough to know that avoiding investment will eventually ruin Ireland. They plan to have the investment all right, but they plan that it will come from their friends in the private sector.
So huge swathes of Irish infrastructure is being handed over to the private sector in PPP arrangements.
An example of this is the motorways. Private companies are being asked to finance and build these new roads. So the cost doesn’t appear on the national accounts. Nice trick. But every year Irish people pay millions of euro on tolls to compensate for this ‘debt-free’ situation. It’s a smoke-and-mirrors job.
The vast majority of people go into debt because it makes perfect sense to do so. The critical thing is to borrow sensibly so that the loan can be maintained and will pay for itself in the end.
That’s common sense. The only sense that Fianna Fail is talking is nonsense.

Fancy landing in a bog?

The decision on the second runway at Dublin Airport is now imminent, probably next month. My money is on the runway getting approval but you never know.
The Portmarnock group UPROAR have fought a long battle against this runway. One of the good things about their campaign is that they suggested an alternative.
The alternative seems at first a bit barmy, but on closer inspection has a lot of merit to it. What they propose is that a new airport be built in the boglands of north Kildare or eastOffaly.
Mad, isn't it?
Well not on closer inspection. The bogland in question in north Kildare is just 25 miles from O'Connell Bridge or just a fifteen minute drive on the motorway from Lucan. It would probably be as convenient for most southsiders as Dublin Airport.
One of the problems with Dublin Airport is that it is not just an airport for Dublin. It is the airport for all of Leinster and a large chunk of Ireland beyond Leinster. It is a huge draw for traffic into Dublin much of it with no interest in being in Dublin at at all.
An airport in north Kildare would serve the whole midlands on popular routes such as London while Dublin Airport could continue to serve the city of Dublin and the lesser used routes.
The site is also very well connected being midway between the M4 and the M7, two of the busiest roads in Ireland; and also very close to the railway commuter lines into Dublin. Finally, the proposed outer motorway ring from Drogheda toNaas would be very close to the site.
That's all very well, I hear you say, but what about the money?
Consider this. As UPROAR have pointed out, building land in Dublin will set you back millions per acre. If the land now being allocated to the second runway was allocated to housing it would be worth billions. That's a fact.
The land in question in North Kildare is worth whatever turf it has still on it and it is already in state ownership. So, basically, it's free.
The second runway is a done deal, in my humble opinion, but Casement Aerodrome at Baldonnel is awaiting a big plan. If the military were to be located to a new airport in North Kildare, Baldonnel would also be worth billions and would be potentially of far more use to the city of Dublin than being set aside for an airport.
It's not just the runways, car parks and terminals that use up land - huge swathes of land under the flight paths cannot be used once an airport is built.
The land in North Kildare is also not virgin bogland. It has been industrially mined for turf so that the environmental consequences would be small. I'm not a civil engineer but I'm sure the task of building on former bogland would not be insurmountable.
Even if the new runway at Dublin Airport gets the go ahead, there is a strong case for a second major airport in North Kildare. Given the strains at the current airport with passenger numbers crossing 20 million a year, the time to start thinking about a new airport is now.

Straight Talking enters the Blogosphere

Here's the plan. From this week onwards Straight Talking will live a dual existence.
It will appear in print as usual but it will also appear as a blog on the web at the address niallgormley.blogspot.com.
For those of you who don't know a 'blog' is short for a Web Log, a sort of an online diary that allows people to express their views as they wish. But it also allows readers to make comments and observations and thus earns the status of 'interactive' media.
Some say that this method of publication is the future and some of the old media owners are indeed rattled by it. The reason for this is that it operates 24 hours a day and can respond in real time unlike daily or weekly papers. Some people, indeed, see this type of interactive media as the death knell for newsprint.
Well, maybe. Down the line.
What we are going to do is to try and combine the two. My column, for example, has never been about reportage. I don't break news and I couldn't even if I wanted to.
The column has always been about ideas and ideas don't have deadlines. Ideas get worked through by debate and reaction. In some cases the same ideas resurface again with new slants and takes.
The blog will allow this to happen. And when it does, we intend to publish the emerging ideas back into the paper where those ideas can be exposed to the audience of the old media.
Online views many be more plentiful but only in a handful of cases is the readership more than a few hundred. We have three newspapers here at the Dublin Media Group with a combined distribution of 158,000 copies a week. My column appears in all three (except when we run out of space), so the readership potential is pretty big.
There's an opportunity here that doesn't exist with other online blogs and discussion boards. What I intend to do is to run a short recap of my column each week accompanied by the best contributions from the blog, edited by myself for space. And we'll see how it goes.
I do have an online presence at the moment at niallgormley.com. I haven't been good at keeping it up to date and the last column I put up on it is from November 2005. This demonstrates a flaw that all websites have - the tendency to go out of date.
The way around this, and the way for all users of the web to overcome this, is to actually do the work online. The reason my website is out of date is because I do my writing for the newspaper and I upload it later. Then the uploading never gets done!
In future I will be writing the column online and it will be worked on there in order to make it fit for publication both online and in print. When this happens I will truly have made the transition to the cyberworld. My first column online is 22 October 1999 and I think I must have been pretty much the first Irish journalist to have my own website. It's taken seven years to get to the next step. I've been dawdling on the superhighway.
Talk to you over at the blog. (niallgormley.blogspot.com)