Czech month names

Today I had reason to investigate how months are named in Czech.

My issue was that the Sun java jre (1.5/1.6), for some reason (I presume it’s just something that never got implemented properly) thinks that Czechs abbreviate their months with Roman numerals. So, for example, where an English speaker might write “10 Dec 2008″, java thinks that a Czech speaker would write “20 XII 2008″. I’ve found no evidence that java is correct in its thinking. Furthermore, a (Czech) client of ours has complained about this.

I have customized our java code such that it uses the “proper” abbreviated names for months, when formatting dates in Czech. In doing so, I came across this page http://www.unilang.org/wiki/index.php/Czech_months which suggests that the names for January and February (“leden” and “únor”) mean “ice” and “melting ice”. Names which I think are rather nice.

Show me the money and I’ll give you the keys

If I were to detail all of my gripes with the amount of power that rests in the hands of landlords and letting agencies (e.g. arbitary retention of deposits, little or no maintenance during tenancy, etc.) I would be here all day. One particular thought that I had today: Is it really fair that when you sign a tenancy agreement, you’re generally obliged to provide a deposit and first month’s rent either as cash or a bankers draft before being handed the keys? At the end of the tenancy period, you generally have to vacate the property, hand over the keys and then wait for some arbitrary period until your deposit is returned.

It would be much “fairer” if tenants were able to demand their deposit back before vacating the property.

“Give me the money (my money, in fact) and I’ll give you the keys.”

Nanny state abuse

Oh how I hate it when the term “Nanny State” is abused.

As far I’m concerned, a state can only be accused of “nannying” if it attempts to stop people doing things that (and here’s the nub) don’t adversely affect anyone else. Examples of activities that a “Nanny State” might want to prohibit are:

• Hang-gliding.
• Smoking in ones own home.
• Consensual mutual harming (I’m not saying it’s not weird but…consensual is the key here).
• Riding a bike.
• Swimming in the sea.
• Sales of large amounts of paracetamol.

None of these adversely affects anyone else. Ok, there are some ways in which they do impact others. Hang-gliding might endanger others. Smoking at home might be a problem if your health visitor has to breathe in your smoke. Swimming in the sea could be argued to impact the coastal-rescue services. On the whole though, these things are consensual acts that impact others very little, and endanger mainly the perpetrator.

There are many other activities that a government might want to ban that are not examples of “nannying”. For example:

1. Smoking in a workplace containing non-smokers.
2. Driving at 70mph in a 50mph zone.
3. Sale of fireworks to people who will not use them responsibly.

These activities have an unacceptably high risk of impacting third parties: If you believe the bulk of the evidence, passive smoking is a risky activity. Circa 3,500 people are killed on Britain’s roads yearly. Many bystanders are injured each year by people using fireworks irresponsibly (ask the fire brigade and the hospitals!). 1000 people are injured each year (quite a few, for a two week period!).

Governments have a duty to ban such activities. It’s not “nannying”.

Nannying is protecting you from yourself.

Protecting the majority from the irresponsible acts of the minority is NOT “nannying”.

You might disagree with a workplace ban on smoking but it is not the act of a “nanny state”. It’s the act of a state that has a mandate (and a duty) to protect its inhabitants.

Numberjacks are in our head

Numberjacks, a children’s tv programme on cbeebies (part of the BBC), has always struck me as a bit sinister. Not quite sure why. I think it’s a combination of the wide-eyed earnest looks on the main characters, some strange sound-effects, along with the fact that the villains appear to be mute, which makes them twice as scary.

The Numberjacks are bunch of computer-animated numbers, living in a sofa, who attempt to solve problems, generally caused by one of the resident malevolent characters. The darkest of the lot is The Numbertaker. The show is aimed at 4/5 year-olds but our little boy has stopped watching it, citing the reason: “Sometimes I see the Numberjacks in the night-time”.

If I were to find out that Scooby & Shaggy smoked drugs and watched past episodes of the Numberjacks before each mission, I wouldn’t be surprised. It would completely explain their paranoid demeanour.

Numberjacks is made by Open Mind Productions. I don’t think it’s awful. I just think it’s a bit spookier than it’s intended to be!

Negative equity – will I shed a tear?

Like many people, I’m kind-of fascinated/obsessed by property prices in Ireland at the moment. Many commentators are suggesting that they’re over-valued, with some even predicting an imminent property crash.

I’m one of the non home-owners (and there are lots of us!). Why? Well, we’re completely completely priced out of the Dublin market at the moment. This is partly of our own doing (we’re late arrivals to the party, are in our mid-thirties and have two small children, so we can’t really buy a typical first-time-buyer’s property – a one or two bedroom new-build apartment) but also because – if the doom-merchant commentators are correct – we would be paying X+20% for a house when it would only be worth X.

Why is the market (allegedly) over-valued? I’m no economist, but it appears to be the result of historically miniscule interest rates, and the decade-long economic boom here (aka the “Celtic Tiger”). But individuals have to take some of the blame for it. No-one seems to think “what’s a sensible amount for me to borrow?” and then go and find a house for that much. They seem to think “wha’s the absolute maximum I could possibly borrow?” and then go and buy a house for more than that!

Anyway…the point of this post is that if there is a crash, and property prices fall by (lets say) 20%, will I be sad for home-owners who find themselves in a negative equity situation?

Well…I’ll be sad for the people whose income drops for some other reason (e.g. redundancy) and who then can’t make the mortgage payments and end up having their house repossessed. Of course I’ll feel sad for them.

But…what about the people who complain to me that they’re stuck with a house that’s worth 20% less than they bought it for? Who complain that it’ll be years before their house is worth more than they owe the bank for it? Who complain that their mortgage payments are essentially going into a big pit?

Sadly, I won’t be feeling sorry for them. This isn’t schadenfreude. I won’t be gleeful at their predicament but…I’m really in a negative-equity situation myself at the moment. For the last 10 years I’ve been paying rent, awaiting house-prices to fall into line with earnings. I’ve had 10 years of negative equity. Ok, granted, I’ve always had the option of moving house. I’ve never been “trapped” by negative equity. However, financially, I’m in the same situation. I’m throwing (rent) money into a pit, awaiting for houses to be worth the prices folk are paying for them!

During this boom, not one of our home-owning friends has said “Here, share some of the spoils of the 60% profit we’ve made on our house!” so – I’m afraid – I won’t feel that sorry when they inform us they’ve now made a 20% loss on it and “can we buy them dinner?”.

(Secretly, of course, I’m hoping that prices will drop below what they’re really worth so we’ll be able to snap up a real bargain. However, Ireland is a fairly small country so any such bargains will probably be snapped up fairly quickly [maybe by overseas buyers], which would probably stabilize prices fairly quickly).

Carbon offsetting & the end of oil

Carbon Offsetting debacle

From an article in Saturday’s Guardian discussing carbon offsetting:

Dan Welch, a Manchester journalist who investigated offsetters for Ethical Consumer magazine, summarised it neatly: “Offsets are an imaginary commodity created by deducting what you hope happens from what you guess would have happened.“

Peak Oil

According to last night’s Future Shock: End of the Oil Age on RTE, it’s all kind-of irrelevant anyway. We’re going to run into economic meltdown before carbon offsetting even has half a chance to reduce global CO2 output. Who will really care about global warming when the oil runs out meaning they lose their job, everything doubles in price and they can’t afford to fill their SUV at the petrol station?

Rather worryingly, we in Ireland are particularly prone to oil shocks. Very little is grown/manufactured here. More-or-less everything (food, goods, people) has to be flown, or shipped here. And the internal distribution network is heavily based on HGVs and roads. Great when oil is cheap. Horribly expensive when it isn’t. Still…at least we have some wind, and lots of waves to generate energy in the future. Hopefully that means we won’t freeze (pending what happens to the gulf stream of course).

Enfranchised – for the first time!

This may sound ridiculous but, at the age of 32, I am finally represented in the government by someone who I voted for! He wasn’t my first, choice, granted but…I’m represented nevertheless!

You have to understand: I’m English, and lived in England for 31 years. The voting system there is a first past the post system. This system has its merits – the traditional one that’s rolled out is that it “leads to strong governments”. This is true; and even good in some ways. In lots of ways though, the system is completely rubbish:

If you vote for the losing candidate, then you might just as well have stayed in bed.

Similarly, if you vote for a candidate who wins by a landslide majority then – again – staying in bed wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

Arguably, this isn’t particularly democratic. Certainly it doesn’t make one feel “involved in the democratic process” if ones vote is – essentially – irrelevant.

Situations are imaginable whereby governments can be installed with a majority of seats, but with (for example) just 20% of the “popular vote”. Less extreme cases have indeed happened. E.g. in the 2005 general election, the Labour party won 55% of the seats, having only secured 35.2% of the popular vote!

Ireland: Multiple-Seat Constituencies and Transferable Votes

There are two important differences here in Ireland.

Firstly, each constituency represents multiple seats in the Dáil (the government chamber – akin to the House Of Commons in the UK).

Secondly, you get to list your candidates in order of preference. If your first preference doesn’t get enough votes, then your vote gets transferred to your second preference, and so on… Furthermore. if your first choice gets in with a big majority, then a proportion of your vote gets transferred to your second preference, and so on…

Collectively, these two features make the electoral system a Single Transferable Vote (STV) system.

So…I listed our candidates in the “Dublin North Central” constituency in the following order:

1. Bronwen Maher: Green Party (didn’t have a hope of getting in but…I wanted to register my political/social beliefs and…hey, you never know, enough other people might feel the same)
2. Derek McDowell: Labour (because this country needs some people suggesting radical changes to the way it’s run – certainly some redistribution of wealth is in order)
3. Finian McGrath: Independent (because…well I’m running out of candidates now and…he seems like a nice-enough fellow, and certainly cares for his constituency)
4. Richard Bruton: Fine Gael (because, at the end of the day, I really want a change of government – ANY change!)

And…well, my vote for Finian got used, and he was duly elected, in third place:

Hurrah! I’m represented by someone for the first time ever!

Speedy home-delivery

I know that countless people have had babies at home before but it was so far removed from being an everyday occurrence that the birth of our second child, “E”, definitely warrants a blog entry!

He was born at home, after a very quick labour.

It has been said that I delivered him. This is a gross exaggeration of events. In fact, my partner, “S”, has been getting a little peeved at the congratulations that I’ve been receiving considering that she did all of the gestating and the pushing. Genuinely, all I did was stick my hands out and catch him. Actually that’s not entirely true, I also told S that she should move away from the toilet as being fished out of a toilet bowl would be a rather humiliating way for a baby’s life to begin (although, according to the midwives it does happen with surprising regularity). I also spoke to the 999 operator who advised me to “not do anything”. Oh, and we wrapped him in some towels. No further remedial action was needed. Mercifully, E came out kicking and screaming, not needing a shred of encouragement to breathe/wake-up/cry (very unlike his big brother!). That was the only fear we had, and thankfully it was allayed pretty much straightaway.

It sounds a bit like we’ve turned into new-age hippies: “Yeah man, S was – like – birthing upstairs, watching the sun rise. The kids were in the house too, as we wanted them to – like – feel involved. It was – like – so-o-o natural.”. Or maybe that we’ve subscribed to the “freebirth” craze which is sweeping the world: (I say “sweeping the world”; what I really mean is “up to 12 people in the uk and, of course, a fair few crazy americans”).

Having said that I don’t want to sound like a hippy, S and I do both cherish that fact that E was born into his parents’ arms, without any third parties involved. Made for a pretty special (albeit highly-charged) 20 minutes before the ambulance arrived.

It was a startlingly fast labour. Indeed only 15 minutes before he was born, we were collecting a few things together in order to go to hospital “in a few hours, or so”.

I’ve never seem such a bemused look on anyone’s face by the way; E was truely saying “What the HELL just happened?!”.