• Something interesting and indeed historic is happening in Croker today … today is the start of a major international conference where delegates from up to 100 countries will be attempting to agree on a treaty banning the production and use of cluster bombs.
Ireland is actually one of a small group of nations leading the campaign to ban the use of these weapons. Negotiations started about a year ago in Norway and should the treaty be agreed in the coming 12 days of discussions a formal signing ceremony will take place back in Norway in December.
The three (of around 34) main producers of these weapons; the US, China & Russia, are obviously against the ban and are not attending. Not that it matters as agreement on a treaty would put serious pressure on these nations who would more than likely adhere to the ban even if they don’t officially sign up for it.
Why the ban on cluster bombs you ask? Because cluster bombs blanket a battle field by scattering up to (depending on the bomb) 2000 bomblets across a kill zone. Many of these bomblets fail to detonate essentially acting like a landmine; exploding only when disturbed usually by civilians weeks, months or years later.
Interesting to see how it turns out…

A long time back, September 2006 actually, I expressed my delight at the news that Ireland was to head up the UN’s mission in Kosovo. Fantastic news, thought I, a great honour for a small nation such as ours and, wrote I, “a testament to the magnificent contribution our soldiers have made to peacekeeping operations since joining the United Nations in December 1955″.

Such an expression of support for our Defence Forces is apparently a “parody of jingoism” according to Mr.Quigley.
So, our soldiers putting their lives on the line keeping the peace in Kosovo, Chad or Liberia should not be supported as it would be jingoistic, is that the message? Well here’s one ‘jingoist’ who’ll happily support the peacekeeping efforts of our troops … and shame on you that don’t!

Of course his post wasn’t about my post; it was used as an example of us Irish being fond of ‘sticking our noses into the affairs of other countries’; Quigley’s summation of our work with the UN seemingly. Ireland’s support of Kosovan independence was the target of the post and how apparently we have ‘shamed ourselves’ by supporting Kosovo’s declaration.

It’s to be expected from a “rotten and venal … low rate capitalist state little better now than a colony of the US” according to one.

To be honest I’ll never understand these self-haters. If they dislike where they come from so much from why don’t they just turn in their passport and move to the greener pastures of the states guilty of war crimes and ongoing human rights abuses that they love so much?
Because they don’t have the balls is the short answer. Because at the end of the day they are all talk and nothing more. Sad really.

As for Donie’s suggestion to switch ala Sweden in the 60s, well he’s obviously a bit special if it takes him 5-6 days to adjust to driving on the other side every time he goes to the States.

Why can’t an Irish citizen born in the North play for their national team?
Was Maik Taylor (NI keeper) born in Northern Ireland? Actually, what link does he have with Northern Ireland anyway? He was born in Germany, his mother is German and father is English! The IFA being fucking hypocrits in my opinion.

Give the players some respect, if they choose to play for their national team be it NI or ROI respect their decision and leave well enough alone. You shouldn’t deny players the chance to play for their national team which is what will happen if the IFA manage to reverse this proposal.

Since the IFA isn’t happy with it perhaps they should tackle it another way, by encouraging lads to turn out for the North rather than denying them the chance to play for the Republic.

Now that i’m no longer living in Finland it’s safe enough to tell you what I used to work at although Non-Disclosure Agreements bar me from saying too much. I worked for a Taiwanese company who manufacture … well … everything from game consoles to cars. But the division I worked in manufactured mobile phone parts, both plastics & electronics and our customers were some of the most popular mobile phone producers in the world. Phones like most products in your home are generally produced in China these days and most production as you may know takes place in the South Eastern provinces of China … close to Hong Kong. My job was more or less in the project management side, I was part of the team which dealt with our customers on one hand and our production people in China and Eastern Europe on the other.

Our company had a huge campus in SE China (one of many campuses in China) … going by population size the campus itself was approximately 3-4 times bigger than Galway city. Watching the shift change was like watching Croke Park emptying on match day. It would take us 10 minutes to walk from our building to the main gate and we would meet tens of thousands of employees during that walk. Our company was so big they owned their own construction company who could throw up new factories in a couple of months.

Photo: Tiny snippet of workers getting pre-shift briefing

The campus itself was actually one of the better ones in the province. It was very clean, modern and well maintained and housekeeping was of a standard we would be fairly proud of in Europe (it had to be … there were Western customers visiting regularly). Pay was also half decent … by Chinese standards. But that’s as good as it got generally.

Much of the work in China is done manually (which is why so much manufacturing has left Europe for China) which means there are thousands of workers, often temporary employees, herded into huge rooms doing the same menial tasks over and over for hours on end. Their work spaces are cramped, their work hours long, their break(s) short and the work itself simply mind numbing. For that they get a shitty salary and get to stay in one of the lovely worker dorms. When I say “lovely” I of course mean they are shit holes.

“Why make something in Europe when you buy some Chinese girls for less than $0.50 per hour” – Financial Controller colleague of mine

The people I had most contact with were all educated people. They had the same job title as me but worked twice the hours for less than half the salary. There were days when I was leaving work in Finland at 6pm and still getting emails from the lads in China where it was midnight. They’d be in work again at 6 or 7am. Because of the timelines of the projects we worked on workers would very often have to work on Sunday, and sometimes through the Chinese New Year or their Spring Holiday. No chance of our Western customers skipping Christmas of course.
On top of that those requiring laptops had to buy their own and they all had to pay for their own business mobile calls. Any training courses they needed to do were done in the evening after work.
Anyone in a position of responsibility could expect to see very little of their families during the lifetime of a project.

Photo: Tiny snippet of workers during shift change

One thing made me sick in the documentary last night. Remember the English guy arguing over price of jeans/jackets and told them they would need to cut their price down from $4.3? This is exactly what it is like in the mobile industry. Mobile producers aren’t satisfied with the massive savings they made by switching production to China from Europe (literally millions of $ on a single project), they want to make even more money so they put the squeeze on the Chinese. An average phone these days may cost (very roughly, for main plastics & electronics only) $30 (how much does the average new phone cost you these days? Anything up to a grand), mobile producers would demand that the Chinese supplier cut that down to $25 or risk losing the project. The Chinese producer agrees and in the end it’s the workers who suffer. In fact Chinese companies will often do projects at a loss just to get the project and keep the customer happy.
Then there’s the schedule, it’s faster than Europeans can do but still not fast enough. So the workers suffer even more because they have to work longer hours to make up the time. Of course the customers don’t give a fuck, they need their products at a set time and will put enormous pressure on suppliers to meet their often impossible schedules.

Photo: LongHua

One particular Chinese factory was in the news a number of times, there were complaints over the “sweat shops” where Apple’s iPod were being produced. The iPod factories are as I described above … clean and well maintained … one of the better ones. Which makes you wonder … if these are the better ones, what are the really shit ones like? You can’t help but feel sorry for Chinese workers. And big companies like Apple, Nokia, Microsoft, Sony and all the rest are much to blame. Not happy with the already cheap price they get from Chinese producers they continue to push for lower prices. And what annoys me even more is that companies like Apple are told that ‘this is the way it is in China’ and ‘conditions are better here than in other factories’ like that really makes a bit of difference. They are sweat shops, pure and simple.
Watch out for India, it’s going the same way.

Of course there’s little the Chinese workers can do. They can’t complain. They have to tow the line or face being fired. There’s always thousands waiting to step into their job, so they just get on with it and nobody gives a damn so long as their iPod remains affordable.

I don’t know what we can do either as so much of what we use today is made in China, our computer, our phones, our DVD players, our game consoles, our hair dryers, our kids toys and our clothes! It’s depressing.

Excuse the long rambling post, you can see why I never considered journalism.

Fireworks have been illegal for decades yet it doesn’t prevent people getting hold of them. I can just nip into town now and get a packet of Black Cats if I want. Punishments might be more severe now but I don’t think that will really do much to deter anyone from buying them. Legal or illegal they will always be there and will always be annoying.

Why I would like to see them legalised is on grounds of safety. Do you know what safety guidelines a Fire Officer might issue concerning fireworks? None. Because he can’t. He can’t tell you how to use them safely, he can’t tell you what types are particularly dangerous and he can’t tell you how to take safety precautions when you want to use them. He can’t because they are illegal.
Surely if we are so worried about kids getting injured at Halloween then we need to issue proper safety guidelines other than just ‘don’t use them’; and more than that we need to control what sort of fireworks are actually being sold so we could weed out the particularly hazardous ones or those of inferior quality.

Legalising fireworks would allow us to better control what fireworks reach the market and how they are used. We could put the necessary legislation in place so that only licensed importers could actually import the fireworks, that only an approved range of fireworks (of regulated quality) are imported and that only licensed retailers could sell them. We could set age limits for purchase of fireworks and importantly we could issue all the safety guidelines necessary to properly educate people about the dos and don’ts of fireworks usage.
We could still crack down on those selling illegal fireworks but their business would quickly dry up if we could all just buy our fireworks from a licensed retailer. Plus, in the case of accidents we would now be able to prosecute people for mis-use of fireworks, the retailer for selling to minors or the adult for casually passing bangers to a child.

Fireworks will always be dangerous and annoying but I’ll bet you we’ll see far less kids losing fingers if we are allowed to teach people how to use them safely. Dat’d be my opinion anywayz.