taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Phew! The rumours were untrue. Diageo will not be closing down the Guinness brewery in Dublin 8, and will continue brewing the black stuff in Dublin 8, thankfully:

Diageo is to close its breweries at Kilkenny and Dundalk, significantly reduce its brewing capacity at St James’s Gate and build a new brewery on the outskirts of Dublin under a plan announced today.

The company said it would invest EUR 650 million (£520 million) between 2009 and 2013 in the restructuring.

The renovation of the St James’s Gate brewing operations is expected to cost around EUR 70 million and will see the volume of Guinness brewed there fall from around one billion pints a year, to just over 500 million.

This plant will serve the Irish and British markets and will be based on the Thomas St side of the site. The company said this would ensure that every pint of Guinness sold in Ireland would be brewed here. Approximately half of the 55 acre site will then be sold once the five-year project is complete.

Around 65 staff will remain in brewing operations at St James’s Gate with about 100 others due to transfer to the new Dublin plant. Although the company has yet to announce the exact location of its new brewery, the company says it will have a capacity of around nine million hectolitres, or around three times that of the refurbished St James’s Gate site. This new brewery will produce Guinness for export and ales and lagers for the Irish market.

Diageo said when the two Dublin breweries are fully operational in five years time it will transfer brewing out of the Kilkenny and Dundalk breweries and close these plants. This move will result in ‘a net reduction in staff of around 250′, the company said.

The company employs 800 people in its brewing operation and a total of 2,500 in the Republic and Northern Ireland.

Diageo said these two plants “do not have the scale necessary for sustained success in increasingly competitive market conditions”.

The company said it would offer those employees relocation opportunities where possible. Those for whom relocation is not possible will be offered “a severance package alongside career counselling”.

Operations at its Waterford brewery will be “streamlined” as part of the re-organisation leading to “some reduction in output”. the current workforce of 27 in Waterford would be reduced to ‘around 18′ but Diageo was unable to confirm the extent of the output reduction.

The company says the St James’s Gate site it proposes to sell and the Kilkenny and Dundalk sites have an estimated value of EUR 510 million.

The Guinness Storehouse, which receives around 900,000 visitors a year, will continue to be based at St. James’s Gate.

The company estimates it will incur one-off costs of EUR 152 million during the restructuring and says this would be treated as an exceptional cost in the fiscal year ending in June 2008.

Paul Walsh, chief executive of Diageo said: ‘Over the last twelve months we have conducted a rigorous review of our brewing operations in Ireland. It examined many options and I believe it has identified the right formula for the long-term success of our business in Ireland and for the continued global success of the Guinness brand.’

“Our ambition is to combine the most modern brewing standards with almost 300 years of brewing tradition, craft and heritage.”

Guinness has been brewed at St James’s Gate for almost 250 years. Guinness extract produced at the Dublin site is exported to more than 45 countries.

Tags: beer, brewing, dublin, dublin-8, guinness, history, ireland, st-james-gate, thomas-st

So, Irish voters will soon be voting in a state-wide referendum on the upcoming Treaty of Lisbon — the latest set of amendments to how the European Union is run.

Since ratification will require changes to the Irish constitution, we get to vote on these intricacies where most EU inhabitants do not. Unfortunately this means it’s not particularly “sexy” — it’s a pretty obtuse and boring set of issues, and deciding which way to vote is not easy, with such snore-worthy stuff at stake.

One of the organisations campaigning for a “no” vote in the referendum is called Libertas. Aileen forwarded on a very interesting article by Chekov Feeney on Indymedia Ireland about them, which is well worth a read if you’re interested in Irish politics and the international reach of US lobbying. Here’s some snippets:

Declan Ganley, president of Libertas, happens to be president of Rivada Networks, a US defence contractor (they supply emergency communications networks to the US intelligence community).

[...]

On Sunday April 20th, Libertas announced that Ulick McEvaddy was “joining the No To Lisbon Campaign” and publicised the event with a photo-opportunity of the two ‘entrepreneurs’ in front of the Libertas Campaign bus. McEvaddy is the first member of the Irish business and political elite to join the Libertas campaign since it emerged under the stewardship of Declan Ganley.

What’s particularly interesting about this is that McEvaddy is the CEO of Omega Air, a US defence contractor (they supply cargo planes and inflight refuelling services to the US military). [...] According to the [ US Air Force's Integrator Magazine ], “industry insiders say [McEvaddy's] company has even approached U.S. intelligence agencies about tanking services for detainee transfers, to reduce dependence on foreign air fields.” In other words, offering to provide inflight refuelling services to rendition flights so that they wouldn’t have to stop over at foreign airports such as Shannon on their way to “interrogate” suspects. A very accommodating offer indeed.

McEvaddy was also the figure who got himself appointed to the board of Knock airport with a view to opening it up to US military flights.

Nice guys, then.

The article goes on, and on, and on, detailing some shady transactions involving these guys and their US military/intelligence connections, the “astroturf” nature of the Libertas organisation, and the odd behaviour of the Libertas campaign in general.

It comes to this conclusion:

This article has examined the reality behing the Libertas campaign, the connections of its two high-profile backers, the implausibility of its message, the peculiar nature of its campaign and some of the underlying strategic differences at play. The conclusion is that the evidence suggests that Libertas is most likely to serve primarily as a vehicle for advancing US strategic interests.

Check it out — it’s a must-read.

Tags: eu, ireland, libertas, lisbon, lisbon-treaty, referenda, referendum, voting

More on the Bank of Ireland 30,000-customer data breach (which is up to 31,500 people by now — BoI promised to contact the “affected” customers by post, warning them that their data had been leaked. If you were wondering what those letters might look like, wonder no more. Here’s one, via a friend who found himself in this unenviable position:

• Page 1

• Page 2

So it’s not just name, date of birth, and address — he notes that they’ve leaked ‘information on the current account I use to pay for the policy.’

Interestingly, he says that his life assurance policy was set up directly with their life assurance department, not via the local branch — which directly contradicts what BoI say on their website:

The laptops contained information relating to some customers who either obtained a quote or took out a Life Assurance policy with Bank of Ireland Life from the following branches: [... list of branches omitted...]

The update from 28 April doesn’t clarify this, either. Hmm.

Tags: bank-of-ireland, boi, breaches, data, identity-theft, ireland, privacy, security

So Mulley mentions that Moviestar.ie are planning to offer downloadable movies. Great concept, but I can guarantee the execution will be crap on a stick. :(

First off, the content available:

‘When the service goes live on 1 May, customers will be able to avail of content from several Irish producers including Network Ireland Television, as well as Video International’s film library which includes films like The Little Shop of Horrors. The company is also seeking content from both the History and Biography Channels, which would mean a substantial back catalogue of documentary shows.’

Sorry, but: snore.

Secondly, the technology used:

‘Moviestar.ie content must be downloaded onto a PC or laptop but can then be transferred over to digital media players like the iPod Touch for viewing on the go. This service will be compatible with Apple Macs but only if the user downloads Windows Media Player.’

So in other words, it’s Windows Media. That means it won’t play on my TV through my MythTV box, on a USB stick plugged into a Philips DVD player, on my Linux laptop, or even on a normal DVD player using a burned DVD.

Too little, too late. Plenty of Irish consumers are already consuming downloaded video — as the popularity of the Philips DVP5960 demonstrates. For legal video downloads to work, they need to be somewhere remotely near as convenient and usable as BitTorrent.

Using DRM is just falling down the same rabbit hole that swallowed up downloadable music for 5 years. Nobody used that either, until gradually the companies involved realised that opening up was the only way to get customers, bringing us to where we are today — legal downloads using the MP3 format.

BTW, I know that’s the same DRM technology used by Channel 4’s “4oD” download service. Big deal — I don’t bother trying to watch that stuff either, for the same reasons. If Channel 4 jumped off a cliff, would Moviestar.ie jump after them?

(By the way, that Philips DVD player is a total success story. That’s a name-brand hardware manufacturer, making a low-end, $60 DVD player, with support for viewing downloaded XviD AVI movies on a USB stick. Apparently it’ll also play off USB hard disks, too. It’s immensely popular; for example, here’s a customer review of 10/10: “Best thing ever”. Several of my friends have them, and praise them highly. I’m coming up to DVD player replacement time, and I’m planning to get one too.)

Tags: downloading, dvds, dvp5960, ireland, movies, moviestar.ie, philips, video

Steven Murdoch at Light Blue Touchpaper notes that the UK banking code now includes wording to make the customer liable for losses attributable to them “acting without reasonable care”, where “reasonable care” bizarrely includes installing anti-virus software on their PCs.

The Register also picked up on this, as did Brian Krebs in the Washington Post, comparing it with the vastly superior customer protection offered by the US banks.

I was curious, so I went looking at the Irish situation. Needless to say, it’s not pretty.

I couldn’t find anything in the Irish Banking Federation’s Code Of Practice for Personal Customers, unfortunately. However, AIB’s terms and conditions for use of their Internet Banking product contain this:

5 Transactions on the Account:

5.1 The User authorises AIB to act upon any instruction to debit an Account received through AIB Phone & Internet Banking which has been transmitted using all or part of the Registration Number, PAC and/or any other authentication process which AIB may require to be used in connection with AIB Phone & Internet Banking (including but not limited to a Code Card) without requiring AIB to make any further authentication or enquiry, and all such debits shall constitute a liability of the User. Where the User’s Account is maintained in joint names the liability of the Account Holders shall be joint and several.

5.6 Entries in an Account in respect of Bill Payments, Fund Transfers and Top-Ups shall be prima facie evidence that the transfer or debit represented thereby has been duly authorised and shall be binding on AIB and the User unless and until proved to the contrary.

6 International Payments:

6.9 To the extent permitted by law, and notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, AIB shall not be liable for, and shall be indemnified in full by the User against, any loss, damage or other liability that the User or AIB may suffer arising out of or in connection with the User’s use of the International Payment services (whether as the sender or receiver of an International Payment) unless such loss, damage or liability is caused by AIB’s fraud, wilful default or negligence. In no circumstances will AIB be liable for any increased costs or expenses, or for any loss of profit, business, contracts, revenues or anticipated savings or for any special, indirect or consequential damage of any nature whatever.

As far as I can tell, basically the AIB have no liability here at all — if a bad guy gets hold of your PIN code and account number, and empties your account, tough luck.

What about Bank of Ireland? It seems they agreed to refund phishing losses in an incident back in 2006. But their 365online Terms and Conditions now say this:

13 Indemnity

13.2 Without prejudice to the generality of Clause 13.1 above, the Bank shall have no liability whatsoever in respect of any loss suffered by the Customer as a result of their breach of Clause 4 [jm: Security/Authentication] by way of knowingly, negligently or recklessly disclosing the Security Devices or any of them.

So it’s all pretty bad news for Irish banking customers. This is pretty bad news — it’s only a matter of time before Irish banks are targeted by a new Banking Trojan, and given that antivirus software has an 80% miss rate these days, even having an up-to-date AV scanner isn’t going to be much help.

My answer? Don’t do internet banking on Windows machines. Simple as that.

Tags: banking, fraud, ireland, liability, phishing, security

The Irish Internet Association have a weblog at blog.iia.ie. Back on January 30, this had a Technorati rank of 587893, with 21 inbound links from 14 blogs. That’s about what you’d expect — comparable with Chris Horn’s blog, for instance.

However, fast forward to today, and in the intervening 3 months, it seems to have suddenly shot up to 23,322 inbound links from 550 blogs, giving it a Technorati rank of 6,870.

To put that in perspective, that puts it comfortably in the top 3 in the Irish Blogs Technorati Top 100 — beating Damien Mulley’s 7,859, but just short of Donncha O’Caoimh’s stellar 3,434 — and ahead of these other gods of the Irish blogosphere:

• Tom Raftery (14,800, 9,224 links)
• THE Graham Linehan (13,165)
• Slugger O’Toole (17,279, 2,941 links)
• Twenty Major (18,001)
• Nialler9 (24,286)

Pretty impressive ;)

I was curious, so I went investigating. Of those thousands of inbound links, here’s some samples of the most recent, pasted from the Technorati inbound links page:

barkingmoose

Atacand Free instant online credit report Application credit card Cheap Paxil Does your credit score Household bank credit card application Apr for credit cards Buy Cephalexin? Aciphex Cheap Feldene Zovirax Risperdal Buy Naprosyn, Propecia Credit score codes Poor credit score, Propecia Uk Canada credit card online application Motrin Business credit score Cheap Cialis Jelly 50 Cent Free Ringtones Celexa How to improve my credit score Buy Inderal

4 days ago in barkingmoose by barkingmoose · Authority: 3

The Peninsula’s Edge

Jc penny credit card application Credit cards 1.99 apr ny Affect credit score For credit score American express credit card application Freee credit report Instant fleet 0 apr credit card application? Hydrocodone For low credit scores, No credit instant approval credit cards Annual creditreport.com, Tramadol Credit reporting service Configuration VPN Cheap credit reports. Buy Premarin Carisoprodol Soma Propecia Generic

6 days ago in The Peninsula’s Edge by ricsmith510 · Authority: 9

The Incredible Blog

Prepaid credit card uk Phentrimine Cheap Zovirax: Calan Highest credit score Ambien Valtrex: Ultram 3 credit reporting agencies Credit cards online application Instant approval student credit cards, Apr balance transfer credit cards Free government credit report Transunion free credit report Credit card debt bankruptcy? Propecia Propecia Uk! Correcting credit reports Cialis Uk Credit rating report Buy Synthroid Instant capital one 0 interest credit card application

7 days ago in The Incredible Blog · Authority: 1

Quilters’ Blogs

Annualcreditreport Instantly instant free online credit report Credit cards instant approval Guaranteed instant approval credit cards Lexapro Get my credit score, Card consolidation credit debt financial internet Chevron credit card services. Risperdal Lower credit card debt VPN connection One credit card application Xanax Viagra! Vasotec Diazepam Fix my credit report Credit report bureau. Cialis Soft Tabs! Ativan? Secured loans to increase credit score Cheap Amaryl Cheap Prednisone Alprazolam! Cheap 7 days ago in Quilters’ Blogs · Authority: 5

TPN :: Martial Arts Explorer

Luvox Credit score of Plavix 50 Cent Free Ringtones, Cheap Elavil? Free consumer credit report: Famvir Improve credit score fast Phentermine Online Zovirax Cialis Soft Tabs Apr for credit cards! Ultram Zoloft Credit card deal 0 Deltasone! VPN: Cheap Cardura Credit score rankings! Annual credit report .com Interest rate credit score: Carisoprodol Flagyl ER Online Cialis Soft Tabs Enable VPN 0 apr credit card application Free business credit report Ambien Low 7 days ago in TPN :: Martial Arts Explorer · Authority: 56

Take a look at the ‘inbound links’ list — thousands more just like that.

All of the affected blogs have been hacked to deliver these spam links. They run unpatched versions of Wordpress vulnerable to a major security hole. On a casual visit, their pages seem fine — but “View Source”, scroll to the bottom, and there are thousands of spam links for drugs, ringtones, cheap credit, etc. on each one, exactly as above, and as described by Kevin Burton in his description of the current epidemic of blog spam.

How did links to the IIA’s blog wind up in this collection?

It’s worth noting that the IIA’s blog does not display the same symptoms — the links aren’t present on their pages.

However, this post provided a good tip as to what has happened. Those infected blog pages point, in turn, to other infected blogs. Somewhere within the IIA’s blog setup, there’s a page inserted by a bad guy, collecting thousands of illicit links from thousands of other infected sites — and sure enough, Irish Web Watcher found it on the IIA’s site — here it is.

Looks like the IIA have a pretty major disinfection job on their hands, and urgently — there’s already a lot of spammy results appearing in the Google index from that site, and the next step after that is usually removal from the index once Google notice it.

Tags: blogs, iia, ireland, security, technorati, wordpress

The New York Times yesterday had a great article about modern news consumption:

According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one.

“There are lots of times where I’ll read an interesting story online and send the URL to 10 friends,” said Lauren Wolfe, 25, the president of College Democrats of America. “I’d rather read an e-mail from a friend with an attached story than search through a newspaper to find the story.”

[Jane Buckingham, the founder of the Intelligence Group, a market research company] recalled conducting a focus group where one of her subjects, a college student, said, “If the news is that important, it will find me.”

In other words, as Techdirt put it, this generation of news readers now focuses on sharing the news, rather than just consuming it — and if you want to share a news story, there’s no point passing on a subscription-only URL that your friends and contacts cannot read.

What newspapers need to do to remain relevant for this generation of news consumers is not to hide their content behind paywalls and registration-required screens. The Guardian got their heads around this a few years back, and have come along in leaps and bounds since then. I wonder if the Irish Times is listening?

Tags: grauniad, ireland, irish-times, news, newspapers, openness, registration, subscription, web

As I noted on Monday, the Irish branches of several major record companies have brought a case against Eircom, demanding in part that the ISP install Audible Magic’s Copysense anti-filesharing appliances on their network infrastructure.

I thought I’d do a quick bit of research online into how they do their filtering. Here’s what the EFF had to say:

Audible Magic’s technology can easily be defeated by using one-time session key encryption (e.g., SSL) or by modifying the behavior of the network stack to ignore RST packets.

It’s interesting to see that they used RST packets — this is the same mechanism used by the “Great Firewall of China” to censor the internet:

the keyword detection is not actually being done in large routers on the borders of the Chinese networks, but in nearby subsidiary machines. When these machines detect the keyword, they do not actually prevent the packet containing the keyword from passing through the main router (this would be horribly complicated to achieve and still allow the router to run at the necessary speed). Instead, these subsiduary machines generate a series of TCP reset packets, which are sent to each end of the connection. When the resets arrive, the end-points assume they are genuine requests from the other end to close the connection — and obey. Hence the censorship occurs.

But there’s a very easy way to avoid this, according to that blog post:

However, because the original packets are passed through the firewall unscathed, if both of the endpoints were to completely ignore the firewall’s reset packets, then the connection will proceed unhindered! We’ve done some real experiments on this — and it works just fine!! Think of it as the Harry Potter approach to the Great Firewall — just shut your eyes and walk onto Platform 9¾.

Clayton, Murdoch, and Watson’s paper on this technique provides the Linux and FreeBSD firewall commands they used to do this. Here’s Linux:

   iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP

For FreeBSD, the command is:

   ipfw add 1000 drop tcp from any to me tcpflags rst in

So assuming Copysense haven’t changed their approach yet, it’s trivial to block Copysense’s filtering, if both ends are running Linux or BSD. I predict if Copysense becomes widespread, someone will patch Windows TCP to do the same.

I love Audible Magic’s response:

The current appliance happens to use the TCP Reset to accomplish this today. There are many other technical methods of blocking transfers. Again, we have strategies to deal with them should they ever prove necessary. This is why we recommend our customers purchase a software support agreement which provides for these enhancements that keep their purchase up-to-date and protect their investment.

in other words, “hey customers! if you don’t have a support contract, you’re shit out of luck when the p2p guys get around our filters!” Nice. ;)

Tags: audible-magic, censorship, copysense, eircom, filtering, internet, ireland, p2p, rst, tcp

RTE reports that 4 record companies, EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music and Warner Music, have brought a High Court action to compel Eircom — Ireland’s largest ISP — to prevent its networks being used for the illegal downloading of music:

Willie Kavanagh, Managing Director of EMI Ireland and chairman of IRMA, said because of illegal downloading and other factors, the Irish music industry was experiencing a “dramatic and accelerating decline” in income. He said sales in the Irish market dropped 30% in the six years up to 2007.

EMI and the other companies are challenging Eircom’s refusal to use filtering technology or other measures to voluntarily block or filter illegally downloaded material. Last October Eircom told the companies it was not in a position to use the filtering software.

(I wonder if those dropping sales in the Irish market comprise only CDs sold by Irish shops? 2001 to 2007 is also the time period when physical sales have given way to online shopping on a gigantic scale, especially for music.)

The Irish Times coverage includes another interesting factoid, which appears in a lot of press regarding this case:

Latest figures available, for 2006, indicate that 20 billion music files were illegally downloaded worldwide that year. The music industry estimates that for every single legal download, there are 20 illegal ones.

A little research reveals that that figure comes from the IFPI Digital Music Report 2008. I’d have a totally different take on it, however. In my opinion, the figure is probably correct, but not for the reasons the IFPI want them to be. There are a number of factors:

• it’s bloody hard to buy legit MP3s online. You can buy all sorts of shitty DRM-laden formats, or rent access to files that “expire”, or buy MP3s in certain jurisdictions but not in others, or on certain platforms. So this is the main reason, in my opinion, why legit music downloads are a lot lower than they could be – because it’s tricky to get a legit download!

  By contrast it’s a lot easier to log in to a filesharing service and download high-quality, DRM-free MP3s. Consumers have indicated that DRM frustrations drive them to filesharing sites, and no less than the Executive Vice President of the MPAA recognises this. (It looks like the IFPI dispute this, however.)

• people, given the opportunity, tend to download free music, whether or not they plan to listen to it. It could be called the “radio effect”; they might listen to it, or they might not, there’s no pressure. If they have to pay for it, however, they’ll only download the stuff they really want. I definitely noticed this when the legal download site EMusic switched from an “all you can eat” model to a certain number of files per month; I immediately stopped downloading tunes speculatively, and restricted myself just to the ones I had already decided I wanted.

• on BitTorrent filesharing sites, downloaders need to maintain high sharing ratios — so they download files just in order to re-upload them, regardless of whether they want them or not. (so I’m told. ;)

There’s more commentary on the 20-to-1 figure here.

The IFPI Digital Music Report 2008 also notes:

“2007 was the year ISP responsibility started to become an accepted principle. 2008 must be the year it becomes reality”

Governments are starting to accept that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should take a far bigger role in protecting music on the internet, but urgent action is needed to translate this into reality, a new report from the international music industry says today.

ISP cooperation, via systematic disconnection of infringers and the use of filtering technologies, is the most effective way copyright theft can be controlled. Independent estimates say up to 80 per cent of ISP traffic comprises distribution of copyright-infringing files.

The IFPI Digital Music Report 2008 points to French President Sarkozy’s November 2007 plan for ISP cooperation in fighting piracy as a groundbreaking example internationally. Momentum is also gathering in the UK, Sweden and Belgium. The report calls for legislative action by the European Union and other governments where existing discussions between the music industry and record companies fail to progress.

So it seems Ireland is the vanguard of an international effort by IFPI members to force ISPs to install filtering, worldwide. It seems the same happened in Belgium last year — and I reckon there’ll be similar cases elsewhere soon.

Either way, I doubt this will be good for Irish internet users.

(PS: while I’m talking about buying MP3s online — a quick plug for 7digital. Last time I used them, I had a pretty crappy experience, but the situation is a lot better nowadays. They now have a great website that works perfectly in Firefox on Linux; they sell brand new releases like the Hercules and Love Affair album as 320kbps DRM-free MP3s; they support PayPal payments; and downloads are fast and simple — right click, “Save As”. hooray!)

Some other blog coverage: Lex Ferenda with some details about the legal situation, and Jim Carroll.

Update: EMI Ireland seem to be singing from a different hymn-sheet than their head office… interesting.

Update 2: I’ve taken a look at the Copysense filtering technology, and how it can be evaded.

Tags: eircom, filesharing, ifpi, ireland, isps, law, mp3, music

As I previously threatened, I’ve gone ahead and created a “Microplanet” for Irish twitterers, similar to Portland’s Pulse of PDX — an aggregator of the “stream of consciousness” that comes out of our local Twitter community: IrishPulse.

Here’s what you can do:

Add yourself: if you’re an Irish Twitter user, follow the user ‘irishpulse’. This will add you to the sources list.

Publicise it: feel free to pass on the URL to other Irish Twitter users, and blog about it.

Read it: bookmark and take a look now and again!

In terms of implementation, it’s just a (slightly patched) copy of Venus and a perl script using Net::Twitter to generate an OPML file of the Twitter followers. Here’s the source. I’d love to see more “Pulse” sites using this…

Tags: hacks, ireland, irishpulse, sites, twitter

A friend of a friend writes:

Unless you are pretty good at avoiding the media, you will be aware that Dustin the Turkey has been chosen as one of six finalists for RTE’s Eurosong, the winner of which will go on to represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest in Serbia in May.

What you may not be aware of is that I wrote and recorded the song with him and need your votes to help get me to Serbia!!!

The TV show will be broadcast live on RTE this Saturday Feb 23rd, at 7pm. It is a televote (a la X-factor format), so get your mobile phones ready. The results are at 9:45pm.

The song, Irlande Douze Points, is a parody on the current types of songs, acts and block-voting in the Eurovision. It may make your ears bleed a bit, you may ask yourself why, but what the hell, send someone you know to the final!!!

Apparently, Dustin urges the contest judges to “give douze points to Ireland, for its lowlands and its highlands, for Terry Wogan’s wig and Bono’s leather pants. We brought you Guinness and Westlife, 800-years of war and strife, but we all apologise for Riverdance.”

Check out the outraged reactions from Ireland’s past Eurovision “winners”:

Frank McNamara, who wrote two of the Irish Eurovision winners, asked whether RTE, the state broadcaster that selected the six acts, was “giving two fingers” to Irish ’song’writers. “I think it is absolutely disgraceful.”

Shay Healy, who wrote Johnny Logan’s Eurovision hit What’s Another Year?, wondered “how any bunch of grown-ups could come up with this as a solution”

Phil Coulter thought that Eurovision was going “down the tubes”.

The choice on Saturday is between a turkey puppet taking the piss in a Northside accent, and such po-faced “serious pop” mawkfests as ‘“Double Cross My Heart” performed by Donal Skehan’ and ‘“Time to Rise” performed by Maya’. snore. You know it’s got to be the turkey.

Here’s the official Bebo page, and the Facebook group — and here’s the song itself:

Update: actually, here’s another, higher quality clip — with an entirely different song! Let’s hope this is the one…

Update 2: he won. Dana and the other professional Eurovision types have been chewing wasps, it’s hilarious!

Tags: dustin, eurovision, ireland, music, pranks

It appears a public relations firm, Edelman’s, recently performed a phone survey which concluded that bloggers are the “least trusted” group of authority figures source of information in Ireland. This has been widely reported:

on Edelman Dublin’s blog:

When we consider who we trust the most as a spokesperson in Ireland, the most trusted sources of information include, financial or industry analysts at 62%, followed by a doctor or healthcare specialist at 57%, an NGO representative at 57% and academics at 53%. Bloggers are the least trusted at 7%.

at Silicon Republic:

Bloggers have emerged as the “least trusted” group in the country.

and on ElectricNews.net:

“What has been interesting to note in this year’s findings is the apparent low standings of bloggers and social media in general,” said [Mark Cahalane, managing director of Edelman Dublin]. “One interpretation of the survey would be that bloggers have now entered the mainstream and people no longer distinguish between blogs and ordinary websites. This is also reflected by the fact that numerous high profile bloggers are widely quoted in the media.”

However, as Damien noted, Piaras Kelly raised a very significant point about this – ‘the people surveyed for the research had to fit a certain demographic, including having to be aged between 35-64.’ [...] ‘A Generational gap is evident.’ This press release corroborates that. Sure enough, most blog readers (and writers) would tend to be of the younger generation — a pretty key point, one would assume, but one that most of the non-blogger coverage has omitted ;)

(Update: the term “authority figure” wasn’t quite correct; replaced with what Edelman themselves use, “source of information”.)

Tags: age, blogging, blogs, crumblies, edelmans, generation-gap, ireland, surveys

A good deal came up on a mailing list I’m on: SAMSUNG 245BW Black High Glossy 24″ 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor for $459.99, or $409.99 after rebate, via Newegg.

A follow-up from a German poster: he’d just picked up a Dell 2407WFP-HC ‘for the low, low price of 659 EUR’.

We marvelled at the price difference — then I looked up Dell.ie forcomparison. I thought 659 EUR was bad, but Dell.ie is asking for 1,117.74 Euros inc VAT for the same product — insane!!

What possible excuse could there be for that? EUR 458.74 worth of shipping maybe? Do they encase it in platinum? That’s nearly three times the price of the Newegg monitor.

Update: Duh. I’m an idiot. That’s a 2707WFP, not a 2407WFP; it’s 3″ bigger and quite a bit fancier. It appears Dell.ie is no longer selling the 2407WFP.

Tags: dell, dell.ie, ireland, markup, newegg, prices, ripoff, shopping, wtf

Before Christmas, it seemed you could hardly read a newspaper, listen to the radio or watch TV in Ireland without being bombarded with stories about how the country was awash in cocaine.

It’s an attractive story, tying in nicely with the death of lingerie model Katy French, hand-wringing over Ireland’s recent ‘celtic tiger’ wealth, a supposed loss of our traditions, etc. etc. RTE, our national broadcaster, made a tabloid series called ‘High Society’, which cashed in on the issue in a particularly crass way – crappy “reconstructions” of actors chopping lines with voiceovers, dodgy-looking men handing over money to ominous music, that kind of thing.

Well, just before Christmas, Vincent Browne wrote a fantastic op-ed in the Irish Times regarding this. I have to quote this particularly perceptive passage:

Cocaine abuse is a social problem, but the thrust of much of RTE’s coverage of the phenomenon is to suggest that it is a widespread, pervasive problem. There are no recent statistics available on the prevalence of cocaine consumption in Ireland - the last survey was done four years ago. The National Advisory Committee on Drugs (NACD) will be publishing a prevalence report next month and we will know then the size of the phenomenon.

But we have some indicators about the scale of cocaine use. The European drug agency EMCDDA estimates that 3 per cent of all adults in Europe aged between 15 and 64 have used cocaine at least once in their lives.

A third of these took cocaine during the previous year and half of these took cocaine during the previous month. This means that about 0.5 per cent of the adult population took cocaine over the previous month. And the data suggests that, for at least two-thirds of those who have ever taken cocaine, the drug is not a problem for them.

In the US the statistics are higher. Almost 15 per cent of the population aged between 12 and 64 have taken cocaine in their lives and 2.5 per cent took cocaine over the previous year. Again, this is suggestive that cocaine use for most people is not a problem, otherwise the number of people who took cocaine during the previous year as a proportion of the number of people who ever took cocaine would be far higher.

The figures for Ireland are likely to be that about 4 per cent of the adult population have taken cocaine in their lifetime, with about 1 per cent having taken cocaine in the previous year and 0.5 per cent having taken cocaine in the previous month.

It would be better if people did not take cocaine, but the prevalent contention that the consumption of cocaine at all is necessarily harmful and addictive is obviously false.

It would also be better if people did not drink here, for the problems related to the consumption of alcohol are far, far greater than in the case of cocaine.

Instead of presenting a balanced picture of the cocaine phenomenon, RTE has greatly exaggerated the issue, in a way more typically associated with tabloid journalism.

Well said!

Tags: cocaine, drugs, high-society, hype, ireland, rte, scares, statistics, vincent-browne

I’ve been on vacation for a week, introducing Bea to the many joys of the bogs of Connemara. I think she liked it.

While I was away, I appeared in Ireland’s newspaper of record, the Irish Times, specifically in Conor Pope’s ‘Pricewatch’ consumer-affairs column, under the byline “Shopped to the taxman”. Here’s a cut-and-paste of some relevant snippets:

Justin Mason [hey, that's me] contacted Pricewatch after being hit with just such a charge. In August, he and his wife, who were expecting a baby, received a package from friends in the US [thanks Nishad and Janet!] containing amongst other things, some hats, socks and a little hoodie for their baby.

“It was shipped via FedEx, got here in good time and was very cute,” he says. The couple were delighted, until a couple of weeks later, when they received an invoice from FedEx looking for EUR 34.47, made up of EUR 2.49 duty, EUR 19.88 VAT and EUR 10 in “administration fees”, plus an additional EUR 2.10 VAT on the “administration fee”.

“This strikes me as pretty unfair, maybe there’s duty payable, but I’ve never had to pay VAT on a gift I’ve received before? On top of that, being charged one-third of the price as an administrative fee? Ouch!”

The couple disputed the fee and were told if they didn’t pay, the invoice would be sent to a debt collection agency and non-payment would affect their credit rating. A couple of weeks later, another gift arrived from the US, followed by another invoice looking for EUR 7.84 in duty, plus the EUR 10 administration fee and EUR 2.10 VAT on that fee. Mason disputed the charge and was eventually told it would be waived as it had a value of less than $50 (EUR 34.70) and was clearly labelled as a gift. There is tax relief called Small Parcel Standard Relief on goods purchased from outside the EU, which is EUR 22 for bought goods and EUR 45 for gifts, so the tax should never have been applied by FedEx.

We contacted FedEx and UPS, highlighting our readers’ concerns. A spokesman for FedEx said the administration charge has always been in place in Ireland and was applied “to ensure customers receive their packages quickly”.

He said that if it did not pay the VAT and duty, “packages would not be cleared through customs until the customer has paid them, thus adding severe delays to the delivery process”.

So, to be honest, I’m not impressed at all with Fedex’ response here. I was hoping they’d be more helpful, especially once it hit the most significant consumer-affairs column in the country — but not at all :(

To recap — since Conor didn’t mention it — here are my problems with the charges:

• the packages were both genuine, unsolicited, gifts. Surely having to pay duty on a gift is not applicable; it certainly makes receiving a gift a particularly unpleasant experience!

• the first package contained baby clothes, which are VAT-free in Irish tax law anyway.

• we cannot seem to get contact details for someone at Customs and Excise to talk to about this, and Fedex have failed to get back to us since then.

Not sure what the next step is…

There’s also a little follow-on discussion at Conor’s blog.

Update: good news. A couple of days ago, a letter arrived from Fedex UK, containing 2 credit notes; both invoices had been reduced to EUR 0.00, citing “incorrect application of duty” for one, and “customer satisfaction policy” for the other. Hooray!

Tags: bea, consumer, customs, duty, fedex, import, ireland, pricewatch, rip-off-ireland, rip-offs, tax

Damien posted an interesting suggestion for the Irish Blogs Top 100 the other day — during discussion of which, it emerged that there were a few overlooked Irish blogs which hadn’t yet shown up on the planet.journals.ie Irish blogs aggregator, and therefore were not appearing in the Top 100. These were:

• Twenty Major (oops! a major omission, sorry Twenty — he’d moved from a Blogspot URL to his own domain)
• Linden Lifestyles, an Irish-based Second Life accessories blog
• John Handelaar’s blog
• and Donncha O’Caoimh’s InPhotos.org.

Anyway, they’re in now. When I first spun up the script and checked the results, though I was a bit shocked and had to do a bit of a double-take — at number 1, far beyond Damien’s number 2, was InPhotos.org, with a Technorati Rank of 1 and 102,857 inbound links from 88,772 blogs, compared to Damien’s Rank of 7946 with 1,606 links from 519 blogs.

Insane! I guess being in the default Wordpress install makes a bit of difference there ;)

Interestingly, InPhotos.org, with a Technorati Authority of 88,434, is far beyond the most popular blog listed on the Technorati Popular Blogs page. It seems that page is a hand-tweaked set of blogs, and not just a “Technorati global Top 100″, then, despite what one might naively assume…

PS: Damien’s original suggestion, btw, was to measure blog popularity using Google Reader and Feedburner’s audience stats. However, I can’t do that without a public API I’m allowed to scrape. Does anyone know of one?

Also worth noting that I recently added del.icio.us bookmarks as a metric of popularity, to go with the Technorati stuff. It’s interesting to see how those rankings differ — bloggers and bookmarkers don’t always agree, with bookmarkers preferring MP3s, Second Life, and politics I reckon.

Tags: blogs, damien-mulley, donncha-o-caoimh, inphotos.org, ireland, irishblogs, journals.ie, technorati, top100

The Irish Road Safety Authority have just revised Irish law as it relates to ‘learner drivers’, the 15% of drivers who haven’t yet passed a driving test. (This includes me — my US driving license doesn’t allow me to drive a manual-transmission car in Ireland, so I’m still a learner over here!)

They helpfully released the details as a rather broad PDF entitled ‘Road Safety Strategy 2007-2012‘, which covers the changes along with other plans and statistics; and a more focused document, ‘Learner Permit and Changes to the Driver Licensing System‘, dealing with just the learner-permit system.

Unfortunately, the latter was released as an MS Word document. Given the problems this raises — lack of searchability, integration with the web, etc. — I thought it’d be helpful for searchers if I put up the text in full here, so here it is.

Introduction of Learner Permit and Changes to the Driver Licensing System - Changes to the Driver Licensing System announced on 25 October 2007

In this document you will find information about changes to the driver licensing regime. These changes affect learner drivers and recognise the fact that learner drivers are a vulnerable group of road users. The changes also serve to emphasise the importance of the learning phase for drivers, one element of this is the replacement of provisional licences with learner permits. The changes also highlight the important role played by the driver who accompanies a learner driver.

Over time the intention is to expand the range of conditions applying to a learner permit and to develop a graduated licensing system where there will be a number of different restrictions/conditions applying at different stages. These restrictions will apply while driving with a learner permit and in the initial years of driving with a full driving licence.

Specific details about each of the current changes together with questions and answers on the impact of each change are set out below.

Provisional licences are being replaced by learner permits to emphasise the fact that the holder is a probationary driver and is learning to drive. Existing provisional licences will continue in force until their expiry date. On renewal the person will be issued with a learner permit.

Q: When will learner permits start to issue?

A: Learner permits will issue as and from 30 October 2007.

Q: Does the learner permit system apply to all driving licence categories?

A: Yes, the learner permit system will apply to all licence categories.

Q: Is there any change to the period of validity or the fee for a learner permit compared to that for a provisional licence?

A: No, the duration and fee remain the same as applied to provisional licences.

Q: Are there any changes to apply under the learner permit system?

A: A number of changes detailed below are being introduced for drivers with a learner permit. These are also being applied to drivers with a current provisional licence.

The holder of category B (Car) learner permit (provisional licence) must be accompanied by and under the supervision of a qualified person at all times. This change removes an exemption that, up to now, allowed a person on a second provisional licence to drive unaccompanied. To drive unaccompanied will be a penal offence and the person will be subject to prosecution.

Q: When does this new rule come into effect?

A: This is coming into effect as and from 30 October 2007.

Q: I am currently on a second (provisional licence) learner permit for driving a car, and was not required to be accompanied heretofore with this (provisional licence) learner permit. Must I now be accompanied?

A: Yes, you must be accompanied at all times when driving with a (provisional licence) learner permit for a car.

Q: I have passed the driving test in a vehicle with an automatic transmission and now hold a (provisional licence) learner permit for driving a car with a manual transmission, can I drive this car unaccompanied.

A: No, you must be accompanied by a qualified person until such time as you pass the driving test for a manual transmission car.

Q: In respect of which licence categories is a person who holds a (provisional licence) learner permit required to be accompanied by a qualified person?

A: Drivers with a (provisional licence) learner permit for vehicles of category B, C1, C, D1, D, EB, EC1, EC, ED1 or ED, (Cars, Trucks, Buses and Articulated Vehicles) must be accompanied by and under the supervision of a qualified person.

An accompanying qualified person must hold a full driving licence for the vehicle category for at least two years. It will be a penal offence for the driver not to be accompanied by a qualified person so licenced to drive.

Q. When is this change coming into effect?

A. This change will apply as and from 30 October 2007.

Q: If I am a learner driver driving a car and the accompanying person has held a driving licence for two years in respect of a motorcycle, or a tractor/work vehicle, can this person act as an accompanying qualified person?

A: No, the accompanying qualified person must hold a driving licence for two years for the category of vehicle you are driving.

Q: If a person has passed a driving test to drive the vehicle category, can this person act as an accompanying qualified person?

A: No.

Q: If a person has held a full driving licence for an automatic vehicle for two years, may this person act as the accompanying person?

A: Yes, but only if the learner driver is driving an automatic transmission vehicle in the same category. If s/he is driving a manual transmission vehicle, the accompanying qualified person has to hold a full driving licence for at least two years for a manual transmission vehicle.

Q: If I have a learner permit (provisional licence) in category C1 (small truck) can I be accompanied by a person who holds a full driving licence for category B for two years and for category C1 for one year?

A: No, the accompanying qualified person must hold a full driving licence for two years in respect of the vehicle category which you wish to drive, in this case category C1.

Q: If the accompanying driver has heId his / her driving licence since six years ago but has been disqualified for 2 of the last 3 years, may he /she act as an accompanying driver?

A: No, the accompanying qualified person, at the time you are driving, must hold a full driving licence for two years in respect of the vehicle category which you wish to drive. He/she must not have been disqualified for any period of the previous two years.

The carrying of a passenger by a motorcyclist with a (provisional licence) learner permit is a penal offence.

Q. When is this change coming into effect?

A. This change will apply as and from 30 October 2007.

Q: Can I carry a passenger on any motorcycle category for which I hold a learner permit (provisional licence) ?

A: No, you must have a full driving licence for the motorcycle in order to be able to carry a passenger.

Q: Can I carry a passenger on a category A motorcycle for which I hold a learner permit/ provisional licence if I have a full driving licence for category A1?

A: No.

Q: If I pass the motorcycle driving test, can I carry a passenger?

A: No, you must first exchange your certificate of competency (driving test pass certificate) for a full driving licence to be able to carry a passenger.

It is a penal offence for a holder of a category W (Tractor/Works vehicle) learner permit (provisional licence) to carry a passenger unless the vehicle is constructed or adapted to carry a passenger and the passenger is a qualified person, ie. a person who holds a full driving licence for the vehicle category for at least two years.

Q. When is this change coming into effect?

A. This change will apply as and from 30 October 2007.

Q: When can I carry a passenger?

A: When the passenger holds a driving licence for the vehicle category for at least two years, and where the vehicle is constructed or adapted to carry a passenger.

Q: Can I carry a passenger who is a qualified person if there is no passenger seat?

A: No, the vehicle must be constructed/ adapted for the carriage of a passenger.

It is a penal offence for the holder of a learner permit (provisional licence) in respect of any licence category to carry in the vehicle any passenger for reward.

Q. When is this change coming into effect?

A. This change will apply as and from 30 October 2007.

Q: Can I carry a passenger for reward in the course of my employment?

A: No, you may not do so while driving under a learner permit (provisional licence).

Q: If I have a category D1 learner permit (provisional licence) to drive a minibus, can I carry a passenger for reward?

A: No, you may not do so while driving under a learner permit (provisional licence).

It is a penal offence for the holder of a learner permit (provisional licence) for vehicles of category B, C1, C, D1, D, EB, EC1, EC, ED1 or ED, to drive such a vehicle unless there are displayed on the vehicle rectangular plates or signs bearing the letter ‘L’ not less than 15 centimetres high in red on a white ground, in clearly visible vertical positions to the front and rear of the vehicle.

Q. When is this change coming into effect?

A. This change will apply as and from 30 October 2007.

Q: If I have a category B full driving licence and a learner permit for category C (truck) or category D1 (minibus) must I display L plates?

A: Yes, you must display L plates on the truck or minibus if driving on a learner permit.

It will be a penal offence for the holder of a learner permit (provisional licence) for vehicles of category B, C1, C, D1 or D, to drive such a vehicle while the vehicle is drawing a trailer.

Q: If I have a category B driving licence and a learner permit for category C1 (small truck) can I draw a trailer?

A: No, you may not drive a truck while drawing a trailer if you hold a learner permit (provisional licence) for a truck. You must have the trailer entitlement for the category on the learner permit (provisional licence) in order to draw a trailer.

Learner Motorcyclist to display ‘L’ plates on a high visibility tabard.

Q: From what date will motorcyclists have to display L plates on a high visibility tabard?

A: It takes effect as and from 1 December 2007.

Q: Which learner motorcyclists are required to display L plates on a high visibility tabard?

A: All persons with a learner permit (provisional licence) for category A, A1, or M, must when driving such a vehicle display a yellow fluorescent tabard bearing the letter ‘L’ not less than 15 centimetres high in red on a white ground, in clearly visible vertical positions worn over the chest clothing. The ‘L’ plates are to be to the front and rear of the person’s torso. It will be a penal offence not to so display L plates.

A person who is a first time holder of a learner permit (provisional licence) cannot take a driving test for a six month period after the commencement date of the permit (provisional licence).

Q. When is this change coming into effect?

A. This change will apply to driving test applicants with an appointment date for a test on or after 1 December 2007 and who hold a learner permit (provisional licence) for less than six months. At this point driving tests are scheduled up to this date and the change will not affect existing appointment holders.

Q: Does the change apply to all licence categories?

A: Yes, It applies to all licence categories.

Q: Why is the six month limitation being applied?

A: The purpose of the provisional licence/learner permit is to allow a learner driver to gain experience of driving. Research shows that the longer a learner is supervised while driving, the less likely s/he is to be involved in an accident. For this reason the six months limitation is being applied.

Q: I hold a first learner permit (provisional licence ) for less than six months. I have an appointment already arranged for a driving test. Can I take the test?

A: Yes, the change is being introduced with effect from 1 December 2007 and should not affect existing appointments for driving tests.

Tags: drivers-license, driving, driving-license, government, ireland, learners-permit, provisional-license, rsa

Mike Culver, Amazon’s “Web Services Evangelist”, will be in Dublin next week to evangelize about the goodness that is Amazon S3, EC2, SQS and so on. It seems he’ll be talking at the following locations:

• in the Auditorium of the Digital Exchange, Crane Street, Dublin 8 on Tuesday October 30th, 3-5pm; here’s a flyer the Amazonites have been passing around. (upcoming.org page)

• according to Damien, later that evening, he’s in the Westin Hotel on Westmoreland St., D2, starting at 7pm; note, it seems you need to book places at this, see Damien’s post.

• and again at the Irish Linux User’s Group on Thursday November 1st at 19:30 in the Irish Computer Society in Dublin (map).

I guess these are all going to be same talk, bar the Q&A ;)

There was some kind of an ICTE get-together mooted for Friday 2nd.

Also, the ILUG annual general meeting is scheduled on the following Saturday, 3rd November, also at the ICS. Gareth Eason notes ‘we’re hoping to start at 3pm sharp, with talks from Dave Wilson (HEAnet), Frank Duignan, John Looney (Google), and others, followed by a relaxing wind-down in the Schoolhouse pub later on.’ (upcoming.org page)

Hopefully I’ll get to at least one of the AWS talks (probably the Digital Exchange one) and the ILUG AGM… busy week!

Tags: amazon, aws, dublin, ec2, icte, ilug, ireland, linux, mike-culver, s3, social, talks

Over the weekend, this really hit the Irish blogosphere — several Irish guys have apparently figured out the algorithm used by Eircom to generate WEP keys.

I blogged that page in the link-blog this morning, but it’s worth writing about a little more. WEP is apparently easy to crack nowadays, so in a way all those wifi users were insecure anyway — but this is interesting as a case study of how not to write a key generator:

• Compiled code != secret: the first mistake Eircom made was to generate the WEP key entirely from a little “secret” text, some “secret” shuffles, and the serial number of the hardware. There should always be some randomness in there. Compiled code running on a user’s desktop, is not secret.

• Don’t share secrets: Secondly, it’s a good demo of why you don’t generate two separate key values from the same source data. In this case, both the WEP key and the SSID are generated from the Netopia router’s serial number — and sufficient bits are accidentally exposed in the SSID to enable computation of the WEP key. (This is kind of moot in many cases, since the serial number is also exposed in the MAC address, in even more detail.)

As far as I can tell — although it’s not quite clear who did what — that guy Kevin Devine did a pretty great job of reversing this code. Nice one.

I’m impressed that there’s now an app which detects the static tables (S-boxes, constants etc.) used in crypto algorithms — that idea seems very clever in retrospect, hadn’t occurred to me.

Here’s a boards.ie thread where this exploit was discussed; there are plenty more details there, if you’re curious. It seems this has been quietly floating around back-channels since the start of September.

(By the way, am I missing something, or did Eircom ship unstripped binaries for the key generator library? I could swear that when I looked at the Boards thread earlier today, there was a cut-and-paste from IDA Pro listing a function prototype. Oh dear; if so, add that to the ‘case study’ list above. ;)

It seems Eircom are now recommending all customers switch to WPA — good luck with that, since it’ll break all those Nintendo DSes. That won’t be popular!

Tags: eircom, ireland, reverse-engineering, security, wep, wifi, wpa

A last-minute notice — the Irish Linux Users’ Group are organising an introduction to Open Streetmap tomorrow:

Open Streetmap : An Intro

The ILUG committee is organising an introduction to the Open Streetmap project on Saturday, 1st September, 2007 in Dublin.

This will include info on how to use your GPS and upload your data to the project, to contribute to a free and open map of the world.

The Hamlet Pub, Balbriggan (N 53.61396 W 6.20608 degrees)

Sat, 1st Sep 2007 2pm ~ 5pm

If you have a GPS and a laptop, please feel free to bring them. Wireless internet is available in the venue.

To register interest, please e-mail chairman-at-linux.ie

Tags: balbriggan, dublin, geowanking, ilug, ireland, mapping, open-streetmap

A few months back, Blogorrah noted an amazing 419 scam, claiming to be a missive from ex-Taoiseach of Ireland Charlie Haughey’s wife, Maureen. It’s really quite appropriate Charlie becoming the subject of a scam himself, given what he did to this country. But anyway… over the weekend, a new variant on the theme emerged:

From Mrs Maureen Haughey, ROI

My Dear Friend,

I am Maureen Haughey, widow of former Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, Charles J. Haughey and daughter of former Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland and heir to de Valera, Sean F. Lemass.The Press has written a lot about unresolved mysteries and corruption surrounding CharlesÂ’s dealings, but I tell you something,my Charlie was a good man. He was human and he did whatever he did.

People marvel why I stuck with Charlie and didn’t speak during the mess that came with the exposure of his affairs with Terry Keane (I just hate to think of her). I had to stand by him through the tribunal times…. it was to do with what I’m doing now. No one knew the details of all Charlie’s financial dealings but me. I remain the only one who knows all who got loans from Charlie and didn’t come back to pay when he was disgraced. I am the only one who knows about these monies and the other Ansbacher accounts.

I write to you, an old weary woman, sick and almost tired of living. My end is near but I will not depart until my final mission is accomplished and I also write this with an unshaken belief in the power of aspirations and dreams of a human being. The Irish government thinks it can shave and reduce me to a poor widow but I have the winning ace. A few years ago, when we werenÂ’t sure if my Charlie would be convicted, he kept some money in trust for me in a Security and Finance company. He did not open the account in our names so it will not be traced to us to enable the past remain the past. The name on the account is Cedric de Vregille. I never thought Charlie would leave me so soon and it never occurred to me to ask if this name were fictitious or not or a name of any of his friends. I have tried to find this man but to no avail. The amount he deposited in this name is 30,000,000 (Thirty Million Euros).

I want an honest person to come forward and lay claims to this amount, moreover to use the funds as instructed by me. I have all the documents needed, I just need a face for the name. I have mapped out 30% of the funds for you, as you will help us (you and I) execute this job.

As soon as I receive your acceptance for this work I shall give you necessary details of my solicitor who will facilitate the release of the funds in your name. Please reply me via my personal email: maureen_haughey67@yahoo.co.uk

---

For my security and the sake of letting sleeping dogs lie, I strongly advice that you keep our dealings confidential. You can read more about my charlie from:

http://www.ireland.com/focus/haughey/ITstories/story11.htm

http://www.teachersparadise.com/ency/en/wikipedia/c/ch/charles_haughey.html

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=548983&lastnode_id=0

Thank You.

---

Message sent using UebiMiau 2.7.2

It was sent via a webmail system at nildram.co.uk, from a proxy in Australia.

The writing is amazingly ornate — ‘I write to you, an old weary woman, sick and almost tired of living’, ‘the Irish government thinks it can shave and reduce me to a poor widow but I have the winning ace’, etc. Very odd stuff. Also, it looks spell-checked. And, once again, poor old cyclist Cedric de Vregille gets dragged into it, too! I wonder what he did to deserve that ;)

If you fancy scambaiting, ‘maureen_haughey67@yahoo.co.uk’ is the one to go for. These guys seem to be having a good go of it — ‘The thought of the Irish government trying to shave an old woman has shocked and appauled me, so I will assist in anyway possible.’ ha!

Tags: 419, advance-fee-fraud, charlie-haughey, fraud, ireland, nigerian-scam, scams, spam