braz

Following recent Infomaps with R trend - Visualizing Irish unemployment rates with a choropleth map

2009-11-19T23:18:00.005Z

Following on the recent trend of InfoMaps from Flowing Data and a call to R users to attempt their own examples. I saw this lovely German visualization with R and decided it was time to do Ireland.

Looking at these images, I'm reminded of the lyrics of the song "What a Difference A Day Made", the one that goes like

What a difference a day made,
Twenty-four little hours,
Brought the sun and the flowers,
Where there used to be rain...

Playing with R to animate SBP / RedC polling data

2009-10-04T23:55:00.003+01:00

Another quiet afternoon so I had a look at the excellent site, "From Data to Graphics" and came up with this little animation showing the last three years of Sunday Business Post polls results with the last general election results.

Visualising Lisbon 2009 and 2008 by constituency

2009-10-03T17:34:00.001+01:00

The results are in. Lisbon 2 has been passed by Ireland. Voting results are available Irish Election, from RTE, and the IT. I've added a couple of visualisations using dot plots to help show where it all changed from last year.

The 2009 Lisbon Referendum Ireland voting results by region and constituency.

Here are the 2008 results for comparison.

Lisbon Red C Polling 2009 Dot Plots

2009-09-27T18:13:00.005+01:00

I've been playing around with R and dot plots. Today's SBP poll from RedC was a prefect excuse to have some fun.

LisbonRedCPolling2009-IncludingDontKnows
Originally uploaded by bluepelican

LisbonRedCPolling2009-ExcludingDontKnows
Originally uploaded by bluepelican

Lisbon 2 Round up

2009-09-21T15:14:00.003+01:00

It's almost time for Lisbon 2 so to I've brushed up my readings to take the new changes into account and decided to post a few of the more interesting pieces I've found online.

Elvis making his case against the treaty:

A very nice summary of the social side of the treaty, slightly pro but I guess it depends on how you view it.

Jim Corr and the New World Order.... oh and how it relates to the Lisbon treaty

Michael O'Leary - 5 Reasons to Vote Yes

The Forum for Europe has collected a number of debate transcripts that they held and printed them online.
Defense, Foreign Policy and Neutrality Yes: Pat Cox No: Joe Noonan
Ireland and Social Europe Yes: Ruari Quinn No: Joe Higgins
Institutional Arrangements Yes: David Byrne No: Susan George
Economic Implications Yes: Peter Sutherland No: Mary-Lou McDonald.

Neutral Sites with Information:
Citizen's Information Service - Guide to Lisbon Treaty
Referendum Commission

Guides to support the arguments
YES: The Improved Spoofers Guide to the Lisbon Treaty
NO: Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) (including UKIP) Guide to the Lisbon Treaty

I've listened again to many false arguments and blatant lies so I'm voting YES. The times are different now and it is even more critical to be part of the wider European community for so many reasons. Whilst I'd love to give the Government a bloody nose by voting No, it is sheer stupidity to think that way as a referendum is not a general election and won't cause any change to the government. I do believe Ireland needs a change of direction and government, voting YES is the first step in that process.

Limerick City Election Results since 90 including 09 first count

2009-06-06T17:40:00.004+01:00

Courtesy of John Browne

These figures show a scary trend for FF and for the now deceased PDs. These figures are based on the tallies for the 2009 LE results and are subject to revision but the trend itself is quite interesting for a major urban centre. The second point is the sheer personal vote of Willie O'Dea if these figures reflect a `party' vote.

** UPDATE 21:41 - New chart reflecting actual first count figures rather than tallies. **

Votewatch.eu or What did MEP X, Y, or Z do ?

2009-05-11T17:24:00.002+01:00

It's that time again with the European election nominations just closed that you might actually be interested in what your MEP has been up to for the last term. Want to check how they voted or how often they were in Brussel ? Thanks to http://votewatch.eu you can.

The project has been sponsored by the European Policy Centre with the aim of assisting the monitoring of MEPs. It provides details on the voting, attendance, party allegiances of MEPs. The search functionality of the site allows users to query an MEP's record based on their EU party / grouping, nationality, and particular national political party.

So on to the sport as they say!

In the `Motions for resolutions' category, which deals with motions put forward for voting on by the parliament. The top three are Brian Crowley (101), Eoin Ryan (91), and Colm Burke (45). The bottom three are Jim Higgins (1), Mairead McGuinness (5), and Marian Harkin (5).

In the `Parliamentary questions' category, which details the questions asked by MEPs to the European Commission or to the Council of the European Union. The top three are Proinsias de Rossa (1067!), Jim Higgins (324), and Kathy Sinnott (213). The bottom three are Colm Bourke (41), Sean O Neachtain (104), and Eoin Ryan (105).

Good to know who is working but lets get to the main event or the attendance figures. The top three are Brian Crowley (94.3%), Sean O Neachtain (93.29%), and Kathy Sinnott (92.98%). The bottom three in visiting the parliament are Eoin Ryan (83.22%), Mairead McGuinness (84.56%), and Proinsias de Rossa (85.32%).

I'm sure that next weekend's papers will see a nice break down by the political correspondents looking in detail at the attendance and motions / questions categories.

Arduino Mega and Prototype Shield Assembly

2009-04-20T01:14:00.003+01:00

I've had some Sunday afternoon fun and games with the assembly of a prototyping shield. It is the design from e-lioness and is for the new Arduino Mega board. The new Arduino Mega board is designed to wow, with 128 KB of Flash or program memory, 8KB of RAM, and 4 KB of EEPROM. The board has a massive 54 digital pins (14 of these offer PWM output), 16 analog io pins, 4 hardware serial ports, and I2C. It is compatible with most of the earlier shields designed for the standard Arduino. The firmware includes the now standard, auto-reset on upload, a pre-burned bootloader, and automatic power selection. It does need you to update your Arduino to at least Arduino version 0015 or later. Here is a little table comparing the latest hardware from the Arduino and a close mid capacity derivative from the RepRap project, the Sanguino.

The Arduino Mega is a very sweet option for installations and sensor heavy projects.

Here's the starting picture:

Here's how it ended up:

The process is visually documented in my Flickr images and doesn't really need any more documentation. I would possibly check around to see if other prototyping shields have a better track layout for the digital pins as this turned out to be a little messy.

An example of the fun you can have with the Arduino Mega is shown by Tom Igoe's post on ``8×8 LED matrix control on an Arduino Mega''. He has a great example using it to play Pong.

Sun, Sea, Sounds, and Arduino at SMC 2009

2009-03-31T16:51:00.005+01:00

If you're interested in learning about the sounds of Porto and physical computing then consider participating in the upcoming SMC Summer School on Interactions with Environmental Sounds. It is going to be held in Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal from July 18-21. There is funding available from the COST Action ICO601 on Sonic Interaction Design, for third level students interested but the application deadline is approaching (24th of April). There is a whole range of interesting project proposals already online. Guest lecturers will be given by Marcelo Wanderley of McGill, Joel Chadabe of NYU (and EMF), and Xavier Serra from the Music Technology group in Barcelona. Tutors include Jean-Julien Aucouturier, Stephan Baumann, Bram de Jong, Luis Gustavo Martins, Rui Penha, Stefania Serafin, Federico Fontana and myself.

Check out the Summer School website for details and application forms.

CS4062 - Fourth Arduino Lecture

2009-03-18T17:46:00.001Z

CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - Fourth Arduino Lecture - March 18th 2009 - University of Limerick. This lecture presents a short review and introduction to programming concepts relevant to Arduino. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Arduino Lecture 4 - Interactive Media CS4062 Semester 2 2009

View more presentations from eoinbrazil.

CS4062 - First Arduino Tutorial - Talking to PureData and to Flash

2009-03-18T17:34:00.001Z

CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - Tutorial Example 1 Arduino and PureData - March 18th 2009 - This is a simple worksheet example for a class tutorial on getting PureData and an Arduino to communicate. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Tutorial Example 1 Arduino and PureData Tutorial Example 1 Arduino and PureData eoinbrazil CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - Tutorial Example 1 Arduino and PureData - March 18th 2009 - This is a simple worksheet example for a class tutorial on getting PureData and an Arduino to communicate. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Notes Academic Work interactive media puredata

CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - Tutorial Example 2 Arduino and Flash - March 18th 2009 - This is a simple worksheet example for a class tutorial on getting Flash and an Arduino to communicate. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Tutorial Example 2 Arduino and Flash Tutorial Example 2 Arduino and Flash eoinbrazil CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - Tutorial Example 2 Arduino and Flash - March 18th 2009 - This is a simple worksheet example for a class tutorial on getting Flash and an Arduino to communicate. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Notes Academic Work interactive media digital media

CS4062 - Third Arduino Lecture

2009-03-16T10:54:00.003Z

CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - Third Arduino Lecture - March 11th 2009 - University of Limerick. This lecture presents an introduction to motors, LEDs and Arduino with examples. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Arduino Lecture 3 - Interactive Media CS4062 Semester 2 2009

View more presentations from eoinbrazil.

The slides with notes are available here.

CS4062 - Second Arduino Lecture

2009-03-06T14:07:00.004Z

CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - Second Arduino Lecture - March 6th 2009 - University of Limerick. This lecture presents an introduction to communications and Arduino with examples. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Arduino Lecture 2 - Interactive Media CS4062 Semester 2 2009

View more presentations from eoinbrazil. (tags: avr prototyping)

The slides with notes are available here.

CS4062 - First Arduino Lecture

2009-03-05T11:25:00.004Z

CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - First Arduino Lecture - March 4th 2009 - University of Limerick. This lecture presents an introduction to the Arduino with examples. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Arduino Lecture 1 - Introducing the Arduino

View more presentations from eoinbrazil. (tags: avr physical computing)

The slides with notes are available here.

Germans wise up to e-voting

2009-03-03T21:10:00.004Z

Germany has gone back to the paper ballot today with a decision by the German Federal Constitutional Court to immediately cease the use of electronic voting machines, in particular the Nedap ESD1 and ESD2. The Court said its decision was based on the evidence that the current technology had defects and was difficult to control. The devices were felt to contradict the principle of public elections with vote transparency as their defects make it possible to lose secrecy and control over the counting of the votes. The case was brought based on the 2005 Bundestag election in Karlsruhe, however the court ruled on this aspect stating that they were no hints of errors and left the results of this election stand.

The case was brought forward by a father and son team. Joachim Wiesner, a retired policital scientist and his son, Ulrich Wiesner, a software developer. An expert witness against e-voting was Professor Wolfgang Lawer from Bonn. He spoke to the court and stated his concerns about a ``a vacuum of control after the act of voting'' and the misplaced ``blind faith'' that the electorate had for these machines. He felt this threatened free and open elections where counts could be seem by all and were less easily manipulated.

Germany first used electronic voting in 1999 with differing acceptance by states. The last election using this technology was held in a local election for Brandenburg in September 2008. There are currently 39 of 299 election districts using this type of technology, in particular the states of Brandenburg, Hesse, Nordrhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Pfalz and Saxony-Anhalt.

Experts pointed out that whilst software modification could be discovered afterwards, hardware modifications to the actual device were much more difficult to trace. This type of hardware manipulation was demonstrated by the Chaos Computer Club who modified the innards of an Nedap machine in approximately one minute.

This ruling has not completely banned e-voting. Andreas Voaykule, vice president for the Federal Constitutional Court clarified the ruling stating that ``the tenor of the decision could lead people to the conclusion that the court was hostile towards the technology and had misgivings about the challenges and opportunities of the digital age''. The use of other voting machines is possible and he also pointed out that the court has not banned the possibilities of internet voting. The presiding judge, Justice Rudolf Mellinghoff, did ask about the option of a vote verified trail using a printed ballot. This resulted in an agreement between Nedap and the parliament (Bundestag), in principle to offer this option as one mechanism with a parallel computer and paper count for elections. This may be one possibility for the re-introduction of modified Nedap machines in the future. Professor Wolfgang Lower remarked on the paper option, ``We must ask where is the advantage of the computer as part of the election in this case?'' referred to the idea of having separate and parallel paper and computer counts. (Editing Note: My German is not bad so I think this is a fairly accurate translation, however I do stand open to corrections).

iPhone Developer University Program

2009-02-20T19:35:00.001Z

iPhone Developer University Program
Originally uploaded by bluepelican

The Computer Science department, thanks to Mikael's efforts has officially joined the iPhone Developer University program. It is a free program designed for third level education institutions who are introducing development courses for iPhone or iPod touch applications. It will allow up to 200 students, provide group management, and allow publication of the applications to the AppStore. This has also been done in collaboration with the Technology Transfer Office in UL so thanks are also due to Paul D for his help.

As they say, keep watching - there is more in the pipeline but you'll have to wait and see.

Random Paris Pictures

2009-02-05T15:50:00.002Z

Mixed weather here in Paris but here are a couple of photos I took earlier, more to follow.

Backup and Failure

2009-01-04T18:01:00.005Z

JournalSpace closed down a couple of days ago over a serious oversight with regard to their backup policy (read more here). The story seems to resolve around their use of a RAID array as their only backup. It failed completely and overwrote six years of bloggers data. They did keep backups of the code for the system but bizarrely overlooked the database content which was the images, comments, and posts that made up user's blogs. It prompted me to made a backup of my blog here, I doubt Google are going away today or tomorrow but who knows. I've always tried to keep update with my backups using SuperDuper (with an external HDD) and JungleDisk (it uses remote disk space on Amazon's S3). I remember reading "Disaster Recovery Planning" a few years ago and really seeing how serious you need to be about these things when in business, if after that storm, disgruntled employee, or other unforeseen event you have got be able to start from scratch. It doesn't cost alot to keep backups, reading "Backup and Recovery" shows the numerous open source options out there. I pay a little extra for simplicity and ease of use but the lesson from JournalSpace is at the very least, keep regular backups on different servers or media, preferably off-site and simulate an disaster with actual recovery phase.

Looking around at the end of the year

2008-12-24T12:59:00.003Z

Well its a funny old Christmas this year with ups and downs in the economy. For a laugh or cynical look at the current situation, you could listen to Joseph O'Connor and his radio diary from yesterday's Drivetime on RTE Radio One, it goes nicely with Frank Nally's column in the IT today.

On brighter news, 50% service has been returned to the Shannon-Heathrow route so maybe there are some minor Christmas presents. We'll ignore the loss of revenue to the region of the last number of months and the fact its only a partial return of the service and take it, however I'm sure the local Government politicans will do better in the New Year as its full service return or they're not fighting the case in my book.
Hat tip to John and Nev for the SOS photos.
Hat tip to Nev for the photo.

On a more worrying note it looks increasingly more likely that Dell will be phased down in a fashion to minimise the company's repayment of Government grants. This isn't particularly great news and it looks like this abandoned factory in Raheen may soon have more company.
Hat tip to slinky2000 for the photo.

It looks like the private sector will feel the pain in the New Year and one wonders with the ERSI report will that happen in the public sector, it should (as I've said before) but the lack of authority shown by the current Government doesn't inspire much hope in this area. All I can hope is that maybe some of the sagely advice given by more optimistic people such as Elaine will be taken and perhaps we'll have a brighter 2009.

Rte fun and games - who runs that bank?

2008-11-28T23:46:00.002Z

rtefunandgames
Originally uploaded by bluepelican

Rte were obviously having fun with names today as they messed up the names for the Six One news and then inverted them for the Nine news. I'm wondering if this is yet another sign of the declining standards of our national broadcaster, given the sad sad piece of TV that was Prime Time last night and the very slanted rumour mongering about Declan Ganley (Dan has this in more detail), one has got to wonder what exactly is our license money paying for ?

Votes lost - no its not America rather Finland

2008-11-05T23:58:00.003Z

Just an update on the current Finnish e-voting farce where 232 votes were lost due to `usability' issues with the voting machines, this Finnish EFF (see their statement). This might seem pretty small but this was only a pilot in three small areas and actually accounted for 2% of the electoral register. The problem happened when after a voter had inserted their smart card to verify their identity, selected their candidate by typing his/her number and pressing okay, then a verification screen was shown and some voters did not press the okay on this screen but removed their smart cards which caused the ballots to be lost. The instructions on the machine said that the only way to cancel a vote was by clicking the cancel button and then removing their smart card, this of course didn't help matters. So a hit tip to the both the EFFi in Finland and to the EDRI for pointing this out. If you're interested in digital civil rights in Europe, I'd recommend subscribing to the EDRI-gram newsletter and checking out its archive.

Obama's speech

2008-11-05T11:41:00.002Z

In case you had to work today or just fell asleep on the counch in the early morning hours, here's a link to President-Elect Obama's acceptance speech. I'm really happy to see the change in the US, it'll still be a bit of a battle for him to get all his policies past the Senate given the current results leave open the potential for many fillibusters but it is definitely a new dawn for America. Who'd have thought that they'd elect a black man to sit in the Oval office, it is really a day that shows the American dream is possible for one and all. Ireland will have to wait a few more months to see if the taxing of overseas American companies (FDI) will be taxed according to his earlier plans but today its a happy day for the world as America has shown democracy in action.

Civil service performance scheme - pay rises for all

2008-10-26T13:42:00.004Z

Where is the radical reform in the civil service ? Sunday Times figures show that almost every civil servant in the country has received a pay increase. The Government seemed happy to let the civil servants write the budget and now we find that the oversight process for employees in the civil service, the Performance Management and Development System (PMDS) has standards so low that in essence the civil servants are writing their own pay rises. According to the Department of Finance, the pay bill for 2008 will be €2.1 billion up 6.7% from 2007 (€1.9 billion). This sparks the questions about pay freezes, reform, and job security of civil servants. Its worse in the wider public sector where the average wage increase is around 8.9% or so and adds €1.5 billion to the wage bill per year.

Mark Tighe in the Sunday Times (26/10/2008) had reported a number of shock findings in the PMDS scheme for performance rating of civil servants. It seems that if you turn up to work and sleep at your desk for the day, you'll still get your raise while you work in the Irish civil service. It seems that those who word hard in the civil service are being hampered and the top quality of these hard workers are not being rewarded in relation to their colleagues. Whether it is a failing of training or for management needs to be discovered because this kind of carry on would last less than five minutes in any Multinational in this country so why should it be allowed to fester in our civil service ?

Tighe got the view of Union leader's such as Tom Geraghty who claim the scheme has improved performance but does not his surprise that were not more people in the poor performance categories as ``Everyone things they are a swan but there are bound to be a few ducks''. He further conceded that management had to motivate people and that ``telling them that they are useless isn't a great way of doing that''.

The figures released to Tighe show the soft reality of the civil service. These are especially harsh when compared with the civil service-wide PMDS evaluation (PDF) by Mercer Human Resource Consulting which was completed in May 2004. The suggested figures for percentages in levels are vastly different, perhaps Mercer was thinking along the lines of the private sector where only true performance and merit is rewarded. The consultants report further noted that the PMDS system itself was weak at distinguishing between the different performance levels, in highlighting which staff performed well and in handling those ``few ducks'' who underperformed. The figures shown below highlight how the civil service is over egging the pot (on the left) by being top heavy in the 3, 4, and 5 categories. The consultants report (on the right) showed a more private sector view with correspondingly lower numbers in the higher categories and a vast increase in comparison to the underachieving categories.

The most telling problem with this system is that the consultants found that it was not linked to decisions on promotions, pay increases, or career development. Senator Alan Kelly of Labour has recently (8th October, 2008) voiced further concerns about PMDS as it currently only being applied to the lower grades of the civil service and that its implementation in the senior manager grades has left a lot to be desired.

Even a bad scheme like PMDS is better than no scheme. Local Authority workers (~35,000) and Health Service Executive staff (~111,000) are not yet in such a ranked/rated scheme. In the case of the Local Authority, they are considering it and in the HSE they have one but it doesn't use any kind of ranking or rating. It really is no surprise that the HSE has a bad record for its management not knowing who is currently employed but without ranking for staff, one wonders how the staff get assessed with any due consideration.

Mark Tighe has a second Sunday Times article point out that 74.2% of all public-sector workers earned more than €40,000, further break downs show that even in the higher pay categories the public sector employees are still ahead of the average private sector counterpart. Two examples, between €50,000 to €100,000 its 29.1% of public sector workers to just 13.1% of private sector worker and above €100,000 its 2.5% public sector to 1.9% private sector. These figures are basic figures and do not include any additional loading for job security or the guarantee of a pension for public sector employees.

Tighe spoke to Jim Power, chief economist with Friends First who pointed out the reality that ``in the private sector thousands of workers are being let go and salaries are being cut by 10% to 20% in some companies. It is clear the public-sector unions believe the adjustment in the economy must be borne entirely by the private sector''. Brian Lenihan has stated a reform of this area will be ``messy and unpleasant'' so instead he's waiting for a task force to deal with the problem instead. I think I'd prefer the approach of Richard Bruton to sorting out the mess because regardless of politics, he at least seems to understand the problems (overview of reform approach, Reform through Recovery response to Budget).

An annual increase of €1.5 billion in the national public sector pay bill or €100 million for the over 70's medical card, hhmmm I think I know which problem I'd be tackling if I was in government. There was an elephant in the room for this budget, it was and still is public sector reform. Tackling this one issue would provide all the funds to provide universality for health care and education and they'd still be cash for capital development. If only there was some leadership and grasp of reality in the current Government we might cushion the impending hard landing as it stands this is an avalanche gathering speed which will plunge us into a Japanese style recession without prompt and hard calls by the Government.

Inflation versus Innovation - Budget 2009

2008-10-15T11:24:00.002+01:00

A great hullabaloo was given to the announcement in yesterday's budget that €300m was being earmarked for the continued implementation of the Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation.

Science Foundation Ireland is up €7m from last year to €179m
Enterprise Ireland is up a little over €3m from last year to €127m

I'd like to point something to the Minister - inflation is running at 4.3% according to the CSO so that means that both SFI and EI are actually running behind inflation, so no new schemes or extra changes here. This will probably mean that there will probably be more contracting of existing schemes rather than a directed push for more innovation, research or commercialisation. The meagre 5% rise in R&D tax credits to 25% isn't worth anything to the figures I've done based on my own tech transfer experiences. The final insult is the lack of any effort to provide a broadband infrastructure to deal with the third world or worse state of this critical technological engine of change.

This adds onto my disgust at the treatment of OAPs and marginalised sectors of society. Well done, Minister - no reform, no strategy. At least Ray `the knive' MacSharry could claim some reform in the public sector but this is a joke of a budget with the private sector, the old, and the marginalised left to suffer the pain.

Lights out for fourth level research due to HSE style budget cuts in Universities

2008-09-13T17:01:00.002+01:00

I'd like to share a rumour / latest conspiracy theory doing the rounds regarding fourth level funding. I'm not sure if its true but it needs to be answered and quashed ASAP by the Government, the Department of Education, and the founding bodies such as Science Foundation Ireland or Enterprise Ireland. This was spurred on by John's post.

Rumours are painting a scary picture which is emerging from a number of universities across the state. The universities, it seems are willing to throw the baby out with the bath water in order to make the 3% to 5% salary budget cut imposed on them by the Government. The fourth level research sector is undergoing a purge reminiscent of Kristallnacht where many young researchers and their project proposals are being silently dropped from universities to fulfil these cuts. It seems that in the typical wisdom of the Government and as seen previously in the HSE, a salary budget for an institution is a single figure. This is one composite figure regardless of whether it comes from funded research projects or from the Department of Education. Like the HSE, its a figure that does not distinguish between front line services or managerial / secretarial levels. In the case of universities, the distinction can be seen between central admin, departmental staff, and contracted researchers / lecturers.

A major goal of the knowledge economy in Ireland is to promote new areas of research to encourage the development of new technologies and to enable new discoveries in the sciences. This process will create a new generation of researchers and open new possibilities for business through the commercial exploitation of these advances which should stimulate and grow the economy. Unfortunately, the core and critical people who will achieve this aim are the junior researchers in the third level sector. These are the very targets of this type of purge. The purge fits quite well within the lens of university upper echelons and their thinking as the junior researchers are among the most silent in a university population as they typically have no union representation or other form of effective representation.

This type of purge is achieved by simply refusing to accept new research projects. You might ask how this benefits a budget reduction when a project is never started. Once a research proposal is accepted by the founding authority such as Science Foundation Ireland or Enterprise Ireland, the salary budget from that project is actually assigned to a university's central salary pool. Back to the single figure, so by then refusing the project and sending back the money the university can actually state that it has made a budget cut, which is true in a perverse sense. This approach is further assisted by not taking on any new research projects so that the central salary pool figure is not added to. Many universities seem to be stalling contract or junior researchers with various excuses or delays regarding the processing of new project proposals. This lack of clarity and response has lead to this conspiracy theory doing the rounds at various coffee tables around many universities. If one remembers the likes of President Septimius Severus Krupp in ``The Big U'' and his style of modern University management, there is a certain possibility of this type of scenario being true.

This may be the latest conspiracy theory or it may just be gross incompetence in the administration levels of the universities. It would be nice to know which. If the Government is committed to a knowledge economy, the means of achieving it are the very researchers affected by this bizarre situation. It is past time for budget cuts by memo to be dropped. A scalpel rather than an axe approach for budget adjustments is needed. This means targeted cuts in non essential areas or services which will not negatively affect the future engines of growth such as fourth level research.