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EVERY NIGHT DURING the general election, TheJournal.ie brings you the latest from the Election 2016 campaign trail.
Everybody’s talking about
By his own admission Gerry Adams isn’t good at maths. Last year, the Sinn Féin leader told us this isn’t a problem, but for a party that wants to be taken seriously as an alternative to the current government it really is. Sinn Féin scored an early campaign win with its fiscal space success, but much of that work was arguably undone by two poor interviews Adams did on RTÉ today.
This morning he clashed repeatedly with Seán O’Rourke during a tetchy interview on Radio 1 where the Louth TD seemed to struggle on the details of the party’s economics proposals. This evening, he faced similar difficulties on the Six One News where Bryan Dobson was the interviewer.
At one point, Adams claimed that anyone earning less than €100,000 would not be impacted by Sinn Féin’s tax plans. This is not true when you examine the proposed changes to pension tax reliefs which will impact people earning as low as €50,000. Even Adams attempt to goad Dobson by asking if he earns over €100,000 fell flat as the experienced broadcaster admitted, without missing a beat, that he does.
Details matter, leaders must show competence on issues like this. It’s why Enda Kenny was widely criticised for claiming on day one of the campaign that the people don’t understand “economic jargon” when it was clear he struggled with it himself.
Adams is held to no greater a test than any other party leader, and on the numbers he consistently comes up short.
Slap Down of the Day
There were quite a few today so we picked two.
Ouch.
FactCheck of the Day
As part of our general election coverage, we’re testing the truth of claims made by candidates and parties on the campaign trail. Tonight, Dan MacGuill has looked at whether Fine Gael is right to say it has maintained disability spending?
Bull**** Claim of the Day
Michael Noonan has clearly been inhabiting a parallel universe for the last two weeks.
Row of the Day
Can we trust Fianna Fáil to run the economy and the country again?
That was the central question in our latest High Table Election Debate between Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan and Fine Gael’s Noel Rock.
WTF Moment of the Day
Everyone had a bit of fun with Labour’s ‘No Direction’ newspaper ad, including Fianna Fáil.
And the Anti-Austerity Alliance’s Paul Murphy.
It was a good day for
It was a bad day for
Tomorrow’s news today: What’s happening on the campaign trail
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RTE to hand out two abacus
.. and 6 Pencils (HB with Integrated rubber)
RTÉ deserve a few boots. This isn’t one of them however.
License increase first though. About €350 extra each should cover the €150 million consultancy fees in to what type of abacus. Wood or Plastic.
11 year old looks at this calculator-like device, then looks at his Xbox 360, then at this calculator-like device, then at his IPad….. 11 year doesn’t look at his calculator-like device ever again!
They would be covered in lead paint and cost 52 million squillion along with a committee to oversee this failure. Just don’t lick the paint
BBC hands out free coding devices to help children with programming and give them a leg up in future science.
RTE reminds children everyday at 6 that a primitive god needs his daily attendance.
“primitive” – there are modern ones I ought to know about?
There’s thousands of gods, all it takes is some imagination.
I think the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a relatively recent deity.
Step up to the plate RTE
Would you be willing to pay extra for your TV licence. You don’t think the overpaid Dobsons & Turbridys of this world are going to take a pay cut now do you.
Why is it their role to do this? If theres benefit schools should be the ones to recieve the funding to provide it. I dont immediately see that the national broadcaster and TV license money should be funding these resources as opposed to the Education Department unless as a rather quirky publicity stunt. If this is assessed as beneficial and worthwhile simply give the Department the extra budget. The BBC is fantastic but no need to ape their every move.
Someone has to pay for the new wine cellar
Fair play to BBC
If rte handed these out they would also implement the household coding device license fee
In a few years we will discover they were ‘accidentally’ collecting data on every home with one of these devices.
Maybe if they didn’t dumb down the curriculum the kids wouldn’t be idiots over there
Not to mention dumbing down the BBC itself.
The UK has consistently outperformed Ireland every year since records on education index. This kind of programme will ensure that this continues while the department of education and rte still make a mess of getting basic internet and IT to schools. Don’t mock our neighbours as a nation of UKIP following troglodytes when we are playing catchup.
I didn’t understand any of that.
They are going to give out little yokes to the kids to play with so they can get jobs doing same when they are big. Because the mines and shipyards are gone and the call centres are in Asia.
God damn I always hoped this age of coding, computers, AI etc would come after my time.
Well if it did you wouldn’t be able to make that comment just there, a touch ironic that eh
No it’s not ironic. You kind of misunderstood my point. I mean a world where everything is about computers, technology etc, which is the age we are about to enter/just entering. We’ve had commenting abilities on the internet for years.
You do realize that your commenting is enabled by coding and computers, – and lots of it? Probaby millions of lines of code, since you use Twitter’s oauth login to enable the post. Given that you are using our Twitter account to post, – its almost certain that some AI came into it too, for Spam and Web security filtering, especially since you sent your comment also to Twitter.
I would say it is in fact ironic by definition, since code,computers and probably AI enabled your comment.
Alan R
Can you read?
I am nit computer literate, as many pensioners/disabled, especially rurals are not.
No lessons available but an hour a couple of times per week and some buses and we could rectify this gradually.
BBC give out coders. Rte give out reminders on behalf of Irish water to sign up or else you will be reduced to a trickle and fined and a lein put against your property.
Have we not given up on rte yet?, apart from the odd decent thing like Notoriuos or L/H wouldn’t go near it!
Don’t understand why you need a device to plug into a computer to start coding. You can write code in any simple text editor.
That confused me also.
The point is for this thing to be a visual incentive to code rather than directly aid coding. It’s a wearable device with scrolling text, flashing lights and other things that make it very obvious what your coding changes are doing. I guess the idea is changing a sequence of lights or flashing your favourite sports team across a screen is more understandable and exciting for learning the impact of code than a hello world screen.
I’m not convinced. If someone isn’t impressed into coding by seeing games, the internet and everything else related then I doubt that piece of crap will inspire them, flashing lights or not.
It apparently needs to be plugged into a ‘real’ computer anyway so it’s redundant.
From the scant information provided in the article it seems to be a poor attempt to make it appear that the British government are doing something to improve their education system when all they are really doing is wasting money by handing out a bit of tat.
Combined with the fact that the average punter never has had and never will have the need or interest to program anything it looks almost totally useless.
Coding to be used in wars nice one lads
Can’t top that RTE, might as well close down now and save us that licence fee.
“Mein Gott! Der Tommy Trojan und der Englander fischingßcam!”
“Take that Fritz. His firewall has come unstuck chaps. Hurrah for our boys!”
Permission to shout “Bravo” at an annoyingly loud volume, sir.
TALLY HO!
Only a Winston could get away with that…lol +1
Fairly pointless. What eleven year old in Britain hasn’t already got at least one device that they can code on now if they felt like it?
And if RTE did do something like this everyone on here would be saying “waste of money” “typical RTE” “They should spend money on decent programming first” blah blah blah. RTE can never be right regardless in the eyes of the “this country is sh!te” brigade that usually comment on here.
There’s enough gadgets in the class rooms, alot of the kids can’t count without a calculator
Oh to have a broadcaster where folk dont pay a licence fee for the angelus
have your say