A Sudden Outbreak Of Common Sense… In Ireland?

THE IRISH INFORMATION Commissioner’s Office has seemingly told schools to tone down the whole ‘biometric’ thing. In particular there are about seven schools in Ireland who seem keen to deploy various biometric solutions to keep track of their students, the most obvious one being fingerprinting, but the Commissioner’s office has rained on their parade telling them that it will ‘rip out‘ anything it considers ‘excessive‘.

In its guidance for schools issued this month, the office indicated that it might not approve of schools fingerprinting pupils. It said it wasn’t necessary in Irish law for them to do so, and if it wasn’t necessary then the Data Protection Act said it shouldn’t be done. So – ten out of ten for the lads at the Commissioners office – they seem to be doing a bang up job of taking a calm and rational approach to things. Bravo I say.

Although one does wonder at this sudden outbreak of common sense, sure you’d almost think it was an election year wouldn’t you?

Oh wait… it is.

Anyone want to take a wild stab at which of our amazingly inept politicians will try to swing in behind this common sense approach in the coming days? It’s just too good a soundbite opportunity to miss, so I’m betting at least one of the oxygen thieves will jump on the bandwagon and wax lyrical about the childern; who’s protecting the children?

These are the same gobshhites who spent €50M of our hard earned taxpayer cash to purchase a bunch of e-voting machines that were never tested by the suppliers and didn’t work (at least in a satisfactory and auditable way), and who continue to pay approximately €700K per annum to store the bloody useless things because they ditched them.

These machines are still there, somewhere down in Cork I think, gathering dust and costing me and you €700K per annum – all for nothing. Absolutely fucking no value whatsoever.

So remember folks, when it comes to the inevitable “Who’s protecting the children” and “Think of the children” conversations that you may hear on your doorstep over the coming months, I suggest a witty and urbane retort along the lines of :-

WHERE’S MY FUCKING MONEY YOU OXYGEN STEALING, DISINGENUOUS, TAX DODGING, CORPORATELY SPONSORED LYING BASTARDS?

See if that gets their attention at your front door?