Let’s Get Digital (let me hear your 24-hour talk)
Damien Mulley is wondering about the future of Digital Terrestrial Television (”Freeview” to British readers!) in Ireland. The comments (other than mine) are a useful peek into the debate, and in particular the question of universal service (both in terms of access to a basic level of media service, as well as the idea [...]
Google Public Policy Blog
Hello World says Google’s new ‘public policy’ blog. They’ve been shadow-blogging for a while, and there’s a good few posts up for your reading and deconstruction…I liked this post on net neutrality. From this post and from others, they don’t appear to be putting anything out there that’s not already on the public [...]
Do we have too many Ministers?
Some numbers, to add to today’s stories.
Ireland: 166 members of the lower house of parliament: 15 Cabinet members, 20 ‘juniors’, for 4m people
Canada: 608 members, cabinet of 32, plus 22 juniors, for 33m
UK: 646: 23, 90, 60m (inevitably, there are lots of layers within the 90 sub-Cabinet people).
Aus: 150: 18, 28, 20m
India: 552: [...]
Exministerative Law, Part 2
Returning to the question of the Ministerial change-of-mind, I see that the Attorney General has apparently told the new Minister for the Environment (Gormley)that he can’t revisit the decision of his predecessor (Roche):
In a statement last night, however, Mr Gormley said that Mr Roche had been carrying out a quasi-judicial function, and without a change [...]