Twitter really is powerful. Just received an e-mail from it to say that Barack Obama is ‘following’ me. Thought he had better things to do….global credit crunch, 2 wars and so on. There you go, might send him a note and see what happens.

Ireland’s Future in Europe

There has recently been a lot of articles about Denmark and Iceland deepening their European integration in response to economic difficulties. Denmark is considering holding a referendum to apply for membership to the Euro and (maybe) reverse their ‘opt outs’ in some sensitive policy areas. Iceland is also said to be considering an application to join the EU and eventually adopt the Euro. All of this has a number of implications for Ireland which we must consider in the run up to the next Lisbon referendum.

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The Oireachtas Library and Research Service have just published an analysis of every constituency in the country. It is a brilliant piece of work which tells me the following things which I never knew:-

• The share of the Dublin Central population aged between 20 and 39 is the second highest of any constituency in the country.
• The education level of people in Dublin Central us much higher than the rest of the country, with people in Dublin Central leaving school later and with higher qualifications.
• The share of the population with a disability is higher in Dublin Central than nationally.
• 2.5% of the Irish population lived in Dublin Central in 2006.

Tons of interesting nuggets in the document but these were the ones that really caught my eye.

Typical. Amidst the frantic and wonderful life of a politician you need things that keep you going. Music is one of the things that does that for me. My tastes are very wide. One of my favourite bands at the moment are The Killers. I could not get tickets for their last gig at Marley Park. Justine managed to get 2 tickets for their gig at the O2. I was over the moon. The date went right into the calender. Sacrosanct. Any anyway, it is a Friday night. Everything would be fine. Wrong!

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If I lose every election in the future party HQ may well look back and say that if I had spent less time wasting time on gadgets and computers and more time knocking on doors I would have been more successful.

Well I just can’t help myself. I’ve just been on Twitter and set myself up on it. I’ve seen so many others on it. I’ve got such a great reaction about this site that I may as well give it a bash. So if anyone out there twits
as well….look me up!

Click below to Follow Paschal on Twitter