Blurred Keys

Further to the post, ‘My keys must be blurred: The state of things’, when Blurred Keys stated boards.ie’s blogs are down, the site seams to be currently setting up a new blog system using what looks to be Wordpress.

Blurred Keys just  received an email detailing how to access our updated blog over there. With a new address http://blogs.boards.ie/[username]… [edit: 'Boards Blog' are some-what working now].

On another note, a news update on TypePad’s homepage tells us the whole of TypePad has been blocked in China. Although this also happened last year, and was resolved, the latest block of the site could possible be a part of the Chinese authorities’ moves to further control the net in the country, with all Chinese websites been made register.

The Shanghai blog ‘Wangjianshuo’s blog’ explains the registration process…

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News of the World, could we just get an outright ban on that? Please.

Anyone that knows anything about media and publishing in Ireland will know there is really no such think as so-called ‘freedom of speech’, or ‘freedom of the press’, in Ireland. Whether it’s libel law, or censorship to the standard of some people’s idea of decency. To be clear on this: I’m making no point as to if any of the above is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ - libel law with exceptions of a ‘greater public interest’ for one thing can be only seen as a good thing.

While looking for something quite different, after bumping into ‘Censorship in Ireland’ at Government’s (quite good) oasis.gov.ie, it directed me to a full list of banned publications up to 31st December, 2003 [it  can be found in a PDF file at http://www.justice.ie/].

Not that I’m complaining, but it would be interesting to know why the ‘News of the World’ was prohibited in 1930 and 1961, the ‘Daily Mirror, and Sunday Pictorial’ in 1958, or the ‘National Enquirer’ in 1964.

One of the strange things is the amount of ‘Police’, ‘Detective Stories’, or ‘Murder Mysteries’ that were banned in the past. Was it just fears of copycats?

On a quick look, the  recent entries including ‘Fox’, ‘Hard News’, ‘Maximum Perversum’, ‘Unzipped’, ‘Triple’, ‘Sex’, ‘Private Mega Pack’, and ‘Pleasure’, were all banned at some stage in 2003, but their Prohibition Order were all due to end in 2004.

On grounds for bannings, Oasis.gov.ie notes, "Periodicals are prohibited if the Censorship of Publications Board considers them to be frequently or usually indecent or obscene. Both books and periodicals may be prohibited if the Board considers that they advocate abortion or ways of carrying out abortions. Periodicals may also be prohibited if the Board is of the opinion that they have given an unduly large proportion of space to matters relating to crime. In practice, however, publications are usually only reported to the Board for obscenity".

Oh, come on, you lot should have banned Bret Easton Ellis’ books - it’s sick stuff… but maybe in context? On a real ending note, it is quite honest (and nice) how the above, as well as film censorship, is actually classed by the government as censorship.

IrishEyes writes "On the day the Sunday Business Post carries a story about overtures made by Ireland to the Chinese government, I know the immigration control queue at Dublin Airport has a different story. I watched Chinese displaying lengthy documents to the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) while the staff behind the plate glass barked, "What is your job? What do you do?" (The visitor was politely saying the words "integrated circuit" but the man-behind-glass was having none of it.) From my vantage point, there will be no quarter given to Chinese trying to sneak in and possibly disrupt Irish employment by serving in takeaways. The only way to receive a thousand welcomes is to carry GNIB card with its accompanying passport stamp"…

"It does not help to force a 30-minute queue onto a member of a Chinese delegation who wants to enhance cooperation in such areas as education, technology and culture."

Half an hour you say? That’s about the amount of time I recently spent queuing at immigration at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport. And I’m nearly sure it wasn’t rush hour.