A blog about things that interest me, politics, news, media, architecture, development, environment, local history, secularism, web, dublin ireland, tara

Contact me at expectationlost@gmail.com

Sunday 1 November 2009

Government aircraft travel of Irish ministers 2009 exhibited, mapped, timelined, listed and editable.

This screen shot shows an exhibit of Irish Government Ministers travel on Government aircraft in 2009 using this data using Ken Foxe's Freedom Of Information Requests.

2008 finished

Made with Exhibit from MIT which...

Exhibit enables you to create html pages with dynamic exhibits of data collections without resorting to complex database and server-side technologies. The collections can be searched and browsed using faceted browsing. Assorted views are provided including Timelines, tiles, maps, and more.
You can copy examples from the Exhibit wiki and simile mailing list.

                        ex:role="view"
                        ex:viewClass="Map"
                        ex:label="Birth Places with Photos"
                        ex:latlng=".birthLatLng"
                        ex:center="38.479394673276445, -115.361328125"
                        ex:zoom="3"
                        ex:bubbleWidth="200"
                        ex:icon=".imageURL"
                        ex:shapeWidth="60"
                        ex:shapeHeight="60"
                        ex:selectCoordinator="president"
                        

...calling the named columns from the google spreadsheets.

The source
Ken Foxe of the Sunday Tribune has been requesting information (FOIs) about government minister's travel and particularity noticed the excessively costly travel arrangements of John O'Donoghue the Ceann Comhairle (also when he was Minister for Tourism). Because of his and others journalism and rather then justify the costs he resigned as chair of the Irish house of parliament (Dail) in October 2009.

The change
Ken Foxe in a very unusual move for a professional journalist has shared the raw information he got in his FOI's with the public. The information from the Ministerial Air Transport Service is voluminous so with more eyes and perhaps my exhibit of the information in a more visual and manipulatable manner we can comprehend more of what politicians are doing with our government resources. He used FOI'd government aircraft travel data to write ...Living on our jet plane, at a cost of €10.6m (18 Oct 2009, Sunday Tribune).

TRANSPORTING government ministers aboard the government jet over the past four years has cost the taxpayer more than €10.6 million.

Figures from the Department of Defence show that the €7,890-an-hour Gulfstream IV jet has been in use for 1,214 hours since the beginning of 2006. The government's Learjet – the running costs of which now come in at almost €3,000 an hour – has been in the air for 826 hours at a cost of €1.89 million.

...continue reading at tribune.ie

MIT Exhibit
I modified the Presidents Births and Death example of which you can see it's simple JSON file. You can use MIT's Babel to convert your data to JSON or XML (create live XML with editgrid.com) or any exhibit friendly form.

Ken's FOI data
Using the spreadsheets he then re-published Ken Foxe's Gov aircraft use FOI's eg. Ministers Air Travel - 2009 Jan - Oct (Scribd doc).

Mats - 2009 Jan - Oct

My Data
I rearranged it into this google doc file with labels so that the Exhibit script can read it as JSON. How to make an exhibit from data fed directly from a Google Spreadsheet


Use Define groupings and calculations to calculate personal totals
Used Batch geocode for the locations and Notepad ++ and jEdit some basic excel/google spreadsheet macros and functions. And converting dates to the right format.

The exhibit
You can pick out any element or facet of the info from the list on the left, the central tag cloud, the timeline, map or Flight time slider below the map, deselect it by un-checking on the sidebar list or use your browser's back button. You can zoom into the map under Ireland or Europe or view the Details of the trips in a table.

Your help
I need to add the purpose of the trip and a contemporaneous news article to give them fair context. Anyone can help me to do that by going to the google spreadsheet and editing the 'purposeoftrip' or 'contexturl' and 'urllabel' columns for each row/trip. I also need fill in the unnamed Ministers of State in the person column.If there is a another way to arrange the data to make it more comprehendable by people please suggest it.

I need to display the helicopter trips better.Working on it here to add polylines extension of exhibit made by www.werelate.org code changes

Its pity there no way to batch search, so I could quickly find why Mary Harney was in Helsinki and Michael maritin went to New York in July.

Want to do 2008
2008 MATS spreadsheet FOI'd by Ken Foxe
via scribd.
JSON base file
MATS 2008 Exhibit

To do
I need to figure out functions to add up totals...

I'm also working on a politicians constituency map and TD/Dail diary similar to the above.

The Story
A couple of young (ish) journalists have set up thestory.ie to gather and release data about Irish politics for crowd sourcing and crowd reviewing. Gavinblog and Mark Coughlan have, as have I, been inspired by the work of projects like the UK's mysociety.org in opening up shared data resources for citizen journalism. They are working towards creating an Irish version of whatdotheyknow.com, which makes it easier to request and share 'Freedom of Information' requests. Another MySociety project created a more accessible and manipulatable parliamentary record called Theyworkforyou, programmer John Handalaar has already created a version called kildarestreet.com for the Irish parliamentary debates.

The visualisations
I have taken some of thestory's spreadsheets of data and made visualisations (I'll describe how in another blog post).

A visualisation of donations to parties by-industry using Tree Map's via Manyeyes and Google Docs. Visualised Liam Carroll's Corporate Structure, a more dynamic ZVTM version of LC companies
Minister for Finance for Ireland Brian Lenihan's Diary during the financial crisis, in google calendar form, in SIMILE WIDGET timeline form.

APIs, feeds and linked data
I had been using some of the above methods to follow the Howth Malahide council elections and hope improve with use of RDF and XML and geocoded feeds. With free collaboration and document sharing sites, RDF and XML and feeds and API's its becoming easier for non-programmers to serve, slice and link data.

Links
Another Irish Journalist Mark Tighe is releasing data for his Sunday times articles
Guardian Open Platform.
Batch geocoding addresses.
Sunlight Labs the tech development of open government US.
The sunlight centre for open politics UK.
Zoho: Document collaboration site To do
The coder behind werelate.org has created some extensions exhibit pedi maps to make connection icons on the map. I think you havve to put the whole system on your own host, which when I manage to add it I can use to connect flight.

Friday 23 October 2009

The 3rd Bayside Shopping Centre re-development proposal

Yet another planning application F15A/0436 on 26/01/2016. Another new planning application after May 2015 one withdrawn, this one is F15A/0436 applied for 18th September
Bayside Shopping Centre, Bayside F15A/0436
see Miscellaneous Correspondence 00504933 for best views of new Sept 2015 plan

----
new 2015 planing application Ref F15A/0206
See these documents for best views of new 2015 plan

Architectural Design Statement
Site Location Map
Elevations

Seems they have withdrawn application in July due to traffic/parking issues.




Some leaflets from the Bayside Shopping Centre Management and the local residents arrived for the 3rd new proposal for the Bayside Shopping Centre redevelopement. The first two proposals were refused in 2007 and 2008.

The current shops. The development involves retail, 62 apartments, an underground carpark, services. Planning number is F09A/0522 Search for it the Fingal planning website

To quote the two Bayside Centre Management leaflets.

We are in agreement that the existing square and associated shops/ buildings need to be redeveloped in full as its has become run down, dilapidated and detracts from the Bayside/Sutton Park area.
Who is responsible for the rundown dilapidated Bayside Shopping Centre?
Failure to achieve a satisfactory planning application with your support will inevitably lead to the further disuse of retail units and dilapidation of the existing centre in the future and we believe that it is in nobodies interest for this to happen.
Who is responsible for the disused units and dilapidated Bayside Shopping Centre?
This is an opportunity to finally replace the current dilapidated and run down centre with a new vibrant and modern facility which will enhance the whole area.
Who is responsible for the run down and dilapidated Bayside Shopping Centre?
We the retailers of the Bayside Shopping Centre, feel that if this one fails there will be neither be the funds nor the appetite to try again for many years to come and the existing centre will continue to deteriorate.
Who responsible for the deterioration of the Bayside Shopping Centre?
Existing Centre: Derelict Squash Court
Who responsible for the derelict squash court?

The answer to all those questions is the Bayside Centre Management, so they should stop trying to blame it on the locals.

Here are the leaflets. More later.



Bayside residents meeting recap of objections

The Study the BCM refers too is the Bayside Urban Development Framework Which somehow manages not to mention the phrase '5 storeys' in its report while recommending such 'focal buildings'.

The contact for the Bayside management is Baysidesquare@gmail.com

News article from the Dublin Northside People with quotes from residents, councillors and the developers.

Tuesday 6 October 2009

Monday 11 May 2009

Irish European Election Constituencies Map

European Elections Constituency commission report on European Elections Constituencies (2007-9, PDF).

Google Earth Kmz version
Google map browser version

Version with Candidates Names Placed
Google Earth
GM Browser

Not perfect but use and see what you can do with it. You can use a program like Ge-Graph to add 3d graphs or colour gradients with stats etc.

Irelands Elected MEPs

East
Liam Aylward MEP (FF)
Mairéad McGuinness MEP (FG)
Nessa Childers (LAB)

NorthWest
Jim Higgins MEP (FG)
Marian Harkin MEP (IND)
Pat 'The Cope' Gallagher (FF)

South
Senator Alan Kelly (LAB)
Seán Kelly (FG)
Brian Crowley MEP (FF)

Dublin
Gay Mitchell MEP (FG)
Joe Higgins (SP)
Proinsias De Rossa MEP (Lab)

Full Candidate list

Dublin (10 candidates: 2 FF, 1 FG, 1 LAB, 1 GP, 1 SF, 1 SP, 1 LIB, 2 IND)

Cllr Eibhlin Byrne (FF)
Senator Deirdre De Burca (GP)
Proinsias De Rossa MEP (Lab)
Joe Higgins (SP)
Mary Lou McDonald MEP (SF)
Patricia McKenna (IND)
Gay Mitchell MEP (FG)
Eoin Ryan MEP (FF)
Caroline Simmons (LIB)
Emmanuel Sweeney (IND)

East (11 candidates: 2 FF, 2 FG, 2 SF, 1 LAB, 1 LIB, 3 IND)

Liam Aylward MEP (FF)
Thomas Byrne TD (FF)
Nessa Childers (LAB)
Kathleen Funchion (SF)
Paddy Garvey (IND)
Micheál E Grealy (IND)
Mairéad McGuinness MEP (FG)
Raymond O'Malley (LIB)
Senator John Paul Phelan (FG)
Tomás Sharkey (SF)
Jim Tallon (IND)

North West (13 candidates: 2 FF, 2 FG, 1 LAB, 1 SF, 1 LIB, 6 IND)

Pat 'The Cope' Gallagher (FF)
Paschal Mooney (FF)
Jim Higgins MEP (FG)
Senator Joe O'Reilly (FG)
Susan O'Keefe (LAB)
Declan Ganley (LIB)
Marian Harkin MEP (IND)
Cllr Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (SF)
Fiachra Ó Luain (IND)
Michael McNamara (IND)
Noel McCullough (IND)
Thomas King (IND)
John Francis Higgins (IND)

South (10 Candidates - 2 FF, 2 FG, 1 LAB, 1 GP, 1 SF, 3 IND)

Brian Crowley MEP (FF)
Ned O'Keeffe TD (FF)
Colm Burke MEP (FG)
Seán Kelly (FG)
Senator Alan Kelly (LAB)
Senator Dan Boyle (GP)
Cllr Toiréasa Ferris (SF)
Maurice Sexton (IND)
Kathy Sinnott MEP (IND)
Alexander Stafford (IND)

Irish Times candidate details
RTE candidate details
General EU links
electionsireland.org
politics.ie
europeanelections
micanddiate profiles
euobserver.com
euprofiler.eu
candidatewatch.ie
www.votematch.eu