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Amazing Grace, how sweet the soundThat saved a wretch like meHave you ever felt a moment of grace? Some call it enlightenment, some call it muse, some call it inspiration, some call it spirit, and some call it the collective unconscious. But have you ever felt it? A man, a slave trader all his life, in the middle of a terrible storm at sea, wakes up and realizes how wretched his actions have been.
The sleepy days between Christmas and New Year are traditionally a time to release news you don’t want anyone to ask questions about. This year two stories found their way into the public domain which, now that we’re all trying to shake off the coma of Roses and tinsel, deserve a closer look.
I'm afraid that in the course of installing and tweaking two new spam-combating plugins, I managed to wipe out all of December's comments. This is particularly galling, as it included the sequence of comments which attended the Data Retention votes.
As before, my thanks to The Dossing Times for permission to reprint the below. Thank you for your email regarding the voting on the ALVARO Report on Data Retention. As you may be aware the two largest political groups in the Parliament, the EPP and PSE, agreed a deal on a compromise package of amendments which forced the Rapporteur, Mr Alvaro to withdraw his name from the report.
I thought I'd collect up some of the other responses from MEPs to constituants who asked why they voted the way they did. My thanks to The Dossing Times, who gave me permission to repost the letters from here. (You can also see the letter he sent at the end of that link as well).
I haven't seen this anywhere else and a number of the comments in the earlier post voiced a specific disappointment with Proinsias De Rossa's decision, alone amongst Irish MEPs, to vote in favour of the Data Retention Directive. So in the interests of fairness, I reproduce below his statement on the matter.
Well, it did last Monday the 12th December anyway, when it sent me out its eMonday newsletter. Whenever the Mac Mail programme tried to open the email, or even show it in the preview window, it crashed totally. When it came back it said that Mail had new settings, and did I want to use these new ones, or go back to my original ones.
Data Retention Hits the Front Page Originally uploaded by Editor_Tupp. The Data Retention vote in the European Parliament is today the front page story in Dublin's Metro Newspaper. 'Stop the Net Spies' it gratifyingly says.
Now, after a little help from Europe Direct I can bring you the votes of Irish MEPs in relation to the final Data Retention Directive vote yesterday.
Rubbish debate. Watching the stream of the Debate on the introduction of Data Retention Directive. The live stream is all the excitement of the European Parliament on your very own screen.
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