Without much doubt, the Volkswagen emissions story is one of the greatestl corporate disasters in recent decades. As a proud VW owner, I’m shocked that a company of its size and reputation would have ever allowed itself to get into so much trouble.

The highly abridged story is as follows. An independent test revealed that some VW diesel cars contained software designed to trick emissions testers. If the software noticed that the car was undergoing an emissions test, it would change the engine settings to reduce nitrogen oxide output to the lowest possible level, thus tricking the testers. When the car was allowed back on the road, the engine settings would be reset, allowing emissions – up to 40 times higher than legally permitted – to be released. VW put code into their cars that was deliberately designed to break US environmental laws. It also breaches environmental regulations in many other countries. Up to 11 million cars are affected and we are awaiting news on exactly what these cars are.

It was a monumentally audacious trick. It’s beyond me how, with 11 million affected cars on the road, they didn’t imagine they would eventually be found out. Now that the fraud is in the open, VW face massive lawsuits from a whole raft of countries. They cannot sell any more diesel cars in the US – both for this year and next year. Switzerland has banned the sale of further diesel cars. Presumably more countries will follow. All owners of affected cars may be compelled to return their cars to their dealers, so that a software fix can be applied to the cars. If the cars are not as powerful after the remedial fix or if taxes are increased for these models, VW face massive class action lawsuits from millions of annoyed drivers around the world. VW’s reputation – indeed the reputation of the German motor industry – is badly tarnished, resulting in enormous job losses down the line. This may spell the end of diesel cars. People with breathing difficulties, such as cystic fibrosis or asthma, may well be encouraged to sue Volkwagen for putting their lives in danger.

Given the implications as described above, I cannot understand how VW’s legal team would ever countenance such a thing. Their job is to protect the company under all circumstances. Permitting such a fix to go through would have been idiocy of the highest level. My assumption, at this time, is that they simply didn’t know, which should imply that the CEO did not know either. However the same cannot be said for their head of engineering. To pull off this massive fraud, somebody wrote the code, other people tested the code and yet other people signed off on the code. Testing must have been quite sophisticated to ensure it worked in real world conditions, so we are talking about a lot of engineers and a considerable enough budget to pay for all this.

For this reason, I do not believe this was a massive conspiracy orchestrated from the top of VW. You could of course argue that “everybody is doing it” as an incentive to commit the fraud, but so far it appears that just one engine produced by Volkwagen is affected. It looks like a solo run by someone in engineering – someone far too clever for their own good. Whoever dreamed it up, signed up to this scheme or attempted to cover it up should face criminal charges.

Despite the bad news, there is a silver lining. Ironically this could be the best thing to happen to international business culture in quite a while. The incident means that corporations need to double down on their business conduct policies. No matter how good any corporation perceives itself to be, this story shows that a small number of people can do irreparable damage to the entire enterprise in pursuit of short term profitability objectives. It also perhaps signals a concerted move towards cleaner technologies. In the medium term, testing of diesel cars will be revamped. There have been significant issues with these tests for years, with the industry arguing vociferously against more regulation. They have now lost this argument. In a year or two, all diesel cars will be subjected to a far more stringent regime. This is good for all of us. In the longer term, it is likely that diesel will diminish in importance, though it could be argued that electric vehicles cannot match the power and durability of diesel engines. Either way, it will signal a major change in the industry.

Whatever the outcome, plenty of lessons have been learned.

This latest horror story from Paris has filled me with dread. What with all the kidnappings, the rapes, the bombings and beheadings in the past year. The mass graves, the terrorism of innocent people, the droves of young men burning their passports and pledging allegiance to the harshest edicts of a 7th century philosophy. Where does this instinct to kill and butcher come from? Is it Islam?

The whole Islam / Islamism debate is a minefield, to borrow an unfortunate metaphor. To what extent are you being Islamophobic when you criticise these brutal killers and their methods? There is a danger you will find common ground with some of the worst, most right wing elements in Western society. If you stay quiet about it you make a mockery of the values upon which our society is based – tolerance, empathy, the robust sharing and challenging of ideas, to mention a few. It’s a tightrope.

Islamism should be a core target of sceptics and humanists, because it represents the very worst extreme that blind belief can lead one to. Homeopathy and psychics might screw up someone’s value system and quality of life, but Islamism kills and terrorises, while subjecting all sorts of minorities to cruelty and despair. It’s a depravity – the very negation of free thought and forthright argument.

On the other hand, humanism stands with all people: black, white and brown, rich and poor, native and foreign, male and female, young and old. People from Muslim countries have as much a right to live in peace, security and happiness as anyone else. Castigating and criminalising whole sections of society just because of the actions of a small few is repulsive to me.

People are precious. People are important. The ideas in their minds are not so special. Nobody should ever be killed or injured for their beliefs. but beliefs should never give anyone a license to kill or injure. For that reason, all beliefs should be subjected to robust scrutiny and if necessary, ridicule.

People have mothers, brothers, sisters and friends. Ideas don’t. People shout with joy and weep tears. We worry for them when they get sick. We miss them when they die. Ideas don’t have hospitals, nor do we give them gravestones. People can live on after abandoning damaging beliefs, but it so often happens that damaging beliefs result in death.

Islam is a belief. But mass killings of the past centuries didn’t all need Islam to justify them. It’s just the ogre of the moment. There is something deeper here that can take a belief and turn it into something truly evil. When we criticise the average believer, we taking aim at a convenient target, but it’s the wrong one. It’s radicalism in all its forms that we need to focus on.

Via @therealbanksy

A couple of days ago, a local politician noted with interest the number of “non-indigenous” people, in one instance, who have been given houses off the housing list. While the comment itself seemed innocuous, the reaction was predictable, with many commenters on social media vehemently agreeing with her. A Twitter friend, who is in the public eye, sees this attitude every day. When politicians make such announcements, widespread agreement is almost guaranteed from a large section of the community.

But no. None of these people are racist. It’s something else, apparently.

The thing is, if that “something else” is not racism, it’s still very ugly.

And in some ways they are right, it’s not just about race. It goes way beyond that. Travellers, obese people, single mothers, feminists, homosexuals, people of other religions, the non-religious – all targets of the same anger and prejudice. Easy scapegoats for those with an axe to grind.

Left to fester, this can boil over into something like what happened in Waterford this weekend, a semi-pogrom in the 21st Century. Idiots taking the law into their own hand.

This is why politicians need to be so careful with their public utterances. The anger, the scapegoating and the hatred is all out there, a background noise in our society. We need community leaders to do their bit to address this – to direct the anger to where it needs to go – not stoking the flames of prejudice. When councillors rush towards populism to appease latent bigotry, they have to share some of the blame when things get out of control.

Last night, my eldest son, who is preparing to do his Junior Cert this year, asked me a question. Why should he study history, he asked, wanting to know what jobs might be available after doing it.

In truth, I don’t think there are many directly related jobs, unless you fancy being a historian or an author, but I think that’s missing the point. History is a vitally important subject for reasons that transcend basic job market economics.

First of all, it gives us a sense of who we are, and how we came to be. It tells us stories about our locality, our country and our civilisation that in turn, give us an insight into why things are how they are. Great historical events don’t die quickly. They create echoes that last to and through our present day. History is there in everything we experience. By understanding this we enrich our minds.

Secondly, the stories it tells can often be related to decisions relevant to the present day. History is bubbling over with stories of people who had great decisions to make, and the consequences of those decisions are often described in gruesome detail. History is probably the only laboratory in which many of our decisions can be tested. In history we find context, and from that context we can move forwards, mindful of the mistakes made in the past that lead nowhere, or even to disaster.

Thirdly, history can do wonders for our critical thinking skills. Where there is a narrative, there are often one or many counter-narratives. We learn from our past that nothing is quite as straightforward as it seems, and that the stories we are told often have gaping holes or mind-boggling complexities. We discover that that simple stories often deliberately overlook or distort events in order to push a particular viewpoint or ideology. Being sensitive to these distortions is no bad thing. A careful reading of history asks us to look beyond propaganda and to seek out the untidiness, while also valuing expert consensus where it exists.

History is a powerful subject. It would be a pity to see it commoditised or deprecated simply for its job-winning value. History has to be seen as more than the means to an end, as there is so much to be learned beyond our first job. It’s a type of learning that can accompany us throughout our lives.
It’s a friend to the grave.

Last Friday, I was climbing a stepladder when it gave way, collapsing in a heap on the ground with me onboard. I wrenched my foot in the process. It hurt. A lot.

After a sleepless night and a morning trip to the doctor, I was assured I had not broken anything, although a few foot muscles might be somewhat worse for wear. I’m recovering quickly now, my chances of making Brazil’s first 11 slightly diminished.

What has struck me is how difficult the small things become when something like this happens. Carrying things, crossing over uneven ground, descending steps, opening and closing doors, going to the bathroom: all became challenging tasks. Just a small walk up down the hall was beyond me for a while. What I’ve also noticed is the kindness of people – the cup of coffee out of the blue, the genuine concern, the people willing to get things for me (I could get used to that).

I can’t imagine what it would be like to break my ankle as I am greatly assured it is pain an order of magnitude more intense. Neither can I imagine what it would be like to live with disability or chronic pain on a daily basis. I’m nowhere near understanding these things. What I did get was the tiniest of insights. It’s given me pause for thought.