"All this is bad enough but God forbid that the self-styled political spinmeisters advising Mr Blair persuade him bow to DUP demands that he stop the rapid moves necessary to deliver to nationalists the equal treatment, demilitarisation and justice they’ve been denied since the signing of the Belfast Agreement."

And I thought the Provo line was 800 years of oppression not just 8!!!

And yet they still persist in calling this a newspaper!

What's new in the Really Direland telling us they dont trust Paisley? Its not like they're going to let the facts get in the way of their arguments or anything. They can conveniently ignore the fact that the DUP were clearly ready for a deal if the conditions were right last November, but the Provos weren't.

Oh dear - we cant possibly have the Government doing anything for the Unionist community. That might just smack a little to much of actual equality of treatment.

The one benefit is, that if it appears in the DI, at least not that many people will end up reading it.

Oh, and another thing - why does the DI's website have a .co.uk address??

Oh, and another thing - why does the DI's website have a .co.uk address??

Probably because it's more expensive to get a .ie domain name. Wouldn't fork out the extra few quid I'd say.

"It'd be like tuning into a Sigur Ros album half way through". More people probably read the article here than in the print version.

Paisley not serious about doing a deal and stuck in the seventeeth century? Surely not...

Talk about shooting the messenger.
The above posts come under "ad hominem" attacks on the newspaper,bar pakman..
where's the ref?

Now the question was:
Paisley still locked in the seventeenth century?

I'd say he's hoisted by his own petard there.
Cromwell, sack cloth, ashes, marching to commemorate ancient battles.
These things are all indicators of 17th century mentality.
Its been observed that the careful administration of d-lysergic acid diethylamide -25 offers all the prospects of corrective therapy. Sadly this was one study governments were anxious to immediately rush for the sequiters. For further reading try
R.D.Laing

Alex not you either for ad hominem

It's always amusing to read the barely literate contributions of the Anti-Daily Ireland Brigade... For a paper they don't read, Daily Ireland surely does get up their noses.

But I also find it curious that Mick is bringing up an editorial which was published in the newspaper in August....perhaps there's some sort of a time lag.

It probably makes no difference - October/August, 2005 and 1705, there's NEVER going to be any significant shift in the Nay-saying position of Mr Paisley.

After just reading some of the above posts maybe some could be already sick of all the intellectual analysis offered on the loveulster site!!!!

Why are we talking about an editorial that was written in August?

OC, honestly didn't know it was from then. I got there from the paper's front page (just below Letters to the Editor) this morning. I genuinely thought it was in yesterday's paper. It'll teach me to read the date in future!

In general terms the structure of the site is confusing. There's no archives to speak of and, if it wasn't for Nuzhound, certain important pieces in DI would have disappeared from view permanently the day after publication.

DI jounalism has such a timeless quality that I didn't notice. Thanks for pointing it out.

Mick,

That's fair enough comment in terms of the site. Presumably the site is not fully developed yet as the paper is concentrating its resources on promoting the print edition. Who knows, it may go down the road of the Irish News and charge for access to the site. But then again perhaps not.

Nuzhound, however, is the saviour of alot of newspapers in Ireland. I think myself that internet editions of newspapers will make a comeback but, unfortunately, it will only be on a pay per view basis.

Even though sites like slugger demonstrate an interactivity which would be coveted by most advertisers. Yet it doesn't seem like the net has been factored into advertising budgets in a meaningful way. Perhaps Slugger should campaign for government advertising, like Daily Ireland has.

17th Century? i think Daily Ireland are being way too generous

Daily Ireland's piece was an editorial....geddit? You are permitted to express your political viewpoint in an editorial, the main problem for the majority of the commentators is that they do not agree with it , and one suspects do not believe that anyone, least of all a NEWSPAPER, has the right to hold such opinions. I susepct some commentator here would have been happier in the 17th century when they could have hang draw and quarter folk who dissented from their views.

OC:

"Perhaps Slugger should campaign for government advertising, like Daily Ireland has."

It is - havent you signed the petition?

Oilbhear,

I think I wrote at the time of the launch that I really liked the print design, but that they should have used a decent content management system to sort out the online content from the start. A good one will cost more than the blog software slugger runs on, but not thousands.

Personally I like the open door system - it means content can get out and around the world and kick ass. Newton Emerson's N.O. piece was a case in point. It brought in 32,000 visitors on one day alone on Slugger. Usually we'd have passed most of that on to the Irish Times, but the front door was locked to the casual US/Anglosphere market.

The ad revenue is not yet there, but the Belfast Telegraph site (which was doing nothing online four or five years ago) must be pulling down decent revenues by now.

But it takes time, a modicum of investment though even with Google ads, you can re-coup something along the way.

In the meantime, it would pay all newspapers to note that blogs can be powerful multipliers of content. Not every day. But enough of the time to be taken more seriously than we are.

A decent archive would: 1 make life easier for us; and 2 give us a retrospective choice as to what we think has important.

Of there's more to say, but I think the guys at Teach Basil will have to get the chequebooks out if they're needing some consultancy. ;-)

Of course he is locked in the 17th century - at least in language if not in methodology. I think he knows he has gotten where he is on the basis of preaching a negative message to the Unionist community and that in the current absence of PIRA violence, his party is inventing a new "threat", namely of a non-existent disadvantage his community supposedly face vis-a-vis the Catholics. The fact that Catholics remain twice as likely to be unemployed in NI (rising to 3.5 times among women), with the NI Civil Service being only 25% Catholic and the PSNI 18% Catholic, illustrates that there remains a jobs bias against Catholics in NI. But I guess in the absence of the PIRA, a new bogie-man has to be invented for the DUP to seek votes in the name of "defending" against it...:(

According to Newt, there is some important 'buried' research on the subject of discrimination which apparently demonstrates there's no discernable discrimination in the NI Labour market at all.

" The fact that Catholics remain twice as likely to be unemployed in NI (rising to 3.5 times among women), with the NI Civil Service being only 25% Catholic and the PSNI 18% Catholic"

With the most powerfull anti discrimination in the world (and the incidental fact that a prod can`t get a job as a policeman/woman without the statutory taig tucked under his arm) if differences in employment levels remain, then the problems lie not with discrimination.

Examine the cohorts of the unemployed- what are their skills -how well do these skills match the labour market?
What is the level of economic activity in the country/area?
What levels of employment, at which labour costs will this acxtivity level sustain.?

Areas of high unemployment- are their any specif problems associated with these areas?

GCSE enonomic- not disrimination

"According to Newt, there is some important 'buried' research on the subject of discrimination which apparently demonstrates there's no discernable discrimination in the NI Labour market at all."

Hmmm. Deloitte....are these the people currently in the news in the South for the colossal messup of the introduction of the PPARS computer system inthe health-service? Wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them.