Britain
Boomers’ memories of the Great
Ian Jack has a fine nostalgia piece in the Guardian – no, better than that, a piece about the collective memory of passing generations – linking the not altogether compatible elements of the Dickens bicentenary to the monarchy. The link he made was not with Empire or English images of national virtue so often disputed [...] more »
What is Britishness anyway? – latest
Stephen Moss in the Guardian adopts the least analytical approach imaginable to the identity thing, a random journey. It’s like an intro to a report that that doesn’t actually appear. A bit like Britishness itself maybe? Quite unlike our own passions. Might uncertainty and toleration be its saving graces? As I stood in freezing temperatures [...] more »
Referendum demands may be catching
In that interview trailed by Pete below, the Examiner itself highlights the DPM’s soft voiced approach to an early referendum on unity. Have Alex Salmond’s tactics found their Irish imitator? The deputy first minister believes the Democratic Unionist Party can be persuaded to agree to such a dramatic move. more »
Maybe the referendum question is not so simple
I may have spoken too soon about the clarity of Alex Salmond’s preferred referendum question : do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country? The Today programme took the trouble to ask a professor in Arizona who had never heard of Big Eck if the wording was fair. Sure, it was completely loaded [...] more »
‘Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?’
Well, the essential question proposed by Alex Salmond in his consultation paper is surely good enough to satisfy the UK government’s requirement for a clear question on independence. That’s one stumbling block out of the way, I reckon. But Westminster ‘s rival paper is clearly opposed to a second question on anything like devo max. These [...] more »
Next steps towards a Scottish referendum
Make of the Sunday Telegraph ICM poll what you will. 43% of English voters approve of Scottish independence at this particular moment, but only ( only!) 40% of Scots. Of the three potential questions 26% of Scots voters prefer independence, 26% more tax and spending powers and 37% the status quo. How did we get [...] more »
The Scottish independence debate: the complexities start to emerge
Professor John Curtice explains the complexities surrounding the referendum questions on the Today programme. Assume two ballot papers, one on devo max, the other on independence. If you look at some opinion polls, as many as 75% -80% might vote for devo max. Let’s say fewer, say, 51% vote for independence. Which would win? The Nats [...] more »
Irish emigration – most to go Britain
I’m probably lagging behind on this so apologies if you’re au fait but I’ve just caught up with the Irish( republic) emigrant figures for the last year - 76, 400 to end of April 2011, up 17%, according to the Irish Times report. I decided to search for them as most of the news stories [...] more »
Unionist forces begin to muster
So it’s game on for the early rounds of the referendum campaign. The Westminster government says Alex Salmond can have a binding referendum provided he sticks to a Yes, No question on independence. No fudging over devo max. The UK parties are uniting to save the Union, although the others would like Cameron and the Tories [...] more »
A constitutional crisis over a Scottish referendum?
Just how serious is the new stand-off between Westminster and Holyrood over a referendum on Scottish independence? I take the view that it’s largely shadow boxing. The two governments will do a deal in the end, even though there’s quite a way to go before it’s clinched. Many believe Cameron boobed badly yesterday by trying [...] more »
David Cameron boardroom pay and putdowns
The coverage of David Cameron’s views on any Scottish independence referendum have been analysed in detail. Those comments did rather eclipse the coverage of his interview with the Sunday Telegraph. The Telegraph is obviously the most pro Tory of the broadsheets but they do seem to be even more sympathetic than usual in their coverage [...] more »
Only a fool would call the Scottish independence referendum at this distance
“Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled – Scots, wham Bruce has aften led – Welcome to your gory bed. Or to victorie!” Punditry is not an art that suits the modest. Anyone asking people to take time and trouble to read their writing, let alone expecting them to pay for the privilege, is usually best [...] more »
David Cameron has transformed the SNP’s long game of Scottish independence into a penalty shootout
David Cameron has hugely raised the stakes over Scottish independence by planning to give the Scottish Parliament legal powers to hold a binding referendum, provided it takes place within a tighter time frame than that envisaged by the SNP government. See the chess analysis by the doyen of Scots commentators Magnus Linklater [...] more »
What have the Elizabethans ever done for us?
If you still aren’t sure how to spend that Christmas book token, then AN Wilson’s “The Elizabethans” is a good candidate. This is a magisterial survey by the leading novelist, scholar and reviewer of the political literary and intellectual experience of a “glory age”, whose legacy in shaping modern Britain has only just come to an [...] more »
Spare us a phoney row about racism, we’ve got enough on
A silly media row about racism just had to figure in the riots’ post mortem. Was the Tudor history expert David Starkey racist on Newsnight when he said: The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in [...] more »
It’s now about police v politicians
A dust storm is blowing up over the riots but not entirely along conventional party lines. It’s much more like a stand-off between the police and politicians. With the police taking a second political battering in almost as many weeks, you’d have thought they’d be bound to emerge as losers. They still might, if the [...] more »
Northern Ireland has lessons on police governance for England
David Cameron was very lucky he wasn’t addressing the recalled Commons after a fourth night of serious violence. But government fortunes still greatly depend on what happens now on English streets. MPs were able to unite around the quickly accepted wisdom that the police went in too lightly for at least two nights, without making a [...] more »
Cool hand Hugh
What game is Hugh Orde playing, other than that of the cool statesmanlike top policeman who has got the best grip of any police chief on the rioting since it went nationwide? One day, he’s popping up on TV to tell us how he’s fixing the deployment of outside forces into London, the next day he’s rejecting media [...] more »
Can we find the tipping point when protest becomes riot?
When some people have a serious grievance like an alleged (don’t foreget that ”alleged”) wrongful fatal shooting, they rise up in their just wrath and – trash the place. A hideous non sequitur to you and me, a “protest” to many in places where we don’t live. 30 years ago I covered the Brixton riots which [...] more »
Freudian connections
The celebrated portrait painter Lucian Freud who has just died had his Ulster connections, having once been married to the beautiful minor novelist and aristocrat Caroline Blackwood, one of the Guinnesses who was ( barely) educated at Rockport school near Holywood. (Did she trot over from Clandeboye I wonder?). But far more interesting than [...] more »
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Books
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The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday (Neil MacFarquhar)
With perhaps the longest title of any book I’ve read this year, The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East gives an insight into the lives of people living in Middle East through the eyes of journalist Neil MacFarquhar. MacFarquhar’s father was a chemical engineer [...] read our review »
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Eamon Nancarrow’s misadventures in Rock…
It’s the quiet ones you have to watch, they say. When I last saw Eamonn Namcarrow, back in the mid 1980s he was a congenial, good-natured and highly sociable young lad. The next time was 26 years later, in Lavery’s Gin Palace in Bradbury Place. He’d just brought out his first book, Holywood Star about [...] read our review »
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Turas, by Colin Neill – a story of strangers in a strange land
Colin Neill’s first novel Turas peeks into a world in which many Ulster Protestants feel uncomfortable. It’s 2020 and the Irish unification that unionists and loyalists confidently predicted would never happen has become a reality. President Adams is ensconced in Phoenix Park. The newsreader reported that … a short ceremony at Stormont had confirmed the [...] read our review »
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