Society and Culture
“Sinn Féin in my opinion has been slowly sedated…”
In light of Mick’s post, and now Brian’s follow-up, it’s worth noting an Irish News report today of Ballymoney Councillor Anita Cavlan’s resignation from Sinn Féin ”over concerns it is failing prisoners”. From the Irish News report The Ballymoney councillor said she believed Sinn Féin had “lost direction” and “should be doing more to represent the prisoners”. “Sinn Féin [...] more »
L’ (middle-aged) enfant terrible of the UUP given his cards by new party captain…
So the Joey Barton of Ulster politics has been shown a permanent Red Card by Captain Nesbitt, and David McNarry makes his way to the dressing room where (to mix my sporting metaphors for those of you who remember Mike Yarwood or Ed Waring) he’ll take an early bath. It’s ironic, that this most ill-disciplined [...] more »
Containment: Northern Ireland’s major purpose and raison d’être?
Some really interesting ideas in this lecture at the University of Ulster, with Duncan Morrow. It kicks off with a potted history of the origins of the conflict. He describes the public policy response firstly, via the original devolution of parliament to Stormont and latterly in its response to the civil unrest of 1969-1970, under [...] more »
Masterplan for Girdwood: “back to the sectarian drawing board…”
The Northern Ireland First and deputy First Minsters recently announced the second round of funding, £1.5million, available from the Executive and Atlantic Philanthropies’ ‘Contested Spaces’ Programme, although I’m still not entirely clear where the other £2.5million went… The announcement, in the absence of a “Cohesion, Sharing and Integration” strategy, rebranded, and “watered down” to the “lowest commmon denominator“, [...] more »
The Western Mail reverts to an old old type…
The Western Mail, Wales’s National Newspaper, has lost the plot. A front page editorial states: AN EXTRAORDINARY recommendation has been made by eight AMs that would see up to £400,000-a-year spent on translating the written record of every meeting held at the National Assembly into Welsh. We say that at a time when budgets are [...] more »
Euro crisis: “With that we buried the Maastricht Treaty, the legal basis for currency union”
A couple of interesting reports in the Irish Times with relevance to the ongoing euro crisis. First, from Derek Scally in Berlin …Mr Asmussen, a member of the ECB governing council, said growth measures – agreed without reopening the fiscal treaty – could help drive European integration. “The benefits of a currency union are so [...] more »
“I think it might be part of a wider fraud organised by certain political elements…”
The Irish Times reports from Ennis Circuit Court where a 33-year-old sub-contractor has been jailed for six years, with the final year suspended, after a jury convicted him of a €680,000 VAT fraud between January 2001 and October 2003. From the Irish Times report Retired Revenue official Michael Downey said yesterday an estimated €15 million went through [...] more »
Review: “Be outraged; there are alternatives…”
It was only four years ago that John Maynard Keynes, for so long deeply unfashionable amongst those with serious economic and political clout, seemed to be making a comeback. As recession loomed, ‘stimulus’ was the word on every politician’s lips. What worked for Roosevelt in the thirties should work for us now, albeit with only [...] more »
“The boom years were the dream. Hard work and tighter belts are the new reality.”
Jolly little thought via Gerard O’Neill: For decades workers, faced with exploding global competition, were compensated by governments with cheap goods, early retirement and welfare on credit: a dream of affluence for life to replace jobs for life. Now the competition is as intense as ever, societies are ageing and their nations are poorer than [...] more »
Dublin stories: Under the Why Go Bald Sign…
“But I was impecunious and with her could not agree…” Via Broadsheet.ie more »
Fisk reminisces.
From the Independent: You can check in any time you want – but you can never leave.: On the Europa Hotel’s message pads, my handwriting records “2 sold VSI RVH” (two soldiers very seriously ill Royal Victoria Hospital), “bomb in SR and VS St” (Sandy Row and Great Victoria Street railway station), “son of judge [...] more »
#EUREF: Real political price of the Treaty is “shift from community to union”…
Very good piece in the Irish Times today by John O’Brennan of NUI Maynooth, on the scale and dimensions of the democratic deficit that attaches to the Fiscal Compact… In effect he argues that it will dramatically sideline European Commission where smaller countries like Ireland can at least broker some national influence on the EU: [...] more »
Belfast Black Taxi Tour – political insight or Troubles tourism?
A black taxi tour of Belfast? Chris Jenkins raised questions about the morality of troubles tourism in a recent Guardian Unlimited article. Matthew Symington followed up with an extended interview on Eamonnmallie.com in which Chris again challenged the trend of “money being made from human tragedy” and the DUP’s switch from opposing a “shrine” at [...] more »
Education Minister refuses to provide colleagues with a breakdown of £2 Billion of funding for schools…
So there’s been a little addendum to the sudden, and last minute, reappearance of £72 million in funding in the Department of Education just before the minister was expected to explain his spending patterns to the Finance Minister. It seems the Finance Minister is not best pleased [Ahem, well we did suggest he mightn't be [...] more »
History like you’ve never seen it before….
Drunk History vol. 6 w/ John C. Reilly & Crispin Glover from Drunk History Great history telling schtick, one of a series of five… more »
Sectarianism in Northern Ireland is common (and popular) across all classes…
Alex Kane has a marvellous take on the Golf Club issue that blew up last week… He argues that Jonathan Bell’s only mistake was to single out golf clubs as singular offenders, and that the DUP should not have backed down… But then he gives the argument a gentle twist: If you’re looking for evidence [...] more »
Euro crisis: “the quadriga is a perfect symbol of how confused and contested that project has become”
Tim Garton Ash asked, “Who wishes to address the assembly?“. Will Self has a point of view on the euro crisis and the European Project’s democratic deficit. You can listen to his Radio 4 Point of View here. From the accompanying BBC Magazine article That these same politicians were afflicted by a strange sort of [...] more »
Stormont not so keen on transparency or the FOI Act…
I think the significance of this News Letter story is the Stormont administration’s attitude to transparency and openness, especially, but not solely, with regard to ‘awkward questions’ from the public. The information being sought was the details of Sinn Fein appointed ministerial drivers. But, for me, this is core of the issue: DFP claimed in [...] more »
Euro crisis: When “earth’s proud empires pass away”…
Andrew Roberts in the FT with a little touch of cold realism on the Euro crisis. He also picks out the underlying political and economic problem here, and advises the EU to prepare for a big bang he argues springs from a federalist overreach of the original Treaty of Rome that never fitted such an [...] more »
New media, Libya and the shift in politics now civilians have “rushed the field”…
There was an interesting conversation between Noel Thompson and Jonathan Chavez on Hearts and Minds last night, regarding how new media is changing politics… Well earlier in the week, I’d been conducting my own series of interviews with John Pollock who is contributing editor to MIT’s Technology Review… His latest work looks for a feel [...] more »
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Total Politics: Top 20 NI Blogs…
Fair play to Iain, he managed to get over 2,200 people voting in his poll for the top Northern Irish blogs this year… We (just, I imagine) retained our top spot, with Splintered coming straight in at number 2, no doubt his pet subject du jour will have garnered him a lot of fans… I’ve [...] read our review »
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Debating the Churches’ Role in the Peace in Northern Ireland
This morning’s Sunday Sequence featured a substantial debate (about 35 minutes into the recorded programme) on a new book,Religion, Civil Society and Peace in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press 2011), written by sociologists John Brewer, Gareth Higgins and Francis Teeney. The debate was framed in an opening vignette by presenter William Crawley in uncompromising terms, [...] read our review » -
“It was a trivial problem that… occurs every year”
Just your average family gathering at Christmas, with a bit of an argument about the seating cleaning arrangements… Scuffles have broken out between rival groups of Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics over a turf war in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. Bemused tourists looked on as about 100 priests fought with brooms while cleaning the [...] read our review »
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