Our View: You Have A Voice, Make Sure It’s Heard Tomorrow

DECISION TIME: It’s not often on this site that we feel the need to put up an editorial view. Generally because the editorial team on this site have diverse political views and even if we tried it would be difficult for any consensus to last longer than five minutes, today is an exception however.

Today’s Front Pages – Tuesday

              Still not decided on this feature. It will necessarily be a little out of time this week since Mick is out and about without a computer to his name in Belfast and Dublin. But We’ll consider its value by the end of the week. If we do decide go with it, then we’ll set a regular time for it each day. adminA slightly inhuman presence that bans bad comments and works late at night to …

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Today’s Front Pages – Monday

                This is a bit of an experiment to see what you think of this round up of front pages. Let us know whether you think we should do this on a daily basis below, or indeed if you have a regional paper you would like us to include. adminA slightly inhuman presence that bans bad comments and works late at night to remove the wrinkles in Slugger’s technical carpet. You will need to …

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It’s Micheál!

As widely expected, Micheál Martin T.D. has been elected as the 8th Leader of Fianna Fáil. The Finance Bill Committee Stage continues in the Dáil. adminA slightly inhuman presence that bans bad comments and works late at night to remove the wrinkles in Slugger’s technical carpet. You will need to know about the comments policy to stay off the fightin’ side of me and there is a bit of background about me here. You can email me using this spam-proof …

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Coming for breakfast on Thursday?

Just a quick reminder; There are still tickets left for the Slugger / Stratagem big breakfast next Thursday at the Europa. We’re there to go over the nominations for the Slugger Awards including the Thinker & explainer / Investigative journalist / Challenging your own community threads that have been running over the last few days (the original nomination thread is here). There will be more of these over the coming days. (Update: A ‘building trust and credibility in politics‘ award thread has …

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‘Freddie’ quits the UUP to sit by the phone

Further to Mick’s post last week, it seems that Harry doesn’t regard his end-of-the-line with the UUP as the end of his political ambitions: From the Beeb: “Harry Hamilton, a well-known Freddie Mercury impersonator, polled more than 10,500 votes in Upper Bann in the general election. However, he was rejected as a candidate for next year’s assembly elections. Mr Hamilton said he was keeping “an open mind” about the future but would be open to an approach from the Alliance …

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Bank of Ireland – Government takes a majority stake

… according to Reuters anyway and coming after a long plunge in today’s trading and a decision to hold a firesale of the family silver. They’re stopping short of full nationalisation though. It’s casting fresh doubt on the credibility of the stress-testing that both the Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Bank went through in July. Not much more detail than that available at the moment, but we’ll keep you posted. adminA slightly inhuman presence that bans bad comments and works …

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Cowen Statement (in case you missed it)

Via Maman Poulet: Brian Cowen’s statement 22/11/010 from maman poulet on Vimeo. adminA slightly inhuman presence that bans bad comments and works late at night to remove the wrinkles in Slugger’s technical carpet. You will need to know about the comments policy to stay off the fightin’ side of me and there is a bit of background about me here. You can email me using this spam-proof link if you really need to, and Slugger is @sluggerotoole on Twitter. But …

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The new comments system is here

We’ve just added our new comments system to the site. Have a look? The thinking behind it can be seen on this post from a few months ago. It will help us do the following things: Help readers find the best comments quickly. We often have 100+ comments on a thread. You will now be able to highlight the points that you agree with and that you think are original or well-made points. See who you regularly agree / disagree …

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See you later?

Don’t forget, the Great Big Politics Pub Quiz is on tonight at The Black Box. Online ticket sales have ended but you can pay on the door.  The throw-in is at 7.45 but the doors are open at 7.30pm. Don’t be late – we won’t wait for you…. A few points to bear in mind: Tonight, everyone realise that you are as clever as you’ve been saying you are for a while now There are prizes. Actually, there are lots …

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Great Big Politics Pub Quiz – prizes update & reassurance that you don’t have to attend with a fully formed table

Politicos! We feel your pain. We know that you’re desperate to go to The Great Big Politics Pub Quiz, but you’re cursed with normal friends who would rather dip a tender extremity in acid than go and get bamboozled by questions about The East Lothian Question*. Do not despair. You can still join the fun even if all your friends are ‘normal’. Individuals coming along on Monday night (25 October) won’t be left without a team. Your name will be …

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Time to send your own message to the media

We’ve doing The Slugger Awards very differently this year. Instead of having rigid ‘Journalist of the Year’ / ‘MLA of the Year’ type awards, we’re asking everyone who reads this blog to tell us what they want politicians / the media / public bodies to do more of. Once we know what behaviour you want to reward, we can work out who to give the awards to. Mick started the ball rolling asking everyone to finish the sentence “Politics would …

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Slugger’s site moderation

Just a quick reminder: Slugger has a comments policy. Personal insults, smears and rudeness are not supposed to be tolerated here and we try to stay on top of this with the ‘delete’ key as much as we can. Normally, Mick picks up a lot of this kind of thing, applying his patience and charm (virtues that not all of us are blessed with). But Mick’s away at the moment and not able to get involved. We know that a …

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More brain-stretchers

It’s Friday! It’s 3.30pm! It’s Poets Day. You’ve only got another 90 mins of Looking Busy to get through! The boss is probably going to be ‘off to a meeting’ shortly anyway, but in the meantime, here’s a few more samples of the kind of questions we’ll be asking you at the Great BIG Politics Pub Quiz, scheduled for Monday 25 October in the Black Box. NB. We will not be asking these actual questions just in case there are any …

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Chilean miners rescue: Liveblog

Slugger readers will be familiar with CoverItLive. Channel Four have a live news stream and liveblog of the Chilean miners rescue here. There are rumours that a couple of the miners are very annoyed with themselves because they forgot to clock-in at the start of their last shift…. adminA slightly inhuman presence that bans bad comments and works late at night to remove the wrinkles in Slugger’s technical carpet. You will need to know about the comments policy to stay off the …

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Politics quiz time

In what year did Jeffrey Donaldson and Arlene Foster join the DUP? Appointed in 1721, who was Britain’s first Prime Minister? Name the President of China. How many members (TDs) of Dail Éireann are there? Name the creator of US TV show The West Wing. To the nearest hundred votes, what was Naomi Long’s margin of victory in the 2010 Westminster election? Which two men were awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 1993? Which Belfast street was the birthplace of …

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Diaries out! Come to the Great Big Politics Pub Quiz

Test your political knowledge at the inaugural Great BIG Politics Pub Quiz on the 25th October (7.45pm onwards at The Black Box in Belfast). Tickets are available online – price £5.00 + Eventbrite’s booking fee. Supported by Slugger O’Toole and Stratagem and raising money to build homes in Haiti. Whether green, orange, red, blue or some other point on the political spectrum, it’s time to put your political know-how to the test and find out who knows most about the …

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Foreign news and conjuring with the circulation figures

Even though news graphics often provide newspaper readers with more vivid versions of news events than  mere words can sometimes offer, enthusiasm sometimes takes the place of accuracy, or consistency, as in the case of the Chilean mine story, which broke in the papers generally on 23rd August, a fortnight after the shaft collapse which buried 33 miners alive. All the newspapers agreed on many basic details, with one exception: where exactly did the collapse take place that entombed the miners? The Irish Daily …

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Three officers shot during Belfast rioting

From the BBC: “A total of 27 officers were injured during disturbances – 14 in the New Lodge area of north Belfast and 13 at Broadway in west Belfast. About 200 people threw petrol bombs, stones and bottles at police during trouble in the Broadway area. The trouble began at about 2345 BST on Sunday. Police used water canon and fired baton rounds. At least one car was hijacked and set alight” adminA slightly inhuman presence that bans bad comments …

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