Mick Fealty – Slugger O'Toole

If “Others” have the casting/blocking vote, both nationalism and unionism need to show they are open for development

Mick Fealty on May 31, 2023, 11:10 am | Readers 9035

We're Open

Fintan O’Toole yesterday (or at least his headline writer does) poses a useful question: What if Sinn Féin makes Northern Ireland viable? But to that hypothetical I would add another: What if Northern Ireland already is viable? This is a non trivial consideration. Reform processes have been ongoing for at least two and perhaps three generations (depending on how you count them (in the country where people marry later one generation is thought to be 30 years). There are issues that …

Sinn Féin’s impressive vote harvesting technique shows up as zero gains for the cause of a united Ireland in 25 years.

Mick Fealty on May 26, 2023, 4:33 pm | Readers 7811

Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment. - Evan Hardin

“Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect . . .” -Jonathan Swift Newton Emerson had an intriguing theory in his column yesterday, one I’m not sure can be proven but it fit with a lot of evidence. I never subscribed to the idea that that SF were strategic in their mission, but they are geniuses …

Research request re your experiences of short haul travel within the UK and Ireland

Mick Fealty on May 25, 2023, 11:55 amComments Off | Readers 1072

aircraft, turbine, engine

This is not a story, just a request for help on a particular line of inquiry. If you have had any odd or unsatisfactory experiences on any journey within and between any airport in Britain and Ireland I want to hear from you via [email protected] As such there’s no facility for commenting directly on this thread. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media …

Fianna Fáil’s Michael McGrath lays out proposals for a new Ireland national wealth fund…

Mick Fealty on May 12, 2023, 7:40 am | Readers 3379

glut of money, 500 euro, euro

One of the big issues dogging countries across the western world is how to manage increasing fiscal pressures in a world that has suddenly become highly volatile and subject to multiple economic and socio political shocks. The lunatic Trumpian fringe amongst the US Republicans scant majority is threatening to impose a debt ceiling on government which would reset it to 2022 limits and provide for a one per cent increase each year going forward. Sounds reasonable until you consider this …

Why it’s important to talk about the famine rationally without invoking old hatreds

Mick Fealty on May 3, 2023, 12:34 pm | Readers 4986

a statue of a person standing on top of a hill

I was on Nolan on Monday with Mark Simpson to talk about the famine, Sir Charles Trevelyan and possible reparations. It’s a subject close to my heart, not least because generationally my own great grandfather was 19 in 1845, the onset of the famine. Featured was an interview with Laura Trevelyan, one time BBC journalist and great great granddaughter of the man who, as assistant secretary to the Treasury was responsible for famine relief in Ireland under the Premiership of …

DUP calls the UK government out on its longer term death by a thousand cuts agenda

Mick Fealty on April 27, 2023, 12:30 pm | Readers 5229

scissors, cut, seamstress

One weakness of modern politics in Northern Ireland but also elsewhere is not the unrelenting focus on personality, but the near absence of policy from that debate, in spite of the best efforts of public policy journalists to push the river backwards. The point I made on Nolan (hosted by Mark Simpson) the other day was that threats from the Secretary of State to claw back £300,000 of overspend in the Northern Irish budget should be viewed in the context …

Heaton Harris’s threat may end an Extended School policy that none of the local parties ever seriously owned..

Mick Fealty on April 21, 2023, 1:20 pm | Readers 3960

kids, girl, pencil

I was asked to come on Nolan this morning to comment on a story I might otherwise have missed. It’s part of a bigger play the NIO seems to be using to put added pressure on the DUP to suspend its boycott of the Stormont institutions. In the detail it’s rather telling about just what a free ride our political class has been taking since the re-start of the institutions back in 2007, which sadly, in reality never really survived …

If it does take another 25 years to blow away the stench of 1969 and after, it’ll be worth the wait…

Mick Fealty on April 21, 2023, 7:06 am | Readers 3016

footprints, sand, sea

Sorry I wasn’t able to get to Tuesday’s discussion of the media’s role at the time of the Belfast Agreement, it would have been a pleasure to be back in the company of many audience members with whom I had shared some great moments since that time. Hearing them speak you realise how long and isolating the process of waiting for some or any product was back then. And also how well resourced the media was. Would the modern day …

Mitchell: “Don’t be too hard on yourselves, but don’t give up on the belief you can do better and better…”

Mick Fealty on April 18, 2023, 11:05 am | Readers 3967

At ninety George Mitchell rocked the house yesterday treating his audience to the wisdom, humour and realism no doubt honed over many years in American public life. For today, I’ll stick to his opening remarks (and a recurring theme here of renewal)… On the evening the Agreement was reached I commended the men and women who wrote and signed it. But I also said that it would take other leaders in the future to safeguard and extend their work. And so it has. …

Casement to be rebuilt as part of the joint Irish British bid to host the Euros…

Mick Fealty on April 14, 2023, 9:42 am | Readers 6186

‘There’s no money for it’ says a series of callers to Stephen Nolan’s radio programme, when informed by Stephen that the IFA are confident that the long awaited development at what was for generations the home GAA in Belfast. Before going any further we should pause at this point and let this state of affairs sink in. I don’t mean the absence of Stormont, I mean the IFA, the original representative soccer body on the island until the FAI broke …

Why Stormont cannot be fixed through absence, political inertia or even browbeating the DUP…

Mick Fealty on April 13, 2023, 11:46 am | Readers 8308

man in black shirt standing on green grass field during daytime

…there seemed no ground in front of my feet, only the abyss of star-studded space falling away forever. – David Abrams Asked by Ian Dale the other night on LBC whether the Biden visit would have an effect, I gave him the obvious answer which is that since only the DUP (the current fulcrum around which the fate of the Assembly revolves) can decide, it changes nothing. Aside from political considerations, US Presidential visits are fun especially for the people …

Let’s celebrate the Belfast Agreement’s successes but recognise that Biden’s content free visit also highlights it failings…

Mick Fealty on April 12, 2023, 8:31 am | Readers 4684

shallow focus photography of dragonfly

“What’s the difference between a bug in a program and a misunderstanding?” — Monica Anderson I watched the events of Good Friday 1998 in the old cottage we rented off a local estate in Dorset. My abiding memory though was an audio tape that one of my Irish students brought to the class I ran on Tuesday nights some weeks after the event itself. On one side were programmes he’d taped via satellite of Raidio na Gaeltachta for the class, …

On Ian Paisley the man, the preacher and the demagogue blessed with “a tongue like an old cow…”

Mick Fealty on April 6, 2023, 12:19 pm | Readers 5400

“I have bedimmed The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And ’twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder.” — Prospero, The Tempest So the BBC has finally pulled together a three part documentary on the life of Ian Paisley (Snr). You can find all three episodes of the House of Paisley on the iPlayer here. It’s a tall order to tell an authoritative story of one so complex and controversial. It’s hard to stay between the ditches of hagiography and demonisation of someone who dominated our lives for so long. My own attempt back …

25 challenges for political unionism to build a better (and more successful) “us”…

Mick Fealty on April 5, 2023, 12:35 pm | Readers 7769

eclipse, sun, space

A group calling themselves the Northern Ireland Development Group have published a fascinating document today, which you can find as a PDF here. At the core of it is 25 challenges for political unionism to take build a better future for Northern Ireland. They are, as follows: 1. Emphasise Northern Ireland as a place for all; as a shared home, in shared isles and a shared island, and with a shared (if also divergent) history. Also recognise that the future should …

In their own words: The problematic task of selling the Belfast (or Good Friday) Agreement to a sceptical middle ground

Mick Fealty on March 31, 2023, 3:02 pm | Readers 2764

puzzle, last part, joining together

There will be lots of programmes (by many organisations are, including other parts of the BBC beyond Northern Ireland) on the Belfast Agreement. But David Kerr and Conall McDevitt’s passionate debate on The View (23.04) sets the context well. Each belong to a successor generation to Trimble and Hume respectively and both were intimately familiar with the detail of how the GFA was hammered out and by whom. Both played a key role in actively selling it. Here’s a transcript of …

Northern Ireland’s future prosperity depends on ever closer relationships between Belfast, London and Dublin…

Mick Fealty on March 30, 2023, 11:54 am | Readers 4685

a group of men standing on top of a roof

Finn McRedmond makes a good point today in the Irish Times when she makes the point that the “return of boring politics in Britain is great for Ireland”. It’s a reminder to some in Dublin that populism is not an especially British characteristic. It’s not helpful for maintaining and building upon peace in Northern Ireland either. It’s quite shocking the degree to which it (Northern Ireland) has been left in abeyance. Sunak’s attendance at the British Irish Council was the …

After years of tight top down control SNP members finally get their say over the party’s future…

Mick Fealty on March 27, 2023, 10:23 am | Readers 5348

person holding airplane control panel

Chaos ensues when democratic centralism breaks down. Discuss? The SNP has been a tightly controlled wife (leader) and husband (CEO) affair ever since Nicola Sturgeon took over from Alex Salmond after losing the Scottish independence Referendum in 2014.

As the Westminster door closes, perhaps the DUP’s opportunity has just opened?

Mick Fealty on March 23, 2023, 5:01 pm | Readers 12431

trees, moss, forest

But, as LBJ once famously pointed out, politics is about numbers. Right now not only does Sunak have almost all of his party, he also has the full throated backing Labour, Lib Dems and the SNP meaning the House divided: Ayes 515 to Noes 29.

Survey shows opposition to Windsor Framework dwarfed by positive support and a huge swathe of “Don’t Knows”

Mick Fealty on March 22, 2023, 10:55 am | Readers 8313

view, eyes, insight

Today The Irish News carries the second (and for me the more interesting) part of their survey conducted by the Institute of Irish Studies in Liverpool. The results are not unambiguous in the sense that the Don’t Know and Yes figures are very close. But it does dispense with the popular idea that there is a substantial proportion of the population which is opposed to the Framework… The most useful thing about the surveys we get through the University of …

An anatomy of the success of Irish Rugby: “Spread out, but stick together…”

Mick Fealty on March 21, 2023, 1:16 pm | Readers 7607

Sam McBride’s opening paragraph on Sunday captures something that is both puzzling and miraculous about Ireland’s commanding win over England (forty fifty years after England came to Dublin in the teeth of the worst days of the Troubles): The most remarkable aspect of another thrilling and historic Irish rugby success yesterday was not that an island of seven million people has produced the best team in the world, but that the team represents a country which doesn’t exist. [Emphasis added] …