Government – Slugger O'Toole

The destructive use of dismissive language in politics…

Ian Clarke on November 28, 2023, 8:01 am | Readers 4638

neon light mounted on white surface

Two things coincided this week that led to this piece. The first was Thursday’s violence in Dublin. The second is the fact I’m about two thirds through Graham Linehan’s autobiography in which he details his fall from grace and into career isolation following his emergence as a critic of transgender ideology. Two very distinct issues but they had one thing in common, the use of language as a basis for avoiding debate of the issues underpinning both. Arnold Carton touched …

Horrific assault and the riots that followed indicate huge problems Irish politics cannot continue to ignore

Mick Fealty on November 24, 2023, 10:21 am | Readers 5244

waterfall, victoria falls, spray

Some additional thoughts to Brian’s round up last night on the first widespread rioting in Dublin since the reaction to the Love Ulster Parade that took place roughly the same quarter back in 2005. In a hastily written oped in The Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole rightly identifies this as a “testing moment” for the Republic, but he risks erring towards disowning the problem when he simply argues that the Irish people are “better than this”. Whilst I agree with the …

Learning to listen – the Thirty Project

Paul Gosling on November 21, 2023, 9:03 am | Readers 418

There is immense frustration across Northern Ireland’s community sector that the Civic Forum collapsed in 2002 and was not replaced. Demands are increasing for citizens’ assemblies, or similar, to provide an alternative voice to that of politicians, especially in the absence of the Assembly and Executive. Avila Kilmurray was a founder of the Women’s Coalition which led demands for the Civic Forum as part of the Good Friday Agreement negotiations. Avila makes the point that it was also the Women’s …

Farming in transition

Paul Gosling on November 6, 2023, 9:03 am | Readers 1885

Agriculture is worth around £1.7bn to the Northern Ireland economy, 4% of total economic activity, according to figures published by the Department for the Economy. This compares to farming comprising just 1% of the UK economy – so farming is worth four times more to our economy, proportionately, than to the rest of the UK. But it is a sector that is in transition and worried. Post-Brexit trade deals agreed by the UK with major agricultural economies Australia, New Zealand …

The other waiting list crisis

Paul Gosling on October 23, 2023, 9:03 am | Readers 2634

When waiting lists are discussed and shouted about in Northern Ireland, we are usually talking about our disintegrating healthcare system. But there is a second waiting list crisis – that of households seeking social housing. As at March of last year, there were 44,426 applicants on the social housing waiting list. Of these, over 10,000 were regarded as homeless and more than 31,000 were in housing stress. Nor is the situation improving. There was a 20% jump in applicants for …

The opportunity grown up Unionism needs to grasp…

Ian Clarke on October 20, 2023, 8:39 am | Readers 13523

I submitted this article six months ago and three or four weeks after the announcement of the Windsor Framework. The essence of it – from an unapologetically pro-union perspective – was that Jeffrey Donaldson had stalled very quickly in his efforts to present the gains of the Windsor Declaration as something to be built on by his party and by unionism in general to enable the return of Stormont to stabilise things at least psychologically and allow unionism to present …

Equalising rail fares – balancing the books but at what cost?

Andy Boal on October 19, 2023, 7:50 pm | Readers 1840

Once upon a long ago – I think way back in the 1990s – I looked at the fares from Belfast Central to every station on the network. In those days, the Great Northern branch line from Knockmore to Antrim was still open, and I found a few surprises. Chiefly, that Bangor, 13 miles from Belfast Central, had the same fare as Whitehead (15 miles away) and Crumlin (a lot further). Granted, Crumlin had an unusual fare because the fare …

GRACE: measuring trust for better community relations

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on October 17, 2023, 11:52 am | Readers 527

On the International Day of Peace, as part of Good Relations Week, research undertaken through a partnership between the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (Coventry University) and Community Relations in Schools (CRIS) was launched. The research examines the role of trust-building in school-based reconciliation initiatives: “Trust, while taken for granted as important, has not been deeply unpacked or examined to better understand its more particular role in facilitating a move towards reconciliation,” declared the organisers, and the panel …

30 free hours of childcare sounds good, but doesn’t fully deliver

Soapbox on October 16, 2023, 4:01 pm | Readers 1130

Kate Nicholl is the Alliance Party MLA for South Belfast With many people’s childcare bills outstripping mortgage costs, parents and carers struggling with the strain of juggling careers and childcare, and providers struggling to keep their doors open, you don’t need to look far to see the impact of crippling childcare costs on our children, parents and carers, our economy, and wider society. The lack of affordable childcare in Northern Ireland was at the heart of my decision to run …

Hamster wheel of demographic politics #3: ‘if it seems too good to be true, it probably is’.

Mick Fealty on October 12, 2023, 7:11 am | Readers 5754

transportation system, bus, car

So, part three of my analysis of the Coulter et al paper. The thing about rigorous political analysis that’s rooted in robust data (and sets don’t come much more robust than the Census) is how it reveals what common or garden journalism routinely misses. We have seen how the Catholic population seems to have reached its zenith, well short of the fabled 50%+1. And a rise (overall) in those describing themselves as Irish and Northern Irish and a fall in …

‘Building anew’: sharing lessons of transition in Germany and Ireland

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on October 10, 2023, 11:50 am | Readers 3384

A conference to mark Germany Unity Day was held at the Royal Irish Academy, co-hosted by ARINS (Analysing and Researching Ireland, North and South), Maynooth University, and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Dublin. Two panel discussions explored practical matters of transition in Germany while being alert to and making attempts to avoid and/or counter societal polarisation in any transformation process. The German Ambassador to Ireland, Cord Meier-Klodt, said that for him the focus of the day’s …

A tale of one city and two regeneration sites

Paul Gosling on October 9, 2023, 9:22 am | Readers 3729

Derry is a frustrated city. Too often promises of improvement either come to nothing, or happen too slowly. Anyone who doubts this can consider the regeneration of two major development sites – Ebrington and Fort George. One is now partially occupied, the other largely vacant. This is two decades after the fanfare of their transfer from the Ministry of Defence for the benefit of the city. The former Ebrington Barracks, also known at one time as HMS Sea Eagle, were …

Lost Boys: Belfast’s Missing Children

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on September 28, 2023, 3:50 pm | Readers 3746

Tonight sees the premiere in Belfast of a new film Lost Boys: Belfast’s Missing Children which throws a spotlight back onto a series of unsolved disappearances during the Troubles nearly 50 years ago. Two boys, described as having learning difficulties, were last seen waiting on the Falls Road to catch a bus to school in November 1974. Thomas Spence and John Rodgers vanished. To date, they haven’t been traced, alive or dead. There was certainly a lot going on in …

Good Relations Week

Paul Gosling on September 25, 2023, 9:03 am | Readers 1245

Last week was Good Relations Week, the annual Community Relations Council event that aims to build relationships between people of different backgrounds in Northern Ireland, including across the traditional Catholic and Protestant divisions and also people of differing ethnicities. You might say this remains work in progress, which is not the fault of the CRC. Northern Ireland remains a toxically divided society – exemplified, and arguably amplified, by the inability of the two largest parties of the two largest communities …

Why do we still have ‘peace walls’?

Paul Gosling on September 11, 2023, 9:02 am | Readers 2340

Why, a quarter of a century after the Good Friday Agreement, do we still have peace walls and interface barriers? The truth, of course, is that the peace deal ended the conflict, but failed to end division and embed reconciliation. Murdered journalist Lyra McKee famously wrote that more ‘peace walls’ have gone up since the GFA than have come down. This is despite a strategy from the The Executive Office containing the target to remove them all by 2023. Yet …

I simply will not allow Northern Ireland to become, or be viewed, as a failed part of the United Kingdom

Soapbox on September 10, 2023, 10:30 am | Readers 19942

Doug Beattie is the Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party As we move into the second week of September and Westminster have a week under their belt, following recess, the problems facing Northern Ireland mount. Education is facing major problems, our health and social care lurches from crisis to crisis and the Police Service of Northern Ireland is in turmoil. Politicians must take their fair share of responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in. In just one month the …

LA vs Belfast: How do you move forward in a divided city? (Tuesday 12 September) #imaginebelfast

Soapbox on September 7, 2023, 8:59 am | Readers 551

poster for Imagine Belfast event about Los Angeles vs Belfast: How Do you move forward in a divided city?

Imagine! Belfast Festival are hosting a free transatlantic hybrid event from 8pm on Tuesday (12 September) asking what if anything can Belfast and Los Angeles learn from each other, and from the world, about how to find reconciliation and achieve cooperative governance?

Connecting the North West

Paul Gosling on August 14, 2023, 9:02 am | Readers 4766

Derry and Donegal are not only marginalised by their geographic position on the periphery of the island of Ireland, but they are also very badly served by the transport infrastructure. They are not alone in this: there are similar complaints from Sligo, Fermanagh and elsewhere in the West. After a long campaign, parts of the A6 road between Derry and Belfast have been upgraded – though it is still not a dual carriageway between Dungiven and Castledawson. It was back …

WATCH: Is Better Possible? Prof Jon Tonge’s assessment of GFA legacy and his ideas for reform #JHISS23

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on July 31, 2023, 6:56 pm | Readers 1965

Jon Tonge being filmed speaking at the 2023 John Hewitt Summer School in Armagh

As well as joining the panel in Slugger’s The State of Us discussion at last week’s John Hewitt International Summer School in Armagh, Professor Jon Tonge delivered a talk asking ‘Is Better Possible?’ at this point in Northern Ireland’s history, 25 years on from the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. He looked at some of the positive statistics as well as the more negative ones around the institutional uptime. He compared the local situation with other countries enjoying consociational government, and looked …

Flaming July – the evidence is clear that climate change is happening…

Paul Gosling on July 31, 2023, 11:01 am | Readers 1797

trees on fire

Only the most devoted conspiracy theorist could deny climate change given the devastating events of recent weeks. Spring was marked by deadly fires in Canada, terrible floods in Northern Italy and even an unfamiliar heatwave in Northern Ireland. Now things have got even more deadly, with awful new fire outbreaks in Greece, Italy Algeria and Tunisia. And a severe worsening of ice melting in the Antarctic. Meanwhile, the drought and loss of agricultural land in the Horn of Africa is …