What now for legacy?

The widely opposed Legacy Bill is now enacted as the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act, 2023. But it remains widely hated and the Irish government has launched inter-state proceedings against the UK administration. This is a clear and strong sign of how bad relations are between the two governments that are co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement. Out of what we can now call the Legacy Act comes the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery. While this …

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The DUP’s actual problem is everybody’s actual problem?

To answer my own rhetorical question, it is simply because they cannot bear to be in government (because it loses them votes, rather than grows them). For most of their fifty plus years they were oppositionist. The elder Paisley he made a good fist of at least looking like they enjoyed the trappings of power. But according to insiders at the time, although the atmosphere was good, nothing was getting done. Back in 2008, I gave a presentation in NICVA …

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The Hope of Possibility

My Dad died two days before Christmas. I was on my way up to see him when I got a missed call and a text from my brother telling me he’d passed away. He had pancreatic cancer. The time between diagnosis and death is often short. Before you’ve had time to wrap your head around the fact that your loved one is ill, they are gone.  The shock of the loss is as sharp and painful as the grief. How …

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[Long Read] Next Irish Election will test whether what a government does makes a difference

In 2024 four billion people go to the polls: about half the population of the planet. In the US, poll watchers predict a Trump win in a campaign where he may spend more time in court than on the stump. In the early 1930s, Will Rogers, a lifelong Democrat joked that the reason Republicans nearly always won the Whitehouse back then was that they had a habit of having three bad years followed by one good one. The good year …

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Gerry Kelly libel case: “The abuse of process in this case is so blatant that it would be utterly unjust if the court were to allow the proceedings to continue.”

justice, statue, lady justice

As the BBC report, Belfast High Court has thrown out a libel case brought by Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly against freelance journalist Malachi O’Doherty, describing it as “scandalous, frivolous and vexatious”. As the Irish Times report notes In a decision published on Monday, The Master of Belfast High Court, Evan Bell, also struck out Mr Kelly’s defamation action on the basis that “the proceedings are an abuse of process”, that it “has no realistic prospect of success”, and that …

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The end of free GP access in Northern Ireland is in sight

A couple of years back, I was chatting to a friend of a friend who is a GP. Like, I suspect, most of us, I had (and still have) a fairly limited understanding of the nuts and bolts of how healthcare is actually provided in Northern Ireland, and he spent a bit of time explaining it to me. I was quite surprised to discover, for example, that GP surgeries are actually private businesses. They’re almost exclusively organised as partnerships, a …

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Fix climate change and congestion with better buses

A recent job change, for me, led to a minor conundrum associated with the loss of a free city centre parking space. I could either continue to drive to work and pay for all day parking (£7 is the lowest price I’m aware of) or I could use the bus. I opted for the bus.  The Antrim Road area, where I live, is quite well served by the Metro 1 route. Using the “Belfast Bus Tracker” third party app (App …

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In praise of… Moderation

These two random gentlemen randomly beseeched me to take this random photograph. I randomly obliged.

I know I promised I’d shut up for the rest of the year, but after I finished yesterday’s round up I realised I’d forgotten to thank probably the most important members of Slugger online, ie the moderators. Thanks to Brian the team has expanded considerably over the last year which has spread the burden of keeping the conversations here both convivial and (largely) on topic. They’re an amazing bunch. The job they do cannot be underestimated. Almost every online conversation …

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A brief coffee time review of 2023, before the return of real politics in 2024?

red kerosene lantern

In a year in which we seem to have gone from Storm Ciarán to Storm Pia in the blink of an eye, the changeable weather elsewhere barely seems to have touched the deadlock of NI politics. In a February edition of The Irish News there’s an editorial that reads, Moment of truth nearing or Donaldson, just ahead of the announcement of the Windsor Framework [Was that this year? – Ed]. By any measure that moment of truth is still to …

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Can ‘cradle to the grave Unionism’ live with being a little less British?

Quaint river town

“My grandfather was a Unionist; my father was a Unionist. I was born a Unionist and I will die a Unionist”. In similar mode, DUP MP Carla Lockhart speaking at the 2023 Party Conference referred to having grown up in a ‘Paisley-ite family’ and still wearing the term ‘with pride.’ Passionate assertions like this are indicative of ‘cradle to the grave protestant Unionism’; encrusted by conflict and a sense of betrayal. Electoral fodder with gravitational pull for political ambition, it …

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As another “deadline” goes whooshing past, NI continues to choke on its indigestible form of consociationalism

beach, sea, sunset

I’m not sure where the northern press pack got its briefing that the DUP might come out and back the deal it has long been negotiating with the UK administration, but it looks like that call is wrong yet again. Few, it seems, have understood the motivations of the DUP in regard to what it will take to persuade them to re-shoulder their local responsibilities and enable all parties go back into office. The UK government has already met some …

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Is Jeffrey ready to hit his home run?

This is the fourth piece I’ve submitted to Slugger in 2023 on the challenges facing Sir Jeffrey Donaldson in getting his party back into government in Stormont. The essence of the previous 3 was that Jeffrey needed to face down the old (literally and figuratively) Paisleyite rump of his party by claiming victory from his negotiations with HMG and using that claimed victory to lead a realignment of mainstream unionism into something currently lapsed voters can embrace. It certainly hasn’t …

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‘A floating process’: drafting the Downing Street Declaration

The thirtieth anniversary of the Downing Street Declaration was marked by a panel discussion organised by ARINS (Analysing and Researching Ireland, North and South) and held at the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) in Dublin. RIA member Professor Katy Hayward chaired the conversation with Professor Ian McBride, Seán O’Huiginn, and Sir Jonathan Stephens. The event was in support of the Quill Projects at Pembroke College, Oxford; Writing Peace is bringing together archives, private papers, and oral histories from across the political …

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Tackling isolation

Isolation and loneliness amongst older people are serious problems that worsened during the pandemic. While people are living longer, often this involves one partner surviving the other. Sometimes the result can be not only unhappiness, but also additional pressures on GPs and hospitals, as the person has nowhere else to turn. Loneliness has such far-reaching consequences that the health impact is comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, according to one study, and is associated with an increased …

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Getting beyond pitchforks, or the Republic of Ireland has changed, and changed utterly…

american gothic, grant wood, painting

David Moane is retired, in his sixties, and has lived in Dublin most of my life. He’s an avid consumer of Irish and British media and writes in a purely personal capacity about how the Republic has changed in his lifetime. I remember our accession to the EEC in 1973, the long terrible saga of the Northern Ireland (NI) conflict, the turbulent 1980s, the Celtic tiger years (c1995 to 2010), the Crash years (2010-15) and since then the remarkable recovery. …

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The domestic violence crisis

face, eyes, abuse

Women in Northern Ireland are twice as likely to be murdered as a result of domestic violence than in the other UK nations. In some years, almost half of Northern Ireland murders are connected to domestic violence. In the 2022/23 year, of 17 homicides there were eight that resulted from domestic violence against women. Northern Ireland is also an outlier in international terms. While Finland has the highest rate of femicide by a partner, Northern Ireland is joint second with …

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“Two buckets are easier carried than one, I stand in between…”

bucket, metal, water bucket

“We’re not Brazil, we’re Northern Ireland!” chant the Northern Ireland football fans, highlighting that in that context they are also distinct from Scotland, England, Wales and the Republic of Ireland. So, begs the question, who are we as a people that share our part of these islands called Northern Ireland? A good place to start is found in the words of the Ulster poet, John Hewitt in a debate in the Irish Times on the 4th of July 1974, (The …

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“Head up, shoulders back and unclench your fists. Look out and look up.”*

flame, lighter, light

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” – John Adams “Well, if the vote is for Brexit things will be more interesting.” “Facts don’t matter”. “When I offered them my contact book, none were interested. Young journalists these days are only interested in a 9-5 job job which involves taking no risks.” These are all off record quotes from local working journalists …

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The destructive use of dismissive language in politics…

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 …

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

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 …

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