Is it time to give up on power sharing as a bad job ?

A couple of weeks back I wrote about whether or not the time had come for Alliance to adopt a constitutional position (TL;DR – it hasn’t). As is typical of articles that touch on the constitutional issue, there were quite a few comments, most of which spectacularly avoided the point and tended to rehash boring talking points and clichés from the 1970s. But there were several fair remarks which merit further discussion, so I thought I’d start with the most …

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Home truths : pension provision in a United Ireland

source : getty images

A topic I see coming up quite often relates to the question of pension provision in a united Ireland. For such an important topic, there seems to be a great deal of misinformation. The ongoing “civic conversation” has not really addressed it properly and, unfortunately, there have even been academic papers that have sought to wave the problem away.  Most people assume that since they’ve been paying national insurance contributions to the UK throughout their life, the UK government would …

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Beware the communication police…

We all know communication is important. It’s at the heart of nearly everything that we do; how we form (and end) relationships; how we work and play; how we support each other or fight with each other. It makes sense to want to be able to do it well. Our desire to improve our communication skills has created an industry of communication “experts”. The internet is full of articles and videos telling viewers how to improve their communication.  Self-help books …

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A legacy process should be about why the Troubles should never happen again

Brian Rowan and Deric Henderson speaking about Reporting the Troubles at a Creative Holywood conversation.

On Thursday evening, hours before Lyra McKee was fatally shot in Creggan, Brian Rowan was speaking about Reporting the Troubles in Holywood. Throughout the event, he often pivoted away from pure reminiscence and returned to the subject of legacy, arguing for an inclusive and society-wide process that asked less about what had happened but instead focussed on why it happened and crucially why it should never happen again.

Coming to terms with the Internet will not entail switching it off, but facing and evaluating fears

Gavan Titley has it about right. Moral panic is about the best way to describe the latest outbreak of social media bashing in the Republic. The first political party in the south to take to the business of engaging online was Labour, as this report from Damien Mulley outlines. The first Twitter storm I witnessed was a spectacular one when Fianna Fail used Joe Rospers as blogger bait, and got burned for their efforts. Much of the criticism we’ve seen …

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