#TheReset: Renewed focus on Apprenticeships can help young people deal

Richard Kirk is CEO of Belfast-based Workplus, which was set up to help businesses explore apprenticeships as a way of finding new talent or up-skilling existing employees. Here he argues that apprenticeships can help young people to “earn, learn and be part of the solution” to the oncoming economic crisis…  At the end of August, some Southern states in America braced itself for Hurricane Laura – the region’s most powerful hurricane in over a century and the joint fastest in …

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Young People Not Immune to Political Deadlock

Paul McCusker is the SDLP Councillor for Oldpark Twenty years on from the Good Friday Agreement, the ceasefire generation – for the most part – live a peaceful and prosperous life, free from the violence and the heartache of the past. There is however a forgotten generation; a generation who still feel the weight of living in areas controlled by paramilitaries, whose parents and grandparents lost their lives in the conflict, who live in communities barricaded by “peace” walls, who …

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‘Cross Community Projects’ are Outdated in Today’s Northern Ireland

The concept of a polarisation of politics is one often talked about in today’s society, and in Brexit Britain and Trump’s America and so many other cases it is easy to see evidence of this polarisation. People follow different narratives that offer different (or alternative) facts and there is a demonised view of the motives of politicians that you do not agree with. In Northern Ireland polarisation of politics is nothing new to us, and it continues to this day …

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‘We need to encourage young people that this is a place they can build their future’: Report on ‘Let Them Speak’

Back in February, 90 Sixth Form Pupils from 25 schools across Belfast gathered at Ulster University to discuss the city’s future. The event was part of the 4 Corners Festival, and was featured on Slugger at the time. The 4 Corners Festival have now produced a booklet that collates some of the students’ comments, grouped around the thematic areas of education, diversity, our political system, transport, regeneration and investment, health care, and hopes for the future. The pupils generated those …

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Young people and the upcoming elections

What is it that we look for in our politicians is it experience, judgement or is it youth? I ask this as over the past few weeks on Twitter parties from all sides seem to be nominating younger people (18-30 years old) to contest the upcoming elections. As I have pointed out in a previous post-Northern Ireland actually does well in getting younger people into the assembly when compared to the rest of the UK. However, despite this rise of …

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Are young people getting a fair go politically in Northern Ireland? Ctd

David McCann really got me thinking when he asked recently: Are we giving young people a fair go in Northern Ireland? I have a few observations I’d like to ventilate on the issue. Having studied at Queen’s and lived in Toulouse and New York I’ve come to see it that young people in Northern Ireland possess certain characteristics that are unique to the province and which are relevant to any answer we should provide. You could say that the basic …

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Irish News doesn’t always err on the side of caution

The Irish News photo coverage of the third arrest at Thursday’s RNU protest at Alliance HQ was a tale of two halves – while they decided to hide the identities of the PSNI officers arresting a 16 year old, they didn’t give that same protection to the arrested youth. When UTV covered this story (TV coverage available via link), before the Irish News would have gone to press, they protected the identity of the minor along with those of the …

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