Does Andy Marr’s cap fit?

 A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting. They are very angry people… Terrible things are said on line because they are anonymous. People say things on line that they wouldn’t dream of saying in person. – Andrew Marr Surely not! “Oh dear an overpaid washed-up TV hack has a tantrum. Poor didums, his pal Tony is no longer a force in British Politics …

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Slugger media awards: Speaking Truth to Power

   I’m suggesting an award  for Speaking Truth to Power. It’s one thing to cheek a senior politician buried in a blog  particularly if you have little or no profile yourself, quite another to do so day after day in print, or across a studio floor. Occasionally in the bad old days – not often – a politician’s friends might go in for a little freelance intimidation, nothing drastic you understand, just a hint of menace. But to be fair, in …

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Bloody Sunday debate exposes doubt and disagreement over dealing with Northern Ireland’s past

No points to the Commons and Lords for the scheduling clash between the debate on lessons from the Bloody Sunday inquiry in the Upper House and Lord Saville’s personal appearance before the NI Select Committee yesterday. MPs failed to lay a glove on the now retired Supreme Court member over the epic 10 year time scale and £190 million cost of an inquiry whose impact casts a long shadow over the whole public inquiry system.. MPs were naturally caught between …

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Saville speaks at last

For the next four years, Lord Saville of Newdigate will dominate the lives of the members of the Northern Ireland Select Committee of the Commons, starting Wednesday at 3.15 pm. ( I made up the bit about the four years). The one-off session will cover a range of issues including: lessons to be learnt from carrying out an inquiry into the past in Northern Ireland the adequacy of legislation on public inquiries in the UK the length of time and cost of …

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Have we woken up to the uni revolution?

Have I missed a burning debate about university tuition fees in NI? I thought not.  But better late than never. It’s surely obvious that Joanne Stuart’s recommendation to keep them at their present £3290  level is out of date – if it ever was up to date. The DEL report is understood to favour keeping the current fees and improving maintenance grants. Sir Reg has hinted that the financial crisis could affect any moves to be more generous to students. …

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Peace jargon like this tells us nothing

The Londonderry Sentinel whom God preserve, reported the following story” “Forum held to encourage Protestant participation” The Gateway to Protestant Participation (GPP) hosted its second major discussion forum in the Mellon Country Inn, Omagh, with the aim of encouraging Protestant groups to get involved in good relations projects. OK tell me more. The GPP is a strategic programme designed to encourage the participation of the Protestant community by promoting a shared sense of belonging and addressing issues of marginalisation and …

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Sinn Fein’s open goal presents the SDLP with a golden shot

Does the SDLP have a future? The question is often asked but rarely examined properly. Now the historian Cillian McGrattan has had a modest go at it in Fortnight. On bread and butter policies there’s little or no difference with Sinn Fein: spend, spend, spend. It might be very different if they were obliged to tax as well as spend. Looking back on the Troubles, McGrattan is right to stress radically different legacies. It’s true that the SDLP found it easier …

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A tragically missed opportunity

The newly digitised public archives for the early years of the Troubles now available on a special CAIN-PRONI site are a gold mine. Straight away my heart aches at the what-might- have- been in the official papers about setting up a new university in 1964 –5. This was Derry’s great rebuff when the city lost out to a green field site on the banks of the Bann outside Coleraine. Often recalled as a unionist plot to keep down Catholics it …

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The cuts: another straw in the wind?

The Guardian’s most centrist commentator Martin Kettle argues that  the First Minsters’ case  for leniency is one of the signs that the cuts mightn’t  live up to their fierce billing. Or is  being panglossian, as he himself wonders? Extracts  Might it not instead be time for the long expected political hurricane to be cautiously downgraded to a tropical storm? Here are three very current reasons for thinking the answer is yes. The first is this week’s report in the Financial Times that …

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Spending cuts prompt Peter’s move on political reform. Will it work?

So Peter is moving on this at last. What’s not clear is his next move other than into thin air.  Cutting the sizes of the overblown Assembly and Executive is an appropriate  aim with additional political motives. It follows on the  proposed reduction of Westminster seats and Stormont constituencies to 15 and the reduction by one of the MLAs in each constituency. Peter’s timing suggests he has given up on getting agreement with SF and the other parties  behind the scenes. Or …

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Whitehall ” too busy ” to deal with First Ministers – claim

 The fairly dismissive  Verdict of my colleague, devolution expert Alan Trench, on the rainbow coalition of FMs’ call to scale down the cuts.  But note the flier in the FT that the phasing may be changed in a direction they favour. Adds Friday. Warm words from deputy PM Nick Clegg about the likely impact of the cuts  on a familiarisation visit. Extracts: The First Minister and Deputy First Minister raised with me in very clear terms their concerns about the …

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Dealing with dissidents: we’re all in it together

“What Was the Message Behind the Real IRA Bomb?” asks Finola Meredith for the benefit of Time magazine’s readers worldwide. No clear answer comes from her sources. But is the question really so hard to answer? The aim surely, was first to provoke precisely this sort of speculation in the news agenda. The accompanying belittling comment obliges the dissidents with  continuing challenge to feed off. Perhaps that can’t be helped. But three other approaches should be tried.  First,the precedent of the …

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Slugger Awards (Media) Pitch: Searchlight on Government

This is one of several I have in mind. But this category would include campaigns and high quality investigations that reveal what’s going on under the surface of ministerial accountability to include the bureaucracy, quangos and watchdogs . This is particularly important in a political system without a formal opposition. Candidates would be asked to assess the role of FOI and pre-emptive government disclosure of papers in their reporting. ++++++++++++++ Slugger is now looking for pitches from people to turn the …

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Community Relations Council – doomed?

As reported by Pete, UCD’s Institute for British Irish Studies report for the Rowntree Charitable Trust deplores a perceived retreat from “reconcilation” in the Shared Future document of 2005 to “accommodation” in the FMDFM ‘s “Cohesion ” document now out to consultation. One result of the downscaling looks like the abolition rather than the beefing up of the Community Relations Council, now a bigger target due to the spending cuts. Scrapping the council in favour of an advisory body to …

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Rattling the begging bowl one more time is a bankrupt strategy

Why are Executive leaders squealing together “fight the cuts”  in this fashion when it’s so divorced from reality? It’s just the sort of loser’s strategy that produces panic in the system and bad cuts as a consequence when it fails, as Oxford Economics have warned. Times really are a- changing, why don’t they recognise it? Have they really no other shots in the locker? It’s one thing to use Keynesian arguments in NI’s favour, quite another to try to convert the …

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The likely impact of the cuts – doom or just dread?

As the countdown quickens to the comprehensive spending review (CSR), in a fortnight’s time, Peter Robinson argues for Northern Ireland to continue to be treated as special case. This runs counter to  other indications e.g.. “Any arguments made that the region requires special „exemption‟ from cuts or that there are specific circumstances requiring a sustained flow of support are almost certain to fall on deaf ears” – (Oxford Economics) Perhaps he knows something we don’t; let’s hope so. On the …

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Draft profile of today’s Ulster Unionists

I’ve been on a little muse about the sort of people Tom Elliot represents. Epithets like ” the salt of  the earth ” and ” the backbone of Ulster ” would have applied to them in my youth.  Despite the dominance of Belfast, their essential character was rooted in  a very strong sense of place.      Putting my head in a noose, I’ve tried this little profile.   A basic question is whether the home comfort zone of the  UU socal classes exists …

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Bright young things of Ucunf are now unpersons

Although I know little about them personally, I feel sorry for the former Ucunf couple Ian Parsley and Paula Bradshaw. Ian is more widely known than his political record as an Alliance and now an NI  Conservative would suggest. Theirs seems to be the only successful bit of the partnership left. I noticed him as a minor star at last year’s Conservative party conference with Sir Reg. Paula as UU candidate in south Belfast was the victim of an Alliance surge …

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Even Unionist leaders must lead

You can see the dilemma facing unionism especially the UUs, from recent articles by two of the most seasoned observers of unionism around. Looking back at the Ulster Unionist record as Tom Elliot takes over, Ed Curran dismisses fashionable media opinion (whatever that is) and believes the Fermanagh man may be the right leader for the “mainstream conservative church going Protestant rather than the secular liberal.” And so he may be. Ed points meaningfully to Jim Molyneaux’s long tenure from …

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Death by a thousand cuts or education reform – the crunch at last

The paper “Developing the Case for Shared Education” by the consultancy Oxford Economics argues convincingly that the Executive should turn the ill wind of the spending  cuts into an opportunity to reform education and increase opportunities for all, rather than suffer death by 1000 cuts. The paper is available from the Integrated Education Fund here. Oxford Economics are careful not simply to embrace the single solution of integration as such. Instead, they update the well known arguments for ” sharing” which …

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