Option of anonymous voter registration gets green light

The British government has signalled it will support the right of some electors to anonymously register to vote, indicating that the criteria will be drawn up in the short term. Whilst the Minister (David Hanson) intimated that this option would be limited to individuals whose safety is deemed at risk, the evidence from the last local election would indicate that making anonymous the names of election candidates’ nominees would be consistent with the stated aim of protecting individuals seeking to …

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Threats force footballers to quit local team

Two Irish league footballers have been forced to quit the Institute team and flee Derry after being subjected to threats at their Waterside home in the city. The footballers, from Belgium and France, have been receiving threatening phone calls for the past three weeks, but the final straw was the appearance of a baseball-bat wielding gang at their home who threatened to shoot the players. Update: On an interview carried on UTV Live tonight, the players are indicating that they …

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The slaughter on our roads continues

I posted a thread at the weekend after learning of the deaths of four Polish men in county Cork and three young men in east Belfast. Since then, every news bulletin seems to bring more news of fatalities on the roads, the latest being two men killed in Newtownabbey this afternoon. Harry Green of the DOE has highlighted how 50% of fatalities this year have occurred at weekends or holiday periods. It seems to me that if our political leaders …

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Hain’s Parade Commission appointments: Court case due next month

The case against Peter Hain and the NIO over the manner in which appointments were made to the Parades Commission is due to be heard in a couple of weeks. The Belfast Telegraph had discovered official criticisms of the appointments and details of how the Secretary of State was permitted to select the appointments from a list including people who had failed the interview process. Chris Donnelly

Irish League football to return to West Belfast?

After an absence of 50 years, local football could be returning to west Belfast after First Division side, Donegal Celtic, claimed a play-off spot at the weekend. The prospect of the club’s promotion has revived memories of the great Belfast Celtic team, which captured the hearts of the local football enthusiasts from the late 19th century up to the 1940s, when the club departed the local football scene after players were attacked following a tense match with city rivals, Linfield. …

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PSNI come to the rescue of Orangemen as legal cases dropped (again)

It looks like many of the Orangemen and their supporters who were involved in the intense rioting last Autumn will escape prosecution after what is being termed a ‘bureaucratic blunder’ by the PSNI. Many will note that this is the second time a PSNI ‘blunder’ has resulted in Whiterock Orangemen evading prosecution. Both Sinn Fein and the SDLP have observed that no such bureaucratic blunder was committed when 23 nationalists were brought before the courts two weeks ago over charges …

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Calling all World Cup fans

53 days to the beginning of heaven on earth for football fans, (aka the World Cup.) The BBC are providing this nifty Predictor facility to enable fans to have a go at predicting the results of matches, following through the Group stages to the Final itself. I personally have France beating Brazil, with England and Argentina going out at the semi-final stage. Chris Donnelly

Road carnage continues

It’s the beginning of another holiday period in Ireland, and already tragedy has been visited upon many families as a result of road fatalities. RTE are reporting that eight people died in three crashes overnight in Cork, Belfast and Meath. The EU has highlighted the continuing failure of successive Irish governments to effectively address the issue, and in an attempt to shore up public confidence in their ability to do so, the Irish government recently appointed veteran broadcaster Gay Byrne …

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One for the election anoraks

For all the hopeless psephologists out there. Here’s a website, Elections Ireland, which has recorded election results at most levels in recent years, north and south. The site is also being updated regularly as candidates are selected by all parties in the countdown to next year’s much anticipated Leinster House elections. Chris Donnelly

Bad day for ecumenism as Moderator says no

The Presbyterian Moderator, Dr Harry Uprichard, has caused controversy by refusing to attend a service to celebrate the RUC’s George Cross Foundation- because of the involvement of catholic clergy. Dr. Uprichard, who was on the receiving end of much criticism last summer when he appeared rather tardy in his condemnation of a loyalist campaign targeting catholic homes and properties in his native north Antrim, would undoubtedly have wished that the news would have been carried on any other day than …

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Educational underachievement: Dodgy stats from the NIO?

Since David Hanson announced his �33 milion spending programme for loyalist areas, the impression has been created in the media that educational underachievement is a problem almost exclusively affecting protestant areas. To support this assertion, the line has been spun that protestant wards accounted for 13 of the 15 most deprived in terms of educational underachievement. In fact, this does not square with the NIO’s own statistics, which reveal educational underachievement to be a much more evenly distributed problem, particularly …

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UVF interview: no decommissioning please, we’re loyalists…

An interview carried today by the Belfast Telegraph reveals that the UVF are certainly under little pressure to decommission- and are expressing little hope of doing so anytime soon. Indeed, the interview points to the loyalist paramilitary outfit seeking to use its muscle to influence the Plan B option being floated by both governments here, a potentially ominous development as we approach the marching season- particularly given the level of UVF activity last Summer. Chris Donnelly

The Crisis In Education Continues

Too many schools, too many teachers; lollipop ladies/ classroom assistants/ cleaners being sacrificed to reduce ELB deficits; too few pupils and (as yet) no real idea about how we’re going to get 11 year olds from one school to the next. This Belfast Telegraph story reveals that up to 600 teachers will go in the coming months as the crisis reaches a head. Interestingly, it also flags up how the British Government could have lessened the impact of the staff …

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Alex Kane: Partnership with Sinn Fein Unionism’s Best Available Option

UUP Strategist, Alex Kane, has gazed into the near future and doesn’t like what he sees for unionism. If unionism continues to turn against power-sharing with Sinn Fein, then the future will see ‘British-Irish joint management’ and a local government framework in which nationalism would ‘control’ the majority of the six counties. Faced with this scenario, he seems to indicate that governing alongside Sinn Fein may be the only means of securing ‘the union.’ Are unionists beginning the hard sell …

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Pressure To Build On DUP

The most significant aspect of this week’s announcement was the joint decision by both premiers to turn the spotlight firmly on the DUP. Though the form of joint management – or ‘joint authority-lite’ as one wag commented to me- has not been properly sketched out, what is clear is that the DUP have been given a very short time-frame to perform a massive u-turn and accept the Good Friday Agreement, with all that entails for power-sharing and participation in all-Ireland …

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Justice And Common Sense Finally Prevail

The long running case of west Belfast man Kieran Milnes has finally reached a happy conclusion for the man. Faced with charges of assaulting a youth he had alleged was stealing his girlfriend’s car, Kieran spent time in jail, until the force of public opinion led to a retrial being announced, which he won today, thus ending the traumatic episode. The case resonates across the north of Ireland, no where more so than in areas like West Belfast, where the …

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Southern Commitment to Irish Unity Undiminished

The findings of a Sunday Business Post poll reveal the enduring strength of the Irish people’s vision for re-unification. The poll is interesting for revealing that the attachment to this objective remains strong amongst the young as well as old, with a geographic analysis revealing that only in Dublin does the commitment to unity seem to be lessening. How ironic then that Sinn Fein appears to have found a way around this, given the continuing strength of the republican party’s …

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Can Irish Soccer Learn Any Lessons From The All-Conquering Domestic Rugby Scene?

Another great day for Irish rugby, as Leinster and Munster triumph and secure in the process a return of an Irish province to the Heineken Cup final next month. The success story that is Irish rugby continues to contrast somewhat to the fortunes of Irish football teams- at international level (most recently) but consistently at club level. The Setanta Cup seems to have grabbed the attention of a wider football audience than would usually be the case for local soccer. …

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Parades Commission: Inside Dealing To Secure Drumcree Stitch-Up?

The composition of the new Parades Commission has been the source of much discussion, with much alarm expressed at the appointment of numerous Portadown unionists/ Orangemen. The public admission by a Commission member that he is fighting the Orange cause “from inside the fence” is bound to heighten nationalist fears that the new commission may be wearing orange-tinted glasses when it comes to making crucial decisions in the coming months. The fact that the Commissioner concerned made his comments to …

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McDowell: Ahern May Cosy Up To Sinn Fein

Having suffered a humiliating retreat following his targeting of the Greens and Fine Gael in recent days, Justice Minister Michael McDowell has returned to type and renewed his attacks on Sinn Fein in an interview where he flags up the prospect of Ahern approaching the party to form a coalition. Whilst the verbals may keep his profile up and owe more to scare tactics than anything more substantial, the latest opinion poll ahead of next year’s General Election indicates Sinn …

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