About that raise…

Instead of twiddling your thumbs waiting for the latest spin and speculation through the weekend, why not try The Guardian’s Too Smart for your Salary? quiz.Based on the premise of a link between salary level and IQ (that’s the ‘leftist rag’ we know and love!) it would probably be best to let that hangover subside first. Personally, I’m looking for a raise… either that or a new job 😉 Your results You got 23 questions right out of a possible …

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Partition politics

One for all those history buffs out there.. you know who you are. Ryle Dwyer in The Irish Examiner takes a long look back at the exploitation of the issue of partition in Irish politics, and points the finger at the Long Fellow himself Pete Baker

It’s just not cricket

As the England cricket team embarks on another politically suspect tour, and John O’Farrell has a wonderfully sceptical glance at that story in the Guardian, The Irish Times reports on a developing row in West Indies cricket, with an Irish tinge.James Fitzgerald, in the Irish Times, reports that players’ personal sponsorship deals with business competitors of the main West Indies cricket sponsor Digicel, owned by Irish businessman Denis O’Brien, has led to the dropping of, arguably, the West Indies best …

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The shape of things to come?

The Guardian carries an account of the career of Dan Rather, anchorman on CBS Evening News for the last 23 years, after his declaration of intent to stand aside on the 24th anniversary of taking on that role in March next year. The role of bloggers in that decision merits only a few lines in the report, but it was their criticism of his report on Bush’s National Guard service record that led directly to Rather being pushed.Perhaps the Guardian …

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Danger signals for ‘deal’

What had been promoted, in some reports, as the SF Ard Chomhairle’s ‘decision’ meeting on the governments’ proposals, has turned out to be nothing more than another ‘briefing’ by their party president.But the alarm bells will be ringing in government, and DUP, circles following the statement by Gerry Adams that, on decommissioning, “he was not in a position to go to the IRA because no final deal had been reached”. That’s a tacit, and public, claim that the IRA have …

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SF Caving In

That’s the heading The Irish Echo has on Paul Colgan’s report. Attributed to the SDLP’s Mark Durkan, natch, but Colgan finds support for that interpretation from none other than Brian Feeney.Not that Feeney mentions this in his Irish News article – blogged here – but then when Feeney asks in that column “What was it [the last 30 years] all for?” he, keeping an eye on his regular audience, isn’t asking Gerry Adams. The line from the Irish Echo report …

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Cash On Delivery

‘Pay us to agree!’ is the clear subtext of the emergence of a call for a payment of £1Billion if the DUP and SF agree to the Irish and British governments’ proposals. None of the other political parties here seem prepared to question this – it would be a difficult line to take publicly – but there are reasons why the political cover provided by such a payment could adversely affect future politics here.Without the necessary consideration of financial prudence …

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Best place to be…

Yesterday’s Observer magazine carried an interesting series of opinion pieces on which part of the “British Isles” *ahem* is the best suited to your lifestyle. Best place to be a parent, famous, fashionable, green (Bristol, apparently), an artist, etc, etc.. Determined as they obviously were to hit every demographic I looked through to see who is, allegedly, best suited to live here. Belfast, it seems, is the best place to be ‘young’. Well, they don’t know any better, do they?The …

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Clergymen witnesses a backward step

Courtesy of Newshound, Suzanne Breen, writing in the Newsletter, has a couple of suggestions for possible candidates for witnesses to decommissioning. But, as well as pointing out the need for more than an official ‘blessing’, she raises an important point – “I don’t believe there is this huge reservoir of respect for these men. Indeed, a substantial section of the population – including believers – view them with (at best) suspicion and (at worse) contempt.”I’d go further. Whatever progress, such …

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Look on the bright side, how many albums have they left?

Following the Economist ‘quality of life’ survey, in which Ireland topped the list of ‘best countries in the world to live in’, in the Guardian, Irish Times columnist John Waters and author Joseph O’Connor give their take on how Ireland has coped with the shocking news.John Waters predicts a new dispensation that will see expectations increasingly failing to meet reality and, in the process, makes some good points on what he argues is “the last survey to include evidence of …

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A seasonal diversion

Apropos nothing, but this is going on my christmas list. As reviewed in The Guardian – How to Keep Dinosaurs by Robert Mash.The Guardian review begins – “Who could resist a handbook about potential pets that has a little symbol for ‘likes children’ and a separate one for ‘likes children to eat’. Who could not warm to warnings that private owners of Deinonychus and Velociraptor are legally required to trim their pets’ disembowelling claws?” One dinosaur’s description reads as “agile, …

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Heartache (and stalemate) after all

While I hear what Mick is saying about the DUP and SF preferring to play their cards close to their chests, the pressure is already telling on some. SF’s Mitchel McLaughlin is quoted by Dan McGinn, PA Ireland Political Editor – “the proposal that the entire executive be elected in a block vote… [is] a proposal that is not going to cause Sinn Féin too much heartache”. That was yesterday. Today, SF to press Blair to change government proposals.In between …

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Bah Humbug!

It’s November for christ’s sake. Get a grip. The BBC, having run out of startling revelations, ‘reports’ (and I use the term as loosely as possible) on the latest pre-christmas hype. Belfast shopkeepers’ are already pushing the idea of “a late christmas rush” – my tip.. stay warm, stay inside, and get those presents online. Pete Baker

Comrade Taoiseach!

In the Irish Examiner, Fergus Finlay sketches the possible ( probable ? ) scenario that led to Bertie Ahern describing himself as a ‘socialist’. Pete Baker

A basis for democracy?

The Governments’ decision to present the DUP and SF with their proposals for a ‘deal’ is a tacit admission that those two parties, by themselves, cannot provide a way forward for the political process. And yet we are still facing a situation in which SF and the DUP are being placed in a position to decide just that. The headlines may say ‘NI parties hear plans for deal’, but the reality is that only two parties are being asked and …

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Greater rights for gay couples in Ireland

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has declared his support for moves to provide equal rights for gay couples in Ireland on tax and inheritance issues – “These people who are in relationships which are not illegal, they’re not immoral, they’re not improper. They say: ‘We want more equality and we want to be treated fairer.’ I agree with that.” The RTE report also has Realmedia links to news reports on the Taoiseach’s comments. Pete Baker

SF’s Plan B a non-runner – Rabbitte

In today’s Irish Times, the leader of the Irish Labour Party, Pat Rabbitte, introduces a welcome tone of realism on decommissioning and points out that the notional joint-rule as a Plan B, which the Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has been promoting to his party’s supporters in the US, is unconstitutional – not that SF have ever been that concerned about the constitution of ‘the 26 counties’.He refers to the Taoiseach recent comments on the likelihood of the parties agreeing …

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A 21st-century seanchaithe

The Observer’s Literary Editor, Robert McCrum, on the rumours and truth that have surrounded the author Desmond Hogan. Hailed as one of Ireland’s finest writers in the 1980s and early 90s and admired by many other writers, including Ted Hughes and Colm Tóibín, Hogan dropped below the literary world’s radar in the mid 90s in what seemed a restless quest for solitude but is set to re-emerge with a new collection of short stories next year, Winter Swimmers: New and …

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DUP “a sectarian party”

The BBC reports on David Trimble’s address at the UUP conference in Newcastle, County Down, where he has provided his analysis of the failings of the new political majorities here to reach a resolution of the difficulties he had struggled with. It includes perhaps his most scathing attack on the DUP to date.His comments on the changes being sought by the DUP are sure to cause a reaction. “What is the gain if the DUP is not required to vote …

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The Transformation of Ireland

In The Guardian, Carroll Professor of Irish History at Oxford University, Roy Foster favourably reviews Diarmaid Ferriter’s recently published The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 and predicts it “will be an influential book” as well as being “a remarkable achievement” in itself.As well as commending Ferriter for his analysis of the enormous changes, both social and economic, Foster, in particular, points to Ferriter’s “judicious and empathetic” approach in dealing with the experience of Northern Ireland as part of the larger Irish …

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