Governing alcohol consumption: Who are the winners?

“Excuse me mate, the only reason you could possibly want to go into this club is to get drunk as a skunk, so get back in the car.” A Belfast taxi man has confidently told me that people in his profession are the most knowledgeable people around when it comes to what’s happening on our streets. Robert said that when he took passengers from Lavery’s bar in Belfast to a nightclub at 00.45 on May 26th; the PSNI were waiting …

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How would you measure a Belfast Buzz?

At the ‘Belfast One City’ conference Paul Nolan, author of the Peace Monitoring Report, said it would be difficult to collect the data to measure the positive feelings in Belfast. As odd as it may seem to take a scientific approach to measure the mood of an entire city, it does highlight how small victories for a city as a whole, may not be of any consequence to individual citizens struggling with recession. As we head into summer, many people …

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The citizenship test: Protestants as well as Catholics in favour of fee waiver?

In Northern Ireland we have the unique situation where we can claim dual nationality. The bulk of the population is split between those who claim Irish citizenship and those who claim British citizenship. Following the news that sixth form pupils in the UK who hold Irish passports qualify for free university tuition in Scotland, the question arises whether the passport that a person from Northern Ireland holds, is the definitive mark of their nationality. It was originally believed that students …

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