Profile for Alan in Belfast
Latest posts from Alan in Belfast (see all)
Alan in Belfast has posted 471 times (13 in the last month).
UNESCO pitches golf ball into Runkerry bunker
Tweet It took a long time to work through the planning process, but in February 2012 the Bushmills Dunes Golf Resort and Spa finally received planning permission. A year later in February 2013, the National Trust lost its judicial review of the decision and have not appealed. Minister of the Environment Alex Attwood invited Unesco [...] more »
Ulster People’s Forum plans denial of service attack on PSNI and Parades Commission
![ulsters people forum [sic] leaflet](http://sluggerotoole.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/ulsters-people-forum-leaflet-e1369348731511-160x61.jpg)
Tweet A News Letter online article explains that the Ulster People’s Forum is taking a leaf out of the Anonymous movement’s hacktivism playbook and are planning to flood the PSNI and subsequently the Parades Commission with spurious 11/1 forms. The article quotes Ulster People’s Forum chair John Wilson: The groups have decided to ask all [...] more »
“culture wars and shared futures make very uneasy bedfellows”
Tweet This final post in this series about last week’s PSA/Fellowship of Messines workshop – Has the Protestant Working Class lost out in the Peace Process? – looks at the fourth session of the day which asked about the place of the PUL community in a shared future. Once again, the opening remarks by the [...] more »
The PUL Community and the Peace Process: An Audit
Tweet The third session of the all day PSA/Fellowship of Messines workshop – Has the Protestant Working Class lost out in the Peace Process? – looked at the peace process through the eyes of two loyalist leaders and an academic. Strong views on the Social Investment Fund, how paramilitary actions gave unionists confidence in the [...] more »
Challenges for Protestants in “Dealing with the Past”
Tweet The second session at the all day PSA/Fellowship of Messines workshop – Has the Protestant Working Class lost out in the Peace Process? – looked back at some of the events and experiences that shaped loyalism. It didn’t particularly address “dealing with the past” in terms of societal remembering, truth commissions etc. (Yesterday’s post [...] more »
Has the Protestant Working Class lost out in the Peace Process?
Tweet That’s the title of a workshop that brought together working class loyalist representatives with some peers from other communities, interested academics and a small number of journalists. The day long event was organised by Dr Aaron Edwards and supported by the Political Studies Association’s Irish Politics Specialist Group and the Fellowship of Messines Association. [...] more »
Taking years off your life – NI life expectancy deprivation gaps show increase over last decade
Tweet When I asked Billy Hutchinson on Wednesday about the lack of publicity around any PUP campaigning on health and life expectancy, I was thinking about the kind of life expectancy figures that have been released yesterday by the Department of Health in their Inequalities Monitoring System/Life Expectancy Decomposition comparative report: Chapter 4 deals with [...] more »
Billy Hutchinson: talking at rallies and protests doesn’t necessarily make you a leader
Tweet Billy Hutchinson – leader of the PUP – said during a workshop on Thursday that the media often used the word “loyalist” as a shortcut to mean “criminal”. He quoted the example of a DUP councillor up in court for some misdemeanour who was described in a newspaper as a “loyalist” rather than a [...] more »
Increasing numbers of passengers let the train take the strain … apart from a 10 year decline on the Enterprise
Tweet Monday morning’s Belfast Telegraph splashed with the front page story that passengers numbers have fallen by 22% on the Belfast-Dublin Enterprise train over the last decade. The ‘exclusive’ – based on figures in DRD’s Future Railways Investment consultation document [pdf] that was published in January – was picked up by Talkback at lunchtime as [...] more »
Team Jasil – that’s John and Basil – say: “Get off your backsides and vote for people that are trying to make a difference”
Tweet Basil McCrea and John McCallister were the invited guest speakers at a Friday lunchtime Politics and Change in Northern Ireland seminar run by the Institute for Research in Social Sciences at UUJ. The room was mostly full of academics and postgraduate researchers. It was an opportunity to hear John and Basil deliver what might [...] more »
Latest comments from Alan in Belfast (see all)
Alan in Belfast has commented 784 times (13 in the last month).
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Books
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Graphic portrayals: Northern Ireland, graphic novels and the peace process
Tweet Dr Gordon Gillespie, a researcher at the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, gave a presentation on “Graphic Portrayals: Northern Ireland, Graphic Novels and the Peace Process”, at the Linen Hall Library. Gordon started with a clarification that he was going to talk about graphic novels/comic books, not cartoons, and material that [...] read our review »
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The Earl Bishop
Tweet Interesting BBC article on an upcoming presentation and talk [Roe Valley Arts and Cultural Centre, 17 August] by lecturer and broadcaster Stephen Price on the subject of his new book – The Earl Bishop. The 18th Century ”Earl Bishop” was Frederick Augustus Hervey, fourth Earl of Bristol and Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry. Hervey was also [...] read our review »
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A poem for the day – Launching the Whaler Juan Peron
Tweet A Belfast epic, and one of my oldest poems, the opener of my first collection, Grub. The gist of the story was found in Moss & Hume’s Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff, Belfast, 1861-1986, which tells how Eva Peron was due to launch a huge whaling vessel in Belfast, [...] read our review »
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Comment on Ulster People’s Forum plans denial of service attack on PSNI and Parades Commission
on 24 May 2013 at 2:14 pm
From what I’ve been told, it would be a first if the PSNI checked the names on the forms to see if they corresponded to real people.
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Comment on According to Question Time, SF=IRA, DUP=Goodies
on 24 May 2013 at 2:12 pm
The camera operator’s crib sheet would be difficult to classify as ‘journalism’ … However, it was certainly inappropriate and very embarrassing and a reminder to folk that in a world of camera phones and social media, very little is private.
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Comment on Lisburn City Council funds Unionist Forum meeting using Good Relations money
on 23 May 2013 at 11:12 am
h/t to grandimarkey – You can watch the event …
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Comment on Lisburn City Council funds Unionist Forum meeting using Good Relations money
on 23 May 2013 at 10:58 am
Two thoughts.
(1) “Community relations” and “good relations” are commonly used to refer to cross-community activities. Some aspect of intra-community relationship building must also be necessary in parallel with the wider bridge-building.
Using council money to support the event by means of making the hall available is not an instantly bad idea – though I’d worry whether the branding, advertising, access and public perception would be lead to people believing that a majority unionist council was supporting single-identity events. But the council could achieve balance through the encouragement of a range of events.
(2) The manner in which the item went through the Leisure Services Committee deserves investigation. Even better if a member of the public or local press had attended the meeting and remembered what had happened. If does seem reasonable that Alliance and nationalist councillors on the committee would have questioned the event if they had been more fully aware of the details.
The mature approach for a politician with good working relations with her/his peers would be open about the event and convince their colleagues of the value of the event in the context of the other good relations work. A less mature and sleekit approach would be to slip it in without full details to avoid questions.
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Comment on The PUL Community and the Peace Process: An Audit
on 21 May 2013 at 7:36 pm
Brian – Unlike party conferences which tend to be spin over substance, the workshop was a low key conversation that we’ve got the opportunity to overhear parts of. Glad you’re enjoying them – one more session to go.
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Comment on The PUL Community and the Peace Process: An Audit
on 21 May 2013 at 1:32 pm
Brian – while there was a plea for action and next steps during the discussion after some of the sessions, it really boiled down to a commitment to keep talking (perhaps with a wider audience) and to try and recover the ground and progress that had slipped due to the flag protests.
But you’re right about the deja vu feeling that the conversation didn’t have to be grounded in May 2013. I doubt a meeting of the Loyalist Commission back in those days would have been so civil and cordial.
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Comment on The PUL Community and the Peace Process: An Audit
on 21 May 2013 at 9:38 am
Search the post for ‘fund’ and you’ll find that part transcribed! Billy did refer to it as the “*Strategic* Investment Fund” but it seemed clear he was referring to “*Social* Investment Fund”
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Comment on Has the Protestant Working Class lost out in the Peace Process?
on 20 May 2013 at 8:43 am
The second part has now been posted – though the session title Challenges for Protestants in “Dealing with the Past” may not entirely reflect the speakers’ comments! But they cover border polls, identity, insecurities and more …
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Comment on Has the Protestant Working Class lost out in the Peace Process?
on 19 May 2013 at 2:49 pm
Mainland Ulsterman – There were two women – who both made strong contributions – amongst the forty or so folk at the workshop. It’s something I’ll come back to in tomorrow’s post: the voice of the women who held together families while combatants were in prison or on the run are still missing from the top table in these conversations.
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Comment on Increasing numbers of passengers let the train take the strain … apart from a 10 year decline on the Enterprise
on 17 May 2013 at 9:14 pm
IJP – Comfort and ease of use. If ticketing was more flexible and straightforward – ie, smart cards didn’t expire quickly – I’d be much more likely to catch buses. As it is, I’ve been on 10 or 20 times the number of buses in London than in NI (used to commute from hotel to work in London on a bus rather than the tube).
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