Comment Archives for Alan in Belfast
Normally to be found blogging over at Alan in Belfast where you'll find an irregular set of postings, weaving an intricate pattern around a diverse set of subjects. Comment on cinema, books, technology and the occasional rant about life. On Slugger, the posts will mainly be about political events and processes.
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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Comment on Team Jasil – that’s John and Basil – say: “Get off your backsides and vote for people that are trying to make a difference”
on 16 May 2013 at 3:50 pm
Morpheus – for playing the man
> Word of advice, don’t be a tool. It makes you look like a tool.
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Comment on Team Jasil – that’s John and Basil – say: “Get off your backsides and vote for people that are trying to make a difference”
on 12 May 2013 at 6:10 pm
Getting out a sizeable “protest vote” at the Euro elections next June will be key if the John and Basil party is going to have any longevity. If the electorate – existing voters and normally-non-voters don’t turn out in large numbers, they’ll be doomed.
They’ll be aiming to pick up votes from UUP, Alliance and SDLP – as well as the politically disillusioned – which is a lot of plates to keep spinning at the one time, and a lot of different groups to keep consistently messaging.
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Comment on Slugger live reporting from the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis…
on 24 April 2013 at 5:50 pm
Was about to say that “we” covered the last Dublin-based Sinn Fein ard fheis too back in 2010, but having failed to find the post on Slugger, I must have just done it for myself on AiB back in those days.
Found this wee video from the ard fheis though:
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Comment on Matt Baggott on flag protests, Boston tapes, G8 summit, drones & social media
on 23 April 2013 at 9:51 pm
[There is a little debate whether the phrase "but if there’s a minor misdemeanour as we would call it being committed" was "as we would call it" or was "as most would call it" or even "as you would call it" ... though playing the original recording (mp3) back 30% slower, it sounds to me like "we". Though more than half way through an hour long interview, anyone should be allowed a slip of the tongue.]
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Comment on Tweet like a politician … ideally, thinking about how it’ll be read and misread
on 14 April 2013 at 11:21 pm
FJH – nicely put.
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Comment on Sinn Féin and abortion – two more motions challenging the party’s current stance
on 14 April 2013 at 9:46 am
As expected, the Ard Chomhairle motion passed and the other two failed.
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Comment on Sinn Féin ard fheis gets underway with motions on candidate gender, flags, Royal Exchange and Easter Lily stickers (updated)
on 13 April 2013 at 6:56 pm
This isn’t a thread about Margaret Thatcher!
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Comment on NI = a hub of multi-millionaires; a dearth of patents; a society of minorities; differing community narratives
on 11 April 2013 at 1:07 pm
Reader,
> I doubt other societies collect anything else like this amount of data.
Most create the data, but few have a funded organisation/researcher who collates it together from the different agencies and tells a story with it.
In the first 5 minutes of the interview, Paul explains that the Peace Monitoring Report itself is quite rare – South Africa have something along these lines, but not in detail – though many post-conflict regions attend conferences to talk about the need to capture the metrics and trend them to see if/when they start to go off the peace rails.
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Comment on NI = a hub of multi-millionaires; a dearth of patents; a society of minorities; differing community narratives
on 10 April 2013 at 9:58 am
jthree – multi-millionaires data frin WealthInsight 2012/Guardian survey 13/9/2012
Morpheus – personal protection of current and former security staff must play a part in the figures, but they still seem very high
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Comment on Imagine … TEDx talks by Peter Robinson, Martin McGuinness and others … under the gaze of Lord Craigavon
on 28 March 2013 at 6:16 pm
Scáth Shéamais & chrisbrowne28 – You may not approve of the lineup, but on the other hand, they sold out of tickets so people were happy to attend to hear the line-up. To be fair – leaving the politicians aside (Simon Hamilton was notably the one most “with” the spirit of Ted) – there was a range of speakers from NI, ex-NI and abroad.
From previous TEDxBelfast/TEDxBelfastWomen events I’ve attended or listened to, just one or two speakers at each event stick with me. More than one in ten die on their feet or ramble. And leaving the event it’s always fascinating to hear people talking enthusiastically about speakers who I won’t have rated at all.
Hosting the event in the Great Hall at Parliament Buildings, it would have been odd not to have challenged MLAs to share their “ideas worth spreading”. While some contributions were underwhelming, it did teach something about some MLAs’ abilities to stand up and speak passionately on a subject without notes and without making it sound like a lecture/speech.
In terms of setting up a TEDx event, you’ve got to apply for a licence, and agree to meet the exacting demands and rules of the TED/TEDx organisation which owns the brand. Not for the feint-hearted as the local organisers will testify.
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Comment on Bluff and brinkmanship over press regulation – and blogs?
on 20 March 2013 at 5:06 pm
Big question is whether adverts (with their small stream of revenue) make a group political blog “a business”? And whether the blog owner/editor or a blog post author is liable …
Interesting times.
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Comment on Can you see your tax dollars at work? Boosting accountability, efficiency and transparency the Louisville KY way
on 8 March 2013 at 4:25 pm
LGO – RPA seems like a great opportunity to get groups of councils (even if not all of them) to share the cost of implementing these kind of solutions. And even LouieStat has started quite small and is growing in a sustainable way.
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Comment on No surprises in Mid Ulster as Molloy wins; turnout dips down from 91.5% in 1969 by-election to just 55.7%
on 8 March 2013 at 11:02 am
Gerry – peril of changing the post title late at night – fixed.
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Comment on Making plans for Mid-Ulster, never mind plans for Nigel
on 5 March 2013 at 7:31 pm
Thread well off topic and closed.
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Comment on Making plans for Mid-Ulster, never mind plans for Nigel
on 4 March 2013 at 8:17 pm
6rrealist – Nigel is plain in his News Letter webchat
Comment From John: Nigel has clearly come through tragic personal circumstances in the loss of his father. The area around the Moy, Canary and wider south tyrone suffered many deaths at the hands of the UVF. Will Nigel openly condemn those directly involved in those murders and recognise that victims come from all sides of the community, including republican families.
Nigel Lutton: All forms of terrorism were and are wrong. I condemn all acts of terror including those of recent days where families have been targeted with crude devices.
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Comment on Making plans for Mid-Ulster, never mind plans for Nigel
on 4 March 2013 at 4:37 pm
Let’s stick to the post, rather than dissecting a candidate’s family history.
Drumlins Rock – why is it nonsense to suggest that if the PUL vote in Mid Ulster needed to increase, then a long campaign might have stood a chance of increasing turnout at next week’s poll. If the numbers were the other way around, I can imagine SF bringing teams from all across Ireland to “get their vote out” and create a surge to get a second placed candidate over the line.
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Comment on Making plans for Mid-Ulster, never mind plans for Nigel
on 4 March 2013 at 4:16 pm
Turgon – it was a post about the selection process and the late campaigning, rather than the well-known tragedy in the candidate’s close family. The Belfast Telegraph report was only mentioned tangentially as it was in today’s news, and will “not harm his vote” unlike “his shyness of the media”.
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