Post Archives for Alan in Belfast
“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 »
Iceland election result: two parties blamed for economic meltdown returned to power
Tweet Back to Iceland to look at the election result. The BBC report that: Centre-right opposition parties in Iceland are set for a return to power with nearly all votes counted after Saturday’s parliamentary election. The Independence party has 26% and the Progressive party 24%, putting them on track to win nearly 40 of the [...] more »
Peter Robinson: in 50 years’ time the votes of the culturally Irish will help ensure union remains safe
Tweet Peter Robinson light-heartedly suggested that DUP’s first ever spring policy conference today in Fermanagh “means that the G8 Summit has now been demoted to the second most important event in Fermanagh this year!” The full speech is available from the DUP website. The DUP leader reassured delegates that Nigel Dodds “will be back at [...] more »
Icelandic dinosaurs, elections and the fate of their crowd-sourced constitution … and a link to equal marriage
Tweet Slugger should take a look at Iceland more often. An article in yesterday’s Guardian described intriguing democratic and constitutional processes. About a third of the North Atlantic island’s population live in the capital city of Reykjavík, another third live in the greater Reykjavík area. Apparently two thirds of the island’s population are on Facebook: [...] more »
Matt Baggott on flag protests, Boston tapes, G8 summit, drones & social media
Tweet It’s all looking a bit fraught. We need a recovery plan. The words of the Chief Constable Matt Baggott describing the fortunes of his football club rather than the PSNI’s response to the flags crisis. Though the words must echo what went through the PSNI senior officers’ minds when the flags crisis didn’t abate [...] more »
Interview with Matt Baggott: his view on PSNI transformation, confidence in policing, over-regulation, vocation & faith
Tweet We usually hear public figures speaking in sound bites. At most ten minute interviews about some topic of the day. We rarely get to listen in as they explain what motivates them to do their job and reflect on their rationale or approach. The PSNI Chief Constable has been given advice on what he [...] more »
News Letter relaunched with new fonts, new templates and perhaps fewer words
Tweet A new look News Letter hit the news-stands on Monday morning. All Johnston Press titles have been going through a process of refresh, and this week it is the turn of the two hundred and seventy six year old paper. The News Letter website will undergo its revamp today. [In the images below, last [...] more »
Tweet like a politician … ideally, thinking about how it’ll be read and misread
Tweet Tools like Twitter and Facebook can make a politician into a one person media outlet, broadcasting what they hear, see and think without the mediation of the traditional broadcast and print media. Gone are the days of being off-the-record and silent until a reporter turns up to note your words. Politicians can be online [...] more »
Gerry Adams says loyalists have much in common with republican neighbours and calls for dialogue
Tweet Gerry Adams closed the Sinn Fein ard fheis with his presidential speech. It was live on RTE (and the sinnfein.ie website) and will be repeated on BBC Two NI on Sunday at 6pm. The full text is available; below are some excerpts. On a border poll … There would be no peace process and [...] more »
Sinn Féin and abortion – two more motions challenging the party’s current stance
Tweet For the second year in a row, motions about abortion have been submitted to the ard fheis. The Ard Chomhairle has its own motion this year around legislating “to give effect to the 1992 judgement of the Supreme Court in the X Case”. But the motion from headquarters is joined by two others that [...] more »
Martin McGuinness: “a lack of cohesion between Unionist and Republican Ministers … frankly this isn’t good enough” (updated with his Saturday observations about dissidents & Orange Order)
Tweet Some excerpts below from this evening’s speech by Martin McGuinness at the Castlebar ard fheis. You can listen along … though he was rudely interrupted in the live stream by adverts for Gaviscon Double Action and Harpic White and Shinner Shine at one point! listen to ‘Martin McGuinness @M_McGuinness_SF addressing 2013 Sinn Fein Ard [...] more »
Sinn Féin ard fheis gets underway with motions on candidate gender, flags, Royal Exchange and Easter Lily stickers (updated)
Tweet Sinn Féin’s ard fheis gets underway this evening in Castlebar, County Mayo. Martin McGuinness will give his now-traditional Friday night keynote, followed by debate around motions on a United Ireland and the peace process. The majority of the business is tomorrow – with blocks of motions debated throughout the day, peppered with a band [...] more »
NI = a hub of multi-millionaires; a dearth of patents; a society of minorities; differing community narratives
Tweet The Community Relation Council’s second annual Peace Monitoring Report is launched this morning on the fifteenth anniversary of the signing of the Belfast Agreement. [Links to download sections from the report can be found in the CRC's press release.] The report seeks to provide “a dispassionate analysis of the trends in Northern Ireland politics [...] more »
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Books
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Christopher Hitchens, 1949 – 2011
Tweet Writer Christopher Hitchens has died aged 62. He was as contrary as he was brilliant. Here is a brief In Memoriam from Vanity Fair (his outlet of choice since 1992) and, here, a longer tribute from his friend Christopher Buckley Stanley in The New Yorker. Better, perhaps, though to post one of Hitchens’ own writings [...] read our review »
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Lessons in Cute Hoorism: “Graft was accepted, for you were taking from the British…”
Tweet I’ve been catching up on some reading, recently. Most pleasantly surprised by John Drennan’s latest opus from Gill and Macmillan, Cute Hoors and Pious Protestors… It’s early days yet, but I was struck by this paragraph, part of a dissection of Fianna Fail near the beginning: One of the more fatal consequences of our [...] read our review »
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What Ireland did right (and what it needs to do)…
Tweet It is difficult to believe now that one country recently sent 19 delegations to Ireland to study how well our economy was managed. The revelation that our model of economic management featured positively in political and economic discussion in countries including Estonia, Greece and Scotland may also come as a surprise. As we survey [...] read our review »
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