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Books
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Help me with the West Wing: Essential viewing or Party Political Broadcast?
Tweet Having somehow managed to avoid watching a single episode of the widely praised West Wing TV series I was delighted to discover the entire Box set in my Christmas stocking – and with enough spare time over the holidays to give it a good lash. But with 10 episodes of the first series under [...] read our review »
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The Irish political journalist’s problem with partial disclosure…
Tweet The nod and wink politics of Ireland’s last two or three decades as practised par excellence by Bertie, Albert and Charlie is ultimately what has the Republic in the stew it’s in. Don’t get me wrong, the effective monitoring of those exercising of power does not demand full disclosure of everything all the time. [...] read our review »
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“Unionism Decayed 1997-2007″ by David Vance: book review
Tweet I initially wrote this when the book was first published three years ago; whilst certain elements of it now sound dated, its basic premise that the period of 1997-2007 was a period of irreversible decay for Northern Irish Unionism can still be argued as a valid opinion. My own feeling is that it did [...] read our review »
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Comment on One more domino for Labour: Nessa Childers’ ‘resignation’…
on 5 April 2013 at 1:24 pm
Cynics might suggest that the time to walk was the last budget (not that she had a vote, but she could have supported Keaveny’s anti-budget stance). It’s hard to accept that she only now realises that this Government is ‘hurting people’. Maybe Meath East opened her eyes to at least one future job loss.
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Comment on Basil and John need a name for their New Party: Can you help?
on 28 February 2013 at 12:26 pm
Think of the comic potential if Ian Parsley and Basil were in the one party. I suggested ‘Unity’ as a joke, but who knows?
I wouldn’t be surprised if they include ‘Northern Ireland’ in the moniker, rather than ‘Ulster’. Reaching out to the Catholics who are ‘Northern Irish’ don’t you know.
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Comment on Do all Nationalists believe in “what’s bad for you is good for us…”
on 27 February 2013 at 3:46 pm
I detest the Orange Order. They’ve been on the wrong side of every cultural, political and societal debate from Catholic Emancipation to Gay Marriage. But I remember that forlorn fly on the wall documentary the BBC did in Ballysally in Coleraine last year, and how a newly formed flute band gave young unemployed men something to get out of bed for. It’s a pity that there isn’t a nonsectarian equivalent but let’s face it, there isn’t.
Re. a name for Basil’s party, I suggest ‘Unity’ – that way even SF supporters could vote for it.
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Comment on The shrinking heart of the UUP: A lucky 13?
on 20 February 2013 at 2:25 pm
I can’t really agree that Nesbitt put in a good performance on Spotlight. Positioning himself against gay marriage, saying that all the deaths of the Troubles were down to Nationalists being unhappy about the recognition given to their cultural identity – if that’s one of his better outings I’d hate to see his disasters.
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Comment on #Gay Marriage: Who says you can’t have religious symbols? The Law
on 20 February 2013 at 12:36 pm
Far be it from me to defend Arlene Foster, but I thought that Stephen’s point was a strange one. He said something like ‘an atheist hetrosexual couple can have a religious ceremony but a Christian gay couple can’t.’
But why would an atheist couple want such a thing? I think the implications for adoption are a much more serious issue, but they were hardly mentioned.
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Comment on Time for Unionism to find a place for the Irish National flag in Northern Ireland
on 19 February 2013 at 11:16 am
“Hard to get past that 17% figure though.”
Not so very hard – the 2011 Census showed 25% of the population opting for an ‘Irish only’ identity. That’s plus 8% without even venturing into what ‘Northern Irish’ means.
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Comment on Nesbitt: “change happens and if you don’t roll with it then you’ll be left behind”
on 18 February 2013 at 4:47 pm
My hope is that Will Farrell will reprise his Newsreader role to play Mike in the biop. I wonder who will play Lynda?
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Comment on #Flegs: They haven’t gone away you know…
on 18 February 2013 at 2:26 pm
“protestant streets”
Jesus wept.
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Comment on “They can take whatever they can, but Northern Ireland is still going to be British whether they like it or not”
on 7 February 2013 at 10:34 am
Antain Mac Lochlainn: I thought the key quote was: ‘They have no right whatsoever’. ‘They being a majority of democratically elected Councillors in Belfast.
You’ll have had no problem with Stormont pre-1972 then, will you?
UPC, Stormont’s distain for Irish Catholics went a bit further than banning the tricolour.
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Comment on Farewell to Gaelscéal
on 7 February 2013 at 10:30 am
Mainland Ulsterman: as regards English being ‘a perfect language to sell pigs in’ – I’ve always felt uneasy about that line myself. In fairness though, the poet Hartnett wasn’t so much attacking English as responding to a familiar jibe against Irish: that’s it’s no good for practical purposes, commerce etc. He’s standing the argument on its head by painting ‘practical purpose’ as a bit grubby, like Yeat’s ‘fumbling in the greasy till’. Romantic, yes but not racist. He expressed the same idea in a better line from the same poem: ‘Irish is our final sign that we are human and therefore not a herd.’
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Comment on Spotlight Poll: A ‘crisis’ of widespread political mislabelling?
on 7 February 2013 at 9:35 am
Re. Lionel’s statement that ‘if Sinn Fein ever manage to get into government, its a game changer’, I would have agreed, once. But there’s very little a Dublin Government could do to advance unification within the framework of the Good Friday Agreement. Further all-Ireland institutions, for example, need approval by all sides and it’s not clear how any Dublin administration could breathe new life into the existing ones.
Plus, the experience of coalition Government has not been kind to smaller, radical parties. The Southern political system is remarkably rigid – even after disgracing themselves, Fianna Fáil appear to be on the mend. It is just possible that this generation of SF could get to Cabinet only to find the party meet the same fate as Clann na Poblachta and their old mates in Democratic Left.
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Comment on Spotlight Poll: A ‘crisis’ of widespread political mislabelling?
on 6 February 2013 at 5:22 pm
A shocking performance by Gerry Kelly on that radio clip – more or less saying that Malachi O’Doherty has no right to an opinion.
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Comment on Sinn Fein: mislabelled meat…
on 6 February 2013 at 3:01 pm
‘Give us a capall o’ yon burgers.’ Wee bilingual one, there.
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Comment on “a 65% to 17% majority for Northern Ireland remaining in the UK suggests little room for doubt.”
on 6 February 2013 at 12:56 pm
The debate was bad but it had it’s moments of humour. I loved the way Alex Attwood claimed the designated days compromise for Nationalism (‘Nationalism worked it through’.) All things spring from the SDLP, it seems.
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Comment on “They can take whatever they can, but Northern Ireland is still going to be British whether they like it or not”
on 6 February 2013 at 12:29 pm
I thought the key quote was: ‘They have no right whatsoever’. ‘They being a majority of democratically elected Councillors in Belfast.
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Comment on “a 65% to 17% majority for Northern Ireland remaining in the UK suggests little room for doubt.”
on 6 February 2013 at 10:40 am
Ah, the death of Republicanism or the fall of Unionism or whatever. It reminds me rather of sporting punditry. Man United or Man City lose three games on the trot and it’s all about decline and fall. Then they start winning again and it’s all about unstoppable force. If SF and the SDLP do well at the next round of elections, winning the North Belfast Westminster or picking up Assembly seats in the East, Slugger and other forums will be full of ‘the Death of Unionism’ again. It’s all very well decrying the poverty of public discourse – it seems to me that Unionism and Republicanism, far from being dead, are the only show in town.
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Comment on Farewell to Gaelscéal
on 5 February 2013 at 2:10 pm
I should say straight off that I contributed a few articles to Gaelscéal. I can’t agree that it was always a ‘fantastic’ paper but then how could it be with the resources available to it? I recall the frustration I felt when I worked with Foinse (the old Foinse, not the one that comes free with the Indo) when people compared us unflatteringly to The Irish Times or The Guardian. Useless to point out that there are more staff working on the sports pages of those newspapers than Foinse had over it’s entire history.
That is the existential problem for the Irish language media -that they can’t really compete with English language papers in terms of investigative journalism, specialist analysis and so on. In searching for a distinctive role for themselves Irish language publications are too likely to fall into the trap of being papers about the Irish language. It’s a circle that’s hard to break out of.
But it doesn’t help that Foras lay down such unreasonable conditions. If Foras are disappointed by the sales acheived by Gaelscéal they might like to ponder the fact that they are the ones who insisted on having a complete on-line edition. I’d say that put a serious dent in the sales.
And the staff of Gaelscéal are entitled to ask: where was the support? Where was the advice? Foras are supposedly experts in project management. Did they alert Gaelscéal to their concerns? Did they address how their existing, contracted providers might be helped turn things around? No. Just pull the plug and blame.
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