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Books
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Voices from the Grave
Coming up to the Halloween holiday, some people might be frightened of the idea of Voices from the Grave – but for others, the chance to hear an oral history of the Troubles from the mouths of two (in)famous protagonists, PUP leader and former UVF member David Ervine, and Brendan “The Dark” Hughes, is not [...] read our review »
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Titanic: was it all right when it left here?
Not according to metallurgists Tim Foecke and Jennifer Hooper McCarty whose research has suggested that dodgy Harland and Wolff rivets were at fault for allowing the Titanic’s hull to be ripped apart by the pressure of the iceberg impact. With six of the hull’s chambers exposed to the Atlantic waters, the “unsinkable” ship lasted less [...] read our review »
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Hearing the Other Voice from the Grave: Why Should we Listen to David Ervine’s Stories?
Ed Moloney’s Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland has received considerable attention in the press and in the public realm since its publication earlier this year. Although the book relates the experiences of the Provisional IRA’s Brendan Hughes and the PUP/UVF’s David Ervine, much of the discussion has focused on Hughes’ stories [...] read our review »
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Comment on NI Universities show strong religious imbalance in student numbers
on 18 October 2011 at 9:00 pm
Turgon, I normally don’t comment on Slugger, and I normally enjoy reading what you have to say, but your QUB – Oxford analogy is completely off the wall. Admission to Queen’s takes place through the UCAS form (see here) while admission to Oxford (see here) takes place through a review of UCAS applications alongside personal statements (for which ample opportunities for coaching exist at feeder schools). This review produces a shortlist to interview for places. Interviews are a great opportunity to filter for the ‘right’ sort of student.
I have no sense of what the problem might be here though I doubt that we at the Universities can declare ourselves entirely innocent, but the admissions process itself simply cannot be to blame.
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Comment on The saga of high garden hedge legislation, or election-discounting devolution for teens…
on 30 January 2010 at 12:59 pm
This just looks like insular whingeing from Newton Emerson. Is he complaining about consultations? God knows this is a trivial issue, but people here weren’t consulted for the 2003 Act.
Speaking of the 2003 Act, it seems that there was a consultation there. It ended in 1999 (I can’t find the report itself, which must make a stunning read, but there are lots of references to it). So it took about five years to get from conception to Act in England and Wales. And then the English launched another consultation in 2004 to figure out how the Act would be implemented.
Also, we’re not much farther behind the Scots, who started their consultation last year. And their Assembly wasn’t suspended at all.
So this takes time everywhere, and why shouldn’t it? The only real lesson seems to be that democratic government in the UK, in all its mad variety, is slow government. Even when it comes to Daily Mail-inspired silliness, since when is slow law-making a worse thing than fast law-making?
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Comment on On the importance of the law in online political discourse…
on 21 January 2010 at 11:23 pm
DR: I would guess that cryptic clues count as innuendo. See about halfway down this page.
I wonder about the linking to libel question. This guy thinks it is, and seems to make a pretty persuasive argument.
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Comment on Thoughts on Policing and Justice
on 19 January 2010 at 2:55 am
Northern Ireland shares the English and Welsh justice system
Turgon, it doesn’t undermine any of your other arguments, but as Comrade Stalin says, this is not true. Northern Ireland has its own legal system and does not operate under English law (as Wales does). It’s by no means as distinctive from English law as the Scottish system, but it is separate.
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Comment on “It’s obviously an alien probe”
on 13 January 2010 at 11:56 pm
Sorry to hear about joeCanuck’s dog. As Douglas Adams revealed, our canine friends are all that stands between us and full-scale nanobot invasions.
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Comment on As the dysfunctional semi-detached polit-bureau wends its way into history…
on 12 January 2010 at 4:29 pm
Is it too much for Unionists to ask that the British government, Labour or Conservative, at least take an even handed approach and put its own citiziens interests above maintaining good relations with the government in the south.
I doubt that the government in the south is particularly engaged at the moment, but anyhow: my impression of the last quarter century of British government is that “maintaining good relations with the government in the south” is a major plank of their strategy for attending to their own citizens’ interests.
There’s no reason to believe that the interests of NI’s Unionists as you imagine them are at all the same as the interests of most UK citizens, as imagined by the state.
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Comment on Would the last under 36 year old please switch off the lights as you leave Ireland?
on 23 December 2009 at 3:27 am
Feck. Last sentence of paragraph 1 should have been at the end of paragraph 2.
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Comment on Would the last under 36 year old please switch off the lights as you leave Ireland?
on 23 December 2009 at 3:26 am
Mack, you’re right, as Karl Whelan pointed out last April, asset values increased hugely for most households during the boom. But as we’re finding out, asset values are far more volatile than people expected and certainly more volatile than household debt. It would mean that the drunk have were putting George Best to shame.
What I found disturbing here is the fact that the debt levels that, when averaged across all households, put the Irish 4th on the OECD’s league table, is actually held by only half of households. It’s like discovering that the Irish are on average massive drunkards and then finding out that half of Irish people are teetotalers.
Also, I do wonder as I mentioned to Mick when we chatted about this, but the survey was done over the telephone. I’m sure that Gerald O’Neill would give a good considered answer on this, but I wonder on the face of it if his survey underestimates pressure at the younger end of the spectrum: young households under financial pressure are quite likely not to be paying for landlines I would think. If polls in the USA are anything to go by, this can have quite an effect.
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Comment on Fine Gael prepared to work with Sinn Fein (to unseat Eoin Ryan)?
on 1 June 2009 at 6:47 pm
Just for the record, Enda Kenny says it’s not true.
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Comment on The pressing need for ‘power to speak unto the people’…
on 24 April 2009 at 7:19 pm
Fin, I don’t know that that follows. A UI would only be attractive (on these grounds) if the Republic was doing better than the UK. And the opposite is the case.
Also – and Northerners are spectacularly blind about this in my experience – a UI would require a referendum in two jurisdictions. Taking on an expensive Northern Ireland would surely look less and less attractive to taxpayers down South as their own economic woes bite. Why would worse living conditions in NI make a UI easier to sell in the Republic?
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