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Books
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Breakthrough on Ireland’s bank debt?
Tweet This looks like a breakthrough on the Republic’s bank debt problem: According to a statement issued at 4am (Irish time), eurozone leaders pledged to “examine the situation of the Irish financial sector with the view of further improving the sustainability of the well-performing adjustment programme.” read our review » -
A rolling First World War reviews thread.
Tweet Given the day that is in it, and since there are only whatever number of shopping days until Christmas, this post is a rolling review of First World War literature, in its broadest sense to include personal accounts, historical fiction (and everything in between), histories, cinema, documentary, drama, theatre and the endless poetry. Next [...] read our review » -
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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Comment on Sinn Fein undermining the sanctity of marriage
on 29 April 2013 at 7:13 pm
The concept that this sets a ‘dangerous precedent’ or puts us on a ‘slippery slope’ is a fallacy – that we should not do something which is correct in case it leads to some other future situation which is wrong.
Letting a pair of same-sex adults get married hurts no one (other than maybe themselves…) – no one is going to coerce a straight person into getting married to a gay person, and no one is suggesting that a Church be coerced into performing these marriages either. Mind your own business and let other people try to find happiness.
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Comment on Willie Frazer detained at his home this morning…
on 27 February 2013 at 5:31 pm
The Orange Order jumps up and down and says “if they don’t use the Parades Commission then we won’t” forcing the Police to do something now before we have a summer of chaos.
This is Sinn Fein’s fault?
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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 3:50 pm
A reversion to a Unionist vs Nationalist head count in mid-Ulster is not really embracing change.
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Comment on Declan Kearney on unionism, compromise, and building reconciliation as the next stage in the peace process
on 31 January 2013 at 12:53 am
The most disappointing aspect of this entire article is that much of the seemingly published good sense is quoted directly from An Phoblacht – and despite some very decent logic being presented I just can’t accept information from a paper which has such a history of being horrendously propagandistic.
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Comment on Is Heaney right when he talks about us having ‘caste politics’?
on 31 January 2013 at 12:17 am
I find Christopher Hitchens was much more accurate than Dawkins in describing the current situation in NI – while agreeing that there is a certain amount of politics involved in our territorial and religious differences he recognises that if there wasn’t faith present in the first place then we all would have long assimilated – as a group of white pale ginger humans who speak exactly the same and behave as almost mirror images of each other.
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Comment on Adams apology worse than no apology at all…
on 30 January 2013 at 11:30 pm
The Guards were rather more neutral than the RUC. The RUC were an active combatant before the PIRA even existed.
I don’t care for the IRA and I never have – but this situation currently has a whiff of blaming only one organisation – an organisation which didn’t really exist in any proper capacity until several years after the Troubles had begun. The RUC were one of the original combatants and in their political policing they were one of the main catalysts for the modern conflict – and they should be remembered as such.
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Comment on Friday thread: Curriculum should be based more on asking questions than answers
on 26 January 2013 at 3:39 am
About 3/4 of the way through this video my brain was thinking “this is all very well but we pay teachers peanuts” before Krauss came out and hit my own particular nail on the head.
I love maths. I have always loved maths. I went to Pim Street Christian Brothers school in the New Lodge in Belfast and managed to make it to St Malachy’s College precisely because of my ability in maths – and despite of a distinct lack of ability in almost every other subject.
Fast forward a decade and my love of maths brought me first into computer programming – and then into sports bookmaking (as in gambling). This has led to me spending the best part of the last 5 years working for some of the world’s biggest betting companies, building mathematical algorithms to predict the likelihood of individual outcomes on sporting events.
As much as I love sport and I enjoy being paid to watch it constantly I can’t help but think that there could have been better ways to utilise the skills I have accumulated over these years – and academia has always seemed hugely attractive on a personal level.
But the single biggest issue for me (and I am ashamed to admit it) is wages. Private sector companies will pay you handsomely for your skills while there is almost no money in academia. How am I supposed to deal with this? I mean teaching others and spending my time being creative towards a scientific goal feels hugely attractive – I’d love that – but I certainly don’t want to find it much much harder to cover my mortgage.
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Comment on Sinn Fein’s ‘creative accountancy’ over funding the gap for a United Ireland
on 25 January 2013 at 4:16 pm
There are few private sector jobs in Northern Ireland because it is much cheaper to do business across the border. I hold a directorship in the Republic of Ireland and a directorship on the Isle of Man yet my family home is in Newtownabbey. The difference between NI and the ROI and IOM is that the two later territories is that their governments have independent fiscal control.
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Comment on “Why can’t Great Britain look Northern Ireland in the eye?”
on 25 January 2013 at 4:06 pm
A hint of truth IJP.
When young James McClean refused to wear a Poppy on his shirt, a Sunderland supporting friend of mine commented that he could go back to his own country if he didn’t like Britain’s culture – I quietly whispered that Derry is in the same country as Sunderland.
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Comment on At the current rate of progress, gender equality of MLAs at Stormont will only take another 65 years
on 25 January 2013 at 12:35 pm
My wife prefers to be a full time mum – I’d prefer to go to work and not to be a full time dad. There is a sex bias for these preferences – more women prefer to stay at home than men – and not everyone can afford childcare. This is not coercive, my missus gives me dirty looks every time I suggest she get a job.
So given that there will always be at least a slightly smaller pool of women who potentially want to work the long hours associated with politics we shouldn’t be artificially pushing those women ahead of men using a kind of PSNI style ‘positive’ discrimination, if that’s what you are suggesting.
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