Profile for davenewman
Green Party prospective candidate for the Pottinger Ward in Belfast City Council.
Worked for 15 years on e-democracy and e-participation (e.g. http://huwy.eu/).
Formerly a Lecturer in Information Systems at Queen's University Belfast, and ran the Appropriate Technology Centre at Kenyatta University, Nairobi.
MA (Materials Science), Ph.D. (Appropriate Technology), M.Sc. (Artificial Intelligence).
Latest comments from davenewman (see all)
davenewman has commented 253 times (1 in the last month).
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Books
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Eamon Nancarrow’s misadventures in Rock…
It’s the quiet ones you have to watch, they say. When I last saw Eamonn Namcarrow, back in the mid 1980s he was a congenial, good-natured and highly sociable young lad. The next time was 26 years later, in Lavery’s Gin Palace in Bradbury Place. He’d just brought out his first book, Holywood Star about [...] read our review »
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The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday (Neil MacFarquhar)
With perhaps the longest title of any book I’ve read this year, The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East gives an insight into the lives of people living in Middle East through the eyes of journalist Neil MacFarquhar. MacFarquhar’s father was a chemical engineer [...] read our review »
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Turas, by Colin Neill – a story of strangers in a strange land
Colin Neill’s first novel Turas peeks into a world in which many Ulster Protestants feel uncomfortable. It’s 2020 and the Irish unification that unionists and loyalists confidently predicted would never happen has become a reality. President Adams is ensconced in Phoenix Park. The newsreader reported that … a short ceremony at Stormont had confirmed the [...] read our review »
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Comment on The misunderstood Lord Mayor shuffle – timing, facts & Sinn Féin tying themselves in knots over friendship
on 28 April 2012 at 4:30 pm
So if Gavin Robinson takes over, will Belfast then have a tradition that the Mayor has to be a councillor representing Pottinger?
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Comment on Belfast Telegraph to drop evening edition, while News Letter may (not) go weekly?
on 16 April 2012 at 11:47 pm
Once upon a time the Belfast Telegraph was affordable.
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Comment on John Bercow: What should a 21st century Parliament look like?
on 6 April 2012 at 10:25 am
Bercow argues for paying attention to what other legislatures are doing. I was at the World E-Parliament Conference at the US Congress in 2009. The only people there from the Westminster Houses of Parliament were librarians and Hansard staff talking about how to transcribe speeches in the house.
Nancy Pelosi and her fellow congresswomen and men were there, enthusing about their work to get more young people engaged with the parliament. There were no UK politicians.
Chile has a virtual senate, and Brasil a virtual chamber of deputies, in which citizens can go online to participate in shadow debates on the same topics being debated in parliament – in advance of the in-house debates, so that the parliamentarians taking part in the on-line ones can learn from the experience of outsiders (not just paid lobbyists). But I have never heard anyone in Westminster, Whitehall or Stormont looking at that (although some in Scotland have).
Even the Oireachtas is closer to a 21st Century Parliament than Westminster. A joint committee of the Dail and the Seanead ran an e-consultation in 2006 on what should be in the Broadcasting Bill. In our evaluation report (http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/econsultation/ECRG_Report.doc) I wrote a section explaining what a 21st Century Parliament might look like.
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Comment on Tom Elliott’s first post resignation interview…
on 9 March 2012 at 7:22 pm
See how far behind the times our politicians are.
Even in Syria people know they have to resign on YouTube.
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Comment on Do journalists’ arrests mark the end of the British scandal sheet?
on 18 February 2012 at 2:29 pm
Forget the tabloids. We still have Private Eye.
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Comment on In praise of… Borgen
on 5 February 2012 at 8:43 pm
The British TV equivalents will be comedies. Think about how often the comedy is better than the drama or thriller on our TV. So Waking the Dead is surpassed by New Tricks, Allo allo is better than the earlier Belgian and Channel Islands resistance dramas, and so on.
Imagine a comedy version of CSI, set in Belfast.
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Comment on John Kyle on faith and loyalism
on 25 January 2012 at 10:35 am
John Kyle did get 1022 first preferences in May. That was 75% of the quota. So it is not true, as Turgon claimed, that very few people support the PUP as their first preference.
The reason it took him 9 rounds to get elected is because the PUP is not as transfer-friendly as some of the smaller parties (such as the candidate excluded in stage 8).
In the end he was elected under quota, but so were two of the DUP councillors.
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Comment on Olympics – the funding disgrace continues…
on 24 December 2011 at 9:27 pm
The point is that greedy selfish bastards in London take money from the poor in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the north of England.
It is time to tax Londoners higher for their damage to the environment, instead of subsidising people (e.g. through expensive commuter trains and the tube) to live in an overcrowded corner of the country.
The aim should be to depopulate London, spreading work around the country, just like in Germany.
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Comment on Pass Netanyahu Molyneaux’s memoirs before it’s too late
on 21 December 2011 at 6:54 pm
s/Liduk/Likud/
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Comment on Meet Kim Jong-un, he may need your advice
on 21 December 2011 at 7:57 am
He should take a sabbatical to do a Masters in Public Policy (but not plagiarise a Ph.D. like Ghaddaffi´s son).
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