Profile for Lee Reynolds
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Latest posts from Lee Reynolds (see all)
Lee Reynolds has posted 1,002 times (1 in the last month).
Unionist cause in Scotland should fight from a position of strength
Grasping defeat? The Unionist cause in Scotland fighting an independence referendum campaign should be doing so from a position of inherent strength. Support for the Union has consistently outpolled support for independence. In more recent years any spikes in the support for independence have been just that, unsustained for any significant period of time. Also [...] more »
Debate within Unionism: Thorough, Intense and Constructive
This is a cross posting of Fair Deal's contribution to Open Unionism's ongoing debate on the future of unionism. He argues that all parties to the debate must resist the temptation to the shape of the solution in their own preferred image, but rather they must allow the debate be 'thorough, intense and constructive'. more »
The DUP knocked to the canvas
A massive right hook was delivered by the TUV squarely on the DUP’s chin. It put the DUP on the electoral canvas so as it gets to its feet to receive its 8 count by the referee what should be going through its mind? NOTE: The following is written with hindsight at full value. Even [...] more »
Euro 09 and the DUP – Part 2
The ‘Who’ question for the DUP and the European Election has been answered with Diane Dodds selected as the European Election candidate but what should the party’s message be? (H/T to those who reviewed earlier drafts/parts of this article.) Part 2 continues the examination of the main candidates and how the DUP message should be [...] more »
Euro 09 and the DUP – Part 1
The ‘Who’ question for the DUP and the European Election has been answered with Diane Dodds selected as the European Election candidate but what should the party’s message be? (H/T to those who reviewed earlier drafts/parts of this article.) Part 1 examines the broader battle and begins with an examination of the main candidates.The Unionism [...] more »
Results to suit every position
According to Policing Board research confidence in the PSNI has never been higher. “Eighty six per cent of respondents have some, a lot or total confidence in the PSNI’s ability to provide a day-to-day policing service for everyone in Northern Ireland,” According to the ICR, confidence in the policing in working class loyalist communities is [...] more »
The new ‘decommissioning’?
Over on Our Kingdom I argue that the devolution of policing and justice in the St Andrew’s Agreement has become the equivalent of decommissioning in the Belfast Agreement with the roles of Unionism and Republicanism reversed and that the recent deal faces two tests in 2009; the reaction of republicans if it does not happen [...] more »
A Road to Croydon conversion
A Conservative Party councillor, Maria Gatland (nee McGuire) has resigned as the Croydon Council Education Cabinet member after her past involvement in the PIRA was revealed. She detailed her involvement in a 1973 kiss and tell book about the PIRA called “To Take Arms: My Year with the IRA Provisional”. (Hat tip Guido Fawkes). more »
Freeze the district rate?
The one tax in the ‘control’ of local parties is rates. The DUP has put strong emphasis on the significance of freezing the regional rate and all parties have worked to hold back water charges. However, there is the matter of the district rate. At the moment discussions are beginning within councils about next year’s [...] more »
Latest comments from Lee Reynolds (see all)
Lee Reynolds has commented 141 times (0 in the last month).
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Books
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Debating the Churches’ Role in the Peace in Northern Ireland
This morning’s Sunday Sequence featured a substantial debate (about 35 minutes into the recorded programme) on a new book,Religion, Civil Society and Peace in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press 2011), written by sociologists John Brewer, Gareth Higgins and Francis Teeney. The debate was framed in an opening vignette by presenter William Crawley in uncompromising terms, [...] read our review » -
Stay out of Libya: counterinsurgency doesn’t work
A moment of some significance in journalism perhaps, as the New York Times reviews the current talked about book, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan by Bing West. The author is no bleeding heart but a former assistant Defense Secretary from the Reagan era who stomped his way round the Afghan [...] read our review »
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Spare us a phoney row about racism, we’ve got enough on
A silly media row about racism just had to figure in the riots’ post mortem. Was the Tudor history expert David Starkey racist on Newsnight when he said: The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in [...] read our review »
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Comment on The PSNI, illegal road blocking charges and prospective New Year’s resolutions
on 29 December 2011 at 5:21 pm
Joe
No I don’t have the time.
CD
Ignoring my questions and challenges and then trying to shift the topic, I wonder why? Care to respond to why the Robinson case slipped your mind and why the different attitudes at Stormont and Ardoyne?
No it wasn’t the same as Sammy’s conference speech a living breathing actual child was discriminated against.
“at least the Mayor had the decency to apologise for his regrettable actions”
Sorry the Lord Mayor took days to apologise (after SF had publicly said he wouldn’t) and did it so hamfistedly the first time he had to issue a second one. On the same day as the apology he told a journalist he wouldn’t rule doing the same again (cutting the legs from under the apology).
Asked three days later to say he wouldn’t behave the same way he refused and his group leader said to ask him to do so was to ask him to become a Unionist. Yet the next morning his group leader promised on the radio the Lord Mayor would not do the same again (this was mysteriously achieved without him changing into a Unionist) so what was too much to ask the night before became possible within hours. This was a SF media mess not a Unionist conspiracy.
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Comment on The PSNI, illegal road blocking charges and prospective New Year’s resolutions
on 28 December 2011 at 7:44 pm
CD
If you are so interested how did such a prominent case slip your mind? The twaddell protest occurred after a number of white line pickets on the crumlin road by republicans so the psni bascially facilitated two sides of an argument to protest rather than discriminate against anyone. Never mind the disjoint of repulicans sharing power at stormont but can’t share a roundabout on the crumlin road.
Your stuff is so much better when you don’t parrot connolly house lines. There was nothing faux about the anger at an act of political discrimination against a child by a mayor under orders from party superiors. The claim this is to get alliance votes back really is from another planet without the first clue about non-nationalist voting patterns in the city. Just shows how the unionist outreach has made zero impact on republican analysis with the same tired and wrong conclusions reached.
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Comment on The PSNI, illegal road blocking charges and prospective New Year’s resolutions
on 28 December 2011 at 7:03 pm
You omit the detail of a parades commission ruling applied to the protest on which charges were made unlike the other examples.
Also there is the matter of the first minister and a DUP councillor being convicted of this offence a number of years ago but that wouldn’ fit the story very well would it? Was that case a shift in psni policy?
I realise that Sinn Fein in the city are trying to ‘toughen up’ their image to counteract the dissidents but a lesson the DUP learned from tackling the TUV is that such approaches are the wrong path.
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Comment on “…it’s not actually the economy, stupid, after all.”
on 29 November 2011 at 3:08 pm
CD
“Sinn Fein’s Unionist Outreach initiatives?”
Just as the UUP provide much of the manual of how not to do politics SF provide the section on how not to do outreach.
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Comment on Spiteful Peter launches broadside at Nolan during Party Speech
on 28 November 2011 at 4:21 pm
Lionel
It was in the 2011 DUP manifesto
“bring forward legislation to increase the maximum period of
imprisonment for offences involving violence or neglect directed against the elderly or vulnerable”
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Comment on “…it’s not actually the economy, stupid, after all.”
on 28 November 2011 at 3:13 pm
CD
No it doesn’t go to the heart of it. It’s what you wish to make it about – undermine a narrative with sideshows. The analysis is stuck too much in the old narratives and failing/unwilling to grasp that this is a long-term programme.
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Comment on “…it’s not actually the economy, stupid, after all.”
on 28 November 2011 at 11:47 am
Carnmoney Ayeyerma
They do get it. They just pretend not to as it is the easier means to try and kill the narrative.
CD
“refrain from boasting about their ability to stop houses from being built for catholics.”
The person who described it as boasting on that thread…the independent source…oh it was yourself in the comments. Way to support an argument.
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Comment on Conservatives winding up the UUP?
on 11 November 2011 at 7:33 pm
OneNI
The Tories have made an all or nothing offer in terms of relationship with the UUP. If the answer is No the JN’s continuing participation in the ECR may be a casuality of that No.
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Comment on Conservatives winding up the UUP?
on 11 November 2011 at 2:11 pm
One NI
Why does NI need the UUP?
It doesn’t in particular. Electorally it provides a home for those who simply don’t want to change their voting habit and those whose politics is primarily anti-DUP in basis.
Should those who support the Union not welcome the fact that Cameron wants to end NI’s isolation from UK politics?
The Tories have been here for over 20 years. Conservatives have no monoploy on Unionism. Presence and inclusion are not always the same thing.
Does Elliott’s knee jerk reaction not amount to the expulsion of Jim Nicholson from the UUP?
No. It means his participation in ECR hangs in the balance.
Are people not putting nostalgia and self interest ahead of moving on politics?
There are multiple reasons why the UUP is in the state it is. There is multiple reasons why UCUNF failed some of which was the Tories inability or unwillingness to understand NI politics. These are the fundamental problems to all this rather than nostalgia and self-interest.
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Comment on Conservatives winding up the UUP?
on 11 November 2011 at 10:49 am
“The meetings of the so-called “Way Forward Group” have included UUP members such as Lesley McCauley, Johnny Andrews and Trevor Ringland. Neil Johnston of the Conservatives has also been involved, and John Lund.”
If this claim is correct then it is the best evidence to support Obelisk’s comments regarding Central Office not getting Northern Ireland politics.
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