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Talking to a brick wall: how to make politicians listen?
It took me a long time to warm to advertising agencies. The first time I worked with one I was working in sales management on Fairy Washing Up Liquid. I was due to attend a meeting at which I was to be told what consumers really thought of the brand. I remember my reluctance to [...] read our review »
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A poem for the day – Launching the Whaler Juan Peron
A Belfast epic, and one of my oldest poems, the opener of my first collection, Grub. The gist of the story was found in Moss & Hume’s Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff, Belfast, 1861-1986, which tells how Eva Peron was due to launch a huge whaling vessel in Belfast, built [...] read our review » -
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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Comment on The need for a Bigger Picture
on 28 April 2012 at 7:42 pm
Congrats BP on getting on board with slugger.
My advice would be this:
You’ll learn a lot from the experience if you let it.
You’ll probably find your first couple of dozen threads will be rough. This is normal ‘blooding’ of new contributors with the site users testing ur abilities. It generally isn’t personal.
Don’t feel the need to write long screeds with every post. (In fact if you just blog matter of factly about a topical news story users seems to appreciate it but by highlighting particular stories you still drive the narrative). I did write some monster posts in my day but they were the exception not the rule.
It can be time consuming but engaging in the comments is often worthwhile plus it allows you to develop an argument or message to its full. You’ll get to see every angle criticism will come from.
And of course don’t feed the trolls.
With a bit of luck maybe the BT will get over its DUP comment phobia and you end up with a paying gig (even if a very poorly paid one). Enjoy.
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Comment on Sinn Fein’s seven goals towards unification?
on 8 April 2012 at 12:31 pm
This is plain rehash of what has been said over the last decade or so. Some of it even echoes the so-called TUAS document. It hasn’t worked in the last 15 years so little sese it’ll suddenly bear fruit in the next 15 years.
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Comment on NI Tories: “You have to wonder on which planet the new UUP leader is living”
on 3 April 2012 at 11:04 am
The Raven
“I will admit I should have said “your party” as opposed to “you”.”
Thank you for the clarification if somewhat contradicted by
“But things weren’t *that* bad in your Coleraine days, now, were they?”
Again you’ve strayed into the personal. There were families who endured worse than ours in Ballysally but we did not, especialy in my younger years have an easy time.
“I wonder, as I have read elsewhere today, that Nesbitt – for all his faults – is a just an eensy bit scary for you lot, gimmicks or no. ”
It’s wishful/conspiratorial thinking like that has delivered the past 15 years for the UUP. So much for MN being a break from it.
The party that has been chasing garden centre prods for the last 15 years has been the UUP. They haven’t turned out for them because unlike mondeo man they are the stuff of demographic fiction rather than electoral reality. The demographic which regularly uses garden centres would be well-represented under the voting section of the public.
“He’s not a farmer. He’s not from Fermanagh.”
No he isn’t but you overlook that the remaining places of strength for the UUP are Border Unionism so Nesbitt ‘nots’ are an additional opportunity for the DUP.
Also MN’s vote getting record is poor. The Strangford UUP result in 2011 lost all its 2010 gains despite Nesbitt being on the ballot both times. Where did the votes go? To the DUP and the Alliance party. Something John McCallister failed to make enough of in his campaign.
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Comment on NI Tories: “You have to wonder on which planet the new UUP leader is living”
on 2 April 2012 at 2:45 pm
The Raven
“Yes, it’s outright gimmickry”
Which was my point, and pretty shallow gimmickry at that.
“100,000-odd non-voting Unionists aren’t turning out for you.”
They aren’t turning out for anybody and gimmicks won’t work to get them out either.
“for you to criticise what Nesbitt is doing”
If you want to go down the personal route I’d point out I don’t need to visit such a family as I grew up in a family of working poor, lived my entire life in three different communities all of which are officially defined as deprived communities, have had to live on benefits (for abt 9 months after Uni) as well as doing 15 years work in the community sector (both paid and unpaid). So I don’t need to read an income chart to get an inkling of the issues or to become a poverty tourist either.
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Comment on Lagan Weir footbridge safety report / Irresponsible Drinks Promotions Regulations
on 12 March 2012 at 1:19 pm
“Yet this shouldn’t have needed to be a knee jerk reaction”
It wasn’t. Work on this preceded the incident. The tragedy simply meant the media paid more attention to it and their attitude changed from Stormont kill-joys to Stormont must act.
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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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Comment on Why Sinn Fein will rightly raise three cheers for the Dragon-slaying Kingmaker from Derry
on 31 October 2011 at 1:12 pm
On the stats, the SF physical vote was down on 2011 and in 3 of their 5 best performing constituencies MM’s performance was below their 2011 % share.
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Comment on Tories struggle to maintain a political ecosphere beyond England…
on 5 September 2011 at 1:28 pm
Not so much his kitchen cabinet but Cameron. He is a skater. He never applies himself to an issue for a sufficient length of time to get to the substantive.
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Comment on Election expenses: UUP binge, SDLP go on crash diet, whilst UKIP spend the day at the races
on 2 September 2011 at 6:15 pm
“In the event, 16 is not as bad as many predicted, nor as bad as it could have been.”
How many elections now is it that this has been the line trotted out to explain the UUP performance?
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Comment on My response to the Slugger Begrudgers
on 18 July 2011 at 3:33 pm
There is an interesting coincidence with Pollak’s inability to deal with comments from others and the recent reaction to criticism of the Past Group in the CoI Gazette (and IIRC Fionnula Meredith wasn’t best pleased about slugger reaction to one of her pieces either on another occassion).
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Comment on Victims and an Amnesty
on 22 June 2011 at 5:52 pm
FJH
My apologies for any misinterpretation on my part
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