Profile for Ruarai
Latest posts from Ruarai (see all)
Ruarai has posted 64 times (2 in the last month).
And the most racially intolerant country is…
Tweet Intriguing wee study reported in today’s Washington Post (and Daily Dish) comparing racial tolerance attitudes worldwide. From the WaPo: The survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify kinds of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents, picking from a list, chose “people of a different race.” The more [...] more »
Suárez bites the hand that feeds him. Again. (Updated)
Tweet *Updated below Before today Liverpool FC’s biggest problem was whether they could prevent Luis Suárez departing this summer. The guy is more than a genius; he’s a hard-working genius. They’re not common. Unfortunately for his employer, Liverpool Football Club, his manager, Carnlough’s Brendan Rogers and, not least, his opponent, Branislav Ivanovic, the reason he’s [...] more »
Sir Stirling Moss: Cretin
Tweet A rolling stone gathers no moss. And yet…The Guardian reports wise old owl Sir Stirling’s belief that “women do not have the mental aptitude for the sport”. (F1 being the sport in question.) “I think they have the strength, but I don’t know if they’ve got the mental aptitude to race hard, wheel-to-wheel,” In [...] more »
Thatcher: Reagan without the charm – or the opposition
Tweet No British figure will emerge in our lifttimes with the capacity to polarize debate quite like Margaret Thatcher. By forcing future Labour governments to embrace the market rather than the state as the central organizing locus of all productive and cultural life in Britain, Thatcher effectively ended tradition-left vs. right ideological debate domestically; indeed, [...] more »
Can the slow death of Irish Nationalism be averted?
Tweet Two weeks ago during a fleeting exchange with Northern Secretary Theresa Villiers I congratulated her on her government’s radical attempts to dismantle the UK’s bloated public sector and hard-earned welfare state before encouraging a bold expedition of the project where its need is greatest: Northern Ireland. On a personal and professional level Ms. Villiers [...] more »
Politicians will drift from one St Patrick’s gathering to the next until the tide goes out leaving everyone beached
Tweet “Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory.” Thatcher’s former press secretary Bernard Ingham. I’ve been ‘doing’ the Washington, D.C. St. Patrick’s Day Week circuit more on than off for most of the last [...] more »
Dealing with Benedict’s legacy
Tweet A common affliction suffered by intellectuals is their ability to think arguments through to their logical conclusions. US audiences watched a minor example unfold quite recently when self-styled libertarian Senator Rand Paul was honest enough to defend the implications of his intransigent commitment to restraining Federal Government activism: ‘principled’ opposition to the Civil Rights [...] more »
Has David Ford even read the Patten Report?
Tweet Alliance Party leader David Ford must have watched last December as British Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a public apology for the unchecked, extra-judicial and murderous activities of the Force Research Unit (or FRU) in Ireland. Cameron lamented at the time that, “The collusion demonstrated beyond any doubt… is totally unacceptable”. The issue with [...] more »
Second Amendment fanatics aren’t paranoid. They’re blindsided.
Tweet The National Rifle Association is taking heat for releasing a new ad attacking President Obama’s attempts to curb citizens’ access to semi-automatic assault weapons. Many are upset at the NRA’s focus on the president’s daughters. Former Bush speech writer David Frum isn’t holding back: As the makers of the NRA ad should know, and [...] more »
The collapsing scenery of NI’s politics
Tweet It’s time to stop patronizing loyalists and tell the truth. You don’t haul down a flag in victory any more than you decommission weapons after winning a war. Trying to convince the angriest elements of the loyalist community otherwise only undermines the credibility of leaders and commentators alike. Yet politics is not an absolutist [...] more »
Latest comments from Ruarai (see all)
Ruarai has commented 333 times (42 in the last month).
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Books
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Voices from the Grave
Tweet 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 [...] read our review »
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The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday (Neil MacFarquhar)
Tweet 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 [...] read our review »
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Friday afternoon thread: Why confession works in a world of ‘cheaters’…
Tweet This is really worth watching… It suggests the very Catholic option of opening a new page by having a confession process does in the longer term help people to behave better… Presented by Dan Ariely, author of The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves. read our review »
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Comment on And the most racially intolerant country is…
on 16 May 2013 at 9:56 pm
Touché Kevsterion
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Comment on PSNI: “if the NCA is unable to operate fully in Northern Ireland, this will have a detrimental impact on our ability to keep people safe”
on 16 May 2013 at 5:56 am
Comrade,
(Ruarai) Read the rap sheet then try with a straight face to justify under any circumstances spooks operating unaccountably in Ireland.
(Comrade) Locally accountable police are running agents in the paramilitaries right now. What’s the difference ?
You just said it: local accountability. The issue has never been with the principle of intelligence gathering, but with who is doing it, for whom and what purpose and what accountabilty is in place. You must known this.
(Ruarai) Not sure what you think that’s got to do with the price of butter. My primary interest is in security arrangments in Ireland. The good people of Manchester or Birmingham have had a slightly different relationship with the Crown, I think you can agree.
(Comrade)What’s different about it ?
We’ve nicer accents. Don’t ask stupid questions Comrade, you’re way smarter than that.
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Comment on PSNI: “if the NCA is unable to operate fully in Northern Ireland, this will have a detrimental impact on our ability to keep people safe”
on 15 May 2013 at 10:55 pm
Comrade,
Firstly, a compromise could almost certainly have been found to make them locally accountable.
And hopefully it still can be.
Secondly, what are you talking about ?
To paraphrase Morpheus above: You shouldn’t have to ask Comrade. Read the rap sheet then try with a straight face to justify under any circumstances spooks operating unaccountably in Ireland. Now, granted, PSNI reforms still left chasm-wide gaps that enabled precisely that – one of the reasons SOCA wasn’t kosher either – but just because some horses have bolted that’s reason to work to getting them restrained, not sigh as the whole damn barn let’s rip.
They’d be as accountable in Belfast as they would in Manchester or Birmingham.
Not sure what you think that’s got to do with the price of butter. My primary interest is in security arrangments in Ireland. The good people of Manchester or Birmingham have had a slightly different relationship with the Crown, I think you can agree.
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Comment on PSNI: “if the NCA is unable to operate fully in Northern Ireland, this will have a detrimental impact on our ability to keep people safe”
on 15 May 2013 at 7:56 pm
Placing accountability for a national UK-wide agency, dealing with reserved or excepted matters, at a level lower than that of the national Parliament risks undermining the operation of that agency
That’s right – and the whole point. Checking the ability of such an operation to run unchecked is as much a goal as any other.
As ample reports, investigations and whistle-blowers have abundantly revealed, its precisely because of the nature of the operations that such a locally unaccountable outfit would likely run, as even the most blinkered person must now appreciate, that an unchecked smooth operation is unacceptable.
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Comment on PSNI: “if the NCA is unable to operate fully in Northern Ireland, this will have a detrimental impact on our ability to keep people safe”
on 15 May 2013 at 7:43 pm
Funny how the DUP and friends make a song and dance about not extending the much needed libel legislation to Belfast yet when it comes to this issue – the ability of (locally unaccountable) spooks to play favourites and play God – its a free-for-all.
At some point unionists will come to realize the extent to which fellow-unionists also fell victim to this shower. You’d think they’d show a little more interest in addressing that question prior to offering another liscence to kill.
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Comment on Beware politicians shutting down their own public accountability mechanisms
on 15 May 2013 at 5:45 pm
Son of Sam is right – Profiles in Courage in legislative chambers are an exception.
The solutions must be structural: changing the incentives not looking for better characters.
In NI that means reducing the representatives’ numbers and increasinly the power/responsibility of those that remain (so that the public is too afraid to disengage).
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Comment on Drama shows best how much Northern Ireland has changed
on 15 May 2013 at 5:38 pm
What’s more depressing, A or B?
A) That the SNP feel the need to assure wavering voters that post-independence: “Scottish viewers will continue to receive popular programmes such as EastEnders, the X-Factor and Strictly Come Dancing.”
Surely a better policy is to warn “anyone caught watching such rubbish wll be immediately stripped of the right to vote on public safety grounds”.
or B) Unionists’ case for their union increasingly comes down to laughable hands-flailing hyperbole around issues like, “but how would we handle the BBC?!”
Again, in an age where China can build a city in the length of time it takes Britain to release a paper on the expansion of Heathrow Airport, surely such laughable non-problems are evidence of people unfit for public policy debates in the first place, never mind managing policy for Scotland as well as England.
The Scottish independence debate is, in my view, steadily if not yet rapidly emerging as a one massive, “Are you serious?” – a call to arms for any self-respecting Scots insulted once too many times by the sheer defeatism and negativity of a union campaign based on little more than:
“You Scots could never run Scotland alone, you idiots!”
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Comment on Beware politicians shutting down their own public accountability mechanisms
on 15 May 2013 at 5:24 pm
There are basically no similarities between Congress and Stormont. Except one…
To this point: “…all politicians and politician institutions are suffering from the same condition, a strong sense of being cut off from the electorate.”
This is exactly the wrong way around. The problem with the US Congress, that is similar to (one of) Stormont, is that it is too connected and responsive to the local. In both Houses (Belfast and DC) the representatives pander to tiny local micro-elements, and in-do-doing the run from partnership and cooperation.
Improvement depends on listening to the local yahoos less, and thinking about the whole collective more. Therein lays the compromises required to un-jam both House’s pathetic recent legislating records.
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Comment on Drama shows best how much Northern Ireland has changed
on 15 May 2013 at 5:16 pm
Sorry Brian, I just noticed you had linked to Lawson so I read it.
He says, The word behind the BBC’s first initial was explosive to many nationalist viewers
Really? The word alone? I’m not buying that one. Sure there were and are issues with bias that may have flared at times but that’s to do with news reporting accuracy, not the name of the channel.
I still choose the BBC, for all it’s pros and cons as, a go-to news source and I’m in the US.
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Comment on Drama shows best how much Northern Ireland has changed
on 15 May 2013 at 5:10 pm
Brian, quick question on this:
He rightly observes the big change, that it’s now Scotland with its independence debate where the “British” in” BBC” expresses more of an issue than it does in today’s Northern Ireland.
Can you unpack that? Is there a move in Scotland to change the name of the BBC? Assuming not, and not having read Lawson’s piece, I’m not sure what this claim is or what its supprting evidence is?
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