Profile for William Markfelt
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William Markfelt has commented 68 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 » -
The peace process not such a good model after all
Which reminds me…. Platform for Change’s driving force Robin Wilson has produced a corrective to the notion that the lessons of the NI conflict are easily exportable. Like myself, Robin is associated with the Constitution Unit. He introduced his new book in a CU blog which I here reproduce. The water crisis in Northern Ireland [...] read our review »
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Review: To Kill a Mockingbird
Somehow I escaped reading this essential school text, with its story of racism in 1930s American South. Living in Northern Ireland, I draw parallels with sectarianism, with its similar bigotry and prejudice. To Kill a Mockingbird was part of a Unite Against Hate campaign event at Parliament Buildings in Northern Ireland, which I’ve written [...] read our review »
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Comment on The defeat of the PUP and Dawn Purvis
on 10 May 2011 at 11:29 am
Now that the dust has settled can I just say that, on a personal level, I’m pleased to see any worthless member of the worthless PAC made unemployed. What goes around comes around.
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Comment on Catching up with Stephen Stewart (18 year old independent) #ae11 #bele11
on 23 April 2011 at 4:55 pm
A couple of points
1. A ‘little” life experience is presented as a negative. It would appear there is greater respect for those with more life experience to fiddle their expenses and screw the voters, always figuratively and in some cases literally, as some sort of aphrodisiac of power.
2. Boring middle-aged blokes in boring suits talking bollocks on UTV and the BBC is generally time to make a cup of tea on the basis that we’ve heard it all before and it’s boring, while this young man is clearly embracing new media that the old farts haven’t cottoned onto yet. I wonder what his ‘environmental footprint’ is by comparison to the main parties whose posters are a pox on the landscape?
3. Support for the 11+ is bad? Well, obviously its abolition was such a success that it wasn’t supplanted by the tears of mothers fretting over its ridiculous replacement(s). So it all rather looks like a Ruane groupie chastising an educational traditionalist (described as a ‘young Unionist’).
He won’t be elected, but good luck to the young fella, as long as he remembers not to become so wrapped up in politics to the excluson of all other hobbies that he becomes as boring as the older political class. As usual, I’m staying in bed until the charade is over, followed by a Lennon-esque bed in until the old media election posters are all removed (circa January 2013).
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Comment on Declan Gormley launches multiple legal actions…
on 21 April 2011 at 8:42 pm
‘confidentiality clauses are now routine at the public body, in an attempt to conceal details which may embarrass public servants or their political masters’
Yes. Public bodies are good at concealing details which may embarrass them, up to and including the destruction of evidence and telling lies.
NIAO (amongst others) tell them, and PAC gobble them up.
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Comment on Declan Gormley launches multiple legal actions…
on 21 April 2011 at 12:42 pm
The O’Muilleoir connection is irrelevant to Gormley’s case, Granni, so don’t hold your breath on that element of it. It will instead focus on the manner in which he was sacked, and the lies piled on lies that occurred thereafter to justify the sackings. Those sackings probably weren’t ‘illegal’, in the sense that there probably was a right not to renew a contract (leavin aside the fact that the sacked board were praised by Murphy for their great work in the months in advance of the sackings), but there’s a morality issue.
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Comment on Declan Gormley launches multiple legal actions…
on 21 April 2011 at 12:17 pm
I wish Mr. Gormley every success and can only echo what Pigeon Toes and Pippakin have already said. There certainly are others who, if they had the money, would take the same course of action as Mr. Gormley apparently plans to take. There is an entire raft of government agencies out there who have behaved in a shabby manner for years, and for whom the likes of PAC and the NIAO have been a source of problems, not solutions. Not that either care.
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Comment on NI Justice Minister names independent reviewer
on 21 April 2011 at 8:24 am
‘I wonder has there ever been an ‘independent’ investigation in the north.;
No. The outcome has been pre-deterined, and a bunch of suits will now make the necessary noises to create the illusion of investigating before they announce the findings they’re expected to deliver. They may possibly even attempt to make their findings without actually interviewing Mr. Pollock. After all, he’s just an irrelevancy to the findings of the investigation.
@gongadin : Why limit your mistrust to the ‘higher’ level of civil servants? Even the lower level ones are being schooled in the dishonesty dark arts.
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Comment on Was NI Water rolling back poor departmental compliance rates?
on 21 April 2011 at 7:07 am
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-13148654
I’m quite surprised that Slugger’s correspondents haven’t tried to analyse and compare the political tactics in the ‘Red Sky’ story as they did the NIW story, because there are valid comparisons, and it seems that there is an element of ‘political contracting’ going on here, with some anonymous little ‘investigation’ resulting in a conclusion without there apparently being any sort of valid system of ‘justice’ in place. Not that we should be surprised that the NIA operates in this manner.
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Comment on Bad Vibes
on 20 April 2011 at 8:18 pm
You see, there you go….35 year old music. A nostalgia trip. You could be linking to something new, fresh, contemporary, vibrant, alive in 2011.
This is why stuff like Good Vibes (and record shops) have to go. It’s just a trip down memory lane for a long faded youth. Yes, indeed. Everyone GETS the punk concept.
Live for now. Live for the future. This 35 year old shite is pointless, in terms of revisitation.
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Comment on Bad Vibes
on 20 April 2011 at 2:37 pm
‘From this distance was it not about absurdity and irony as an antidote to the orthodox?’
No.
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Comment on Was NI Water rolling back poor departmental compliance rates?
on 19 April 2011 at 3:47 pm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-13094137
Sorry to drag our old friend NIW up again, but the above link (Red Sky construction in administration) seems to resonate across to the NIW tale.
As sure as NIW’s travails had a deeply ‘political contracting’ agenda, and possibly bolted on sectarian politics and agenda involved, so does the Red Sky story.
As sure as eggs are eggs, there is a ‘political contracting’ angle at work here, and a fairly obvious whiff of sectarianism running through it.
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