Class

The DUP class coalition is ending…

Jay Burbank on April 29, 2021, 8:00 am | Readers 7096

Despite the best efforts of hard-line unionists to bring the narrative of Arlene Foster’s downfall at the hands of the much-maligned NI Protocol, the discussion is almost organically drifting towards values. The party of Paisley faces the perfect storm as working and middle-class supporters leave them poll after poll straight to the Alliance Party or to the Traditional Unionist Voice. The former departure lounge of the UUP has been exposed as the fractured loose coalition of two opposing world views …

Our New Class System During The Coronavirus Pandemic…

Michael Palmer on June 2, 2020, 10:18 am | Readers 1634

The coronavirus pandemic has completely reordered the world as we know it. Simple, everyday things that we took for granted such as shopping or going to the gym or bars have either been taken or been severely restricted for the good of public health. In these restrictions that have become the new normal has emerged a new class system in all societies all over the world: Essential Workers and Shielders. A third group are those who fall somewhere in between. …

Bonfire Porn and Our Contempt of the Working Class…

David on July 12, 2016, 1:53 pm | Readers 8038

While the last pallets were gathered and stacked in estates around the country yesterday, moralising social media pundits were already unleashing patronising vitriol. It grows in vigour as the sky-scraping pyres rise ever higher across the province, the self-assertion of Northern Ireland’s armchair intelligentsia whose smug classist intolerance is as easy and cheap as the ignorance they supposedly are criticising. There are, of course, unsavoury and deeply rooted elements of this celebration that are commandeered for sectarian purpose and are …

Why social democrats need to seriously (for once) address the vulnerability of the poorest in society…

Mick Fealty on November 19, 2013, 2:54 pm | Readers 55

My top favourite wonk blogger bar none, on why some responsibility for the often illiberal attitudes of the poorest in society often belongs to social democrats who fail to reduce the real sense of vulnerability they feel to in turn feel some sympathy for the ‘other’: First, moral judgments are influenced by our economic positions. Marx was right to say that “the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life.” For more evidence of …

Thoughts on the politics of the riots

Turgon on August 10, 2011, 2:23 pm | Readers 6

Riots are not common in mainland GB. Every time one occurs there is handwringing by the media who seem torn between denouncing it all as “mindless violence” and trying to understand why it has happened. The same occurs in Northern Ireland of course though previously during the Troubles there seemed more emphasis on understanding and nowadays there is more emphasis on condemning. Politicians are similar to the media in their reactions with the exception that any politician who attempts to …

Sinn Fein: limited political ambition?

Turgon on June 9, 2011, 10:44 pm | Readers 7

The row over Mary McArdle shows no sign of abating yet and the one over Sean McGlinchey the new mayor of Limavady seems to be gearing up. There are of course a variety of other Sinn Fein members with significant terrorist pasts: the News Letter produced a list of these individuals last week. Various explanations have been proffered: rewards for “old soldiers” and reassuring the hard line republican base seem to be amongst the most convincing; winding up unionists is …

Of Royal Weddings and Social Mobility

Turgon on May 2, 2011, 11:30 pm | Readers 9

The excitement of the Royal wedding did not last even as long as the long Bank Holiday, displaced as it has been by Mr. Bin Laden’s death. There was little in the way of politics to the wedding: omitting Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from the guest list hardly counted as a constitutional crisis. As social commentary some suggested that the fact that Catherine Middleton is from a non aristocratic background somehow marked a welcome departure for the Royal Family. …

Forget about platforms. Why not just do it?

Mick Fealty on November 8, 2010, 12:01 pm | Readers 9

Eamonn McCann thinks talking about change will have limited appeal unless it comes with a proposal for material change that people will be motivated to vote for: History teaches that the only occasions when sizable numbers of Protestants and Catholics have detached themselves from communal allegiance to make common cause have been occasions when they came together to fight together – 1907, 1911, 1932 and onwards to 2010. There is no recorded case of any such thing happening as a …