dupconf
Peter Robinson: in 50 years’ time the votes of the culturally Irish will help ensure union remains safe
Tweet Peter Robinson light-heartedly suggested that DUP’s first ever spring policy conference today in Fermanagh “means that the G8 Summit has now been demoted to the second most important event in Fermanagh this year!” The full speech is available from the DUP website. The DUP leader reassured delegates that Nigel Dodds “will be back at [...] more »
Know your members: the DUP launches a significant membership survey (proposed & run by university researchers)
Tweet Update: A few clarifications from the DUP: “the researchers approached us and it is a funded research programme to costs party nothing”. The funding is from the Leverhulme Trust. The questions were drafted by the researchers around a year ago, building on previous work with the Orange Order. - – - Membership survey forms [...] more »
DUP conference: dogmas, Mexican bandits, turkeys, opposition, outreach #dup12
Tweet The DUP is undeniably changing. Ten years ago who would have thought that purveyors of the trade organisation representing sellers of the devil’s buttermilk – Pubs of Ulster – would be sponsoring a drinks reception at the DUP conference? Who would have predicted that a Irish government minister would be welcomed to the DUP [...] more »
Party conferences dates, venues and a thought for exhibitors who want to wrestle control back from the parties
Tweet A quick post to remind political conference followers about the start of the conference season. UUP are tempting metaphors and analogies with their conference on 21 (members only) and 22 (public sessions) September in Titan Belfast. Last year Secretary of State Owen Paterson popped into the conference and said a few words on his [...] more »
Sinn Fein are the tomorrow people and the yesterday people.
Tweet Most of the excitement regarding the DUP conference centred on Peter Robinson’s speech (or Sammy Wilson’s). In contrast Nigel Dodds’s has received less attention. The moving forward narrative was again played up with the repeated claim that the DUP are the party of Northern Ireland and the party to move Northern Ireland forward. There [...] more »
Sammy Wilson’s #dupconf routine – complete with doubtful gags about SF’s Long Creche
Tweet Sammy Wilson’s speech was billed as ‘finance’, but was in reality his usual mid-afternoon comic turn to pick up the spirits of the delegates who were still in the hall. You can hear the full 20 minute routine over on Audioboo (mp3 download). In one section about 5 minutes in, he was commenting on [...] more »
Peter Robinson: “If we want a better society it can’t be ‘them and us’.”
Tweet Here’s the full text of Peter Robinson below. Few impressions are it was long, but I suspect that’s because he wanted to take his time to talk to his party and his base, before making the key pitch to the rest of us, which is we back a shared future, not the equal but [...] more »
-
Books
-
Do Words Matter?: Book Review of Political Discourse and Conflict Resolution – Debating Peace in Northern Ireland
Tweet I share many of the concerns of Andy Pollak, whose recent post ‘My Response to the Slugger Begrudgers’ zeroed in on the ‘relentless flow of negativity’ of some Slugger commentators. Pollak’s post was largely concerned with the medium of the blog. Indeed, I think the anonymity of the online world encourages extreme discourse and [...] read our review »
-
Risk of going beyond either/or…
Tweet This is article was first published in Fortnight magazine back in February 2003. Chris Farrington is now a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences’ in the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin. Although the circumstances it describes has changed radically [...] read our review »
-
The Creative Class and Northern Ireland
Tweet As part of NICVA’s series of masterclasses from its Centre for Economic Empowerment project, there was a morning seminar on the topic of the “creative class” (as popularised by Richard Florida) and its applicability to Northern Ireland. The agenda was to: Explain Richard Florida’s idea of the “creative class” and the link between economic [...] read our review »
-