In the world of knowledge, judgement and choice we can live in a world of data, but no facts.

Whatever your sympathies are (or aren’t) for UK Labour, Tuesday’s Abbott interview on LBC was a particularly hideous event. This gladiatorial pit style of journalism is one reason why Mrs May (because she can) has ruled out meaningful engagement (aka, questions) with the press. There has, as John Lloyd put it in his seminal assay of the relations between the British press and the UK’s politicians What the media is doing to our politics, been “an evident struggle for power between media and government, …

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Explaining politics to a (nearly) five year old

It will be a good 12 years before my eldest child can vote, but already she, along with her younger sister, has come with me to the polling booth on two occasions. The third is looming large on the horizon. Quite possibly, it is only the children who get a day off due to their school transforming into a polling station who will benefit the most from this election. I certainly don’t see any benefit to it and am getting …

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Friday thread: “In this country we need to be extremely vigilant about the stories we choose to tell ourselves”

So whilst we’ve been indulging in the usual northern recriminations over St Patricks Day, and getting hot under the collar over the Alliance Party Euro candidate making a pitch for the liberal nationalist vote, southern audiences were treated to some great content on St Paddy’s Day in We Need to Talk About Ireland. I was particularly struck by this contribution from the playwright Bryan Delaney on the critical importance of storytelling and why it matters to the future of Ireland: …

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Increasing numbers of passengers let the train take the strain … apart from a 10 year decline on the Enterprise

Monday morning’s Belfast Telegraph splashed with the front page story that passengers numbers have fallen by 22% on the Belfast-Dublin Enterprise train over the last decade. The ‘exclusive’ – based on figures in DRD’s Future Railways Investment consultation document [pdf] that was published in January – was picked up by Talkback at lunchtime as well as other news programmes. The actual consultation ended in April, though this isn’t mentioned in the paper! And in some ways, it’s never too late …

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