Referendums
Why a #BorderPoll ill-serves the cause of a united island
Tweet “I live in terror of not being misunderstood.” From The Critic as Artist, by Oscar Wilde So, what is a reasonable, even a Nationalist, objection to the calling of a Border Poll in the next parliamentary term north and south? The most obvious is that from what we know of the current public will [...] more »
How to win a Scottish Referendum – ten iron laws…
Tweet Leaving aside the politics of the upcoming referendum, for a moment, however hard that is, let me explore the ten iron laws of referendum campaigning: Referendums are not elections – they encapsulate issues and ideas in theory, rather than people and personalities; that is why political parties find them so hard – because parties [...] more »
Is Crotty killing off any sane domestic consideration of Irish foreign policy?
Tweet Before the landmark Crotty vs the Taoiseach judgement in 1987, the Irish Constitution had amassed nine amendments in the previous fifty years of its existence. In the twenty five years since it has scored another seventeen. Some of those were responses to the massive social changes the country has undergone in those years. Three [...] more »
Would Ireland really need a Referendum on Treaty change?
Tweet Paul doesn’t like themdoesn’t like them, but there is some limited evidence (according to the Spectator this week) that populations which are regularly consulted and feel part of the political process are happier than those who are not. In Ireland the population is so rarely consulted (and her politicians so rarely called upon to [...] more »
AV Referendum: Don’t vote – it only encourages them! #meh2av
Tweet I hope you don’t vote in the AV referendum today. A while ago, I posted a general criticism on the use of referendums. As I put it then, using a referendum to choose an electoral system is like using trial-by-combat to pick the winner of a peace prize. The conduct of the AV campaign [...] more »
Why referendums should be banned
Tweet In the not too-distant, we are going to be offered a referendum to decide which voting system we prefer in the UK and Northern Ireland. This is the equivalent of being offered a trial-by-combat to decide who should be awarded a peace prize. There is little evidence that referendums make a vote fair. Nor [...] more »
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Books
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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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“Good Friday. The death of Irish Republicanism” by Anthony McIntyre: a review
Tweet This was a book that I first reviewed at the same time as “Unionism Decayed” back in 2008. Like Vance’s work, it is the author’s portrayal of a defeated political movement or ideal and as a Unionist it was instructional to read an interpretation of the immediate post-Agreement period from the other side of the [...] read our review » -
A Political History of the Two Irelands competition…
Tweet It’s not often we get free things to give away to our readers, but courtesy of Palgrave Macmillan we have a nice paperback copy of Brian M Walker’s excellent history of partition of the island and how identities shifted in both the north east and the south and west: as most of the territory [...] read our review »
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