Interview with Matt Baggott: his view on PSNI transformation, confidence in policing, over-regulation, vocation & faith

We usually hear public figures speaking in sound bites. At most ten minute interviews about some topic of the day. We rarely get to listen in as they explain what motivates them to do their job and reflect on their rationale or approach. The PSNI Chief Constable has been given advice on what he should do and how he should do it from before he arrived in Northern Ireland and it will no doubt continue until long after he has …

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“Regulation of the internet is not an issue that falls within my responsibility or, indeed, that of any part of our devolved Executive.”

For which, I think, we should be very grateful indeed.  Not that such constitutional technicalities prevented MLAs, of all parties, from enthusiastically debating a Sinn Féin motion last week calling for the Northern Ireland Justice Minister “to explore the introduction of better regulation of [social networking websites]”.  Here’s Newton Emerson’s response in Saturday’s Irish News Worse was to come when Stormont debated social-networking sites, in a session that might as well have been entitled “we support free speech, but”.  One MLA …

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Coming to terms with the Internet will not entail switching it off, but facing and evaluating fears

Gavan Titley has it about right. Moral panic is about the best way to describe the latest outbreak of social media bashing in the Republic. The first political party in the south to take to the business of engaging online was Labour, as this report from Damien Mulley outlines. The first Twitter storm I witnessed was a spectacular one when Fianna Fail used Joe Rospers as blogger bait, and got burned for their efforts. Much of the criticism we’ve seen …

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RTÉ Prime Time Investigates is dead. But what happens next?

Okay, so RTÉ Prime Time Investigates is dead ahead of a critical report due to publish from the BAI tomorrow… On Tuesday night, Vincent Browne brought together a first rate panel to discuss the wider issues flowing from the mater… The discussion here falls roughly into two parts. The broken system of journalistic checks and balances, and the value of RTE’s public service broadcasting product as opposed to privately owned print journalism… Three things occur: – This case demonstrates that …

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“Come back John Wilkes. Your work is about to be undone. Politicians are losing the plot.”

Well, some politicians.  Specifically, the Labour Party’s shadow culture secretary, Ivan Lewis, MP, who is calling for suggesting a register of professional journalists.  So they can be “struck off” if they transgress.  As Roy Greenslade comments Lewis and the cheering delegates in Liverpool need to understand the danger of their position. Look at the contradiction at the heart of Lewis’s crowd-pleasing speech. At one point he said: “In Britain, a free press is non-negotiable.” At another, when demanding “a new …

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Sky News deal ignores the problem of Monopolies

So Mr Murdoch got his way. Not because of any favouritism on the part of the new government, but, according to the FT anyway, because current regulatory frameworks are inadequate for protecting plurality in the new market in the UK: …the bigger issue is that such constraints simply miss the point. They do not deal with the concerns that exist about the market power Mr Murdoch will wield once the takeover is complete. European competition law cannot be relied on …

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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes (after they retire)?

Nassim Taleb has a thought provoking blog on the subject of gamekeepers turned poachers at the Huffington Post. Specifically he deals with regulators who use their in-depth knowledge of government regulations to secure extremely well paid employment, helping firms sail as close to the regulatory wind as possible, upon leaving public service. At Davos last year, Taleb was approached by Alan Blinder, a former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, who attempted to sell him a financial product that …

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After Ireland’s reckless “if-I-have-it-I’ll-spend-it decade”…

There seems to be a sustained counterattack on Irish Labour at the moment, usually framed as a question: ‘what would you do instead?’ That was the predominant line of questioning of Pat Rabbitte on Morning Ireland this am… Although you can see from Noel Whelan’s column on Saturday that whilst Labour may have many policy documents they may not add up to the sum of the parts… Rabbitte’s response was not to get tangled in the detail, but to argue …

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Irish MEP: Facebook makes you mad, so let’s have a law against it…

Of all the political parties in the south, Labour is one of the ones which ‘gets’ t’Internet most. But I wonder if Labour MEP Nessa Childers‘ question seeking a written answer in the European Parliament ever saw the desk of leader Eamon Gilmore? There is certainly no sign of it on her blog. Adds: Clare Minnock seems to be the only member of the MSM (well, the Carlow Nationalist at least) to pick up the story and she treats it an …

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