On Free Speech and Banishing People to Desert Islands…

rocky beach, natuna indonesia, deserted island

Mark Hanna is a Lecturer in the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast. Free speech has become a curious creature in Northern Ireland. Nowhere is this more obvious than in The Newsletter and Ruth Dudley Edwards’ year-end list of people ‘to banish to a desert island’. It is perhaps not surprising that things have reached a point where elements of the press are expressing a preference for the ancient practice of banishing people to desert islands to curb their …

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Catch up on the Mount Stewart Conversations: diplomacy and Europe, then and now

MOUNT STEWART CONVERSATIONS – a weekend of ideas, debate and stories looking at relationships with Europe from Lord Castlereagh’s involvement in the Congress of Venice right through to Brexit and the kind of diplomacy that will be required in years to come. Throw in live music, food, and the gorgeous National Trust gardens and walks, you can see how country houses used to transact a lot of political business away from the cities and parliaments!

The Irish language belongs to us all, not just to Sinn Féin

It must be very tempting in this current highly charged atmosphere to convert any turn of events into an attack on Sinn Féin and Gerry Adams.   And God knows the party does provide the material for onslaughts.    However the recent ill-informed and ignorant ‘Curry My Yoghurt’ remarks of Gregory Campbell, and the subsequent farce of barring him from speaking in the Assembly for a day he was due to be in Westminster, doesn’t seem to me to be a …

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#Indyref and the Orange demonstration: some quick notes

With the actual poll looming, this weekend sees the Orange Order make its on-street intervention into the #Indyref debate in Scotland. What will add an extra dimension to this is keeping an eye on how the media deal with events on the day, since, as Kilsally points out, #Indyref has created some unusual bedfellows. The last few days have given a couple of stand out media moments of the campaign. At a wider level, Nick Robinson’s reporting yesterday was astonishing, not …

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Is Assange just super briefing the public in what it already knows?

I recall a few years ago being berated in Slugger’s comment zone by Julian Assange for daring to suggest that some decisions were best discussed behind closed doors. Despite our heavy duty investigation of Northern Ireland Water last year, I still don’t believe that everything in government automatically benefits from the transparency of the public square. But reading the Irish Independent’s batch of Ireland cables from the State Department, begs the question: is Assange simply super briefing the public in …

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