UUP
Team Jasil – that’s John and Basil – say: “Get off your backsides and vote for people that are trying to make a difference”
Tweet Basil McCrea and John McCallister were the invited guest speakers at a Friday lunchtime Politics and Change in Northern Ireland seminar run by the Institute for Research in Social Sciences at UUJ. The room was mostly full of academics and postgraduate researchers. It was an opportunity to hear John and Basil deliver what might [...] more »
“it is important that other schemes that may be in a position to be progressed ahead of the A5 are given full consideration by the Executive”
Tweet As the BBC report, the Northern Ireland Regional Development Minister, the UUP’s Danny Kennedy, has announced that his department will not be appealing the Belfast High Court ruling quashing the decision to go ahead with the controversial A5 £330m dual carriageway project. A “costly mistake [not appealing] but will not be the end of this project“, according to [...] more »
Mike Nesbitt vacillating on policy and unionist co-operation over the last twelve months
Tweet Modern politicians must sometimes read biographies of past politicians and long to have lived and worked in a world where only major speeches were reported and their every word wasn’t recorded, indexed and placed in the public filing cabinet that is the internet. Here’s a selection of what UUP Mike Nesbitt has been saying [...] more »
The shrinking heart of the UUP: A lucky 13?
Tweet So, there’s a lot of people looking at the crisis in the UUP and coming to a conclusion they hope is true. In fact Mike Nesbitt put in decent performance on Spotlight last night, but I think Emmett Doyle is not far from the truth when writes: The Party need to come up with [...] more »
Basil McCrea finally throws in the towel … from where can UUP find hope?
Tweet Two months ago on 15 December, UUP leader uttered the following phrase on Evening Extra: If we have to shrink to grow, we will After John McCallister’s resignation last night, Basil McCrea has followed this morning, burning his bridges on the Nolan show. listen to ‘Basil McCrea reveals he is quitting the UUP. ’ [...] more »
Home Rule, Rome Rule and Gay Marriage
Tweet Last September, Unionists paraded in their tens of thousands through Belfast to celebrate the centenary of the Ulster Covenant. From the days of Lilibullero in the 17th Century, Ulster Protestantism has always had a particular genius for summing up its political causes in easily remembered ditties and catchphrases. Perhaps the easiest slogan to remember [...] more »
“a 65% to 17% majority for Northern Ireland remaining in the UK suggests little room for doubt.”
Tweet From the conversation on BBC NI Spotlight tonight there are challenges for all the political parties in the results of the polling by Ipsos Mori. But here are the reported results on the constitutional question. Not surprisingly, more than 90% of those who identify themselves as Protestants told the pollsters they wanted to stay [...] more »
Will unionism’s long 2012 be seen as the year when the wave broke?
Tweet With the #flegs protests seemingly diminishing, it seems like a good time to wrap up where 2012 has brought unionism, although it can be pretty much summed up in one word – crisis. It was a year in which there were early signs of modest progress visible to DUP leader Peter Robinson in March and by November he felt confident to proclaim that the constitutional debate [...] more »
Nesbitt concedes unity in a seat that no unionist can realistically win?
Tweet So, according to the News Letter, Mike Nesbitt didn’t ask his constituency party in Mid Ulster whether they wanted a Unionist unity candidate, or not. He may not have done much of the longer term math either, or calculated that the principle he’s ceding here is that his party no longer has any designs [...] more »
Basil McCrea: we are increasingly looking at a policing response that does more than just contain the situation
Tweet Lagan Valley MLA Basil McCrea was interviewed on his local community radio station Lisburn’s 98FM today. Presenters of the weekly On The Record politics show – David McCann and Kerri Dunn – quizzed the whip-less politician about his previous statements on flag, the state of his party and his political future. listen to ‘Lagan [...] more »
“If you set so much store by symbols then don’t be surprised if…”
Tweet In the News Letter, Alex Kane has some sensible advice for the recently convened unionist forum. From the News Letter article So can we stop falling over ourselves in a headlong rush to jump into every elephant trap set for us by Sinn Fein and Gerry Adams’ continuous loop guff about the inevitability of [...] more »
Leadership That’s Working?
Tweet 48, 48, and 48 – those are the nightmare numbers for Unionism. Not necessarily for the Union, but for Unionism the political ideology as we have understood it for the past century or so. In the 2011 Assembly election, only 48% of the population voted for Unionist candidates, interpreting that term as generously as [...] more »
On the lack of unionist leadership – what would Paisley in his prime made of it?
Tweet As Paul Bew has pointed out in the Times(£), with the NIO a rump and now lacking historic memory in depth, there’s not much Theresa Villiers can do to affect the flags disturbances directly, with day to-day responsibility for law and order devolved to Stormont. Unless that is, the protests gain wider political traction as [...] more »
Basil McCrea: “I have stayed with the party through thick and thin, and I will continue do so …”
Tweet A long-standing family committment meant that Basil McCrea was unavailable for today’s scheduled UUP disciplinary hearing. But while his party have been relatively quiet over the past 24-48 hours as flag protests have resurged, the Lagan Valley MLA has issued a statement tonight. When I joined the UUP in late 2004 some were surprised [...] more »
That Mayan issue…
Tweet So there we had it: the world didn’t end for us all yesterday. But is there still a figure looming large? more »
The modest case for the Assembly in 2013
Tweet Later.. I’ve now made it to 20 points by adding a couple on managing the economy ( how could I have left them out?). These create a dialogue with Mick, although not quite along the same lines. Working with the available material and far away from Nirvana. To adapt Mario Cuomo, you rebel in poetry but [...] more »
Caption Competition
Tweet Things seem to have fallen a little silent on the Nesbitt front but let’s not let sleeping dogs lie! 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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Graphic portrayals: Northern Ireland, graphic novels and the peace process
Tweet Dr Gordon Gillespie, a researcher at the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, gave a presentation on “Graphic Portrayals: Northern Ireland, Graphic Novels and the Peace Process”, at the Linen Hall Library. Gordon started with a clarification that he was going to talk about graphic novels/comic books, not cartoons, and material that [...] read our review »
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Against the use and promotion of ‘hate speech’…
Tweet Of all the reasons to write a book this one’s got to the most incongruous: i.e. the receipt of an email saying “YOU ARE A TOTALITARIAN ASSHOLE”. Nice piece from John Paul Stevens in the New York Review of Books, in which he reviews Jeffery Waldron’s theses that freedom of speech should be tempered [...] read our review »
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