Brian O’Neill

Open Sunday – discuss what you like…

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The idea for Open Sunday is to let you discuss what you like. Just two rules. Keep it civil and no man/woman playing. Comments will close at 12 pm on Monday.

Brian O’Neill

Open sunday – politics free zone…

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In addition to our normal open Sunday, we have a politics-free post to give you all a break. So discuss what you like here, but no politics. Comments will close at 12 pm on Monday.

Frank Schnittger

How Bloody Sunday changed me

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I wrote a comment on Terry Wright’s excellent OP on “Where have all the Prods gone” in which I referenced an article I had written in 2010 for the European Tribune and the USA political blogsite The Daily Kos (where …

Terry Wright

Where have all the Prods gone? The PUL Exodus and its impact in Derry/Londonderry

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A new report on “the Exodus” — the displacement of Protestant, Unionist and Loyalist families from the West Bank of the Foyle between 1968 and 1998 — finds a prolonged, incremental movement with no single cause, and an experience still awaiting the civic and political acknowledgement that would place it alongside, not against, the memory of CNR communities.

Brian O’Neill

Why Google will get you a taxi before our Department of Inertia…

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The taxi market in Northern Ireland is an absolute mess. In 2014 about 16,000 taxi licences were registered in Northern Ireland. By the end of 2023 this had fallen to 7,500. Industry estimates they’re only less than 5,000 active drivers …

Brian Walker

Mike Nesbitt’s resignation is a disaster that will be probably ignored

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Mike Nesbitt’s sudden resignation  goes to the heart of what’s wrong with how Northern Ireland is governed. Modest hopes for limited  success have been dashed. If  systems and attitudes don’t  change, the crisis  in the health service  and others like …

El Cavador

Why a treaty on ‘killer robots’ would not stop ‘human safaris’…

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UN negotiators have until the end of this year to agree a legally binding instrument on autonomous weapons, built around the principle that humans must stay in control of lethal decisions. In southern Ukraine, human operators use that control to …

Slogger

The end of GCSE Learning for life and work…

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Something which may have slipped under people’s radars recently is the announcement by the Northern Ireland exams board, CCEA, that a number of subjects are to be discontinued. German, Economics and Engineering are to be scrapped along with Leisure Travel …

Soapbox

Culture, Identity & Inclusion in a Turbulent World – The 15th Annual D’Arcy McGee Summer School…

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How can a new Ireland maintain and deepen its values, sustained for a century, while achieving the inclusion of unionists and immigrant communities within an all-Ireland culture? Fascinating debate and discussion are anticipated at the 2026 Darcy Magee Summer School …

Jack Russell

The road to Stormont 2027: voter attitudes and election battlegrounds

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In a previous article, I investigated attitudes towards minorities in Northern Ireland, examining how those attitudes varied by political party support. With a double-header election to Stormont and local councils now less than 9 months away, and LucidTalk’s latest voting intention poll suggesting that allegiances may be shifting in the wake of Jeffrey Donaldson’s conviction, this article investigates a wider set of social attitudes across the party divide.