Helping Haiti

Regular readers may recall Slugger’s interest in Haiti over the last year, including support for the Great Big Politics Pub Quiz fundraiser last October and Moochin’s pics and commentary from the Iron Market in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere. Later this year Slugger will again be getting behind a few good causes in Haiti, hoping to raise awareness and some funds to help alleviate the situation of at least a few of this earthquake and corruption-stricken people. More about that in due …

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…a very tight voting arrangement…

This is probably as daft a political scandal (by someone not called Wiener) as there has been for a while. It seems that over 3,600 calls were made from a Leinster House phone to a premium phone line at a cost to the taxpayer of €2,600. The premium line was to register votes for a candidate in a 2007 reality television show, Celebrities Go Wild.  The candidate was Michael Healy-Rae, heir to the cap-wearing dynasty’s Dáil seat in their Kerry South caliphate. At the time, his father Jackie was …

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POTD – All quiet on the Eastern Front

Newtownards Rd (Pitt Park) 11.15pm Moochin PhotomanPhotographer and visual artist based in Belfast. I have facilitated community based workshops with groups as diverse as visually impaired individuals in Dungannn, Travellers across Northern Ireland, Young Offenders and many community groups across Belfast. My work has exhibited extensively here in Northern Ireland in group and individual shows and has been shown in North America and i had my first solo international exhibition in New Zealand. I have been the recipient of a …

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Ireland’s long nightmare of generational private debt…

If you missed RTE’s Frontline last night it is well worth doubling back on. Anchored in some robust market research from Amarach, the conversation seemed to reveal a generational split between those concerned about the moral hazard implied in mass debt forgiveness and those pointing out the that those who have bought houses in the last ten/twelve years find themselves under an unprecedented collective burden that is simply unsustainable. Forgiving The Debt – An Amárach/Frontline Report June 2011 View more …

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BBC giving David Ford another bye-ball?

The BBC headline runs: Prisoner MacFerran mistakenly released six weeks early Mr MacFerran, this time, did nothing illegal like numerous prisoners before him – he was wrongly released on David Ford’s prison watch. MacFerran wasn’t the one in the wrong but his name is the headline – how does that work? Why doesn’t the headline run – Minister Ford oversees another prison farce? Blank

GAA ref knocked unconscious at Beragh…

Quite a shocker… Referee Simon Brady was attacked by a spectator at the end of the Tyrone Ladies Senior Football final between St Macartan’s of Augher and Carrickmore. The referee awarded a controversial free to St Macartan’s in the final moments of what was then a draw game. St Macartan’s scored and won the match by a point. Mr Brady was punched as he checked his score card and was stretchered off the pitch and received hospital treatment for his …

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“this is probably the biggest known asteroid to have come this close.”

As spotted by SpaceWeather.  At about 1700 UT (6pm BST) today Asteroid 2011MD will fly past only 12,300 kilometers (7,600 miles) above the Earth’s surface.  [Image credit NASA/JPL] As the diagram shows, that’s close enough to be affected by Earth’s gravity. This small asteroid, only 5-20 meters in diameter, is in a very Earth-like orbit about the Sun, but an orbital analysis indicates there is no chance it will actually strike Earth on Monday. The incoming trajectory leg passes several thousand kilometers …

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SDLP’s last advantage lies in their cross community appeal…

Okay, I’m deliberately turning this one on its head, partly because the question raised in Ian Parsley’s post poses is more interesting that way. So for me, here’s the payload in Ian’s post: The DUP has proven masterful at taking fairly narrow policy positions and giving them broad appeal; it seems to seek out certain chunks of the electorate and prioritise one particular set of policies to them. The UUP and SDLP, on the other hand, try to sell their …

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IFI: “It is therefore incorrect to say the fund has an uncommitted surplus.”

The Detail’s John Breslin interviewed the chairman of the International Fund for Ireland, Denis Rooney, about the ongoing campaign to re-instate funding.  But when he asked about the accounts, he was referred elsewhere.  From The Detail report The Detail wanted to talk to someone from the organisation able to walk through the accounts. That did not happen despite two e-mails sent over two weeks ago asking for an interview with someone familiar with the accounts. As of September 2010, the …

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Loyalist disenchantment moves along the Gold Coast

From last week’s North Down Spectator what, at first sight, appeared to be an insignificant piece of news: EIGHT of Bangor’s eleventh night bonfire celebrations will now be deregulated, it has been revealed this week. The Spectator understands that a total of eight local bonfires have now pulled out of the bonfire management programme following a dispute with North Down Borough Council.  This means that over half of the bonfires lit across the borough could be burning hazardous materials such as tyres, …

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Robinson’s policy aims at robust defence via charm offensive…

cropped DUP logo

This is a good distillation of the lessons for Unionism from the NILT survey, and political reality as near as we can discern, from Alex Kane: I think the surest thing we can assume in all of this is that there is a Catholic demographic which is content enough to remain within the United Kingdom. That doesn’t mean they are unionist and it doesn’t even mean that they are, in any active or intellectual sense, pro-Union. It just means that …

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Ian McCrea, another one who failed to get the memo?

Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

ICC Chief Executives’ Committee recommend “qualification process” for World Cup 2015

Both RTÉ and the BBC report that the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Chief Executives’ Committee (CEC) have approved the recommendation of the Cricket Committee that there should be “a qualification process”  for the Cricket World Cup 2015.  But they haven’t recommended increasing the number of teams taking part from the ten originally proposed.  From the CEC press release. ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 The CEC recommended that there should be a qualification process for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 but did …

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Why Demographics is the Norwegian Blue of NI’s Constitutional politics…

One of the things that’s been puzzling me about the news flows over the last few days. Why, when the NI Life and Times survey has been diligently mapping social and political attitudes over the least 13 years has everyone suddenly got so agitated about social patterns that have been apparent for most of that time. It’s like no one noticed before. But these figures were available when we first published our study of the future of unionism back in …

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POTD – Cross community

The Markets 12:53am Moochin PhotomanPhotographer and visual artist based in Belfast. I have facilitated community based workshops with groups as diverse as visually impaired individuals in Dungannn, Travellers across Northern Ireland, Young Offenders and many community groups across Belfast. My work has exhibited extensively here in Northern Ireland in group and individual shows and has been shown in North America and i had my first solo international exhibition in New Zealand. I have been the recipient of a number of …

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Grant application from the lawless Beast from the East?

A number of interesting features in the media regarding the East Belfast violence this weekend. Brian Rowan on BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence provided an uncomfortable analysis for those who assumed the only major paramilitary threat to the new dispensation came from dissident republican factions. In a frank contribution in which he didn’t hit and miss the wall, the experienced analyst of republican and loyalist groupings said that the UVF Leader was a “law unto himself” in East Belfast. Rowan …

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And so to Inverclyde…

The vote is on Thursday for the first Westminster by-election since the SNP Holyrood victory. Daid Milliband says: “Any vote other than a Labour vote is a vote for the Tories” Meanwhile the SNP in Inverclyde are exposing Labour: “Ms McLaughlin exposed the Labour – Tory plan to sack council workers in a televised debate last week. Challenged again by Ms McLaughlin on BBC Politics Show Cllr McKenzie who sought to shout his way through the interview was forced to …

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The other sides(s) of the wall

A follow up on the Draw Down the Walls piece at Flax Street here with the view either side of the peace wall at Cluan Place Moochin PhotomanPhotographer and visual artist based in Belfast. I have facilitated community based workshops with groups as diverse as visually impaired individuals in Dungannn, Travellers across Northern Ireland, Young Offenders and many community groups across Belfast. My work has exhibited extensively here in Northern Ireland in group and individual shows and has been shown …

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POTD – Throwing out time

Waring Street 12:52am Moochin PhotomanPhotographer and visual artist based in Belfast. I have facilitated community based workshops with groups as diverse as visually impaired individuals in Dungannn, Travellers across Northern Ireland, Young Offenders and many community groups across Belfast. My work has exhibited extensively here in Northern Ireland in group and individual shows and has been shown in North America and i had my first solo international exhibition in New Zealand. I have been the recipient of a number of …

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