January 2012 – Page 2 – Slugger O'Toole

“this device may have been here for some considerable time, possibly many years…”

Pete Baker on January 28, 2012, 10:23 pm | Readers 38

There’s good news, and there’s bad news, as a 36 hour security alert in Kinawley, County Fermanagh, ends with two controlled explosions by the British Army’s bomb disposal team and the removal of a viable device “for further forensic examination”. From the BBC report Police have said that a bomb found in a field in County Fermanagh may have been there for many years. Army bomb experts carried out two controlled explosions on the device found by the Drumroosk Road in …

Shifting ground in the land of dreary steeples

Chris Donnelly on January 28, 2012, 9:17 pm | Readers 225

A day which began with the news that Derry had succeeded with its bid to host Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in 2013 has ended with the news that Peter Robinson has joined Martin McGuinness in attending the McKenna Cup Final between Tyrone and Derry, the first time the DUP Leader and First Minister has attended a GAA match. Meanwhile, UUP MLA Basil McCrea appeared at a Sinn Fein-organised discussion on the theme of Uniting Ireland in Derry whilst the republican party received more good news …

Londonderry to host All-Ireland Fleadh in UK City of Culture year

Pete Baker on January 28, 2012, 3:41 pm | Readers 55

After the application of some internal, and external, pressure the Ulster Council of Comhaltas reversed their earlier decision in time for the organisation’s central executive to select Londonderry to host their All-Ireland Fleadh during the UK City of Culture year in 2013. In the event, the only other candidate was Sligo… [Adds – Apparently Ennis withdrew their bid “for the greater good”.] Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the launch of a £1million Big Lottery fund for UK City of Culture celebrations, there …

How it feels to be Irish these days?

Mick Fealty on January 28, 2012, 3:26 pm | Readers 41

With all the intense focus around Scottish devolution here on Slugger, we missed what has to be the best blog post of the week on Storyful… another tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. As someone once said. 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. …

Six Nations 2012 Prediction Contest

Dewi on January 28, 2012, 9:22 am | Readers 40

Ok – it’s that time of the year. Same rules as usual which are: 1 point for a correct home win, 3 points for a correct away win, 7 points for a correct draw. This year we need the top try scorer. 3 points if it’s one bloke, 2 if it’s joint, 1 if it’s shared by three. Any more than 3 top try scores it’s nowt. Tie breaker is total points scored. Here’s the fixtures: 1 France v Italy …

Unreconstructed Unionism in Cookstown: Whither catholic outreach?

Chris Donnelly on January 27, 2012, 10:24 pm | Readers 116

Whilst the unionist unity debate rages on, Mick’s thread linking to an article by Michael Shilliday, a vocal opponent within the UUP to the idea, is interesting for highlighting both the dangers of the aspiration for a unified unionist (or nationalist) voice and the gulf between the infrequently lofty rhetoric of the DUP’s Peter Robinson regarding his party’s vision of a unified community and the words and actions of his own fellow party members (more on that here and here.) The policy of DUP councillors …

David McNarry resigns from UUP Assembly Group after Tom Elliott cuts him out of education committee role

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on January 27, 2012, 8:22 pm | Readers 117

Tom Eliott wielding scissors at the opening of David McNarry's Saintfield Advice Centre Opening

The News Letter and UTV’s Ken Reid have been tweeting tonight what looks like being the latest episode in the UUP-DUP united unionist soap opera. David McNarry has resigned from the UUP Assembly group after Tom Elliott withdrew him as vice-chair of education committee, though stopped short of taking away the party whip. The BBC add: Mr McNarry said he spoke to the party leader on Friday evening by telephone. And Mr Elliott told him he was being disciplined as …

Newt Gingrich: a space cadet with ideas that are out of this world?

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on January 27, 2012, 7:26 pm | Readers 41

Canadian teenagers Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad launch a Lego man into space and he safely returns to Earth

By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American. (Newt Gingrich) It certainly qualifies as a BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goal for anyone lucky enough not to be fluent in management speak. An injection of ambition and cash into the state space industry would be a big sweetener to people listening to Newt Gingrich’s message at his Florida campaign rally. We will have commercial near-Earth activities …

Questions for Ulster Protestants

Ruarai on January 27, 2012, 7:11 pm | Readers 283

Assuming, for the sake of discussion, Scottish independence happens in the next 5-50 years: 1. What would be in the best interests of Ulster Protestants in a post-union (i.e. post-U.K) Northern Ireland and why? 2. For centuries most Ulster Protestants have had a series of reasons for being both (a.) pro-Union and (b.) opposed to a unified, one-person-one-vote, independent Irish state. Notwithstanding your views on the continuing present day validity of perspective (b), what would it mean to be pro-Union …

Irish DPP to consider Garland case

Pete Baker on January 27, 2012, 4:53 pm | Readers 46

Having dismissed, in December last year, the US application for the extradition of former Irish Workers’ Party president, Seán Garland, in the long-running saga of the counterfeit ‘super-dollars’, Dublin High Court has now referred the case to the Director of Public Prosecutions to examine whether he should be charged in Ireland. From the BBC report Giving his reasons on Friday, Mr Justice John Edwards decided that the offence for which Mr Garland was wanted in America is regarded as having been committed in …

Unionist unity is illogical, impractical and wrong

Mick Fealty on January 27, 2012, 10:45 am | Readers 34

Michael Shilliday argues in today’s News Letter that competiting visions for Unionism is natural and required to push unionism onwards: If united unionism was the natural way of things, the DUP would never have existed in the first place. If it was good for unionism, it would have happened by now, and if it was wanted the people would have voted for it. The idea that a “cosy relationship” between the UUP and DUP benefits anyone is fanciful. Taking the …

Holocaust Memorial Day Belfast

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on January 27, 2012, 10:37 am | Readers 406

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is promoting everyone to mark the occasion today with local activities as well as individual acts, such as signing a pledge. For me, a particular significance is remembering that Nazism was about state-sponsored, systematic discrimination against entire categories of people — whether Jewish, Polish, gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, or anyone who over fraternised (contaminated themselves) with any so-labelled degenerate: Let’s not forget that anyone who opposed the regime politically were also targeted. For example, shortly after …

Unionist unity is a debate worth having rather than a ‘fate accompli’…

Mick Fealty on January 27, 2012, 10:08 am | Readers 33

Nope, not Scottish Unionism. Lee Reynolds writes in the News Letter this morning laying out some keen, existential reasons for at least considering some form of Unionist unity: As we look forward to the centenary of Northern Ireland in 2021, would focusing our efforts on these challenges and changes not produce greater benefits for the Union and unionism than finding arguments for the sake of them? Unionist unity could be an opportunity to create something new and better. This is …

You are not responsible for the crisis (Oh yes you are)

John Ó Néill on January 27, 2012, 10:04 am | Readers 36

Whoever it was aimed at, Enda Kenny’s performance in Davos doesn’t seem to be going down well back home. The Irish Times reports that he said: “What happened in our country was that people simply went mad borrowing,” Mr Kenny told a meeting at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “The extent of personal credit, personal wealth created on credit was done between people and banks – a system that spawned greed to a point where it just …

The redress of major capitalism: the rebirth of small nations?

Mick Fealty on January 26, 2012, 10:28 pm | Readers 28

Tom Nairn has an interesting piece in the Scotsman today (H/T Peter), in which he places Scotland’s ‘struggle’ for greater autonomy in a wider world in which the classic nation state is reducing further down to its more constituent parts, parts always so dominated by the mercantile class upon which global capitalism: Little Scotland has been developing a differently grounded resistance to the same mercantile order. Usually emphasis is placed on historical grounds stemming from the pre-1707 state and the …

“We would end up like West Pakistan-” Empey on the nightmare of Scottish Independence

Chris Donnelly on January 26, 2012, 10:27 pm | Readers 59

The Scottish Independence debate has clearly unnerved our local unionist political leaders in recent days, leading to at times sensational and contradictory messages from the political elite (past and present.) But Reg Empey’s latest missive, delivered in the House of Lords, warrants special mention. From the BBC Report: The former Ulster Unionist Party leader said Northern Ireland had “spent decades overcoming nationalist terrorism and we gradually after years and years and years managed to settle down our community”. “I don’t wish to exaggerate, …

Is there an easy way out of Ireland’s debt crisis?

Mick Fealty on January 26, 2012, 5:01 pm | Readers 50

Interesting to watch Enda Kenny talk at Davos today. He seemed relaxed and reasonable, and indeed at one point one of the other speakers noted that others who were in the throws of a debt crisis needed to follow Ireland’s example (of being ‘good little boys’? – Ed). Though Denmark’s new PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt, was keen to point out that what’s currently missing is any convincing plan for growth. In the Dail at leaders questions on Tuesday, when accused of …

Lord Chief Justice: “it is difficult to regard the remarks as anything other than undermining and unhelpful to the administration of justice in Northern Ireland”

Pete Baker on January 26, 2012, 4:53 pm | Readers 152

Apparently, I haven’t read it, former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, MP for Neath, devotes two pages of his recently published memoirs to an attack on Lord Justice Girvan. More specifically, an attack on the then Mr Justice Girvan for his 2006 High Court ruling that Peter Hain “acted for an improper motive” when appointing Bertha McDougall Interim Victims Commissioner and was “in breach of the Ministerial Code of Practice” and that the then Secretary of State “approve[d] …

Lessons from Northern Ireland: Rise above the fatalism generated by your own “sui generis” conflict…

Mick Fealty on January 26, 2012, 12:06 pm | Readers 101

H/T Mary FitzGerald on Twitter… This is a fairly impressive array of academic, political and government voices which looks at what lessons might be drawn from our much feted Peace Process, recorded in May last year… Most worthy of note are Jonathan Powell (keep hard power on so the insurgents cannot get comfortable, but offer a political process towards a solution); Bairbre de Brun who notes that peace relies on addressing the causes of the conflict, not just the absence …

Maybe the referendum question is not so simple

Brian Walker on January 26, 2012, 10:24 am | Readers 52

I may have spoken too soon about the clarity of Alex Salmond’s preferred referendum question : do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country? The Today programme took the trouble to ask a professor in Arizona who had never heard of Big Eck if the wording was fair. Sure, it was completely loaded he said. To be fair, the question had to be balanced with a “or not “ in some form. Closer to home the Times reports …