Unionism: Bourbons with Big Drums

Can you hear it? We’ve bridged the months to July, the rather expensive bonfires (but only for ratepayers!) are under construction and the once faint but now increasingly detectable sound of the Big Drum beating can be heard far and wide. In Dervock, they hear it, and so did the parishioners of the Church of Our Lady and John the Evangelist where local loyalists erected a flag inside the grounds of the church before painting the gates and kerbstones at …

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Dublin confirm DUP cancel North-South meeting with just a days notice

Sources in the Irish government have confirmed that the DUP have asked for the North-South Ministerial Council meeting to be postponed until September. It appears to be some bleeding from the withdrawal from the party leaders talks earlier is now going into North-South co-operation. This announcement of postponing the meeting comes off the back of some positive news about the electricity inter-connector that was announced this week. But sure what the hell, it’s not as if people in Northern Ireland …

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Martin McGuinness: “We are not in conflict with Peter Robinson and the DUP… We are in conflict with the British government…”

And not for the first time…  ANYhoo…  With elections out of the way, for now, there is some space for a discussion on actual Northern Ireland Executive policy.  Into that space comes the NI OFMDFM and UK Government’s agreed update [2 July 2014] on last year’s Building a Prosperous and United Community economic pact.  And there are a few points of interest to pick up on. Firstly is the agreed re-profiling of last year’s additional £100million borrowing by the NI …

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Unionism to make ‘graduated response’ to no Ardoyne return parade

The Parades Commission have again ruled that there will be no return parade past Ardoyne, consistent with its previous rulings in 2013 and subsequently. The unionist response has been pretty immediate. Not only have all the unionist parties walked out of the wider talks at Stormont, but there has also been an attempt to provide a unified front in a statement issued by DUP leader Peter Robinson, UUP leader Mike Nesbitt, TUV leader Jim Allister, PUP leader Billy Hutchinson and …

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Micheal Martin: Where does Ireland stand in the debate on the future of Europe?

Micheal Martin’s speech in the Dail yesterday on the wash up after last week’s meeting of the European Council meeting are well worth highlighting: By any objective measure last week’s summit was a mess. At a time when the citizens of Europe are demanding a plan to reform and renew the European Union the Heads of State and Government did little more than argue about jobs for themselves. The debate was about personalities with vague platitudes being offered on substance. With …

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John out, LRA in, NI21 loses half its external funding, interim exec promise new processes & AGM … later in the day, interim exec lost a member

In this morning’s News Letter Sam McBride joins the dots on the news that John McCallister has finally made good on his promise to resign from NI21 after he felt that staffing issues were under control. Under Assembly rules, NI21 was paid just under £60,000 per year because it had two MLAs. That will roughly halve now that the party only has one MLA. But as an independent Mr McCallister will no longer receive any money under The Financial Assistance …

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Ed Milliband’s big decision on the future of the UK Labour party…

Interesting piece from Peter Oborne in the Telegraph, on the unresolved tensions within Labour in the aftermath of the Blair/Brown era… Mr Cruddas’s remarks have highlighted a rancorous and philosophically very significant dispute that has been rumbling for some time. One camp is occupied by the three most senior members of Labour’s front bench – Ed Balls, his wife, Yvette Cooper, and the shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander. All three were modernisers who occupied senior posts in the Brown/Blair government. They …

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DUP, the Grand Old Dukes of York.

Peter Robinson is outraged that welfare cuts aren’t being implemented in the north. Speaking yesterday he said that: In our discussions, the Prime Minister was absolutely clear that there is no more room for manoeuvre on welfare reform. Now is the time to decide this issue. The days of republican ducking and diving are over. In brief, the Assembly doesn’t have to impose the proposed cuts the Tories want implemented as it has devolved powers and can introduce amended legislation …

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@BBCGMU, KKK and that interview

Yesterday morning, BBC Radio Ulster’s flagship show, Good Morning Ulster decided to conduct an interview (1hr 36 mins in) with the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Frank Ancona, in response to a flag that was displayed in East Belfast. Much was made by the show about the fact that Ancona had never given an interview to anybody in the UK or Ireland before, but could this not have been due to the fact that they have no presence in …

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Nesbitt recognises that partnership is not just unavoidable but the only way to get stuff done

Jude Collins was not impressed with Mike Nesbitt’s interview with Alex in which he nonetheless traversed some interesting ground… MN: If you are going to talk about unofficial opposition and the UUP walks out on its own, what’s the proposition we are offering people for next time, if you want to talk about electorally? Surely we would have to be doing this in conjunction with the SDLP: because I would like to see an official opposition, I think that would be …

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#IndyRef: “‘Yes’ needs a game changer, and where is that going to come from during the summer?

The odd thing about yesterday’s dramatic YouGov poll in The Times is that it wasn’t that dramatic. 60/40 is reflective of a settled split in the Scottish people over the last few years, and to be fair, the latest Scotland Thinks Poll of Polls has the Yes camp rating just above that on 43%. The gap seems almost irreducible because  among other things, as John Curtice has said, it’s about the economy, stupid. Being the bird in the bush, it’s the Yes …

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Where do people get their news? BBC 1 & UTV out in front. But Sky News & Radio Ulster neck & neck!

Perhaps pertinent to my earlier post on the media, Ofcom have recently released their News Consumption in the UK report. In Northern Ireland, the top news sources are BBC One (cited as being used by 65% of adults), UTV (56%), BBC website or app (28%), Sky News Channel (20%) and BBC Radio Ulster (20%). Lots more facts, figures and charts in the set of slides that accompany the report. Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast)Alan Meban. Tweets as @alaninbelfast. Blogs about …

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Changing the conversation about the media … do you feel the hand of vested interests? #xss14

Friday morning at Xchange summer school began with a two hour session looking at how to change the conversation about the media. Denzil McDaniel was joined on the second hand sofas by former journalist and spin-doctor Lance Price, digital investigative journalist Steven McCaffery and ex-newspaper editor, columnist and commentator Nick Garbutt. It was Lance Price’s first trip back to Enniskillen since covering the 1987 bombing for the BBC. Later he worked in 10 Downing Street as deputy communications director (under …

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Time for an urgent review of all Northern Ireland’s oversight bodies

When the Police Ombudsman in Northern Ireland (PONI) recently accused the PSNI of refusing to provide his office with information relating to certain investigations, he acted on his interpretation of a set of facts. The police had their own, alternative interpretation, insisting that they have a legal responsibility for the care and management of all the information they hold, some of which is extremely sensitive. Although they gave careful consideration to every separate request from the Ombudsman, they were constrained …

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No FG/Lab majority in the next Seanad

Amongst all the fallout from the recent local elections in the republic one that has gone somewhat unheralded (just as the same effect was largely missed in 2009 for the FF/Greens) is the impact that the results have on future collation building after the next general election. While the task of assembly the numbers to elect a Taoiseach and hence a appoint a cabinet rests on the numbers in the Dáil, the job of governing or the practical tasks of …

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Police win flag protest appeal

As the BBC reports, the Appeals Court has overturned a High Court ruling in April that the PSNI misdirected themselves in relation to policing the flag protests in Belfast – which “led to the situation in which the police facilitated illegal and sometimes violent parades with the effect of undermining the 1998 Act, in breach of their duties under section 32 of the Police (NI) Act 2000 and in breach of the applicant’s Article 8 rights.”  From the BBC report …

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