Mick Fealty

A stiff warning to the DUP that “what got us here is not going to keep us here.”…

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…they are no substitute for a small number of strong local connections. -Benjamin Allen, researcher at the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard I was asked on Nolan yesterday to comment on Lee Reynolds analytical piece in The Critic magazine …

Soapbox

When did the left stop owning free speech?

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Erica Blair is the pen name of a Belfast-based Free Speech Union member. At the risk of doing a Kier ‘my father was a toolmaker’ Starmer, I was brought up in a left-wing household in working class Belfast. We read …

Soapbox

The case for a new flag in Northern Ireland…

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David Michell is Assistant Professor in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation at Trinity College Dublin at Belfast. You can follow him on Twitter. It’s good to see the Executive working on normal politics again. But the flag problem – one of the …

Soapbox

Renewables developers and the public will no longer have the same interests…

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Editors note: This OP by Jérôme à Paris an investment banker and blogger specialising in renewable energy projects is not for the faint hearted, as it includes a discussion of the design and usefulness of contracts for difference (CfDs) designed …

Frank Schnittger

The United Rugby Championship commences… plus emerging Ireland squad picked

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Edinburgh vs. Leinster Match Preview: Leo Cullen has picked three academy players to start their campaign in a tricky away fixture in Edinburgh. Charlie Tector was a good u.20 outhalf subsequently overshadowed by his successor, Sam Prendergast but is played …

Obelisk

Dancing on the Precipice

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A month and a half ago, I published a piece in the aftermath of two assassinations in the Middle East where I asked if we were standing at the edge of disaster. After all, it was hard to imagine how …

Brian O’Neill

Free Speech Union launches a dedicated Northern Ireland Advisory Council…

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This press release dropped into my inbox: On Friday 20th September, the Free Speech Union (FSU), a non-partisan, mass membership organisation that stands up for the speech rights of its members and campaigns for free speech more widely, will launch a dedicated Northern Ireland …

Ben M

Postponed ‘Not for EU’ Labels: A Setback for Unionists and the Irish Sea Border?

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The Guardian reports that the Government’s plans to force food manufacturers to put “not for EU” labels on all meat and dairy products sold across Britain next month have been indefinitely postponed after warnings that the scheme could cause “chaos” for …

Andy Pollak

Rising tensions over immigration fuel concerns about European far-right extremism…

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I have just returned from a holiday in Spain. The main news story while I was there was an argument between the central government in Madrid and the regional government in the Canary Islands about who should take responsibility for …

Michael Hehir

Voting, border poll, and NI’s future: What the non-committed think…

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In a fascinating article in Irish Political Studies, Jon Tonge and Thomas Loughran draw on survey evidence to examine the attitudes of those who do not identify as nationalists or unionists, whom Tonge and Loughran dub the “neithers”. It is …