Slugger O'Toole Martin McGuinness, before leaving for the US: “Hard choices hard decisions have to be made and I believe the Republican movement is up for it”. Intriguingly, he went on to speak about bringing the peace process to an end. Right political noise, but will they follow through with actions to match? Channel 4 News political correspondent Gary Gibbon in Belfast tonight noted: “I suspect that tomorrow evening we will have something in our hands that we can take away and …
Undoubtedly stung by the criticism of their apparent inability to take action during loyalist paramilitary intimidation in Garnerville estate over the past few days, the BBC are reporting that police have arrested 11 people and charged 7 others in connection to the loyalist feud. And there’s a security operation at a housing estate in Holywood, Co Down. According to the report – Officers have also carried out 63 searches in connection with the feud and are also carrying out a …
Gerry Gregg, a producer on RTE’s Today Tonight current affairs programme during the turblent years of the early 80s reflects on his own difficult time there. He fields the widely made criticism of RTE at that time that it was dominated by key members of the Workers Party. And he goess on to accuse the national broadcaster of declining standards. By Gerry Gregg Joanna Mathers was just 25 years old in the spring of 1981. She was a first class …
Fascinating story which has been bubbling under for the last few days (I’ve been ill rather than willfully ignoring it). It seems the UVF (in favour of political settlement) in East Belfast have been allowed to take direct action over apparent sympathisers of the LVF (the organisation accused of Lisa Dorrian’s abduction and murder, and associated with political dissent from settlement) ie put them out of their homes in the Garnerville estate in East Belfast. The UVF says it will …
Marie Ervine trawls the past for clues as to what the IRA’s statement might contain. The natural template is the one issued 26th February, in 1962 that ended the Border Campaign, and which declared “that the situation obtaining in the earlier stages of the Campaign has altered radically”. However, within eight years the situation had changed again and the IRA was back at war. One reason why Unionists are not prepared to count any chickens just yet. Slugger O'TooleA general …
On the 18th June, Peter Hain stated – “I am satisfied that Sean Kelly has become re-involved with terrorism and is a danger to others and, while he is at liberty, is likely to commit further offences.” Tonight Sean Kelly was freed on what has been described as “temporary release” pending his application to the Sentence Review Commission – and ahead of an expected statement from the Provisional Movement – leaving the narrative to be filled by whichever theory you …
With the IRA statement widely expected tomorrow Martina Purdy looks at some of the elements outside any prospective agreement between Sinn Fein and other democratic parties, and their capacity to disrupt any new dispensation. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
As the hype continues, RTE, BBC, etc.. The Guardian’s Ireland correspondent, Angelique Chrisafis, sums up the situation well. But timing is everything and many remain cautious. The republican machine prides itself on news management. It would not want to make its historic announcement when it was not guaranteed to top the news agenda. Having often bombed London, the IRA does not now want to be associated with Islamist suicide bombers or risk seeing its groundbreaking announcement relegated to a paragraph …
That’s despite the reported unresolved technical fault.. and sometimes this interwebby thingummy really outdoes itself.. You can watch NASA’s coverage of today’s [hopefully] launch of Space Shuttle Discovery live online [Windows Media and RealPlayer formats available] launch around 3.39pm.. with live streaming of later mission coverage available too. Update So far, so good Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
The Ulster Unionist Party’s newly appointed Chief Negotiator, Alan McFarland, delivered his speech to the MacGill Summer School last Friday, in which he made his theme confidence and trust. He not only defends the UUP line post 1998, but takes the DUP to task for their stance. The Democratic Unionist Party ran away from negotiations in 1997 and spent 6 years carping from the side-lines. They stood in the 2003 Assembly elections on a cunning plan about which they were …
We recently received a letter from one Ed Moloney who was not pleased at a series of comments made by commenters on Slugger during the run up to the election. However after a robust and lengthy correspondence we have resolved the matter amicably – see statement below. Whilst we don’t agree that the statements were necessarily libellous, we also don’t believe that public figures should be subjected to the kind of personal abuse Mr Moloney received. It serves as a …
THE Auditor General has found significant financial control failures in the Ulster-Scots Agency and the Irish language body, Foras na Gaeilge. The report is somewhat overdue, since it refers to the first year of the two bodies’ operation, 2000. David Gordon reported: Their key points include: An internal audit of the Ulster Scots Agency in 2001 found that internal controls were “largely non-existent” and “even the basics of regularity and propriety were absent”. Mr Dowdall and Mr Purcell express …
For various reasons I was out of action yesterday. Still no word on the IRA statement, although PA had this fascinating quote from an unnamed source first thing yesterday morning: “With unionists not rushing back into government, it would give Assembly members something to do while they wait for the IRA to live up to its promises,” a source said. It would enable Assembly members to debate issues affecting the people of Northern Ireland, even scrutinise what direct rule ministers …
Alex Kane picks up on a conversation that stopped locally when all ministers packed up their briefs and ambled off into a long hiatus in October 2002. However education is still a touchstone for important ideological divisions. According to Kane, what he see as the liberal tendency to dampen competition is running riot through the educational establishment. Conference believes it is time to delete fail from the educational vocabulary, to be replaced with the concept of deferred success. This is …
That’s the BBC view from Barney Rowan, who is one of a handful of journalists in a position to know and one of their top analytical editors, Mark Devenport. Rowan notes the pressure from developments in the outside world: In the same way that after the 11 September attacks speeded up the movement towards decommissioning, Gerry Adam and Martin McGuinness will have to ensure that off the back of the London attacks that they get the IRA to the right …
The Ulster Museum is to receive £11.5million for a major redevelopment of the Museum – scheduled to begin towards the end of 2006. £7million coming from the Department of Culture, Arts and LearningLeisure and £4,713,000 from the unofficial tax fund.. I’d like to see better online access to the Museum’s collections for a start. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
Tying in with our favoured analogy for the never-ending political-processing.. [actually ahead of Peter Hall’s 50th Anniversary production of the play – Ed] actor Simon Callow has a great article, in The Guardian, tracing the influence of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot from its opening night in January 1953 at the nearly defunct Théâtre de Babylone in Montparnasse. “Charming evening we’re having.” “Unforgettable.” “And it’s not over.” “Apparently not.” “It’s only beginning.” “It’s awful.” As Simon Callow says – Now …
The UVF, according to reports, have forced some residents to leave a Belfast estate, claiming – in the midst of the ongoing feud – that they had LVF links. Police may be “very much present”, as the quote in the BBC article puts it.. but who exactly are they serving? And what has our part-share Sectretary of State to say? Btw, if anyone thinks the heading is in anyway an endorsement.. read this previous post on the ubiquitous use of …
On a bit of a culture jag this morning.. bear with me.. First up, another in the occasional series the Guardian appears to be running on John Millington Synge. This time a marvellous short story by Joseph O’Connor – The playboy of Glenageary – it’s an extract from Synge: A Celebration, edited by Colm Tóibín. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
The front page of the Irish Independent – which tends to be much less activist on Sinn Fein and the IRA than its sister paper – is dominated with a report that Martin Ferris TD, Martin McGuinness MP, and Gerry Adams MP are finally stepping down as members of the IRA Army Council. Right through the last pragmatic ten years or so, all three men have denied such charges, but it seems this apparent move is being interpreted as a …