Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) – Page 49 – Slugger O'Toole

Green Party NI conference, the visit of Alex Attwood, and criticism of MLAs who can’t read or believe the speeches written for them

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 31, 2011, 9:05 am

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Steven Agnew at gpni11 conference

I encountered a confidence within the Green Party in NI at Saturday’s conference. Their conference attendance was a tad smaller than the Workers Party event on the other side of Belfast. While the party was relieved to have Steven Agnew elected in Brian Wilson’s vacated seat (running against Wilson’s wife who was standing for Alliance) they were disappointed to only return three councillors in the local government elections. Speaking to @greenpartyni”s @StevenAgnew after their party conference (mp3) The party has …

Look back at Workers Party NI conference (including audio)

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 30, 2011, 8:30 am

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Table at Workers Party northern conference 2011

John Lowry welcomed around 100 delegates and union representatives to the Grosvenor Hall in Belfast. The northern conference of the Workers Party isn’t a policy-setting body. Lowry said that the party is making preparations for the next local government and Assembly elections to ensure “there is a vibrant socialist alternative”. About two thirds of attendees are older men. But there are pockets of young/middle aged and a handful of women. The past twelve months … Comrades, friends and guests … …

“two challenges and a serious suggestion” offered to Ulster GAA by Dr Norman Hamilton

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 29, 2011, 2:15 pm

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It’s hard to predict where a Presbyterian minister will pop up next. The latest nationalist foray was conducted this afternoon by former moderator Dr Norman Hamilton who had accepted an invitation to address the Ulster GAA at their Club and Community Development Conference in Armagh City Hotel (the scene of last week’s UUP conference). Back on 10 January when he was still moderator, Hamilton met with the Ulster GAA in Armagh. The meeting during which the news of Michaela McAreavey’s …

Workers Party conference on Saturday

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 28, 2011, 11:30 am

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Workers Party SECT ARIA NISM election poster

Update – new post now published looking at the content of the morning session at the Workers Party conference on Saturday. They haven’t gone away you know! The Workers Party Northern Ireland conference takes place in Belfast on Saturday while counters in other parts of the island will be transferring presidential votes. (The Green Party conference is also running on Saturday.) With a wide variety of socialist/left-leaning parties competing with each other for scarce votes in May’s elections, the Workers …

Green Party conference: nuclear power, environmental governance, and a visit from Minister Attwood

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 25, 2011, 9:00 am

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Update – post covering the content of the Green Party conference now published, including audio of the speeches and debates. Environmental governance and nuclear power … these nearly seem like clichéd themes for the Green Party NI to discuss at their annual conference next weekend. While the two leaders’ speeches will no doubt cover other aspects of Green Party policy, including economic and social issues, the main thrust of the agenda is focussed on traditional ‘green’ topics. SDLP Environment Minster …

Talking to Occupy Belfast camp in Writer’s Square

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 24, 2011, 2:30 pm

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Occupy Belfast Writers Square

Following on from my earlier Occupy Belfast – rebels without a cause? post, I spoke to Gerry Carroll at lunchtime today, sheltering under a pagoda set up beside the impromptu Occupy Belfast camp in Writer’s Square opposite St Anne’s Cathedral. About ten tents are pitched in the square. The protesters have a nightly meeting at 6pm to decide on the next course of action, and have no plans to pack up their camp. More info on Facebook and Twitter. Alan …

Republicans and loyalists unite to mark centenary of James Connolly arriving in Belfast

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 23, 2011, 5:49 pm

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SIPTU – the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union – are marking the centenary of the arrival of James Connolly in Belfast to organise dockers and mill workers in an event in Belfast City Hall on the evening of Friday 28 October. Lord Mayor Niall Ó Donnghaile will unveil a a portrait of James Connolly by artist Frank Quigley, followed by a panel discussion on the theme of the ‘The Task Today’ looking at “the current needs of workers and …

Tom Elliott’s speech to #uupconf and a quick interview

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 22, 2011, 10:48 pm

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UUP gavel

Tom Elliott walked into the hall to begin his leader’s speech to strains of Arcade Fire’s Ready to Start. A fine sentiment, though the song’s first line may not be UUP policy! Businessmen drink my blood / Like the kids in art school said they would / And I guess I’ll just begin again / You say can we still be friends … All the kids have always known / That the emperor wears no clothes / But to bow …

UUP Conference … short, sweet, Secretary of State spoke, an Orange Lodge scolded

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 22, 2011, 7:40 pm

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UUP gavel

Any UUP delegates scanning Saturday morning’s papers over breakfast might have choked on their cornflakes when they realised that the Irish News had devoted the best part of a page to UUP conference news, while there was absolutely no mention in the Newsletter! And the date wasn’t 1st April. The UUP Conference kicked off about 10.15am in Armagh City Hotel. In the absence of the (Anglican) Archbishop of Armagh, Rev Andrew Forster opened in prayer. The local constituency chairman, Councillor …

Suddenly everyone wants to be an Ulster Unionist!

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 22, 2011, 6:17 pm

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Fearghal McKinney chairing a panel at the UUP conference

First it was the Secretary of State Owen Paterson … … and then SDLP vice-chair Fearghal McKinney. Everyone wants to be branded as an Ulster Unionist at their conference this morning in Armagh! Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast)Alan Meban. Tweets as @alaninbelfast. Blogs about cinema and theatre over at Alan in Belfast. A freelancer who writes about, reports from, live-tweets and live-streams civic, academic and political events and conferences. He delivers social media training/coaching; produces podcasts and radio programmes; is …

78 postal votes at £66 each – the price of democracy?

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 22, 2011, 9:00 am

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The Electoral Commission’s report into the running of the three elections earlier this year in May does not read well for the Election Office for Northern Ireland (EONI). Three elections in one day was always going to be a challenge, but the report takes issue with EONI’s planning and processes at the counts. In her foreword to the report, outgoing Electoral Commissioner for NI Henrietta Campbell addresses the length of time it took to complete the count: One of the …

UUP conference preview – #uupconf (and a preview of what Tom won’t say in his speech!)

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 21, 2011, 9:00 am

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What do you think Tom Elliott should say in his UUP conference speech on Saturday? I began last year’s UUP conference preview post with a fantastical vision of a Barcamp-style UUP ‘un-conference’, complete with delegate-suggested sessions. I also imagined the delegates writing Tom Elliott’s speech by scribbling suggested sentences on post-it notes and then knitting the fragments together in a “sensible and compelling order” to produce his address. This year I tried to go further and asked attendees and panellists …

The cost of getting elected to the NI Assembly

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 21, 2011, 8:55 am

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Two reports came out yesterday morning from the Electoral Commission pertaining to the May elections in Northern Ireland. The first report gives a breakdown of Assembly candidate expenses. (Overall party expenditure was reported at the beginning of September.) [Click on the graphs to enlarge them.] The six winning candidates spent more than twice as much in South Down, Fermanagh and South Tyrone and West Tyrone as they did in Belfast West or Belfast North. South Down and East Londonderry were …

Is Murdo Fraser right? No, but he’s got a point.

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 19, 2011, 1:30 pm

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Robert Price, Iain McGill, Mike Nesbitt, Bill Manwaring, Ian Parsley at Young Unionists debate asking Is Murdo Fraser Right?

“No, but he’s got a point” was probably the most succinct answer to the question “Is Murdo Fraser Right?” posed at last night’s Young Unionists’ event in QUB Students Union. With Mike Nesbitt in the chair, four centre-right panellists took ten minutes to outline their response to the question as well as the implications for unionism in Northern Ireland. There were 21 in the audience, nearly all young male students. Young Unionists: Is Murdo Fraser Right? (part 1) (mp3) Organiser …

Dis-united Kingdom? Young Unionists debating the issue on Tuesday night

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 17, 2011, 12:05 pm

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As Brian, O’Neill, Mick, Dewi and others have posted, there has been a lot of public debate in recent weeks about the state of the Union. Attention has largely been centred around the strength of Scotland’s links with the rest of its island and whether the Scottish Conservatives should go it alone. The Guardian has been running a Dis-united Kingdom series this month. Mick and I participated in an online debate (that was dominated by Scotland and Cornwall) last week …

Digital Switchover – analogue TV signals stop on 24 October 2012, but RTE1/2 and TG4 will be available digitally right across Ireland

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 17, 2011, 9:00 am

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Denis Wolinski and Digit Al unveil digital switchover date

In primary school – P4 or P5 – I remember listening to a short current affairs educational radio programme that mentioned the new concept of cable TV and channels arriving in homes through coaxial cable rather than aerials. It was at least another ten years before CableTel started to dig up the streets of Belfast. Early cable TV systems were analogue, but they paved the way for today’s bewildering choice of television transmission technologies that now includes cable, satellite, digital …

Round-up of the PUP conference (including audio from speeches)

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 16, 2011, 9:00 am

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Billy Hutchinson speaking after taking over as PUP leader

The Progressive Unionist Party’s annual conference was held on Saturday morning in the large conference room in City East this morning. About 60 people attended. This year exhibitors hadn’t been invited, curtailing a conference revenue stream, but also keeping the focus on party business. I’ve a theory that most party conferences are identifiable from a photo of the back of delegates’ heads. This morning’s conference was dominated by older men, though some younger people and some women were present. As …

Billy Hutchinson is the new Progressive Unionist Party leader

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 15, 2011, 2:12 pm

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Billy Hutchinson - newly elected as PUP leader

Billy Hutchinson was the only nomination for leadership and was elected unopposed at this morning’s Progressive Unionist Party conference held in East Belfast. You can watch his first interview as leader and hear his comments on what the PUP stand for, where the party is going and whether the PUP has the energy to go forward. Hutchinson spoke of the continued need to challenge criminality, repeating his mantra: You can’t be a criminal and a loyalist at the same time. …

PUP conference preview

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 14, 2011, 9:32 pm

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On Saturday, the Progressive Unionist Party will hold their annual conference. It’s been a year of change for the PUP. In the May elections, neither the PUP’s leader Brian Ervine nor independent Dawn Purvis won a seat in the Assembly. Instead the East Belfast loyalist mantle seemed to pass across to Sammy Douglas, who had been approached by and agreed to stand for the DUP. In the local government election, both PUP councillors retained their seats with John Kyle in …

Occupy Belfast – rebels without a cause?

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 5, 2011, 9:10 am

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Occupy Belfast Fist poster

Occupy Belfast are reclaiming the ‘O’ word in these neck of the woods as they organise a protest “to show solidarity with workers and young people fighting against austerity and for a better future across the world, and to tell our politicians that the fight is coming to them”. Over the weekend, there were hundreds of arrests in New York as Occupy Wall Street protesters were disrupted by the NYPD. Arrests seem unlikely as the Belfast sister organisation plans its …