Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) 
A slightly smaller crowd that previously gathered at 8am this morning up on the top floor of the Europa Hotel. After a quick plug from sponsor Mark Prentice (MD of Firmus Energy – who can help you to Keep ‘er lit) a number of guests popped up to the podium to make their comments on the Assembly and AV referendum results and take questions from the bacon butty-guzzling guests. Asked to comment on the role of Twitter in politics, Conall …
It was a quite a contrast to the previous referendum – the Good Friday Agreement poll – which was announced to vast crowds of waiting politicians, campaigners and the world’s media. With the final count completing in Fermanagh & South Tyrone, tonight’s regional AV referendum result for Northern Ireland was finally declared at 2.10am in an almost empty Kings Hall … shortly after the overall UK result was finally able to be announced in London. No official media were present …
Midnight in Kings Hall. The Belfast South and Belfast West Assembly counts have been suspended until 9am. The state of play in terms of surplus redistribution can be seen in more detail if you clock on the shots of the scoreboards. Five to one. Northern Ireland’s referendum counts are still continuing …and consequently have delayed the final announcement of the UK-wide totals from Friday until Saturday! Bristol was the second last hub to finish – at 9.30pm. Four hours later, …
The (first) day of the count is a slow news day as it takes a few hours for verification to confirm the turnout and set the quotas for the subsequent STV counts. And while parties will be busy tallying this morning to get early indications of what the eventual first preference results will be, there ratio of speculation to hard fact will remain high until lunchtime at the earliest. In the meantime, it might be useful to look at some …
As an election observer, today’s the day when you get to visit lots of polling stations. Having started my morning at an away day in Ballymena in the delightful surrounds of the ecos Centre I toured around a few North Antrim polling stations before heading back towards Belfast East, Belfast West and Lagan Valley. I picked up a lot of comments that the colour of the different ballot papers weren’t sufficiently distinct – despite input from RNIB – particularly when …
It’s the storm before the calm. It feels a bit like Slugger’s clearing out the draft folder of posts before they become irrelevant post-count when the focus switches away from the campaign and turns to the results and the consequences of the electorates’ pencil scribblings. In case Tuesday’s late night leaders’ debate whet your appetite for midnight political listening, here’s one last election treat. It’s a recording of last night’s East Belfast election hustings, held in Knock Presbyterian Church. I …
The Electoral Office for NI have released the eligible electorate numbers for the three elections running on Thursday. Some of the changes can be put down to boundary changes, others are about an increasing population. But a lot must be down to increased voter registration. The overall eligible electorate in NI has risen from 1,107,904 in March 2007 to 1,210,009 – that’s a 9.2% rise. The chart shows the changes per constituency, in descending order of percentage change. Update – …
Opinion seems divided about the format and scheduling of last night’s leaders’ debate – available to view online. Personally, I liked the way that the format allowed the five party (northern) leaders to be put on the spot by members of the audience, tackling four areas each. It was at least as illuminating as the bickering bunfight that followed when the leaders got the chance to talk across and over each other. Update to bear in mind when reading the …
While the Chief Electoral Officer Graham Shields and NI head of the Electoral Commission Séamus Magee are clearly holding dummy oversized ballot paper samples, the real thing won’t be much shorter in some polling stations. With an inch-high rows per candidate and space for the constituency details at the top, the East Belfast Assembly paper – with 17 candidates – could be close to two feet long! That’ll be fun to manipulate and fill in on the polling booth shelves. …
In the last of this pre-election series of interviews with representatives from smaller parties contesting Assembly and/or council seats, I spoke to John Lowry, General Secretary of the Workers Party. (Update – adding link to their Election 2011 site.) John Lowry is standing for the Assembly in West Belfast and Lower Falls for Belfast City Council. The party is contesting all four Belfast Assembly constituencies. My earliest election memory as a child was pouring over the broadsheet 1983 general election …
If there was ever a time to run as an independent – particularly for council – surely this was the year to get out around the streets and convince people to give new voices a chance – new voices that weren’t wedded to historic party policies, tribal politics and uniformed organisations of one for or another. Disappointingly, although Roy Hobson is running as an independent candidate for Belfast City Council in Victoria Ward, he hasn’t put any literature through the …
The Green Party has six Assembly and twenty two council candidates standing for election on May 5. I spoke to Steven Agnew a few weeks ago in the party’s constituency office (and headquarters) in Bangor to ask about Green Party policies and priorities for the Assembly and local government, local sourcing, and their stance against reducing the number of local councils and their hopes for election results. Steven Agnew once echoed Kermit the Frog when he said “it’s not easy …
Within an hour or so at landing at Belfast City Airport on the latest stop in his non-stop campaign schedule, Eddie Izzard had been greeted by Dawn Purvis (who’s in favour of AV), had a look inside the Black Box, given a pep talk to runners in tomorrow’s Belfast Marathon, met leading politicians from local parties supporting AV and retired to Malmaison for a purple (non-alcoholic) cocktail … as well as spontaneously canvassing numerous passers – even the receptionist at …
I’m not sure that the scales fell from the DUP leader’s eyes, but when Peter Robinson fell into his fish pond this afternoon, it certainly gave us all a laugh. And by the string of tweets that followed, his iPhone wasn’t in his pocket when he slipped. 1) The Good Lord punishes any desecration of His day. I’ve been busy these last weeks and feeling guilty that my Koi Carp were neglected. 2) What harm could it be to remove …
… but does it have to? This example of Sinn Fein postering in East Antrim isn’t exactly the most professional piece of campaigning … surely the early bird captures the worm lamppost while latecomers have to find their own free space? 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 …
Posters and Segway scooters. With less than a week to go until the election, candidates will have sore feet, lost weight and be counting the hours until polling closes on Thursday night at 10pm. The PUP is certainly pulling its weight when it comes to election gimmicks. Last week they unveiled a poster featuring Kristin Mackenzie – the American model/stock photo that both the DUP and UUP both used last year in rival posters – “to highlight the ongoing neglect …
On Thursday afternoon I spoke to IRSP’s two candidates standing for Belfast City Council: Jim Gorman (Lower Falls) and Paul Little (Oldpark). The party has another three candidates standing in Derry and Strabane. The first part of the interview looked at their candidacy in next week’s local elections; the second part looked at the IRSP more generally, its link with the INLA, God, apologies, policing and their view on current dissident activity. I asked about where the IRSP as a …
The Forester newspaper which covers the Forest of Dean region of Gloucestershire splashes the story of a ballot paper mistake over its front page this morning. Postal voters in Northern Ireland’s Lagan Valley constituency were last week sent ballot papers which featured the wrong party logo beside one of the candidate’s names. Across the pond, 2,200 postal voters in four wards – Lydbrook and Ruardean, Mitcheldean and Drybrook, Coleford East and Newent Central – were sent district council ballot papers …
Eighteen year old Stephen Stewart is squeezing in running as an independent candidate for East Belfast in the Assembly elections alongside his A-levels. He’s partially inspired by Martin McAuley who stood as an independent in North Belfast’s Westminster election last year and is having a crack at the Assembly this year. The whole point of me doing this is to complete the Good Friday Agreement and elect the first person from the ‘ceasefire generation’. It’s thirteen years since the signing …
The Progressive Unionist Party launched its manifesto this morning. The party is now led by Brian Ervine who is standing for the Assembly in East Belfast while another eight candidates are running for seats on councils in Antrim, Belfast, Castlereagh, Derry, Larne and Newtownabbey. (I posted an interview with Brian Ervine back in March.) Speaking at the launch, Brian Ervine had an upbeat message. The PUP has emerged stronger and more resilient as a consequence of the crisis of 2010. …
