Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) 
The Equality Commission together with the Commissioner for Public Appointments for NI and WRDA/Reclaim the Agenda hosted an event for International Women’s Day on Thursday. Watch Geraldine McGahey (Chief Commissioner of the Equality Commission), Deirdre Hargey (MLA and Communities Minister) and Judena Gillespie (Commissioner for Public Appointments for NI) speak with candour about their careers and journeys into positions of leadership.
A surprising announcement from Councillor Guy Spence this evening states that he resigned from the DUP on Friday afternoon and will step back from politics and retire from Belfast City Council at the end of March. Aged 19, Spence was first elected to council in May 2011, becoming Deputy Lord Mayor in 2015. Back in April 2015 during the election campaign, his car and home were pelted with eggs. In early 2019, his local party organisation selected former UUP MLA Fred Cobain as the DUP candidate for Castle ahead of the sitting councillor, though the central party subsequently added Spence to the ticket.
Alliance delegates gathered again in the Stormont Hotel for their annual conference, marking the 50th anniversary of the party’s formation and celebrating a year of growing success at three successive elections (local, European and Westminster). The mood was upbeat, attendance was strong, yellow clothing was prevalent, and while there are no elections just around the corner to fire up the crowd, there was a sense of achievement and satisfaction at the party’s fortunes.
Three figures were notably absent including party leader Naomi Long who had been diagnosed with a severe respiratory infection and was on bed rest and fluids under doctor’s orders. Deputy leader Stephen Farry delivered the conference main speech which also held from PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne, former Secretary of State Julian Smith, and young councillors.
US President Trump has replaced his chief of staff and appointed Mick Mulvaney as US special envoy to Northern Ireland. With incidents of loose language (and embarrassing roll backs) assumed to be reason for his replacement, Mulvaney may need to be extra careful with his comments once on the ground in Northern Ireland if he is to use his undoubted political skill to make a contribution to the ongoing peace process.
Lord Patten of Barnes addressed an audience in Belfast City Hall last night to mark the 20th anniversary of the Equality Commission and the NI Human Rights Commission. Michael Wardlow finishes his eight years as chief commissioner at the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland today. Deputy chief commissioner Geraldine McGahey has been appointed as his successor.
Do you keep your toaster in the cupboard? Hate ABBA? Holiday in Bundoran? These are important questions that Derry Girls raised during in a memorable episode that dived headlong into the stereotypes that persist in Northern Ireland society. The ‘Differences’ blackboard from the show is currently on display in the Ulster Museum’s new CultureLab exhibition along with memorabilia from many other ways we express and define our local identity, not just the Orange and Green.
Wearing my hat as a director of FactCheckNI and participating in a recent lunchtime webinar organised by ResponseSource, I commented that while social media are used to spread misinformation and disinformation, these platforms also give access to a “huge, big brain” of “experts who do actually know some of those numbers or do know what happened” who can pick holes in arguments and claims.
SLUGGER EVENT. We’ve implemented it, ignored it and extended it, but never before in Northern Ireland has it been sung! But on the opening night of Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas & Politics, you can settle down in Accidental Theatre to hear singers from Spark Opera perform the local première of a choral setting of the Declaration of Support at the start of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement text, written by former NIO official Clare Salters. But don’t worry, we know that “singing the d’Hondt formula would just be weird”! Alongside the music will be a politician discussing what it was like to be inside the talks in Castle Buildings and as well as a journalist who anchored hours and hours of the rolling late-night TV coverage that accompanied the negotiations. An evening of nostalgia and reflection.
The Guido Fawkes political blog also reports that the new Northern Ireland Secretary of State has yet to appoint a special adviser, saying that he was “spotted returning from his first official trip to his new district thumbing through his ministerial folder containing a document entitled ‘A beginner’s guide to the political scene in Northern Ireland’. Sounds like he urgently needs a hire – any Northern Ireland experts get in touch with him …”
It’s taken a lot longer than anticipated for the list of names and salaries to be released, but late this afternoon the Department of Finance issued the list and numbers. The average salary is £62,607 (down 13.8% from £72,681 in the last Executive) and the total pay-bill has decreased from £1,162,894 to £876,498. Four of the six special advisers in The Executive Office (which used to have eight advisers) have been placed in the middle of band 3, while all other SPADs are in pay-bands 1 or 2.
Making his third visit to Northern Ireland in the role of EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier addressed a packed audience in Queen’s University Belfast’s Riddel Hall this evening. Watch back the video of his lecture and read extracts from his speech.
Paraphrasing what I heard: the UK can no longer dip its hand into the EU sweetie jar as those treats are only for the 27 members. Anyone hoping for a softer edge to Brexit may think again.
This afternoon finance minister Conor Murphy published a new Code of Conduct for Special Advisers and a code governing their appointment, and details of the paybands (which now have a lower ceiling). The Code of Conduct goes further than other UK jurisdictions, requiring the use of official email systems, outlawing leaking of confidential information, quarterly publication of gifts, hospitality and meetings with external organisations and individuals.
See who is sitting around the new NI Executive table following this afternoon’s return of the NI Assembly, election of a new Speaker and Deputy Speakers, appointment of First and deputy First Ministers, nomination of Junior Ministers and the Justice Minister, before the departmental picks using the d’Hondt method.
Mike Nesbitt’s contributions to a Reimagining Unionism event I filmed at this summer’s Féile an Phobail – along with remarks by fellow panellists Dawn Purvis, Senator Ian Marshall and Sophie Long – are worth considering in light of the decisions around UUP strategy that need to be taken in the changing political battlefield.
Watch back tonight’s #GE2019 Belfast South hustings from a packed Great Hall at Queen’s University, with four of the five candidates choosing to attend and participate.
Sinn Féin’s national chairperson Declan Kearney voiced his support for a policy document on Inclusion and Reconciliation in a New Ireland, that was adopted by delegates at last weekend’s ard fheis in Derry. As with all political party policies, there is much that is old and reinforced, as well as new nuance and specificity that a party’s actions (and those of its elected representatives and members) can be held to in the future.
How can a community tell its story? That’s the question Jonathan Hodge has been asking as he visited other places and communities to bring back ideas and challenges to loyalist communities in Northern Ireland. This week he hosted a discussion in Shankill Road library and launched his new Perspectives magazine which looks at identity, rights and the United Kingdom.
Speaking a couple of weeks ago in Belfast, Amnesty International’s secretary general Kumi Naidoo picked up the title and theme of the UN’s New York summit in September – Climate, Rights and Human Survival.
The DUP conference included multiple references to ‘next generation unionism’. The days of Union Flags being left on delegates’ seats to be waved with proud fervour during the leaders’ speech now seem to be over. Shouts of “for she’s a jolly good fellow” have also been banished, along with Willie McCrea’s singing from the front. The conference is now more sober in its organisation, as is the mood.
Read through the Private Members Bill that the DUP tried to bring before the NI Assembly using Standing Order 77 this morning. This post previously claimed that the DUP had written to the Attorney General about the bill on 20 June. A DUP spokesperson rebutts that claim: “This was a typing error. The date should have read 20th October rather than 20th June.” Hopefully their bill drafting was more accurate than the letter-writing …
