Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) 
Just a quick post to archive the 1st preference vote totals and the vote share percentages for each party in the 2019 Northern Ireland local government elúctions for posterity – as the vote totals are hard to find elsewhere at the moment. With a higher turnout, the DUP grew their vote and share, while SF grew vote but shrank share. UUP and SDLP lost votes and lost share. Greens, Alliance, and PBP grew votes and share. Tories, UKIP, TUV, PUP …
Playwright Rosemary Jenkinson is turning her satirical pen away from Stormont and is dipping her nib in the dark ink pot of Westminster with her latest rapid response work – Mayday! – a one woman show with Jo Donnelly playing Prime Minister Theresa May.
With only seven and a half weeks left of his five year term as PSNI Chief Constable, George Hamilton delivered a lecture at Queen’s University this evening to “help signpost the next steps for policing with the community”. He called out those “across the political spectrum … [who] have too often defaulted to the blame game … finding it easier to blame the police without taking any responsibility for the context in which police are being asked to operate”. Hamilton …
Growing up in Lisburn, with James Molyneaux’s victory a certainty in any General Election race, the interesting number to find was how well runner-up Alliance candidate Seamus Close polled this time. He was first elected to Lisburn Borough Council back in 1973, becoming the first non-unionist mayor in 1993 …
Life-long Europhile Jane Morrice launched her colourful campaign this morning. She wants to press for a People’s Vote on any deal with a clear option to indicate a desire to remain in the EU, and for any deal to include special recognition of Northern Ireland, essential she says, due to its unique frontier and people’s right to EU citizenship.
Wearing his hat as visiting professor at Ulster University, in an event organised by the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences and Slugger O’Toole, Dr Nicholas Whyte delivered a lecture reflecting on how the UK’s Brexit process has been perceived at the heart of the EU, noting that “Brussels may seem rather far from Belfast, but Belfast is increasingly visible in Brussels”. Watch back or read what he said …
Recalling working on Prime Ministerial visits, receiving IRA briefings from five different P O’Neills, collating tens of thousands of pages of notes, deciding to no longer knock the doors of bereaved relatives, and thinking out loud about how to address legacy issues, when Brian Rowan and Deric Henderson sat down on Thursday evening to discuss their contributions to the book ‘Reporting the Troubles’, they had no idea of the tragic events that would happen just a few hours later in Creggan.
On Thursday evening, hours before Lyra McKee was fatally shot in Creggan, Brian Rowan was speaking about Reporting the Troubles in Holywood. Throughout the event, he often pivoted away from pure reminiscence and returned to the subject of legacy, arguing for an inclusive and society-wide process that asked less about what had happened but instead focussed on why it happened and crucially why it should never happen again.
A film about a reporter’s experience and delayed testimony from Angola’s civil war which raises ethical questions about any journalist’s responsibility to quickly tell the objective truth, and their responsibility as a human being to save lives and prevent setting up a feedback loop to the best-funded factions in the war.
QUB pro-vice-chancellor Professor Richard English delivered a 40-minute talk on the topic of Does Political Violence Work? during the recent Imagine! Belfast festival, looking at terrorism by non-state and potentially state actors as well as drawing some conclusions about the disjunction between why campaigns start, why people join up, what is achieved and how we post hoc rationalise what happens.
Maybe the message of the posters is just cynical enough to cajole a few of us into voting by following our own intentions and aspirations rather than someone else’s stale dogma?
In his last public lecture as his seven-year term as Police Ombudsman draws to a close, Dr Michael Maguire reflected on what independence means for his office, and lessons that can be learned. “You cannot take independence for granted. It can be undermined in a number of different ways. Whoever holds the post of police ombudsman must keep this in mind. Be aware some entirely innocent initiatives can have unintended consequences.”
A playwright from Portadown, but now living in Dundee, John McCann wonders why the people around him aren’t aware of the “shitberg” of nonsense spoken by politicians in Northern Ireland, rhetoric that “in any normal functioning democracy would have cost someone their job”.
Mark Durkan is standing in a Dublin constituency as a Fine Gael candidate in May’s European elections. While the current SDLP leader Column Eastwood has thrown his party’s lot in with Fianna Fáil, Durkan is making his strategic partnership with their main rivals in a bid to return to active politics.
READ AND LISTEN BACK to the main speeches at today’s Alliance Party Conference on the second anniversary of the last NI Assembly election and exactly two months before the next local government poll. Naomi Long pulled no punches in her criticism of Secretary of State’s “appalling dereliction of duty” to restore the Stormont institutions.
BAIL EXTENDED for another six months for journlists behind Loughinisland film No Stone Unturned. Given the allegations of collusion exposed in the film, the disputed source of the complaint to the police, the heavy-handed seizure of evidence beyond the scope of the investigation, and the desire for the police to constrain which aspects of the case can be discussed in public, the police have as many questions to answer as the two journalists whose search for truth and justice uncovered so many embarrassing and hard to explain aspects of the killings and the investigation that followed.
Imagine! Belfast, the festival of ideas and politics. Back from 25-31 March with 380 speakers at 156 events with 65 partners crammed in 50 venues over 7 days. Film, theatre, talks, panels, exhibitions, songs, a gag or two … and even a wood pellet competition.
Right at the point where Her Majesty’s Opposition might be expected to galvanise their efforts against a Tory party that is pulling itself in different directions, the UK Labour party is in disarray. This morning ‘gang of seven’ MPs have resigned from the Labour Party: Luciana Berger, Ann Coffey, Mike Gapes, Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith and Chuka Umunna. Berger explained: “This morning we have all now resigned from the Labour Party. This has been a very difficult, painful, …
Read or watch back as Canon David Porter and Dr Nicola Brady tease out how forgiveness might fit into the cut and thrust of political point-scoring, binary positions and contested history in their closing addresses at this year’s 4 Corners Festival in Belfast.
South Belfast MLA Claire Hanna has resigned from the SDLP’s whip will withdraw from of SDLP group meetings at the NI Assembly and has resigned from the position of party Brexit spokesperson. She remains an ordinary member of the SDLP. But it’s complicated. “Following the conference on Saturday, I have thought long and hard about the outcome and implications. I remain unconvinced that an exclusive partnership with Fianna Fáil is the right vehicle with which to deliver the non-sectarian, transparent …
