Brian Walker

Apologies to Eamonn for this separate post. For some reason I can’t add comments to exisiing posts at the moment. Some years ago, I enjoyed a long reminiscence with Cardinal Daly in St Patrick’s Cathedral. His personal warmth was genuine rather than formal. Fortunate not to have been in office for the peak of the abuse scandals, he was a conventional ecclesiastical conservative. But even at faraway Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, he spoke out on the Troubles. Labelled the Mekon by …

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Van Morrison was a hacker’s victim. He hasn’t fathered a son by Gigi, and adds: “For the avoidance of all doubt and in the interests of clarity, I am very happily married to Michelle Morrison with whom I have two wonderful children.” Brian WalkerFormer BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior …

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Whether you approve of honours or not, three cheers for Ivan McMichael, the doyen of a dwindling profession, that of court reporter, for being made MBE. He should have waited for the spurs of knighthood.. At the height of the troubles, he was also a terrific news tipster. For generations, he has supplied court stories to the entire media without a serious stumble. In a rare burst of modesty Ivan comments: “I have been thinking why me instead of colleagues …

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A diplomatic and political storm is likely to follow the Guardian’s categorical claims that the kidnapping of Peter Moore and the murder of three, and probably four security guards was sponsored out by an elite Iranian force which took them to various locations deep inside Iran. Evidence of the Iranian connection comes from one of the Iraqi kidnappers whom the Guardian has interviewed. I assume the Guardian had been sitting on the story for some time, not wanting to risk …

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Combined with his blunt attack on his own security system, Barack Obama’s deadline of tomorrow for a preliminary assessment of the apparently thwarted attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner will make big waves on this side of the pond. We can expect a revival of the “Londonistan ” analysis like this from Michael Burleigh. Typically, the British elite tried to manage the problem by co-opting the self-appointed tribal chiefs, and paying them off with honours. Unfortunately, some of the …

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So Van’s still the man at 64! Why ever not! Over 500 news stories and counting throughout the world proclaim it so it must be true. And he’s more open about Van 111’s citizenship than his place of birth. Well, what do you expect from a man called Ivan from off the Bloomfield Road? Brian WalkerFormer BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political …

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When a journalist in a newspaper labels a leading politician as a liar and produces what ‘s claimed to be a smoking gun so to speak, we know that it’s game on for the highest stakes. Suzanne Breen and the Sunday Tribune are hardly risk averse. They come to the Adams scandal buoyed up with a clear victory over the government over their refusal to disclose the source of the Real IRA claim for the Massareene murders. Recognising the significance …

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If it’s confirmed that Brian Lenihan has pancreatic cancer, the prognosis is poor. You don’t need to be an oncologist to know that. His illness sadly recalls a similar affliction his ebullient father suffered from for most of his adult life. TV3’s newsbreak seems a piece of over-keen competition but it’s entirely typical of the trade. Alas, the serious illness of a finance minister cannot be “private” for long. Did the station break a self imposed embargo the bigger news …

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Cuts in university funding for England are at odds with what’s happening in Scotland with its modest £21 million hike for 2010-11 and Northern Ireland 2009-10, but for how long? The local settlement for 2009 –10 is an increase but for the life of me I can’t find up to date figures for 2010 –11 other than in the three year plan which we have to think of now as fantasy. Reports that capital cuts threaten a UU move from …

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You can feel the waves of anxiety coming at you from the lively Tory house journal the Spectator, hit by the Indy’s ComRes poll that the Conservatives are only (only!) nine points clear – and with holes. And who says the Americans are indifferent to British politics? The Wall St Journal, no less, gives Cameron a solemn lesson. … if he wants to convince Britain that he deserves to be its Prime Minister with a proper parliamentary majority, Mr. Cameron …

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The Irish Times’ Mary Fitzgerald makes a brave attempt in CIF to set the Strasbourg abortion case in a wider Irish context – paedophile scandals, recession and so on. Her point is this: Until very recently, Ireland’s progressive social change went hand in hand with economic liberalisation – and now that the resulting boom from the latter is over, reasoned political debate over the former seems paralysed Hmm.. maybe so… but I should have thought the Lisbon Treaty re-run and …

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I’m not at all surprised that the SNP are threatening a legal challenge to the historic decision to have three-way leaders’ debates in the UK general election. In 1995, like most London-based BBC editors I was taken aback when, after an injunction the BBC pulled a Panorama interview with the PM John Major a few days before Scottish local elections. The contexts seemed so different that we didn’t suspect a clash but the ruling went against us. Nick Robinson, then …

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Friends and foes alike of the monarchy (and there are plenty of both in Slugger I’m certain) will be keen to learn many more baroque details of the Palace’s never-ending claims for more public spending on crumbling palaces, thanks to a long running FOI campaign by the Indy. The Government have 35 days to comply with the new Information Commissioner’s ruling ordering disclosure at last, in the teeth of silent but fierce royal opposition for many years. As scores of …

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Two Conservative iconoclasts offer pronouncements for the end of 2009, Max Hastings in the FT on Britain and the recession, and Nigel Lawson on Copenhagen, both Tories of different kinds. Both are too lugubrious to be of much use to a party expecting to take office in 2010. Ironically, they remind me of the great fin de regime anti-Tory slogan of 1964 : Thirteen wasted years”. Arch climate change critic Nigel Lawson is at his most supercilious in the Wall …

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With all the magnificent perversity for which it’s renowned, the Roman Catholic Church has confirmed moves to make saints of two Popes, Pius X11 and the John Paul 11, both fabled for putting first their absolute defence of the Church as an institution. This is the very posture that incubated the world wide paedophile cover-up scandals, contributed to the world Aids crisis and led to the catastrophic failure (shared by Lutherans and others ), to challenge the rise of Hitler …

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The fun stuff was the lunch with the FT. Not a word about a shift of strategy. Eventually, I make out the words on the wrapper and blurt: “Oh! A bagel!” “It’s got pesto,” says O’Leary. “It was either that or McDonald’s. I figured you for a bagel girl.” The staff get another pasting as he moves on to talk about management consultants (“should all be euthanised”) and MBAs (“bullshit”). “MBA students come out with, ‘The customer’s always right,? he …

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Thank goodness for some old fashioned power brokering to dramatise the issues of Copenhagen – US-China deadlock, EU standing apart, Third World accusing the First world of planning a Holocaust to come. You have to make some allowances. Everyone’s very tired and emotional. The crucial omission? Without a strict timetable for verifiable cuts, the 20% goal for 2020 lacks backbone. The BBC accepts there was a climate deal of sorts; the Guardian proclaims failure, the Times, a poor fudge. (At …

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So the Independent and its Sunday stable mate in London may go to a Russian oligarch and become a London freesheet. Changed times for what began as a glorious hacks’ co-operative. Roy Greenslade points out the new synergy, as it shares a building with the Evening Standard ( and even some hotdesks I hear). While it’s the end of a dream for the retired Sir Anthony, where does it leave his family’s faltering control of the parent Dublin group? It …

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Through gritted teeth no doubt, Education Minister Caitriona Ruane recently sneaked out an unpublicised Assembly written answer disclosing the results of the unregulated secondary school transfer tests, area by area, school by school, (from page 33 of written answers for 11 December; selected details below the fold). Now if we adopt the standard of notionally reclassifying as a comprehensive, every grammar school whose latest 11plus intake falls below 50% A grade, we reach some interesting conclusions. 17 out of 56 …

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As we know, Northern Ireland opinion surveys are almost as controversial as the opinions themselves, and the latest, on what to do about the Troubles legacy won’t be an exception. ALMOST TWO-THIRDS of the community in Northern Ireland believe that it must deal with the legacy of the conflict to allow it to move on as a society, writes Victims commissioner Patricia MacBride in an Irish Times article commenting on a Millward Brown Ulster opinion survey on the Troubles legacy …

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