Brian Walker

So is there any prospect of the Executive actually taking action on the recommendations of Richard Barnett’s review of economic policy? You would think they ought to manage at least to create a single department of the Economy as this appears to involve only a realignment of responsibilities and not – horrors! -the disappearance of any actual department. Barnett diplomatically makes the familiar case against the risk averse strategy of Invest NI that should have been replaced years ago when …

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Make whatever sense you can of this rigmarole about receiving that poor relation of a terrestrial TV channel, Five . If you have Freeview boxes that aren’t specified here, can you continue to get ITV3 and 4 if you don’t bother to retune? It’s a lousy deal anyway. It means you lose the best sports coverage in the world – the Tour de France on IT4! And what about those re-runs of Morse and Cracker? Brian WalkerFormer BBC journalist and …

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Having just taken part in a BBC NI film When the Pope Came to Ireland 30 years ago, I’ve been thinking that a visit from Pope Benedict next year could hardly be more different. The film vividly recorded the contrast between yesterday’s faith and hope in grim days and today’s disillusion and fragmentation in otherwise better times. The expectation that a Pope will visit Armagh at last will no doubt be welcome. JP2’s plans were finally dashed by the horrors …

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“Around half of those asked would prefer the licence fee to be lowered by £5.50, compared to just six per cent who wanted additional money to be spent on regional news on other channels.” So concedes the BBC chairman, in the opening move to do business with a Conservative government. The BBC licence fee is £142. Brian WalkerFormer BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; …

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Jeffrey Donaldson will surely have a good deal to say about the Sunday Times’ latest claims, that Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell wrote to him as long ago as January, implying that Gordon Brown forestalled compensation for IRA bomb victims because of oil interests and Libya’s new found cooperation in the “war” against terror. That at any rate is the interpretation the Sunday Times puts on the letter but if it’s right, why hasn’t Donaldson spoken out long ago?. However, …

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A two fingered salute to James Murdoch then. An overwhelming majority, 77%, think the BBC is an institution people should be proud of – up from 68% in an equivalent ICM poll carried out five years ago. As Guardian bright boy columnist Jonathan Freedland comments: Most, 63%, also think it provides good value for money – up from 59% in 2004. It’s surely central to the BBC’s raison d’etre that it will always be more reliable in providing truthful news …

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It’s apparently straight talk like Denis Bradley’s in today’s Irish News article,” Neither SDLP nor Sinn Fein has credible plan for unity” that intrigues me more than a hundred boilerplate party speeches. His conclusion is in a way unexceptional: “ Now that the IRA has gone, they might even consider working up a joint strategy for a new and better Ireland – and that might give all their supporters a bit of hope.” But what prompted the piece, the second …

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Crafty Alex Salmond has gone back to flirting with a multi option approach to a Scottish referendum next year. To try to stave off defeat in Holyrood where the combined opposition comprise a unionist majority, Salmond is prepared to include the Calman report’s recommendation for more powers for the Scottish Parliament, as well as the minority SNP government’s own bid for support to open negotiations for independence with Westminster. As the BBC’s Scotland political Editor Brian Taylor says: “ This …

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Dramatic and hilarious developments about a leaders’ debate in the forthcoming UK general election. Sky News have broken ranks with other broadcasters to “secure a leaders debate,” their redoubtable Political Editor Adam Boulton has just told Radio 4’s Media Show. “David Cameron and Nick Clegg have agreed and there will be a podium for Gordon Brown if he chooses to occupy it.” This is a clear high stakes gamble to bounce Gordon Brown. I’d give evens that it’ll work.Would the …

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The Irish News today hosts a blast from the SDLPs’ Alasdair McDonnell against Sinn Fein, adopting a line of attack familiar in Slugger. Sinn Fein has willingly thrown itself into a squalid axis of self preservation that has pushed the north to the brink of a virtual dictatorship – a counteractive dual dictatorship, which renders each side paralysed and fails to pay even the most cursory lip service to the framework of democracy. McDonnell’s critique may be all very well …

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Now here’s a interesting idea. The Times reports that David Frost may return to host a election debate with the main UK party leaders. This would break new ground. A leader’s debate, I mean, not David Frost. The Prime Minister of the day has always resisted mixing it with the other leaders on the grounds that s/he would be throwing away a natural advantage of incumbency. All we had in the past was Election Call phone ins ( I used …

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The Independent’s struggle for survival reaches a new phase with the revival of Telecom tycoon Denis O’Brien’s feud with the beleaguered O’ Reillys. The demand to close or dispose of the Indy starkly exposes the gulf between O’Brien who wants clear signs of moving into profit, and the O’Reillys who want to keep the titles alive. As a buyer for the papers seems unlikely in this climate, it looks as if the long delayed crisis is arriving at last. The …

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Every time I go to the London library in St James’ Square I pass the little memorial, often decked with a bouquet, to WPC Yvonne Fletcher who was shot dead from the Libyan “People’s Bureau” in 1984, as she was diverting people away from a small demonstration. Now in the wake of the Megrahi release, there are hints that the Libyans are considering compensation for her killing and for the victims of Libyan- fuelled IRA terrorism. Nothing more than a …

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It’s a relief to read that Vladimir Putin is backing away from a neo-Stalinist line for the commemoration of the outbreak of the Second World War at Westerplatte near Gdansk, the former Danzig. By describing as “immoral” the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which paved the way to the immediate Nazi-Soviet carve-up of Poland and made war inevitable, and repeating Gorbachev’s admission of Soviet responsibility for the Katyn massacre, he moderates the threat of rougher relations with the former members of the Warsaw …

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It’s becoming more and more clear that the BBC will have to come up with something more to stem the tide of media and political criticism that makes it the victim of its own success. That success by the way, was founded on going on line early while the newspapers and all other UK mainstream media were asleep. Ex Guardian editor Peter Preston, whose paper has aims to become no less than the centre left’s website of choice for the …

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A final burst of history today as the Sunday Times homes in on the Sticky story within RTE, extracting from a new account by Brian Hanley and Scott Millar. The gist of the story comes under the category of “everybody knew” at the time but there’s lots of fascinating detail. RTE although not quite central to the Troubles was harder hit than was the BBC in Belfast as a national broadcaster by Section 31 and the associated mindset, the RTE …

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How could a NI Bill of Rights be regarded as meeting the need when key rights are exempted? The project is in the doldrums anyway. An absorbing report of the McCloskey Civil Rights Summer School from Jeff Dudgeon below the fold. The lack of press coverage so far is a comment in itself: I argued that new rights were inevitably unpopular and had to be fought for almost by their nature, not imposed by statutory bodies. I mentioned that the …

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Mountbatten, the Narrow Water massacre, 30 years of Thatcher, even the WW2 anniversary, it’s a great time for stoking up the memories. In August 1969, was the Irish army on the brink of invading up the Buncrana road as a new RTE documentary seems to allege? As a student back home in Derry, I remember the tingles coursing down my spine when I watched the mild mannered Jack Lynch delivering his “ we shall not stand by” speech on August …

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A modest return to growth next year. after faint signs of recovery so far, says Richard Ramsay in the Ulster Bank’s quarterly review. These signs were noted at the InterTradeIreland conference in Dublin in June, as different strategies begin to bite on the economies south and north. In some ways NI with its dominant public sector has fared better than the GB average. But recovery is likely to slower in the region than in GB. Extracts from Ramsay’s crisp and …

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The rest of MSM are in a quandary about how to respond to Rupert Murdoch’s decision to charge for on line content from his newspapers. An Observer profile of the Dirty Digger points to the problem. The tough new conditions have led Murdoch to declare that the era of free news is over, although News Corp insiders say there are still no clear indications about how he intends to persuade people to pay for it. . The Independent confidently announces …

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