Brian Walker Brian Feeney today takes a swipe inter alia at the Northern establishment especially the DUP, for being clueless about how they’ll face inevitable financial cuts, preferring instead to sit crowing on top of their own wee dung-heap. In contrast, he points to an Bord Snip: One of the key aspects of An Bord Snip’s recommendations is a hard look at the cost of the state apparatus in the south. In this wee place with one and a half million the …
Kathryn Torney‘s report with tables on the latest grammar school intake in the Bel Tel again shows that some grammar schools are a lot more popular than others. Campbell and my old school Coleraine Inst for instance now admit more D grades than As. Even the iconic Belfast Inst has a majority below A. Is a minority of grammar schools like these catering equally well for all their students? Should they be required to widen their curriculum range? The problem …
I hope the local airwaves and webpages are about to crackle with a new debate about secondary schooling in defiance of the dreadful deadlock over academic selection The rank and file Catholic revolt over scrapping it is one powerful piece of evidence that education reformers should skirt around the rocks of the emerging “unregulated” system rather than crash themselves up against them in a futile effort to shift them without consent. In this respect a local take on Alan Milburn’s …
No shrinking violet Nuala, who tells the Irish News she nominated herself for a working peerage years ago .“I have chosen to do it because legislation is made in parliament and the House of Lords is part of Northern Ireland. The voice of Northern Ireland is not heard as strongly as it should be because there are very few working peers from Northern Ireland. It’s an opportunity for me to serve more widely. (Should this read.. “the House of Lords …
Which is the greater threat, ageism or grey power as we boomers slide into retirement? It depends on what age you are I suppose. “The age police are facing a policy crisis” says Mike White in the Guardian in terms which tell you which side he’s on. Taking sides seems to be the name of the demographic game, as the recession appears to set the young and old at each other’s throats in a competition for scarce resources. Good then …
Just in case you missed it, a hilarious big wrap from Ms McCafferty on just about everything to do with contemporary Ireland, from blasphemy laws and of course the Pope to an Bord Snip ( where’s she’s amazingly well connected, courtesy of a well-known Dublin pub), through Mary the Stump to our church bells in Derry ( I suppose she’s counting that tinkling carillon in St Eugene’s as church bells). Jonathan Swift, thou should’st be living at ths hour. Brian …
Comparisons can deceive but the public response to British soldiers dying in Afghanistan today is in marked contrast to calmness bordering on indifference to the fate of British soldiers during the troubles. Terence Blacker in the Indy defies the media consensus. There is an alarming whiff of mass sentimentality in some of the scenes we have seen this week. Soldiers have been dying in Iraq and Afghanistan for several years but until recently, these tragedies would be covered in brief, …
The knocking comment that greeted my last post about Seamus Heaney is the predictable price of celebrity in Ireland. “Who does he think he is?”, is an inevitable reaction to celebrity with us, just as young south Africans are asking the question on Nelson Mandela’s 91st birthday “What has Mandela ever done for me?” Rather than deal in Life of Brian replies, I draw attention to Seamus Heaney’s first long interview since his stroke with Robert McCrum, literary editor of …
For the first time ever and long overdue, MPs debated abortion rights in Northern Ireland last Wednesday in a side-debate in the alternative chamber in Westminster Hall. The argument of pro choice Labour MPs was two-pronged: that NI women should enjoy the same rights as GB women ; or if not, that a compromise should be reached whereby NI women should no longer be denied NHS funding to have an abortion in GB. The constitutional argument is hard to sustain …
Hear the voice of deep New Labour disillusion from James Purnell, the only cabinet quitter who told Gordon Brown straight he ought to resign. ” New Labour became “too small-c conservative” on schools policy and didn’t make the case for immigration. It was terrified of swing voters, but should put electoral reform to a referendum at the next election. . But Purnell’s decent hopes are fated to be dashed all over again if he starts with sweeping constitutional reform. It …
The Barnett formula for allocating public spending to UK devolved bodies should be scrapped says an influential Lords Committee. Funding should be removed from the Treasury and handed over to an independent UK Funding Commission. Scotland and England now have “markedly lower” overall needs than Wales and Northern Ireland, and a new system ought to reflect it, the peers’ report said. The heat is on Scotland where the report will make political waves in the debate over wider tax raising …
The issues of British and Irish citizenship are for both sorts of Irish, nowadays largely symbolic and about identity, which they obssess about but which mystifies the English, who harp on the practical points . Until that is, a threat was raised to the common travel area. This was quietly lifted yesterday. It happened as the Commons staged a fascinating debate on the spider’s web of links between “these islands” in the final stages of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration …
Will Tony Blair become “President of Europe” courtesy of an Irish “yes” vote for the treaty in October? The new Europe minister Glenys Kinnock blew the gaffe on the open secret that old rival Gordon Brown was formally backing his predecessor for the new post in Strasbourg yesterday, immediately unleashing a torrent of controversy, noted by the New York Times which still retains a memory of the old Blair magic Stateside. On this side of the pond where the magic …
Gerry Adams launched the British leg of Sinn Fein’s United Ireland campaign at Westminster last night. I went along in a quandary. Having read the write up of the New York launch, I wondered if he had anything new to say. More to the point, had I? No use sniping or sneering, there’s enough of that elsewhere. In the event, I think I detected a new openmindedness, a much softer sell involving an adjustment to reality, certainly light years away …
In the Irish Times Gerry Moriarty has picked up on the theme of the SDLP’s attitude to the House of Lords, following Nuala O’Loan’s appointment. Among those who congratulated her yesterday were SDLP leader Mark Durkan, MP Dr Alasdair McDonnell and Assembly member Alex Attwood, notwithstanding that the SDLP does not nominate members to the House of Lords. Dame Nuala is married to SDLP MLA in North Antrim Declan O’Loan. Mr Durkan said that Dame Nuala would provide an “independent …
Is there no end to Nuala O’Loan’s elevation? With her appointment as a baroness, this particular Dame of the British Empire has become a walking template for reaching the top of the tree in both branches of the post Agreement British-Irish relationship. The former Police Ombudsman is already a UN special envoy appointed by the Irish government. Outspoken as always, last week she found “odd” aspects of Sir Peter Gibson’s report into the Omagh bomb intelligence handling, and wondered why …
“Warrenpoint all over again.” What I remember most vividly is the smell that lingered for over 24 hours. There is still a jagged legacy. The contrast is between the Wooton Bassett ritual of the bodies coming home from Afghanistan today and the acceptance, almost the indifference in the 70s to the 90s, of the wider British public to the losses of the “long war.” Even Troops Out had little traction. It remains to be throughly explored but however much the …
Why is the Pope warmer towards Obama than many US Catholic bishops who deplore his pro-choice and pro-stem cells approach? An interesting New York Times discussion. In most European nations, meanwhile, the abortion debate is basically closed Not quite all. 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 Research Fellow, …
As Mick has just offered a shrewd review of the political vibes, I’ll go on today’s press stand-off. Certainly, you can never fault the News of the World for lack of chutzpah. The great phone tapping scandal centres on two questions: were the News of the World Goodman and Mulcaire convictions in 2007 for phone tapping the tip of an icebeg of “thousands “ of other cases as the Guardian suggests? And can David Cameron’s PR chief Andy Coulson, the …
The very idea of a gagging out of court settlement in the News of the World hacking case is highly dubious in this age of trumpeted accountability. That a media group should seek such a settlement is typical hypocrisy of a high order. That a court should grant it and that the police and the CPS should take no further action when, as it appears, they knew most of the Guardian’s facts boggles the mind. Without the Guardian’s scoop who …
