Brian Walker Well to be fair, the BBC had this analysis and reaction posted by 5 .45 pm. Well done Executive, this is the quickest local response ever to the UK Budget. But more details and consequences needed soon please. Speculation arises now on whether a local emergency Budget is now needed. “The executive will have to find efficiency savings of £122m by 2011,” says Nigel Dodds. £116m will be made available over the next two years. The government is also to …
UK Budget Day is always frustrating for regional analysts. It takes ages for the local Department of Finance and Personnel to come out with the local implications. Devolution aggravates the problem. It’s no more in the interests of NI than UK ministers to spell out the worst, so we may suffer from a double spin. My belief is that public spending levels are OK for another year and then are up for grabs, either from a Tory government or the …
In a neat and radical pre-Budget diversion, Gordon Brown ( through Commons leader Harriet Harman) has announced his own swingeing interim reforms for MPs’ allowances. There’ll be rows over the proposed replacement for a second homes allowance, a flat rate daily attendance allowance. But the main longer term issue is the basic salary level which is too low and which rising expenses were designed to redress before they ran out of control. Two big time bombs for Northern Ireland. One …
The rawness displayed at the 20th anniversary commemoration of the Hillsborough disaster is a reminder that legacy issues cling to places other than Northern Ireland. The boos directed at Everton supporter and Sports Secretary Andy Burnham on the Anfield turf recalls the rough reception given to NI Secretaries of State Jim Prior and Tom King in the bad old days. Media misdeeds are not forgotten; the Sun still isn’t forgiven for its claim that drunken fans urinated on the dead. …
After the suppression of an assisted suicide debate in Cork, a new twist in the UK. It’s the case of Kathleen Gilderdale, charged with the attempted murder of her daughter Lynn, a chronic ME sufferer. I’m not sure about this, but this may the first time a campaigner for a better understanding of the clinical basis of this condition has been so charged. The ME Association reports the legal move without comment. The case doesn’t seem to be covered by …
Attempts to get a public debate going on assisted suicide in Ireland are being dealt with in the time-honoured way , i.e. by smothering it in “pro-life” outrage. The debate is a fledgling one indeed – I hadn’t come across it before until I read this Comment is Free piece by the thwarted lecturer. The well-established and growing UK debate is by no means about simple for-and against advocacy, as this Guardian sample shows. There are fears of excessive pill-popping …
Amid the avalanche of tributes to Seamus Heaney at 70 on Monday, a two part interview with Mark Lawson for Radio 4’s Front Row hits the spot on the topics of the poet’s creative mainsprings, his celebrity and his occasional forays into political comment. The first part was recorded at a London session after his South Bank reading to mark the publication of Stepping Stones, his interviews with the poet Dennis O’Driscoll that serves as a partial autobiography. This is …
Historian Paul Bew’s warning that that the forthcoming movie Easter Sixteen could unwittingly feed the current drive by the violent republicans to re-establish themselves is whistling in the wind. It has to be faced: striking parallels exist which raise the familiar charges of contemporary betrayal. Those who are susceptible to the Real and CIRA’s arguments will rightly treat denial as a sign of evasive weakness. Instead, it should be easily admitted that the 1916 story is a stonking tale. It …
I’ve just caught David McKittrick’s obit for Paddy O’Hanlon, one of the first of his generation of SDLP founders to die. I last met him on the fringes of the Bloody Sunday tribunal a few years ago. Not the least of Paddy’s attributes was his good humour and fellowship and the absence of a life of subterfuge – unlike so many of Sinn Fein who because of their past deeds or associations and whatever their talents and present intentions, will …
The part played by the United States and Irish America in particular in the long turmoil of Irish politics is a whole literature in itself. Their role in our own time is unlikely to reduce the flood. Niall Dowd’s role alone as lobbyist and propagandist is worth a lot of attention. Every assertion in his Easter message is worth a PhD or two, not to mention quite a few loud pub conversations. Examples below the fold: “Simply put without Senator …
I’m leaving myself open to deliberate misunderstanding here, but am I alone in my unease at the tone as distinct from the substance of some of the coverage of the death of Ian Tomlinson in the G20 demos? Comment (from Ken Livingstone for example) was overconfident about declaring it as “clearly” a case of police assault when they couldn’t possibly know what happened seconds before the apparently damning video clips. Channel 4 News’s two items on the story last night …
I realise this is just the latest of several announcements, but confirmation of the go ahead for Derry’s foot bridge across the Foyle comes as a relief. ( Update. I see Mick is transgressing on my Maiden City preserve on a similar theme – ( joke) – great minds.. just goes to show that not all North Down folk think that the world stops at Ikea.. ) In all senses, it’s a hands across the water exercise. It links the …
Under the circumstances of political deadlock, the report that the AQE and the Catholic grammar schools are seeking agreement on a single transfer test is surely to be welcomed. However much some might like it, integration and the abolition of selection are not going to happen any time soon, by the will of the people I guess, as well as the parties. The way ahead now is to make progress on the basis of facts and analysis rather than any …
“Do movies about the Troubles help?” was Kirsty Wark’s surprisingly basic question on Newsnight Review last Friday. That question prompts a more important one: does the often maligned “reconciliation industry ” help? Both questions were raised in the BBC’s “Five Minutes of Heaven” shown on BBC2 last night but premiered as a movie in Belfast weeks ago. My answer to the first question is, probably not much. Earnest protestations of true story telling tend to surrender to the thriller romp …
So ads for abortion services and condoms may be shown on ITV. Will they be shown on UTV I wonder? The Bel Tel lifts the story without developing a local angle.The proposed ads seem well within the range of the new NI guidelines. If shown, the terms of the ad would make a fundamental point clear. … those against abortion will be required to make clear if they do not refer women for abortion so that delays do not result …
The basic problem with a new Bill of Rights for a well established political system like the UK’s is that only government can push it through and government will always be in two minds about being high principled on the one hand and creating a rod for its own back on the other. Both minds are present in a Cabinet split and in the long delay in producing this mouse. Once party politicians get their hands on a Bill of …
On Tuesday, it’s a “new counterterrorism strategy.” On Wednesday it’s a document on a new UK Bill of Right and Responsibilities, that according to the Sunday Times suggests “new entitlements such as rights to good healthcare, education and freedom from poverty ( which) could be added to traditional freedoms such as trial by jury and free speech. The new rights would be offset by responsibilities, such as a duty to look for work in return for receiving benefits or to …
Worth noting the latest pronouncements on the condition of Ireland by those organs of high international prestige the Economist and the Financial Times. Contrary to what that curious mish-mash of a new website Irelandcentral states, the Economist doesn’t claim that the “Irish economy is dead” Indeed it’s good to note that both journals are quite optimistic, in contrast to so much cynicism and rage at home. From the Economist. ( Economist and FT quotes below the fold). It is easy …
I know it’s nerdy but I had to retreat to the blog in exhaustion after Ireland’s squeaky triumph.. Not everybody reads the Life and Times survey in quite this way, but this is the clear conclusion of the statesman who developed the notion of southern partitionism in Towards a New Ireland , thanks to the damage done by the long IRA campaign . In the north, the campaign d put off unity indefinitely. He made his case after talking to …
The life-long agony for Thomas Devlin’s parents continues and echoes in many other hearts. But if we assume there is a real case to answer and the wall of silence has been broken, this is good news. 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, The Constitution Unit, …
