Brian Walker

It starts to look like a feeding frenzy among the media at least, some of it from entirely predictable sources. Sunday is usually political comment day and this one is no exception. The BBC is slightly hobbled by the ritual of having to give prominence to the Lib Dem conference but the internet spurns mere rituals. Even the political weekly the New Statesman owned by Geoffrey Robinson, Gordon Brown’s mentor and friend, could hardly hold its peace until next Friday …

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Only now, ten years on, another flawed link in the evidential chain in the Omagh bomb case has been brought to light. According to the BBC Panorama programme’s investigator John Ware, the British Government’s signals intelligence arm GCHQ at Cheltenham, were monitoring the Omagh bombers on the fateful day and did not immediately pass the information on. Nuala O’Loan the former police ombudsman, has spoken out “ There are only a couple of main access routes into the town. It …

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The guys in Iveagh House have always been amazing.. In the early days up to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, they ran rings round the Whitehall mandarins who were only just learning to hack their way through the thickets of the NI problem. In his retirement from public service ( I think he’s a banker now) one of the brightest of the school of Dublin’s Department of Foreign Affairs Michael Lillis has come up with a brilliant strategy for winning …

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Update It seems nobody is interested- amazing! Some things are a matter of life and death and some things are more important that that – like sectarian knockabout. Here’s a real life and death issue I haven’t seen discussed by local ministers. “The current practice on top-ups, which prohibits people from privately purchasing drugs not available on the health service while continuing a course of NHS care, is untenable. People could not understand why they are allowed to top up …

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Britain and Ireland are twins in many respects and never more than over what skyscrapers are doing to the historic centres of our capital cities. Simon Jenkins, the newly appointed chair of the National Trust and champion of sensitive planning everywhere is scathing about the threat to World Heritage sites like Westminster from the

“Treating intelligent design as too obviously simple-minded to merit discussion is a mistake. Creationist beliefs are much more likely to be part of a complex set of related cultural ideas than a simple misconception”. The latest contribution to a Slugger favourite comes from the most august scientific body of all the Royal Society. Rev Michael Reiss, a biologist and RS director of education (his title at both ends of his name gives you a clue to where he’s coming from) …

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On Radio 4 tonight a memoir of a great might-have been: Could the Ulster Workers’ Council strike of 1974 have been overcome and the powersharing Executive saved? It turns out that wasn’t the only relevant question, because secretly at the time, the Prime Minister Harold Wilson was planning a British withdrawal, under the fig leaf of Dominion status, in which “Ulstermen would remain subjects of the Queen.” This has since become known but the clincher was produced in the programme, …

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It may not be much but it’s a whole lot better than you’re getting in Northern Ireland. Gordon Brown’s winter fuel package will apply to England, Scotland and Wales – but not to our wee Province So, despite having the highest fuel bills in the UK it’s nada on : Free cavity wall and loft insulation for pensioners and poor households 50% off cost of insulation for all households Freeze on this year’s bills for poor consumers Partial reversal of …

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After the mea culpa from the Irish government already noted here , the proposals for a deal on the Lisbon Treaty are ready, according to a French government leak to the Daily Telegraph. Next month Brian Cowen will tell his fellow heads of government that Ireland can’t meet the deadline of next June’s elections to the European Parliament for a second referendum. That’s the bad news. The solution though looks like a good deal if only he can deliver it. …

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You remember the phrase “campaign in poetry, govern in prose?” Arthur Aughey professor politics at the University of Ulster is neither quite a campaigner nor a professing poet but he comes close to both as a writer. Aughey is an apologist – that is, an explainer – of the elements not only of Ulster unionism but of what Gordon Brown call “Britishness,”. a far more complex and imaginative entity than is usually discussed along the twisty tramlines of structural analysis …

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I’d never heard of Operation Banner before it ended – it seems somehow diminishing to have the tumultuous experience of 30 years of the Troubles described in one of those curious military labels like “Operation Market Garden” for the Arnhem landings. The military – and that also means thousands in NI connected with the UDR and part-time RIR – have held an official ritual of closure in a commemorative service in St Paul’s Cathedral. For me, this is not the …

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Update. Seven men face bomb plot retrial. This is a rare and legally difficult move, entailing the risks of double jeopardy, being tried on the same evidence twice. There’s a long chain linking your tube of toothpaste to al Qaida and it runs through the White House. We have it from Peter Clarke head of Met counter terrorism at the time that it was the big feet of the CIA that wrecked a British intelligence operation to net the whole …

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Well now, how about a Slugger’s agenda for Gordon on his visit to Belfast next week? It may be no more than a ritual run round the kingdom, finishing ofF what he started in Birmingham. We can guess that the pre-spin will talk up the economic prospects, and an imminent deal between the DUP and SF – can’t we, just two days before Peter’s deadline?. Or maybe, as we recall what the DUP used to do to deadlines, it’ll only …

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Now here’s one where the Republic really is different from the European mainstream, never mind the UK – neutrality. I can recite the arguments, I know the history but I still can’t fathom its grip on modern Ireland’s consciousness. Pressure from a revived Lisbon Treaty campaign may cause Dublin to opt out of EU security arrangements in Bosnia and the EU sponsored mission to Chad. All because paranoid – or cynical- Lisbon treaty opponents have put the frighteners on mammies …

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I’m coming back to the discussion following on from Pete’s post and Mark Durkan’s idea of scrapping the unionist, nationalist other designations because I have something new to offer, even after 100 and more comments. Here’s a link to “The Trouble with Northern Ireland” a devastating critique of the political system by the political scientists Robin Wilson and Rick Wilford. They explain exactly how a new system without designations would work while still guaranteeing cross community support. A new threshold …

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After a month of gloomy previews the UK’s autumn political season is launched, with Gordon “now it’s personal” Brown going melodramatic and staging a cabinet show in Birmingham rep before the warm-up of the TUC annual conference. The unions are staking much on a revival of a spectacular flop with echoes of Shakespeare, a winter of discontent. For once, the programme notes from the right wing Daily Mail and centre left Mirror are chiming together, yes, it’s that serious. Conservative …

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The handsome profit the Spanish firm Ferrovial will net from the sale of George Best city airport is a drop in the ocean compared to the massive debt it acquired by its purchase of BAA including the prize Heathrow. As the Times puts it, “the profitable sale of Belfast may raise Ferrovial’s hopes of generating extra revenue from the BAA sales. This would help to reduce its enormous debt burden, which Ferrovial said last week was 23.1 billion.” It now …

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The plot thickens in the Brown v Salmond saga over the new tartan tax. The Times which has offered the most ambitious analyses of the game now sees Brown’s proposal as a move to appease English grumbling at having to shell out £30 billion a year to the Scots while also appearing to accede to Scottish demands for more devolved powers. Simon Jenkins, that vocal champion of local government writing in the Guardian, welcomes the idea of a genuinely local …

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Repeating Mick’s question Is Our Politics too Big for the Net? I thought I’d show what the Hansard Society I’m associated with has been doing with parts of the UK Government to shake up their interactive communication and accountability. There are ideas here that could be adopted by Stormont. Digital Dialogues is part of the Society’s wide ranging e-democracy programme. It was a three phase “review of ways in which central government can use new technologies to promote public engagement …

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Hardly the most startling U Turn in history as the Democrats’ powerbrokers assert themselves. From the way the story is written up in Irish Voice Niall Dowd and co are still smarting. ….“..to shore up Obama’s somewhat frayed relationship with Irish America….” Was it really only a week or so ago since the Obama camp announced: “He will consult with the Taoiseach, the British prime minister, and party leaders in Northern Ireland to determine whether a special US envoy for …

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