Brian Walker I can’t resist linking to one of the best interviews with Michael O’Leary I’ve read. With the normally voluble and equally opinionated ex-Telegraph edtior Dominic Lawson, for once almost shut down by his interviewee. O’Leary’s latest riff is that he might be interested in taking over one of the South East airports BAA is likely to be forced to divest. Here, he grabs the zeitgeist: “It would be very hard not to improve any of the London airports. We’d staff …
Rather creeping on me unawares has been “Taking Liberties,” an independent exhibition run by the British Library of how British freedoms were won. The title expresses neatly the ambiguity of the subject – how the State could be oppressive and how citizens progressively gained the essential corpus of freedom we associate with a modern democracy. Although run by very much a State body, we’re assured Taking Liberties is far from a celebration of a tradition or history in aspic: Quote …
Georgia is on my mind. And not because of any parallels ingenious Slugger commenters may find between South Ossetia and NI, ( small, troublesome enclave frozen in time with an unruly paramiltary force laying waste etc, etc). Against the run of coverage, as the tension ratchets up, I’m with those who say the Russians are not the only ones to blame. Being small by itself doesn’t make Georgia right. The case is summed up by Washington post writer Michael Dobbs: …
A shipbuilding contract to die for, worth £372 million and 3,700 jobs – on Clydeside, for the Royal Navy. Ian Jack, a seasoned Scots reporter long ago translated to London has gone back to Glasgow to write a terrific piece in the Guardian about the revival of an old industry. Yet Govan it seems, has long rejected the nostalgia for the old days which in Belfast is all that’s left of the old H&W tradition ( well, not quite all). …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00czkfn/ Slugger is designed for comment and further comment may be largely redundant but it seems inappropriate to let the Omagh anniversary pass. I wasn’t there, I haven’t been since and the closest I’ve been was to talk to the family representatives on one of their weary pilgrimages to London in search of justice. So I append the link above to part 2 of BBC NI’s Legacy programme still available on BBC i Player. From reporting, I suppose, up to …
I don’t know whether to feel schadenfreude for Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary at his loss of income ( he’s personally worth $400m), or admire him for chutzpah.. Here he is admitting he screwed up for failing to hedge on oil prices last year. and here again he spits defiance at the Republic’s National Consumer Agency which has asked him to honour sales of Ryanair seats made by rival websites. How much revenue was Ryanair losing on these transactions I wonder? …
Have you ever wondered how Senator John McCain acquired all that steel in his character? No, it wasn’t due to those Vietnamese torturers. it was in his blood, stupid – OUR blood, planters! (Actually, I’m of mixed heritage and insufferably enjoy the best of both universes). But enough of me and back to the (US) Republican standard bearer. The Ulster – or as they call it there – the Scots Irish ancestry of McCain is amazingly offered as a part …
It’s worth noting that the heavy UK nationals papers are vying with each other as usual to provide comprehensive post-A level information services on results and university entry. This is good upmarket PR for the papers of course, but the services are impressive and tailor-made for enhancement through interactivity. The Daily Telegraph, Times and Guardian all offer A level results school by school while the Independent carries the official UCAS clearing site for university entry. Unsurprisingly, England dominates the results …
With the news of the death of his constituency neighbour John Macdougall in Glenrothes, Gordon Brown faces another excruciating last ditch battle for survival. Glenrothes was the one they had been primed to dread, as the unfortunate Macdougall died a lingering death. Glasgow East came as a sudden devastating blow. The Scotsman lays the issues out starkly, as does the Guardian. While the doyen of political analysts John Curtice wraps it all up on the Today programme at 7.20a.m.. So …
Stand by for the usual tears of joy and gloom as well as the charges of dumbing down that will greet today’s A level results. GCSE results follow next week. The local papers are braced to write the usual “Northern Ireland tops the league” stories while tastefully ignoring for the moment the broad ranks of our “Neets,” the young people not currently engaged in employment, education and training.” Update And sure enough, after the results came out at 9 a.m. …
I know it sounds callow to admit it but I’ve just spent my very first holiday in west Cork and Kerry. In spite of the monsoon conditions, I was mightily impressed. Brian Friel type memories of Donegal in the 40s and 50s can be laid to rest. There was no sign whatever of bungalow blight. This is a country that has reinvented its environment with new buildings in the vernacular and fresh coats of paint and decent roofing on traditional …
Having just returned from a Noah’s Ark holiday in the deep south west, I reached the sight of Mount Ararat (aka Divis) just ahead of the storm that engulfed the south’s motorway network around Dublin last Saturday, before making it back to London yesterday to be greeted with similar climes. More of that later maybe. In the meantime, a catch-up note developing Fair Deal’s post on Westminster’s Joint Committee’s backing for their eponymous subject, a British Bill of Human Rights. …
Well, if the local parties can’t agree on much else, they’re united against abortion. Leading on this rare story of chiming unity, ( how right you are, my dear friend Gail) the Belfast Telegraph post-Troubles is reverting to a a comfortably conservative (complacent?) editorial line, homing in on commercially sensible consensus where it can find it. If I were a GB MP with my background, I would be very tempted to support Diane Abbott’s amendment. I strongly endorse a woman’s …
Just the thing to distract me from packing for the holidays… I’ve decided to pull this up from a comment to a blog. After the first flush of excitement the next questions are: What impact would a Conservative/ Ulster Unionist alliance have on the politics of power sharing? The move seems likely to provoke a quickening response on the nationalist side. Will the SDLP and Fianna Fail go tit-for tat? Might mergers heighten or reduce the border issue between the …
Just the day after Westminster goes off for the long hols, up pops the campaign to extend abortion to Northern Ireland with a quick ambush to keep the issue boiling and NI MPs nerves on edge all summer. Telly pundit and MP Diane Abbot told the BBC’s Today programme (see 8.42) that the cross party group would seek to move an amendment to the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill, controversially postponed from last week to the autumn. All this in …
Gloomy musings about the future of the Union on the eve of the Glasgow East by-election. What would happen if the Conservatives win England and power but fail to carry a single seat in Scotland? Tristram Hunt in the Guardian and David Goodhart in the seminal magazine Prospect are among commentators hedging their bets. P.S. Not a mention of course of what would happen to Northern Ireland if the unlikely happens. If pressed, many pundits state the obvious: merge with …
The Independent today prominently trailed and published a piece by Mark Steel celebrating the acquittal of Eamon McCann and other members of the “Raytheon 9” in Derry last month. The paper had withheld publication of the same article in May, while the trial was in progress. But Steel himself went ahead anyway and ran it on his own website and Slugger picked it up. After the trial, the press was pilloried for a craven response , hardly surprisingly with a …
Things have come to a pretty pass when that doughty daughter of Ulster, Labour MP Kate Hoey is defended by the Conservative king of the blog Iain Dale and attacked in a Labour-looking website. Her announcement as sports adviser to the then Tory candidate for London mayor Boris Johnson can hardly have endeared her to the Labour campaign. But then she has often clashed with Labour’s sports policies from Wembley to the Maze. She behaves as if her own sporting …
What Nicholas Sarkozy put to Brian Cowen was very different to the public back-slapping and schmoozing, according to the Irish Times, the only paper that seems to be on the inside track.. While most of the media were diverted by the row over Sarkozy’s alleged “The Irish must call a second referendum” remarks and the supposed affront to Irish sovereignty, Sarkozy was at it again – though this time in private. From the Irish Times report: Although the Government is …
