Brian Walker

Picking up on Turgon’s post on Martin McGuinness’s peace mission to Iraq, I see the BBC are rating it highly in the newsmaking stakes. They’ve sent Paul Adams a news correspondent to follow in his footsteps. For the Today programme, Wood interviewed the DFM last night for broadcast just after his plane touched down this morning. McGuinness was asked some pointed questions, about his attitude to killing British troops in Basra and planting car bombs. I hope his companion on …

Read more…

Sir Charles Wheeler who died of lung cancer yesterday aged 85 had no connection with Ireland and as far as I remember, never reported there. But wherever great reporting is valued, he will be remembered. Highlights give just a flavour of some of the big events he covered. As a young reporter I knew Charles on Newsnight when I was floundering in the big world, fresh out of Belfast where you could lean over and touch the story. When he …

Read more…

In a very busy news day, it’s interesting to note that the decision not to cull badgers in NI is the one that has prevailed for England. And this in spite of advice to cull from the last Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK government. If you relish controversies, this is the mother and father of them all. Brian WalkerFormer BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC …

Read more…

Update. Credit where it’s due. BBC News tonight published a comparison of the four health services – and NI comes out quite well. You’d think the Executive would make more of it. I’m glad to see some signs of life in Dundonald House about the Health Service, after all the fanfares in England that greeted the launch of an “NHS Constitution” increasing patients’ rights. Whether this was in stealthy response to Slugger’s goading, I can’t say. They would never admit …

Read more…

UPDATE. Nigel Dodds “disappointed by MP’s expenses vote”- DUP statement. So why did none of the NI MPs turn up and vote, then? ( see below the fold) Inevitably, it was the Mail which struck the classic headline. In a sensational Commons move, Gordon Brown suffered another devastating blow when 33 of his ministers voted against a Commons committee recommendation to submit to external audit and cut their allowances by 3k. Amazingly, Brown himself didn’t even turn up for the …

Read more…

Talk about the good driving out the best… The shift to biofuels is now found to be responsible for a 75% rise in world food prices, says World Bank. The hope that biofuels might be a magic bullet to reduce dependency on oil has long been dashed. But the scale of biofuels’ responsibility for soaring world food prices comes as a shock. The news punches a hole in Gordon Brown’s green strategy and couldn’t come at a worst time, when …

Read more…

The running sore of Irish language policy needs attention on its merits. Across the party divide, it seems to be arousing more bad feeling than any other single subject. Policing and Justice may be devolved sooner than the language policy is settled. Gerry Adams put it at the top of his recent speech in London. The outstanding issues from St. Andrews including the Irish Language Act can be sorted out if there is the necessary political leadership and resolve. But …

Read more…

OK I admit it. Sexism and ageism or whatever. Being the right age, I knew all about Belfast’s own crooning idol Ronnie Carroll as one of 25 standing against David Davis in his by-election bid to wake up Britain to a slow erosion of civil rights under Labour. I’ve since woken up to the fact that Davis faces a double Belfast whammy, with Ronnie joined in the candidate list by Ulster and now Great Britain beauty Queen Gemma Garrett. Not …

Read more…

It’s that man again. A fiery Sammy Wilson let rip against an unctuous Shaun Woodward at an NI Select Committee hearing this afternoon with a host of grudges – over pressure to devolve Justice and Policing, funding Irish language programmes, “gifting” MoD sites, treading on the Executive’s prerogatives and “one-sided behaviour” generally. “You wouldn’t treat Scotland that way!” he complained. After Sammy’s tirades, you’d fear the DUP were about to declare UDI…Woodward had no doubts. About anything. Only polite hesitation …

Read more…

According to TV presenter Andrew Neil on today’s “Daily Politics” show on BBC 2, at 11.51 this morning nine minutes before Prime Minister’s Questions, the Daily Telegraph posted on its website the leak of a handwritten letter from Labour Chief Whip Geoff Hoon to Home Affairs Committee Chair Keith Vaz. In the letter, Hoon thanks Vaz for his help in persuading fellow Labour MPs to back the crucial vote on a 42 days detention limit without charge for terrorist suspects. …

Read more…

Slugger doesn’t go big on tennis I know, but maybe it’s worth having a quick knock-up of comment on the day of Andy Murray’s mammoth battle with Nadal. We’re told the Wimbledon strawberry bashers have taken him to their hearts at last, after his turn-round win over Gasquet on Monday, also watched until dusk by a rare 10 million TV viewers. Earlier coolness might have been something to do with Murray calling for a Paraguay win over England in the …

Read more…

“You want the Union, you’ve got the Union even for sex – at least until you can agree to decide these matters for yourselves” That was the message the House of Lords and Westminster as a whole is sending back to Stormont on the vexed question of lowering the age of sexual consent in Northern Ireland from 17 to 16 to bring it into line with England and Wales. In the Lords debate on the NI Sexual Offences Order, to …

Read more…

As far as I can make out, not a cheep from the Northern Ireland Health and Social Services Dept, ( see recent press releases), in response to the big new drive for a higher quality health service in England unveiled yesterday. For instance, one big aim is to speed the validation of new drugs and end the post code lottery for approving their use by NICE, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. Nice has applied to NI since 2006. What’s …

Read more…

Update. I add a demolition of the Clarke scheme from the Unit I work with below the fold. The Conservative veteran Ken Clarke has come up with an ingenious scheme for containing English resentment at the bad deal the British majority are getting out of devolution, as Tories see it anyway. This involves the lesser noticed part of Clarke’s constitutional task force report, the replacement of the Barnett formula for public spending in the devolved areas , including NI. Clarke …

Read more…

The threat of a split in Anglicanism over sexuality generally – women bishops as well as openly gay behaviour – looks nearer after all. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury has at last spoken out against the Gafcon bishops who are setting up a sort of church within the church. 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 …

Read more…

An unlikely new gang of four have just written a piece in the Times that appears to hint that the UK should go back on the decision to commission a new generation of nuclear subs. The article is by two former Conservative foreign secretaries Douglas Hurd and Matthew Rifkind, one ex-Labour ditto David Owen and Blair’s ex- Defence Secretary and former Nato Sec Gen George Robertson – none of them exactly CND. They give backing to a US initiative led …

Read more…

Update The Guardian says Gordon Brown will call a snap by-election in Glasgow East next month. His premiership could be at stake says the Herald. See rewrite and more below the fold. The fall-out from Wendy Alexander’s resignation as Labour leader in the Scottish Parliament and a good SNP showing in the Westminster by-election for Glasgow East could trigger a collapse throughout GB from which Labour might never recover and even imperil the Union, warns anti Brown and fanatical Blairite …

Read more…

See Updates below the fold. Full statement, first reactions and another quits! BBC News are running the scoop of Wendy Alexander’s sensational decision to quit after less than a year as Scottish Labour leader over a footling error in her leader’s campaign expenses. Only a year ago Alexander was tipped to lead the pro-Union fight back against Alex Salmond’s coup in winning office for the SNP and holding onto it brilliantly. The long-running expenses row may have thrown her political …

Read more…

Mission creep has also infected RIPA the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to epidemic levels. Intended as an anti-terrorist and anti serious crime measure to be used by the police and security service, its use has spread from monitoring terrorists suspects, fraudsters and stalkers to dog fouling, littering, people on the sick, and lying about addresses for schools admissions etc etc. The rot started when Home Secretary David Blunkett extended the Act’s powers to councils and the like in 2003, …

Read more…

Jack Straw’s new law to protect witnesses from intimidation being rushed through Parliament from next week will fail to make any impact on the judges, warns leading QC and legal commentator David Pannick. Pannick’s pronouncements almost amount to law in themselves and he speaks with authority. He writes with utter certainty about this. Some local readers may smile at his reference to the Northern Ireland courts’ reluctance to admit anonymous evidence, despite paramilitary intimidation. If Pannick is correct, scores of …

Read more…