Brian Walker – Page 54 – Slugger O'Toole

Omagh and Enniskillen the happiest places in the UK, says the Office of National Statistics

Brian Walker on September 26, 2015, 10:25 am

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A jolly piece by Zoe Williams in the Guardian which does not quite fathom the reasons but manages to avoid condescension – just about. The residents of the district of Fermanagh and Omagh are the happiest in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics. This comes as no surprise to any of them. It’s a large area with three civic hubs – Enniskillen, Omagh and Dungannon – each of which claims to be happier than the other two. …

Will Sinn Fein emerge as winners once again?

Brian Walker on September 10, 2015, 1:28 pm

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For general stimulation, Kevin Toolis, a noted historian of the IRA, presents the millennarian version of Sinn Fein’s outlook in the Times(£) For the IRA and Sinn Fein, the collapse of Ulster’s power-sharing executive shortly before Irish voters go to the polls is a perfect political storm that could sweep Gerry Adams to power in Dublin.. And of course, untainted by ever having held national office, Sinn Fein, Ireland’s only cross-border party, presents itself as the leftish unblemished defenders of …

Nearly two decades of sectarian politics have produced increasing indifference to politics, which is progress of a kind. Age, education and income are now the great dividing lines.

Brian Walker on September 10, 2015, 10:34 am

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The Guardian’s Henry McDonald reports an advance of the findings of a complex opinion survey carried out by Social Market Research Belfast for four universities and coordinated by a team including Professor Peter Shirlow, now at Liverpool. In common with the NI Life and Times opinion surveys the poll confirms a much more complex state of public opinion than a straight standoff between unionist and nationalist or a hardening of attitudes between them. A huge amount of political agnosticism is …

Are you impressed with the latest Assembly moves?

Brian Walker on September 9, 2015, 2:47 pm

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Gaming in the Assembly crisis reaches new heights ( or depths) with the DUP delivering an undisclosed ultimatum to the secretary of state and the Ulster Unionists implementing their own ultimatum by refusing to take part in talks on the basis of the Stormont House Agreement, even though Mike Nesbitt’s way out of one part of the impasse is through the same Stormont House Agreement. Meanwhile Sinn Fein postures above the fray as yet another old warrior enters the frame. …

Who is responsible and what’s at stake in the Assembly standoff

Brian Walker on September 3, 2015, 12:00 pm

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David McKittrick emerges from retirement to pass a magisterial verdict on the Assembly in the Newsletter, while the paper has just run a long and fascinating interview with David Trimble by Alex Kane. His view of the history since 1998 is not a million miles from the familiar saying that Sinn Fein were clever enough to play their weaknesses to advantage while unionists were too stupid and bigoted to realise that they’d won. Presumably recorded before the latest developments in …

There are lessons from Northern Ireland for the SNP’s row over Nick Robinson and the BBC

Brian Walker on September 1, 2015, 1:49 pm

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The row between the BBC’s outgoing political editor Nick Robinson and the former Scotland first minister Alex Salmond reminds me of experience in Northern Ireland during the Troubles where there was a similar lack of fundamental agreement about the political destiny of the country. Nick’s row arose out of questions he put to Alex at a news conference towards the end of the referendum campaign. The SNP were playing down the theme which turned out to be the clincher in …

Sinn Fein’s self interest more than pressure over the IRA, will keep the Assembly in being

Brian Walker on August 30, 2015, 12:48 pm

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So the pressure is mounting on Sinn Fein North and South to do – what exactly? Agree to accept or at least put up with a revival of the International Monitoring Commission and dissociate themselves from the IRA? This would require a new political calculus all round. Still, the Irish government may have made a move in that direction. Will the British follow? The Sunday Times (£) reports a revival of pressure in the Shinners over the IRA’s ill gotten …

Closer engagement not boycott, is the route out of crisis for the Northern Ireland Assembly

Brian Walker on August 29, 2015, 2:48 pm

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Is Jeffrey Donaldson MP offering a way out of “ crisis?” He said it would be a different situation if Sinn Féin “came clean” and said murder had been carried out by members of the Provisional IRA and said they would work to rectify the situation. He said the Sinn Féin leadership needed to “recognise they have a problem” and then work could begin to solve the crisis. The IMC issued its final report in February 2011 and Mr Donaldson …

The peace process phase is over. A new age of political progress is what we need

Brian Walker on August 27, 2015, 4:04 pm

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I hesitate just a little to criticise Peter Osborne ‘s piece on Galvanising the Peace as I bow respectfully to the view that dialogue and contacts are essential for peace, reconciliation and development. But we really have to move on from this sort of generalised approach to more rigorous analysis and hard questions leading to more real solutions. We should have learned by now that yet another appeal like Galvanising the Peace won’t crack it. It lets the political class …

The collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly can be averted

Brian Walker on August 27, 2015, 10:51 am

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The Ulster Unionists appear to have succumbed to the revulsion many unionists feel at the very idea of sharing power with the spawn of the IRA that most of them have suppressed every day since 1998. The danger now is that they will set off a chain reaction and take the DUP with them. The DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson says the UUP’s move does nothing to support the DUP’s aim to exclude Sinn Fein from the Executive, even if this …

The drive for independence suspected in new boost for Scots language. Sounds familiar?

Brian Walker on August 26, 2015, 12:47 pm

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The Financial Times (£ paywall) which is so good at making its limited space for non-financial themes count, reports a new boost for the Scots language which the writer Mure Dickie suspects is part of the longer term drive for independence. In language policy, the parallels as well as contrasts with both Irish and Ulster Scots hardly need much spelling out. But I hope you will – enjoy, is that the word? – the distortions of what we think of as …

Yes Alasdair, the SDLP oppose republican criminality but is anybody listening?

Brian Walker on August 26, 2015, 11:50 am

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Signs of life in the SDLP are an interesting sidebar in the great IRA structures kerfuffle. Alasdair McDonnell has taken up the challenge to contradict the Guardian’s Henry McDonald’s charge below in yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph, which is basically that the SDLP has played mini-me to Sinn Fein for far too long. The SDLP may have stopped passively supporting the Sinn Fein line through those tortuous post-Good Friday Agreement negotiations, and the party is no longer perhaps the Shinners’ advert-adjuncts, but its …

Threatening the existence of the Assembly is a victory for terrorism

Brian Walker on August 25, 2015, 1:38 pm

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Oh God, not another fundamental breakpoint founded on the highest principles, whether they’re about welfare or the IRA! Come on, get real. This kerfuffle over “IRA structures” will pass. For all their simulated outrage over the IRA or welfare, no politician – none of the leaders anyway – want to close Stormont down. Electoral politics are also in play on both sides of the border. We should discount it. No clear advantage can be gained by any party threatening to …

I’m really looking forward to the Labour leadership contest of 2017

Brian Walker on August 15, 2015, 7:08 pm

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As an old inhabitant of the Westminster bubble, I give my prophetic testimony. Having been bombarded by emails from different sections of the Labour party and paid to qualify for a vote, I’m now waiting for my ballot papers in the leadership election. For the first time in my life, I’ve declared a party allegiance. I’m only doing as a personal gesture in favour of Labour remaining a party of government. While it’s all great crack ( sic), it’s completely …

Happy days were here again for Beckett in Femanagh

Brian Walker on August 13, 2015, 11:23 am

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Great to see that the unapologetically highbrow Beckett Festival which has just ended in Fermanagh for this year, has survived the funding famine. This is quite a feat for the celebrations of such a unsentimental and enigmatic author, whose work is so at odds with the normal run of Irish summer fare. Perhaps this is because almost by definition, it relies so little on Irish stereotypes and mixes the best of British and cosmopolitan with excellent indigenous talent, like a …

Anti- austerity arguments are not limited to Sinn Fein, but a proper debate about the real impact of cuts is needed.

Brian Walker on August 11, 2015, 10:18 am

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Anxiety and anger over budget plans including welfare cuts continue on both sides of the water. Amid the attacks on George Osborne for “ Tory austerity” in his plans to cut public spending by a further £20 billion or 40% for unprotected areas, a rough comparison of public spending as a share of GDP suggests that UK and Irish spending by this measure will remain roughly comparable to the end of the decade. I float this out in the hope …

Can we ever lay 1916 to rest?

Brian Walker on August 10, 2015, 1:15 pm

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Official Ireland’s well known discomfort over how to commemorate the centenary of the Easter Rising has just been exposed over the prefiguring event, the funeral the previous year of the physical force Fenian, O’Donovan Rossa. With the failure to consign this heritage to the past in advance, it seems possible that there will be a full blown struggle over the ownership and character of the republican tradition in an election year. If not, it will not be for Sinn Fein’s …

Should the Scottish Parliament and the Assemblies in Cardiff and Belfast control ” their” BBC?

Brian Walker on August 5, 2015, 4:51 pm

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The three wee Celts in the precariously devolved UK have got together – convened wouldn’t you know it – by the Scots, to agitate for a bigger slice of the BBC licence fee during the coming round of the BBC Charter review. Northern Ireland’s culture minister Caral Ni Chuilin declares: “The BBC must continue to embrace and further develop its commitment to its public obligations and the occasion of the charter renewal must be seen as an opportunity to deliver …

In dealing with the past, both the state and its legal critics should stop playing games

Brian Walker on August 4, 2015, 1:55 pm

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“The UK is still in breach of international law for failing properly to investigate unresolved killings, especially and most controversially where state agents might have been involved”. So states Brian Gormally the director fo the legal lobby group the Committee on the Administration of Justice, quoting the UN Committee on human Rights, No doubt Nuala O’Loan agrees. The UK government does not take kindly to lectures from this committee. More potent pressure may come from the “ hooded men” case against the …

Ted Heath is the latest and most senior Tory to be named in paedophilia claims. But how do you prove a negative?

Brian Walker on August 4, 2015, 12:07 pm

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Growing up in the 1960s with a precocious interest in politics, the main UK party leaders Harold Wilson and Ted Heath were among my role models. The new term “meritocrat” might have been invented for them . Both of them came from modest backgrounds and made it to the top. Politically I admired Heath’s decisiveness compared to Wilson’s waffle and to some extent I still do. At the time, entering Europe and introducing power sharing in Northern Ireland required bold leadership, however mixed …