Brian Walker

The seven bishops were surely right to support Shirley Chaplin’s challenge to the ludicrous and oppressive ban on her wearing a small necklace cross to work (not a “crucifix” as some heathen reporters describe it). Trouble is, this gets confused with far less worthy causes like “Christian” objections to basic sex education. Pressure from the churches at election time makes the point- that they are in fact marginal to life in GB, diminished by indifference and now scandal and have …

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The Catholic abuse crisis is a pretty brutal reminder that Modern Ireland is not as modern as many people thought. Might it just be that the black North has something to teach the South re the relationship between Church and State? The veteran commentator Bruce Arnold seems to think so. Pre- crash sleaze dating back to the Haughey era, the unfolding of the financial crisis and bursting of the dam of child abuse are slowly stirring debate about a rebalancing …

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Garret FitzGerald, the visionary of a New Ireland in the 1970s, has at last pronounced on the Catholic abuse scandal. He says the Pope is “open to criticism” which is putting it mildly. Typical Garret, he homes in on the impact of canonical procedures in creating secrecy from at least 1962 to the mid 90s. This period spans Garret’s career in politics. In common with the rest of the political establishment, why did he do nothing about it? The former …

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The Times makes the sensational claim that the Vatican wants Cardinal Brady to quit. All sources are unnamed. The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland will be pressed to quit if he refuses to resign over the growing child abuse scandal, The Times has learnt. Nothing less than Cardinal Sean Brady’s resignation will diminish fury at the highest levels in Rome over his role in paedophile priest cover-ups.. Dr Brady’s exit, after the resignations of two other bishops, …

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Murdoch’s NewsCorp will start charging for The Times and Sunday Times at last. Readers will be offered a day’s use for £1, or £2 for a week’s subscription. Readers who have a seven-day subscription to the print editions will not be charged extra for access to the websites. International pricing has been set at $2/€1.5 a day or $4/€3 for a week. The Irish Times are launching a subscription based epaper.” in traditional format” and “a move away from a …

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Here is that rare thing, a proper valedictory speech from an MP. Chris Mullin, whose sparkling diaries are advertised in Slugger was a disarmingly honest MP and junior minister even when he was half heartedly pulling a flanker. He doubts if he has made more than “a foot print in the sand” as an MP. Maybe, but he deserves immortality for creating the Department of Folding Deckchairs. And as Harriet Harman once a civil liberties lawyer acknowledged when Chris had …

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The Labour government and Westminster as a whole can hardly be blamed for ducking legislation on an NI Bill of Rights. Local divisions and lack of urgency made that inevitable. But it could prove a hot potato for the Conservatives if elected. Sam McBride in the Newsletter rather glided over the differences between a freestanding NI Bill and an NI section in a British Bill to replace the present Human Rights Act as announced by shadow Justice Secretary Dominic Grieve. …

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Just a few months ago the University of Ulster’s big switch from Jordanstown to York St was in doubt. Sir Reg also raised the spectre of the Holyland. “The big problem is accommodation. Currently a lot of Jordanstown students are in the Holyland. “If they build a significant Belfast campus over and above what they already have, where are those students going to go? What changed? It sounds an exciting development but for university education, is it good value for …

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So the ex-KGB man has closed the deal to buy the Independent for a £. What’s the Belfast Telegraph worth then? In the paper’s own lift of the story, not a word was carried about its future. Did anybody notice on the newsdesk? 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 …

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An MI6 agent herself, a trainer of SOE operatives tasked in Churchill’s words “to set Europe ablaze,” Baroness Daphne Park who has died aged 88 was one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met. She knew terrorism from both sides. She seemed utterly fearless, with nerves of steel but she was also gentle and had beautful manners. I wonder how she would have dealt with paramilitaries as a minister. Would she have called their bluff? Attacked criminality much earlier? …

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While the dissident threat was first up, strange to say it was the travails of the Presbyterian Mutual Society subscribers that dominated the last Northern Ireland questions of this Labour government, although no figures were mentioned here. Try as they might, neither the SDLP ‘s Alasdair McDonnell nor the (still) Ulster Unionist Sylvia Hermon managed to force junior minister Paul Goggins into promising more than “a hard headed solution that will work in practice.” Little hope then, of Labour delivering? …

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Ian Paisley made a final, final curtain call at PMQs which he obviously knew would produce a fulsome tribute from Gordon Brown. How very different the verdict would have been, had he died of that illness in 2004. Forty years ago he arrived in a Commons which treated him warily as an interesting specimen that might bite. From the start though, he realised his more extravagant buffooneries would be counter productive there and rapidly found himself taken at something like …

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Even the Tory blogs haven’t registered the full impact of the Dispatches sting operation yet. Are they worried about tempting fate? ConservativeHome’s webpage presents the cornucopia of stories that sets the scene of the most confusing pre-election period ever. Labour’s problem was getting caught on camera over lobbying. Polls are still narrowing, yet the Force seems with the Conservatives, who get a boost from the news under the Sun classic headline “Wham Bam” Sam Cam set to be Mam”. The …

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The Commons debate on transferring Justice powers to Stormont may have been a valedictory in more senses than one. Ian Paisley made his last speech in the Commons after just under 40 years. It may also be the last occasion that a Northern Ireland Secretary addresses the House. It has long been a Whitehall ambition to replace the three territorial Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with a single Secretary of State for Devolution Affairs and fulfil …

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A genuine debate on the abuse crisis is gaining second wind in the press. Granted that the Pope’s pastoral letter is but one small step, what reforms are needed? The question now is whether the firestorm of disgust and disillusion takes on a political character to equal dealing with the recession, or blows itself out. Giving in to a temptation to stall would allow the conservative forces to regroup, ensuring that little happens beyond some minor internal reforms. Even now …

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On a first reading and leaving aside the inevitable and overdue apology, the striking message of the Pope’s pastoral letter is that a clean-up is needed to strengthen the authority of the clergy, not dilute it. At the heart of his response is a basic refusal to grasp the full extent of the problem. Conservative as ever and as unquestioning as ever of the traditions, structures and authority of the Church, the Pope blames the swingin’ sixties for creating a …

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From the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary *LORD Foster’s architectural firm has been dropped from Boris Johnson’s project to design a new Routemaster bus, despite having won the design competition back in 2008. The Mayor’s Transport for London (TfL) has instead awarded an £8 million contract to design and build five of the new buses by 2012 to Northern Ireland-based Wrightbus. Getting rid of the unloved bendy buses and the reintroduction of a modern version of the hop-on, hop-off Routemaster were …

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As the Washington Post observes, the world will be watching to see if the Pope in his letter to the Irish church tears away the veil of secrecy over the full extent of clerical cover-up and admits some blame of his own. Honesty demands that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own mea culpa,” says Hans Kung, the world’s most famous Catholic theologian, harrassed by JP2 …

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The Guardian’s veteran political commentator Michael White takes world weariness to new heights by predicting that the Catholic Church has the stamina to sit out the media firestorm. These things blow themselves out in time, as all Westminster watchers know. In Britain perhaps, where the abuse crisis hasn’t reached the same level but there’s no sign of a firebreak in Ireland and indeed worldwide, where the storm is gaining second wind and is now engulfing the Vatican. But balance and …

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