Brian Walker It was a relief to see that Gerry’s search for Jesus didn’t result in a meeting of minds after all. Indeed it was all strangely detached, even a little wistful. Thankfully we were spared a wander round the Holy Land looking for Jesus the revolutionary, some parallels about blood sacrifice, a Christian justification for the IRA campaign. In the Channel 4 film, a theme of his accompanying web article was missing: “ Jesus is about equality, the poor and the …
Ahead of Gerry on Jesus on C4 tomorrow, the commentator Geoffrey Wheatcroft writing in the Independent, identifies racism as a reason for applying double standards to terrorism. In summary, Israel gets away with assassinating a Hamas official in Dubai because he’s “black”. Wheatcroft goes on to draw comparisons with Martin McGuiness and Gerry Adams and the actions of Tony Blair. Two questions arise; Israel and Hamas are still in conflict, whereas the UK and the IRA have stopped. Does that …
Pete has already noted Paul Bew’s unionist intellectual’s contribution in advance of Sinn Fein’s Putting Irish Unity on the Agenda conference tomorrow (Saturday). Apart from the flattering comments from the noble Lord and former Trimble adviser, much of the agenda attracts the sort of left British opinion Sinn Fein courts here but is wary of in Ireland. The Guardian’s Comment is Free carries articles by several of them. Margaret Ward’s piece on the role of Irish women supports Irish abortion …
More on a similar theme. Thanks to Eamonn for drawing attention to Platform for Change, a new campaign that’s a real antidote to despair. It’s the brainchild of Robin Wilson, the academic and journalist who ran the much missed Democratic Dialogue, NI’s only think tank and a past editor of Fortnight. Its aim: The next assembly election in 2011 can not be allowed to become, like the European Parliament poll in 2009, a political arms race as to which ‘community’ …
In her Irish Times column Fionnuala O’Connor, like many of us whose adulthood has spanned the Troubles, switches from marvelling at what’s been achieved, to gloom about the political future. Stranger things have happened. The former leader of the IRA, after all, is at present Deputy First Minister in a Northern Ireland administration that is limited in its ability to make laws, unable to raise revenue but designed as a powerful symbol of compromise between long-time enemies. Yet she goes …
The Dublin media still seem shell-shocked that so little came out of the Pope’s meeting with the Irish bishops. It’s as if they can’t believe it- maybe asking themselves for a moment, did we dream it all up? There are some signs of a delayed reaction. The extraordinary interview style of one Keith Finnegan, presenter at Galway Bay FM, produced the following exchange with Bishop Drennan of Galway, so remarkable that the Irish Times carried the (slightly inaccurate) transcript. Here …
In the interests of accurate reporting, I’d like to acknowledge that the sceptics were right. The van parked last Saturday in Derry between the courthouse and the Deanery, and detonated by a controlled explosion, was empty and wasn’t part of a hoax, the police say. But there was a jittery atmosphere in Derry that day after a suspicious device was found on Craigavon bridge and a warning issued by the “32 county sovereignty” movement. Brian WalkerFormer BBC journalist and manager …
I was very sorry to hear of the death of Trevor Hanna. He was one of the old school of Ulster journalists who began work before the troubles and survived them triumphantly. A formidable popular journalist nationally and locally, he didn’t allow his allegiances to get in the way of a good story, either written by himself or supplied to name writers in the UK national media. A freemason, he also belonged to the wider freemasonry of journalism that had …
Belligerency seems to be the order of the day for the push-me-pull-you SDLP. In her first moves as leader, Margaret Ritchie finds herself in contradictory – well, maybe just paradoxical- positions. She goes militant over the SDLP’s claim to the Justice Ministry while at the same time sits down with Reg to try to devise a plan break the other Assembly logjams. As Malachi puts it, there is “a serious flaw in the SDLP’s response to the process devised for …
I’ve just heard the audio of First and deputy First Minister launching their “campaign” in support of the Hillsborough Agreement. British broadcasters are banned by law from carrying it as an advert, so coverage will be limited to news programmes – perfunctorily, I’d say. If the intention is to mobilise public opinion in favour of making the Assembly work better, I applaud it . I take it this is part of the public consultation Peter Robinson referred to in the …
I’ve only just noticed this, the latest very precisely sectarian target of rejectionist republicans, next door to my old family home. They knew what they were doing, attacking the heart of the Plantation heritage. Part of a pattern of identifying iconic targets for maximum impact, it didn’t of course compare with the murder attempt on Peadar Heffron but the same mentality is at work. The Guardian story seemed to suggest that damage done by a controlled explosion on an empty …
I wouldn’t have commissioned him myself for this sort of thing during my BBC career and yes, I understand the incongruity and share the sense of irony. But then this is the sort of left field idea that Channel 4 is for. I’m looking ahead to Gerry Adams’s Jesus pilgrimage next Sunday with an open mind. Helen Bond, a Biblical scholar at Edinburgh University was Adams’ minder on the project. She writes about him as if she had barely heard …
Is the consociational model – that is, guaranteed power sharing – wrecking the Northern Ireland Assembly or rescuing it? Its critics have long argued that a system specifically designed to force accommodation actually hardens the battle lines and elevates them to unprecedented prominence. As for the political parties, living with the sectarian divide isn’t the problem; it’s rather that they can hardly bear the squeeze of the consociational pincers upon them. It’s all too tempting to blame the system when …
Conservative confusion persists over how to deal with Northern Ireland. It’s not easy being “ the party of the Union.” The shadow NI secretary Owen Paterson insists they won’t disturb the GFA but harbours the belief that the Assembly could move towards “voluntary coalition.” This is hardly the moment to rattle the Assembly’s cage. Paterson needs to explain how he could make the shift constitutionally as the nationalist parties oppose it. To add to the confusion, as comment in the …
In a very rare move, the head of MI5 Jonathan Evans rejects the charge of covering up complicity in torture as “ the opposite of the truth”, while careful to avoid direct criticism of the Appeal Court. There have also been a series of allegations that MI5 has been trying to “cover up” its activities. That is the opposite of the truth. People who choose to work in the service do so because they want to protect the UK and …
A sensational clash over MI5’s involvement in torture has erupted between the government and top judges in the case of the former Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, a British resident. The court had been asked to lift a bar on details of a Divisional Court ruling that Mohamed had suffered brutal and degrading treatment at the hands of Pakistani and American interrogators with MI5 complicity for over two years. In fact the appeal judges decided that a disclosure ruling was unnecessary. …
Conservative plans for “ fixing broken politics” are more ambitious than they themselves realise. That’s the verdict reached by the Constitution Unit in our major critique of their constitutional reform agenda. Decisions are needed on some of these major issues much earlier than people think – in many cases before the end of this year, in order to fulfil pledges to implement them before the end of the next Parliament of four to five years. Don’t suppose that if the …
A man walked into a Dublin bar and saw a friend sitting with an empty glass. ‘Paddy can I buy you another’, he asked, to which Paddy replied – ‘now what would I be wanting with another empty glass?’” ConservativeHome reports that a councillor in Medway Kent was ordered to pay compensation on racist grounds to an Irish-born union official for telling this joke. Allowing for context, surely a piece of nonsense in 2010? Brian WalkerFormer BBC journalist and manager …
70% of UK voters bemoan “ a broken society” (although 60% are optimistic about the future). The MPs expenses scandal rumbles on. In the pre-election period politicians’ appeals for public trust will be tested as never before. They’ve got a lot to do. Mary Riddell in the Telegraph has a fine piece exposing the gap between rhetoric and record. In the Commons today, Labour is testing the waters of support for a controversial change in the voting system, too late …
Whatever you do, don’t bracket Ireland with Greece – but Larry Elliot Economics Editor of the Guardian just has. The argument is hardly new to Slugger, but here, it’s also invoked to say how right Britain was to stay out of the euro and contains a warning against a particular view of public spending cuts. Ireland is Labour’s dystopia of a Tory Britain The consensus view in the markets is that Ireland will be rewarded for its prudence …. (but) …
