Jay Burbank – Page 2 – Slugger O'Toole

Where are the activists?

Jay Burbank on October 1, 2020, 8:19 am

| Readers 2828

Recently I have been reading quite extensively about the period between 1960-69. In Derry the bubble of ‘bottled resentment’ was spilling over into near riot and civil breakdown well before the establishment of NICRA in 1967. Hume was very active in the street politics of this time, however he didn’t enter elected office until 1969 when he beat the long-standing figure of nationalism Eddie McAteer. On his defeat he conceded that the ‘old guard’ of nationalism had been replaced by …

What are Labour for?

Jay Burbank on September 22, 2020, 6:15 pm

| Readers 1169

They are a party who haven’t run official candidates in NI for nearly 60 years. Yet so much of the past century has been influenced by the once mighty Labour party. Sir Keir Starmer is proving more popular in technocratic opinion polls, but will his virtual party leader speech made today filter through into positive headlines for the beleaguered centre-left? Poly Toynbee has thrown down the gauntlet to her ideological partners, calling on Labour is re-capture a sense of patriotism …

The tension between Politics and the Law…

Jay Burbank on September 17, 2020, 7:46 am

| Readers 925

In modern society there is a tension between democracy and the law which has always existed throughout history. Democracy at its most absolute is tyrannical, brutish and often short lived because of the mass hysteria which can engulf otherwise rational people when they act as a group. Psychologists called this ‘groupthink’ in the 20th century, ever since we found this flaw we quickly discovered that it had actually given us our most valuable skill putting us at the top of …

RIP Sir Ken Robinson: may your creative spirit inspire us to change…

Jay Burbank on August 29, 2020, 9:03 am

| Readers 2531

This week I was challenged by a comment on this platform which claimed that studies over the last 35 years have shown that intelligence is largely ‘innate.’ In simpler terms it is implied that intelligence is the sum of genetic characteristics which give some individuals natural advantage (or “talent”) over others no matter what environmental factors are applied – i.e. education, health or nutrition. I struggled greatly with this, as in our age of fake news and ‘feeling’ politics I …

#TheReset: Reducing the risk of ‘stag-deflation’ after COVID…

Jay Burbank on August 26, 2020, 7:13 am

| Readers 787

If the post COVID ‘reset’ works, then it will have to move beyond longstanding structural thorns that western society has so far failed to deal with. The great twentieth century historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote that the period from 1945 to the early 1970s were a ‘golden age’ in human achievement and it was only the breakdown of the mid to late 1970s of economic wellbeing and living standards that broke this unprecedented period of growth. In the height of this …

Pounds, shillings and pence: Stormont’s Fiscal Council…

Jay Burbank on August 12, 2020, 8:10 am

| Readers 1553

I have before written about the idea of a fiscal council for Northern Ireland which was first mooted in the Stormont House Agreement. When the new decade new approach agreement was published there contained a solid commitment to the establishment of this crucial mechanism. The post war Labour government who established the NHS were committed to ending the regional disparities in relief which had become stark in the nineteenth century. Across Britain and Ireland there was an old system of …

Hume’s origin story: fighting injustice at every corner…

Jay Burbank on August 3, 2020, 9:14 pm

| Readers 2388

It is incumbent upon us all to remember what propelled a young teacher in Derry into frontline politics and change the face of Northern Ireland forever. The young teacher was John Hume, born into a working-class catholic family he had been given opportunities not afforded to generations before and attended University. In the words of that other Derry giant (Gerry Anderson) his generation of queens’ graduates [para] “went away to university, learned about the country they lived in and came …

Spinners and Losers: Sinn Fein cool the heat…

Jay Burbank on July 10, 2020, 7:10 am

| Readers 5128

As ‘crematorium-[side]gate’ moves into its second week, and the legislature bit its gums into a non-legally binding motion, it appears as though the heat is shifting. The media are now fixating on two Belfast city council big hitters (BBC): The Belfast Telegraph is reporting the council’s chief executive Suzanne Wylie and director Nigel Grimshaw have lodged a formal grievance with a solicitor. They are said to have warned they may resign if “concerns are not resolved”. What I find remarkable …

“Perhaps one can live while the other survives:” Thoughts on the NI Economy…

Jay Burbank on June 20, 2020, 8:48 am

| Readers 2117

There is an old economic doctrine which at the beginning of the enlightenment was incredibly popular in European ancien régimes. It was known as “Mercantilism”, in short it was a form of protectionism which favoured maximum export surpluses and minimising imports through subsidy (added with excessive regulation) all in the hope of accumulating gold bullion in the national coffers. The movement isn’t pure ‘protectionism’ as it still adheres to the idea of international trade being a positive thing, therefore Donald …

Symbolism: the art of propaganda…

Jay Burbank on June 11, 2020, 8:37 am

| Readers 2252

Edward Colston, Slave trader, Tory member of Parliament and…philanthropist. As a liberal who believes that society, the law and democracy should serve only to liberate I abhor slavery and its nefarious influence which still skews our global economy to this very day. The city of Bristol, like so many other western European port towns, lives with the historical scar of Colston’s ill-gotten wealth. There is a hall, tower, schools and streets named after this man throughout the city. In many …

Unionist Parties: Good or Bad for Unionism?

Jay Burbank on May 14, 2020, 7:00 am

| Readers 4945

If we reduce unionism to a simple definition of “maintaining the link between Northern Ireland and Great Britain” then it becomes problematic distinguishing the actions of unionist parties and the overall unionist method. As a supporter of the Alliance party I come across this often, I choose to define my political ideology as liberal because I think that Liberalism is a universal ideology which should be applied to the laws of the UK or of Ireland. To me the constitutional …

Policy is always a choice…

Jay Burbank on April 17, 2020, 8:43 am

| Readers 631

Perhaps I am within a rare category of people who believe that ‘neoliberalism’ has created some positive outcomes for society. I will use a definition of neo-liberalism which is summed up best by the economist Fredrich von Hayek of the Austrian school. His ideology and that of the 1980s mainstream was to abandon Keysianism of the post war era which preached the economics of maximum supply and output through high government taxation and spending. This spiralled out of control in …

The Plight of the Sole Director during Covid-19…

Jay Burbank on April 6, 2020, 7:49 am

| Readers 2054

In the wake of the coronavirus epidemic the government announced unprecedented measures to keep the economy afloat. These are largely rooted in Keynesian and new monetary theory policies. The purpose is to keep money in the businesses that supply our economy with the goods and services demanded by consumers. First, we had money set aside by the exchequer to the tune of £300 billion for loans that would relive larger to medium sized businesses and the SMEs that needed such …

Liberté, égalité, and a Secular Ireland…

Jay Burbank on April 3, 2020, 11:00 am

| Readers 1756

In France they have a law which has its written roots in 1905 but the principles steam back to the 1790 revolution which saw ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ emblazoned into the national character and constitution of this large European nation. The law is called laïcité and it is at serious odds with Anglo-Saxon inherited concepts of what it is to be tolerant within a community. So much of our own understanding of modern Europe and modern Ireland stem from the thinking …

HAND OF THE FUTURE Podcast Episode 1 – “Biopolitical Peacebuilding”…

Jay Burbank on March 2, 2020, 12:36 pm

| Readers 1404

I have embarked upon a podcasting journey in order to generate some discussion on topics popular on this site and on twitter. Hand of the future is a tongue and cheek reference to the recent comment by Boris Johnson in the great hall of Stormont. His entire speech seemed unprepared, uninformed and representative of a distant Westminster bubble. Yet I thought it nicely summed up what I want this podcast to be about, achieving a future not blighted by a …

The great British culture crisis…

Jay Burbank on February 19, 2020, 8:24 am

| Readers 3570

Gerald Dawe wrote in a 1994 essay that: “There are parallels that can be pursued between the Northern Protestant situation today, and what might emerge in England in, say, twenty-five years when ordinary English men and women can no longer take for granted the stability and reliability of a given history and a cultural identity based unthinkably upon the post-World War II past.” What is striking is that Dawe foresaw this identity crisis nearly to the year. On his estimate …

Are Sinn Féin Populist?

Jay Burbank on February 10, 2020, 10:59 am

| Readers 5218

Last week the Irish Independent printed an opinion by Phillip Ryan. He charged Mary Lou McDonald with the title of ‘Ireland’s Donald Trump’ which prima facie is a confusing argument but I decided to persevere through such arguments and it made me think more broadly about the idea of Sinn Féin being a left-wing populist party. Has populism finally arrived in Ireland? Populism or elitism are nebulous terms, but in the modern usage they imply a party that presents easy …

Interview: Jim Allister MLA talks about his Special Advisors bill…

Jay Burbank on February 2, 2020, 6:05 pm

| Readers 3041

Next Monday the Northern Ireland assembly order paper will contain a private members bill from one of the few non-government party MLAs in the chamber. That member is Jim Allister. His tenure in politics spans decades and he has been present over the course of many political changes including the function or dysfunction of local institutions, he issued a challenge to the Assembly members: “if people are serious about cleaning up this place then they should have nothing to fear …

Reform and enlargement: Europe’s next struggle…

Jay Burbank on January 30, 2020, 1:47 pm

| Readers 2153

The first stage of the Brexit process, the ‘withdrawal’ is nearing its completion with a vote in the EU parliament on the withdrawal package now done. Barnier and the Commission throughout the process have presented a unified message with little breakdown in communication between them and the EU capitals. It may look to EU federalists like a stepping stone on the process of sovereign status for the Brussels institutions but upon closer inspection this notion is easily dispelled. The Brexit …

Peter Weir – broaden the scope of your underachievement report…

Jay Burbank on January 24, 2020, 12:27 pm

| Readers 2188

The announcement by Peter Weir of a new report into the underachievement of working-class protestant boys will (as noted by Brian) stack up on a dusty old shelf in the Department of Education, the eighth since 2011 and these official reports are not isolated in the wider discussion on the issue. It got me thinking when Deirdre Heenan this week said about having a ‘philosophical debate’ about what we actually want from education in NI, as noted by many Slugger …