Great article by Seanín Graham in today’s Irish News about the ever expanding waiting list for medical operations in Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland patients are waiting on average five years for routine operations. This compares to less than a year in England. From the article: It emerged that one million patients are now waiting more…
You get the feeling they must be tripping over camera crews in loyalist areas. The recent DUP/Conservative deal has turned the eyes of the UK media towards Northern Ireland. A steady stream of film crews has been making the trip recently. You know the format by now: lots of footage of explosions, the obligatory standing more…
Very slick video from The Guardian, well worth a watch. From The Guardian post: East Belfast is the heartland of Protestant, unionist politics and therefore, one would believe, the natural support for Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party. The Guardian travelled to East Belfast to meet the core support for the party – which has just more…
If you commute into Belfast by car, you will know it is a pretty hellish experience. Congestion is getting worse. At peak times the Westlink is like a car park. Trains are already at capacity, so the best option is to increase bus usage. The Guardian has this to say about the benefits of bus more…
Over the past few years, there has been a major issue with underage kids drinking in the Falls Park and City Cemetary. At weekends hundreds of children gather to drink, take drugs and do all the usual things that teenagers do. The problem is especially severe in the summer. Underage drinking is not exactly new, but more…
People in Northern Ireland really love their diesel vehicles. In fact, around 60% of vehicles on the road are diesel powered, and about 45% of private cars. Just one small issue, diesel pollution is killing people. If sitting in a traffic jam on the Westlink is not depressing enough, now you know that you are also more…
The BBC has released salary details of presenters and stars earning more than 150K. As expected Stephen Nolan is the highest locally paid presenter earning a salary of between £400,000 and £449,999 a year. Nolan is famously a workaholic: The Belfast-born broadcaster presents a number of radio and TV programmes for the BBC. He presents more…
This month we celebrated our 15th Birthday. Over 36,000 posts and nearly a million comments later Slugger is stronger than ever. In the last month alone we have had over 150,000 readers! For those of you who love a bit of sexy data visualisation, we have this funky interactive report for our June traffic. You more…
Slugger Deputy Editor David McCann discusses this years election results with Chris Donnelly and Nelson McCausland. The TV Show is new for us so do let us know in the comments what you think. You can watch the episode above and it will also be broadcast on NVTV tonight at 20.45 & 00.15, and tomorrow at more…
Speaking on today’s BBC TalkBack show former SDLP MLA Alban Maginness declared that “Politics in NI is dead, has descended into sectarian mud-wrestling”. Is he right? As the voters abandon the middle ground is our political system now just a straight sectarian headcount? People were quick to accuse the SDLP of sour grapes: It's the egotism more…
It was a bad night for the moderate parties as the SDLP have lost all three of its Westminster seats and the UUP lost all two of theirs. The DUP and Sinn Fein grabbed 17 out of 18 seats with Independent Lady Sylvia Hermon being re-elected in North Down. This will be a major blow more…
Wow. Politics continues to surprise us. What many thought would be a walkover for the Conservatives has ended up costing them their majority and putting May’s leadership on the line. What will happen next? Will May resign? Will Boris be the new leader of the Conservative Party? Will Jeremy Corbyn become Prime Minister? Will there more…
15 years eh? Where does the time go? 35,934 Posts and 906,699 Comments later Slugger is still going strong. Join us in the Duke of York Bar to celebrate our Birthday. There will be food! There will be booze! There will be cake! There will be Tim McGarry! There will be a tired and emotional Mick more…
It is a busy week at Slugger. Tonight the first episode of our new Slugger TV Show goes out on NVTV. You can watch it on Freeview Channel 7 or Virgin Media Channel 159, we will also be putting the video online tomorrow. It will be on tonight at 22:45, and will be repeated on more…
As part of his continuing programme of How to lose friends and alienate people, German magazine Der Spiegel quoted Trump at the G7 meeting as saying: “The Germans are bad, very bad. Look at the millions of cars they’re selling in the U.S. We will stop that.” A particular target seems to be BMW, from more…
Over in the Minnesota House of Representatives, Republican Abigail Whelan had an imaginative response to a question. As reported by Think Progressive. Pressed about her lack of support for an amendment that would close loopholes for offshore tax havens, a Minnesota Republican dodged the question in favor of talking about her religious beliefs. Minnesota Rep. Abigail Whelan, a more…
What an exciting year for politics. As we face yet another election join us to discuss the runners and riders in the race for seats. Who are the favourites? Who will be neck and neck? Who will be trailing the pack? Brexit, the impending collapse of the Labour Party and decades of Tory rule. Not to mention President more…
Nestlé has announced that they are to axe 300 UK jobs and move Blue Riband biscuit production to Poland. More than likely this is about cost saving and has nothing to do with Brexit but it does introduce some interesting questions. Under EU rules member countries are not allowed to give subsidies that encourage companies more…
Just when you think the reputation of the Irish Catholic Church can’t get any lower the Irish Independent reports on what amounts to slavery: A notorious industrial school in Limerick was paid to send boys under the age of 16 to work for traders, merchants and big farmers, according to hundreds of documents that have more…
The LAD chaps have surpassed themselves with this little ditty. For those of you not up on your pop culture it is a spoof of Ed Sheeran’s Galway Girl song:
