Mick Fealty – Page 14 – Slugger O'Toole

“There are no checkpoints in the orchestra, there are no passport controls….”

Mick Fealty on December 28, 2021, 9:02 am

| Readers 2471

violin, music, fiddle

Just to keep things light this week, this is the first of two musical features I want to highlight. They’re both about an hour and fifteen minutes long and both take as their subject a figure from music who’s been extraordinary. Today it is Daniel Barenboim. The programme went out on BBC Four but n the UK it is still available on BBC iPlayer. It’s cribbed from previous materials edited to give full of human insight into Barenboim’s approach to …

Sound Walk up the Glen River to the top of Slieve Donard

Mick Fealty on December 27, 2021, 9:01 am

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I’ve been up Slieve Donard maybe three or four times in my life, the most recent about three or four years ago. As a kid I remember being awed by its height as it seemingly rose up from sea level to dominate the town of Newcastle. Each time there’s a special feeling that derives from being at the top of your seeable world, everything else you know below you. From its height you glimpse NI’s tiny snatch of wilderness And …

If Ireland as an island is two places in one surely we can afford to relax and let natural ‘unities’ emerge?

Mick Fealty on December 22, 2021, 1:10 pm

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few, together, swamp scratch thistle

For me growing up, the border felt like a fault-line in our family’s life. I grew up in North Down but the place I most related to was the tiny Atlantic side farm on the north coast of Donegal which had been my dad’s family’s home for over 100 years before. In the early 60s you only slowly filled in the clues that this place was somehow different to our northern home (some considerable distance to the south of the …

Paddy Kielty: an honest, faithful story teller, who should be listened to…

Mick Fealty on December 16, 2021, 2:35 pm

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lightbulb, idea, creativity

It’s been a week in politics where one politician tried (unsuccessfully) to be a comedian and a comedian very much succeeded in sign posting the way towards a better future. But I’m going to let Richard Buckley, editor of Business Eye magazine, do the formal introductions via his monthly newsletter… Paddy Kielty has long been one of our more erudite, balanced and intelligent exports. He’s a whole lot more than the comedian most of us know him as. In his …

“He’d probably be the one roaring “Shots! Shots! Shots!” and dropping Jägerbombs into their pints…”

Mick Fealty on December 15, 2021, 2:44 pm

| Readers 4514

Troubles legacies are never far from the news. Cases of victims from 50 years ago still throng the courts system and many others suffer in silence with barely any attention from the media. On Sunday this week, Mairia Cahill wrote about those (admittedly few) cases in which the bodies of the victims have been “disappeared” and have never been found. In the same week, the WAVE Trauma centre posted the names of four on Facebook, with a song specially written …

“In any serious discussion on a truly ‘new’ Ireland, UK membership ought to be on the table.”

Mick Fealty on December 13, 2021, 2:46 pm

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New UK passport

For someone so young, Joel asks a mean exam question… “In any serious discussion on a truly ‘new’ Ireland, UK membership ought to be on the table.” Discuss. — Joel Keys (@JoelKeysNI) December 11, 2021 It comes just as a poll of southern opinion shows there’s no appetite for change to attract people of a British background to a United Ireland. I expect that’s people don’t believe it’s a realistic prospect. Pat Leahy reports… There is a high degree of …

“If SF and the DUP were serious about truly moving society out of segregation…”

Mick Fealty on December 8, 2021, 11:13 am

| Readers 4748

friends, trust, friendship

The art of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code; and secondly in fearlessness of revision, to secure that the code serves those purposes which satisfy an enlightened reason. — Alfred North Whitehead However quote of the week goes to Máiría Cahill writing in the Sunday Independent. It’s an old saw in marketing that “everything communicates” and sometimes in ways people might rather it didn’t. Looking back to her own youth and childhood, she recalls a …

Ireland, and the need to deal with the learned helplessness of echo chambers and filter bubbles…

Mick Fealty on December 3, 2021, 3:14 pm

| Readers 3947

wood, wooden, bridge

I watch/listen to a lot of RTÉ. It’s a relic from the ’80s when I moved to the south coast of England, way outside the range of Radio Ulster, and found the NI pickings from the BBC in London very thin. RTÉ Radio One on Long Wave was the thickest newsflow I could access at the time. Almost incidentally and by osmosis I also eavesdropped on some of the big developments in the south. I recall Ian Paisley slamming the …

Northern Ireland showing signs of growth, expansion and quietly escaping its historic restrictions

Mick Fealty on November 26, 2021, 12:32 pm

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butterflies, flowers, pollinate

An old English friend rang me the other day and asked me about a potential placement his son was considering from a software company in Belfast (neither have any real connection I know of with either part of Ireland). He was puzzled by the fact the opportunity was in Belfast, and wanted to know a bit about life over there and a bit about the context in which a large US software company would be settling in a place like …

As Covid recedes its aftermath is witnessed in a system that is ‘beyond broken’…

Mick Fealty on November 25, 2021, 1:43 pm

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surgery, hospital, medical professionals

On Nolan yesterday to talk about the latest response from the Stormont Executive to rising Covid infections. Through the various conversations it struck me how public understanding is failing to keep pace with the nature of the crisis. One lady said she was so fed up with looking at people in masks that she preferred to sit at home rather than go out. It transpired that she’d lost her husband during the crisis and still clearly suffering from the loss …

Phantom bounce in north south trade due to corrections in previous misreporting?

Mick Fealty on November 17, 2021, 11:42 am

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office, business, accountant

One of the most prominent bear traps of the Brexit era is the epistemological bubble. That according to C Thi Nguyen is not the same as the more pernicious echo chamber. It’s where people of like mind come together to examine the world. Slugger has tried to achieve a diversity of view, not as a virtue signal, but so that our readers (and us) be all the better informed. Lookouts on port and starboard means you’re less likely to hit any …

Remarkable solidarity on the death of Austin Currie in the Assembly yesterday…

Mick Fealty on November 16, 2021, 10:10 am

| Readers 2034

Here’s a shortened version of the comments on the death of Austin Currie in the Assembly yesterday. With the exception of the SDLP who opened and closed the session, I’ve stuck to just one party spokespersons. The breadth and the quality of the contributions are striking from right across the house: Nicola Mallon (SDLP): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I begin today by offering my condolences, on behalf of the SDLP, to Austin Currie’s family: his wife, Annita, and his children, Estelle, …

There’s no need to rush to war at a time when we are still trying to put the last one to bed…

Mick Fealty on November 11, 2021, 5:51 pm

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child, kid, play

Often when something needs saying, it’s Newton Emerson who has the courage to say it. Taking his cue from the Liverpool survey last week he has this to say about findings that suggest there’s a consensus is for retaining the protocol… But on the unionist side he notes… Unionist acceptance of the protocol is resignation, not enthusiasm. This silent majority is to some extent a sheepish majority, digesting unionism’s fault for its own plight. Unionists also have to accept that …

“acting in this manner means enduring the no-deal outcome that Johnson was unwilling to countenance two years ago”

Mick Fealty on November 10, 2021, 10:26 am

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I do wonder where all this talk of “war” is going to take us. Like the chatter about an imminent United Ireland, when the latest polling evidence indicates most people in Northern Ireland are happy enough, it’s largely just chatter. For now. Ronan McCrea in the Irish Times today expresses real frustration on the Irish side with the way things are going: With London walking away from the compromises it made and no good options available, Brussels may well conclude …

Independent Review of Education offers “a new possibility space…”

Mick Fealty on November 9, 2021, 12:17 pm

| Readers 1534

businessman, possible, impossible

In a previous life I spent a lot of time in different educational settings, across Ireland, Britain and most of Western Europe, as the non eastern bloc countries were referenced at that time, doing participatory creative work. I was working in schools at the time of the “Great” Education Reform Bill (or GERBill for journalistic shorthand) in 1988, which brought in some useful measures (like giving teachers time away from the classrooms for ongoing learning). The name was first coined …

‘Nothing should be done that threatens that architecture..”

Mick Fealty on November 8, 2021, 1:52 pm

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brexit, eu, europe

So the talk of Article 16, is still just that, talk. Taoiseach Micheál is not one for dramatising a crisis, so his warning against going down such a precipitative route ought to get a hearing in London: “We’ve been here before, negotiations are still underway, there is still engagement between the UK and the European Union – as I said in the Dáil last week and I stand over my comments, I think it would be reckless and irresponsible to …

Inter communal consensus to get NI Protocol done, backing for the Assembly (but not a border poll)

Mick Fealty on November 4, 2021, 10:34 pm

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math, blackboard, education

On tonight’s edition of The View, there’s some fascinating polling from the Irish Institute at the University of Liverpool. Fascinating mostly for the depth it goes into over how public opinion falls out over the Northern Irish protocol. For one thing, it turns out that whilst it may be exercising some members of the political class it’s not the top priority for for the electorate. Overall Health is top (29.1%), Covid Recovery is next (18.3%) followed by the Economy (12.4%). …

“Single identity appeals won’t work in terms of winning any future border poll…”

Mick Fealty on November 4, 2021, 2:53 pm

| Readers 1541

I won’t create too much commentary on this (I’ve already written a longer piece here), but Battle of Ideas have released a nicely edited account of the Battle of Ideas debate in London a few weeks ago. (It should start just after the intros.) It would be good to here your response to the conversation in the room. Andrée Murphy comes in shortly after my first leg… Do watch the whole thing if you can find the time? Mick FealtyMick …

“Sinn Féin begged on bended knee for an effective amnesty in criminal law for IRA historic crimes…’

Mick Fealty on October 21, 2021, 5:57 pm

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I wasn’t going to mention the death of Dennis Hutchings in mid trial from complications arising from Covid 19. Mostly because I couldn’t see enough debatable politics in it when his story took a final and tragic (for all concerned) turn. However, it moved Senator Michael McDowell (a former Minister of Justice for some time in the noughties) to out some of those who have been loud in their condemnation of the British government’s intention to install an amnesty. His …

Through each post GFA crisis the middle ground is slowly building…

Mick Fealty on October 21, 2021, 3:52 pm

| Readers 2288

books, shelves, door

It is tempting to suggest that whatever crisis we’re going through is the worst yet. Most of them since the establishment of the new Stormont institutions have been, in one way or another, crises of legitimacy. As is current one over the Protocol. We may think that the legitimacy of the current institutions derive from the paper documentation of the Belfast Agreement, but in fact it is something that has to be fought over on a day and day, month …