Mick Fealty

Brian (O’Neill) tells me it was Ulster Day yesterday (28th September), the anniversary of the signing the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant or the women’s Declaration, almost a foundational document for political unionism ever since. Owen Polley explains… Yesterday, Northern Ireland’s four explicitly unionist parties issued a ‘declaration’ affirming their opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol. This statement was timed to coincide with the anniversary of ‘Ulster Day’ in 1912. 109 years ago, on the 28th of September, almost half …

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Whatever thinking or writing we do, however we choose to couch it and whatever our explanatory ambition, we do it from the midst of things, not from above or beyond the fray. There are different ways of articulating that relationship – more remote or more immediate – but no way out of that situatedness. – Adam Tooze On Slugger we are trying to make sense of things in a world where everything screams at you to take it more seriously than …

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II’m glad I put yesterday’s blog out before President Higgins gave his ‘explanation’ about why he wasn’t coming to this joint service, because in its absence I preferred to focus on the bigger picture and why it is important to move on. When it did come out, many people, including here in the Slugger comment zone and elsewhere found  they had argued in the belief the President had been snubbed he was entitled take umbrage and refuse to come north. …

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It’s hard to know what to say about the decision of the Irish President not to attend a cross community commemoration (not celebration) of the 100th anniversary in Armagh, the ecclesiastical centre of the whole island. The BBC reports that SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said people should take President Higgins “at his word when he says he can not be there”. The Irish government says it has played no part in his decision, because, well, it can’t. Ironically the DUP (currently …

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“Wittgenstein realised [that] no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.” – David Foster Wallace. Complacent solipsism is becoming the defining characteristic of the 21C. Kathy Sheridan in The Irish Times picks up the baton after columnist Niamh Walsh lammed into three female FF parliamentarians, simply for how they looked: The point-and-laugh piece included tired old tropes such as outrage/hilarity at false tans, hairstyles, outfits, shoe-shapes and to avoid the woman-bashing rap, a mention of male bellies and boring blue suits. …

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I recently read that between 1991 and 2011 some 25% of all babies born in England and Wales were born to women who were born outside the UK. Sunder Katwala contextualises the new British US Open champion in these terms: If Emma-mania is the theme of the sporting year, does that tell us anything about identity, migration and integration in Britain today? Sport’s role in society has made it a focal point on identity for decades – about social class in …

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Sometimes, only satire can be relied on to report what would otherwise be classed as the bleeding’ obvious. Mario Rosenstock’s skill in showing a good man (Paschal Donohoe) losing it (which he rarely does in real life) is put to good use here as he interrupts Leo preening over his picture chilling at a London music festival at the weekend. First we had Merrion-Gate, could this be Mighty Hoopla-Gate?! 👀 @GiftGrubMario @IanDempsey https://t.co/IC6PEhTkHC — Today FM 💛 (@TodayFM) September 6, …

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So there’s been a few reports around the INLA funeral where guns were fired in Galliagh, right on the outskirts of Derry. Some alleging that the PSNI withdrew countered by a statement from the PSNI that they simply didn’t intervene. Such events do serious damage to the efforts currently going on within the city to make it fit for the extraordinarily large numbers of high achieving students that exit the city every year, many of them never to return. In …

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One thing I can say about my friend David McWilliams is he is creative when it comes to charting the future of Ireland. In his latest column he argues that the Swiss Confederation might be a way to think about a united Ireland. David used to work for the Swiss bank, UBS and so is clearly well informed about the principles on which Switzerland works… The balance of political power in Switzerland is divvied up between the three Cs – …

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As we await the return of Northern Irish politics proper, here’s a snippet captured by the excellent John Naughton’s Memex 1.1 Substack blog (subscription, highly recommended) on US lessons from Afghanistan: Strategy: The U.S. government continuously struggled to develop and implement a coherent strategy for what it hoped to achieve. Timelines: The U.S. government consistently underestimated the amount of time required to rebuild Afghanistan, and created unrealistic timelines and expectations that prioritized spending quickly. These choices increased corruption and reduced …

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Speaking as a parent of a young woman who has just returned exactly GCSE results she needed, I have to say I’m not as non plussed about the outstanding performances this year as others seem to be. Nor am I as worried as some. The assessments have been rigorous, ongoing and consistent for the last school year (as opposed to a final exams crammed into May and June). I’m pretty certain no teacher wants to send any student in over …

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