Mick Fealty – Page 3 – Slugger O'Toole

Boycotting Nolan is a refusal of a much needed opportunity for politicians to connect with the public…

Mick Fealty on July 11, 2023, 4:02 pm

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As Ryan Tubridy takes what may well be a last roll of the dice to save his career in front of a Dail committee today, it looks like he’s planning to tough it out, but while we wait for an outcome it is worth taking a look at a controversy closer to home. The Irish News over the last week has published a number of articles by commentators some of whom I like (£) and admire (£) on the subject …

Demographic benefits have been real but nationalism must bring its own ‘theory of government’ to bear on the future

Mick Fealty on July 6, 2023, 12:15 pm

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Kleefeld field landscape

“Act always so as to increase the number of choices.” — Heinz von Foerster Everyone (I hope) has a teacher upon whom they look back fondly and with gratitude for the good influence their teaching had on the rest of their lives. I can think of three, my P1 teacher Miss Farrell, who lulled me into the idea school would be fun. My O level Maths teacher Frank Kelly who taught me there’s never any such thing as a stupid …

“I survived the fcking Troubles and I survived all the shte that was going with it…”

Mick Fealty on June 28, 2023, 6:28 am

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I’m often wary of material that deals directly with our conflicted past, whether in books, films or a series like the BBC’s latest chronicle of the Troubles, Once Upon A Time in Northern Ireland. Often there’s some too clever narrative shortcut at play. Before I dive into this rare piece of slow journalism, some context on how I believe journalism has drifted from its proper democratic mission since 1998. Einstein said explanations should be as simple as possible, but not …

President Higgins should reflect on the risk to his reputation posed by his own half baked, cranky ideas?

Mick Fealty on June 21, 2023, 12:14 pm

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animal, flamingo, water

I recall back in the mid naughties Bertie Ahern arguing in an OpEd in the Irish Times there ought to be a conversation about Ireland and the UK joining Schengen. It was one of those famous declarations of intent to do something that never happened. The Consultative Forum set up by Micheál Martin at the Department of Foreign Affairs is trying to get some kind of conversation going on Ireland’s position, primarily in Europe, now two of the largest European …

On the limitations and failures of modern day Populism in Britain, the US, Northern Ireland and Ireland…

Mick Fealty on June 16, 2023, 1:11 pm

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round gold and white analog clock reading at 7:10

We can say with some certainty that the current penchant for populist politics will not end with the exit of Boris Johnson, nor with any putative departure Donald Trump. Nor is it likely over. But it has not been good for international relations. In the Irish Times this week Fintan O’Toole warns that the game is far from over for Trump in spite of the most extraordinarily detailed indictment which details actions the former President may struggle to explain to his …

Finucane and the right to freedom of speech, but what of our common obligation to others?

Mick Fealty on June 13, 2023, 7:18 am

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hand, human, woman

The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. – Simone Weil, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind, 1949. It’s not surprising (as pre-noted on Nolan) that John Finucane MP dealt with objections to his speech at a memorial for twenty four IRA volunteers who died in South Armagh during the conflict by turning a genuine political question into one of rights. On Nolan the most …

End of a petulant populist? The Trump Indictment in spoken form…

Mick Fealty on June 10, 2023, 9:01 am

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Just putting this here. It’s the indictment against Trump read out so you don’t have to read it all. For now, I’m going to keep the comments closed until people have had a chance to listen. Slugger is not for venting, but for thoughtful comment. I will open them later on once people have had a chance to listen. If you haven’t listened or read the written report, please refrain until you have? Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. …

If “Others” have the casting/blocking vote, both nationalism and unionism need to show they are open for development

Mick Fealty on May 31, 2023, 11:10 am

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We're Open

Fintan O’Toole yesterday (or at least his headline writer does) poses a useful question: What if Sinn Féin makes Northern Ireland viable? But to that hypothetical I would add another: What if Northern Ireland already is viable? This is a non trivial consideration. Reform processes have been ongoing for at least two and perhaps three generations (depending on how you count them (in the country where people marry later one generation is thought to be 30 years). There are issues that …

Sinn Féin’s impressive vote harvesting technique shows up as zero gains for the cause of a united Ireland in 25 years.

Mick Fealty on May 26, 2023, 4:33 pm

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Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment. - Evan Hardin

“Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect . . .” -Jonathan Swift Newton Emerson had an intriguing theory in his column yesterday, one I’m not sure can be proven but it fit with a lot of evidence. I never subscribed to the idea that that SF were strategic in their mission, but they are geniuses …

Research request re your experiences of short haul travel within the UK and Ireland

Mick Fealty on May 25, 2023, 11:55 amComments Off | Readers 1097

aircraft, turbine, engine

This is not a story, just a request for help on a particular line of inquiry. If you have had any odd or unsatisfactory experiences on any journey within and between any airport in Britain and Ireland I want to hear from you via [email protected]. As such there’s no facility for commenting directly on this thread. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media …

Fianna Fáil’s Michael McGrath lays out proposals for a new Ireland national wealth fund…

Mick Fealty on May 12, 2023, 7:40 am

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glut of money, 500 euro, euro

One of the big issues dogging countries across the western world is how to manage increasing fiscal pressures in a world that has suddenly become highly volatile and subject to multiple economic and socio political shocks. The lunatic Trumpian fringe amongst the US Republicans scant majority is threatening to impose a debt ceiling on government which would reset it to 2022 limits and provide for a one per cent increase each year going forward. Sounds reasonable until you consider this …

Why it’s important to talk about the famine rationally without invoking old hatreds

Mick Fealty on May 3, 2023, 12:34 pm

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a statue of a person standing on top of a hill

I was on Nolan on Monday with Mark Simpson to talk about the famine, Sir Charles Trevelyan and possible reparations. It’s a subject close to my heart, not least because generationally my own great grandfather was 19 in 1845, the onset of the famine. Featured was an interview with Laura Trevelyan, one time BBC journalist and great great granddaughter of the man who, as assistant secretary to the Treasury was responsible for famine relief in Ireland under the Premiership of …

DUP calls the UK government out on its longer term death by a thousand cuts agenda

Mick Fealty on April 27, 2023, 12:30 pm

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scissors, cut, seamstress

One weakness of modern politics in Northern Ireland but also elsewhere is not the unrelenting focus on personality, but the near absence of policy from that debate, in spite of the best efforts of public policy journalists to push the river backwards. The point I made on Nolan (hosted by Mark Simpson) the other day was that threats from the Secretary of State to claw back £300,000 of overspend in the Northern Irish budget should be viewed in the context …

Heaton Harris’s threat may end an Extended School policy that none of the local parties ever seriously owned..

Mick Fealty on April 21, 2023, 1:20 pm

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kids, girl, pencil

I was asked to come on Nolan this morning to comment on a story I might otherwise have missed. It’s part of a bigger play the NIO seems to be using to put added pressure on the DUP to suspend its boycott of the Stormont institutions. In the detail it’s rather telling about just what a free ride our political class has been taking since the re-start of the institutions back in 2007, which sadly, in reality never really survived …

If it does take another 25 years to blow away the stench of 1969 and after, it’ll be worth the wait…

Mick Fealty on April 21, 2023, 7:06 am

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footprints, sand, sea

Sorry I wasn’t able to get to Tuesday’s discussion of the media’s role at the time of the Belfast Agreement, it would have been a pleasure to be back in the company of many audience members with whom I had shared some great moments since that time. Hearing them speak you realise how long and isolating the process of waiting for some or any product was back then. And also how well resourced the media was. Would the modern day …

Mitchell: “Don’t be too hard on yourselves, but don’t give up on the belief you can do better and better…”

Mick Fealty on April 18, 2023, 11:05 am

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At ninety George Mitchell rocked the house yesterday treating his audience to the wisdom, humour and realism no doubt honed over many years in American public life. For today, I’ll stick to his opening remarks (and a recurring theme here of renewal)… On the evening the Agreement was reached I commended the men and women who wrote and signed it. But I also said that it would take other leaders in the future to safeguard and extend their work. And so it has. …

Casement to be rebuilt as part of the joint Irish British bid to host the Euros…

Mick Fealty on April 14, 2023, 9:42 am

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‘There’s no money for it’ says a series of callers to Stephen Nolan’s radio programme, when informed by Stephen that the IFA are confident that the long awaited development at what was for generations the home GAA in Belfast. Before going any further we should pause at this point and let this state of affairs sink in. I don’t mean the absence of Stormont, I mean the IFA, the original representative soccer body on the island until the FAI broke …

Why Stormont cannot be fixed through absence, political inertia or even browbeating the DUP…

Mick Fealty on April 13, 2023, 11:46 am

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man in black shirt standing on green grass field during daytime

…there seemed no ground in front of my feet, only the abyss of star-studded space falling away forever. – David Abrams Asked by Ian Dale the other night on LBC whether the Biden visit would have an effect, I gave him the obvious answer which is that since only the DUP (the current fulcrum around which the fate of the Assembly revolves) can decide, it changes nothing. Aside from political considerations, US Presidential visits are fun especially for the people …

Let’s celebrate the Belfast Agreement’s successes but recognise that Biden’s content free visit also highlights it failings…

Mick Fealty on April 12, 2023, 8:31 am

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shallow focus photography of dragonfly

“What’s the difference between a bug in a program and a misunderstanding?” — Monica Anderson I watched the events of Good Friday 1998 in the old cottage we rented off a local estate in Dorset. My abiding memory though was an audio tape that one of my Irish students brought to the class I ran on Tuesday nights some weeks after the event itself. On one side were programmes he’d taped via satellite of Raidio na Gaeltachta for the class, …

On Ian Paisley the man, the preacher and the demagogue blessed with “a tongue like an old cow…”

Mick Fealty on April 6, 2023, 12:19 pm

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“I have bedimmed The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And ’twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder.” — Prospero, The Tempest So the BBC has finally pulled together a three part documentary on the life of Ian Paisley (Snr). You can find all three episodes of the House of Paisley on the iPlayer here. It’s a tall order to tell an authoritative story of one so complex and controversial. It’s hard to stay between the ditches of hagiography and demonisation of someone who dominated our lives for so long. My own attempt back …