Mick Fealty – Page 9 – Slugger O'Toole

#AE22: Poll suggests that Unionist unrest could deliver an end to a DUP First Ministership

Mick Fealty on April 6, 2022, 12:05 pm

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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parliament_Buildings_Stormont.jpg

The first of a series of video reports. According to the University of Liverpool/Irish News poll ground appears to be shifting under the feet of the DUP in particular. See David’s IN report here. The two former parties of the extreme seem to be destined to hit a fork in the road if not a complete break up, but not because of tribal tensions. In the case of the DUP poor delivery may be a greater factor. In the past …

Most often there are not two sides to a story, just the story…

Mick Fealty on March 31, 2022, 10:32 am

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camera, aperture, digital camera

I’ve been signed in to a number of substack newsletters recently, increasingly of the sharp American type that first attracted me to blogs all those years ago now. Dave Pell is the only thing worth reading on that Oscars slap, not just because he says something sensible about the goof show the Oscars have become, but something deeper: Stop. Seriously, stop with the bothsidesing think-pieces about Will Smith’s slap. I’m sure Alopecia can be a traumatic condition, but this isn’t …

Will Doug Beattie’s standing out from the unionist crowd get rewarded or punished?

Mick Fealty on March 29, 2022, 11:01 am

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grass, pavement, brick

Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows.” — Alfred North Whitehead Well, it was a brave decision from Doug Beattie to pull out of the anti protocol protests. Brave in both senses of the word as it has come to be commonly used, ie courageous and maybe a little foolish. “It is now clear that anti-protocol …

A “polluter pays” rule regarding social media’s damage to the online environment?

Mick Fealty on March 26, 2022, 11:09 am

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robot, technology, artificial

As a follow up to this, here’s the video which contains presentation I gave on Thursday evening as part of the Imagine Belfast (the bulk of which is here). It’s worth watching the whole thing especially Ciarán O’Connor’s presentation on how new social tech is providing a safe space for hate crimes. The other parts of my own presentation are here and finally, my idea that the polluter of cyberspace should pay for others to produce real stories which …

Online abuse and why going to where you’re kindest matters to you and other humans?

Mick Fealty on March 22, 2022, 2:25 pm

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office, business, accountant

“Go to where you are kindest.” –Jaron Lanier On Thursday as part of Imagine Belfast, I’ll be speaking on a panel about the persistent (and in my view worsening) problem of online abuse: the scope and scale of which can be daunting if not frightening: What can we do about online abuse? Lets discuss Free #Belfast event 24 March @AccidentalT w/ @MrHanna3 @Insideireland @isdglobal @mickfealty @AmandaFBelfast @SluggerOToole @OrnaYoung @FactCheckNI #Imaginebelfast https://t.co/RLK10jP36o — ¡MAGINE! (@ImagineBelfast) March 13, 2022 It was heartening …

Sinn Féin’s burns its record on Russia…”the party simply wiped thousands of embarrassing statements from its website.”

Mick Fealty on March 16, 2022, 1:13 pm

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“Every country has its own mafia. Putin’s Russia is the first where the mafia has its own country.” –Garry Kasparov One thing that strikes me about our politics (north, south, east and west) is how we’ve become so exceedingly inattentive about the operation of dark money circulating not just in the wider economy and in culture (think Chelsea?) but in our politics. There’s something about larger volumes of cash (millions and billions) that renders them almost invisible to the public …

Sinn Féin MLAs deserted their own minister’s legal advice but one DUP abstention forced them to retract…

Mick Fealty on March 9, 2022, 11:42 am

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Still think the DUP has collapsed Stormont. It might have been better if they had (so unpractised are some Ministers despite being a ‘natural party of government’, Sam McBride takes up the story: MLAs have voted, seemingly by mistake, to change the law in a way which would cut housing rents for every private renter by 10%, and a Sinn Fein minister is now desperately trying to undo what she allowed to happen. That such a thing could happen sounds …

“The best way for unionism to have a debate with itself is to have a meaningful choice of parties.”

Mick Fealty on March 4, 2022, 11:41 am

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polling station, poll, election day

As ever Newton Emerson’s got it right. The best thing that could happen to unionism now is that it has a huge fight over its future. Voters whether actual unionists or those happy to remain UK want something more than the usual reflexive defensiveness or clarion calls against the other tribe. As we wrote in A Long Peace (now a long time ago, but sadly still relevant to a still too inward looking Unionism today)… Defensiveness is far too predictable …

“And yet, as history pushes, the standup stands firm…”

Mick Fealty on March 2, 2022, 1:27 pm

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man, newspaper, read

Dave Pell Via John Naughton’s blog this morning… As a teen during the Holocaust, my dad was hunted by Ukrainian henchmen working for the Nazis. When history pushed, he pushed back. Today, he would be proud of the courage shown by Ukraine’s Jewish president Volodymyr Zelensky. When the U.S. offered him an escape route, he responded, “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.” Man, I wish my dad — who survived the Holocaust because he got a …

Especially in a crisis, we must hold space for non political witnesses from every side of the room

Mick Fealty on February 28, 2022, 9:25 am

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avenue, trees, path

“Since 1945, Western Europe has enjoyed a holiday from history. That has bred and unearned sense of moral superiority vis-a-vis unluckier people.” – Simon Kuper, Financial Times 26/27 February, 2022 It should be obvious by now the world is not as comfortable, cosy or as unambiguously predictable as many of us have come to think of it. Even those of us who grew up with conflict in the 70s/80s/90s. Kuper writes with directness and uncommon appreciation of where we find …

Russian insight on how they do information wars (and how the new demagogues use it in the west)…

Mick Fealty on February 25, 2022, 6:52 pm

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After watching the Russian Ambassador on RTÉ’s Six One News just now, I thought I’d share these highlights from the Handbook of Russian Information Warfare. RTÉ Six One interview with Russia’s Ambassador to Ireland Yuriy Filatov | Live updates: https://t.co/65zqcDbQ9X pic.twitter.com/1y7QfJUkh7 — RTÉ News (@rtenews) February 25, 2022 It makes for sobering reading (and will be somewhat familiar to consumers of domestic politics)… ‘A study of information dominance published in an authoritative Russian military source lists the main principles of media …

Kenyan Ambassador’s lesson for the UN Security Council has resonances for any “new Irelander…”

Mick Fealty on February 23, 2022, 12:02 pm

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road, street, winding

I’m currently deeply immersed in Fintan O’Toole’s absorbing tome “We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958” that an English friend recently lent me. As I came up for air earlier this morning on Twitter, I found someone had tagged me in this Tweet, featuring the Kenyan Ambassador Martin Kimani’s remarks to the UN Security Council yesterday. If you're gonna listen to any speech about #Ukraine 🇺🇦, let it be this one. The Kenya ambassador to the UNSC …

And quietly perhaps we have the beginning of the end of the problematic protocol?

Mick Fealty on February 22, 2022, 8:38 am

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laptop, office, hand

In principle, do we finally have a solution to the invasive NI Protocol… (h/t Mainland Ulsterman)? 13/ The official said the EU had accepted in principle the UK argument that a distinction should be made between goods that are moving GB-NI and remaining there for end-users, and those goods which go on to cross the land border into the single market. — Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) February 21, 2022 Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on …

Forget about polls, it’s about time the SDLP made nationalism a coherent offer of their own…

Mick Fealty on February 21, 2022, 7:43 am

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vegetables, basket, vegetable basket

“Sometimes, you can actually bring home something that is food, food for the human community that we can sustain ourselves on and go forward.” — Terence McKenna The SDLP showed basic human decency in cancelling its conference this weekend. Statements from Colum Eastwood and Claire Hanna, show that both of whom had known Chris Stalford from their pre-politics days. The decision went deeper than politics. The expression of human empathy is not often something that is seen as a political …

Principal Deputy Speaker Christopher Stalford MLA dies

Mick Fealty on February 20, 2022, 3:04 pm

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The DUP MLA Christopher Stalford was one the good guys. He was always sincere in his politics, proud of the fact he’d always been a DUP man, but typical of a lot of later generation politicians in Northern Ireland who wanted to see it become a better place. Not least for his four kids, who anyone with eyes to see could tell he loved deeply and with great tenderness. I’ll share just two statements which I think show the reach …

Harder to take the tough decisions needed to address the northern housing problem, than complain about the same problems in the south…

Mick Fealty on February 17, 2022, 3:54 pm

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sand, shovel, construction

My favourite line from Tom Kelly’s Irish News column on Monday was “in Northern Ireland positivity is sucked from the air like a Dyson on overdrive”. Of course, we’re not alone in that regard. Populism is hollowing politics as usual everywhere. Louis Theroux’s latest series opened last night on the BBC with a really interesting look at the new young alt Right in America, in which one respondent talked about how and why did not want to engage with a …

This June we’ll have been twenty years a Slugging. Some brief reflections.

Mick Fealty on February 16, 2022, 10:42 am

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parthenon, greece, acropolis

Slugger will be 20 years old in June. That’s not something I ever expected to write. What set Slugger apart from other blogs at the time (which were mostly American, with a few Brits and Irish) was that I’d set it up as a research tool not a bully pulpit. I wanted somewhere I could pin other people’s stories, research and valuable analysis ahead of a project I hoped to get funding for looking to inject some intellectual capital into …

Voter volatility has finally arrived in Northern Ireland, but which boats will it float?

Mick Fealty on February 15, 2022, 7:05 am

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beach, beaching, ships

There’s lots to digest in the latest University of Liverpool poll for the simple reason that some of its questions dig a little more beneath the surface than we’re accustomed. None of it is entirely surprising to those of us who’ve been paying attention. Jon Tonge had the headline figures on Twitter yesterday (NB he later amended the DUP’s rounded figure to 19% with the caveat that the SF lead over the DUP is now 3.8%): SF 23%, DUP 20%, Alliance …

Getting a more unmuddled sense of Brexit through a larger set of perspectives.

Mick Fealty on February 14, 2022, 11:57 am

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mountains, sun, clouds

This is an excellent (and fairly non judgemental) outline of the Brexit process and why and how it got messy quite so quickly from Professor Anand Menon, Director of the UK in a Changing Europe… I think the non judgemental bit is important if we are going to stand any chance of un-muddling things even if it is very hard to achieve… Anand breaks it down to the following… Leaving is hard Division is difficult The constitution is complex Trade …

A functional new start would not be difficult to engineer, but will enough people vote for it?

Mick Fealty on February 9, 2022, 6:02 am

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hands, thumb, promise

When the Belfast Agreement was set up there was supposed to be a review to see how it was working and to make adjustments accordingly. But with the stop start nature of the way the institutions went at the very beginning it slipped off the table. What we got instead was s power play at St Andrews and a settlement in favour of the two biggest parties: think sectarian headcount (a “keep us all in jail” card for the DUP) …