Mick Fealty – Page 9 – Slugger O'Toole

Pace Henry McDonald RIP, a warrior for Ireland and for peace…

Mick Fealty on February 19, 2023, 11:13 pm

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There’s a few things I was tempted to blog about tomorrow, but this is an occasion I would least have wanted to mark. Henry McDonald, late of The Observer (and The Guardian), has died. Henry was the first mainstream journalist to pick up our press release on the report that launched Slugger as a serious watering hole for Northern Irish politics. I wasn’t entirely happy with the angle he took, but then Henry and I rarely agreed. When we later …

Sunak’s flying visit to Belfast smacks more of a reality check than harbinger of a deal…

Mick Fealty on February 17, 2023, 9:10 am

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flower, life, yellow flower

Rishi Sunak is in Belfast to brief party leaders this morning. There’s been rumours circulating for weeks that a deal is done. Unlike Boris Johnson, the current PM has not been spraying promises around the place or playing high stakes in the media. It’s thought he’s kept the nature of the deal tight amongst a very small group within his own cabinet, so that what the party leaders hear this morning is pretty fresh. There’s an understanding in Dublin at …

Is UK political leadership starting to get real about putting their country back on post Brexit rails?

Mick Fealty on February 13, 2023, 1:22 pm

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entrance signage

I agree with much of what Frank says, not least because he focuses on Ireland and its transformative experience of EU membership. There’s an awful lot in what he says about referendums, though I still think they do far too many of them. He’s right to say that Brexit has been bad for the Republic, but probably not quite as bad as I (personally) feared. That’s largely to do with the fact that in spite of Boris Johnson’s promises to …

As the timelines extend, so do the possibilities for solving the Protocol riddle…

Mick Fealty on February 10, 2023, 7:26 am

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telephone, telegraph, pole

Two things worth noting this week. One is the legal challenge to the protocol failed in the Supreme Court. In an excellent OpEd in the News Letter Lord Paul Bew lays out (without hyperbole) the reasons why… …let us be clear — the protocol does not constitute a change to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Why? Because the constitutional status of Northern Ireland depends historically on the Government of Ireland Act 1920 which opened the way to two Parliaments …

“Those who want unity the most seem to see it is an extension of sameness…”

Mick Fealty on February 7, 2023, 1:54 pm

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loaf, to bake, crispy

Another poll in The Irish Times recently probes the unanchored certainties of those pushing an early unification without reference to the realities of the Belfast Agreement and the new binding articles of the Bunreacht na hÉireann. Fintan O’Toole comments: Those who want unity the most seem to see it is an extension of sameness: the North essentially dissolves into the South. But the survey shows how very far from Irish reality such an assumption remains. Any honest discussion of unity …

How Trumpian politicians “flood the media” with embarrassing issues they’re guilty of too…

Mick Fealty on January 31, 2023, 1:00 pm

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man in black suit jacket

“The art of progress is to reserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.” — Alfred North Whitehead The news that Facebook is going to let Donald Trump back on to Facebook at time when his public profile is not what it was (but apparently when speaking to those who can hear, he’s gotten a lot more extreme) has not gone down well with some. As the never Trump commentator Charlie Sykes notes in the Bulwark yesterday: The …

Republic using productivity boom to invest public infrastructure and housing

Mick Fealty on January 17, 2023, 12:35 pm

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house, structure, real estate

A typically spunky piece from the New Statesman’s new columnist Wolfgang Münchau starts with a great quote from Otto von Bismarck: “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” He has Angela Merkel in his sights. He notes that despite the appearance of economic success, her austerity policies have led to a public investment shortfall in public investment of some half-a-trillion pounds, with the dire consequences only leeching up from the …

“If there’s going to be a united Ireland, that Ireland is going to look different.”

Mick Fealty on January 16, 2023, 10:24 am

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aminoindane, psychoactive, drug

“Every voyage is intensive, and occurs in relation to thresholds of intensity between which it evolves or that it crosses.” — Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari It’s interesting how Tommy Tiernan has moved from raucous bad boy of the Irish comedy stage, to a sort of father confessor, conscience of a nation figure on his recent interview programme, The Tommy Tiernan Show (most of it is available globally). That’s partly because from the first episode he’s wanted to ‘horse into’ …

Invest NI faces a damning report on its lack of strategic delivery and poor organisational culture

Mick Fealty on January 13, 2023, 3:38 pm

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result, excuse me, fail

This week saw the release of a damning report on the performance of Invest NI. The report was commissioned before Minister for the Department of the Economy left office from a stand alone Independent Review Body chaired by Sir Michael Lyons. In the executive summary Lyons and his team make the same case we’ve been talking about this week in Health, ie that the political stalemate has grave implications for the success (or lack thereof) of a critical strategic body …

New air of seriousness about EU/UK negotiations promises to defuse the NI Protocol for Unionists

Mick Fealty on January 12, 2023, 1:43 pm

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explosive, explosion, bomb

John Manley reported earlier in the week that whilst the timetable may not coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement, there seems a seriousness about EU/UK talks that was entirely missing under the Boris Johnson administration. In today’s Irish News Newton Emerson notes that even the Restoring Northern Ireland’s Place in the Union report from a new think tank Centre for the Union, and coauthored by Jamie Bryson and Ethan Thoburn, editor of the Bruges Group… Unionism’s practical concerns …

Health Crisis: “When you don’t have political leadership, you don’t get decisions..”

Mick Fealty on January 11, 2023, 11:14 am

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bridge, autumn, nature

This is a useful addendum to my post on Friday, which highlighted the deleterious effect of political boycotting of the only institutions that can deliver real change both in the here and now and in the longer term for four out of the last six years. John Compton, author of the previous report the joint first ministers of the DUP and Sinn Féin also chose to ignore, Transforming Your Care had this to say about the total absence of any real …

On how we’re not dealing with the too difficult to confront present…

Mick Fealty on January 10, 2023, 10:24 am

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a man standing at a table with a laptop in front of him

In all the comment that fills newsprint about our past, sad cases of families deprived of their loved ones looking for someone to pay for their life time of loss, or offence taken a commemorations of dead paramilitaries, whilst extra judicial shootings continue in the here and now (the killing of Seán Fox in a social club in West Belfast just part of a self regulating criminal landscape now)… Meanwhile across town a more contemporary form of politics is getting …

NI politics still mired in fear and loathing largely because it remains stubbornly unaccountable…

Mick Fealty on January 6, 2023, 3:43 pm

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Have you noticed how weird the democratic world is getting (yes, outside Northern Ireland)? The UK has had three PMs in as many months, and now the US Congress is being to ransom by a caucus of no more than 5% of Representatives. The world (not just the UK) is getting more and more like Northern Ireland where we’re never sure what we want but we are sure as clear about what we don’t want. One common link between all …

For a resilient society we must challenge the master narratives that catastrophise our past suffering with our own stories

Mick Fealty on January 5, 2023, 11:51 am

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music, cassette tape, cassette

Stories for me kick in about the time I finally began to do some interesting things with my working life. I spent a large chunk of my 20s and 30s helping groups of kids mostly (in schools mostly) across Ireland, Britain and in what was then a carefully delineated western Europe from Lisbon to Wilhelmina in northern Sweden to Keady in south Armagh. In west Berlin, nearly four years before the wall came down, I vaguely recall gathering a story …

If you’re a commenter on Slugger, then please read this short note on civility, pain and learning…

Mick Fealty on January 4, 2023, 12:20 pm

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I inadvertently got caught up in the staid drama of the US House of Representatives failing three times to elect a speaker. A small band of hold outs when to (in my limited view) the ludicrous extreme of voting for someone who didn’t want the job. It is emblematic of a modern era in which signalling discontent is more politically profitable pastime than fastening down the more challenging job of getting stuff done. This was a protest against the ‘secret …

Ireland’s grand coalition (that Micheál Martin built) throws its job share switch half way through…

Mick Fealty on January 3, 2023, 11:08 am

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We live in a world where fewer journalists chase fewer and fewer stories. The change of Taoiseach just before Christmas has come with a flurry in the southern press chasing a newly refreshed PR initiative from the less-than-shy Leo Varadkar. The contrast with his predecessor Micheál Martin is stark. Martin’s love of and focus on policy means rather than the press there’s been very little in the media about what has been the most active period in central government in …

To “save” the Belfast Agreement we need a strategic deployment of our own democratic values

Mick Fealty on December 29, 2022, 2:27 pm

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black traffic light

A variety of questions have been raised over the past few days in the Irish Times opinion pages, including Alex Kane’s asking whether the Belfast Agreement is worth saving at this stage. Those of us who know and love Alex know this is not a new tune. He’s one of life’s pessimists, though not without good reason. He was out on the doors during the twin disaster elections (for the UUP at least) in 2003 and 2005 which saw the end …

Its tolerance for #Bullshit is slowly eating up the US’s once prodigious appetite for long term gains

Mick Fealty on December 28, 2022, 11:38 am

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man, secret, face

Nothing is true; everything is allowed. -Naked Lunch, William Burroughs This is a US story with useful universal lessons attached. Congressman Elect George Santos fate may be sealed by the fact his defence of his lies has taken a Woody Allen-ish comedic turn. He now claims that rather being a Jew or Jewish, he’s Jew-ish. As blogged here a long, long time ago, this is, quite literally, “Bullshit” [There’s a book on it! – Ed]. “Bullshit is trying to impress the listener …

Real politics should co-evolve with experience, not just chase after a bunch of groundless abstractions

Mick Fealty on December 22, 2022, 7:39 am

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an abstract image of a purple and pink cube

Every model of abstraction you make, your models get prettier and prettier but the world you’re describing gets farther and farther away… -Katherine Collins One downside to institutional unsteadiness in Northern Ireland is that we end up talking about what might eventually replace them, rather than how to fix the obvious flaw of how easy it is for one party to lift the ball, walk off the pitch and end the game. Oran Doyle in the Irish Times observes: Northern …

Beyond Civil War: What can the north learn from the south to make good on the promise of the Belfast Agreement?

Mick Fealty on December 16, 2022, 11:02 am

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body of water near bridge

“The way through this morass is to be more curious and less judgmental.” -Ted Lasso, fictional TV Soccer Coach “There was and is quite a lot to be proud of [in the modern Irish State]” was an apt final line in RTÉ’s documentary on the Irish Civil War which finished on Tuesday. It was a rare acknowledgment of an arduous journey rarely talked about in the south. That reluctance many lie in the fact that it’s only been in recent generations …