Soapbox – Page 21 – Slugger O'Toole

A letter to the Ministers of Education and Health on Childcare provision

Soapbox on June 11, 2020, 12:24 pm

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Dr Orna Young & Dr Ciara Fitzpatrick write for us about their joint letter highlighting the issue of childcare provision We have written to the Ministers for Education and Health to urge them to provide clarity on the issue of childcare provision, and an indication of a road map to ensure children can return to childcare settings when appropriate and the risk has been proven to be reduced. The current situation is unsustainable, with parents and guardians continuing to provide …

What can we change to help consume less of the earth’s precious resources – and in doing so, improve our lives?

Soapbox on May 26, 2020, 1:50 pm

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Joan McCoy is President of the Royal Society of Ulster Architects and writes in support of #OurChangedPlaceNI – a campaign which asks people what they’d change about the built environment During lockdown, I have been entertained by receiving and sending memes commenting on the current situation – some funny, some less so. One has stuck in my mind though – it was a cartoon of the earth, battered and bruised and coved in bandages – beside an almost equally large …

A new borrowing arrangement for local Councils is key to funding a Just Transition

Soapbox on May 26, 2020, 11:15 am

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Sean Fearon is a Just Transition Researcher. He is writing in a personal capacity. It will be no surprise to anyone that the COVID-19 public health emergency has reshaped the economic and public finance environment in Ireland, as around the world. Once upon a time the British and Irish governments, in lock-step with the European Commission, championed deficit-reduction and savage austerity programmes as a most noble and urgent economic crusade. As of May 2020, these same actors now run historic …

Preventing the Millennials becoming ‘Generation Unemployment’

Soapbox on May 22, 2020, 6:15 pm

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Everyone is massively inconvenienced and distressed by the impact of the coronavirus. The consequences for our health workers and other essential workers have been immense. I hope that as we go forward we will ensure they are properly valued, supported and paid. But I am also very worried about the prospects for our young adults. Those people leaving school to seek work this summer, and those finishing at college and university, are facing the most severe challenges of any generation …

Covid-19 has forced us to think differently. So let’s take the opportunity to build back better.

Soapbox on May 18, 2020, 3:35 pm

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Councillor Anthony Flynn represents the Ormiston DEA for the Green Party in Belfast City Council Dolly Parton’s Working Nine to Five is without question the anthem of the office worker. The sentiment is familiar to many of us and I might even have sang along to Dolly’s classic at Friday evening work drinks at some point. Covid-19 has put an abrupt end to office life and we’ve been thrust into working from home and in different ways. There’s been little …

Time to make academic selection History

Soapbox on May 13, 2020, 4:15 pm

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Writing in last Friday’s Guardian on the 75th anniversary of VE Day , and seeking possible parallels between the social changes that followed the war and those which might ensue from the Covid pandemic, Dame Joan Bakewell singled out the significance of the introduction of the 11-plus examinations in 1944, which she credited with having ‘completely transformed schooling in Britain’. While most of the welfare state provisions that followed the war were piloted through by Clement Atlee’s post-war Labour government, …

In praise of our parks & green spaces during the pandemic

Soapbox on May 11, 2020, 2:28 pm

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Cllr Brian Smyth is the Green Party Councillor on Belfast City Council I’ve developed a whole new level of appreciation of our public parks during this pandemic. I’ve been up to Cregagh Glen a few times during the last number of weeks and it brought me the head space I hadn’t realised I needed. I grew up in a block of flats with my mum and space, never mind head space, was in short supply. No garden, not much green …

Coronavirus: A chance to reshape our roads for the future…

Soapbox on April 25, 2020, 10:33 am

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Jonathan Hobbs is a cycling campaigner from Belfast The coronavirus pandemic has affected life in Northern Ireland in unprecedented ways. Thousands have becoming infected and hundreds have died, devastating families and communities. Lockdown has changed how go about daily business in ways that we would have thought unbelievable at the start of 2020. One of the very few positives to emerge has been the general outdoor environment, especially in my city Belfast. Vehicle traffic is almost non-existent compared to normal. …

Who wants to be a hero?

Soapbox on April 2, 2020, 12:16 pm

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Anne Madden, former Health Correspondent of The Irish News and freelance writer. All views my own. In recent commemorations we’ve looked back in anger and dismay at the atrocious waste of life during World War 1. A century ago feckless army generals sent thousands of young soldiers ‘over the top’ with mere hand rifles and bayonets into the line of machine gunfire. The ‘glorious dead’ were celebrated as heroes willing to sacrifice their lives for the nation. While everyone was …

Widespread Covid-19 testing needs to happen NOW!

Soapbox on April 1, 2020, 6:18 pm

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It is imperative that testing is extended to the community at large. The British government was totally at variance in stopping testing, in the first place. WHO recommendations amplified by Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghrebreyesus, whose mantra was “Test Test Test “, likened the position the Government took to “fighting a fire blindfold”, or as Prof. Gabriel Scally stated on BBC Radio – “letting it rip”. The absolute tenants of modern epidemiology are absolutely clear, in that gathering the evidence of …

New Virtual Festival Launched in Northern Ireland as a Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic

Soapbox on March 23, 2020, 12:04 pm

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The Imagine! Belfast Festival, forced to abandon over 90 public events because of the Covid-19 pandemic, is going virtual layer this week with much of its programme going online to ensure that audiences don’t miss out. In an imaginative response to the crisis, the popular event has been re-organised as a digital offering with over 25 events streamed during 25-27 March. The virtual festival, the first of its kind in Northern Ireland, will be free to view on the Imagine! …

Railway radicalism beats motorway madness… but new high-speed lines are off the menu

Soapbox on March 6, 2020, 11:03 am

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From Michael Rafferty, PhD student in Geography at the University of Luxembourg. The Salmon of Data deserves credit for his punchy, intriguing provocation on a radical but somehow arguable idea: a new high-speed rail link from Derry to Dublin. While this particular proposal is several bridges too far, there is significant merit in the concept of expanding rail, even to the North West—and with some (fairly major) alterations it deserves serious and timely consideration, particularly in comparison with current infrastructure …

An expert view on Covid 19, the new Coronavirus…

Soapbox on March 4, 2020, 7:12 am

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The majority of experts internationally believe that Covid 19 will continue to be transmitted and countries will see outbreaks. What isn’t known is when and how it will evolve in different regions, and how other factors such as climate may influence the outbreak. Information is coming out from China at a rapid rate and we are fortunate to benefit from studies and research undertaken by the Chinese health authorities. They are to be commended for their rapid response and sharing …

SOAPBOX: Why university staff are striking…

Soapbox on February 21, 2020, 7:33 am

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Dominic Bryan, is a Professor at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast. You can follow him on Twitter. Staff in Northern Ireland at Queen’s University, the University of Ulster and the Open University, myself included, are on strike again. Staff at Universities all over the UK are on strike again. This is the second time in a year and the third time in three years. It is utterly frustrating that we are back in …

SOAPBOX: Gambling – you can bet your life we have a problem (by John Kyle)

Soapbox on February 18, 2020, 6:57 pm

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Dr John Kyle is a retired GP and the Progressive Unionist Party councillor Titanic in Belfast and writes about the glaringly obvious lack of provision in respect of education, prevention and treatment around gambling addiction. A Department fort Communities consultation on the regulation of gambling closes on Friday 21 February.

Soapbox: Democracy Day 2020 helps launch 14 initiatives to involve the public more in decision-making

Soapbox on February 5, 2020, 9:21 am

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This time last week, more than 100 people gathered in Parliament Building’s Long Gallery for the fourth annual Democracy Day to share ideas about involving the public more in decision-making. At the heart of the programme organised by the Community Foundation in association with Imagine! Belfast Festival, 30 one-minute pitches made by organisations looking for support to hone their proposals and work with partners to deliver change.

God bless you Seamus and thank you for all your work in helping to bring peace to this country. It’s up to others to get on with it now.

Soapbox on January 24, 2020, 8:55 pm

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David Kerr was a Special Advisor and Press Secretary to David Trimble when he was First Minister in that period 1998-2001. I’m very sorry to hear of the death of Seamus Mallon tonight. When I worked with David Trimble in the First Minister’s office between 1998-2001, we worked closely with Seamus and his team, in his role as Deputy First Minister. He was a tough, principled and at times incredibly stubborn politician. Negotiating with Seamus took time because he was …

Maps and metaphors guide the way to resolving conflict

Soapbox on January 23, 2020, 12:49 pm

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Sir George Bain served as Vice Chancellor of Queens University Belfast from 1998-2004 Northern Ireland (or is it the North of Ireland?) is often described as ‘emerging’ from 30 years of violence known as ‘the Troubles’, 22 years after they were officially ended by an agreement whose name cannot be universally agreed. The power-sharing Executive and Assembly have finally been restored after a three-year hiatus. Promised measures for dealing with the legacy of the conflict have come and gone: the …

2020 – A key year for climate action including within the assembly

Soapbox on January 10, 2020, 1:25 pm

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Stevie Maginn is a Green Party Activist & Environmental Campaigner. 2019 was the year that the climate crisis finally became part of mainstream society thanks to the work of activists like Greta Thunberg and more locally, Youth Strike 4 Climate Belfast & Múscail. 2020 must be the year for Climate Action. The science is there, the UN International Panel for Climate Change recognises that global carbon emissions MUST peak this year, if average temperatures are to remain within 1.5C of …

Soapbox – Here we go again?

Soapbox on December 31, 2019, 11:30 am

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SOAPBOX – The PUP’s Councillor John Kyle reflects on the talks process, calling for elected representatives to listen to the voters and move beyond virtue signalling and blaming others to take action and deliver results by overcoming their mutual animosity. “Petty party politics has failed, the people deserve better.”