Soapbox Kate Nicholl is a former candidate for the Alliance Party. She writes for us today on the issue of abortion rights & in defence of those who oppose an extension of the 1967 act. I’m going to say something unpopular about abortion. And defend those who don’t support the extension of the 1967 Act. Right now there is a very real debate going on in our society about a woman’s right to choose. For the past 4 years I worked …
James Orr is director of Friends of the Earth in Northern Ireland. In his account of what’s been happening in an East Antrim wood belonging to Northern Ireland Water, he argues that recent planning reforms have led to a water company getting involved in oil exploration on its own land. Woodburn, near Carrickfergus. The clue is in the name. In this local haven, there is a wood growing and a burn flowing. Woodburn is designated in the local plan as a …
This Easter time many thousands of Christian people across Northern Ireland will gather to celebrate Christ’s resurrection. They will do so in churches, houses and communities where they will share the stories- as laid down in Christian Scripture- of that event some 2000 years ago. Of those who gather, many will be convinced of the truths told in those stories. They will speak of it as a reality in their own lives and will have developed a whole way of …
Jamie Bryson is a Unionist political activist interested in law, human rights and writing. He is author of My Only Crime Was Loyalty and banned Nama book ‘The Three Headed Dog’. Currently a political advisor and campaign manager for Cllr Ruth Patterson. I have been following the debate – mostly in the Newsletter Letters page – around the call by Professor John Brewer for more “peace journalism”. It’s a term that catches my interest because I sense a deeper, and …
WHAT’S IN A NAME; I always said if I ran for election again I’d change my surname to something beginning with an A or a B. Nicholl is such an unfortunate political surname, especially in Northern Ireland where it gets lost after all the M’s. Because it is a truth generally acknowledged that candidates who are first on the ballot tend to receive a vote advantage compared to those whose names begin with letters later in the alphabet.
In this country of ours, we have a story and a history that is very sad. It is very traumatic for many people. I think today of those who have lost family, friends or comrades to the violent times here. In doing so, I am not judging one death or suffering family as any less or more deserving than another. To remember something, it must, by definition, be in the past. If it is not in the past, we need …
“What would Belfast look like, sound like, feel like, taste like, if the city was a cultural commons?” asks the event description on the Imagine Festival’s website. It was this question that drew me to my first-ever Imagine Festival event, a so-called “conversational seminar” entitled “Imagining Belfast as a Cultural Commons,” hosted by Voluntary Arts Ireland and held at City Hall on Monday. Between the plethora of events organized for this year’s self-described “Festival of Ideas & Politics” and the …
We are all gearing up for an Assembly election at which we will select decision makers, complain about them for the next five years, and then select a slightly different crew in five years time. This is called democracy. Broadly speaking it works, but given the gridlock in the system and a pervasive sense of apathy about politics, it is probably wise to be on the look-out for ways of improving our democracy. One approach is to suggest that for …
For St Patrick’s Day Mark Perryman outlines the meaning of the forthcoming Easter Rising Centenary for models of Britishness. St Patrick’s Day across England has always been more of a party than our own St George’s Day. Down the local, one of the best night outs of the year, a non-stop evening drenched in all things Irish. A celebration of Ireland’s freedom, which can never be entirely separated from its place in English, and British, history either. But the framing …
Michael Moore is Policy Officer at Macmillan Cancer Support In a matter of weeks, the Assembly election outcome will be known and elected MLAs will be contemplating their priorities for the next five years. The numbers, needs and experiences of people affected by cancer in Northern Ireland make a powerful case for cancer care remaining high on the agenda. We want to see all parties in government working together – along with Health and Social Care providers and charities – …
Jamie Bryson is a well known anti-agreement Loyalist activist with an interest in law, politics and writing. He is author of “My Only Crime Was Loyalty”, an account of his role in the Union Flag protests and his subsequent lengthy and complex criminal trial. In an interview with Danny Morrison from the Andersonstown News just over a month ago, the former Republican prisoner remarked that surely the DUP would say that by Ruth Patterson- and other independents- standing in hotly …
The noise that has emanated from politicians – past and present – and pundits about what the next government might look like has been difficult to make sense of in recent days. Equally trenchant arguments have been made, on the one hand, that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will form a coalition and, on the other, that such a grand coalition is impossible. Some have advocated for a minority Fine Gael government, supported from the opposition benches by Fianna Fáil. …
About 10 years ago, I was helping to facilitate a week-long summer scheme project in the Lower Shankill area of West Belfast, mostly helping to coordinate the work of young volunteers who were part of a programme set up by the Church of Ireland. The volunteers were being housed 2 miles away at the King’s Hall in South Belfast. I’d arrive at the community centre where we were working early each morning, while the volunteers would arrive after lunch. From …
Chris Eisenstadt is a US citizen who has been living in Northern Ireland. He is also a member of the Ulster Unionist Party. Here he considers the controversy over Sammy Wilson’s engagement captured by BBC reporter, Conor Spackman. Northern Ireland isn’t a racist place. Sure, it has issues with racism, and a few racists live here, but fundamentally it isn’t a place where racism is part of the fabric of society. It isn’t a place where causal, ignorant and lazy …
Suzanne Collins is the Director of Operations and Campaigns for Women For Election. She writes for us about the success of female candidates in the 2016 General Election. In 1990, the newly elected Irish President Mary Robinson who was the first woman to be elected to the office, thanked her voters the ‘women of Ireland, Mná na Éireann, who instead of rocking the cradle rocked the system.’ The system may have been rocked but it another 26 years and a …
Dr. David Shiels is College Research Associate in History at Wolfson College, Cambridge and author of a forthcoming biography of Enoch Powell. He argues that if Unionists insist on peeling away the post war constitutional frame by leaving the EU, you risk the unraveling of the British Union too. The Democratic Unionist Party has, at last, come out in favour of Brexit. The party which proudly wears the badge of Euroscepticism in Northern Ireland has until now refused to take …
There is a proposal from the Department of Regional Development for a bridge linking the Gasworks with Ormeau Park in South Belfast. Alliance party councillor, Emmet McDonough-Brown writes for us arguing for the bridge… Belfast is a city on the rise. As we emerge from conflict we find our city growing in confidence and ready to claim its place in these islands as a fantastic place to live in, work in and raise a family in. Along the way we …
Trevor Ringland responds to Chris Donnelly’s proposal to co-opt the Irish Tricolour as the only way of resolving the raft of flag disputes. He argues that the issues left unresolved by the longest period of sustained political violence in Irish history cannot be addressed by returning to old arguments, but by creatively breaking new ground within the terms of the historic Belfast Agreement.
There was so much violence back then. That year alone saw 98 people lose their lives. Like the violence itself, the people who died came from all perceived sides in the conflict. However, almost half those who died were recorded as ‘civilians’. I was a 15 year old civilian in the summer of 1987. Despite the violence that raged around me, my life went on as normal- as normal as it could have been. Each evening, now that school was …
SOAPBOX – Ali FitzGibbon responds to yesterday’s post agreeing that the price of administering public resources can be disproportionate to the budget but arguing that participative budgeting would prone to localism, dominant interests and fails to capture the boundary-smashing, crazy adventure, the surprise and imaginative leaps that are the essence of the arts.
