In the run up to the local elections, John Manley’s Irish News article on Hill St. in Belfast added more fuel to an ongoing debate over car restrictions. But why does a tiny cobbled back street in Belfast warrant a quarter page in one of NI’s biggest daily newspapers and continue to generate a running commentary on other media outlets? Hill St. is located at the back of St Anne’s Cathedral in the old print district – and runs through …
Heading into the local elections in Northern Ireland, we’ll hear about health, the climate crisis, the housing crisis, anti-social behaviour, dereliction etc. We’ll hear very little about parking. But we should, because it affects all of us and contributes directly to those issues. The word “parking” has its roots in Washington DC. In 1871, the Washington Parking Commission was established – not to park cars as they didn’t exist then – but to to plant trees, bringing shade, birdsong and …
As a recent poll showed, Fine Gael lost the room when it ended the eviction ban. In fact, it lost the whole house. It bet the mortgage on private landlords re-entering the market if the eviction ban was lifted. In reality, private landlords can’t exit the market quickly enough when the opportunity comes. There is more money to be made in short-term lets through Airbnb or selling into the swollen property market. The Government has a fundamental responsibility to provide …
The Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics is seeking to provide ‘brain food’ to all and sundry over seven days in March. The packed programme is a veritable feast of ‘ideas for a better world’. Now in its ninth year, the festival has over 130 in-person and online events, and the majority are free. While politics is often to the fore, politicians themselves aren’t usually platformed at the non-partisan festival’s events. But this year, one event will be exploring …
Despite the recent hikes in interest rates and the general uncertainty around the economy, house prices are still rising. From Margeret Canning in the BelTel: Dr Michael McCord, reader in real estate valuation at UU, said: “The housing market, while showing a softening in price growth over the course of 2022, continues to show resilience with no price correction evident despite the rather turbid economic setting, the continued cost of living crisis and Bank of England base rate increases. “There …
It shouldn’t actually surprise us in the slightest, and for once I can’t entirely blame the DUP’s collapse of the Assembly. On 25th October, John O’Dowd announced as Infrastructure Minister that Translink fares would “remain frozen for another year”, but today it was announced that they would rise by an average of 7% from 6 March. The Secretary of State made a statement to the House of Commons on 24 November 2022 saying he recognised “that steps will also need …
One of the conversation points that I often encounter in the debate around climate change and the move to net zero/energy independence is the role that could be played by hydrogen. Like many of the other aspects of this debate, it is poorly understood, particularly among the press and policymakers. What is hydrogen ? Chemically, it is the simplest and most plentiful element in the universe, having one proton and one electron. It’s thought that, along with a small number …
Just before Christmas, it was announced for the first time that researchers at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US had successfully achieved “ignition” within a nuclear fusion reaction. This generated a lot of excitement in the press, not all of it well-informed, so I thought it might be interesting to explore this topic in more detail. What is nuclear fusion ? Why was this news so significant ? When will we begin to benefit …
Quite a difference in the weather today. It was 14 this morning in Belfast. The BBC reports that we should get our £600 energy payments in January, but I will not hold my breath. From the report: The UK government confirmed electricity firms will be funded for the payments, with direct debit customers receiving the money into their bank accounts. Other customers will be sent a voucher to redeem the payment. The money is intended to help with energy bills …
Fusion energy has been promised for decades now. I remember watching BBC Horizon documentaries about it in the 1990s; it was always ‘just around the corner’. But now it seems we have an actual breakthrough. For the first time, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California could generate more energy than it took to start a reaction. Fusion is different from nuclear fission. It is a very clean energy source, with none of the pollution and greenhouse gases …
I admit I take a certain amount of pleasure in the fact that a guy with an Irish background is being such a complete pain in the neck to the British Establishment. They absolutely loath charismatic working-class leaders. This is the front page of today’s Sun. Take a minute to watch this bizarre monologue from Richard Madeley yesterday: 'Will you answer the question Mr Lynch, I won't let you get away with nonsense'@richardm56 grills the General Secretary of the RMT, …
The Nationality and Borders Act achieved Royal Assent in April 2022. A period of consultation is under way on the implications for immigration tribunals etc. The mainstream GB media focus has been on issues like detention in Rwanda whilst asylum applications are considered, but of interest here is the controversial requirement for non British and Irish citizens to need to apply for an Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) to enter Northern Ireland from the Republic. In this OP I explore why …
A campaign has been launched calling for the reopening of a key railway line that served the West of Northern Ireland up until the 1960s. Lobby group ‘Into The West’ campaigns for the improvement and expansion of rail across counties Derry/Londonderry, Tyrone, Fermanagh and Donegal. The organisation was founded in 2004 when they successfully defeated a proposal by civil servants to shut the Derry-Belfast rail line west of Ballymena. Since then they have also secured a major track upgrade of …
Yesterday my electric tariff was 38p per unit. Today it is down to 17p, which is quite a drop, and not far off the 14p it was last year. The reason is the new Energy Price Guarantee scheme has come into effect. The scheme will cap the price for a unit of gas and electricity until April 2023. Bills will be reduced by up to 19.9p per kilowatt hour (kWh) for electricity and 4.8p/kWh for gas. The Consumer Council have …
Back at the start of August, home heating oil was £399 for 500 litres. It is always a dilemma to know when to buy oil, so I decided to wait and see if the price dropped any further. Instead, the opposite happened, and prices shot up to £545 for 500 litres, and I have been kicking myself ever since. But at last some good news, prices are coming down again. Here is the price per litre chart for the past …
Following on from my previous articles on how nuclear power works, and why we need to rethink the dangers posed by it, it’s time to talk about the other safety-related concerns that are often raised in the debate about the viability of nuclear power. Can a nuclear power station explode like a nuclear bomb ? What happens if a nuclear power station finds itself in the theatre of military conflict, as is currently happening in Ukraine ? To deal with …
A couple of weeks back, I wrote a little about how governments are reconsidering their attitude to nuclear power, and talked about the mechanics of how a reactor works and how it can solve the problems of getting us to net zero carbon emissions and securing energy supply in the long term. But we can’t gloss over the bad reputation that nuclear power has. Can’t it blow up, like a nuclear bomb ? And haven’t there been a number of …
Get your jumpers ready, the cost of energy is predicted to go higher and higher this year. From the Daily Mirror: But now energy experts at BFY say energy prices could hit £3,420 in October – then £3,850 when the price cap is reviewed again in January 2023. A year ago in July 2021 the price cap was just £1,138 a year – and most energy deals were much cheaper than that. Adam Jones, senior manager at BFY Group, told …
A report by Carbon Brief shows what is possible with Renewable Energy when you put your mind to it. From the report: Our compilation and analysis of targets and projects announced by the central and provincial governments shows wind and solar capacity would reach more than 1,100GW by 2025, tripling the 360GW total installed in 2015 and doubling the 536GW at the end of 2020. The wind and solar plans emerging from recent policymaking are far ahead of the pace …
Last week I wrote an article suggesting that in the event of a united Ireland, the British government would propose that the future Irish government assume responsibility for paying the former Northern Ireland state pensions, on the basis that it would already be receiving the benefit of historic pension contributions that were invested in the form of public spending there. The article noted that this was the proposed arrangement in the event of Scottish independence (see page 139). This drew …
