Human rights are under threat in the UK, warns the Northern Ireland Human Rights Chief Commissioner Alyson Kilpatrick. While the immediate question is whether the British government will change the law in order to remove large numbers of asylum seekers to Rwanda, this is in the context of proposals for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. This would have significant, negative, implications for Northern Ireland, given that this is one of the foundations of the Good …
I was on Nolan on Monday with Mark Simpson to talk about the famine, Sir Charles Trevelyan and possible reparations. It’s a subject close to my heart, not least because generationally my own great grandfather was 19 in 1845, the onset of the famine. Featured was an interview with Laura Trevelyan, one time BBC journalist and great great granddaughter of the man who, as assistant secretary to the Treasury was responsible for famine relief in Ireland under the Premiership of …
So here we are – the final episode of this series of ‘Blue Lights’. And again, it only seems fair to fire another warning shot to those reading this review to expect a lot of spoilers from previous episodes. So if you’ve not yet seen all five episodes preceding this one, you should probably watch them first before reading this. With viewers still reeling from the events of last week’s episode, ‘Blue Lights’ immediately thrust its audience into the mania …
Watch back last week’s conference that shone a light on work by trade unions, community groups, artists and faith-based organisations in the road towards peace.
We hear a lot about the last 20 years being a Golden Age for television and with some justification. But right now it really feels like a Golden Age for Irish TV comedy and drama. After years of developing directing, writing, acting and film production talent, stories set in Dublin and Cork are really making their mark. Sharon Horgan’s Apple TV+ black comedy ‘Bad Sisters‘ was last year’s most exhilarating new show. RTE and AMC’s crime drama ‘Kin‘ with Clare …
Dan McGinn is a journalist who was previously the Ireland Political Editor and Ireland Deputy Editor of the Press Association and has worked for the Irish News, Belfast Telegraph and other publications and for TV and radio. He currently works in communications and public affairs and is also a film and television critic with his own blog They’ll Love It In Pomona which covers the latest cinema and television releases.
I was asked to come on Nolan this morning to comment on a story I might otherwise have missed. It’s part of a bigger play the NIO seems to be using to put added pressure on the DUP to suspend its boycott of the Stormont institutions. In the detail it’s rather telling about just what a free ride our political class has been taking since the re-start of the institutions back in 2007, which sadly, in reality never really survived …
Sorry I wasn’t able to get to Tuesday’s discussion of the media’s role at the time of the Belfast Agreement, it would have been a pleasure to be back in the company of many audience members with whom I had shared some great moments since that time. Hearing them speak you realise how long and isolating the process of waiting for some or any product was back then. And also how well resourced the media was. Would the modern day …
Dominic Bryan and Brendan Sturgeon of Queen’s University Belfast lay out the complexity of dealing with the remnants of major Loyalist ‘paramilitary’ groups and argue that treating it only as an organised crime problem is insufficient. In many respects the peace process in Northern Ireland has been successful. Most obviously there is overwhelming support for political processes over the use of force. After agreements in 1998 and 2006 weapons were removed from the streets as the British Army stood down its policing …
At ninety George Mitchell rocked the house yesterday treating his audience to the wisdom, humour and realism no doubt honed over many years in American public life. For today, I’ll stick to his opening remarks (and a recurring theme here of renewal)… On the evening the Agreement was reached I commended the men and women who wrote and signed it. But I also said that it would take other leaders in the future to safeguard and extend their work. And so it has. …
‘There’s no money for it’ says a series of callers to Stephen Nolan’s radio programme, when informed by Stephen that the IFA are confident that the long awaited development at what was for generations the home GAA in Belfast. Before going any further we should pause at this point and let this state of affairs sink in. I don’t mean the absence of Stormont, I mean the IFA, the original representative soccer body on the island until the FAI broke …
…there seemed no ground in front of my feet, only the abyss of star-studded space falling away forever. – David Abrams Asked by Ian Dale the other night on LBC whether the Biden visit would have an effect, I gave him the obvious answer which is that since only the DUP (the current fulcrum around which the fate of the Assembly revolves) can decide, it changes nothing. Aside from political considerations, US Presidential visits are fun especially for the people …
“What’s the difference between a bug in a program and a misunderstanding?” — Monica Anderson I watched the events of Good Friday 1998 in the old cottage we rented off a local estate in Dorset. My abiding memory though was an audio tape that one of my Irish students brought to the class I ran on Tuesday nights some weeks after the event itself. On one side were programmes he’d taped via satellite of Raidio na Gaeltachta for the class, …
As the information sheet for Gail Ritchie’s exhibition, The Im/material Monument, points out, 25 years after the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement there is no memorial to commemorate the collective dead of the Troubles. Through a series of objects, Ritchie challenges our imaginations as to what our memorialising could be. With a guided tour, she explained the motivations and intent of her work on display at QSS Artist Studios. Ritchie began her curated tour by remarking that she had …
In Northern Ireland’s most challenged neighbourhoods and communities, where advocating for the Agreement carried the greatest risk, the 25 years since its signing have been a long harrowing of broken promises, stalled initiatives, and predatory practices. From the mid-nineties onwards, buoyed by the prospect of local power-sharing, a raft of social policies emerged with the potential of consolidating the decades of grassroots activism that maintained local communities (urban and rural) in the face of violence. Under New Labour, the first …
A “human peace wall” event at a Belfast interface marked the 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. About 100 people lined up from the Falls Road to the Shankill Road end on Northumberland Street, forming a line of solidarity across the community. They stood still for 25 seconds, to mark the years since the peace accord was agreed upon. The event was organised by New Life City Church and the Falls Residents’ Association. After some singing and prayers by …
“I have bedimmed The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And ’twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder.” — Prospero, The Tempest So the BBC has finally pulled together a three part documentary on the life of Ian Paisley (Snr). You can find all three episodes of the House of Paisley on the iPlayer here. It’s a tall order to tell an authoritative story of one so complex and controversial. It’s hard to stay between the ditches of hagiography and demonisation of someone who dominated our lives for so long. My own attempt back …
In my recent contribution to a series of talks given at Lisburn Road Library for BBC NI, I recounted my upbringing in the Belfast of the 1950s and early 1960s. Here it is below… ‘My Belfast’ doesn’t exist anymore. It lives on in memories of another time – basically, when I grew up in the city in the 1950s and 1960s. In what follows, I’d like to think about that time and try and recapture what it’s like to revisit that …
David Moane is a Dublin-based retiree with an interest in politics and current affairs. Here he re-assesses the career of Charlie Haughey in the light of Gary Murphy’s recently well received biography. I have mixed views on Haughey. I am in my early sixties now and am old enough to remember the great sparring matches between him and Conor Cruise O’Brien. When Haughey was appointed Taoiseach in December 1979, O’Brien was editor-in-chief of the Observer newspaper. He wrote a column …
A new poll commissioned by the Iona Institute confirms that Mass attendance in the Republic has still not reached its pre-pandemic levels. And it highlights a stark lack of engagement among regular Mass-goers with the Church’s synodal process – a worldwide initiative that Pope Francis hopes will renew the church. The survey also asked an unusual question about the ‘soul’ of the nation: ‘In your opinion, has Ireland lost her soul?’ Forty percent of the general population said yes, 23% …
