Society and Culture – Page 14 – Slugger O'Toole

Irish passport holders in the North to benefit from access to the controversial new 20 million Newry Duty-Free Zone…

Brian O'Neill on April 1, 2023, 7:00 am

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For generations, border people have been arbitrage experts, using the different regimes North and South to their advantage. In the Second World War they would smuggle things like butter and eggs, but in recent years, it has more likely been diesel, cattle and even waste. Now renowned local Newry entrepreneur Dan Amibaareáin is looking to capitalise on the NI Protocol by building a new £8 million pound Duty-Free Shopping Centre on the outskirts of Newry. Under the NI Protocol rules, …

GFA stood on the shoulders of those giants who defied terror and who ultimately were vindicated in pursuing peace

Gary Kent on March 31, 2023, 7:24 am

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time for a change, new ways, letters

The following is an abridged version of a speech I made in Belfast last night to the Peace Train Organisation… If you’d told the teenage leftist, entirely English too, that I would spend years working against terror with bedfellows in many parties on both sides of the Irish Sea, I’d have been surprised. When I joined Labour in 1976, I initially swallowed the position that the root cause of the Troubles was partition, and that Irish unification was the solution. I overcame …

Citizens Wallpaper: a co-produced community visual story

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on March 30, 2023, 12:37 am

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Four “canvasses” of photographic images, covering the northern part of the island of Ireland, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Irish Sea, are part of an exhibition that was launched by Kellie Armstrong MLA in the Long Gallery at Parliament Buildings, Belfast. “The Citizens Wallpaper” is a project organised by the renowned photojournalist Martin Nangle, who serves as chairman of the Associated Photojournalism for Art and Culture (APAC) Association, a Northern Ireland-based charity established partly to engage, create, and share …

We need to better educate people on the Irish language origins of many of our town names…

Arnold Carton on March 29, 2023, 5:49 pm

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brown and green mountain beside body of water during daytime

As a school teacher in the mainly Protestant and Unionist sector I always believed it was common sense that our pupils understood the Irish language origins of many of our town names, seeing this as a way to desensitise our population from the divide over language. While explaining that so many of our towns begin with ‘Bally’ because the Irish word ‘Baile’ means town I had many interesting conversations with our GCSE pupils about geography and nationality. I argued more …

“How far do you live from the English border?”

Ciaran Ward on March 29, 2023, 7:00 am

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brown wooden parsons chair on gray beach sand

One summer in the 1990s while I was a student I did what many other students do and crossed the Atlantic for gainful holiday employment. I spent a hot, humid festival season amidst the mosquito-infested lakes, pine forests and flatlands of rural Michigan where I slaved away scrubbing pans and mopping floors in the kitchen of a children’s summer camp with a number of other students from Slovakia, the Netherlands, England, Australia and Canada. Our passports had been confiscated on …

Frequent Flyers

Dan McGinn on March 28, 2023, 9:04 pm

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In October 2019, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute published an assessment of police reforms in Northern Ireland. The authors Dr Marina Caprini and Junseo Hwang chronicled in their article the experience of policing from the Troubles to the Good Friday Agreement. They noted the evolution of policing from the Patten Commission through to St Andrews Agreement to the 2010 Hillsborough Castle Agreement and highlighted the challenges faced by the PSNI as well as its achievements. Both authors observed the …

Interview with Damian Gorman, the author of a new play about John Hume…

Noel McAdam on March 28, 2023, 2:59 pm

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At first glance, John Hume might seem the last politician you would make a musical about. With respect to each and all of them, a song and dance show on Ian Paisley could, of course, have a core of gospel, tree-hugging beardie Gerry Adams’ might rock go to a hippie beat and David, Lord Trimble most likely needs an Elvis soundtrack, with a touch of Wagner. But Hume was not always associated with music – apart of course from The …

After years of tight top down control SNP members finally get their say over the party’s future…

Mick Fealty on March 27, 2023, 10:23 am

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person holding airplane control panel

Chaos ensues when democratic centralism breaks down. Discuss? The SNP has been a tightly controlled wife (leader) and husband (CEO) affair ever since Nicola Sturgeon took over from Alex Salmond after losing the Scottish independence Referendum in 2014.

An anatomy of the success of Irish Rugby: “Spread out, but stick together…”

Mick Fealty on March 21, 2023, 1:16 pm

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Sam McBride’s opening paragraph on Sunday captures something that is both puzzling and miraculous about Ireland’s commanding win over England (forty fifty years after England came to Dublin in the teeth of the worst days of the Troubles): The most remarkable aspect of another thrilling and historic Irish rugby success yesterday was not that an island of seven million people has produced the best team in the world, but that the team represents a country which doesn’t exist. [Emphasis added] …

DUP won’t endorse the Windsor Protocol without “clarification, change and re-working…”

Mick Fealty on March 20, 2023, 4:15 pm

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right, false, cartoon

Latest is that DUP MPs are not going to vote for the Windsor Framework in Westminster. It’s tempting to jump to the conclusion that this is where they’re going to land at the end of the month, but (a little) premature. They’ve chosen an awkward (Peter Robinson like) device that doesn’t make the party leader’s position particularly easy whilst the panel deliberate in the background. My own suspicion is that they’re probably busy taking soundings from they voter base. LucidTalk …

“Twitter’s gamification bears some resemblance with echo chambers and moral outrage porn…”

Mick Fealty on March 20, 2023, 10:39 am

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“A medium is not something neutral—it does something to people.” -Marshall McLuhan I was on Nolan this morning to discuss an Irish News story about a 29 year old candidate standing for the DUP called Tyler Hoey. It featured some awful FB quotes (which I won’t repeat here) from just three years ago favourably mentioning the UDA. The paper notes that Ian Paisley “previously said” he took action to make sure the posts were removed, an apology made and “a real …

A Snake banisher comes of age…

Ciaran Ward on March 17, 2023, 7:00 am

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It’s that time of year when the Easter eggs have been in the shops since about early January, the daffodils (some of which have been in bloom since early January – which may or may not be a consequence of climate change) set the place alight with yellow and pubs throughout England’s green (and yellow) pleasant land celebrate a famous British saint adopted by Ireland – and I don’t mean Jack Charlton. In a convenient tie-in with the Six Nations …

Losing Saint Patrick to Find Ourselves…

Soapbox on March 16, 2023, 7:00 am

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Keith Williamson is a History and Politics teacher in County Down Saint Patrick has (possibly) been subjected to more makeovers than any other historical figure born within these islands. For fifteen centuries he has been refashioned by monks, kings, archbishops, politicians and expats. The endless rebranding is, however, hugely interesting in terms of Ireland’s evolving storyboard. In truth, all we know for certain about Patrick is what he revealed in his own writings. Hagiographers and propagandists, who wrote centuries later, …

What does St Patrick signify today, in the increasingly diverse nation that is modern Ireland?

Declan McSweeney on March 15, 2023, 4:42 pm

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a statue of a man holding a staff

St Patrick’s Day is known the world over as a celebration of everything Irish, synonymous with the proverbial green outfits. Here in England, it is celebrated far more widely than St George’s day (April 23). Yet, behind the excuse for the party lies the story of a Briton who made his home in Ireland in the most extraordinary of circumstances. I am old enough to remember March 17 as the one day of the year we had Mass in Irish …

DUP panel could do worse than seek defend NI’s place in the UK from a point of view of economic strength…

Mick Fealty on March 14, 2023, 2:23 pm

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cloud computing, arithmetic in the cloud, saving data

As we wait for the DUP to decide on the Windsor Framework, and Rishi Sunak runs off with the sword of Damocles to cut the rights of creature who has the misfortune to be caught as they wash up on England’s southern shore, here’s Graham Gudgeon: Some unionists may insist that Northern Ireland be treated identically with GB, but the fact is that this has never been the case. NI had devolved government more than half a century before Scotland …

On Lineker, the only reasonable expectation you should have of a service is its professionalism, not avoidance of offence…

Mick Fealty on March 13, 2023, 9:59 am

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white and black digital device

Gary Lineker, eh? I’m not so much of a soccer head that I missed either edition of Match of the Day this weekend. It’s more a nostalgia act for me from the days when it was the closest thing we could get to watching live soccer on television. As for the larger question of whether we should be listening to football commentators for our political analyses, I’m kinda with Julie Birchill writing in The Spectator: When I was a girl, …

Images of Incoming: exclusion and belonging in Northern Ireland

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on March 10, 2023, 10:11 am

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To coincide with International Women’s Day, the Linen Hall Library hosted an event showcasing a Photovoice project that involved over 70 women from Northern Ireland and Canada, expressing their sense of inclusion and exclusion in their new countries. Dr Federica Ferrieri, the project coordinator, presented a selection of their images and expanded on their captions with themes and subthemes revealed through the work. Ferrieri described the background and framework of the project, which was a partnership between Queen’s University Belfast’s …

Talking to a broad-minded sporting unionist who defies all the southern stereotypes…

Andy Pollak on March 10, 2023, 7:00 am

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Brian Dougherty is a unionist. This Derry community worker says he is more determined in his unionism than he has ever been. Yet in every other way he goes against the narrow stereotype that most people in the South have of unionists: he is a socialist who is hugely committed to his working class community; open to and interested in Irish music and culture; in favour of cross-cultural legislation including promotion of the Irish language; a board member of an …

Is deprivation in the North fueling racism?

Kenneth Harper on March 7, 2023, 7:00 am

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brown game pieces on white surface

Some depressing news for those who want to see a more diverse and integrated society. A study commissioned by the RoI’s Shared Island Initiative and carried out by the Economic and Social Research Institute, (ESRI) was published on 6th March. The conclusion is that Northern Ireland is less welcoming to migrants than the South even though there are fewer of them. Why? Well there is a direct correlation between a positive view of the future, and attitudes to immigration, and …

Is the DUP’s NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER Unionism about to be de-commissioned?

Terry Wright on March 3, 2023, 10:22 am

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trees, path, forest

There may not be demonstrations outside the Waterfront Hall or numerous meetings in the Ulster Hall, Stormont Hotel, the Ramada and elsewhere but this does seem like a ‘Good Friday Agreement’ moment for the DUP and its leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP. In his quieter moments, of which there may not be many at present, is he having a déjà vu moment about his role in the opposition to the leadership of the late David Trimble; was Brexit such a …