Society and Culture – Page 4 – Slugger O'Toole

Can the Minister of Education pour ‘new wine into old wineskins?’

Terry Wright on November 28, 2025, 2:00 pm

| Readers 1674

two baskets full of grapes

The recent ruling by the Supreme Court in regards to ensuring religious education in Northern Ireland is delivered in an ‘objective, critical and pluralistic manner’ has sparked a flurry of comment from politicians, church leaders and representative bodies; with a little scaremongering and electioneering thrown in. The DUP is now claiming how important it is that it fills the portfolio. There is clearly a conversation to be had in the light of the ruling but will it be as comprehensive …

Slugger Cato Project: Claire Sugden on Challenging the Stormont System as an Independent MLA

Mick Fealty on November 27, 2025, 7:27 pm

| Readers 811

a bunch of bees that are on a beehive

The way I originally conceived this project was as a sort of shared inquiry, where the active audience(s) of Slugger would play as much of a role in uncovering actionable insights from these individual episodes as the interviewees themselves. This helps us to fill out the context of a wider landscape and it’s no coincidence that that three of the commenters I’ve picked to introduce this episode are either expats living in London, or a native of the other island …

Slugger Cato Project: Patsy McGlone on Independence and Challenging the System

Mick Fealty on November 25, 2025, 4:44 pm

| Readers 1589

a bunch of bees that are on a beehive

A feature, or bug is simply a difference between the product you have and the product you want. –Ernest Mueller The last episode (released on Thursday) sparked a pleasingly positive response from the Slugger Community, if not exactly breaking all records in terms of a ton readership. It seems we struck a nerve. For too long, the prevailing narrative has been that Stormont is merely a dysfunctional “clown show.” But as our commenter Babyface pointed out, while slagging everything off …

Accountability vs. “Clicks”: Paul Frew MLA on Scrutinising the Stormont Executive

Mick Fealty on November 20, 2025, 4:20 pm

| Readers 1500

a bunch of bees that are on a beehive

Over the summer and the autumn I’ve been quietly working away talking to a small number of cross party backbenchers about the work they do in the Assembly as part of a new project we call the Slugger Cato Project. Cato the Younger was famous not for seeking power, but for relentlessly challenging it. He was a symbol of integrity, independence, and defiant courage—a citizen who demanded the highest standards from his government. Now it seems the wider media is …

A celebration of music journalism and Belfast’s musical legacy

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on November 8, 2025, 10:23 am

| Readers 955

On a memorable evening at The Deer’s Head, music journalist Stuart Bailie launched his new book chronicling 40 years in music journalism — The Song is Nearly Over. The event featured an intimate conversation with Tim Wheeler of Ash, followed by closing reflections and a performance by Terry Hooley, the legendary founder of Good Vibrations record label. The evening brought together three generations of Northern Irish music history, weaving together stories of punk, Britpop, and the transformative power of music journalism. …

Review: Constitutional change in Ireland will likely be slow, consensual and evolutionary, not quick, revolutionary or violent…

Mick Fealty on November 5, 2025, 6:39 am

| Readers 5250

a roller coaster with a sign that says cyclone

Mick reviews two books which treat generously and intelligently the vexed subject of constitutional futures on the island of Ireland and concludes that the historical divergences between north and south mean that constitutional is likely only ever to come through the sort of slow, consensual change embodied in the Shared Island Initiative, if at all…

The Politics of Neglect: Why Good News Gets Buried in Northern Ireland…

Peter Shirlow on October 28, 2025, 6:36 am

| Readers 3088

blue and red graffiti on wall

At a recent Assembly Committee Sinn Féin’s Pat Sheehan, asked ‘if one of the major parties were to walk — if they were to leave the Executive and the Assembly — could the institutions survive with any credibility?’ Soon after Alison Morris summed that Stormont cannot work despite valid attempts. That conclusion is part-true given disputes over legacy and language. But does that mean nothing is working? A fundamental problem with our political, media and commentor class is the inability …

Are we even able to hear the surprisingly good news from the health system in Northern Ireland?

Mick Fealty on October 20, 2025, 5:29 pm

| Readers 1455

a circular hole in the ground with trees growing out of it

Increasingly in our diet of online news we (journalists, politicians and ordinary citizens) have become prone to follow our own dopamine circuits’ interest in shiny news objects wherever we can get it. That includes our collective obsession with Trump. Why not resile to cynicism when truth is more often than not an illusive fugitive? Yet we need less of it to figure what’s actually happening and get beyond the social media generated miasma of synthetic futures slopping around in a …

If there was light at the end of the tunnel, some Unionists would prefer to stumble around in the dark to find a switch.

Terry Wright on October 17, 2025, 1:34 pm

| Readers 3050

a gray cat with yellow eyes sitting on the floor

“ ….. genuinely plural, liberal, democratic… capable of accommodating social, cultural and religious diversity…… open to all to share in the benefits of British citizenship regardless of class, creed or race…. so that everyone here can enjoy the same rights as their fellow-citizens in Great Britain, irrespective of whether they aspire to be Ulster-British, British-Irish or Irish.” 27 years ago. and counting, the late David Trimble, leader of the main unionist party of the day, voiced these aspirations in a …

BIPA: Turning the page on generations of drift in all island education…

Mick Fealty on October 13, 2025, 6:22 pm

| Readers 1316

books on brown wooden shelf

My friend John Kellden says that every major issue in the world today is a crisis of governance. We know from the serial collapses of Stormont and the constitutional chaos in the US that to work institutions must be inhabited by people and ideas. I used to ascribe the attitude of some of the advocates for the Belfast Agreement to a kind of neo-political Calvinism, which in having vouchsafed the peace then all manner of good things would naturally follow. …

Why “winning the internet” is failing to win the argument on a united Ireland…

Mick Fealty on October 10, 2025, 10:00 am

| Readers 2385

blue card on top of opened book

Social media is (to quote Michelle Gildernew on Northern Ireland) a sh!thole. That nasty stuff is posted there about the presidential candidates is no surprise. It’s like rugby where the referee is tied and bound and left in the changing rooms. People focus on the brutality it helps generate from time to time (the intimidatory protests outside Naomi Long’s house, for example) but it also makes us stupider as a society. It is its basis in large language models (LLMs) …

Whatever happened to Civic Nationalism?

Terry Wright on September 18, 2025, 9:22 am

| Readers 1737

the words future is creative painted on a wall

In 2018, a group of civic nationalists penned a public letter urging Taoiseach of the day, Leo Varadkar TD, to protect the rights of Irish citizens in Northern Ireland. The letter voiced concern at the ongoing political crisis in Northern Ireland saying that it had come about because of a failure to: “both implement and defend the Good Friday and St Andrew’s agreements” the result being a denial and refusal of “equality, rights and respect towards the section of the …

Kneecapping victims subsist in the dark forest of a past many of us are too easily forgetting

Mick Fealty on September 4, 2025, 1:31 pm

| Readers 2848

time lapse photography of multi-step waterfalls

By and large I’ve not passed remark on the success of Belfast rap act, Kneecap. I’m pleased if it rekindles interest in the Irish language amongst another generation, call me a prude but I struggle to get the irony of an act that seems to revel in drug taking. The controversy of the band’s political entanglement with the UK’s judiciary system has raised consideration of the feelings and experience of survivors among an estimated 2,500 people who were victims of …

Getting Derry the investment it needs will take an all-Northern Ireland mindset…

Mick Fealty on August 19, 2025, 11:36 am

| Readers 2873

man standing beside another sitting man using computer

On Nolan on Friday we discussed Colum Eastwood’s claim that as an MP he often found it easier to get things done when Stormont was down than when it was up. He wasn’t advocating for abolition, but merely stating there’s a serious case to answer. His particular beef was the way the northwest and Derry in particular has been neglected in spite of the fact that city has had representation right at the top of the Stormont tree. Martin McGuinness …

The Sporting Weekend: The Premier League Returns.

ItwasSammyMcNally on August 15, 2025, 8:53 pm

| Readers 631

a stadium filled with lots of blue seats

Whilst some of us may trace all of our little island’s problems and disagreements back to our perfidious neighbour – that same neighbour has provided us with something that we can all disagree about amicably – the English Premier League. …and whilst our constitutional allegiance and our county or province of origin may determine whether we fancy Rugger or GAA or the League of Ireland or the Irish League or Celtic or Rangers – the good old Premier League gloriously …

Why painting the Orange only in the darkest colours will rebound on nationalism…

Mick Fealty on July 22, 2025, 7:00 am

| Readers 7696

shallow focus photo of assorted paint brush lot

I wonder what our media would report during silly season if it were not for the Orange celebrations leading up to and following the 12th July. Sammy Morrison of the TUV calls it Twelfth Derangement Syndrome (does TDS sound a wee bit familiar?). In the US, the liberal media’s earnings soared as they daily expressed shocked outrage at the latest utterances of Donald Trump firstly on Twitter, and latterly on his own platform, the ironically named Truth Social. Their overreaction …

“We’re between narratives, which means denial in the early stages is because of a desire to preserve last shreds of old imploding monoculture’

Mick Fealty on July 2, 2025, 10:59 am

| Readers 3042

brown sand under white sky during daytime

Reconciliation, rekənˌsɪliˈeɪʃən: “the process of making two people or groups of people friendly again after they have argued seriously or fought and kept apart from each other, or a situation in which this happens.” -Cambridge Dictionary Last week the word reconciliation got a bad wrap in some quarters. Rory Carroll highlights one comment, from an old mucker of mine, Kevin Rooney, who found it to be a villainous roadblock on the road [not another A5? – Ed] to a united Ireland: …

Introducing a Stormont election projection tool…

Soapbox on June 30, 2025, 10:14 am

| Readers 3154

closeup photography of swarm of jellyfish

Originally from Fermanagh, Eoghan Kelly is a postdoc on University of Edinburgh’s Scottish Election Study and has lectured in Irish politics at Queen’s. Here he introduces a new election projection site for Northern Ireland.. Tools like Electoral Calculus allow anyone with an interest in Westminster elections to convert national polls into seat projections. But no such tool existed for Northern Ireland Assembly elections. The subtleties of STV and a general lack of interest from the GB political class meant we …

Same anthem. Same flag. Reconciliation, not a priority. Is this the ‘great generational cause’?

Terry Wright on June 26, 2025, 9:14 am

| Readers 4492

A bronze sculpture depicts a man hugging a child.

Former Taoiseach and TD, Dr Leo Varadkar is no stranger to provocative politics when it comes to Northern Ireland. Continuing, of late, with the agenda he platformed during an event at the SSE arena last year he reveals, yet again, limited understanding of the residual values and preferences within the party political and non-politically aligned Remain UK constituency, and beyond. Unlike Michéal Martin, TD and current Taoiseach, he doesn’t get nuance and complexity. Instead, he opts for the binary and …

A5 debacle: “likely to take years rather than months to assemble the evidence to support the scheme in anything like its current form…”

Mick Fealty on June 25, 2025, 5:48 pm

| Readers 2406

gray concrete road near trees and houses during daytime

Clowntown. An ugly undercurrent surrounding this week’s court case which struck down the DoFI plans for the A5 road, was a sense amongst some of the road’s supporters that this was a Catholic v Protestant farmer’s thing. Nah, it was incompetence. There’s been no unionist involvement in this project since Danny Kennedy’s tenure between 2011 and 2015. Since then (and before, when Conor Murphy took the hot seat) Infrastructure has been a nationalist gig. One that doesn’t speak well for …