Society and Culture – Page 6 – Slugger O'Toole

Ahead of the first annual British Irish Summit Shared Island remains the only viable game in town…

Mick Fealty on March 6, 2025, 7:27 am

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“…planning must precede a crisis rather than follow it, ensuring that shocks lead to constructive reform, rather than losses in resilience.” –Confronting the long crisis, Alex Evans • Bruce Jones • David Steven Today sees the first annual summit in London between the Irish and British governments. Although there are multiple crises facing both the UK and the EU bloc of which Ireland remains a part, for once there’s presently none in Northern Ireland. That doesn’t mean there won’t be …

“You can’t put things to bed if you’re a hypocrite, you can’t put things to bed if you’re a liar…”

Mick Fealty on March 4, 2025, 3:35 pm

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“…while examining its outer surface I have caught only a glimpse of the smooth and finely glazed inside of the bowl.” — David Abram If you can I recommend watching the two part series charting the life of former East Tyrone IRA man Brendan Hughes on iPlayer. Failing that you should be able to catch part two going out live tonight on BBC One NI at 10.40 tonight. It’s a glimpse into the life of a committed member of the …

Three cheers for NI’s first government programme since 2011, but next time can we ditch the bloody consultation?

Mick Fealty on March 3, 2025, 3:57 pm

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green leaf tree

So finally, after at least one false start last Monday when the Alliance Agriculture minister noted that none of the Executive ministers with portfolios had seen any of the thousands of consultation contributions the Executive has published a PfG. I’ve not seen a copy but we have some ideas of what might be in it from Nolan this morning. It has nine cross cutting themes which include childcare, health, housing and the economy. There are social housing targets for 2027 …

Life Punishes the Late—Adapt or Die

Gerry Lynch on February 20, 2025, 2:14 pm

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A portrait of Donald Trump, featuring his signature blonde hair and serious expression. He is wearing a blue suit, white dress shirt, and blue tie, with a small American flag pin on his lapel. An American flag is partially visible in the background, along with ornate wooden paneling

This will be the first of many shattering weeks in 2025. Even the cleverest members of the establishment that is being routed have started to acknowledge publicly that the old order is dead. This isn’t a matter of a change in the personnel in charge, or even of long-standing diplomatic alliances, but of suddenly finding that the assumptions that most of us shared about how the world functions and how it should function are no longer correct. To think through …

Northern Ireland needs politicians and journalists with the courage to call government to account

Mick Fealty on February 12, 2025, 11:49 am

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“The human mind is incapable of rest, what it needs is change” -Winston Churchill There’s definitely a change in the air when it comes to the future of Northern Irish politics. Eighteen years the Executive and the power sharing Assembly has achieved a genuinely deepening peace, and from that peace has sprung a new prosperity. But it is unavoidably obvious what it has failed at too. Lee Reynolds (a former DUP SpAd) summarised the core problem, adroitly last Thursday on …

Should MLAs be paid more?

Brian O'Neill on February 6, 2025, 8:41 am

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From the BBC: For five years, the Independent Financial Review Panel (IFRP) set wages and expenses for politicians in the assembly. But the terms of the three panel members ended in 2016 and they were never replaced. The Assembly Members (Remuneration Board) Bill proposes setting up a new independent board. It is backed by the Assembly Commission, which includes representatives of the main parties. MLAs are already set to receive a small increase in their salaries this April. An assembly …

Stormont could do worse than develop a Sláintecare approach to health service reforms.

Mick Fealty on February 5, 2025, 12:16 pm

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I was on Nolan this morning discussing how the Secretary of State Hilary Benn had hit a few nerves yesterday on the first anniversary of the restart of Stormont when he laid out the abysmal Health record in Northern Ireland… 53% of people waiting for a first appointment with a consultant are waiting for more than a year in Northern Ireland. In England, that figure is 4%. That’s right, 53% compared to just 4%. Mr Benn said he agreed with …

Micheál Martin’s hard track through the harsh and unforgiving Alps of Irish politics…

Mick Fealty on February 3, 2025, 11:57 am

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So last Thursday Micheál Martin (a day later than scheduled because of some stormy weather in the Dáil) the man who many pundits once predicted would be the first Fianna Fáil leader never to become Taoiseach became Taoiseach for a second time. Indeed nothing was inevitable about Fianna Fáil’s return. When it happened in 2020 few believed it would last more than a few months. Leo Varadkar looked downright miserable at the very thought of coalescing with Fine Gael’s bete …

Remembering the Holocaust 80 years after the first liberation…

Mick Fealty on January 27, 2025, 11:20 am

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On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (and the 20th of my original post on the matter), here’s the moving words of my old friend Phillip Whitfield…. Day of Liberation (Bergen-Belsen, May 1945) We build our own prison walls, but that day the doors fell open. It was holiday time In the death camp. Lift him with courtesy, this silent survivor. Battle-dress doctors, We took him from the truck, put him to bed. The moving skeleton had crippled …

“We are gradually harvesting for good the energy of the whirlpool…”

Mick Fealty on January 24, 2025, 9:13 am

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“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” is a line from the unfinished essay A Defence of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley. A claim, hard to stand up these days when too much poetry has hedged its bets on bland, post modern subjectivism. But in the quiet, often understated work of Michael Longley, who has died, lies a courageous willingness to take on what many never found the words to express about the complex ways Northern Ireland would change …

Unionism needs to turn its values into positive action aimed at building a better Northern Ireland for all

Terry Wright on January 23, 2025, 3:30 pm

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The decision made by Secretary of State Hilary Benn MP with regard to the Stormont Brake can be added to the litany of Unionist ‘tilting at the windmills’ strategies. Unionism has to understand that if you created it, you have to own it. Political Unionism in the shape of the DUP, TUV and to a lesser extent the UUP contributed to the situation that is the outworking of Brexit. The latter did not encourage a ‘yes’ vote but was not …

The signal has gone out that unionism is weak and will always give in

Soapbox on January 21, 2025, 11:30 am

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Jamie Bryson is NI Director of Policy, Centre for the Union, a think tank focused on preserving all aspects of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Here he critiques the DUP’s past claims to have cut the pipeline of EU law. “If there is a choice between remaining in office or implementing the Protocol, the only option for any unionist Minister would be to cease to hold such office” The words, on behalf of the DUP, of …

Jim Allister: Irish Parliamentarian of the year?

ItwasSammyMcNally on December 23, 2024, 10:44 am

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Jim Allister is a formidable and controversial political figure. An uncompromising Unionist with a political career which has also seen him resign not once, but twice, from the DUP. Jim doesn’t do compromise on his Unionist principles and that is perhaps best reflected in his decision to set up and lead his own Political Party – the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV). On one of those occasions he resigned because the DUP had decided to get into bed with Sinn Fein, but in more …

After #GE2024 even in the south Sinn Féin remains haunted by its own largely secret northern legacy

Mick Fealty on December 16, 2024, 4:47 pm

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I’ve put off writing an analysis of Sinn Féin’s fate in the southern general election on Feynman’s principle that “if you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it.” I’m still not sure I do, so only time will tell if what follows is right. The party made two seat gains, but largely because of the addition of 14 extra seats in the 34th Dáil. All three of the larger parties lost vote share but Sinn Féin lost …

Irish Language: An bhfuil sé in am tús úr a dhéanamh?

Terry Wright on December 13, 2024, 3:41 pm

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It would be churlish not to welcome the latest- maybe not meant to sound as condescending as they did – remarks of DUP Education Minister, Paul Given, MLA regarding the Irish Language and his tentative assertion that: “My Northern Ireland is big enough to accommodate everyone.” Any truth in the rumours Santa is bringing a hurley and sliotar for Christmas? Do they indicate a ‘Damascus experience on the way to the Gaeltacht’ for the Minister and his party; akin to …

Requiem for a Dream

Gerry Lynch on December 9, 2024, 9:06 pm

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Today, the Netherlands reinstituted border checks with Germany and Belgium. The new policy, which will initially run for six months, aims “to combat migration and human-trafficking”. According to the EU, fourteen of the twenty-nine members of the Schengen passport-free travel area currently have some form of “temporary” border control; of these all but Malta’s relating to a major international conference feel at least semi-permanent, with Russian sabotage efforts and “risk of violent actions against Israeli citizens” cited by some countries …

If Election 2024 is anything to go by Fianna Fáil’s slow growth approach seems to be working just fine

Mick Fealty on December 2, 2024, 9:29 pm

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To be honest about the election it felt more like a dour mid winter scoring draw than any victory. Yet, after all the shouting’s done, the two main parties of the outgoing coalition still have the ball. This was a secure consolidation in tough conditions. Let’s look at some of the key numbers in order to distinguish what actually happened from of the weird party spin that conjured alternative realities from the RTÉ Exit Poll which rated Fianna Fáil at …

Election 2024: Sinn Féin should take lessons from Fianna Fáil on what civic republicanism can do…

Mick Fealty on November 28, 2024, 3:49 pm

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If I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor. James, Sit Down After years of enduring glad handed propaganda about how well the Republic is doing (and economically it is) the testimonials of real people during the last three weeks of the election campaign show the depth of misery that many are currently enduring. Housing was the key issue in the 2020 election and it remains a huge issue, but it’s clear from various polls and many …

Challenge for Democrats is drop pretensions and get real about progress for the common man and woman

Mick Fealty on November 15, 2024, 4:22 pm

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On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. -HR Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe “Game, set and match to Trump”, said one of his biggest supporters, Elon Musk. If you do subscribe to the idea that Trump is, to use Mencken’s words, ‘a downright moron’ then ask yourself why the ‘smarter’ Democrat party has lost twice …

The ARINS survey has some serious weight issues

Soapbox on November 8, 2024, 10:22 am

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Colin Coulter is Professor of Sociology in Maynooth University. Here he asks some technical but searching questions about the gold standard ARINS survey, and why it is important to have a consistent base in such an influential survey. While the criteria that might determine the calling of a border poll remain opaque, it is almost certain that opinion polls will have at least some bearing on the decision. The recent deliberations of a panel of experts, after all, concluded that …