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Alliance Party conference preview #apni12

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on April 19, 2012, 9:00 am

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The Alliance Party conference on Saturday finishes the 2011/12 season of party conferences. [Sinn Fein’s Ard Fheis (which was postponed from last spring to the autumn) will take place at the end of May in Killarney.] This year Alliance’s venue switches from the mobile not-spot of the Dunadry Hotel to the DUP-favourite mobile not-spot of La Mon Hotel. Moving on from the party’s recent strapline of “Leading Change”, the 2012 conference theme is ‘Delivering Change” and the morning agenda includes …

Addie Morrow RIP

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on March 30, 2012, 2:36 pm

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A real gentleman with a hearty laugh and a giant in the Alliance party, Addie Morrow served as Alliance’s Deputy Leader, was a Castlereagh councillor between 1973 and 1989, and was also elected in 1982 to represent East Belfast in the Assembly. Addie had a strong vision for peace-building and reconciliation, lived out both through his politics and his long time involvement in the Corrymeela Community. Living up in the East Belfast hills, he was a church elder in his …

Oliver Napier RIP

Blank on July 2, 2011, 6:18 pm

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Members of the Slugger team who could do the blog title justice seem to be away from the office. In the meantime I hope the following links are a suitable opening for your comments on the passing of Sir Oliver Napier. David Ford pays tribute to party founder BBC obit and some video. Blank

Alliance Party launch huge manifesto

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on April 20, 2011, 12:45 am

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David Ford 2011 campaign launch speech wordle - wordle.net

The Alliance Party manifesto should come with a health warning. Dropping it on your toe could cause serious injury. On Monday, the DUP’s director of elections Simon Hamilton described his party’s spiral bound book of promises as “probably one of the most detailed and most comprehensive manifestos that any party will do in this election or indeed any party in any election in Northern Ireland’s history will have put forward”. A short-lived claim, as the very next day the Alliance …

Alliance PEB preview

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on April 13, 2011, 3:00 pm

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Alliance have avoided producing a traditional Political Election Broadcast and instead created something novel and modern. No voxpops. No politicians walking towards the camera struggling to remember their lines. No perfect families sitting in showhouse sets. It would be interesting to see the viewing figures for PEBs. Do people stick with them, or do they reach for the remote and channel-surf as they might do during the normal interstitials? It’s a shame that given the effort and thought that went …

Alliance: all (about leading) change

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on April 5, 2011, 1:00 pm

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Alliance launched their election campaign this morning but gave away little about the specific contents of their upcoming manifesto. The paper copy of David Ford’s speech this morning was titled: “Ford launches Alliance campaign saying the party is leading change”. Certainly it seemed like the party leader was embarking on a record breaking attempt to overuse the word change. If his short speech was passed through Wordle, the word “change” would overshadow all other content. [Ed – by popular demand, …

Is it right they rule by rote?

Blank on October 11, 2010, 9:18 pm

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I’m off on a wee rant below, apologies. While Eamonn’s reproduction of a UUP communication to members has transitory interest, it could open up a broader discussion on the internal democracy of our political parties; how they manage policy setting, media protocols and transparency. A party wracked with disagreement and conflicting messages for nearly two decades like the UUP is long overdue a leader to stamp internal discipline and defined direction for external eyes. The immediate threat of ‘you go …