Spare a thought for the 1.8m people who live in the Gaza strip and are currently being subjected to air strikes by the Israeli Defence Forces (e.g. see Haaretz for regular updates). If you want an idea of what conditions in Gaza are like, you can get a grasp of population density if you can imagine moving all the population of the six counties into an area from the tip of the Strangford peninsula up to about Bangor. Now think of the impact of …
It was interesting to see that there was as much comment on Nolan personally as about Pastor McConnell. I don’t see or hear Nolan that often but I thought he played a pretty straight bat on this one. I’m told he divides an already divided community, not on sectarian lines but between pro- and anti- Nolan. That’s quite a tribute. I bet opinion swings quite a bit just like a Nolan interview. With Nolan we’re on a rollercoaster. Whether you …
Well, perhaps… A bearded Austrian man in a dress, Conchita Wurst, won the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 in Copenhagen on Saturday night with “Rise Like a Phoenix” – the title quote was his line from the winner’s press conference. The 25-year-old singer also told reporters in Vienna On the theme of tolerance, Wurst told reporters in the Austrian capital: “This will remain an issue for a long time and I fear I won’t see the end of it in my lifetime. It …
Jeremy Clarkson has never been a stranger to controversy. In his latest problem the Daily Mirror obtained film (not broadcast on the BBC) of him reciting the Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe rhyme and including the ‘n’ word albeit muttered and only semi audible. Initially the Clarkson denied using the word but as now issued an apology and has claimed that the BBC has given him a final warning. The BBC has made a statement: “Jeremy Clarkson has set out the …
The BBC is often accused of a liberal bias most recently by the Today programme’s own John Humphrys. Currently the BBC is paid for by the television licence fee, non payment of which can result in a fine of £1000. Up to 10% of magistrates court appearances are for non payment and if this is not paid it can even result in gaol (107 people were sent to gaol between 2011 and 2013). A cross party group of MPs has …
Is it nearly a year since I joined James Ellis and a bunch of oldies for a London revival of Sam Thompson’s seminal Belfast play Over the Bridge? That night he was in fine form as he congratulated the cast for their performance and reminisced about his own experience as director in resisting attempts to tone down the anti sectarian message of the play. From Z Cars on the BBC TV of the early 1960s, the first police drama …
After last week’s warm-up, the second programme featuring Eamonn Mallie’s extended interviews with Ian Paisley (recorded between October 2012 and March 2013) began with an introduction to Ian Paisley’s strong relationship with his wife Eileen. It went on to cover: The Leeds Castle talks. Tony Blair’s admission that he was converting to Catholicism. You can hear Eileen laughing off-screen as he jokes about “getting a cane” if any of the Paisley children had come with a Catholic boyfriend/girlfriend. Clips of …
Brian SpencerBrian is a writer, artist, political cartoonist and legal blogger. Actively tweeting from @brianjohnspencr. More information here: http://www.brianjohnspencer.com/ www.brianjohnspencer.com/
Last week’s papers and news bulletins spoiled many of the story lines in last night’s first part of Eamonn Mallie’s conversations with Ian Paisley on BBC One NI. (Available to watch on-demand.) Forty hours of interviews were conducted between October 2012 and March 2013, so we’re only scraping the surface of their discussions and there are many gaps in the timeline that some viewers might have wanted to explore. Expect a book to mop up the rest! There was little …
Speaking of making the media accountable… The Northern Ireland Minister for Culture, Sinn Fein’s Carál Ní Chuilín, has declared that she is “considering options such as appointing a panel of experts to review broadcasting in the North and devolution of responsibility locally with a view to bringing proposals forward for cross-party support”. Here’s a couple of lines from the minister’s press release [NI Culture Minister, Sinn Fein’s Carál Ní Chuilín] “I am considering options such as appointing a panel of experts …
I was in Tesco this morning when I saw my friend the Guardian veteran Mike White talking on a Sky screen with the sound turned down low. I read the captions. John Cole had died. I’d heard John was failing. I’d last met him a couple of years ago at a Lords reception for John Laird’s extraordinary memoir. John hadn’t really reported on Northern Ireland affairs for forty years but he always kept up the old connection, through family, social contacts and …
On Thursday morning the Social Development committee agreed to hold an inquiry into the issues raised in BBC NI’s Spotlight programme. The recalled Assembly will sit in plenary on Monday at noon. After prayers the Private Members’ Business brought by Mr R Swann (UUP), Ms C Ruane (SF), Mr S Dickson (Alliance), Mrs K McKevitt (SDLP) will be the only business before adjournment. Call for an Inquiry into Allegations of Wrongful Political Interference in the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, Potential …
The BBC’s live coverage of The Twelfth of July parade through Belfast city centre becomes more anachronistic with every passing year. Last year, a complaint was made to the BBC and later in the post I’ll refer to the finding. While the capital city’s parade remains the longest across Northern Ireland (Armagh is the largest), the numbers of Orangemen and women marching in each lodge is thinning out, often marching two abreast where once eight would have walked, and nowadays …
I’ve just been watching the video stream of Day Two of the Radio 1 Big Weekend in Derry for a few hours, on and off. (I fess up. My daughter is an executive producer of the event. For variety during the cultural initiation I opened up other windows to sound off in Slugger about political reform; that explains it ). That said the event won me over. It looks great, terrifically well staged, well filmed, good sound and really charged on video stream. …
Great bit of on the spot photojournalism from Simon Whittaker. During the filming of last nights Question Time by Mentorn Media for the BBC, he captured the notes attached to the television camera. It gives affiliations for four of the six panellists with an additional note below two, IRA below ‘Sinn Féin’ for the party’s MLA John O’Dowd and Goodies below ‘DUP’ for the parties Ian Paisley Junior. Needless to say Sinn Féin are unimpressed: “The ‘SF/IRA’ tag was one created …
The distinguished Arts commentator Mark Lawson has an interesting blog post in the Guardian pegged to the new BBC2 thriller series “The Fall,” set in Belfast and launched on Monday night. He uses it to discuss the impact of “British ” in the BBC. He rightly observes the big change, that it’s now Scotland with its independence debate where the “British” in” BBC” expresses more of an issue than it does in today’s Northern Ireland. However I think he gets “The Fall” slightly wrong, although the headline …
I almost missed 14 Days, a documentary on one of several traumatic weeks in the history of the Troubles. Paul Canning, who’s based in Cambridge didn’t, and writes an impressively well researched blog asking (amongst several other things), why don’t the BBC mainstream more locally produced work? The ‘BBC NI only’ shows are (or were) all also on iPlayer, which is the reason I know about them at all as I often skim the ‘factual’ strand, I didn’t find them because they …
We always like to know aboout people from the old place who’ve made it, don’t we? Shane Allen is one the most influential people who comes from Northern Ireland. What is he? A politician on the rise (hah!) A journalist/writer (hah again)? A business mogul , a poet? Nope. He’s the BBC’s head of comedy commissioning and so a guy who has the power to shape popular taste. Don’t know him at all but he sounds as edgy as some of the …
Reacting to the transcripts of the Pollard report on the “crisis” within the BBC, where do I start? Best to sum up and not get bogged down. For that, go to Steve Hewlett’s video in the Independent. To be fair press comment on Pollard today is fairly mild, perhaps exhausted after covering the affair as it happened. Yes, chaos and “faffing about” are revealed in the transcripts. Some of the faffing is about concealing full candour which Pollard for all its …
Slugger should note the passing of Robert Kee, historian, TV and print journalist and RAF bomber pilot, who has died aged 93. In this age of revisionist debate, his TV history series first shown in 1981 and The Green Flag, the written history of Irish nationalism which accompanied it, were well timed and still stand up today. It was a stellar achievement to produce such a magisterial work on a hot topic at the time, when so many critics were waiting to pounce …
