Britain – Page 3 – Slugger O'Toole

A constitutional crisis over a Scottish referendum?

Brian Walker on January 11, 2012, 10:08 am

| Readers 42

Just how serious is the new stand-off between Westminster and Holyrood over a referendum on Scottish independence? I take the view that it’s largely shadow boxing. The two governments will do a deal in the end, even though there’s quite a way to go before it’s clinched. Many believe Cameron boobed badly yesterday by trying to dictate terms.The Guardian covered the other view which holds that it was a bold wheeze from the Chancellor George Osborne. Salmond picked up the gauntlet …

David Cameron boardroom pay and putdowns

Turgon on January 10, 2012, 9:56 pm

| Readers 53

The coverage of David Cameron’s views on any Scottish independence referendum have been analysed in detail. Those comments did rather eclipse the coverage of his interview with the Sunday Telegraph. The Telegraph is obviously the most pro Tory of the broadsheets but they do seem to be even more sympathetic than usual in their coverage of the interview: not only the article by Patrick Hennessy above but also Matthew d’Ancona who bordered a little too close to sycophancy</a. and a …

Only a fool would call the Scottish independence referendum at this distance

Gerry Lynch on January 10, 2012, 8:02 am

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“Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled – Scots, wham Bruce has aften led – Welcome to your gory bed. Or to victorie!” Punditry is not an art that suits the modest. Anyone asking people to take time and trouble to read their writing, let alone expecting them to pay for the privilege, is usually best advised to claim some sort of special knowledge or insight that repays the time invested in reading their thoughts. In that context, I suppose I …

David Cameron has transformed the SNP’s long game of Scottish independence into a penalty shootout

Brian Walker on January 9, 2012, 6:49 pm

| Readers 63

David Cameron has hugely raised the stakes over Scottish independence by planning to give the Scottish Parliament legal powers to hold a binding referendum, provided it takes place within a tighter time frame than that envisaged by the SNP government. See the chess analysis by the doyen of Scots commentators Magnus Linklater in the Times (£, unfortunately) If this were a game of chess, the Prime Minister would probably be judged to have used yesterday the King’s Indian …

What have the Elizabethans ever done for us?

Brian Walker on January 2, 2012, 11:57 am

| Readers 54

If you still aren’t sure how to spend that Christmas book token, then AN Wilson’s “The Elizabethans” is a good candidate. This is a magisterial survey by the leading novelist, scholar and reviewer of the political literary and intellectual experience of a “glory age”, whose legacy in shaping modern Britain has only just come to an end, in the author’s view. Chapter One “The Difficulty” of Part One “The Early Reign” begins with this unexpected opening: “After thirty years of fighting …

Spare us a phoney row about racism, we’ve got enough on

Brian Walker on August 13, 2011, 3:31 pm

| Readers 29

A silly media row about racism just had to figure in the riots’ post mortem. Was the Tudor history expert David Starkey racist on Newsnight when he said: The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in this language together, this language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that’s been intruded in England, and this is why so many …

It’s now about police v politicians

Brian Walker on August 12, 2011, 12:21 pm

| Readers 4

A dust storm is blowing up over the riots but not entirely along conventional party lines. It’s much more like a stand-off between the police and politicians. With the police taking a second political battering in almost as many weeks, you’d have thought they’d be bound to emerge as losers. They still might, if the politicians have useful answers. But have they? ConservativeHome does a great roundup of reaction to the riots and the recall debate. What strikes me is …

Northern Ireland has lessons on police governance for England

Brian Walker on August 11, 2011, 2:16 pm

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David Cameron was very lucky he wasn’t addressing the recalled Commons after a fourth night of serious violence. But government fortunes still greatly depend on what happens now on English streets. MPs were able to unite around the quickly accepted wisdom that the police went in too lightly for at least two nights, without making a tiresome and unhelpful political crisis over it. Of course if the rioting returns, the crisis atmosphere will return. The champion of localism Simon Jenkins used …

Cool hand Hugh

Brian Walker on August 10, 2011, 8:39 pm

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What game is Hugh Orde playing, other than that of the cool statesmanlike top policeman who has got the best grip of any police chief on the rioting since it went nationwide? One day, he’s popping up on TV to tell us how he’s fixing the deployment of outside forces into London, the next day he’s rejecting media and politicians’ calls for plastic bullets ( baton rounds) and water cannon from Belfast to be used on English streets. Careful to remind us he attends …

Can we find the tipping point when protest becomes riot?

Brian Walker on August 8, 2011, 12:57 pm

| Readers 24

When some people have a serious grievance like an alleged (don’t foreget that “alleged”) wrongful fatal shooting, they rise up in their just wrath and – trash the place. A hideous non sequitur to you and me, a “protest” to many in places where we don’t live. 30 years ago I covered the Brixton riots which were sparked – not caused – by a minor misunderstanding and false rumours. When I and my crew were packing up in a side street …

Freudian connections

Brian Walker on July 22, 2011, 9:00 pm

| Readers 34

The celebrated portrait painter Lucian Freud who has just died had his Ulster connections, having once been married to the beautiful minor novelist and aristocrat Caroline Blackwood, one of the Guinnesses who was ( barely) educated at Rockport school near Holywood. (Did she trot over from Clandeboye I wonder?). But far more interesting than one of many relationships was one of the subjects of his searing portraits. At a Freud exhibition several years ago, among the portraits of the …

The fight to keep an Irish Cultural Centre

Pádraig Belton on June 10, 2011, 6:01 pm

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I just thought I might share a letter which the Irish Times ran this morning. (This seems a bit unhumble, because it’s by me, but I’ll ask all of your forgiveness.) Madam, – I was pleased to read of Culture Ireland’s “Year-long, €5 million, arts-driven charm offensive on the US” (LifeCulture, June 3rd). It is a shame for those emigrating to London that the home of Irish culture here might well be lost within nine months. Hammersmith’s Irish Cultural Centre does …

Queen’s Visit: Time to move on but not to forget…

ItwasSammyMcNally on May 19, 2011, 10:19 am

| Readers 22

‘I have signed my own death warrant’; so (allegedly) did Michael Collins spake after he had signed The Treaty in London in 1921. Collins’s support for the Anglo-Irish Treaty which both agreed to the partition of the country and required elected representatives in the new state to promise to be faithful to His Majesty King George V (the Queen’s grandfather) was to lead to civil war and Collins’s own untimely death on the 22 August 1922. Irish attitudes to the …

New tales of Empire from David Cameron

Brian Walker on April 5, 2011, 11:01 pm

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A small treat for students of British imperialism especially in Ireland where the agenda of withdrawal from Empire was set. Only the Daily Telegraph so far picks out a headline on these remarks by David Cameron who is keen to make a new start with Pakistan. Odd, coming from the leader of the historic party of Empire where the orthodoxy remains that the civilising mission, however flawed then and anachronistic today, wasn’t all humbug. Is Cameron taking Tory modernisation to new heights of revisionism or will he as I …

The Gray Lady is starting to charge for her services – is it the last straw for free access?

Brian Walker on March 21, 2011, 10:23 am

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In the end, executives decided on a tiered plan, one that would allow visitors to read 20 articles a month at no charge before being asked to select one of three subscription models: $15 every four weeks for access to the Web site and a mobile phone app (or $195 for a full year); $20 for Web access and an iPad app ($260 a year); or $35 for an all-access plan ($455 a year). Only the New York Times and …

US dithering over Libya suggests the moment of overstretch has arrived

Brian Walker on March 16, 2011, 2:16 pm

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Just to lift sights out of the island for a bit, a pre-Paddy’s Day reflection on America that has nothing to do with Ireland. This it will be noted, is in accord with Ireland’s new found modesty about its own importance across the pond. To Europeans, not to mention pro-democracy Arabs, Obama’s silence over Libya is deafening. And yet Americans seem content with that, relieved perhaps that coverage of Gadaffi’s threatened roll-over of the Libyan revolution has been virtually wiped out …

New thinking needed on emigration

Brian Walker on March 12, 2011, 11:00 am

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Every speech, every outside TV News report on the death of the Celtic Tiger has evoked the memory of the coffin ships and Danny Boy. Emigration keening has been a strong element of the Irish identity. Professor Wickham of TCD gives it a more positive complexion. The time to think about emigration differently is long overdue. The difference of view lies in whether emigration can be thought of as a last resort or an opportunity. As entry is unrecorded I’d …

London 2012. Sports minister’s daft remarks on dissidents

Brian Walker on February 15, 2011, 6:33 pm

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If you’re badly in need of an adrenalin shot or a boost to the wrong people, this is the announcement for you – and just as the events schedule and ticket prices are unveiled. More blurted out than premeditated? Brian WalkerFormer BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution …

Jeremy, Plaid Cymru and how to do economic competence

ItwasSammyMcNally on February 7, 2011, 2:03 pm

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I have to confess to being something of a fan of Jeremy Paxman but his smugness can occasionally require use of the TV brick or alternatively a viewing of this excerpt from Newsnight below. It is quite an old clip, having originally been posted by Dewi (Slugger’s Welsh + Rugby correspondent) around election time and which was perhaps a little too concealed in his post – I only just stumbled on it recently. About two and a half minutes minutes …

New taxing powers for Scotland: a sensible step or a botched job?

Brian Walker on January 27, 2011, 1:50 pm

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A major but flawed step in developing devolution is being taken as the Commons debates the Scotland Bill today, giving the Scottish Parliament the right to levy up to 10% income tax and some lesser measures. Alan Trench powerfully critiques the Bill in his blog Devolution Matters. Already nervous NI opinion dipping their toes into the choppy waters of devolution finance over a differential corporation tax will probably have a fit when they read this. The Bill would make the …