Catholics

Update-When Manley met Robinson – Irish News finally gets an interview

| Readers 105

Yesterday was a historic day (in media terms anyway) as  Peter Robinson gave his first interview in five years to the Irish News. Why Robinson decided to freeze out the provinces top selling newspaper I don’t know but the papers political reporter, John Manley said that there was nothing in the DUP Leader’s demeanour to suggest relations were frosty. So we can only assume that the fences have been mended and Robinson will be giving more interviews to the Irish News …

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Women bishops – it is about religion, stupid

| Readers 66

Does anybody else feel uneasy that the case for women bishops is championed by commentators with a wholly secular agenda and that an essential element of the argument has been deliberately left out? Too hard for our little heads to take in or too silly for words, being about religion? Nothing wrong with the secularists’ case of course. Only there’s no reason why their voices should prevail, as distinct from the great majority of church members in favour of women …

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raising an old issue like employment

| Readers 63

At the moment, as Pete flagged a couple of days ago, Bill Clinton is doing some heavy lifting in the US for job creation on behalf of the Republic of Ireland’s government. Over at the Belfast media group, Jude Collins provides an interesting contrast, highlighting the uneven results of Invest NI’s work: During  2010/2011, Invest NI  managed to secure NOT A SINGLE JOB in West Belfast. Yet  year after year, south and east Belfast attract shed loads more money via Invest …

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If Robinson pitches for Catholic votes, where does that leave nationalism?

| Readers 35

There’s a long distance between Catholics preferring to stay where they are and getting them to actively vote for Unionist parties. But that’s what Peter Robinson’s pitching for. Good luck to him, though as Conal McDevitt points out there’s a considerable way to go to convince people the politics emanating from OFMdFM is not business as usual. Robinson has some form on this, as Pete pointed out the day he took up the baton from his former leader to become …

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Nationalism’s ‘crise de foie’: most Catholics prefer the United Kingdom…

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No surprise to most long term readers but it seems that those looking towards sectarian divide to re-unite the island of Ireland might be looking in the wrong direction: The (Life and Times) survey, which was conducted between October and December last year, found just 33% of Catholics wanted Irish unity on the long term. More than half of Catholics said they would prefer to stay in the UK, a view shared by 90% of Protestants. I can’t access the …

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More Catholics than Protestants support the Police

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Extraordinary headline, but one borne out by this study for the BBC. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty