Surviving Covid has to be done together

As cases of Covid rise, the Northern Ireland Executive meets today, reportedly to consider a circuit breaker to reduce community transmission, as concerns continue to be raised about the effect of lockdowns and shielding on mental health and jobs. We know that mental health is seriously affected by lockdown, businesses with fewer customers are likely to fail or at least require redundancies to survive, and the prioritisation of Covid has had a serious effect on elective Health Service treatments.  Yet, …

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Van the Man, or how expressive individualism is pulling us away from our obligations to each other

So Van Morrison has brought out some new tunes which include “criticism” of the government’s Covid policy. I’m as much a fan as the next Ulsterman, but it seemed a good moment to reflect on the way expressive individualism is pulling us away from our obligations to each other. Even Henry Ford understood the immense value that lies in others, “if there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of …

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A new borrowing arrangement for local Councils is key to funding a Just Transition

Sean Fearon is a Just Transition Researcher. He is writing in a personal capacity.  It will be no surprise to anyone that the COVID-19 public health emergency has reshaped the economic and public finance environment in Ireland, as around the world. Once upon a time the British and Irish governments, in lock-step with the European Commission, championed deficit-reduction and savage austerity programmes as a most noble and urgent economic crusade. As of May 2020, these same actors now run historic …

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Long past time for NI to think bigger than its historic grudge matches

Just listened to Erland Cooper’s “Sounds of Change” on BBC Radio 6 Music. For me, the opening is pretty emotional. As someone who grew up with the sea literally 50 yards from the shore of the Belfast Lough in Holywood, I suddenly realised how much miss it. Then there’s the extraordinary words of Florence Nightengale, repeated by Paul Weller, a reminder of that the many nurses in my family have been both the pride and inspiration of my life. But …

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Singing Happy Birthday to the Experts

Of course, the Daily Telegraph’s front page scoop that crack epidemic modeller Neil Ferguson broke lockdown rules to visit his paramour is a dead cat story designed to deflect attention from the UK having the worst COVID19 death toll in Europe. The Telegraph has form in trying to destroy Ferguson’s credibility, but that doesn’t mean this wasn’t a real front page news story, and it doesn’t mean that Ferguson shouldn’t have resigned; in fact, it’s greatly to his credit that …

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For a real reset, we must talk about crony capitalism and post Covid economics

There have been some fascinating pieces of high-end journalism circulating from folks I’ve not been able to read or listen to for some time: probably because of the loud din of garrulous trivia our own politics has itself hooked on for the last few years. If the local political jibber-jabber has begun to take a backseat, as we try figure the best way to tackle the disease and its repercussions, perhaps then we’ve also got a little time and a …

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Why careful consideration must be given to when we re-open schools and how

John Barry’s book, The Great Influenza, provides an extraordinary account of the medical and scientific struggle against the Spanish Flu in 1918. In the second edition of the book, written after the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, he added a chapter on the issues that would need to be addressed and the lessons learned for any future pandemic. Reading the chapter now in the midst of the covid-19 crisis it is extraordinarily prescient. He considers the experience of various ‘non-pharmaceutical …

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