England – Page 12 – Slugger O'Toole

Meanwhile over at what really matters…

Brian Walker on October 8, 2013, 5:14 pm

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Well below the big headline on the latest torrid twist with Gerry Adams’ grim mugshot at the top, lurks the unassuming headline “NI trailing in English and Maths”. This is the local version of the big OECD report on educational performance in England and NI which concludes that today’s kids are less well educated in the basics than their grandparents (people like me). And yes there’s a paradox here.” Northern Ireland is ‘best in Europe’ at primary maths. But that …

50,000 protesters hope Cameron’s next Act will be a disappearing one

Ryan on October 1, 2013, 4:22 pm

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While the Tory Party was preparing to open its 2013 party conference on Sunday with a tribute to Margaret Thatcher – a 10-minute video which received a standing ovation and left many with a tear in their eye – tens of thousands of protestors made their way through streets of Manchester to censure the government’s privatisation plans and their impact on jobs and the quality of health care on a march to #SaveOurNHS. The 50,000 strong rally made its way …

Is the electoral process meant to be magic? [Insert country/province/region here] can do better than this?

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on September 24, 2013, 9:03 pm

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Two quick quotes from today. [Episode 12 from Season 2 of Scandal on More 4] Cyrus Beene (White House Chief of Staff) confronting crisis management guru (or “fixer”) Olivia Pope about her overwhelming guilt about agreeing to rig the presidential election and her desire to put things right: You’re willing to bring down the whole Republic because you feel guilty? You know what our electoral process is? It’s magical. It’s like believing in Santa or the Tooth Fairy or the …

The decline of traditional patriotism in Britain and Ireland

Brian Walker on September 21, 2013, 10:17 pm

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Remember the great closing episode of Blackadder from the trenches of the Great War where the artful dodger meets his nemesis at last : “ We need a futile gesture?” The “futile gesture” being that he was to lead his men over the top to be mown down by the German machine guns. But it was in Ireland that the futile gesture worked best, in the blood sacrifice of 1916. The Irish Times had some fun at the taoiseach’s expense …

CoI appoints first female Anglican Bishop in Ireland or Britain

Mick Fealty on September 20, 2013, 4:15 pm

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Put simply, on the day Pope Francis called for greater involvement of women in the life of the Catholic Church, the Anglo Catholic Church in Ireland (aka, the Church of Ireland) acted to appoint the first woman bishop in these islands… The Revd Pat Storey (53) has been Rector of St Augustine’s, Londonderry (Derry and Raphoe) since 2004. She is married to the Revd Earl Storey and has two adult children, Carolyn and Luke, and a son–in–law Peter. Having grown …

The Irish way of death celebrated

Brian Walker on September 13, 2013, 1:45 pm

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Katherine Butler has contributed a very touching piece to the Indy commending the Irish way of death, compared to death as the last English taboo. This is one area where the twin cultures differ, perhaps because of the earlier English retreat from religion. Will the Irish follow and lose touch with death eventually? Even if Protestants tend not to observe the full three fold ritual favoured by Catholics, they still owe a lot to it whether they realise it or not..I’ve …

ODI: Ireland v England

Pete Baker on September 3, 2013, 3:23 pm

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Ireland’s cricketers have set a respectable total of 269 for 7 in their 50 over One Day International at Malahide against an England side captained by Eoin Morgan and featuring former Ireland fast bowler Boyd Rankin. Rankin picked up 4 wickets [for 46 runs] on his England debut, but a captain’s innings of 112 runs from 142 balls by William Porterfield has made this a testing chase for England. As the BBC’s Stephan Shemilt put it Yep, after a bowling and fielding performance …

DUP man criticises poor DARD performance on Bovine TB…

Mick Fealty on August 28, 2013, 8:50 am

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Not trying to add to the giddy zephyrs of pure conjecture, or anything, but I was struck by a presser from Paul Frew yesterday which took the DRD to task for dithering over how to deal with Bovine TB. In it he says: There is no doubt that Bovine TB cannot be attributed to a single factor, but we cannot escape the fact either that every country which has successfully tackled this disease has put a focus on the reservoir …

The Maze is part of a shared past

Brian Walker on August 24, 2013, 12:41 am

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Malachi O’Doherty is magnificently right. The best result for the Maze project would have been/ still should be to provide an unsparing and comprehensive account of the Troubles, murders, conspiracies and weasel politics, including the narratives without which it is a meaningless recitation of horror. Conflict resolution could come in the last gallery just before the shop. What a powerful statement it would be coming from the post-Agreement generation of parties and what avenues it would open for collective cognitive therapy. …

England and Scotland – growing farther apart anyway?

Brian Walker on August 21, 2013, 11:11 am

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Good to see some real debate emerging over the Scottish independence at last. But is this happening to late, when the result is all over bar the shouting, with the No vote 20 points ahead, as American polling guru Nate Silver has been telling them at the Edinburgh Festival? Not so with 44 % registering undecided, according to Ipsos Mori. Looking behind the stats, commentators warn against relentless negativity from the Better Together campaign, including Andrew Marr recovering from his stroke, …

Britain is, and remains for all the rhetoric of Conservative and Labour, a two nation society…

Mick Fealty on August 12, 2013, 1:45 pm

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So Labour is drifting, according to the polls. The Observer yesterday put some bones on to why that may be happening. Or rather it explained why to some extent there is no real substance to Labour’s UK opposition… Today’s Opinium/Observer poll shows Labour dropping three percentage points from two weeks ago to 36%, taking its lead over the Tories to only seven points. Some senior figures in the party suggest that Labour’s silence for much of the summer is symptomatic of …

From Cream Buns to Hollywood: Paul Tweed talking about his career and libel reform

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on August 8, 2013, 9:43 pm

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Paul Tweed didn’t expect to still be in the legal profession with Johnstons thirty five years after graduating. He explained to the lunchtime Féile audience that it had all started in 1985 with the Cream Bun Case where two local senior counsels (including Bob McCartney) were wrongly reported as having fought over the last chocolate éclair in a Holywood cake shop. Libel action against the Sunday World report ended up being settled by a jury with £50,000 damages awarded to …

The population continues to rise but so does the brain drain

Brian Walker on August 8, 2013, 6:26 pm

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The UK is experiencing a baby boom as the number of births hits the highest level in 40 years, according to mid year figures just out. Only a small fraction of the country’s higher population is now due to foreign immigration. In Northern Ireland where the population has continued to increase, more people left than arrived last year. But the facts about bouncing babies fail to conceal a continuing severe problem of emigration among Northern Ireland’s young people, which a …

MPs with a slim majority are more likely to tweet: crunching numbers of tweeting elected representatives

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on July 29, 2013, 10:05 pm

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Democratic Audit UK today posted a summary of results of research by James Donald who has been looking at the tweeting characteristics of Westminster MPs. It made me wonder about our local politicians. But first, the highlights from the UK-wide findings. Nearly 63% of MPs (408) had Twitter accounts in January 2013, while 37% were still abstaining. (Today, Tweetminster suggests the figure has risen marginally!) The findings showed that the younger an MP is, the more likely she/he is to …

Local party finances revealed as Electoral Commission publish statement of accounts

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on July 25, 2013, 9:30 pm

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The Electoral Commission have now published details about the 2012 accounts for all local political parties. Smaller parties with income and expenditure less than £250k were released in May and the larger parties today. This is a quick post to highlight the numbers with a variety of charts. I’ll leave it to others to start to tell the stories behind the figures … perhaps starting with the size of Sinn Féin’s legal fees and the continued lack of transparency around …

“Human Rights and Human Wrongs” – Rt Hon John Bercow delivers Amnesty International Pride Lecture in Belfast

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on July 5, 2013, 3:45 pm

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As Speaker of the House of Commons, the Rt Hon John Bercow has taken on the external roles of being an ambassador for Parliament and an advocate for democratic politics. A frequent speaker around the world, last night’s delivery of the annual Amnesty international lecture at Belfast Pride was his third visit to the city. On his previous trip to the PSA 2012 conference he asked what a 21st century parliament should look like? Last night in a speech entitled …

Lions…..Lucky

Dewi on June 22, 2013, 4:27 pm

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Crikey that Israel bloke on the wing looks tasty…..how we won that I really don’t know….. DewiWelsh Nationalist. Rugby Fan. Know a bit about History and Railways…

The Lions Test Team – how were our predictions?

Dewi on June 20, 2013, 5:32 am

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Here’s the team: Leigh Halfpenny (Wales),Alex Cuthbert (Wales), Brian O’Driscoll (Ireland) Jonathan Davies (Wales), George North (Wales), Jonathan Sexton (Ireland), Mike Phillips (Wales); Alex Corbisiero (England), Tom Youngs (England), Adam Jones (Wales), Alun Wyn Jones (Wales), Paul O’Connell (Ireland), Tom Croft (England), Sam Warburton (Wales, capt), Jamie Heaslip (Ireland). Subs: Richard Hibbard (Wales), Mako Vunipola (England), Dan Cole (England), Geoff Parling (England), Dan Lydiate (Wales), Ben Youngs (England), Owen Farrell (England), Sean Maitland (Scotland). Astonished at Maitland as sub, very strange. …

England Football: “What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, understanding (er, and intelligent surrender)?”

Mick Fealty on May 28, 2013, 9:39 am

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Mark Perryman, who runs Philosophy Football has an interesting argument on a latter day tradition at England football matches. In advance of this week’s England v Republic of Ireland at Wembley he notes: For as long as I’ve been a travelling England fan (my first game was Moldova away in 1996), a decent proportion of England fans have used the musical pause after the third line of God Save the Queen to insert “No Surrender” with as much volume and …

A Lions tour – predict the first test team please.

Dewi on May 27, 2013, 6:45 am

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So it was just a bad dream for Rory Best – in the Lions squad…and I reckon a test starter. How about the other 14? Rules are simple. I need the names of the fifteen starters in the first test on June 22nd. 1 point for every correct name. Here’s my guess: 15 Halfpenny 14 Bowe 13 Roberts 12 O’Driscoll 11 North 10 Sexton 9 Phillips 8 Faletau 7 Warburton 6 Lydiate 5 O’Connell 4 AW Jones 3 A Jones 2 …