Guardian

“Why can’t Great Britain look Northern Ireland in the eye?”

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on January 25, 2013, 11:15 am

| Readers 362

That’s the question Emer O’Toole asks in her Guardian Comment is Free article today. She reckons that “the media have been strangely reluctant to cover eight weeks of intense rioting in Belfast, yet this is a major UK event”. Great Britain’s attitude towards Northern Ireland has been puzzling me lately … There is a very strange reluctance to give due attention to newsworthy Northern Irish events in Britain. Trying to follow the recent happenings in the papers, I found myself …

“Non-conformist republican groups” merge under banner of the “IRA”

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on July 26, 2012, 10:33 pm

| Readers 199

Under the banner of the “IRA”, the Real IRA, Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) as well as smaller groups often referred to as Óglaigh na hÉireann have formed a “unified structure under a single leadership”. They will be “subservient to the constitution of the Irish Republican Army”. Only the Continuity IRA remains outside the new partnership. Up to now politicians have tended to belittle the dissident threat, pointing to its fragmentation. Consolidated factions under a single brand will surely raise …

#EUref: Great editorials are built on great journalism: Ireland’s desperate choice…

Mick Fealty on May 31, 2012, 12:28 pm

| Readers 11

I don’t always see eye to eye with the Guardian newspaper. For one thing, their line between comment and news is often a little too blurred for my tastes [But you run a bloody blog! – Ed] Yes, but, well I’ve come to praise the Grauniad, not to bury it. Those of you who’ve been following Pete’s tight commentary on the Euro crisis, will have noted frequent references to their Eurozone crisis live blog. That blog has done almost exactly …

What the UK spends stuff on.

Dewi on October 30, 2011, 6:22 am

| Readers 6

Apologies for the delay and thanks to Malcolm Redfellow for the tip. Here’s a great graphic from the Guardian on UK Government spending 10/11. Have a play to find out the easiest way to interpretate. (I bought the paper to get hard copy,,,) Anyway UK debt interest is £44 billion quid a year. For those of us lucky enough to work that’s twenty quid a week each. Seven billion quid a year on the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority….. Child benefit costs £12 …

Dis-united Kingdom? Young Unionists debating the issue on Tuesday night

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 17, 2011, 12:05 pm

| Readers 33

As Brian, O’Neill, Mick, Dewi and others have posted, there has been a lot of public debate in recent weeks about the state of the Union. Attention has largely been centred around the strength of Scotland’s links with the rest of its island and whether the Scottish Conservatives should go it alone. The Guardian has been running a Dis-united Kingdom series this month. Mick and I participated in an online debate (that was dominated by Scotland and Cornwall) last week …

If we know where the NOTW ‘phreaking’ story began, where does it end?

Mick Fealty on July 5, 2011, 8:00 am

| Readers 34

It’s hard to find the right words to describe what Glenn Mulcaire appears to have done in the case of the murdered teenager, Milly Dowler. ‘Phreaking’, we’re told, rather than ‘hacking’ is the correct portmanteau term [*see Comrade Stalin’s comment below]. And that word is disturbingly resonant with a News of the World operative not just listening to Milly’s phone messages, but deleting some to make space for more, thereby falsely raising the family’s hopes that she might have still been …