FLEXIBLE AND IMAGINATIVE – the qualities that might need to underpin any national borders across these islands post-Brexit, yet Dr Katy Hayward suggests that our difficulty in future-orientated thinking makes this an uphill struggle. Watch her talk at the John Hewitt International Summer School in Armagh.
Unencumbered by the Belfast Agreement, ‘comfort’ letters, or any proposals on legacy issues, German authorities sought and, last year, secured the extradition of a suspect in the Provisional IRA mortar attack on a British army barracks near Osnabrück, Germany, in June 1996. James Anthony Oliver Albert Corry, from north Belfast, had been arrested in Killorglin, Co Kerry, in October 2015, on foot of a European Arrest Warrant issued by German authorities. At the start of his trial today in a court in the city …
As we get closer to family holidays, it gets harder to find anything coherent to write about when it comes to Northern Irish politics.[Columnists have to write to earn a dollar, you don’t! – Ed] Some are taking a quiet Twelfth as a good sign for the autumn. But as Steven Agnew pointed out at the John Hewitt Summer School, all urgency is draining from a set of talks with the ever expandable deadlines. That could make a restart unlikely. However …
The local vacuum of practical debate over Brexit continues, while real events move on.. I confess I hadn’t heard of “the Celtic interconnector “ before coming across it in a story in the Financial Times. The EU commission made this announcement at the end of June. A project to build an interconnector linking for the first time the French and Irish electricity systems will today be awarded a €4 million grant from the European Commission… At 4 million euros, it …
SEAMUS MALLON called for people to “be good ancestors as opposed to being good rememberers” in order to move forward. He was speaking on a political panel on the opening day of the John Hewitt International Summer School along with Naomi Long, Steven Agnew and Doug Beattie, chaired by Peter Osborne.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was interviewed by Belfast entrepreneur Nuala Murphy at a recent event in the British Library about her Lean In journey and latest book, Option B. “It wasn’t even on my radar that one day I would be interviewing Sheryl Sandberg,” said Nuala. “I always hoped we could ‘bring Sheryl to Belfast’, but I didn’t think she would bring Lean In Belfast to the centre stage at The British Library in London for the first community-led event …
As the John Hewitt gets under way today, the summer school season had already been launched in Glenties. I spent a few days in the area the previous week so I missed out on this year’s Magill summer school which was as usual these days, highly political. On Brexit you can have too much of a good thing especially when Narin strand and Nancy’s bar down the road in Ardara are beckoning. The School will publish speakers’ papers shortly but …
Ruth Davidson, the leader of the reviving Scottish Conservatives, is a Tory of a different hue from the stereotype. The Unherd website she has written for has attracted the attention of the mainstream media. You don’t have to be a conservative to feel the hint of a breath of fresh air blowing through our troubled politics and to hope against hope for a read across the North Channel. This is how to think about politics. Extracts The consensus surrounding …
BORDERS are one of the recurring themes of this year’s John Hewitt International Summer School which runs between Monday 24 and Saturday 29 July in The Market Place Theatre in Armagh. Talks and panels about contemporary politics and culture as well as creative writing workshops.
As delivered by Fine Gael Minister Joe McHugh TD in Glenties tonight at the MacGill Summer School. Edwin Poots was in the audience (see Gerry Moriarty’s report tonight), with Mary Lou McDonald (abreviated), Katy Hayward, David Gavaghan and moderated by Denis Bradley: A few years ago I travelled to Stormont with around a dozen Fine Gael TDs for a meeting with the First and Deputy First Ministers Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness. Peter Robinson stood up to speak. He began …
So that’s it. The political term over and done with. Politicians off on their holidays and the lights all off in Leinster House. They’re all in Marbella, Magaluf or Corfu. At least that’s the impression you get any time you read the papers upon the rising of the houses of the Oireachtas for any recess. In reality, the political world keeps turning and politicians are still at work, be it in the constituency, developing policy, meetings with various groups, or …
For many years the labours that constituted Fr Alec Reid’s (1931-2013) life work remained behind closed doors. It had to be that way: what he was doing was much too sensitive to be public knowledge. We have known for some time that Reid instigated secret talks that helped kick-start the Northern Ireland peace process. He also had a hand in drafting documents that would become a basis for political negotiations and ultimately the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. A new book …
Tom Kelly is right, now the most peaceful Twelfth in Belfast for years has passed it is time for people to move on. Even the bonfires, pushed to ridiculous proportions must now have the word Grenfell echoing in the ears of the organisers. But move on to what? It’s far from clear. In absence of any sensible explanation as to why Stormont collapsed (and believe me, I’ve looked and cannot find anything that does not add up to some class …
Emily O’Reilly speaking at the BIPA in Kilkenny this morning with a useful reminder of how the Belfast Agreement came about: As a journalist from the early 1980s until 2003, I covered major events from the 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement through to the 1998 Good Friday or Belfast Agreement and for several years after that as the Agreement became embedded I covered its ebbs and flows. I lived in Belfast for a period in the late 1980s and witnessed too …
Interesting spat over the media and politics, between Denis Bradley and Stephen Nolan. My own thoughts fall into two parts: one, this is not new nor specific to Northern Ireland; and two, in insisting Nolan carry the can, the abject nature of the general news cycle gets off the hook. Any opportunity to reference John Lloyd’s seminal essay, What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics is a good day. The whole thing is worth reading, but I’ll just quickly crib from …
It didn’t escape Nigel Farage or Michael Portillo’s notice last night that Michel Barnier was over pouring sweet nothings into the ears of anyone who could remotely cause Theresa May and the Tories a great deal of trouble. It’s an acute move on the part of the EU’s chief operator negotiator to exploit the post referendum splits within the UK and a perfect opportunity for him to take notes from the Leader of the Opposition as well as the First …
If Theresa May made a political mistake (aside from reading the polls too literally) it was to ignore the narrow margin of victory for the Leave camp. Now she’s looking for help to navigate through some difficult, narrow and potentially treacherous waters. So what is Brexit, and what will it look like? Two things seem to be a given, which sit outwith the negotiation process: the UK will leave the single market and the customs union. Both pose big problems …
Another week, another glimpse of ‘new politics’ at work in Dáil Éireann. The Green party’s Waste Reduction Bill, (co-sponsored by Labour as the Greens are short on number in the chamber), passed to committee stage late last night. It did so with the support of Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats and a host of Independents. Its supporters argue that it’s by far the best way to reduce waste by putting the onus on companies to reduce packaging while …
No doubt over the next few days there will be television and newspaper coverage (and not forgetting the boul Facebook of course) that will once again portray Orangemen as evil and wicked two headed demons from the netherworld, whose sole reason for existence is to tramp poor Catholics into the mud. It is the perspective of many that it pretty much is the media narrative all the time in truth, but it will get that little bit worse now for …
From the Irish Times which is worth reading about the Orange Order and how they operate in the South. The entire article is worth a read but this comment about the Irish constitution is worth highlighting A past master and current chaplain of the lodge, he says he could not ask for more protection from the State for his freedom of expression. “It’s fantastic. See the Irish Constitution, article 40.6.2: free assembly under the law without bearing arms. We can assemble …
