Media – Page 4 – Slugger O'Toole

“As with the hardest essay questions, there is no right answer but many wrong ones.”

Pete Baker on January 12, 2018, 4:36 pm

| Readers 997

Writing in the Guardian, “former Downing Street Brexit spokesperson”, Matthew O’Toole [no relation – Ed] has some intelligent, and interesting, things to say about “the psychology of imagined identity” here, and the task facing the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Karen Bradley, as well as the UK Prime Minister in the next phase of the Brexit negotiations. [Definitely no relation! – Ed] From the Guardian article As Bradley will discover, Brexit has unsettled one of the most intangible but …

“Any political party that vetoes the re-establishment of the Northern Assembly until further human rights are recognised (or not) is putting the cart before the horse.”

Pete Baker on December 31, 2017, 7:46 pm

| Readers 2517

As Newton Emerson pointed out in Saturday’s Irish News, Northern Ireland’s first human rights commissioner, and erstwhile “father of an all singing, all dancing Northern Ireland Human Rights Bill“, Professor Brice Dickson, has had something to say about ‘red lines’ and a ‘rights-based’ society. From the Irish News article Northern Ireland’s first human rights commissioner, Prof Brice Dickson, has penned a robust article in the Irish Times explaining that the Stormont talks issues Sinn Féin is describing as “rights” are …

“The truth remains that Adams will only reveal his past if it suits his own agenda.”

Pete Baker on December 31, 2017, 3:44 pm

| Readers 2989

We might never know the truth about the suggestion that Gerry Adams was responsible, directly or indirectly, for setting up the Provisional IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade for ambush as they tried to blow up a police station in Loughgall in May 1987. Sinn Féin have dismissed the claims as “utter nonsense”, and some of the usual suspects have busied themselves playing the man – and/or the media. Meanwhile, Ed Moloney provides some useful background, and reproduces the chapter in his book ‘A Secret …

“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena…”

Pete Baker on December 23, 2017, 2:09 pm

| Readers 722

Here’s a, much needed, short instructive video on perspective from Science at Nasa. Pete Baker

“Perhaps we can begin with social parity.”

Pete Baker on December 19, 2017, 11:04 pm

| Readers 1804

Writing in the Guardian, Richard Angell, LGBT officer of the Labour Irish Society and director of Progress, has an interesting suggestion Owen Smith is right to say that if the parties of Northern Ireland cannot get their act together and restore power-sharing government then direct rule, however undesirable, must be used to make progress on LGBT and reproductive rights. But he is wrong to say that referendums are necessary to give a mandate for change. For one, thing they are not required. Unlike in the …

“The fact that all of the other parties in the Dáil rallied around to wave the green flag on Tuesday demonstrates not that the Government got it right but that it successfully pandered to populist sentiment”

Pete Baker on December 7, 2017, 7:28 pm

| Readers 2251

In the Irish Times, Stephen Collins on the risks involved in the Irish Government’s public positioning over the ongoing Brexit negotiations. From the Irish Times article The British government and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) are the ones primarily responsible for Monday’s debacle, but the Irish Government didn’t exactly cover itself in glory. The way Tánaiste Simon Coveney jumped the gun with a premature radio interview on Monday morning and the subsequent mood music suggesting that the Irish side had …

“ambiguity… appears to have led Dublin and Brussels to interpret it as a maximalist position, while the DUP believed or were led to believe that it would or could be minimalist.”

Pete Baker on December 6, 2017, 4:52 pm

| Readers 1716

The parlous state of the Brexit negotiations has been generating more than the usual level of idle speculation, and arrant nonsense. [Including on Slugger? – Ed] No names, no pack drill… But there are some intelligent points being made, in some places, which are worth keeping in mind – if you are actually thinking about these things. Like other, usually reliable, observers, The News Letter’s Sam McBride, whilst initially a little puzzled by Monday’s developments, offered a coherent scenario yesterday. …

Diarmaid Ferriter on Gerry Adams: “Many political careers end in failure; some just end in irony.”

Pete Baker on November 28, 2017, 4:16 pm

| Readers 3431

It’s worth quoting at length from historian Diarmaid Ferriter in Saturday’s Irish Times on the ironic legacy Gerry Adams leaves for Sinn Féin. Fianna Fáil continued to invoke its republican “heritage” while determinedly staying the revisionist course; the same conclusions are likely to be reached about Sinn Féin under Adams. One of the reasons for the self-righteous defensiveness beloved of Adams was precisely to mask the revisionism, or what has been referred to as the “creative ambiguity” of peace process …

Robert Peston’s radical solutions for Brexit and for halting the decline of Britain

Brian Walker on November 24, 2017, 10:13 pm

| Readers 2435

In the Guardian, do turn up the trenchant and sweary encounter between ace newspaper interviewer Decca Aitkenhead and Robert Peston, economics guru- cum- eccentric political interviewer, on Brexit and the future of the nation. Peston is an acquired taste, a formerly buttoned -up guy who literally as we can see, has let his hair down since he went on TV late in life and longs to come across as spontaneously ordinary but can’t find quite the right notes. (that cringing-making …

“broken promises are – sometimes – necessary for good government.”

Pete Baker on November 6, 2017, 1:54 pm

| Readers 1532

In Saturday’s Irish Times, Fiach Kelly had some timely advice for Sinn Féin and the DUP – and their supporters. Those who seek to govern will always have to compromise, and those who do not – unless their policies are allowed absolute domination – will always decry whatever deals are made. The electorate is free to choose which type of politician it wants, but if it chooses the former, it should do so in the knowledge that compromises will be …

Belfast man sentenced in Germany for 1996 Provisional IRA attack on army barracks

Pete Baker on October 25, 2017, 2:22 pm

| Readers 2368

A timely lesson from the German authorities on dealing with Northern Ireland legacy issues… Having successfully extradited 48-year-old James Anthony Oliver Corry from the Republic of Ireland in December last year, the Belfast man has now been convicted and sentenced for his role in the Provisional IRA mortar attack on a British army barracks near Osnabrück, Germany, in June 1996. From the Irish Times report A Northern Ireland man has been convicted in Germany of attempted murder for participating in an IRA attack on a British army barracks in the …

Catalonia – “Propaganda thrives in a crisis.”

Pete Baker on October 21, 2017, 4:56 pm

| Readers 699

Guardian columnist Natalie Nougayrède is hoping for a Pedro Almodóvar inspired ending to the wild, dark comedy that characterises the current impasse between Catalonia and the rest of Spain. From the Guardian article However, the 1 October referendum was hardly a model of sound, democratic expression. Only a minority of Catalans took part (turnout was 43%), and its organisation ran counter to Catalonia’s own legislation. The two laws that led to it were voted through without the two-thirds majority the Catalan charter (the Estatut) requires for …

Ten more years! Ten more years!

Pete Baker on September 10, 2017, 7:20 pm

| Readers 1981

Having been billed in advance as ‘significant’, there’s been a noticeable absence of applause from the usual suspects for the recently re-announced, but yet to be revealed, Gerry Adams’ Sinn Féin’s 10 year plan for leadership change a “process of generational change”. [Do those ‘suspects’ know who they are? – Ed] Probably… [And does ’10 years’ mean this generation will miss out? – Ed] Possibly… On the other hand, properly sceptical observers have had a field day… Suzanne Breen in the …

“Women in Northern Ireland continue to be discriminated against.”

Pete Baker on August 22, 2017, 5:14 pm

| Readers 638

With the Northern Ireland Department of Health refusing to update guidance to health professionals here regarding pregnancy terminations, despite the changes to UK policy announced earlier this year, in the Guardian Goretti Horgan, a lecturer in social policy at Ulster University and a founder member of Alliance for Choice in Northern Ireland, argues for change to address the equality issue that failed to make it into anyone’s ‘red lines’. [Because that would break the bastards? – Ed] Probably… From the Guardian …

The 70th anniversary of the 1947 Education Act has lessons for the DUP

Brian Walker on August 15, 2017, 5:23 pm

| Readers 1740

On a different tack the Bel Tel recently published a second article showing unionists in government in a more favourable light. This time it’s an article by Prof Graham Walker of QUB on the 70th anniversary of the the passage of the 1947 Education Act. Would that today’s Stormont could agree on effective measures to replace that Act’s 11 plus and advance the cause of genuinely secular integrated education. But in its time the ’47 Act was a real advance …

“in just the same way that nationalists in Northern Ireland can’t permanently settle for their Irish/nationalist identity being simply recognised and accommodated in part of the United Kingdom…”

Pete Baker on August 15, 2017, 2:41 pm

| Readers 2765

In yesterday’s News Letter, Alex Kane, in effect, calls ‘bullshit’ on Sinn Féin’s latest pronoucements on a new united Ireland… and, perhaps, the political psychosis that underlies their thinking. That’s without addressing the question of the authority to offer any such constitutional guarantees and/or the willingness, or ability, to deliver them. [It’s ‘Blue Sky’ thinking! – Ed] Of course it is… From the News Letter article I was on a Féile an Phobail panel with Michelle O’Neill last Wednesday evening, …

NI Media will have serious questions to answer in reporting of RHI…

Mick Fealty on August 9, 2017, 11:55 am

| Readers 2222

I suspect had someone like John Lloyd been invited to speak he would have highlighted some glaring faults in the reporting of this story. I’d cite two major issues: lack of engagement with specialist knowledge and the egregious use of single sources to generate sustained controversy, which in turn created a dangerous form of demagogic simplification. The media in Northern Ireland, like much of the political class they report on, tend to see themselves and their work as being above …

Full circle: Kevin Myers takes the rap and offers full contrition

Brian Walker on August 1, 2017, 5:22 pm

| Readers 1483

But Kevin is right: editors should edit and take responsibility for all copy. What more is there to say? Except that I hope he has a good pension plan. In his first comments on the issue, Myers said he believed “five or six” people would have seen the copy before it went to press. “I am the author of my own misery, I am the master of my soul, the author of my own misfortune. I must answer for what …

Do the Irish papers emerge with credit over how they handled Kevin Myers? You decide

Brian Walker on August 1, 2017, 10:23 am

| Readers 1263

The Irish Independent has at last joined the Irish Times in entering the row over Kevin Myers, who has written for both papers in his time. Former Indo editor Gerry O’Regan resorts to psychology and family background in Leicester and Ireland to explain Kevin’s “ inner rage.” As his editor O’Regan says their relations were…. “unnecessarily uneasy and strained; his propensity to take umbrage at even the slightest criticism in time simply became tiresome. It is a character trait which …

The limited case for Kevin

Brian Walker on July 31, 2017, 9:11 pm

| Readers 2219

The Irish Times for which he once wrote and even more significantly the Jewish Council of Ireland have mounted a limited defence of Kevin Myers. As I labelled him a disgrace for the bonkers claim that two BBC presenters won bigger contracts because they were Jewish, I’m very happy to carry here the case for Kevin warts and all, such as it can be made. There is indeed more to him than this but it’s a pretty unsightly wart. The …