RED FLAG – Will Paul Nolan and Dominic Bryan’s suggestion that politically expedient zero sum game if the Assembly legislates for all councils to fly the Union flag on 18 designated days, while local voluntary agreements offer the best way to tackle unpopular unofficial flags.
The researchers from QUB’s Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice behind The Flag Dispute: Anatomy of a Protest report [PDF] held a seminar in Queen’s University this morning. [Gladys Ganiel blogged in detail about the report when it was published in December.] Two of the six researchers behind the report introduced the main findings. Paul Nolan quickly revisited the background to the protest (the “archaeology”). The PSNI gave researchers open access to operational logs from the …
The third annual Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report was released this morning. Part statistical almanac, part annual report card, it has been compiled for the last three years by Dr Paul Nolan. At times the report acts like a common man’s conscience, calling out where the naked emperors are hiding under the policy carpet in Northern Ireland. The advantage of a longitudinal study over simple snapshots is that it can show sustained trends – or continually fluctuating metrics – allowing …
The Community Relation Council’s second annual Peace Monitoring Report is launched this morning on the fifteenth anniversary of the signing of the Belfast Agreement. [Links to download sections from the report can be found in the CRC’s press release.] The report seeks to provide “a dispassionate analysis of the trends in Northern Ireland politics and society” in order to “look not only at the phenomena that break out on the surface but also at the less visible stresses within the …
