policy

Mike Nesbitt vacillating on policy and unionist co-operation over the last twelve months

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on February 26, 2013, 10:30 am

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Modern politicians must sometimes read biographies of past politicians and long to have lived and worked in a world where only major speeches were reported and their every word wasn’t recorded, indexed and placed in the public filing cabinet that is the internet. Here’s a selection of what UUP Mike Nesbitt has been saying about policies and unionist co-operation over the last twelve months. 15 March 2012 – Over the weekend I was reminded that Mike Nesbitt launched his UUP …

Edwin Poots’ proposals on driving

Turgon on March 15, 2011, 10:35 pm

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The BBC are covering Edwin Poots consultation paper on driving and changes especially to the rules for younger drivers: the department’s press release is here. The proposals are wide ranging and there is much of significant merit in it: however, it is also something of a curate’s egg and there are potential problems in some of the proposals which might produce further problems by the laws of unintended consequences. Looking at some of the proposals in the consultation: Raising the …

If the administration doesn’t like a Shared Future, what then?

Mick Fealty on October 29, 2010, 3:04 pm

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Peter Robinson’s attack on the funding of Catholic education was one of the rare examples of deft politicking in that it had a broad appeal to unionist voters from the most hard core to the most liberally minded. What could be more ‘shared future’ than educating all NI’s children in the same schools? Erm, well… And, as Duncan Morrow pointed out on Monday, the Shared Future strategy, launched by Des Browne in 2005 has found very little purchase with either …

An Insider’s view: Sinn Féin has become “bloated, slow and predictable…”

Mick Fealty on January 11, 2010, 2:27 am

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The excellent Sinn Fein – Keep Left blog has (see also Neil at The Beautiful Room) published a document prepared by Killian Forde and sent up to the leadership after the local elections in June last year… It was, we understand, completely ignored by the party’s leadership… Which is a shame for them, because instead of it remaining a private report, it has gone public… In essence, he argues that the party is driven not by an independent party structure, …