Republic – Page 23 – Slugger O'Toole

Northern Ireland win:win from summit venue

Brian Walker on November 21, 2012, 12:03 pm

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The choice of the Lough Erne golf resort as next year’s G8 summit venue carries a bold double message. One, that overstretched investment in property need not always be fatal (the venue once worth £30 million is now priced at £10m in administration) . And two, there’s always the familiar one about the exportable peace process. Qualifications and reservations about both messages will rightly be muted in the welcome for the highly imaginative idea that came apparently from David Cameron …

The principled barbarity that can happen in a “Catholic country”

Brian Walker on November 14, 2012, 11:08 am

| Readers 36

Excellent reporting by Kitty Holland and Paul Cullen in the Irish Times, that is all the more compelling for being dispassionate. Who will raise as voice against such shame? The doctor told us the cervix was fully dilated, amniotic fluid was leaking and unfortunately the baby wouldn’t survive.” The doctor, he says, said it should be over in a few hours. There followed three days, he says, of the foetal heartbeat being checked several times a day. “Savita was really in …

Bangor born David Montgomery plans return to regional newspapers

Brian Walker on October 28, 2012, 11:33 pm

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Sky News’ City Editor has “ an exclusive” which on the face of it promises new investment in hard pressed regional papers under Bangor boy and staunch Unionist David Montgomery. Iliffe News & Media, owner of the Cambridge News and Hertfordshire Mercury, and Northcliffe Media, the regionals arm of Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT), are in advanced talks to pool their assets into a new vehicle spearheaded by David Montgomery, the former editor of the News Of The World …

Northern powersharing is faring better than the southern version, says Emerson. Can this be right?

Brian Walker on October 28, 2012, 1:02 pm

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In the Sunday Times,(£) Newton Emerson, apparently unabashed at being dropped by the BBC, strikes a counterintuitive note by offering a few words of support to the powersharing Executive at the expense of that other coalition in Dublin. Ignoring the recent Kearney-Robinson dingdong, he bounces his critique off Micheal Martin’s Bodenstown speech deploring the southern coalition’s failure to pay enough attention to the North, and turns it on its head. Stormont is appallingly slow at making decisions, not just on the …

Kearney of Sinn Fein’s “reconcilation” pitch deserves a considered response

Brian Walker on October 25, 2012, 1:28 am

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The pitch made within the precincts of Westminster last night by Declan Kearney the up and coming Sinn Fein chairperson, for “national reconciliation within Ireland through uncomfortable conversations” was more than the usual rally cry for exiles and republican sympathisers. It was a pull-together of the Sinn Fein package for the future, carefully and not unattractively wrapped. Cynics will dismiss it as a cracked record and it can be pulled apart (and no doubt duly will be). But cumulatively and …

Stalling on abortion law reform North and South

Brian Walker on October 22, 2012, 2:21 pm

| Readers 43

Let me try to offer some context on abortion law, with the health warning that I’m not a lawyer. The law on abortion in both parts of Ireland is in question because of a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights almost two years ago which I among others drew attention to at the time. Does that ruling compel the Republic and the North to legalise abortion on demand up to 24 weeks or anything like it ? No …

Will the Scottish independence debate ripple south of the border and across the Irish Sea?

Brian Walker on October 16, 2012, 11:04 am

| Readers 75

At last, it’s game on for the Independence Debate. London based comment has decided that on balance David Cameron had the best of Round One, or the “Edinburgh Declaration, “ as Alex Salmond dubbed it with typical initiative-grabbing grandiosity. Salmond of course hasn’t conceded any such thing. Leaving the wording of The Question aside for later debate, some of the wider ripple effects have been noted. Tory opposition means 17 year olds will be able to vote in the Scottish referendum, which is …

Corporation tax: put us out of our misery

Brian Walker on October 15, 2012, 2:18 pm

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The Financial Times (£) carries a blunt warning from Bombardier, Northern Ireland’s largest employer, that it will lose its ability to invest in the province unless the end of regional aid at the behest of the EU is offset by a cut in corporation tax. This gets down to the bottom line after years of teasing on the subject. (Incidentally has any other news organisation bothered to report this? I can find nothing on line). The FT also reports: Long …

Abortion clinic opens in Belfast…

Belfast Gonzo on October 11, 2012, 3:49 am

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NORTHERN Ireland is to get its first abortion clinic next week. In one of the biggest stories of our generation – and one which will unite hardline Protestants and Catholics – it’s reported that Marie Stopes will open for business in Belfast next Thursday, with the help of former PUP leader Dawn Purvis. The organisation says it will operate within the framework of the law here, but that will do little to assuage the anger of opponents, who will see …

Britain’s divergence from Europe does not necessarily benefit traditional unionists

Brian Walker on October 8, 2012, 11:12 am

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Ed Curran’s column comparing the Ulster Covenant era with today’s is full of good sense. His message is that no State, least of all the Republic, is fully independent in the era of globalisation and bailout. But the state of flux in Europe is beginning slowly to form into a new political landscape. Budgetary and fiscal union combined with closer political relationships seems inevitable for the Eurozone. Britain, historically on the edge of Europe, is sworn never (“never, never, never?”) …

Has the Republic disposed of the malign legacy of Charles Haughey 30 years ago?

Brian Walker on September 29, 2012, 1:29 pm

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The spotlight should not fall exclusively on the history of the North these days. We’re told that the launch of a constitutional convention in the Republic is imminent. Doubts are rife that it will it do the job. Although sparked by the financial collapse, it must review the robustness of the Republic’s institutions from much further back, to the State’s birth in revolution and internal warfare and the “slightly constitutional” stance of the young Fianna Fail in the 1920s which continued to inspire the …

Dolours Price “fresh interviews” on Adams contradicts Ed Moloney – Sunday Telegraph

Brian Walker on September 23, 2012, 4:54 pm

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“A convicted IRA bomber (Dolours Price) claimed that Adams had sanctioned a series of attacks on London in 1972, including the bombing of the Old Bailey, which killed one man and injured 200 more, according to the Telegraph. Price has given a fresh series of interviews in which she makes claims about Adams, which she says are the same as she made in the tapes being sought by the police. The bomber, who served eight years in prison for playing …

Apologise, apologise. Who me?

Brian Walker on September 19, 2012, 4:47 pm

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Two interesting letters in the Irish Times (flagged up to me by Jeff Dudgeon) on the “apology” front worth printing out rather than only hyperlinking to. Michael Lillis whom I knew and liked had the courage to engage frankly with unionists and thus represented a new departure. In his time it was unionist obduracy that contributed to the Anglo -Irish Agreement, for me the slowburn creative shock treatment that brought them slowly into reality. Others will disagree. Philip Flynn a …

Pick up the Church’s gauntlet over gay marriage

Brian Walker on June 14, 2012, 6:37 pm

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In the latest twister among the ecclesiastical storms over gay marriage, Simon Jenkins in fine form denounces the obscurantism of the Church of England.(P.S. First time round, I missed Mick on dear old Ken who on this one isn’t yet wise enough to be embarrassed in polite company). In their latest move calculated to raise the stakes with political opinion, the C of E is fulfilling its modern self-appointed role and speaking for all denominations including the Catholics. Jenkins , an agnostic who …

#Euro2012: Republic’s luck runs out in their return to tournament football?

Mick Fealty on June 11, 2012, 8:59 am

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Old Trap’s Italian defensive approach to game ran out of luck last night… Not least because the one man you would expect to have kept it tight at the back was twice opened wide by fairly ordinary attacks. Can’t help thinking that some of the down reaction is a general underestimation of the Croatian team (who are ranked 8th in the world). Losing the first game is not the end of the affair, but conceding three goals may be too …

Cross border education: lay out all the facts please

Brian Walker on April 5, 2012, 12:27 pm

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Is this form of cross border cooperation actually divisive? Contrast two stories about the SF led Education department’s plan for a survey of 50,000 “border families “ (i.e. families on both sides of the border) on the takeup of school places by children from the other side. Liam Clarke’s story records the objections of DUP’s Mervyn Storey, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, to SF minister John O’Dowd’s plan on the grounds that the minister “ has lost all sense of …

‘New facts’ in abortion debate

Brian Walker on March 5, 2012, 10:12 am

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In recent years I’ve tried to track the long slow path to easing the bans on abortion in both parts of Ireland. And while I support it, I know full well it is no magic bullet so to speak. And so in the cause of disinterested debate and acknowledging the existence of many awkward facts, I draw attention to this anti-abortion article by Ruth Cullen in the Irish Times. I suspect this is no clincher and I’d be keen to hear …

Boomers’ memories of the Great

Brian Walker on February 11, 2012, 10:35 am

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Ian Jack has a fine nostalgia piece in the Guardian – no, better than that, a piece about the collective memory of passing generations – linking the not altogether compatible elements of the Dickens bicentenary to the monarchy. The link he made was not with Empire or English images of national virtue so often disputed in Slugger, but with a workaday industrial world now vanished, which a visit by the Queen memorialised for those who saw her. Make no mistake: …

What is Britishness anyway? – latest

Brian Walker on February 8, 2012, 5:18 pm

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Stephen Moss in the Guardian adopts the least analytical approach imaginable to the identity thing, a random journey. It’s like an intro to a report that that doesn’t actually appear. A bit like Britishness itself maybe? Quite unlike our own passions. Might uncertainty and toleration be its saving graces? As I stood in freezing temperatures in Bradford’s Centenary Square trying unsuccessfully to get twentysomething Muslim women to tell me how they lived their lives, I started to have doubts about …

So what’s the formula for a referendum, Owen?

Brian Walker on February 6, 2012, 4:31 pm

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Jamie Smyth the new (to me ) correspondent of the Financial Times has managed to win some space for an interview with Owen Paterson (£ sadly) who takes whatever wind there might have been out of Martin McGuinness’s kite for a united Ireland referendum. Part of the draught perhaps from the Scottish referendum campaign Graham Walker has drawn attention to, as posted by Mick. “For people in the north there is a real worry on the economic front. I think there …