Sharing and Integration

Sectarian wrangling over sharing and integration can only be averted by raising sights towards higher standards

| Readers 46

A debate on the future of education has begun in confusion but at least it’s underway. Since Obama’s speech which was accorded more significance than it deserved, the debate on sharing or integration in education got into a terrible muddle straight away. Is sharing a big step towards integration or the very opposite?  Since promoting its comment columns as The Home of Debate NI, the Belfast Telegraph has thrown its usual ”on the one hand, on the other – let’s …

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Only united challenges from civil society to government and grass roots campaigns will bring about a shared future

| Readers 72

It’s amazing isn’t it, how all the parties are now singing the praise of sharing, integration and Mammy and apple pie? And yet when it comes to agreeing what that might actually mean they stay stuck in deadlock, their real comfort zone. “A shared future”  risks  becoming debased as a piece of Orwellian double think, our equivalent of the  old Communist dictatorships’ “People’s Democracy.”  Apart from wringing our hands and scratching our heads, what can we do about it? I’m sorry, …

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Please explain what these neighbourhoods across the divide are actually sharing

| Readers 2

This is a perfect example of what I mean by calling for fuller reporting and what others mean when they say the media should stop relying on handouts so much. The New Lodge and Mount Vernon are integrating! Huge story, Northern Ireland is saved! If it can happen here it can happen anywhere. What I’m now itching to read is the news backgrounder describing how integration – ok, let’s stick with sharing – is really being advanced. It will win …

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“£9.7 billion? Well that is truly staggering…”

| Readers 5

BBC NI political editor Mark Devenport notes a charmless and, at best, disingenuous party political response to criticism of the “motherhood and apple pie” aspirations of OFMDFM.  From the Devenport Diaries Sinn Fein’s Martina Anderson is not impressed by some of the carping she has heard from community relations types about the latest Stormont CSI strategy. She wonders “how much of that is genuine or how much of it is about protecting their own positions and funding. There are a raft …

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“Lots of it is on the “motherhood and apple pie” level.”

| Readers 13

The BBC report tells us that The NI first and deputy first ministers have published their proposals for tackling sectarianism, racism and hate. That would be the long-awaited Programme for Cohesion, Sharing and Integration.  And from what I can glean from the consultation document [pdf file] they propose to form a committee “Panel”. As Mark Devenport says about the document Lots of it is on the “motherhood and apple pie” level. It’s good to hear that the First and Deputy First …

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