Society – Page 5 – Slugger O'Toole

Advance on abortion law reform and the treatment of women generally is now inevitable in the Republic. But will it go the whole way?

Brian Walker on April 25, 2017, 1:40 pm

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For readers catching up, the Times (£) has a good pull together on the prospects of seismic change to the Republic’s abortion law. In a series of votes over the weekend, the citizens’ assembly, set up to consider the issue, recommended that abortion should be available up to 12 weeks after conception “with no restriction as to reason”. The vote for change was overwhelming, by 52 to 29. The Irish Times passes a qualified verdict Despite the recommendation from the …

Support – “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means…”

Jon Hatch on April 23, 2017, 7:42 pm

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Since moving to the US, I’ve been working as a supply teacher; in the US, it’s referred to as a ‘substitute teacher’ or simply a ‘sub’. Basically, I’m there if the regular teacher isn’t, taking the class, teaching the lessons, and making sure the work gets done. I don’t mind the work; it can be challenging but also quite rewarding. In the best instances, I can be a pleasant break in continuity, which gives me the opportunity to speak into …

Operation Kenova and The Spy in the IRA…

Pete Baker on April 17, 2017, 2:57 pm

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John Ware’s BBC Panorama investigation on Freddie Scappaticci, The Spy in the IRA, is available online, with an accompanying article on the BBC website. Ed Moloney has some relevant posts on his blog on the programme, including criticism of the initial response by processors in the media to Liam Clarke’s scoop when he broke the story in 1999. Not all journalists were as keen to follow the story up. Sinn Fein spread the word that Liam Clarke’s story was the work of …

Peter Taylor: “Gradually I got used to reporting death. But I never became insensitive to it.”

Pete Baker on April 1, 2017, 3:23 pm

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In advance of the broadcast on BBC Radio 4 tonight, 8pm, of Peter Taylor’s documentary, Fifty Years Behind the Headlines – Reflections on Terror, the renowned journalist has written an article on the subject for the BBC website. Most revealing, on many levels, is the part in which he recounts the “interview [which] affected [him] personally above all others.” The blanket protest by the IRA prisoners in the Maze started in 1977. They refused to wear prison uniform, insisting they were political prisoners and …

What’s That Thing? “a clumsy, aggressive, cheap-looking new sculpture overlooking Belfast”

Pete Baker on March 27, 2017, 2:53 pm

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As the BBC reports, Belfast has won another award! In association with the Architecture Foundation, the Spectator magazine has bestowed its What’s That Thing? award for bad public art on Origin – part of the Farset Project, one of “seven big, bold and ambitious cultural projects” that Belfast City Council have developed alongside the Arts Council of Northern Ireland with an overall cost of £900,000. An 11-metre high public art piece located at Squire’s Hill at the entrance to Cavehill Country Park, with £100,000 …

Joint authority? “What on earth have you been smoking?”

Pete Baker on March 9, 2017, 4:41 pm

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In the Irish Times Newton Emerson takes issue with two of the talking points being promoted by the SDLP and Sinn Féin – EU ‘special status’ for Northern Ireland and ‘joint authority’. From the Irish Times Northern nationalism has an alternative to Brexit – special status for the North within the EU. Nobody has a clue what this means but at least Brussels has been asked if it will consider the possibility (it has said no). Northern nationalism also has …

Sinn Féin’s red lines? : “So you had the Irish language act, there was a thing called the bill of rights and there was another issues.”

Pete Baker on February 26, 2017, 8:26 pm

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Launching the Sinn Féin manifesto for the Northern Ireland Assembly election a couple of weeks ago, the party’s appointed ‘leader in the North’, Michelle O’Neill, declared that “You’d be very aware that I won’t be drawing any red line issues…” Since then she has allowed the impression to be created that the one ‘red line’ the party does have is the nomination of the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, as First, or deputy First, Minister before Judge Coughlin’s inquiry into the RHI scheme …

“is Gerry the Genius sure he has thought all this through?”

Pete Baker on February 18, 2017, 4:22 pm

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In today’s Irish News, Newton Emerson asks the impertinent question… Remarks by Mike Nesbitt about cross-community voting distracted from what should have been the major story of the week. Northern Sinn Féin leader Michelle O’Neill has said her party will not return to the executive with Arlene Foster as first or deputy first minister until the DUP leader has been cleared by the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) inquiry. O’Neill added this was a red line issue – something Sinn Féin …

“I don’t have to be a Sinn Féin republican.”

Pete Baker on February 5, 2017, 5:12 pm

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Despite the efforts of the former Sinn Féin MLA for North Antrim, Daithí McKay to reinvent himself [move along now… – Ed], some of his supporters appear not to be prepared to let it lie. Having resigned from the party over its handling of the Jamie Bryson coaching scandal, and its anointing of Daithí McKay’s successor, former Sinn Féin councillor Monica Digney is standing in the Northern Ireland Assembly election in North Antrim as an independent candidate. As Mick noted in August last year One of the 18 to resign, …

Fine Gael on Sinn Féin: “We couldn’t work with them”

Pete Baker on January 29, 2017, 5:13 pm

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Something to keep in mind when criticising others… There was a bit of a kerfuffle following Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s mid-term non-answer to a question on the potential for any future coalition involving Sinn Féin. The Irish Examiner records Enda Kenny saying While strongly ruling out doing any deal with Fianna Fáil, Enda Kenny said “depending on the result you gave as a member of the electorate, politicians have to work with the result, so, Sinn Féin seem to be converted …

“if Sinn Fein fails to increase its vote and share of Assembly seats under Michelle O’Neill’s leadership…”

Pete Baker on January 24, 2017, 3:30 pm

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With a stagnating vote evident in the last NI Assembly election – just 8 months ago – and a reduced number of seats available this time out, in the Belfast Telegraph Anthony McIntyre highlights a potential problem for Sinn Féin in their election gamble. There is nothing complicated about the DUP pitch: despite the democratic veneer, the appointment of a non-martial politician to lead Sinn Fein in the north, the caudillo and his camarilla are still pulling the strings. A clear declaration …

“we have stripped away the overgrowth of decades of ill-informed comment, half truths and deliberate misrepresentations which have all too often masqueraded as established facts.”

Pete Baker on January 22, 2017, 4:34 pm

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Given the many lurid conspiracy theories that have been constructed over the years around the abuse at the Kincora Boys’ Home in east Belfast, it’s worth highlighting the findings of the Inquiry into Historical Institutional Abuse in Northern Ireland between 1922 and 1995 on that issue in particular. While the BBC mentioned it in a longer report, The Irish Times focused on this aspect of the Inquiry’s findings There is no evidence to support allegations that security agencies were complicit in …

UK Government: “Clearly, any form of joint authority would be incompatible with the consent principle [of the Belfast Agreement].”

Pete Baker on January 18, 2017, 8:00 pm

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A short BBC report points to an interesting exchange today in the House of Lords where the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office and Scotland Office, Lord Dunlop, poured a bucket of cold water on the suggestion that “joint authority” could be an option if the relevant parties fail to form an Executive following the Assembly election in March. From Hansard Lord Lexden (Con): My Lords, this is a grave moment for part of our country—our precious United Kingdom, …

“What was done jointly by the first and deputy first minister cannot be undone unilaterally”

Pete Baker on January 13, 2017, 11:04 pm

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The BBC has a report on the “detailed letter” the Northern Ireland Assembly Speaker, the DUP’s Robin Newton, has sent to all MLAs ahead of a no confidence motion on Monday. It had been reported in December that he intended to send the letter to opposition MLAs. From the BBC report He wrote that, five days before Mrs Foster’s statement, the Speaker’s office received a “valid notice seeking the recall of the assembly” which bore the signatures of both the …

“Now, it’s probably going to be a difficult argument with the Treasury at the minute…”

Pete Baker on January 11, 2017, 3:13 pm

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Interesting, short, snippet from the BBC on that perennial favourite, and long promised, corporation tax cut. From the BBC’s news in brief. Northern Ireland’s corporation tax rate is due to drop to 12.5% from April 2018 – but the RHI crisis calls this into question. “That legislation can only happen if the Treasury gives the green light,” said BBC News NI Economics Editor John Campbell. “What’s called a commencement’s clause. “Basically, the Treasury has to say, “we’ve looked at Northern …

“a strategy which now views the very presence of devolved government in Northern Ireland as a bargaining chip with the Government and with the DUP.”

Pete Baker on January 10, 2017, 12:49 pm

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In the News Letter, Sam McBride provides an astute assessment of the “profound consequences” of Sinn Féin’s decision to resign Martin McGuinness from the Northern Ireland Executive Office. From the News Letter article Mr Adams now appears to envisage yet another round of ‘crisis talks’ in Belfast in attempt to extract further concessions from the DUP and the Government, which Sinn Fein can then sell to its supporters in order to justify its continued position in a power-sharing arrangement …

“The whole issue has, unfortunately, become party political…”

Pete Baker on January 8, 2017, 8:28 pm

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In the Belfast Telegraph, Conservative MP, Laurence Robertson, who chairs the House of Commons Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs, asks some pertinent questions about the ‘crisis’ over the RHI scheme. What would [Arlene Foster’s] resignation achieve? Who would take over? Would this stabilise the workings of the Assembly and the Executive, or throw it into turmoil? If some parties want an inquiry held into the RHI, then fine. But by way of an analogy, if an inquiry were held …

A bit of perspective…

Pete Baker on January 7, 2017, 5:08 pm

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…with this stunning composite image of the Earth and its moon, courtesy of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. [Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona] From the associated text This composite image of Earth and its moon, as seen from Mars, combines the best Earth image with the best moon image from four sets of images acquired on Nov. 20, 2016, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Each …

“More important, though, is to never forget the monstrous things that can be done by apparently affable family men, who write poetry and enjoy fishing.”

Pete Baker on December 27, 2016, 5:15 pm

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With former Sinn Féin MLA, Daithí McKay [now a Slugger contributor… – Ed], speculating elsewhere that the, as yet unspecified, illness that caused the Northern Ireland deputy First Minister to pull out of December’s NI Executive Office trip to China at the last minute may force him to step down in 2017, Eilis O’Hanlon takes a pre-emptive look at Martin McGuinness’ “mixed legacy“. McGuinness has been lucky. Adams is widely mocked for denying that he was ever in the IRA. McGuinness was …

German Police Formally Arrest Extradited Suspect in 1996 Provisional IRA Mortar Attack

Pete Baker on December 17, 2016, 4:57 pm

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Rather less widely reported than developments in certain other legacy cases was Dublin High Court recent ordering of the extradition of a suspect in the Provisional IRA mortar attack on a British army barracks near Osnabrück, Germany, in June 1996. James Anthony Oliver Albert Corry, from north Belfast, was arrested in Killorglin, Co Kerry, in October 2015, on foot of a European Arrest Warrant issued by German authorities. The Belfast Telegraph has the latest update via a PA report German police have arrested a …