Thatcher

Tweet like a politician … ideally, thinking about how it’ll be read and misread

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on April 14, 2013, 9:55 pm

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Tools like Twitter and Facebook can make a politician into a one person media outlet, broadcasting what they hear, see and think without the mediation of the traditional broadcast and print media. Gone are the days of being off-the-record and silent until a reporter turns up to note your words. Politicians can be online and on-the-record all day and every day. Yet these tools carry the risk that context is lost and nuance is unstated. During elections social media is …

#Thatcher: Ten Children Dead

John Ó Néill on April 12, 2013, 4:13 pm

| Readers 1335

From Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister on the 4th May 1979 until her resignation on the 28h November 1990, ten children aged sixteen or under were killed by the security forces (the number is actually eleven as Hugh Maguire should be included in this list, see below). For anyone who wishes to evaluate or find the positive in a re-evaluation of her premiership, it is hard to ignore the recurrent moral failure to adequately protect children over whom she claimed the …

An English Guinness?

Aaron&Brian on December 30, 2012, 9:37 pm

| Readers 1850

This time of year is always interesting for the release of state papers under the thirty year rule. The release of these papers bring fresh light on a period of our past and often reveal tensions we thought were there as well as unearthing stories we didn’t even expect.The one story that struck me and made the front page of the Newsletter was the fact that the Guinness family considered moving the brand from Dublin to their English base. The …

Absence of a united clear line on the first hunger strike prefigured disaster in the second, the 1980 archives reveal

Brian Walker on December 30, 2010, 6:27 pm

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The Irish Times’ reading of the British National Archives for 1980 reveals that Pope John Paul II came to favour the Church putting pressure on the Maze prisoners as well as on the British government to end the first hunger strike – an approach apparently greeted with lack of enthusiasm at first by Cardinal O Fiaich whose leadership was viewed as being ” not particularly helpful.” Clerical exceptions were seen as Frs Faul and Alec Reid who is reported in one despatch …