UK – Page 192 – Slugger O'Toole

Hague will step in for Cameron in Belfast on Monday

Mick Fealty on April 24, 2010, 11:13 am

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Apparently David Cameron’s schedule got set back because of the Icelandic ash cloud. So whilst yesterday, according Eamonn (who is on fire just now on Twitter) the Conservatives were planning to send their big howitzer in on Monday, they are now sending William Hague instead… And nothing, they say, to do with last night’s remarks on Newnight… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media …

Iain Dale denies Cameron made a gaffe

Brian Walker on April 24, 2010, 1:19 am

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Fascinating to see how “Cameron targets North East and Northern Ireland for spending cuts” is building as a political first for Northern Ireland featuring as a story in the main UK election. I doubt if this is what they meant by a peace dividend. The Guardian joins the reporting of Cameron’s Paxman interview as ” Cameron cuts” story. But Conservative blogger Iain Dale puts up a different interpretation and attacks Newsnight’s Michael Crick’s take on it ( and mine). The point Cameron …

DoE Cuts: “to help minimise or avoid the need for redundancies”

Pete Baker on April 23, 2010, 11:13 pm

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Never mind any possible future cuts, the BBC reports that a fall in the “level of receipts from planning applications fell from £22.5m in the 2007/08 financial year, to £15.7m in the 2009/10 financial year” has prompted consideration of a reduction of 269 posts in the Planning Service. Don’t worry though… “Our current estimate is that in total a further 80 posts, outside the Planning Service, are surplus and will be redeployed,” the DoE spokesperson added. In a statement a spokesperson …

Quote of the Week…

Mick Fealty on April 23, 2010, 4:59 pm

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The Conservatives have been facing the wrong way, like the guns at Singapore. This is what happens when an organisation comes to believe its own propaganda. Charles Clarke in The Spectator today. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

Second car bomb attack on Newtownhamilton police station

Pete Baker on April 23, 2010, 12:47 pm

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Two people have been treated in hospital after being injured in the second car bomb attack on the police station in Newtownhamilton, County Armagh, in as many weeks. And from the Guardian report Last weekend the Guardian revealed concerns within the security community in Northern Ireland about “an intelligence gap” within the PSNI regarding the dissidents. Security sources said that there was a dearth of information within the police about the growth in dissident violence. Pete Baker

The leaders’ debates: a very British kind of revolution

Brian Walker on April 22, 2010, 11:23 pm

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“They were downloading not debating” was Simon Hoggart’s snap verdict tonight. The snap polls average out at about 30% all round. Clegg holding, not running away with it. Cameron showing recovery. Brown halts slide but still coming last. My mind wandered to a lateral thought of our time, prompted by the unexpected question: Will you still welcome the Pope to Britain? Even in these cynical times how many have dreamt that so many elites would have made such a tremendous …

Tory press bullying can only boost Clegg

Brian Walker on April 22, 2010, 4:49 pm

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Embarrassed at having failed to predict the Clegg surge, the Tory press are monstering him before tonight’s debate. Has nobody told them that when in a hole stop digging? This is setting up Clegg nicely for the second half of the campaign. Most attention is focused on the Lib Dem leader, some on Cameron, precious little on Brown. This is probably just as well from Labour’s point of view. The comment on the MSM bullies is mostly negative, not least from …

What’s wrong with this picture?

Mack on April 21, 2010, 10:43 pm

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Sky News – General Election Polling. Shamelessly, borrowed from politics.ie Update: Check out today’s press MackNo bio, some books worth reading – The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves – Matt Ridley . Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance -Nouriel Roubini, Stephen Mihm

Nationalists face decision on electing Lords

Brian Walker on April 21, 2010, 1:08 pm

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At last! A firm-sounding but gradualist plan for an elected second chamber at Westminster, based on the government’s White Paper, if the Guardian story comes to pass. The Labour cabinet seems to have sorted out an internal wrangle at the last minute. Just as well, as the Lib Dems might have sorted it for them. Under leaked Labour plans a new House of Lords probably called the Senate has been thrust higher up the agenda in the present storm of …

Any CU wins will be despite the Tory deal…

Mick Fealty on April 21, 2010, 10:08 am

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Much ink has been spilt over the current misfortunes of David Cameron and the conservatives… Over on CIF, I argue their apparent demise (still two weeks to go yet!) is bad for Scottish nationalist hopes to take seats from Labour and any gains in Northern Ireland for the CUs (or UCU-NF’s, or UCs, or whatever) will come in spite of Cameron’s difficulties, only because the difficulties of others in the race prove greater. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. …

No boys and girls you are not still MPs…

Mick Fealty on April 20, 2010, 1:41 am

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Earlier on today I was looking up old fight mates Kerry McCarthy and Nadine Twitter streams for the first time in a while, when I discovered both had changed their accounts from their names followed by MP, to 4MP. Kerry’s old account exists but in abeyance. Ivor has spotted three of our ex MPs still tweeting as though they were still MPs: Conor Murphy, Nigel Dodds and Michelle Gildernew. And beleive it or not that is actually against the law …

“While we are a city of culture there has to be a recognition that we’re not part of the UK.”

Pete Baker on March 2, 2010, 4:24 pm

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Londonderry may have been shortlisted to become the UK’s first City of Culture in 2013, but the Sinn Féin party leader on the council, Maeve McLaughlin, is not happy. Ms McLaughlin said she believed the bid was “very heavily weighted in terms of cementing our relationship with London”. “While we are a city of culture there has to be a recognition that we’re not part of the UK. “We are not opposing the bid, but we are putting down a …

TPA get stung again over inaccurate figures….

Mick Fealty on September 25, 2009, 8:35 pm

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Lest Matt or any of the guys over at the Taxpayer’s Alliance think I have some kind of agenda, let me re-assure them I don’t. The topline of their previous ‘research’ that the Government was paying lobbyists to lobby government is, if true, important work. Particularly in Northern Ireland where the public sector employment steals much of the oxygen from the private sector. That’s why it’s important that if you are going to have a punt at bursting that particular …

Why has the British MSM forsaken their vital ‘crap detectors’?

Mick Fealty on August 17, 2009, 6:32 pm

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Mark asks why does a ginger group like the Taxpayers Alliance get so much coverage in the UK press. I’m tempted to offer the trite response that it’s simply because the Brits are too thick to tell the difference between sound social science and yet another dodgy dossier. But that would not only be a grave disservice to the intelligence of the great British public, but to the wily coruscation of the Taxpayer’s Alliance: not least because they are smaller, …

Murdochgate: “It is not, as News International claimed, one rotten apple; it is a culture…”

Mick Fealty on July 16, 2009, 1:06 pm

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BBC Radio Four’s The Media Show yesterday opened with a bit of a ding dong between John Lloyd of the Reuters Institute at Oxford and Anne McElvoy of the London Evening Standard. Lloyd opened with this: John Lloyd – “Whether it was on a modest scale or an industrial scale what some journalists where doing was using their power and their money and the backing of their news organisation to substantially diminish people’s privacy and their civil and human right …

Murdochgate: Time to stop feeding a desparate and overbearing ferryman..?

Mick Fealty on July 15, 2009, 12:55 pm

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The #Murdochgate affair trundles on with big guns coming out on both sides. On Sunday Tim Montgomery one of the most respected figures (on all sides) of the British blogosphere came out with not so much a defence of Mr Coulson (no one who looks closely at his alleged role in a NOTW fishing expeditions can do that) as a spirited attack on the Guardian. Meanwhile Nick Davies at the Committee for Culture, Media and Sport yesterday, has named the …

Phone tapping: No new Guardian facts to dent NoW rebuttal

Brian Walker on July 12, 2009, 3:59 pm

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As Mick has just offered a shrewd review of the political vibes, I’ll go on today’s press stand-off. Certainly, you can never fault the News of the World for lack of chutzpah. The great phone tapping scandal centres on two questions: were the News of the World Goodman and Mulcaire convictions in 2007 for phone tapping the tip of an icebeg of “thousands “ of other cases as the Guardian suggests? And can David Cameron’s PR chief Andy Coulson, the …

If Blair played footsie with the tabloids Cameron has brought them in-house…

Mick Fealty on July 12, 2009, 1:25 pm

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The story in Westminster continues, if at a decidedly lower pitch now the Guardian has shot most of the bolts in it possession. For context, the Tory blogosphere until three days ago confident and even bellicose in it’s prosecution of the case against an ageing Labour administration is now unusually silent on any matters of substance. Guido’s list of what’s hot and cooking in the media is normally a highly reliable weather vein towards some of the sharpest comment on …

Murdochgate: A scandal that’s only just beginning…

Mick Fealty on July 10, 2009, 5:01 pm

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If you were watching closely enough yesterday you’ll have noticed that there was a buzz all around Westminster and associated media ports over the revelation that two of Rupert Murdoch’s papers have been conducting regular fishing trips against public figures (some political, some not), and that they had settled with three ‘victims’ for £1 million (or ’shut-the-f*ck-up’ payments as Rick puts in this excellent piece on where all of this is really heading). That’s a public interest story, if ever …

Hacking row widens as Yates of the Yard investigates.

Brian Walker on July 9, 2009, 4:16 pm

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The very idea of a gagging out of court settlement in the News of the World hacking case is highly dubious in this age of trumpeted accountability. That a media group should seek such a settlement is typical hypocrisy of a high order. That a court should grant it and that the police and the CPS should take no further action when, as it appears, they knew most of the Guardian’s facts boggles the mind. Without the Guardian’s scoop who …