UK – Page 36 – Slugger O'Toole

The choice is shaping up between holding the Conservative party together and a Brexit that works, sort of

Brian Walker on July 2, 2018, 1:30 pm

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The FT reports Theresa May is to present a new post-Brexit customs plan to her cabinet this week, in an increasingly desperate attempt to find a solution that can unite her feuding ministers and find favour with a sceptical EU. Details of the new plan have not been set out, but its existence — confirmed by Number 10 — demonstrates that Mrs May has concluded that neither of the two customs options under consideration by ministers for almost a year …

As another crisis hits the EU, raging against the Brexiteers is not an adequate response.

Brian Walker on June 28, 2018, 12:48 pm

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Boats with EU, UK flags sailing in opposite directions

Try as I might I’m unable to understand the appeal of Brexit for the UK, never mind Ireland north or south. I say “understand “deliberately rather than “appreciate”, as it is possible to see where people are coming from even if you don’t join them on the journey. Therefore I’m often a humble passenger on Fintan O’Toole’s train of thought. The greatly admired Fintan is among the most sophisticated critics of Brexit on either island from the high vantage point …

Veil of secrecy over Special Branch informer system lifted a chink as the Finucanes make their bid to the Supreme Court

Brian Walker on June 26, 2018, 2:40 pm

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The Guardian lead on the Walker report ( no relation), neatly coincides with the opening of the Finucane family’s bid to the Supreme Court to order a public inquiry into Pat Finucane’s murder. The “secret” report by a former head of MI5 complied in 1980 – nine years before he was murdered – was “the blueprint for making RUC special branch a ‘force within a force’, according to the human rights legal group the Committee on the Administration for Justice …

Uniting Ireland means tackling the huge social debt generated by the Troubles before not after…

Mick Fealty on June 25, 2018, 4:06 pm

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IThe uncertainty surrounding the Brexit process is driving what often comes across as feverish talk of a United Ireland. Make no mistake, Brexit (even a soft one) will change relations on and between these islands for good. But island unity is no foregone conclusion. In his column for the Irish Times week before last, Noel Whelan picked up the same United Ireland issue our Slugger panel will be discussing this Tuesday evening (still a few tickets left). He usefully puts his finger …

“…on which Mr Hazzard in purporting to be offended by a long-standing informational map would do well to reflect.”

Pete Baker on June 24, 2018, 12:55 pm

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Or, catch yourself on! From the Belfast Telegraph, the operator of the national railway network in Ireland, Iarnród Éireann, with a demonstration of how to respond to contrived mischief-making by a member of the UK parliament, in this case Sinn Fein’s Chris Hazzard, MP. From the Belfast Telegraph report A spokesman for Irish Rail said the company had worked “through good and bad times” to provide services between Northern Ireland and the Republic, including “the extraordinarily challenging era when sectarian …

It would be a tragic mistake to miss out (again) on any future expansion of health budgets

Mick Fealty on June 22, 2018, 12:49 pm

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It’s best to treat Theresa May’s NHS/Brexit announcement with some scepticism, but perhaps not too much. It may well be what Robert Shrimsley calls “snake oil sloganising”, but an important political concession has been made. The NHS is running almost on empty, and needs a rebasing injection of funds. But it will also needs accompanying reforms. Not least in Northern Ireland, where we missed out on the Chancellor Brown years when funding ran relatively freely. Whether May ever delivers that …

Review of Archbishop Eames’ Unfinished Search – Will Another Opportunity to Address the Past Slip through our Hands?

Gladys Ganiel on June 21, 2018, 4:26 pm

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‘Despite attempts to revise or rewrite history, the complexities of the legacy of this period indicate, if nothing else, that to find a common ground for the future will be a more difficult task than bringing an end to violence. To win the peace in Northern Ireland is one thing. To make it last and to transform it into an accepted way of life is by far the greatest mountain to climb.’ — Archbishop Robin Eames, Unfinished Search, p. 136 Those …

“Not allowing people to speak or vote according to their conscience goes totally against republicanism, because without freedom of conscience there isn’t any freedom”

Pete Baker on June 21, 2018, 2:25 pm

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Sinn Féin’s continued adherence to the practice of democratic centralism, even on an issue that most political parties regard as a matter of individual conscience, has seen the party’s vice-president on the attack [best form of defence – Ed], and the resignation of Sinn Féin TD Carol Nolan [“disappointing but not surprising” – Ed]. Now the former Sinn Féin MLA Francie Brolly, who resigned from the party in February this year over its increasingly pro-choice position, and his wife, Anne …

The Union in Revolutionary Times

Gerry Lynch on June 20, 2018, 8:00 am

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There may never be a United Ireland. But, equally, there could be one very soon. Historical inevitability is a fallacy best left to ageing Marxist university lecturers. So ubiquitous is forecasting the fate of Northern Ireland through the glacial process of demographic change, we forget that in revolutionary times, previously robust assumptions can crumble in a day. The night the Berlin Wall was accidentally opened, a panel discussion on West German TV discussed the stunning events of the previous hours …

Happy Birthday NHS: What changes are necessary, and how might we make them?

Mick Fealty on June 19, 2018, 12:27 pm

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Tonight’s Slugger event is highly focused on health policy, for which we make no apologies. One poor feature of devolution in Northern Ireland is its retreat from policy in favour of populism. However, this is also a wider feature of western democracy. About a year before the last but one UK general election, this animated conversation between Professor John Kay and Steve Richards illustrates the exact same casual (ie, uncosted) retreat taking place elsewhere: In Northern Ireland (as elsewhere), there …

Do young people have the critical literacy skills to tell if news stories are real or fake?

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on June 16, 2018, 9:00 am

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A report out last week stated that only 2% of children and young people in the UK have the critical literacy skills they need to tell if a news story is real or fake. Is that the whole story?

Margaret Thatcher And The Road to Brexit…

Robert Campbell on June 14, 2018, 12:16 pm

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It was while reading Will Hutton’s and Andrew Adonis’s recently published book Saving Britain that a curious and disturbing thought came into my head, unexpectedly and without invitation; it hasn’t gone away. I’m not a great fan of either author, though they can give useful insights at times. The book has two main parts, firstly, how Brexit came about, and secondly what can be done to save Britain. The thought occurred while reading the first part. Apart from this thought, my views on Brexit …

Individual conscience may make implementing abortion reform as controversial as deciding on the principle

Brian Walker on June 14, 2018, 12:03 pm

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From the Asher’s case to abortion, individual conscience and the prerogatives of devolution greatly complicate reform beyond a straightforward appeal to human rights. Secretary of state Karen Bradley has been attacked for hypocrisy over personally supporting abortion reform while resting on her belief that the Northern Ireland public overwhelmingly support action by a Stormont that is non-sitting and in which there probably isn’t a majority in favour of reform anyway. She knows resting on constitutional propriety gets her off even …

The bizarre story of banknotes in the United Kingdom

Brendan Heading on June 13, 2018, 10:18 pm

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Over the past while we’ve been debating a number of things around “special status” for Northern Ireland. Coincident with this debate was the announcement from Ulster Bank of a plan to issue new, verticially-oriented banknotes. I found myself in rare agreement with North Antrim MP Ian Paisley, who suggested on twitter that we could look at a move to Bank of England notes. I noted again this morning that the topic on discussion on the Nolan Show, where the proprietor …

Would the DUP be any happier with a backstop, staying in the single market?

Brian Walker on June 11, 2018, 5:44 pm

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So it’s October then. The UK will fail to present its withdrawal plan to the EU summit at the end of the month and its backstop, handed in only after a cabinet crisis was averted on Thursday, would still lead to a hard border in Ireland. Lurking in the background may still be the option of some differentiation in NI’s status from GB. Such is the peculiar course of these negotiations, that the EU is mildly encouraged by the state …

Processions Belfast – Pro-Choice Groups Bring Political Energy to a Commemorative Art Project

Kellie Turtle on June 11, 2018, 2:40 pm

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As the participants for the Belfast event of the UK-wide art project Processions gathered at Titanic Slipway yesterday, it was clear that something exciting was happening. Thousands of women were mingling, hugging, photographing each other’s banners, even dancing a little in an atmosphere of celebration and fun. Processions is a living sculpture artwork, that celebrated one hundred years of votes for women. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act gave the first British women the right to vote and …

Peter Robinson was talking about much more than a border poll. The Assembly must become boycott proof

Brian Walker on June 10, 2018, 3:13 pm

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It was Peter Robinson “pulling the pin out of the grenade” and proposing “generational” border polls that attracted most attention. But he had a good deal more to say at Queen’s that was more important or at least more urgent. He kept it lofty, generalised and above all brief, to avoid getting drawn into detail or appearing to lecture his successors. But his meaning is pretty clear . While he had to say he was optimistic about the future, he …

Boris Johnson and the “pure millennium bug stuff”

Brendan Heading on June 9, 2018, 4:03 pm

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I’m really glad Boris Johnson, in private remarks, chose to draw a comparison between the Brexit process and the Millennium Bug. I’ve often thought this comparison was apt and the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs’ comments have given me a great excuse to write about my own short experiences dealing with the bug. I was working at the HQ of a large Irish financial institution between the summers of 1999 and 2000 as part of my placement …

The Churches are backing themselves into a corner of Northern Ireland’s narrow ground. The laity should take over

Brian Walker on June 9, 2018, 11:38 am

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Following on from the testimony of Gerry Lynch and Elizabeth Nelson, it’s hardly a surprise that the continuing revolution in faith and morals over abortion and LGBT rights won elsewhere but not here, is splitting the churches. True to ancient form, the leaderships of the Roman Catholic and Presbyterian Churches are treating what is actually a clash of moralities as challenges to authority. The Catholics appeal to canon law, the Presbyterians to the Bible. And that is still that. For …

Presbyterians, Salvation, and God

Gerry Lynch on June 9, 2018, 8:00 am

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We cremated my friend James on the freakishly warm Friday before St Patrick’s Day, between the two bouts of even freakier snow. We did this after a celebration of the Supper of the Lord Jesus Christ who was his Saviour and the anchor of his life. The daffodils bobbed in the sunshine as we took his coffin through the traffic from the church in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral to the crematorium in East Finchley, his terminus ad quem …