UTVTrip

#UTV Roadtrip: Fermanagh and South Tyrone beyond the digital frontier?

Mick Fealty on April 21, 2011, 4:28 pm

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Fermanagh South Tyrone have one big thing in common. They are both rural, highly dependent on the health of Argiculture and, as the Minister for Agriculture Michelle Gildernew told us, both struggle with a perceived lack of seriousness with which policy makers treat both rural and small scale urban resources. Listen! But in many other respects, South Tyrone is very different from Fermanagh. Dungannon is at the heart of a thriving agri-industrial life. The huge growth in migrant labour is visible …

#UTVtrip in Foyle: How to shift out of the shadow of the past to the future?

Mick Fealty on April 20, 2011, 8:22 am

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There was a strange mix of intelligent optimism and fearful pessimism in the room at Cafe del Mondo in Derry last night. By all reports McGimpsey’s announcement that he had not received sufficient money to build the Radiotherapy Unit in Altnagelvin had caused much of the indignation (not much, says Mark Durkan, quite a bit, says Martina Anderson) there is amongst Foyle voters. However, given the UUP don’t have much skin in the Foyle game (it’s the only constituency where …

#UTVtrip: What are the issues in Foyle for #AE11?

Mick Fealty on April 18, 2011, 12:00 pm

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Tomorrow the UTV Twitter Road show rolls into the Foyle constituency. I should be on the ground from about 9, with a vo pop in the city centre, followed by a first political interview with Eamonn McCann. It culminates in our Tweetup at the Café Del Mondo in Shipquay Place. The idea is almost exactly the opposite of the traditional hustings event. There is no platform, just a circle. The subject of the conversation is what people who come bring …

UTVtrip North Antrim: Boundary change likely to be only source of change …

Mick Fealty on April 14, 2011, 3:15 pm

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We held the second UTV Twitter Road Trip in Ballymena last night. Again, of the folk who turned up all bar one said they would be voting. Out on the streets, in Portglenone and in Ballymena itself there were several, mostly older folk who had already sat out several elections and were not planning to return. We talked at length about the issues affecting life in North Antrim and there was a great deal of engagement, particularly around crime. There …

#UTVtrip: Social media, young people and the problem of transforming politics

Mick Fealty on April 13, 2011, 10:00 am

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UTV posed an interesting question on what all this apparent commitment to social media on the part of all the parties. Sam McBride of the News Letter noted we are likely to see a fall in turn out and therefore most of the parties will be resiling to core voters even as their publicity shouts out ‘we really do care about issues’. It’s a point re-emphasised by his Irish News colleague Diana Rusk, who poses the question we’ve perennially heard …

UTV Roadtrip: Tweeting from East Belfast (#bele11) today…

Mick Fealty on April 12, 2011, 8:30 am

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Today we start the UTV Twitter Roadtrip… It culminates this evening with a small conversational group at the Park Avenue Hotel (almost booked up, but with a few waiting list places). You can follow the interviews with ordinary folk and politicians by using the #UTVtrip hashtag on Twitter… Here’s a bit of what our intention behind the project is: If you want to hook up with me during the day, you can direct message or just ping me on my …

UTV North Antrim Election Twitter roadshow

Mick Fealty on April 7, 2011, 11:51 am

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So next Wednesday we are going to the Braid Arts Centre in Bridge Street Ballymena to host a discussion of the issue facing the voters of North Antrim. We’re hoping to draw in opinion from across the constituency, from Ballycastle down through Ballymoney and Ballymena not to mention the vast rural hinterland. As you can see from my interview with Marc Mallett earlier in the week, it will be held in an open format, and the point is to initiate …

Launching the UTV Twitter Road Shows…

Mick Fealty on April 5, 2011, 3:11 pm

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As some of you may have seen last night or on Twitter, I’ll be hosting a number of Twitter Roadshows for UTV over the next few weeks. In all there will be four of events, starting next Tuesday evening at the Park Avenue Hotel, (our initial thread on East Belfast is still rolling) where the discussion will focus on issues relating to East Belfast (hashtag: #Bele11). There are only a small number of spaces available on the night, as I’ve said …