Profile for Mick Fealty
Latest posts from Mick Fealty (see all)
Mick Fealty has posted 7,889 times (64 in the last month).
PfG arrival expected on Thursday (leaks expected Wednesday)
Yay, politics returns to Northern Ireland on Thursday.. This from the Assembly: The Assembly sitting will begin at 11am with a Statement from the Office of the First Minister/deputy First Minister on the Programme for Government and Investment Strategy. There will be a Statement at 12.30pm from the Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment [...] more »
Robinson threatens elections over Prison’s symbols..
Ya feeling lucky punk? And so, sledgehammer and nut meet (or not). The Alliance Party leader the would be nut. The sledgehammer, the First Minister. David Ford has suggested dropping the crown of the Prison Service emblem and the term HMP from the NI Prison Service. The First Minister effectively says, ‘catch yerself on’. If [...] more »
Voters cut adrift from a politics lacking in sex and identity?
Nice piece in the FT over the weekend by Simon Kuper on the end of identity [Nat here mate - Ed]: The shift from identity politics to economics was a long time brewing. It happened partly because the 1960s ended and the social liberals won, and partly because voters finally stopped expecting politicians to be [...] more »
Opposition voices: Broken promises…
There’s not much point in rehashing the largely academic conversation about the vital democratic ingredient of ‘Opposition’ that was strangely missing from the all party negotiated agreements of Belfast/St Andrews, but if you want an idea of the kind of fun we might be missing, here’s a decent stab by Fianna Fail’s ‘newly constituted’ Ogra: [...] more »
The problem with e-petitions (and fuel price mechanisms)…
Newsman Henry Louis Mencken had a barely disguised (but eloquent) contempt for representative democracy; deep down he felt it added up to little more than mob rule. Mencken was a witty Whiggish rogue, whose position was as far from the Burkean tradition as it is possible to imagine. The UK Government’s e-petition site has been [...] more »
Does no one in the Northern Irish media check the provenance of political stories?
IN the first of a series of posts examining Northern Irish blindspots, Ian Parsley takes last week’s announcement of the effective abandonment (read the detail in Pete’s post if you don’t believe me) of the A5 project (predictable since the downturn of 08, inevitable since the change of government) as a classic dog bites man [...] more »
Sean Crummey dies…
I have to say I’m somewhat shocked about the death of Sean Crummey; voice and inspiration behind the BBC’s Folks on the Hill… Not least because the last episode I heard went out on Wednesday night… His caracatures were often so well observed, you had the feeling he liked his subject, however he might be [...] more »
Politicians and Twitter: “It gives me great pleasure…” “No it doesnae…”
I like this piece from Aine Kerr on Storyful… It’s a timely kick at those MPs who routinely get crossed off the list of anyone who has better things to do with their Twitter accounts than read glib statements of the, erm, ‘bleedin obvious’… In particular, the YouTube clip at the beginning… It’s worth listening [...] more »
Republic 4 Estonia 0
Someon has obviously been waiting for the appropriate moment… Let’s hope they’re not wrong… more »
Barnardo’s: Two thirds of girls in care vulnerable to sexual abuse…
This is a story that broke during the week, that I simply didn’t have time to note. It’s the startling insight from research conducted by Barnardos that up to 2/3 of girls in care are at risk of abuse. Startling not just because of the enormous scale of the suspected abuse, but that there seems [...] more »
Latest comments from Mick Fealty (see all)
Mick Fealty has commented 7,960 times (194 in the last month).
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Books
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John Laird for Christmas?
John Laird (Lord Laird of Artigarvan) is unionism’s jester. His memoir A Struggle To Be Heard ” by a True Ulster Liberal” (from Slugger’s shop on Amazon here) might serve more as a heavy stocking filler than anybody’s idea of a main present. In it he wears the masks of comedy and tragedy to turn the [...] read our review »
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The peace process not such a good model after all
Which reminds me…. Platform for Change’s driving force Robin Wilson has produced a corrective to the notion that the lessons of the NI conflict are easily exportable. Like myself, Robin is associated with the Constitution Unit. He introduced his new book in a CU blog which I here reproduce. The water crisis in Northern Ireland [...] read our review »
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Turas, by Colin Neill – a story of strangers in a strange land
Colin Neill’s first novel Turas peeks into a world in which many Ulster Protestants feel uncomfortable. It’s 2020 and the Irish unification that unionists and loyalists confidently predicted would never happen has become a reality. President Adams is ensconced in Phoenix Park. The newsreader reported that … a short ceremony at Stormont had confirmed the [...] read our review »
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Comment on The problem with e-petitions (and fuel price mechanisms)…
on 15 November 2011 at 7:51 pm
That last is probably why government should not try to ‘capture’ social movement like this.
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Comment on Euro crisis: “it is time to send for the Borg…”
on 15 November 2011 at 5:25 pm
There’s a noteable backwash effect too, with the Germans and the French getting firmly separated…
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/11/15/747541/french-bonds-some-parabolic-perspective/
What was that about a fiscal union?
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Comment on Opposition voices: Broken promises…
on 15 November 2011 at 4:26 pm
That would be the man you just socked NN…
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Comment on The problem with e-petitions (and fuel price mechanisms)…
on 15 November 2011 at 3:23 pm
The trouble is you dont get to vote for issues. You vote for a representative who in turn stands on a party platform.
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Comment on Irish Bank Resolution Corporation [formerly Anglo Irish Bank] to challenge Sean Quinn’s UK bankruptcy application
on 15 November 2011 at 11:06 am
slappy,
“His creditors should have periodically checked to see whether his assets were still titled in his name.”
How so? They did exactly what you said they should have done.
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Comment on Ian Paisley to retire as Free Presbyterian minister
on 14 November 2011 at 10:56 pm
The famous preacher WP Nicholson once prayed that God would “give him a tongue like an old cow… and make this preacher a disturber of hell and the devil.”
They just don’t make them like that any more…
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Comment on “Unionism Decayed 1997-2007″ by David Vance: book review
on 14 November 2011 at 1:10 pm
The bit that was left, did. The rest was a personal rant. One is welcome, the other not.
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Comment on Does no one in the Northern Irish media check the provenance of political stories?
on 14 November 2011 at 11:59 am
Resile, for a moment, to the facts of the A5 case. That fifty million Euro is not going to get ‘here’ until 2016/17.
By my calculations that’s firmly in the someone else’s problem field… Hell, SF may even be in the government by then…
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Comment on Does no one in the Northern Irish media check the provenance of political stories?
on 14 November 2011 at 9:42 am
There’s a third. The poor state of civil society. NI politics is still an insiderly business. Cross to many on the inside and the public pay off will never compensate the courageous for the pain endured.
And I am talking some serious stress, not just the odd campaign of not returning calls and getting struck off the presser list.
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Comment on “Unionism Decayed 1997-2007″ by David Vance: book review
on 14 November 2011 at 8:19 am
I think, Joe, that that problem pertains because assimilation remained and remains a theoretical construct rather than a realistic goal.
There are many ways to heaven so long as you actually make the journey rather than just talk about it!
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