Just in case you thought it was just Northern Ireland where various Christian sects have seething hatred for eachother (that occasionally manifests itself as violence) here’s the scene in that most holy church in the world, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlemen. Bless.
It’s now Up to the Tories…
Published December 24, 2011 News 2 CommentsTags: Northern Ireland, UUP, Ulster Unionist, Conservative
Is this how the new Party logo might look?
After a few weeks thinking time, the UUP leader, Tom Elliott, has responded to Conservative Chairman Lord Feldman’s letter – the one that suggested the the UUP should wind-up and go home.
As expected, Elliott has dismissed Feldman’s suggestions - rather than the UUP Party executive.
So, it’s now over to the Conservatives to do something. And that something, it would appear, would be to establish a new Northern Irish flavoured right-of-centre political party with formal ties to the Conservative Party in London but with local leadership and electoral ambitions.
As I’ve said in the past I would wish this new organisation success. But I would hope that – from launch – the organisation sets out a secular, non-sectarian stall, free from the baggage of the past. The new Party needs to define itself very quickly as something fresh, different, cross-community and attractive. It will need a confident and articulate voice and it will need to be well organised and well-funded – two qualities the local Conservatives never really achieved.
I’ll be watching 2012 developments with interest.
Christopher Hitchens had cancer and knew he was dying. But, nonetheless, his passing is immensely sad. His polemic was brilliant and his incisiveness was both alarming and wonderful. His oratory, simply spellbinding.
Given his passing, this quote is more apt even now than when he wrote it.
“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.”
I’m on Seven Days on BBC radio Ulster tomorrow. Topics include the UK in Europe, Historical commemorations and life on other planets.
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Even the Church thinks the government has gone too far in its proposals for Bishops in the Lords
Published November 14, 2011 Opinion 5 Comments
Even Rowan Williams thinks the government is going too far...
This article is republished from the British Humanist Association website…
Bishops sitting in the House of Lords should not be exempt from “serious offence provisions” the Church of England stated today, opposing the government’s proposals set out in its draft House of Lords Reform Bill. The British Humanist Association (BHA), which had strongly criticised the government’s proposals in its own submission to the parliamentary Joint Committee currently scrutinising the Bill, welcomed the statement from the Church, and described the government’s proposals as ‘seriously disturbing’.
In a written paper signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, the Church of England stated that it had not sought exemptions proposed ‘by the Government for the Lords Spiritual from the tax deeming provisions, the serious offence provisions and those on expulsion and suspension’.
BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson commented, ‘As they stand, the government’s proposals mean that on the most serious matters, Bishops in the House of Lords would be accountable to the Church of England and not to parliament. Even the Church now does not want that, so in whose interest has the government made these seriously disturbing proposals?
‘Given that the Church’s position is firmly to support having automatic seats for its Bishops in our parliament, including on a different basis from other members, its rejection of the government’s proposals to exempt those Bishops from the serious offence provision and those on expulsion and suspension is certainly surprising but welcome.’
Conservatives Call for Winding-Up of UUP – Exclusive
Published November 10, 2011 Uncategorized 41 CommentsTags: Conservative, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Conservative, Tom Elliott, Ulster Unionist
The Conservative Party Chairman has written to the UUP recommending the winding-up of the UUP next year.
I was today forwarded a letter that has been sent to all members of the Conservative Party in Northern Ireland. The letter suggests that the Conservative Party chairman, Lord Feldman of Elstree, has addressed a letter to the Ulster Unionist leader, Tom Elliott, outlining an offer to “move Conservatism forward in Northern Ireland.”
The letter to local Conservative Party members continues, “This offer will involve the dissolution of the UUP early next year and the formation of a new Conservative led party, under the constitution of the national Conservative party, which will operate along the lines of the parties in Scotland and Wales.
“This offer is being made with the express approval of the Prime Minister, the Board of the Conservative Party, as well as the Chairman of the Northern Ireland Conservative Party, Irwin Armstrong.
“It proposes a Northern Ireland Conservative party which can reach out to everyone in Northern Ireland, irrespective of background and tradition, unencumbered by the conflict and divisions which mark our past.”
If this move truly means the winding-up of the Ulster Unionist Party – then this is a move to be welcomed. However, I look forward to hearing the response from the UUP leadership.
The move almost certainly means that a large cohort of UUP members has broken ranks with the UUP leadership and now wants to do business with the Conservative Party – while building a new local, non-sectarian identity. That, also, is to be welcomed.
Read coverage inspired by this post…
The Past Isn’t The Future
Published November 9, 2011 Opinion 3 CommentsTags: Conservative Party, Northern Ireland, Owen Paterson, Sinn Fein
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The following article was written for the Belfast Telegraph. Not sure if it was published.
Northern Ireland doesn’t have much of a commercial sector. But one of its biggest industries must surely be ‘the past’. No people in the developed world talks quite so much about former glories, and former shame.
On the glory front we used to have a great footballer who became one of the game’s most famous womanisers and alcoholics. We named an airport after him. We used to build big ships, and the ugly cranes that built them have become symbols of our industrial legacy. On the shame front we mounted a public enquiry into the killings of innocent people in Derry in the earliest days of our civil unrest – and the enquiry made millionaires of many lawyers and took twelve years to reach a conclusion.
Where, just about everywhere else, the natural tendency is to move on and learn from experience there is a tendency, here, to create vast public obelisks dedicated to the past. Per capita, we must have one of the most complex sets of quangos it is possible to have in a democracy. The so-called cuts have yet to make any material dent in our tendency towards over-engineering our civil society with the pedants of quango-land.
There is a place for institutions to look at the past. Indeed, the entire legal system has been created to seek resolution to events that took place in the recent or not so recent past. But public enquiries are something else again – and quite why they are demanded so much is a mystery to me. If the purpose of a judicial process is to reach a quick and just solution, public enquiries must be one of the worst means of achieving such an objective.
The Conservative Party published figures that suggest that the Bloody Sunday Inquiry cost everyone in the UK £6.64. The total cost of £400 million would have paid for a year’s salary for more than 15,000 nurses, nearly 5,000 doctors and 11,000 policemen, or 13 extra Apache helicopters for British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I’d suspect that is a key reason why Owen Paterson and David Cameron have been so reluctant to agree to a public inquiry relating to the Pat Finucane murder. Is the sledge-hammer to be justified just because this is Northern Ireland and this is how we tend to crack nuts? No.
But there’s another point to be made. The entire “peace process” industry should not be our biggest industry. It tends to stifle everything else. This is not to detract from the grief of families that were made to suffer in Northern Ireland’s troubles. But at some point we have to move on as a Society – and as a Society we have to say “enough is enough”.
Unfortunately many of our politicians don’t agree. Sinn Fein’s tendency to add layer upon layer of complexity to our institutions of “post conflict resolution” is designed to ensure that we never arrive at a position where we’re post-conflict. Instead, it would appear, we have to reside in the perpetual motion machine of recriminations and blame. And the Unionist parties’ tendency towards tit-for-tat response to every Shinner demand oils the cogs of the never-ending vitriol machine. It must cause us to question whether they, collectively, have our best interests at heart.
Unfortunately our political class reflects back at us at every opportunity the shame of our past and its ability to keep tugging us back to the same old, nasty conversations that are, ultimately, divisive and damaging.
There is another way and it’s a way that is being taken by most people who live and work here and try to retain the correct perspective on life and living. Because most in our society choose to shut themselves off from the peace processing discourse. Most get on with their jobs and their life isolated from the never-land conversations that never reach a resolution.
As a people most of us yearn for a political class to emerge that reflects our real, innate need for empathy with our real, everyday situations. And that would require political understanding that has very little to do with the past and everything to do with the present.
No Real Republic?
Published October 30, 2011 Opinion Leave a CommentTags: Dáil Éireann, Ireland, Labour, Martin McGuinness, Michael D Higgins
Michael D Higgins. In his final speech to the Dail argues that a real Republic has yet to be created in Ireland. Now he's the President of that Republic. Image via Wikipedia
As someone on the Libertarian wing of Conservatism I would take issue with much of Michael D Higgins’ sweeping assertions about the evils of individualism in this speech (see below). But as Higgins is the new President-elect of Ireland, I thought readers may be interested in gaining an insight of the man’s world views – and perspectives on Irish nationalism and Republicanism.
The speech is a veritable tour de force – his final to the Dail. He appears to have a few notes, but refers to them little. But it’s a remarkable speech in that it is made to an almost empty chamber which, in a strange way, adds weight to the points he makes about the failure of the Republic and the failure of the political class in Ireland to create one.
Indeed, Higgins refers to three failures in Irish democracy: failure in terms of participative government, failure in terms of adminstrative inclusion and abject failure in terms of communications between and across all strata of society. And while he falters a little at the start of his speech, he soon gets into his stride. If you thought Michael D Higgins was a gentle old poet, if you listen to this speech you’ll get a good idea about the extent of his socialist radicalism.
However, I forgive him for this partly because his passion is deep-rooted in his background and his genuine concern for social inclusion. The central premise of his speech is that while Egalitarianism and Nationalism were at the core of radical Republicanism in 1916, Nationalism became predominant – squeezing out any real Socialist notions that the emerging Free State had.
He also discusses the anti-Intellectual basis of the state – a point that resonates here in Northern Ireland. Even Sinn Fein, that used to claim to have some type of Marxist agenda, now plots, schemes and and strategises in its lust for power over any real ideological basis to its ambitions.
Strategic and Mindful of Grief
Published October 28, 2011 Opinion 1 CommentTags: Irish presidential election, Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein
The bus to nowhere. Image by infomatique via Flickr
The most important learning that the Sinn Fein leadership has taken from the pitifully low polling for Martin McGuiness in the Irish presidential elections is (according to Gerry Adams in an interview for RTE today) that they need to be “strategic” and “mindful” of the grief of families of victims of IRA thuggery.
So there you have it. The IRA caused the grief. Adams and McGuinness were IRA leaders. Now they have to be strategic and mindful of the grief they caused in order to get more votes.
I believe that encapsulates why the winner of the Irish presidential campaign, Michael D Higgins, polled three times more first preference votes than McGuinness. A veritable thrashing. Well done Mr Higgins.
The Incredible Shrinking Northern Ireland Electorate
Published October 19, 2011 Opinion 1 CommentTags: Northern Ireland, Westminster
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The following article was published in today’s Belfast Telegraph print edition…
In the 2010 General Election just over half of our electorate here in Northern Ireland (57.6%) bothered to vote. This was the lowest turnout for all of the UK regions and the lowest turnout for a Westminster election since the records for such things began back in 1945. One could argue that part of the reason for this low turnout was the restoration of devolution. Voters here, some might argue, are less likely to vote in Westminster elections because the Assembly is responsible for more “bread and butter” issues – to lapse into the jargon of the typical MLA. However, that’s not the case either…because in the Assembly elections turnout was even worse. Turnout, in some constituencies, fell to well under 50% – in constituencies such as North Down and East Antrim.
Since the elections nothing has been done to address this problem. Our politicians are behaving like nothing is wrong – that we still have a proper political discourse and that party politics can go as before. But they can’t. In fact there is a vast yawning gulf between party politics and the body politic.
Northern Ireland’s system of participative democracy has been pulled asunder because of a series of perfect storm forces that have been acting upon it. One force is the underlying desire for a proper secular basis to our politics – outside the seriously tedious debates about “culture” or “identity”. Another force is the disgust at the grubby grabathon that modern politics has become – with apparatchik political advisors, dodgy deals and shady goings-on. But the most profound force, resulting in the disengagement of the electorate, is the sheer creepiness of the political class – one that seems incapable of understanding how bizarre local party politics seems to most of us.
The remoteness of the political class becomes more obvious when one looks at how each of the parties behaves. The DUP chose to entirely ignore the fact that the public perception of it – and its leading dramatis personae – careered to rock bottom because of the patronising tone it adopted in the midst of the various Robinson debacles. Rather than learning any lessons from the general election result – that saw its party leader lose his Westminster seat to Alliance – the party merely re-grouped and re-secured its East Belfast seat at the Assembly elections (although turnout in Belfast East slumped from 60% in 2007 to 53.6% in 2011). In short – the DUP appears to have no interest in re-securing the disengaged and disenfranchised. It merely wants to maximise its vote in the runt of the electorate that bothers to turn out.
Similarly Sinn Fein has chosen to ignore the public disgust at the appointment of Mary McCardle as a special advisor to the “Culture” Minister. The UUP has chosen to ignore the fact that its public perception – since its appointment of Tom Elliott as Leader – is that it has no real relevance (if it ever had) to any voters East of the Bann. The SDLP, witters on constantly about regional politics, Ireland this and that, a pan-Irish discourse etc., thereby totally losing us all in its esoteric, navel-gazing rants.
The result of all of this is the incredible, shrinking, Northern Ireland electorate.
In short, it appears that the political system that created vast turnouts in the past is no longer fit for purpose for a present, and future, that requires a different type of politics. Big turnouts of the past were the stuff of sectarian headcounts. Indeed, even in the most recent assembly elections the largest turnouts were in rural constituencies where the tribal drums could be beaten the loudest. Fermanagh & South Tyrone had a turnout of around 69% versus around 46% in leafy, middle class North Down.
Northern Ireland, it would appear, needs a version of the Arab Spring to clear out what has come before. The entire basis of our party politics is completely wrong for a series of political debates that affects us all. Like hapless Apprentice contestants, the local political parties set out their stalls in the wrong locations with the wrong merchandise – and hardly anyone bothers to turn up or buy.
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