Living in the shadow of gunmen, from Jim McDowell… Whether they live in loyalist or republican enclaves still bedevilled by the bully boys of the rump of the IRA, the UDA, the UVF, the INLA, or, now, the deranged dissidents, the courageous corps of decent folk who speak, even anonymously, to the newspapers, or the more…
Contributions from Martina Anderson and Naomi Long were subdued in comparison with the robust exchanges between Gregory Campbell and Joe Brolly at tonight’s West Belfast Talks Back event, part of Féile an Phobail.
While it was cameraman Cyril Cave’s iconic image of the priest with the blood stained hankie that shot Eddie (known to intimates as Ned) Daly to unwanted fame, his appointment soon after Bloody Sunday as bishop of Derry marked a discreet but substantial change in the ordinary life of the church and Catholic society behind more…
In few countries would a governing political party in the throes of internal crisis consider 54% of the vote in mid-term elections to local councils a disappointing result. In South Africa, however, this represents a significant shot across the bows of the ANC 22 years after it took power, a decline of 8% from the more…
There are many reasons why people oppose the practice of building and burning bonfires. That they are an eyesore is beyond dispute. For a period of weeks- if not months -before the night they are set alight, the area surrounding the bonfire site is turned into a rubbish dump, attracting crowds often into the small more…
David Cameron’s referendums were regarded as reflections of ‘the will of the people’. But is that true? Here Peter Emerson of the de Borda Insitute questions that assumption then proposes a better methodology. 2011 Referendum on the Electoral System. Cameron’s first problem? “Those damned Lib-Dems and the voting system!” Hence the first ‘which’, to more…
Heard the one about the comedian whom the police seemed duty-bound to keep arresting whenever he swore on stage? Just thinking of such a scenario seems utterly incredible in our times. For all the complaints about political correctness and how We Can’t Say Anything in This PC Age, the truth is that speech today is more…
I was invited to and duly attended the premiere of Bobby Sands: 66 Days last Saturday night. Alex Kane was also in attendance and he produced this well considered piece in Monday’s Newsletter. After the film’s showing, a question and answer session took place with former republican prisoner, Seanna Walsh, The Impartial Reporter’s Denzil McDaniel more…
In today’s Irish News, John Manley reports; SINN Féin is set to end its pay cap policy for elected representatives and workers. The party is reported to have completed the salary review launched earlier this year in response to concerns voiced by a number of Dublin TDs about the cost of living in the capital. more…
LISTEN BACK OR WATCH Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson MSP’s lecture at the Amnesty NI Belfast Pride event.
A quick break in the drama of the Labour leadership election, or for those still crying into a Remainers cup of camomile tea: Lisa Nandy MP makes a decent fist of outlining what Labour might usefully do next. In short, get over it. Find ways to get Labour’s voter base some real control over their lives with more…
Talking alongside Kinglsey Donaldson at Féile, Declan Kearney appealed to political unionism to stop holding back on reconciliation with its “active commission or omission [that] reinforces, incites and perpetuates sectarian mind-sets and division, and blocks progress and positive initiatives”.
Smart comment from World By Storm drawing on analysis in the latest edition of the Phoenix… However in considering election timing FF will prioritise setting up a sustainable narrative over pure numbers. Micheal Martin has been careful to draw a line between his party’s boomtime past and its more recent crafting of what looks, smells more…
It’s proving to be another crowded year for anniversaries, not all of them Great War- or Ireland-related. Two 25-year ones in the coming week that are particularly worthy of attention may well pass unnoticed amid the above themes. In four days’ time it will be exactly a quarter of a century since the Geneva-based British more…
I’m mostly lying low and sticking to Twitter through the summer holidays. But William of Here’s How podcast caught up with me last week to ask me what I thought the consequences of Brexit would be for NI. This was before the latest Scottish poll was announced showing that the EU appears to be as more…
At the start of July I posted on Slugger O’Toole to introduce Somme Voices, a month-long series of daily tweets in remembrance of that dreadful World War One battle. I’m returning to Slugger to bring the Somme Voices project to a close with a final poem. The reason is that I’d like to quote this more…
Lucid Talk have been conducting a curious self selecting exercise in the Belfast Telegraph and finding that, as Lucid Talk’s Bill White explains, “The poll is currently running at 75% Yes to a border poll, and 70% Yes to a United Ireland, and I don’t need to tell you that common sense, and history, tells more…
Although it’s firmly orientated to business and high finance, the Financial Times (£) concludes in an editorial that the British-Irish relationship should put a brake on the extreme Brexiteers who favour a clean break from the EU. Both sides have much to lose. Without the support of its outsized neighbour, Dublin may now find itself more…
Ruth Taillon, Dawn Purvis, Martina Devlin and Bernadette McAliskey reestablish women’s role in history in this panel discussion from the John Hewitt International Summer School in Armagh.
Among the changes in Prime Minister May’s post-referendum reshuffle David Davis has now been appointed new ‘Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union’ or BrexitSec as I’m growing used to calling him. He caused a bit of a stir last Monday when he appeared not to know that the Republic of Ireland was no more…
