Irish Democrat
23 July 2008
Earlier this month, protesters gathered in Dublin’s O’Connell Street to put pressure on the Dublin and London governments to live up to their obligations to prisoners as laid down by the European Union. The protest was organised by éirígí, a, socialist republican political party committed to ending the British occupation of the...
Irish Times
23 July 2008
Republican paramilitaries opposed to the peace process have threatened a group of civil servants in Northern Ireland.
The Continuity IRA said they would target customs officers and staff from the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) for dealing with police in Co Fermanagh.
The threat was issued in a statement read by a masked man...
BBC
23 July 2008
**Your thoughts on this?
MPs have tabled an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to give women in Northern Ireland the same abortion rights as in Britain.
The 1967 Abortion Act was never enacted in Northern Ireland.
The amendment was tabled on the last day of the parliamentary session and MPs will not debate...
Sunday Life
20 July 2008
Loyalist lifer Trevor McKeown could be called to the public inquiry into the murder of Catholic lawyer Rosemary Nelson.
Four years ago he claimed rogue RUC officers directed him to the spot where Rosemary Nelson parked her car and urged him to shoot her there — less than two years before she was...
BBC
23 July 2008
Sinn Féin has held talks with the Prime Minister in Downing Street.
Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are understood to have met Gordon Brown amid fears of a standoff between Sinn Fein and the DUP at Stormont.
DUP leader and NI First Minister Peter Robinson, and party colleague Gregory Campbell, met Mr Brown on Tuesday.
A...
Dissident threat to DVA civil servants
Belfast Telegraph
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Threat ‘puts whole community at risk’
Dissident republicans have issued a chilling threat to a group of civil servants.
The Continuity IRA (CIRA) threatened to target customs officers and staff from the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) for dealing with police in Co Fermanagh.
Environment Minister Sammy Wilson, responsible...
By Tim Healy and Fiach Kelly
Independent.ie
Wednesday July 23 2008
THE family of 14-year-old Brian Rossiter yesterday said it was a “relief” to have settled their High Court action over the inquest into his death.
Brian’s parents, Patrick and Siobhan Rossiter, sought an order restraining Cork City Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane from proceeding with the inquest following the...
In the topsy-turvy paradox that is Northern Irish politics we have constitutional republicans (in the wider European sense) that are called 'nationalists' (the SDLP), nationalists pretending to be republicans (Sinn Fein) and, most strangely, 'unionists' (the DUP) who possess arguably the strongest sort of nationalism on the island- Ulster Nationalism. This point is demonstrated most clearly in recent weeks by Iris Robinson's comments regarding homosexuality and her attack on secularism. Iris's political development seems not to have embraced any Enlightenment thinking whatsoever and is stuck solidly before the epoch-making French Revolution of 1789- maybe stuck even as far back as 1690! Her views and those of the DUP have no place whatsoever in modern Britain except...
Well, well, well. Here’s a thing. The news from David Cameron and Reg Empey in tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph is that the Conservative Party and the Ulster Unionist Party have agreed to set up “a joint working group to explore the possibilities of a closer cooperation leading to the creation of a new political and electoral force in Northern Ireland”. Slugger understands that although the decision was made just a week ago, the party’s talks with the Tories began as early as last October. The news appears to have come as something of a shock to the DUP.
Perhaps it shouldn’ have. This was Reg Empey’s speech last March:
I have given David Cameron an undertaking that if he succeeds in forming a new group in the European Parliament after the...
Apparently there is a piece in tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph jointly authored by David Cameron and Sir Reg Empey outlining the steps both parties are taking to move closer together. This comes soon after Sir Reg outlined the disingenuous nature of the DUPs pronouncements on Unionist unity recently. More later....
One of the main roles of Stormont Ministers is to act together as a collective in the form of the Executive. The whole point of this is to agree on the best way to do the job they were elected to do and to justify the rather large sums of money they get as Ministers.However, with the DUP and Sinn Féin refusing to meet, the process of government has ground to a standstill.As SDLP Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie has said: The cancellation of Thursday’s Executive meeting is totally unacceptable.“I am outraged that amongst the many other important issues which are being held up in this logjam I am not able to progress my own housing agenda.“The people who elected us have the right to expect much better from the Ministers they entrusted with power.“This year I have set...
£3.oo at Asda: Judge Dredd boxers. Uh, just what I always...
Whilst the Northern Ireland Executive grinds to a halt the DUP and Sinn Féin have been visiting Gordon Brown in Downing St. Separately, of course. [I’m sure he appreciates the timing - Ed]. NI First Minister Peter Robinson, and Culture Minister Gregory Campbell, dropped in yesterday. Today it was the turn of deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams, MP, MLA.The DUP has played down talk of deadlock at Stormont, while Sinn Féin described its Downing Street visit as “routine”.Indeed....
The Google Streetview Car (Streetcar?) spotted in Belfast (Queen’s Road, Titanic Quarter) yesterday morning whilst I sat in my car pondering on the future. A bloke on my Twitter watch list described seeing a similar car in Sheffield just an hour or so previously, or I wouldn’t have even realised it was the Google car (assuming he’s correct of course).
OK, the video’s not up to much, but I had been trying to take a photo......
There are no signs yet from the Health Minister on whether he intends to continue Peter Hain’s alternative remedy clinical trial scam self-assessing pilot scheme administered by Get Well UK - that pilot scheme should have ended in February this year. The BBC is, I hope, suitably embarrassed by the propaganda they broadcast in May. The use of public funds to provide un-proven treatments is only one aspect of the Un-Enlightenment involved. Another is highlighted in an exchange between Edzard Ernst, co-author of Trick or Treatment and the Laing Chair in Complementary Medicine at Exeter University, and the pharmacist chain Boots - as reported in the Guardian. The report quotes Ernst’s open letter to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and their Journal carries...
This morning I woke up tired as usual, but please with the events of the night before; a great meal with some friendly people and that very long, but truly great film, The Fiddler on the Roof.
Upon quickly checking my mail before leaving for work this morning I found that I had received an award in the early hours.
Indeed I have been given an award by Grannymar for “creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community.” Awards don’t happen often, and when they do they are to be treasured, and placed in my virtual award cabinet. My award, from Grannymar, is special two-fold. Firstly, to be given an award for any reason by Grannymar makes me feel very special, but then to be the only of her Toyboys to receive one, gives me even...
It seems republicans of different hues are beginning to obsess about car-related issues. While a SF MLA urged a (peaceful) campaign against SatNav maps, there was a much more sinister turn of events when the CIRA issued threats to Driver and Vehicle Agency workers (and customs officers) at a republican commemoration at the week-end....
A Labour Minister argues that government does have moral duties in particular fighting obesity....
A fun and fascinating talk by physicist Freeman Dyson from 2003 begins with George Washington at Princeton, and grow-your-own-cat [or dog] biotechnology kits, before moving on to astronomy. Specifically the possibility of life on the Galilean moons of Jupiter, and further afield - such as the newly named plutoid dwarf planet Makemake with its surface of frozen methane - rather than say.. Mars.. Via TEDtv, via the Professor....
Don’t know whether Gail Walker would consider Obamamania as an extension of liberal media bias or not but both the Daily Show and McCain campaigns have picked up on the theme so which is the more effective approach, comedy or quotations?...
Given the Protestant reformation was an often bloody pre-requisite for the political, economic and technological gains for the Enlightenment, Iris Robinson seems an unlikely recruit to Benedict’s crusade to re-invigorate the spiritual well-spring of Western secular life. Or the Un-Enlightenment, as Pete prefers to call it. But that’s close to how Alex Kane describes the politics of a lawmaker who takes literal instruction from the book of Leviticus in his Newletter column on Monday.
By Alex Kane
Iris Robinson is entitled to her opinion. As a Christian she has a duty to ensure that her belief is reflected in both her actions and her words. But she is also a very astute politician, who enjoys and actively seeks publicity and profile. No-one is forcing her to go on the...
Just the day after Westminster goes off for the long hols, up pops the campaign to extend abortion to Northern Ireland with a quick ambush to keep the issue boiling and NI MPs nerves on edge all summer. Telly pundit and MP Diane Abbot told the BBC’s Today programme (see 8.42) that the cross party group would seek to move an amendment to the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill, controversially postponed from last week to the autumn. All this in defiance of Gordon Brown’s efforts to thwart the move and appease NI MPs over the alleged 42 days detention deal, according to this and other accounts. ...
Gail Walker argues that social conservatism is the uniting factor across the communities in Northern Ireland and takes the media to task for continuing in its conflict-era habits:
Over the years, the media got into the habit during the ‘Troubles’ of seeking out the minority view — that meant finding someone who didn’t represent any of the main political viewpoints. Somehow that became the sensible view...These causes — which have their own merits — unfortunately became, for the media, something of a ‘middle ground’. They were causes the media deemed to be ‘good’ and ‘progressive’ and ‘nice’ and it never really mattered that practically the only people who espoused them were the spokespeople themselves....
The Irish Times has a short editorial on the official renaming of the Irish Film Censor’s Office (Ifco) to the Irish Film Classification Office yesterday. The history of the censorship of literature in the nascent republic began in 1926 with the ominously named Committee on Evil Literature but it was preceded in 1923 with the Censorship of Films Act. Current film censor classifier John Kelleher was interviewed in the Sunday Times 2 years ago and the Irish Times has some fascinating detail of one of his predecessors’ work.The first film censor, James Montgomery, appointed in 1923, famously stated he knew nothing about movies, but he knew the Ten Commandments and he took them as his code. In his first full year as film censor, he banned 124 movies and...
Gloomy musings about the future of the Union on the eve of the Glasgow East by-election. What would happen if the Conservatives win England and power but fail to carry a single seat in Scotland? Tristram Hunt in the Guardian and David Goodhart in the seminal magazine Prospect are among commentators hedging their bets.
P.S. Not a mention of course of what would happen to Northern Ireland if the unlikely happens. If pressed, many pundits state the obvious: merge with the Republic. One very academic friend says NI could stay with England as the ur-Union.
While Cameron and the Conservatives pay-lip service to the Union, the momentum would tend towards wee England and separation. Preserving the Union is down to Labour and Gordon Brown’s ideas for citizenship...
It seems at least one item of business is not being held up because of SF unhappiness about policing and justice, rural planning. Environment Minister Sammy Wilson said today both the SDLP and SF have backed off from Arlene Foster’s proposals to replace the present policy of PPS 14. He claims they want a policy more liberal than the old one that allowed 7,000 rural dwellings in a year. However, the court ruling did not strike down PPS 14 despite ruling it unlawful with it being announced it would stay in place until a replacement was introduced. Is this an attempt at All-Ireland harmonisation through Donegal Bungalow blight? ;)...
The News Letter (through FoI) has obtained internal government documents confirming problems of sectarianism and poor management practices in the Rivers Agency offices in Enniskillen and Omagh....
The Independent today prominently trailed and published a piece by Mark Steel celebrating the acquittal of Eamon McCann and other members of the “Raytheon 9” in Derry last month. The paper had withheld publication of the same article in May, while the trial was in progress. But Steel himself went ahead anyway and ran it on his own website and Slugger picked it up. After the trial, the press was pilloried for a craven response , hardly surprisingly with a protagonist as able as defendant McCann.
In this piece, David Morrison states that the presiding judge, the Derry recorder, Corinne Philpott, banned publicity about the case, but in such general terms that journalists present didn’t know what they were allowed to report and what was banned. There...
BBC
The head of the team re-examining unsolved murders during the Troubles has admitted they will need much longer to complete their work.
The Historical Enquiries Team was set up three years ago and given six years to re-examine more than 3,200 deaths.
Director Dave Cox said they had only got as far as 1974 and would need...