#WhitePaper - What's the case for a united Ireland?

@chrisadonnelly @brianjohnspencr nats. have the best of both worlds in the UK - SF in govt + UK exchequer + NHS + BBC - all lost in a UI
— Comrade Stalin (@TovarichBelfast) December 9, 2013

In the spirit of Whitepapers (i.e. Scotland's Future: Your guide to an independent Scotland) I'm asking: What's the case for a United Ireland? What would a United Ireland look like? This is a rolling "White Paper" series I'm kicking of right now. Why? Because nobody else is doing it. Because nobody - again I say nobody - is able to actually make a reasoned case, or actually tell me what a United Ireland would actually look like, save that partition is an abomination, the original sin and that unionists are illegitimate colonists. When Salmond et al. came out with his considered and thought out proposal which he has put to the people of Scotland, I muttered, jeez if I were a nationalist/republican I'd be writing a White Paper pronto.

Well I'm pre-empting that. Doing that with my "White Paper" blog series which will make the case for not having a United Ireland. I submit to you that this is timely development and I ask you to join me in this mission.

To get things moving I think it necessary to understand the current state of affairs in the Irish republic. The usual criticism is the €200m public debt. That's a bit cheap. I want to hear more. So, what's the story of the Republic of Ireland right now and in recent history?

Let's begin by looking at The Growing Up in Ireland study which began in 2008, the same year Fianna Fáil implemented their No Bondholders Left Behind policy. The nation-wide study is following a representative sample of 11,000 children as they grow up in the post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.

Ironically since 2008, a great many children in Ireland have been left behind. Fintan O'Toole outlined a few startling facts in The Irish Times here. His headline was that "The gap in health between the best-off and worst-off children has doubled in the three years after the bank guarantee." Here's his main points:

One:

"One child in every four is living in a home where nobody at all has a job (In 2010, 22 per cent of all Irish households were jobless; the next highest proportion in Europe – the UK – was 13 per cent)."

Live Drawing - St Joseph's Craft Fair

Less sweaty, stinky, lumbering politicians. More nice, polite little children. On Sunday 8 December I was doing live drawing at Saint Joseph's Primary School in Crumlin. As you can see from the picture above it was like being trasported back to my primary 4 class of 1994/1995 - Lots of kids enjoying the euphoria of a good cartoon!

I lost count of how many cartoons I actually produced. Tried to take a picture of every piece but missed a few. Click below to see a sample and selection of pieces from the day. Enjoy.

Live Drawing - Thriftway 2013

Mukesh Sharma asked me to come along to the Thriftway 2013 Christmas party at the Crumlin Road Gaol. Above and below you can see a selection of cartoons I did of the attendees during the proceedings.

Fintan O'Toole on the Mandela-Martin McGuinness comparison

In the New York Review of Books here, Fintan O'Toole wrote in February 1998:

"That journey is treacherous because, though Irish republicans would like to think otherwise, the analogy between themselves and Kenyatta or Mandela is not in fact valid. The IRA’s campaign has not been a war of national liberation, waged on behalf of the majority against an oppressive minority or a foreign power. Its enemies have not been illegitimate regimes but two liberal democracies—the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland—and the majority Protestant population in Northern Ireland itself. The end-of-empire ritual of an old flag lowered at midnight and a new one raised at dawn will not be played out in Belfast, whatever the outcome of the talks. Sinn Fein’s leader, Gerry Adams, may have made the transition from terrorist to politician, but he and his comrades are not about to take over the state. The question on which the future of Northern Ireland depends is whether, without the reward of power, an undefeated paramilitary army can be persuaded to trade the epic certainties of violence for the unglamorous ambiguities of peaceful politics. One of the most resilient and fearsome of terrorist groups, which has withstood all the efforts of the British army and the local Northern Irish security apparatus to destroy it, is being asked to settle for something far short of its goals. And for this incorporation into a liberal democracy of an armed conspiracy to overthrow it, postwar history offers no precedent."

Live Drawing - Pub guys

A doodle of some guy I met in the The John Hewitt bar in Belfast. More doodles of his mates below:

Quentin Blake on his relaxed style

Quentin Blake is one of our most popular illustrators. Best known for his collaboration with Roald Dahl hid work is immediately recognisable and is full of joy and happy chaos. Quentin's father worked as a civil servant, his mother was a homemaker. At 14, he began sending drawings to Punch. At 16, his work was accepted by Punch. Quentin also produced work for The Spectator. 

Appearing on Desert Island Discs with Kirsty Young here, he was asked: "If we were to leave through some of those 1949 editions of Punch, would we recognise those drawings as notably Quentin Blake?" Quentin Blake responded:

"You might do. They were quite economical but. You might recognise them. But that way of drawing, that people now recognise, happened really when I was 20-something. Gradually I relaxed and in fact if you draw relaxed you draw much better. You're thinking about what that is, what that gesture is that that person is making. You're not thinking about, am I going to spoil it which is the important thing."

In a 2008 interview with The Telegraph here he said was asked about his idiosyncratic use of line to convey depth and movement. On that style he was asked: "is this because you're relaxed when working?"

"Not really. I remember someone saying I’m deceptively slapdash. Well, thank goodness for the deceptively. I think I’m relaxed in a way that is focused."

During his Reith lecture series here, the cross-dressing potter Grayson Perry spoke of the need for "relaxed fluency" and of the need to break away from "the crippling effects of self-consciousness."

2006 interview with Kirsty Young on Radio 4 here. 2008 Telegraph interview in full here. My blog post on Grayson Perry and "relaxed fluency" here.

The artist's Journey, Ctd Deane's Painting #1

See the image above, the images below explain how I travelled from brief to final product.

A tiny minority makes us all look like loosers

A commenter from Northern Ireland, now living in America responded to a guest blog I produced for the Loyalists Against Democracy blog here. He said of the flag protests:

"I am currently studying Politics in The United States as part of a BA international from University College Dublin. An American Student asked me this question the other day. 'The guys in Belfast marching about the flag are Protestants ya?' I said yes they are. He then asked me 'Why do those people always behave like such freaks?' I said its only a tiny minority, he replied, 'well that tiny minority makes them all look like a bunch of losers dude' - This conversation sparked a discussion in my class (I am studying in California, where the majority of the students are American or of European decent, only one with any Irish connection) I was genuinely shocked by the discussion. They all had such a terrible view of Unionism, undeserved in my view. But the point is that unionism is being destroyed at home and abroad by these idiots."

Richard Haass has said here that the riots and instability has scared off international investors.

Live Drawing - Civic Conversation in Belfast

The above pencil and pen sketch with colour is my interpretation of the below:

Religion no longer - Identity is the new sacred

Ed West writes in The Spectator here:

"But now that identity, whether of race, religion, class, sex or sexuality, is the new sacred, hate crime laws have become blasphemy laws in all but name. The things that will get someone arrested, investigated, shunned, boycotted, made unemployed or end their political career – all relate to the blasphemy of identity."

Live Drawing - Peace Journalism

I had the enjoyment of attending the Peace Journalism workshop during the day of Friday November 29, covered by Alan in Belfast here. He wrote on Slugger O'Toole:

"The phrase “peace journalism” was found wanting by organisers and delegates alike at today’s workshop in Belfast. Partly because the journalistic ethics that apply to conflict equally apply to peace (and every other situation), and also because Northern Ireland may be on a transition between conflict and peace, but it’s definitely not yet altogether post-conflict. 

The main speakers (Deaglan de Breadun, Mike Gilson, Jane Morrice and Malachi O’Doherty) and panellists (Laura Haydon, Alex Kane, Lyra McKee and Julia Paul) all had differently nuanced articulations of the role of individual journalists (and media organisations more generally) in covering conflict and peace, and differing notions of what constituted truth, justice and public interest."

Check out my cartoons from the day above and below:

Art is theft, Ctd Peter Brookes

@Blowercartoons ....and here's one I did earlier! pic.twitter.com/gdvqLmPCpR
— Peter Brookes (@BrookesTimes) July 5, 2013

Live drawing with Ian Knox

I had the great honour of drawing with the Northern Ireland treasure Ian Knox at the Black Box Belfast during the Belfast Comedy Festival. My blog post with photos of Ian Knox here. Check out above and below some images of me drawing with my great cartooning hero Ian Knox!

Ian Knox & Brian Spencer hard at work on our wall comic strip. Looking good pic.twitter.com/Ldj2yVedLE
— Belly Laughs Belfast (@BellyLaughsB) October 6, 2013

Deaneos wine

                       

Check out my drawings for Michael Deane's wine label which I helped to produce. More images below.

Live Drawing - Belfast Friday Night Mashup

On Friday 29 I had the opportunity to do live drawing at Belfast's inaugural Friday Night Mashup, held at the Titanic Pump House in Belfast. Clair Weir covered the event in the Telegraph here. She said:

"It's a networking event with a difference and there isn't a pinstripe in sight. Northern Ireland's bright new tech start-ups and potential funders now have a new way in which to meet, mingle and hopefully, make money. 

The Friday Night Mash-up is run by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs and provides a great opportunity to meet with other big thinkers, tech enthusiasts, investors and media."

Read more about the event here, here, here and here. See below for a selection of the cartoons I produced on the evening:

Let Me Tell You (with David McCann)

Little experiment with David McCann (@dmcbfs), building on the inimitable and esteemed If You Ask Me feature that ran for 16 years on BBC Hearts and Minds. Check out the cartoons featured in the video below. See the full compilation with audio from David McCann here. See the feature on Slugger O'Toole here.

Political cartoonists in the digital age

In The New Statesman here Helen Lewis asked: "can political cartoonists can survive in the digital age?" In a piece by the title, "Loss of habitat threatens cartoonist species" Andy Davey wrote on the matter here:

"I am a member of an endangered species; no, not just homo sapiens sapiens but a rarer and more endangered sub-species; the cartoonists. In fact, my small colony is a sub-sub-species – the few who actually (well, as I write) make a living from the practice. The fact is that habitat change is threatening us. I am extremely lucky to have made it through the Darwinian undergrowth to find this sun-dappled glade where I can reflect on how our small herd got here and to muse about the path ahead. If you’ll indulge me, here goes. Like the WWF, I’m aware of you, dear sympathy-fatigued readers, so in the following paragraphs I’m hoping to strike a bold, rakish balance between abject sorrow at the dwindling numbers of a once-majestic species and an uplifting message of feel-good hope about the future [extended conservation metaphor ends]."

He wrote here:

"The ever-eloquent Rowson always likens us to parasites who will find a host even in the most unforgiving of environments. Our forbears were hosted by Georgian coffee shops, pompous, dry Victorian magazines and eventually newspapers."

The reverse diaspora and Cloud cities

In The Sunday Times of December 1 2013, Balaji Srinivasan considered how the future could look. He said here:

"And we can’t know from today’s vantage point where that first reverse diaspora might assemble outside the US, or what those cloud cities or countries will be like. They could be countries formed by internationally recognised processes similar to the ones that created about 30 new countries over the past 25 years, a pattern noted by Marc Andreessen. They could be regions of the world set aside by global agreement for experimentation, as discussed by Larry Page. They could be floating cities in international waters as put forth by Peter Thiel, or one of the more ambitious 80,000-person colonies on Mars desired by Elon Musk. The specific location is still unknown; in a real sense it matters far less than the people there. 

What we can say for certain is this: from Occupy Wall Street and YCombinator to co-living in San Francisco and co-housing in the UK, something important is happening. People are meeting like minds in the cloud and travelling to meet each other offline, in the process building community — and tools for community — where none existed before. Those cloud networks where people poke each other, share photos and find their missing communities are beginning to catalyse waves of physical migration, beginning to reorganise the world. 

Will this ultimately end in a cloud country of our own, as Page, Thiel and Musk propose in different ways? We can set this as a long-term goal, like the kind of dream that propelled so many millions to exit and come to America in the first place, but it’s unclear what the future holds. We do know this, however: as cloud formations take physical shape at steadily greater scales and durations, it shall become ever more feasible to create a new nation of emigrants."

Rooting out bad teachers

Richard Lokier is working 12 hour days to motivate his pupils

The Sunday Times editorial of December 1 2013 said:

"The lazy tolerance of poor standards in teaching and teacher training has ruined the life chances of countless young people."

Sian Griffiths, The Sunday Times education correspondent asked: "What can we learn from the countries whose children are doing best in the Pisa tests (Programme for International Student Assessment)?" She responded here:

"One obvious answer is to hire the best teachers. Finland, which has traditionally done well in the tests, recruits its teachers from the top 10% of graduates."

She continued:

"In the past, Richard Cairns, the headmaster of Brighton College, one of Britain’s top schools said, heads sometimes resorted to writing good references for poor teachers to get rid of them. The poor teachers simply moved around from school to school, blighting children’s chances in a “dance of the lemons”."

More:

"One of the best weapons in the government’s armoury is an ambitious charity called Teach First. Inspired by a similar outfit in America, it recruits the brightest and best graduates to teach in tough inner-city schools for at least two years."

Sian Griffiths also cited Joan Deslandes, headteacher at Kingsford Community School, in Beckton, east London. She said:

"Teachers are not good at being self-reflective,” she said. “They believe they are being victimised, harassed, discriminated against. But we are professionals and I don’t think we should shy away from addressing problems in the classroom."

As WB Yeats said: "Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire." Also read about Michelle Rhee who shook up teaching standards in Washington, US here.

When it's cool to be dumb, Ctd

Sian Griffiths quotes Alison Wolf, professor of public sector management at King's College London in The Sunday Times of December 1 2013 here: 

"If you are growing up in Seoul or Shanghai, you go home from school to a family that cares desperately about education, no matter what its social standing is. British parents are simply not as aware of how important education is."

My previous posts in the "Cool to be dumb" series here, here, here, here,here, here and here. On the Huffington Post UK here.

The Third Way - Where are the moderates?

 

I made a brief address:

"I come from long tradition in NI. People who have shut up and put up. The muzzled moderate. Right across the world we are seeing the emergence of a global youth protest movement. Where young people in Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey are rebelling against the sweaty mullahs who're trying to impose a theocracy and close the door on the 21st Century. In the 1970s under Vaclav Havel, this was called the power of the powerless. The use of parody, satire and writing to fight communism. Now through social media we can express the frustration of the empowered. 

When it's cool to be dumb, Ctd

@brianjohnspencr @YsabellGiles In the working-class world I grew up in, to succeed was seen by many as 'rising above your station'.
— Ian Livingstone (@IGLivingstone) November 28, 2013

The deputy Lord Mayor of Belfast, Christopher Stalford tweeted in response:

@IGLivingstone @brianjohnspencr @YsabellGiles Ian, absolutely spot on.
— Christopher Stalford (@CDMStalfordDUP) November 28, 2013

Ian Livingstone also shared on his blog his experience and perception of schooling in the context of growing up in a Belfast family:

"I daydreamed my way through school. I paid no attention to class-work and my truancy had now become very regular. In my family there were no expectations from education at all. My parents saw it in a sense, like a glorified baby-sitting service - somewhere I could go during daytime while they were at work. The previous hopes they had for me when I had gained entry into grammar school were by now gone after I had been expelled. I was destined to enter into an apprenticeship as an electrician, plumber or a welder in the Harland &Wolff shipyard, like the majority of males in my family. A good education didn’t really matter."

My previous posts in the "Cool to be dumb" series here, here, here, here, here and here. On the Huffington Post UK here.

Phil Mickelson on Facing Adversity

Phil Michelson won the British Open 2013 at Muirfield, Scotland thanks to his unbending determination to win, work hard and never give up. This victory in particular contrasts with his coming runner up only a month previous in June 2013, when he sat second in the US Open for the 6th time. On the day after his Sunday 22 July victory, Radio 4 played a clip of the winner Mickelson who reflected on his win. He said:

"You have to be resilient in this game. You have to accept losses. You have to use it as motivation as opposed to letting it defeat you. You have to use it as motivation to work harder and come back strong and these last couple of weeks, these last couple of months I've played some of the best golf of my career."

Irish Senator David Norris on Loyalism

Irish Senator, protestant and unionist David Norris slammed the behavior of loyalism in the Senate. He said:

"As a southern unionist and someone viewed from the north as a Protestant, I would like to say I am bitterly ashamed of the behaviour of people who call themselves unionist and protestants. They are a disgrace to any decent representation of those values... They are an appalling embarrassment. 

When they were prisoners, they were like neanderthals, reading comics and doing press-ups. Whereas the Sinners, for whom I couldn't give a toss, at least had the intelligence to do a university degree."

Video of Senator Norris in full here.

Can we replicate Silicion Valley in Northern Ireland?

The younger brother of YouTube founder Chad Hurley, Brent Hurley (@BrentHurley) recently attended Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford and also spoke on Radio 4 here. He was asked: "Can the entrepreneurial success of Silicon Valley be replicated here [in the UK?]" Brent responded here:

"For me Silicon Valley is more a state of mind. It's a mentality among entrepreneurs to look upon the world and see problems they want to change. If you see a pain point, then you try to develop a solution, a product to address that."

Listen to Chad Hurley on Radio 4 here. Sebastian Payne wrote in The Spectator here:

"Trying to clone Silicon Valley has been a cornerstone of this coalition’s business policy. Rohan Silva, until recently the PM’s policy guru, spent several years in government and opposition creating the ‘Silicon Roundabout’, an attempt to provide a new leg for the UK’s economy in East London. 

Depending on who you believe, the East London Tech City project has either been aroaring success or a waste of time. Despite all the encouragement from the government, the main challenge is recreating the enticement of Silicon Valley in Shoreditch — something that may be impossible."

I want to ask: Can we replicate the Silicon Valley state of mind and mentality in Northern Ireland?

Previous posts on creativity here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Paramilitary murals are criminal damage

In the Irish News Newton Emerson explained the law governing the painting of gable walls. He said:

"There is certainly a case to be made that the mural glorifies terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2006 or encourages crime under the Serious Crime Act 2007. But really there is no need to resort to the kind of New Labour anti-terror legislation that has Willie Frazer threatening to dress up as Abu Hamza. Defacing a wall without the owner's permission is a good old fashioned offence of criminal damage, punishable by up to 14 years in jail. 

The law on criminal damage includes an interesting twist. Damaging property with a "reckless" disregard to endangering others is punishable by life imprisonment, even if you are the property owner or have the property owner's permission. This part of the law is intended to cover arson but may apply to anything. Is it mortally reckless to paint a UVF gunman on a wall in east Belfast under present circumstances? A good barrister should be able to make a case for it 

However we are straying back into New Labour territory. A simple charge of criminal damage should suffice, helped by the fact that defaced walls are generally owned by the Housing Executive or Housing Association, so "permission" to paint them cannot be obtained as easily as it would from an intimidated householder. Failing that, there are the planning regulations to consider."

Newton Emerson on Larkin's de facto amnesty

Newton Emerson wrote in the Sunday Times of November 24 2013 an article in response to the John Larkin's call for a de facto amnesty. He said:

"Larkin also proposes that the warehouse of files and evidence held by the PSNI's HET should be made available to victims and relatives on a non-disclosure "freedom of information plus" basis, having first been redacted to protect the right to life of anyone named. Managing that without lawyers would be quite an achievement.   

There are 3,000 unsolved murders from the Troubles. Would it be legally possible to deny all those families the justice they have a right to expect, both from the state (criminal) and to pursue by civil action themselves?"

Newton Emerson addressed the issue of the civil law:

"Preventing civil claims and prosecutions should be relatively straightforward. Larkin suggests passing legislation in London and Dublin setting a statute of limitations on murders prior to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Most civil offences already have a stature of limitations of 3 to 6 years."

He then addressed the criminal law:

"Preventing criminal prosecutions would be another matter. Article 2 of the ECHR, enshrined in British and Irish law, requires the state to investigate fully all suspicious deaths. This is generally interpreted to rule out blanket amnesties. 

Larkin points out that the ECHR has granted Article 2 exemptions to facilitate amnesties elsewhere, while elements of an amnesty have been implicitly accepted in several peace-process deals, most notably on arms decommissioning and locating the bodies of the Disappeared."

A student culture of censorship

I've already written before about Northern Ireland and Ireland's historical (here, here, here, here, and here) and modern impulse (here, here, here and here) to censor. I've also posted here about the need for Britain to enact speech laws like those allowed under the First Amendent in the United States. The editor of The Northern Slant Connor Daly (@cdaly29) wrote here about a "culture of censorship" among student bodies. A trend he called dangerous. He said:

"Student unions have a proud history of welcoming forward thinkers and instigating progressive movements. A culture of censorship, however, is neither forward thinking nor progressive. Rather than advise and educate members, this culture demands that others adhere to the standards and activities that certain groups consider appropriate. It misses the wider point; making scapegoats through piecemeal tactics rather than constructively tackling issues head on. 

When attitudes and actions are offensive it is important to right these wrongs, to encourage a new culture of tolerance, or be it zero tolerance. At the same time it is crucial to send out the right message; a reassurance and willingness to change things for the better, not to ban things with no real end game in sight. Defining ourselves by what we are against and sweeping controversial events or otherwise under the carpet is unproductive. Such tactics may raise awareness, but the issues will persist as will this fondness for censorship."

The editor of The Belfast Telegraph Mike Gilson, who slapped down proposals to regulate the press here, gave his take on the ban here:

"No-one can defend its lyrics which could be interpreted as promoting a rape culture. But it is not the only song, book or magazine which could be viewed in that light. 

Bans smack of totalitarianism. Once anyone sets off down that road it can be difficult to stop and the people who were once praised for acting with the best of intentions would then stand accused of limiting free speech. The lines, suddenly, become very blurred indeed."

Martin Rowson - Political cartoons are assassinations without the blood

In a presentation by Martin Rowson (@MartinRowson) entitled The Power of the Political Cartoon, the Guardian cartoonist explained why he does political cartoons. The self-professed "Albert Schweitzer of British Cartooning" whose sole aim is to please, said:

"I do them because they are assassination without the blood. They are part of the political establishment in the country. For 300 years we've had this kind of satire tolerated. Extremely vicious, rude, personal attacks on people. So in a way it's ritualised. But it's also meant to do damage. It is voodoo. It's part of the symbiotic relationship cartoonists and politicians have. It's mind over matter. We pretend we matter, they pretend they don't mind. 

And what they do also is buy the originals. And this is where we get back to the voodoo. They buy the originals and they invariably hang them in their toilets. You don't have to be much of a Freudian to work out what's happening there. Thy are in fact flushing away the bad magic."

He continued:

"The purpose of satire somebody once said is to puncture pomposity. In fact the purpose of satire is to tear aside the fine arrangements and ceremonial clothing of the elite to show that they are sweating, stinking, pissing, shitting people just like us. It is an egalitarian purpose in satire."

Watch the full presentation here. My previous blog posts on Martin Rowson here and here. Similar posts on Ian Knox here, and Gerald Scarfe here, here and here.

Ian Knox in photos

I'm a huge, huge fan of Ian Knox (on UK Comic Wiki here). He is the esteemed local artist, political cartoonist and Northern Ireland treasure who has been cutting swathes into politicians for decades. He worked for comic strips in the 70's and 80's and in 1989 became editorial cartoonist at the Irish News, a position he has held ever since. Ian Knox is the one who calls out ignorance, apathy, corruption, fraud, prejudice, superstition wherever he sees it, in a way that simply no one else can. 

His strength is his vintage. With it comes wisdom and wit. But his vintage is also his weakness. With it comes a large degree of digital illiteracy. The end of this is that there is scant coverage of him or his works online. Though he does have a newsprint sales web portal here. 

With that in mind, this blog post is the first in a series of a larger effort that will hopefully raise the profile and presence of Ian Knox online. Immediately below if a self-portrait of Ian Knox, and further below is a selection of Ian Knox at work. I hope you enjoy.

If the press is accountable to Peter Robinson, then Peter Robinson is no longer accountable to the press

Andrew Sullivan at the Harvard University JFK School of Government here

Is there far too much criticism of Stormont? So says Peter Robinson. Arlene Foster & commentator Ale... http://t.co/JtxF47czwB via @audioboo
— Stephen Nolan (@StephenNolan) November 25, 2013

Peter Robinson has got this very wrong. The role of the press, the media and journalists is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The newspapers are not the government's pet to control, or in any way influence. The newspaper is there to hold government to account. Not the other way around. Andrew Sullivan said of the role of the journalist in his Theodore H. White lecture to Harvard's JFK School of Government here:

"I think our job is to say things that no-one else will say and to find out things that make people very uncomfortable. The powerful and the powerless. I think our job is not to worry about the impact of what we find out and say but to say what we think and to report what we see."

George Orwell famously said:

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations." 

Mick Fealty wrote of the Stormont all-party, power-sharing coalition here:

"This also goes some way to explain why the Stormont administration has, even after six years, failed to produce anything (beyond copious amounts of PR) resembling a partnership government." 

What Peter Robinson is effectively calling for, is for the press to laud and applaud ineffectual government. He wants Orwell's PR. He wants more PR to go on-top of the "coprious amounts of PR" that flows from the sectarian machine. This a perversion of the western, democratic model. His charge and call is an inversion of a healthy, functioning press. As Boris Johnson said in The Telegraph:

"It's a vigorous, voracious press that keeps our country honest."

As the November 3 2013 Sunday Times editorial said:

"It is the job of the press to keep the politicians honest. It is not the job of politicians to to decide what the press can print." 

Newton Emerson spoke in March 2012 on BBC NI's Hearts and Minds on the First Minister's complaint about the predominance of negative publicity in the media here. He said:

"Peter Robinson now sits at the top of a vast and cynical scare-story machine, instead of shooting the messenger, he should take aim at the negativity his government funds and his party humours." 

If the press is accountable to Peter Robinson, then Peter Robinson is no longer accountable to the press. These claims should concern any committed democrat. Peter Robinson has already defended the veto of Northern Ireland's archaic libel regime, see here. A law slammed by British journalists as a “national embarrassment” and by the American media as “repugnant to U.S. constitutional principles.” See also my article on Eamonn Mallie.com, I’ll see you in court – the new DUP war cry here.

I've also posted here on the need for Great Britain to adopt speech laws like those protected in the United States under the First Amendment.

John Larkin - The past, truth and reconciliation

@DAaronovitch Just had dinner w/ pal whose mother was killed by South African secret police bomb. Truth & reconciliation didn't work for her
— Simon Mason (@LDNCalling) November 20, 2013

My response to the events and David Aaronovitch is on the Huffington Post UK here.

Being Irish is not about being anti-British, Ctd

In a 2011 article for the Guardian ahead of the Queen's visit to Ireland here, Fintan O'Toole wrote on Irish identity:

"For the task that the GAA will complete when the Queen visits Croke Park is a momentous one – that of creating a distinctive and proud Irish identity that is not anti-British. The GAA came out of a time when the easiest answer to the question "what does it mean to be Irish?" was "not British". It takes real courage to replace that easy negative with something more positive and fluid."

Full Guardian article here. My earlier post on creating an inclusive Irish identity that does not define itself by its anti-Britishness is here.

Normal Northern Ireland - Hench Fitness and Rory Girvan

Rory Girvan, founder of HENCH Fitness (@InsideHENCH)

Rory Girvan (@InsideHench) is the athlete and entrepreneur behind HENCH (website here). A creative and innovative fitness gym started in 2012 and located only meters from Belfast city hall, at 37 College Street. Born in North Belfast Rory practices what he preaches. He studied Biomedical Sciences in Liverpool and Sport and Exercise Sciences in Edinburgh. He is a competitive weight-lifter, winning a Silver Medal at the WDFPF World Powerlifting Championships (see here) (more here and here). He is the owner of a growing business employing 10 fitness professionals.

HENCH, 37 College Street

I have been hugely impressed by Rory. He mixes warmth and openness with a fierce ambition, for the sport and business. The tech entrepreneur Felix Dennis said that an idea is worth nothing without execution. Rory has given expression to this. Rory saw the state of the fitness industry and had a vision. He has taken an old dilapidated factory space and executed that vision with a fine professional polish.

Walk into the vast premises at HENCH and you be met with a beautiful mix of vintage and modernity, and a striking sense of being part of the new, post-industrial, networked, international economy. That's the Northern Ireland I know. A team saturated and soaked in ambition. A people straining every sinew to succeed. Read my blog post on the transition from industrial to networked economy here.

Inherited myths, biases and bigotries

Kevin Myers wrote in the Sunday Times of November 10 2013 that Maureen Wall of UCD began her opening history lecture to first arts by asking foreign-educated students to stand. Kevin Myers cited what the famous lady then said to the foreign students:

"You, I have some hopes for. Your minds have not been filled with toxic rubbish that passes for history in our schools. But as for the rest of you, bitter experience has taught me to despair already."

Conor Cruise O'Brien wrote in States of Ireland (p. 89):

"Our school histories do not seriously discuss the ideas and policies of the men of 1916 in relation to the Protestants of Ulster."

The same cuts for Protestant schools, they do not seriously discuss the ideas of the men of 1912, led by Edward Carson, who signed the Ulster Covenant. Malachi O'Doherty suggested a solution to the problem flagged above. He wrote in the Irish Times of November 22 here:

"The further we move on from the Troubles in Northern Ireland the more divergent accounts of that period become... Dr Haass wants to achieve some reconciliation of divergent views of the past to create a basis for co-operation in the future. One approach might be to insist on more teaching of history in schools" 

When it's cool to be dumb, Ctd

India Knight wrote in the Sunday Times of November 17 2013:

"Privately educated children are taught that being clever is cool; some state-educated ones get given the feeling that it is sometimes wiser to hide one's light under a bushel."

My previous posts in the "cool to be dumb" series here, here, here, here and here.

Marriage in the 21st Century

There are three people in Juliet’s (@Reprobatemum) marriage. Herself, her husband, and her boyfriend, Sam. She says it's one big, happy family, sharing childcare, a dog... and her bed. They each tell their story here:

"What’s remarkable about this whole scenario is not that I have a husband who’s prepared to share me, but that I have a boyfriend who is. Tom’s had the best part of a decade with me under the same roof, and for both of us it’s liberating to be able to take the odd break from family life. He’s not always thrilled about my gallivanting, but he understands what I get from the escapism of a new romance. But it takes a whole other level of acceptance to take on a relationship that comes with a husband attached. 

We face opposition, but there is a thrill in rejecting a societal norm. And love works in mysterious ways. If Tom’s fear is that I’ll one day leave him, then Sam’s is that we can’t build a future together. As for me, I’m scared that I’ll end up losing them both, my reputation and ultimately the respect of my children. It’s all very well to assume that the rest of the world should accept what makes me happy, but the reality is that society has rules about relationships for a reason, and it’s perhaps foolish of me to think I can bend them without getting people’s backs up."

Sunday Times Magazine article in full here. Andrew Sullivan debate on re-imagining marriage with Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) here and below:  

Fintan O'Toole - Folly of sectarian 'solutions'

The Good Friday Agreement is a dual purpose document that seeks to do two things. One, stop the IRA and other paramilitaries from killing people. Two, it was supposed to be a founding document that would allow Northern Ireland to move from sectarianism into a new world.

In 2005 Fintan O'Toole wrote a fascinating article on the peace agreement on September 13 2005 in the Irish Times under the title, Folly of sectarian 'solutions'. He said on the second plank of the agreement:

"[The agreement is] supposed to be a kind of constitution. It defines Northern Ireland as a political space and seeks to do so in a genuinely radical, exciting way. It is, indeed, perhaps the boldest constitutional document ever agreed between sovereign states. It creates space that is not ultimately claimed by any state, defines national identity as potentially both mutable and multiple, and rests sovereignty, not on history and geography but on that most complex and fluent of things - the collective mind of a majority of the population."

On the first plank of the agreement, Fintan O'Toole explained:

"[The agreement] built the internal architecture of Northern Ireland's governance on a static notion of "two traditions" which were to be appeased and given "parity of esteem". The hope was that even though sectarianism was built in to the power-sharing system by the requirement of simultaneous majorities on the unionist and nationalist sides, the experience of working the new institutions would in fact diminish it. But there has been no momentum, and the division have been formalised, entrenched and deepened."

We need to achieve what the founders intended, diminish sectarianism. This requires a break with the negative feedback loop of mutual hatred, loathing and recrimination. It needs a break from management and towards vision.

Read Fintan O'Toole from 2005 in full here.

Deaneos Prosecco

I had the great pleasure and privilege to work and collaborate alongside Michael Deane, the eminent Belfast restaurateur and businessman, in his ambitious project to create his very own Deanes' brand of prosecco. I left the brewing and bottling process to the experts and kept to what I know best, art, and helped to produce the label you can see above. Being legally trained at university I'm not great with technology and left the graphic design detail to local designer Adam McConnell.

This project followed the earlier collaboration where I helped produce a label for Deanes' home brand wine. See below for images of the label I produced for the Deaneo Prosecco and of the Deanes' team enjoying a first taste of the bottle's contents.

Irish racism, Ctd

Newton Emerson wrote in the Irish Times of Saturday November 16 2013:

"The supposed republican principles of the anti-agreement 1916 Societies are somewhat underaxsmined by the language of their latest recruitment drive, which is replete with sectarian references to "planters", "colonialism" and "occupation"."

Newton Emerson continued, and asked a critical question:

"One of the mysteries of Irish politics is why, unlike in the rest of Europe, people who speak like this are not immediately recognised as ethnic fascists."

See my previous posts on Irish racism here and here.

The Cult of University, Ctd

As a commenter wrote in response to an article in the Financial Times here:

"Attending 8 hours of lectures per week in an arts/humanities/social 'science' course is a waste of £27,000 except for the academically gifted."

That's the point I've made many times. What 18, 19 or 20 year old student is in the way minded to complete 200 page reading lists and use their own initiative to effectively structure their week around 8 hours of lectures? Not many. I wasn't able to. The average 18, 19, 20 or 21 year old needs structure, guidance and routine.

The 8 hour lecture model undoubtedly works for some, especially the academically minded. But this model cannot work for the majority of young people.

The Influence of Andrew Sullivan, Ctd

Ross Douthat wrote of Andrew Sullivan in The New York Times here:

"The day the gay marriage rulings were handed down I raised the possibility, on Twitter, that Andrew Sullivan might deserve to be remembered as the most influential political writer of his generation, and I was happy to see Tyler Cowen flesh that argument out:                           

Doesn’t... Sullivan have a reasonably strong claim to that title, especially after the recent Supreme Court decisions on gay marriage? Sullivan was the dominant intellectual influence on this issue, from the late 1980s on, and that is from a time where other major civil liberties figures didn’t give gay marriage much of a second thought, one way or the other, or they wished to run away from the issue. Here is his classic 1989 New Republic essay. Here is a current map of where gay marriage is legal and very likely there is more to come.

Ross Douthat continued his analysis of Andrew Sullivan:

"No writer of comparable gifts was on the issue earlier, pushed harder against what seemed at the time like an unassailable consensus, engaged as many critics (left and right, gay and straight) and addressed himself to as many audiences as Sullivan. No intellectual did as much to weave together the mix of arguments and intuitions that defines today’s emerging consensus on the issue — in which gay marriage is simultaneously an expression of bourgeois conservatism and the fulfillment of the 1960s’ liberative promise, the civil rights revolution of our time and a natural, Burkean outgrowth of the way that straights already live. And no intellectual that I can think of, writing on a fraught and controversial topic, has seen their once-crankish, outlandish-seeming idea becomes the conventional wisdom so quickly, and be instantantiated so rapidly in law and custom."

I wrote an earlier post on the influence of Andrew Sullivan here. New York Times post in full here.

Sacrificing the Young to Save the Old

A commenter wrote in response to an article in the Financial Times and in response to central banks hosing us down with cheap money and creating growth based on monetary steroids here:

"Being 24 years old with two years of experience in finance in America, I cant help but really depise the current amount of monetary easing going on at all the major central banks. 

I cant for the life of me justify the current levels of home, energy and food prices given the state of the global economy. However it seems that the major central banks are all so desperate to keep OLDER people rich, that they will never let prices of anything drop so that they actually make sense to new entrants to the work force. 

Simply put, I wasnt working during the 80s and 90s, Older people have a massive advantage in the sense that they worked in more stable economies, with higher wages, interest rates and steadier real estate and stock market performance. However now I feel like central banks are so dedicated to keeping these older folks wealthy, that young new entrants to the labor market only get stuck with paying inflated taxes to cover boomers retirement, AND rock bottom savings rates so that BOOMERS dont lose value on their homes. 

When is anything going to be done for US? The young generation."

Gillian Tett - If a country wants to improve its education system its population must be hungry for change

Gillian Tett provided an overview of the successful education systems across Finland, Poland and South Korea and drew a few key lessons from this phenomenon. She said:

"It pays to invest in vocational education, alongside academic learning; it makes sense to spend more in poor areas; when the status and training of teachers improve, this has a powerful impact on results; children benefit from being given more freedom to manage their time; and when parents get involved with their children at home, this produces much better results than volunteering for the Parent Teachers Association. “The more time that parents spend volunteering on PTAs, the worse their children perform,” Ripley observed at an event in New York last week."

Here's the key lesson. She continued:

"But perhaps the most important message is the most basic one: if a country wants to improve its educational system in a hurry, its population must be hungry for change. “All the countries which have obtained this [improvement] have faced an economic existential crisis,” Ripley says. “There was a real imperative to change and their people didn’t feel they had a choice"."

In FT in full here.

Andrew Sullivan has done for homosexuality what John Stuart Mill did for freedom

Andrew Sullivan (@sulldish) began writing and campaigning for marriage equality in 1988 as an important moral argument. Kenneth Minogue produced a review of Andrew Sullivan's seminal publication, Virtually Normal (1995) in The National Review, he said:

"Andrew Sullivan has done for homosexuality what John Stuart Mill did for freedom: he has presented the whole range of social opinion about his subject with lucidity and fairness, and gone to work refuting most of it... Only those familiar with the deep wells of the history of political philosophy... will recognize the scale of his achievement."

Post in full here. Watch a video of Andrew Sullivan talking about same-sex marriage in 1997 here and below:

David Allen Green on social media regulation

The Financial Times legal blogger David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen) wrote about social media regulation in The New Statesman. My previous post on Allen Green's move from the New Statesman to the FT can be read here. He said here on social media self-regulation:

"Social media provides the means by which clusters of like-minded individuals can easily swap ideas and scrutinise data on public matters. In this way, social media users can hold politicians and media outlets to account in a manner not possible -- or conceivable -- until a few years ago. Instead of a politician saying something forgotten the day after, or a reporter's bylined piece being in next day's fish-and-chip paper, those involved in social media can pore over details and make connections weeks and months later. Transgressions can be linked to and accumulated. A speech or a byline can now come back and haunt you long after you have "moved on".

Adam Wagner on blogging, social media and self-regulation

Hanging around for #leveson? You could read my inquiry statement on social media regulation! http://t.co/mrysUZfq
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) November 29, 2012

Adam Wagner was asked here: "The Inquiry would also welcome your views on the extent to which the content of websites, and the manner in which you operate, can be regulated by a domestic system of regulation?"

He responded here:

I do not think blogs can or should be regulated by a domestic system of regulation, for the following reasons: 

a. Practically unworkable: Practically it would be impossible to regulate all blogging. Hundreds of thousands of blogs are set up each day, let alone posts published, and the term is so elastic (see above) that the task would be simply too large and amorphous for any regulator to manage. Even if only popular blogs were targeted, say those over a certain number of hits, what is to stop an individual blogger simply setting up a new blog in order to avoid regulation? I expect that such a system would be simply unworkable. 

b. Current system works: The current system of criminal and civil law already provides a reasonable level of regulation. Bloggers - whether their websites are read by 1 or lm people - are subject to financial penalties for libel or quasi-criminal sanctions if they commit a contempt of court. See for example the case of Elizabeth Watson, referred to be below, who was sentenced to 9 months imprisonment (later suspended) for breaching a court order through information published on her personal website. That being said, I also note a 1 February 2012 report in The Independent that Mr Justice Peart has said in relation to an Irish case involving the www.rate-yoursolicitor.com website that "The civil remedies currently available have recently been demonstrated to be an inadequate means of prevention and redress".

Conor Cruise O'Brien - Marching through areas that don't want them is not good policy for the Orange Order itself

Fintan O'Toole cited Conor Cruise O'Brien in the Irish Times in May 11 1996 after he announced he would run for election as a unionist candidate in Northern Ireland. Conor Cruise O'Brien said:

"I feel that unionists are essentially besieged. They're under a pan-nationalist siege, of which the main stimulus is being supplied by Sinn Fein. So I don't see it as my job to get out and annoy unionists. I think they're been annoyed quite enough. I have, in an Orange context at an Orange House, urged them to see that marching through areas that don't want them is not good policy for the Orange Order itself or for the unionist community."

The article 'Cruiser's new voyage provokes 'no qualms, no heart-searching'' can be obtained from the Irish Times archive here.

Legalising homosexual sex in the United States - Lawrence versus Texas [2003]

In 1980s Texas, "deviate sexual intercourse" - as homosexual sex was known - was punishable with prison or a fine. In 1981 a Texan court upheld a police department's decision not to hire a man because he was gay. 

The change to the law only came in 2003 when the landmark case - Lawrence versus Texas. John Lawrence and Tyron Garner were fined $200 for being caught caught allegedly having sex in one oftheir  homes. However, the Supreme Court declared the judgement "unconstitutional". In effect the Lawrence case legalised consensual, homosexual acts. This meant that the 14 US states that still had "sodomy laws" were rendered null and void. 

Michelle Rhee - Redefining what it takes to be successful, Ctd

In an interview with The New York Times here, Ms Rhee laid out her philosophy:

"As educators, we have to approach our job believing that anything is possible. It is incredibly important that we constantly communicate to kids that they can accomplish anything when they put their minds to it."

Previous post in the series here.

Ireland the not so immaculate

Catholic Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid with Éamon de Valera

The Sunday Times journalist Siobhán Maguire (@ShivMag) wrote in Sunday Times of November 10 2013 on the inaccuracies of the Judi Dench and Steve Coogan film, 'Philomena'. She cited the co-founder of Adoption Rights Alliance, Susan Lohan who said:

"The film, though well produced and well acted, fails because it confuses mother-and-baby homes with Magdalene laundries. They weren't Magdalenes - they were unmarried mothers... I think that took away from the horror at the core of the film."

Susan Lohan added:

"It was like, 'Here we go again, another diminishment of what the Irish state did to its own citizens'. The issue here is that, from watching the film, you might have been lulled into thinking Philomena's case was an anomaly because there is zero acknowledgement of all the other women whose babies were trafficked to America."

She further explained her pain in watching the film:

"I wanted to stand up and scream during a screening and ask people if they knew how systematic the mother-and-baby homes were, that the state paid for this service and the church tendered for the business.