.@brianjohnspencr doing some live sketching while we watch @bbctheview! #tweetupni pic.twitter.com/a781gqKwOA
— Alan in Belfast (@alaninbelfast) March 13, 2014
#tweetupni @dcmbfs kicks off the tweetup in McHughs pic.twitter.com/zJbVp9HPfl
— Alan in Belfast (@alaninbelfast) March 13, 2014
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| 'England get out of Ireland', St. Patrick's Day Parade 2014, via Long Island Catholic Examiner, Deirdre Haggerty here. |
"Today's youth has spent years chasing qualifications no one ever asks us about. The notion that algebra would ever be useful seemed fishy, but the grownups insisted: education, no matter how apparently arbitrary, leads to jobs."
"The minute we graduated, something switched in employers' heads. The same generation who had us sit Sats and the 11-plus and the 12-plus and Sats again and mock GCSEs and real GCSEs and AS-levels and A-levels and BAs and MAs and MScs and PhDs decided education is an afterthought. Experience is what's really important."
Master Ford with Solomon Northup in Charlie Brooker's film adaption of the memoir by Solomon Northup
"The influences and associations that had always surrounded him, blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery. He never doubted the moral right of one man holding another in subjection. Brought up under other circumstances and other influences, his notions would undoubtedly have been different."My previous post on 'Why we hate' with Andrew Sullivan here. On hate and mistrust as the basic canon of Northern Ireland life here. On Daniel Hannan and cognitive dissonance here. And my article 'Why we hate in Northern Ireland' on eamonnmallie.com here.
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| Taosieach Enda Kenny with the PSNI and An Garda Síochána (New York 2014) |
"[Eamon De Valera's] vision of the Ireland he fought for and hoped to see was a fantastic description of a land and a people that never existed and whose like will never be seen... Enda Kenny will march down New York's Fifth Avenue with men who still see Ireland through this prism of piety and patriotism. Kenny's vision of the "ould sod" is his gombeen pitch that we are the "best little country in the world to do business in"...
This takes us back to 1943, to De Valera and that speech. Ireland was an oasis of tranquillity back then while Europe was going up in flames. We defined ourselves by one religion only, by our attachment to the land, and through our belief that, in some way, God was looking after us...
National identity is all about agreeing on who "we" are. In 2014, the Irish are struggling on that. We are no longer automatically Catholic. We are also Protestants, Dissenters, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and atheists... We have even discovered there are gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender citizens in our ranks. That Ireland will not be on parade abroad, of course. The old stereotypes will be out in force."
"Irish people are equally attracted and reviled by the notion of "true Irish" (fior Gael) that De Valera and others pursued. It's led us to weird places... "Authentic" cultural events are for fascists. Embrace your entirely made-up identity this St Patrick's Day.
"Academic credentials are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having your ideas taken seriously... if someone without formal credentials consistently makes trenchant, insightful observations, he or she has earned the right to be taken seriously, regardless of background."All the above have attested to the depth, authority and veracity of the new medium. Daniel Hannan (@DanHannanMEP) added his voice to the debate:
"The separate categorisation of columnists, reporters, bloggers and interested readers is becoming meaningless. Every citizen is now a potential journalist. News and opinion are a conversation. We still hear occasional complaints from Leftie pundits that online media “lack quality control”. In fact, the dialectic element of blogging ensures a higher standard of accuracy than before. Mistakes are ruthlessly exposed and, because of the sheer number of outlets, a plausible new theory can spread with previously unimagined speed.
Blogs have improved veracity, quality and diversity. They have not led to the segregation by opinion that many predicted: Leftists and Rightists argue online in a way that never happened when people took just one newspaper. It's true that bloggers, being human, are as prone to cruelty, stupidity and error as anyone else. But it has never been easier to go elsewhere: more people are reading more news and comment than at any time in history."On what blogging is all about, Greenwald put it best:
"I began [blogging] without any plan to become a journalist or writer, but simply to participate as a citizen."
"After the 9/11 attacks, the American people became convinced that one of our enemies was Islam, and muslims. And there was lots of talk about how not all muslims are a threat, but nonetheless the fear of Islam and muslims arose and pervaded the country because of the blame that was cast on that group for the 9/11 attacks. And so when it came to the time for government to get the power to do things like put people in prisons without any shred of due process, without the opportunity to be heard in court, or to be charged with a crime, the people they targeted were muslims almost exclusively because of the expectation, which turned out basically to be true, that the fear levels that Americans had of Muslims would make most Americans indifferent to that targetting and would make a lot of other Americans actively supportive of what was being done.
"[English] culture is not the culture of the Gael; rather it is poison gas to the kindly Celtic people."
"I am an Irishman second: I am a Catholic first and I accept without qualification in all respects the teaching of the hierarchy and the church to which I belong."
"I am proud to stand here as a public representative, as a taoiseach who happens to be a Catholic, but not a Catholic taoiseach."
Cartoon off at #tweetupNI between @brianjohnspencr and Ian Knox from @irish_news pic.twitter.com/pfAHSAleJF
— Eye on the Hill (@chambrepa) March 13, 2014
.@brianjohnspencr doing some live sketching while we watch @bbctheview! #tweetupni pic.twitter.com/a781gqKwOA
— Alan in Belfast (@alaninbelfast) March 13, 2014
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| Barry McCaffrey (@Barry_TheDetail) with Ian Knox, in full here. |
"encourage the art of editorial cartooning and to support charitable and educational programs that help promote and support the causes he championed."We need this in Northern Ireland and Ireland. Click below to see a selection of photos of Ian during his interview with The Detail:
"Only those with no memory insist on their originality."
— Coco Chanel
"Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning."
― George Bernard Shaw
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| Rob Behrens, chief executive of The Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education |
"I have seven hours’ contact time at the moment but that will drop to three in my final year. Some of the seminars are good, but there are just too few of them."A first-year geography student who wished to remain anonymous, said she regretted going to university:
"As far as the university is concerned, I am non- existent. I could disappear for good and none of the academic staff would ever notice... When I’ve emailed my personal tutor about something, she just says she’s the wrong person to ask. I feel that I am wasting my time."This backs up my assertion that for many young people university is a giant holding pen. A student in her final year of an English literature degree at a Scottish university said:
"My last essay took two months to be marked, which may sound trivial but it’s impossible to know how you are getting on without feedback."
"La verite est en marche et rien ne l’arretera. Qui souffre pour la verite et la justice devient auguste et sacre... Il n’est de justice que dans la verite. Il n’est de bonheur que dans la justice.”
"The figure of Émile Zola offers encouragement, and his singular campaign for justice is one of the imperishable examples of what may be accomplished be an individual."
Going into an #Apprenticeship or to University should become the new norm for young people when they leave school: both must be top options
— Matt Hancock (@matthancockmp) March 5, 2014
"If young people are to be prepared for that radically changing world of work, we need a plan to change our education system - and to secure their future. In particular, we need to end the artificial and damaging division between the academic and the practical."What Michael Gove called "the apartheid at the heart of our education system." More:
"And we need to ensure that practical, technical and vocational education is integrated with academic learning to make both more compelling for all students in our schools, and more valuable in the new labour market."
"He who does not move does not notice his chains."
— Rosa Luxemburg
Woke up with a sore throat-interesting debate last night on republicanism and unionism plus newspapers @bartoncreeth @brianjohnspencr
— David McCann (@dmcbfs) March 2, 2014
- Irish identity and being Irish.
- The sense of community.
- Pearse and how religion can no more be separated from Pearse than Pearse the person could be separated from religion.
- Catholic State for a Catholic people.
- Deport protestant unionists.
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| John Gray is a political philosopher and author of False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism |
"The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired."Or putting it another way:
"The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not."
"Too many young people are ill-prepared for the job market when they finish full-time education. Advice and guidance offered in the schools is sometimes not given sufficient priority in school activities."And so:
"The CBI combines a series of critical comments on careers advice with a number of positive suggestions on the ways in which employers can, and should, be more supportive of the challenges faced by schools."
As a Scotsman abroad, good to see in @thesundaytimes that Aidan O'Neill QC (@matrixchambers) argues expats may not be denied right to vote.
— Richard Susskind (@richardsusskind) March 9, 2014
"It's ridiculous, quite frankly, that Scottish soldiers based in England, 10 out of 11 Scottish Olympians and international rugby players who played for Scotland all their careers, cannot vote," Wallace, 26, told Reuters.
"What is ultimately going to change China, what is ultimately going to change Iran are young people in these countries. There are half a billion people in china who us microblogging sites, 400 million of whom are under 25. That's what's going to change China. That's what's going to change Iran."Christopher Hitchens spoke of "Iran's baby boomerang" whereby:
"Within the carapace of a theocratic state, an almost completely secular society is being created." Muslim mullahs sowed a baby boom whose children will reap their overthrow.
"The younger a citizen of Donetsk, the more likely she is to view herself as Ukrainian. The older she is, the more likely she is to identify as Russian. And this is the crux of it all: What we are seeing today is the reverberation of what happened more than 20 years ago. This is still the long post-Soviet transition. And this is what it’s like to wander in the desert, waiting for the old generation to die off."
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| Dr. William Roulston |
"We often think of the Ulster plantation and the movement of Scots across the north channel and to our own province as being the most significant event in Scottish history of that era. The reality is that more Scots went to Poland in the early 17th Century than came to Ulster. In fact more Scots went to Scandinavia in the early 17th Century than came to Ulster."
"The lesson of the Church Committee from the 1970s is that when you allow people in government to spy on Americans in the dark with no accountability and without warrant, they abuse that power and that’s what’s happened; it’s rampant abuse and it needs sunlight."Glenn Greenwald has previously also cited Cicero who said: "Laws are silent in times of war." Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) said of Glenn Greenwald and the abuse of terrror laws:
"In this respect, I can say this to David Cameron. Thank you for clearing the air on these matters of surveillance. You have now demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that these anti-terror provisions are capable of rank abuse. Unless some other facts emerge, there is really no difference in kind between you and Vladimir Putin. You have used police powers granted for anti-terrorism and deployed them to target and intimidate journalists deemed enemies of the state.
You have proven that these laws can be hideously abused. Which means they must be repealed. You have broken the trust that enables any such legislation to survive in a democracy. By so doing, you have attacked British democracy itself. What on earth do you have to say for yourself? And were you, in any way, encouraged by the US administration to do such a thing?"
"The irony is that in general terms, sectarianism is on the slide, and mixed marriages are up and the wider population is beginning to adopt a more open view of how the world works than many of their most senior politicians."Politicians stand as fountainheads for the most extreme: talking singularly about the past, parades and victims. Yet, as Brian Rowan said of the parading stalemate of summer 2013, "The standoff is in one part of Belfast, and here and everywhere else, people have other worries - food, bills, jobs, education."
"Fundamentally, a public discourse once solely focused on conflict has not evolved a new approach. There are only a handful of journalists who pay any attention to the wider cultural, social and economic dimensions of relations within Northern Ireland and between North and South."A New Generation of Politicians
"Northern Ireland needs a new political generation, a new agenda and new political parties. It needs people who will work together to make Northern Ireland a success. It needs a generation of politicians who will refuse to accept that stalemate, mutual veto and same-old, same-old elections are the best we can hope for."Previous posts on "The Two Worlds of Northern Ireland" series here, here, here, here, here and here.
"Only those with no memory insist on their originality."
— Coco Chanel
"Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning."
― George Bernard Shaw
"Science, Technology and Maths (STEM) is relevant to everybody, every day - and that's what we have to impart to our young people before they have made academic decisions that close the doors on potential career paths. Too often our students in both primary and post-primary, are taught the process of science, but not the relevance it has to their lives."Science is obligatory to GCSE in schools in UK and Ireland, this is not the case in Northern Ireland. Asked if Stormont is failing students, Judith said:
"There is a disconnect in the Executive. Where one part says that STEM is the economic driver for the economy, and we have to put the economy at the centre of everything we do, another part allows science to drop down the educational hierarchy. This send out a contradictory message about STEM to pupils, teachers and parents."
Writing is alternately a narcissistic and dreadfully self-doubting process, and somewhere in the valley between the two something grows...
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) February 26, 2014
"You’ve got to be smart enough to write and stupid enough not to think about all the things that might go wrong.”More from Charles:
