Terence O'Neill - The Moderate and Ulster at Cross Roads

Captain Terence O'Neill with his predecessor Lord Brookeborough

David McCann wrote in the News Letter of March 2013 on the 50th anniversary of O'Neill's coming to power in 1963:

"O’Neill was the first unionist Prime Minister who attempted to win over middle class Catholics to support the Union by engaging in symbolic acts of reconciliation such as visiting Catholic schools and extending condolences on the death of the Pope."

On November 20 1964 the News Letter wrote an editorial urging Terence O’Neill to meet his southern counterpart Sean Lemass, arguing that:

"No danger to the unionist cause would be involved in the meeting [with Sean Lemass], in agreeing Captain O’Neill would show the strength of his position." 

As David McCann said:

Maria Popova and @brainpickings - The best the Internet has to offer

For me, Maria Popova and @brainpickings represent the best that the Internet has to offer: http://t.co/JsIAbMg9Ec
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) January 15, 2014

Legal blogger David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen) (@JackofKent) gave his take here on the best legal commentary the Internet has to offer. Washington Post blogger and darling of the Internet Ezra Klein (@EzraKlein) warrants note as he spins off from Wonkblog to create an altogether new form and breed of Internet journalism. One that changes the model from one of "relentless presentism" to "persistent content". Vague. I know. We're still waiting to see what this actually means.

Arm folding and mirror holding, Ctd Northern Ireland needs Ian Knox and more satirists

Ian Knox from today's @irish_news. I really do wish the BBC would put his stuff back on TV again. We need him. pic.twitter.com/DsxDUFg6xD
— Alex.Kane (@AlexKane221b) January 8, 2014

In an article 'Comedy as a Weapon' published in The American Thinker, the power and influence of US political cartoonist Herb Block was explained:

"Thanks to people like Herb Block and his ilk, McCarthy became an American laughingstock, allowing communism and socialism to become "cool" in Hollywood, while Conservatives became unofficially "blacklisted." Sixty years later his methods of using humor and sarcasm for social influence are a template for those still seeking to destroy conservative values."

Herb Block popularised the term "McCarthyism" and through his cutting cartoons managed to discredit and pull down the entire edifice of the McCarthy enterprise, as he did with the cartoon above which helped Herb Block to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Arm Folding and Mirror Holding, Ctd

Love how #CreepingSharia amply demonstrates that there is no Defence more English than taking this piss out of extremists. Of any stripe...
— Andrew Haydon (@Postcards_Gods) April 16, 2012

Being able to mock, laugh and ridicule power is a distinctively British tradition. Britain is after all the mother of the free world. Classical British liberalism is what informed the American Constitution and the First Amendment which gives American a complete right to free speech. Britain gifted America Habeus Corpus. The Britain John Milton made the classic case for free speech in his pamphlet Areopagitica. David Allen Green said:

"Being able to openly ridicule and mock those in power – or seeking power – is perhaps a more important right than many realise."

George Orwell knew that England and the English could never fall to fascism as the people instictively laugh at ostentatious acts of power. He said in England Your England:

Art is theft, Ctd

In an article, 'There’s Nothing Wrong—and a Lot That’s Right—About Copying Other Artists' Malcolm Jones said:

"I learned to draw and paint on my own, and I did it by copying."

“I understood more about Vermeer by painting my own Vermeer … than I had ever learned by simply staring at his paintings”:

Oliver jeffers said the same:

“Any opportunity I get to see John Singer Sargent, I do. For technical ability. That’s how I learned how to paint, by dissecting his work and trying to work out, how does he make that look like an ear but he’s only done three strokes?”

Oliver Jeffers

“Only those with no memory insist on their originality.”

Coco Chanel

Andrew Sullivan wrote the piece, 'in defence of duplicating art'

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/02/04/in-defense-of-duplicating-art/

Christopher Hitchens - "I feel very envious of someone who is young and active and starting out" (2011)

In the video above and here and here, Christopher Hitchens made his last public appearance at the Texas Freethought Convention (October 30 2011) and made a petition and entreaty for the new and emerging generation of writers, thinkers and creators:

"At this present moment I have to say I feel very envious of someone who is young and active and starting out on this argument. Just think of the extraordinary things that are happening to us. Go, for example, to the Smithsonian Museum, to the new hall of Human Origins, a magnificently curated new exhibition... What a wonderful thing to be starting out in this tremendous new field of endeavour. How fabulous it would be if you had a gift for physics, to get a job as an intern with Laurence Krauss, for example, who is just beginning to unravel... the idea of the parallel universe. With each horizon that we reach we see more bending beautifully towards and away from us. The knowledge we have, say not just of the sentience and the cognition of animals, all of it is incredibly recent. A matter of decades and enormously rich and yet again very much challenging our claim to primary or supremacy in the biosphere and rich in every possible kind of discovery. I so envy those who [can glimpse those things]... I hope that each of you forms just such an ambition this evening and carries it forward."

Arm folding and mirror holding, Ctd The power of the political cartoonist

Menzies Campbell said:

"Cartoons are a traditional feature of British political coverage and the cartoonist's pen stroke has often conveyed judgments more deadly than anything journalists would dare to express."

They're called "ink-stained assassins" for a reason, as The News Statesman put it here. As Diane Abbott said:

"The idea of John Major in his underpants: he used that over and over and it became part of the political lexicon. It spoke of his timidity, caution and greyness."

Likewise, of Ed Miliband, Tim Benson wrote in the book 'The Best of Britain's Political Cartoons 2013':

"[Peter] Brooke's believes that [Ed Miliband's] comparison with Wallace has damaged Miliband's chances of ever becoming prime minister. This is because, like Wallace, Miliband's also appears hapless, making the public's perception of him unsuitable prime ministerial material."

La verite est en marche et rien ne l'arretera , Ctd

Fintan O’Toole wrote in The Irish Times here:

"Over time mainstream opinion comes to recognise that honest beliefs once held by decent people were reprehensible, not because the people were bad, but because the beliefs were shaped by prejudice. This will happen, probably quite soon, with beliefs about sexual orientation."

He continued:

"Sincerity is as irrelevant here as malevolence – it simply doesn’t matter why people uphold structures of discrimination. Throughout history, decent, moral people have believed with complete sincerity that slavery is a moral good, that women are lesser beings who must be protected from their weakness by being obedient to men, that Jews should be confined to ghettoes, that the Irish are incapable of rational thought, that Catholics are unfit to live in democracies and so on."

He continued:

"This is true even of very great men. Aristotle thought slavery entirely natural. Abraham Lincoln thought for most of his career that when slavery was abolished blacks should be shipped out to Africa because they couldn’t possibly live side by side with free whites. Does this make Aristotle and Lincoln bad men? No. It just makes them examples of highly moral and intelligent people who cannot escape inherited structures of discriminatory thought."

He concluded:

"The whole point of the law is that it’s not about giving people equal status because you like them. It’s about freeing people from subjection to the arbitrariness of other people’s benevolence. Gay men and lesbians shouldn’t have to care one way or the other whether the members of the Iona Institute love them or not. Just as the rest of us shouldn’t measure the rights of our fellow citizens by what they get up to in bed."

In full here.

Britain's hereditocracy, Ctd

In 'The Son Also Rises', a study of social mobility by Gregory Clark, will surprise and also alarm some people. By using surname patterns he showed that mobility is minimal in all societies where data is available even in the Nordic paradise of Sweden. He said:

"In all societies, what seems to matter is just who your parents are. At the extreme, we see in modern Sweden an extensive system of public education and social support. Yet underlying mobility rates are no higher in modern Sweden than in pre-industrial Sweden or medieval England."

Ed West then said of the left's political correctness tick and impulse to censor:

"The Left is terrified of the science around the human brain and human evolution, and goes out of its way not only to deny what is clearly true, but also to call out, harass and stigmatise anyone who argues it."

Ed West in full here.

The best in legal commentary via @JackofKent

Won't be long. But for legal comment follow: @AdamWagner1 @JoshuaRozenberg @carlgardner @Familoo @copyrightgirl @Lyndon_Harris @DBanksy
— Jack of Kent (@JackofKent) January 29, 2014

David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen) (@JackofKent) is away from Twitter and the blogosphere. He's writing (a "wretched") book.

@DavidAllenGreen - Let's ban the banning of things

David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen) (@JackofKent) wrote of the political addiction to prhibition and the impulse to ban things in The New Statesman here:

"Those calling for something to be "banned" should... ask two simple questions. First, what will the prohibition do in respect of the undesired behaviour? And second, what other consequences may flow from the prohibition? Good answers to both these questions will inform the political choice as to whether such a ban should be implemented and, if so, how. We may even get better laws as a consequence; we could even get prohibitions that actually work and are proportionate. 

The call for something to be "banned" should be the start of a mature and constructive political debate, and not the end of one. Perhaps the time has come to ban just banning things."

In full here.

There's no business like the Law School business

Sian Griffiths (@SianGriffiths6) recently did wonderful some work in The Sunday Times (@thesundaytimes) here, reporting on the "1000s of law students who will never practice law." The Sunday Times (@thesundaytimes) is now complicit in this economic madness, offering to add yet more aspiring, but credulous, law students to the "glut" of jobless or desk-monkey law students - see advertisement above! Above that advertisement The Sunday Times included a lengthy encomium, via Sian Griffiths, on a racing driver turned law student. 

Nigel Savage, chief executive of the University of Law was featured on that encomium. He passed wise words on employer-led practice learning, as opposed to the "traditional liberal education" (euphemism for "bums on seats, don't teach education" (as per the Jenni Russell article here)). Apart from that it was cheap salesmanship, PR passed as journalism. Journalism's ignoble and shameful capitulation.

Yet here's what people don't know. The University of Law was sold to a private equity fund for £200 million. With that, you have to ask: If someone was prepared to pay £200 million for the University of Law, there must be big money to be made from teaching law students?

Yes, there's no business like the Law School business. So here's my question for the Sunday Times: Why not offer scholarships for a degree in languages? In technology and engineering? For this is where the growth and economic opportunity lies. 

As a post-script. Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) has written feverishly on his ad-free blog The Dish about "the surrender of journalism to PR and advertising." It seems that it's infected even The Sunday Times. 

Blogging has enormous depth, Ctd Modern day pamphleteers

Legal blogger Adam Wagner talking about social media for law professionals here

David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen) (@JackofKent) is a legal bloggers who began writing online in 2007 when he created his personal blog Jack of Kent, to promote the public understanding of law. He said that blogging is like being a modern day pamphleteer. He said:

"The elements of speed and self-publication in blogging make it, in my view, akin to pamphleteering... blogging is akin to pamphleteering, then it is pamphleteering with electronic footnotes."

@Kenanmalik "on the importance of the right to offend"

Kenan Malik (@kenanmalik) is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster, including a presenter of BBC Radio 4's Analysis. His last book From Fatwa to Jihad was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. He recently wrote a piece on his blog, 'On the importance of the right to offend.' He said:

"There is something truly bizarre (and yet in keeping with the zeitgeist of our age) that someone should become the focus of death threats and an international campaign of vilification for suggesting that an inoffensive cartoon was, well, inoffensive. 

From the Rushdie affair to the controversy over the Danish cartoons, from the forcing offstage of Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Behzti to the attempt this week by members of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to shut down the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s production of The Bible: The Complete Word Of God (a decision thankfully later reversed),  reactionaries have often used campaigns against ‘offence’ as a political weapon with which to harass opponents and as a means of bolstering their community support. The anti-Nawaz campaign is no different. Muhammad Shafiq and Muhammad Ansar both have had public spats with Nawaz, and both are cynically exploiting the claim of ‘offensiveness’ to reclaim political kudos."

Jenni Russell - 'Some universities teach and some do not'

Jenni Russell (@jennirsl) wrote in The Times:

"We must throw a spotlight on those institutions where students can get away with little work... [the] mass of words and numbers avoids the hidden truth about university courses; that a few offer a terrific, demanding education while many others are content to allow students to drift through — in a three-year haze. 

Occasionally that is obvious. Everyone expects medicine at Oxford to be more gruelling than event management at a new university. For a majority of courses, though, it is impossible to understand from descriptions just how much study is involved. Hundreds of thousands of students are miserably ill-served as a result. 

A tiny think-tank, the Higher Education Policy Institute, collaborated with Which? magazine last summer to research the student experience. In a survey that consulted almost 40,000 students over two years, it discovered that, on average, they work only three-quarters of the hours that ministers assumed they did. The number of hours per week that law students put in varied from 21 at some universities to 47 at others. Medicine, which one might assume was tough everywhere, varied from 32 to 50. Maths and computer courses required an average of 23 hours a week at the least demanding universities and 44 at the toughest."

Sir James Munby - The secular judiciary in England and Wales

Sir James Munby, Head of the Family Division of the High Court of Justice in England and Wales

In 2013 Sir James Munby gave a speech in which he said that the law of England and Wales is secular, and that Christianity no longer informs its morality or values. He said that "the days are past when the business of judges was the enforcement of morals or religious beliefs."

The Radio 4 series 'Beyond Belief' explores the place of religion and faith in today's complex world and in an episode 'Christianity and the Law', Ernie Rea was joined by Sir Mark Hedley, Joshua Rozenberg and David McIlroy to discuss the relationship between Christianity and the Law. Listen in full here.

The debate centred around the Keynote Address made by Sir James Munby in October 29 2013 here. He said:

"Happily for us, the days are past when the business of the judges was the enforcement of morals or religious belief. That was a battle fought out in the nineteenth century between John Stuart Mill and Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (Stephen J) and in the middle of the last century between Professor Herbert Hart and Sir Patrick Devlin (Devlin J). The philosophers had the better of the argument, and rightly so. 

Being Irish is not about being anti-British, Ctd

For too many people in Ireland, Irishness is defined by their anti-Britishness. In a piece in The Irish Times, 'An inclusive Ireland can surely find a place for the Union flag - Limits on flying flag do not enhance Irishness but succeed in diminishing Britishness,' Richard Irvine said here:

"Surely Irish nationalism should have more to offer than this [restrict Union flag and campaign against Orange parades]? An inclusive Ireland must have room for Britishness; it must recognise it, even embrace it. To strike at the symbols of unionist survival, to demand after 30 years of war they pull down their flag, is not just to demand too much too soon, it is to fail to recognise unionists’ suffering, their history, their identity."

He continued:

"Just as unionists must learn to accept an Irish identity – and an Irish language Bill would be a good start – so those interested in true Irish unity must realise their task should not be to attack unionist identity but to recognise it and build an Irish identity that can include it. As the late PUP leader David Ervine used to say: “The British presence in Ireland is not the army, it is us.” Until Irish nationalism recognises that, the flags of north Antriwill keep flying."

Richard Irvine is a history teacher and lecturer in Belfast, and an independent commentator. In full here. My previous post in the series with Fintan O'Toole here. My earlier post with Conor Cruise O'Brien, Michael Kirke and Brian O'Connor is here. My long form essay on the issue of being a Protestant and Irish in the Huffington Post can be read here.

See my previous posts on Irish racism here, here and here.

Combinatorial creativity, Ctd Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln delivered the famous The House Divided Speech  on June 16, 1858. In that speech he said:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South."

Captain Terence O'Neill said in 'Ulster at Cross Roads', December 9 1968:

"I could not see how an Ulster divided against itself could hope to stand." 

This epigram did not spring from nowhere or was it simply clutched from the air. This was the product of the collective readings and experience of Lincoln.

The economy has changed, education hasn't

In response to an article in The Spectator magazine by John Armitt, I wrote a piece in The Huffington Post here, 'Remaking Education to make young people work ready' and said:

"The economy has changed beyond all description in recent years. Unfortunately schools & university curricula haven't."

 http://t.co/w16HkJsaGM

The Economist (@TheEconomist) included an article, 'The effect of today's technology on tomorrow's jobs will be immense'

 http://t.co/4pIrnAmxW3 http://t.co/v934fhY6Nl

Agency and Activism, Ctd Margaret Mead

This Act with Agency and Activism series began with Dale J. Stephens said in an interview with Forbes Magazine here:

"My best advice to you is this: realize that you have agency. Don’t expect going to school to get you a job, and understand that if you want to be successful you’re going to have to hustle and create opportunities for yourself."

This is very relevant to the young people in Northern Ireland. Not only in the careers sense in which Dale J. Stephens means it above; but also in the social and community activism sense. In Northern Ireland especially, young people err heavily towards a step in line, know your place (almost ageist) mentality. I looked at that mindset here on Slugger O'Toole. Margaret Mead said:

"Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals."

She also said:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Previous post in the series with former president of Ireland Mary Robinson here. I spoke of the need to act with agency before choosing to go to university here.