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Newton EmersonThe Irish News |
THE latest PISA international education results put England in the top 10 countries worldwide, with the other three parts of the UK falling steadily...
Some of the complaints heard from Israel this week have been of British colonial arrogance. This tired cliche misses the point
UNDER a proposed law from Alliance, parents could face up to two years in jail for having “ordinary” conversations with their children about...
PORTADOWN District Orange Lodge is to apply for a parade along the Garvaghy Road on September 27, not a traditional date for this traditional route....
Dissident republicans have seized on Burnham’s statement as proof Sinn Féin has been naive
THE main reason Stormont keeps running out of money is its policy of pay parity – matching England’s public sector pay rises. This is “the...
How many voters will thank unionist parties for stirring the Drumcree dispute back up again? The DUP and the TUV must think it is a decisive number,...
If parading regulation unravels, Drumcree would not be the only reawakened flashpoint
SOME politicians and journalists have portrayed the row over the Causeway Hospital in Coleraine as an argument over who should decide where health...
There are two stories behind the resignation of UUP health minister Mike Nesbitt: the decades-old one about Stormont parties backing health reforms in...
Citizenship is mocked by near-identical forms of non-citizenship for non-citizens
DARRYL Wilson, a DUP councillor in north Antrim, has raised an important and rarely considered problem with disability benefits – the burden...
SINN Féin is back-pedalling from its hints two weeks ago of walking out of the Executive in frustration at the DUP. Michelle O’Neill and finance...
Annoying the party when it threatens devolution would be a far more helpful contribution
RELATIONS have finally broken down between Northern Ireland’s farmers and Andrew Muir, the Alliance agriculture and environment minister. An angry...
IF Belfast can be kept clean during the Fleadh, with huge crowds in the city centre, why is it filthy the rest of the time? In a social media post,...
Some on social media ask why the July 12th celebrations cannot generate atmosphere more like the Fleadh
PART of a legacy of hosting the all-Ireland Fleadh in Belfast should be debunking the excuses normally used against pedestrianising even small areas...
THE latest LucidTalk poll has major implications for unionism, with the DUP falling three points to 15%, one point behind the UUP. Sinn Féin is also...
Reform should not be treated as the alternative to controlling costs. We should have both
ONE hundred people could take over the Ulster Unionist Party. I always marvel at this when I notice Northern Ireland’s far left setting up or...
Police, politicians and community workers have called for parents to take responsibility for their children following serious disorder in west...
Is the new Labour Party government just as doomed as Keir Starmer’s?
Andy Burnham has caused some confusion by saying he wants the UK to have both a written constitution and a German-type “Basic Law”. Germany’s...
JIM Gamble, the safeguarding expert reviewing what the DUP knew about Jeffrey Donaldson, has said any evidence of potential crimes he uncovers “will...
Mainstream parties of government should be able to sell the CTA as a way to regulate immigration while minimising internal borders
ULSTER University is testing the limits of the law. In a briefing to staff, it has warned it may introduce new charges for graduation to help plug a...
A DÁIL Bill on preparing for a united Ireland must have seemed like a win-win for Sinn Féin. The government parties would either be embarrassed into...
CO-LIVING developments – essentially, student housing blocks for grown-ups – were banned in the Republic in 2020 after only a handful had been...
Unhappy voters stay at home, so unionism could cease to be Stormont’s largest designation next May
Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales need powerful, directly-elected ‘metro mayors’, as in England. Baroness Sue Gray, a former senior civil...
Some of the people now demanding to know why the press did not expose Donaldson earlier can be the sniffiest about the tabloid tactics that would have...
THE downfall of Jeffrey Donaldson is first and foremost a story about justice for his victims, but as they hopefully move on with their lives, the...
Party has two good people in its two top roles, yet neither quite belong and there is nowhere else for either to go
THE one decision that did more than any other to drive Keir Starmer from office was means-testing the winter fuel allowance. It caused a disaster in...
UUP leader Jon Burrows can now claim – just about – to have the support of a majority of his party’s assembly members. There are eight UUP MLAs,...
A plan to raise the age of criminal responsibility in Northern Ireland to 14 fell apart when all three unionist parties blocked it
AN industrial dispute in Newry is more bad news for Sinn Féin’s Good Jobs Bill, currently held up in the Executive by the DUP. Forty staff at...
THE lesson of violence in Northern Ireland is that the British government will give in to it, and so it has proved with the latest wave of racist...
Racism has been associated with unionist areas because that is where immigrants have been able to find housing. Republican communities take pride in...
ANDY Burnham has said it again. The Manchester mayor has told Westminster’s The House magazine that he wants to scrap Labour’s ban on running...
SINN Féin and the DUP have begun openly sabotaging each other’s legislation. The DUP denies it is trying to sink Sinn Féin’s Good Jobs Bill by...
The proposal would let smaller parties take the place of larger ones, rather than trigger the collapse of devolution
LET us start with the details we would all want to know first. If Westminster introduced proportional representation, it would be bad news for the DUP...
AN absurd bidding war has broken out over the minimum age of criminal responsibility, currently 10 in Northern Ireland, one of the lowest in the...
Sitting in government in Stormont has located the party quite clearly on the centre left, with the emphasis on centre
NORTHERN Ireland makes over 40% of the world’s mobile rock sorting and crushing equipment. Most of it is manufactured by a cluster of firms around...
Translink has warned it must cut services and end discounts for young people and families because Stormont keeps freezing its fares. There have been...
Ban will raise the current age limit of 18 by one year every year, until smoking dies out with the last of its adherents
NORTHERN Ireland is twice as bourgeois as it was during the Troubles, at least as a Marxist would describe it. The number of small business owners and...