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Newton EmersonThe Irish News |
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...
SCOTLAND and Wales want a Good Friday Agreement-type mechanism for independence referendums. That is the goal of the constitutional cooperation being...
There is temptation for nationalist parties to blame their shortcomings on lack of money from London. But, this approach may suffer diminishing...
THE UUP has called for an independent review of Northern Ireland’s rights and equality commissions following the Supreme Court ruling last week on...
WHO cut funding for the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project? Strictly speaking, nobody. In 2022, administrative responsibility for the long-running...
A Conradh na Gaeilge report on unification asks if the language should remain compulsory
THERE was plenty of coverage and reaction last year when ‘intimidation points’ were removed from social housing by DUP Communities Minister Gordon...
UNIONISTS have secured a victory at Belfast City Council, against determined nationalist opposition, by signing the council up to the armed forces...
Part of the aim of dissident violence is to embarrass the party by forcing it to condemn what it once supported
THE Standards Board for England was abolished in 2012 after years of problems. Set up a decade earlier to enforce a statutory code of conduct on...
SINN Féin ministers have been diplomatically restrained about the growth in UK defence spending in Northern Ireland. They do not like it, for obvious...
Populist giveaways and overstaffing are costing Northern Ireland a shocking €3.3bn a year
INSTEAD of spreading animal waste on the land and having it run into our lakes and rivers, we could use it to produce electricity, biomethane...
AN important social housing project at a north Belfast interface is being held up by lack of sewage capacity. The Duncairn site between Tiger’s Bay...
WHAT if Stormont’s Good Jobs Bill is a bigger issue for the public sector than for the private sector? In an open letter this week, 22 business...
Three nationalist first ministers in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales may not prove the triumph for nationalism they seem
MICHEÁL Martin has said he is “open” to nuclear power in Ireland, although he has questioned the cost. The taoiseach was responding to questions...
An extraordinary 40 per cent of all schools in Northern Ireland will be unviable by 2033, up from a quarter today
THE 2000 fuel protests, a landmark event in recent political history, received significant support in Northern Ireland, including from the Ulster...
HOUSE prices in Northern Ireland rose almost 10% over the past 12 months, six times faster than the UK average, according to the latest figures from...
Some thought has gone into the psychology of carefully boiling the fiscal frog
WHY is the Education Authority (EA) asking teachers if they are loyalist or republican? The explanation lies with Northern Ireland’s unique laws on...
THE DUP has blocked the introduction of minimum alcohol pricing by UUP health minister Mike Nesbitt, claiming that evidence for its effectiveness is...
There is nothing Belfast City Council can do to to stop property developers and landlords bulk-buying houses and converting them into HMOs (Houses of...
The classic image of Sunday closure in Northern Ireland is of unionist councils chaining up playground swing in the 1960s – the non-swinging ’60s
IN November 2024, the Executive found a spare £17 million for a one-off winter fuel payment for pensioners who had lost the benefit when the...
Having this number to hand would be transformative
TWO parties threatened last weekend to quit the executive. Alliance leader Naomi Long, addressing her party’s annual conference, said participation...
A JUDGE has accused two Stormont departments of being “entirely unfair and unacceptable”, “unprincipled” and of “gaslighting” in their...
Twenty years ago, NI officials tried to put restrictions on one-off rural house-building, and faced blowback from all sides
REGULATING the price of home heating oil in Northern Ireland would be surprisingly straightforward. It would be unusual – most developed countries...
CHIEF constable Jon Boutcher has told a cross-border policing conference that the number of Catholic officers in the PSNI “isn’t good enough”....
HOW much should Stormont politicians discuss international affairs, a subject completely beyond their remit? It might be unreasonable to expect a vow...
We have become fascinating island study of how bureaucracies work in their own interest
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