Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

The Independent's brief i ( there I did it) newspaper has been available in Northern Ireland for a couple of weeks now.  It's a decent stab at a quality paper in digestible form.    It must be said though that the Independent sometimes takes the breath away with its lazy and ill-informed coverage of Irish politics, north and south. Compact cousin doesn't look like it's going to be much better.  Take today's 'Opinion Matrix', which compiles comment on selected stories, from 'home and abroad'.  Under a caption, "Ireland's long road to prosperity", the paper notes, "The past few years have been appalling for Ireland's economy.  Could recent elections provide a much needed fillip?".   Now although the paper erroneously refers to the whole of Ireland, we're talking the Republic here.  After all, that's where the election just took place.   So which commentary does i choose to reproduce? "Sustainable ...

The Guardian claims that its Moscow correspondent, Luke Harding, has been expelled from Russia for reporting the Wikileaks scandal.  The allegation is a little odd as the issue at hand has been covered extensively  in the Russian press . Nevertheless the newspaper has gone to the rather extraordinary lengths of recruiting the Labour MP Chris Bryant to its cause.  He’s demanding that the British government retaliates by refusing to allow the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to make a planned visit to the UK next week.  The coalition would be wise to take its counsel elsewhere. Bryant is practised in the anti-Russia stuff.  Most recently he rushed to condemn Mike Hancock for the grievous crime of having a Russian employee with sympathies for her homeland.  And he also served as under secretary of state in the foreign office during David Miliband‘s virulently anti-Moscow tenure. In any case, there are two sides to the story.   Ria No...

BBC 1 Northern Ireland screened Below the Radar’s Peter Robinson biopic last night.  Like the company’s programme about Gerry Adams , this was more hagiography than documentary.   Robinson and Adams , two hugely controversial figures, portrayed as visionary statesmen. Beyond the moral and factual arguments, this style of broadcasting raises a fundamental issue around the role of an independent media.  Surely its purpose is not to show political figures exactly as they wish to be shown?  That’s a job for PR consultants or party press offices. I wonder whether the sagas around Robinson and Adams, over the past year, tell us as much about journalism in Northern Ireland than they do about the men themselves. Twelve months ago the BBC in particular had sunk its teeth deep into Irisgate and the First Minister‘s financial affairs.  It looked like Peter Robinson’s political career was at an end. Those events were eclipsed by a vastly overblown policing and j...

This might be the most bizarre media story for a while.  Informed readers were not expecting to peruse a copy of the Sunday Tribune yesterday, but a paper sporting its masthead did appear in newsagents.  The southern Irish publication has entered receivership and it will not be printed for the next few weeks at least. So what exactly was this doppelgänger?  It was a special edition of the rival Irish Mail on Sunday, "designed for" Tribune readers!  Talk about kicking someone when they're down! The Mail's editor launches a circuitous and highly unconvincing argument about keeping people in the newspaper buying habit.  It strikes me that the exercise was nothing so much as a print media adoption of 'phishing' techniques popularised on the internet.   There's certainly not much in the way of industry solidarity for a paper fallen on hard times.    

Last week I stood in for the inimitable Geoff McGimpsey and reviewed the blogs for the News Letter.  Here's what I picked out. It’s the time of the year when native Scots, Ulster Scots and wannabe Scots alike munch haggis, recite verse and indulge in a wee dram or two, in tribute to Rabbie Burns.  The poet wrote “whisky and freedom gang the ‘gither”, but The Dabbler blog isn’t prepared to take anything for granted. It poses the burning question “what would Rabbie drink?”, if he were able to drop by on one of his eponymous suppers.  “As a working class lad from Scotland, today’s answer is probably vodka”, Ian Buxton speculates, ignoring the more obvious tipple - Buckfast tonic wine. Ian Parsley is more interested in Burns supper nibbles, or “ an thaim as taaks the Braid ”.  Even where I’m from, that’s a river running through Ballymena, rather than fodder for the toaster.  Which adds piquancy to Parsley’s query, “where are these ‘Ulster Scots’ speakers?”. ...

Early this year the Guardian provided blanket coverage of Sinn Fein’s ‘Irish Unity’ conference in London.   A questionable editorial choice , given that the talking shop was considered irrelevant by just about every other British newspaper. Usually its pages are light on comment from Northern Ireland, but the paper’s one regular contributor of Ulster opinion is a certain Gerry Adams.  Whatever patronising, tacked together, imbecilic garbage occurs to the Sinn Féin president, can’t be rushed to the Guardian’s presses quickly enough. His latest sortie draws ridiculous parallels between Afghanistan and the Northern Irish Troubles.  And I only wish that Kevin Myers response had also been carried by a national British paper.  It appeared in the Irish Independent and you can also read the full article in today’s Belfast Telegraph.  Here I reproduce my edited highlights. I'll take criticisms of NATO/US/British policies in Afghanistan from anyone -- Amnesty Inter...

There’s a fine piece  (subs - appropriately enough - required) in Prospect this month, defending the Times’ decision to erect a pay wall around its website.  The author is adamant that hatred for Rupert Murdock should not cloud people’s judgement on the new initiative. It’s a commonplace that newspapers, almost universally, are now struggling to return a profit, simply because people have become so used to receiving content for free, over the internet. Either the media must develop a model which recoups all its costs through advertising, or consumers have to pay a fair price for news, whether it is in a printed newspaper, or on the web.  Otherwise quality journalism will not prove sustainable in the long term. The Times has made its subscription model affordable, and, in the short term, a preview is available to entice potential customers.  It is also rumoured that access will be bundled with other products, such as Sky television packages. I’ve used th...

In today's Irish News (subs required) I pick through the wreckage of the general election. All three parties describing themselves as unionist are in varying degrees of crisis, following the poll. I argue that Peter Robinson's position is not sustainable, after he suffered a "personal rejection" in East Belfast. And I ask whether Jim Allister can hold his party organisation together, solely in order to give him a pop at an Assembly seat in North Antrim. Then to UCUNF's chances of survival. Sadly, I'm sceptical. The Conservatives and Unionists intermittently emphasised their cross community pitch to voters, but Sir Reg Empey’s failure to unseat a divisive figure like Willie McCrea, in South Antrim, indicates that the approach failed spectacularly. UCUNF’s tardiness in assembling a slate of candidates, a lack of Catholic hopefuls in the final list and the mixed signals it sent, by contracting a sectarian pact with the DUP in Fermanagh South Tyrone, all co...

As anticipated, the Russian oligarch, Alexander Lebedev has bought the Independent and the Independent on Sunday. So far as I can tell, despite attempts to suggest otherwise by Roy Greenslad e and Brian Walker , the Belfast Telegraph was never intended to be part of the deal. So Northern Ireland’s largest daily paper stays in the possession of the Irish company INM.

Sinn Fein’s ‘Irish Unity’ world tour has reached our nation’s capital: London. A venue which has more relevance to Northern Ireland politics than the United States of America, though hardly replete with the people who must be persuaded of the merits of a united Ireland, if it is to ever to become a reality. Although the conference is as irrelevant as ever, it does offer a neat guide to Republicans’ fellow travellers in the United Kingdom. Despite fitful interest in politics in Northern Ireland, the Guardian has decided to offer blanket coverage. Is the newspaper an unofficial sponsor of this event? I see that regular contributor, husband of the paper’s deputy editor and former republican prisoner, Ronan Bennett, is taking part. Certainly it’s unusual to find so much comment about Northern Ireland appearing at CIF all at once. Martin McGuinness rolls out his stock platitudes , Margaret Ward, a regular Sinn Féin mouthpiece, does her bit and Paul Bew’s dissenting opinion is adorn...

As Liverpool have lurched and stumbled their way out of the major cup competitions of England and Europe and into the predicament of scrabbling to sustain fragile belief in their ability to finish as high as fourth in the Premier League (and thus guarantee entry to the Champions League), isolated hints of recovered effectiveness have been swiftly exposed as illusory. Remembering how the 2-0 defeat of Manchester United in October was immediately followed by submissions to Arsenal and Fulham and then a run of three laboured draws, and how the tentative hopes of improved fortunes encouraged by an away victory over persuasively aspiring Aston Villa at the end of December humiliatingly foundered in last week’s expulsion from the FA Cup by Reading at Anfield, it is difficult to imagine we’ll soon be witnessing a genuine restoration of formidability to the club who once ruled British football imperiously. Ok, breathe deeply. I appreciate that you'll need a drink of water and possibly a l...

I wrote a short piece back in December 2007 about the novelistic qualities of some of the year’s news stories. The ‘canoe man’, now hitting the bulletins once more as he attempts to find a publisher for his memoirs, and the ‘polonium murder’ are two prominent examples. Now, in 2009, we have the ‘Arctic Sea mystery’ in which a four thousand ton ship vanished for three weeks and then reappeared in puzzling circumstances. Russia claims to have apprehended eight hijackers whom it alleges stole the vessel. But intriguingly it appears that they did not use force and nor were the fifteen crew members ‘under armed control’. The Russian navy’s recovery of the ‘Arctic Sea’ has, in the short term, added to the mystery, rather than solving it. However, the authorities have undertaken to provide a full explanation, once they have concluded their investigation. What is certain is that few fiction writers have dreamt up a plot so pregnant with suspenseful possibility.

It is not often I have reason to point 'Three Thousand Versts' regulars in the direction of a Daily Mail piece. But this article by Andrew Roberts, who is apoplectic about the decision to award Senator Edward Kennedy an honorary knighthood, is worth reading. Kennedy has been an implacable foe of our United Kingdom. Charles points out that this is a man who suggested unionists in Northern Ireland "should be given a decent opportunity to go back to Britain". I have no wish to make myself a regular passenger on the Mail's Outrage Express, but on this particular occasion its anger is justified.

I previously commended David Shiels’ Belfast Telegraph piece on the Conservative and Ulster Unionist electoral force. He has another article at Conservative Home today, covering the same topic, which addresses a number of important points. In previous debates regarding the new alignment, doubt has been cast on how much determination and courage David Cameron is showing by entering into a deal with Ulster Unionists. Regular commenter (and blogger ) yourcousin, for instance, goes so far as to suggest that the Tory leader’s unionism is merely a pragmatic tactical guise. Shiels rebuts any such suggestions without equivocation. He speaks of, “the determination with which the Conservative Party’s leadership has approached the mission of offering a radical break from the traditional, sectarian nature of politics in the province”. Cameron and Owen Paterson have signalled a clear departure from their party’s recent policy on Northern Ireland’s politics, “His (Cameron’s) critics overloo...

If David Cameron has any doubt that he is on the right track espousing ‘moral capitalism’ as an appropriate response to the current economic climate, he should banish it, following Simon Heffer’s extraordinary diatribe in the Daily Telegraph. The champion of Little England summons up a monstrous, hypocritical rant invoking the type of Free Market idealism which should be anathema to a Conservative like Cameron, for whom scepticism of ideology forms a central tenet of his philosophical credo. This is Heffer at his tub thumping worst. Markets are the guarantor of freedom and are inherently ‘moral’. Market regulation is conflated with constraint of people’s liberty. Any type of interference in markets is akin to communism. Cameron is proposing to ‘Sovietise capitalism out of existence’. Clearly this brand of utopian faith in markets is exactly what the current Conservative leader opposes. He is not suggesting heavy handed regulation. He simply plans to regulate against the worst...

I see Tom Elliott has been pulling apart Ed Curran’s Belfast Telegraph ‘analysis’ as to the state of unionism, in which the paper’s editor calls for a single unionist party. Predictably the MLA finds it riddled with inconsistencies. What Elliott can’t say, but I can, is that Curran’s pieces are to serious political journalism what Dan Brown’s books are to the canon of English literature. He has presided over the Tele’s descent into quasi tabloid trash. It is an indictment of the standard of Northern Ireland’s newspapers in general that anyone is even responding to the lamentably written, poorly argued garbage which he passes off as political comment.

Bobballs wonders why every time the News Letter runs a story about the internal organisation of the Ulster Unionist and Conservative parties, it feels bound to include in its article a diatribe released by the DUP press office. “Why should the by-the-numbers, repetitive bashing from the DUP necessarily be a core part of this story? Why were there no better options to get under the skin of the story? Why just take two press releases and run them together? Instead of publishing the invective, why not investigate the reasoning? Y'know, that old journalism maxim of shining a light into dark corners etc. No? Why is the DUP's hurt and upset necessarily part of a story about the UUP and the Tory Party? It makes no sense.” Examining the substance of a press release , on this occasion attributed to Michelle McIlveen, Bobballs asks, “Why must we endure all this bollocks about unionist unity when the DUP thinks the next UK government (which is not neutral on the union) is just a big su...

Given that Irish language newspaper Lá Nua is owned by Belfast Media and its MD is Mairtin O Muilleoir, it is difficult to muster any real sympathy for its predicament as the last issue was printed this week. Muilleoir is a veteran provo supporter and frequently the newspapers which his group produce are little more than sectarian hate sheets, brimming with Sinn Féin propaganda. Perhaps Lá Nua was an exception (self-evidently I have never read it), but given its provenance I doubt it did much to increase the cross community appeal of the Irish language. Perhaps another publisher can provide Irish speakers with an alternative weekly paper, I hope so, but I have no hesitation in wishing any venture Muilleoir and his group touches a swift demise. Speaking of odious republican hate rags, a piece on Slugger suggests that An Phoblacht, the provo newspaper which once lauded terrorist murders in its ‘war news’ section, is seeking donations after it survived an Ard Fheis motion to close i...

Semantic moral gymnastics about ‘one man’s freedom fighter’ not withstanding, someone who has been convicted of bombing civilian targets and is directly implicated in the eight murders which resulted, is unambiguously a terrorist. Brian Keenan, the violent republican extremist who died of cancer last week, carried responsibility for many more murders and there is not a shadow of doubt that any right thinking person will have abhorred this man’s legacy and adjudged the manner in which he chose to use his talents wholly despicable. That republicans celebrate Keenan’s life and regard him as a hero is of course unsurprising. Their viewpoint is indefensible and it is a reminder of precisely the character of people we are dealing with as regards Provisional Sinn Féin and its supporters. It is still less of a surprise to find that the Andersonstown News contains a glowing and sinister tribute to Keenan within its pages. Those who are responsible for this paper and its stable mates a...

Like Ian Paisley before him, Bertie Ahern’s announcement that he will resign next month has been greeted with a plethora of political obituaries. Paisley’s resignation was presaged by suggestions of improbity and to say that there was a whiff of fiscal impropriety hanging over Bertie Ahern would be quite an understatement. Nevertheless these retrospective articles have in the cases of both men, at times bordered on eulogy. Columnists and colleagues alike, once a resignation has been tendered, have instantly begun to downplay and ignore the unfolding scandals which caused them. With Ahern, unlike Paisley, the praise has been unambiguous and almost universal. Fintan O’Toole’s article on Comment is Free has been completely atypical: “Allegations that he had taken large sums of cash from private donors while he was minister for finance in 1993 and 1994? That he had failed to pay tax on at least some of that money, even though he was in charge of the tax system? That he had been brazen...