The current struggle in Northern Ireland over the devolving of policing and justice powers has everything to do with saving the Democratic Unionist Party from electoral meltdown, according to well-placed Stormont sources.
Archive for January, 2010
Impasse ‘all about avoiding a DUP meltdown’, claim Stormont sources
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, January 29th, 2010Anxiety as Poles agree to host American missiles near Russian exclave
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, January 29th, 2010Poland has announced that it will deploy a battery of American Patriot missiles close to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Bogdan Klich, the Polish defence minister, said last week that the missiles would be positioned near to the town of Morag instead of on the outskirts of Warsaw as had previously been planned.
BOOKS: Heart of darkness
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, January 29th, 2010The Killer Trail by Bertrand Taithe
Oxford University Press, £16.99
The continent of Africa has always been a poor relation to more affluent parts of the world and, as a consequence, a treasure trove of easy pickings when it comes to the exploitation of people and natural resources by more powerful countries. Political raiders have plagued the weaker nations from outside and dubious and corrupt governments have helped themselves from within.
UCATT fury over pleural plaques compensation denial
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, January 29th, 2010Construction union UCATT has angrily criticised proposals to deny compensation to the victims of pleural plaques as “disgraceful”.
Editorial: Tory policy – just cut it out!
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, January 29th, 2010It is not all over. In spite of their continuing lead in the opinion polls, support for the Tories in the country has little depth. Their campaign is held together by mood music alone. David Cameron’s policies – even when he can understand them – are revealed to be weakly developed and often fall apart when scrutinised. The majority of the country does not share the Tories’ support for the rich and not the many, inequality over fairness.
More money not less, say private housebuilders
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, January 29th, 2010The Government risks missing its target for affordable housing by more than half a million homes if it does not protect the housing budget, housing associations warned this week.
BOOKS: Homage to Catalonia
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, January 29th, 2010Not Just Orwell: The Independent Labour Party Volunteers and the Spanish Civil War by Christopher Hall
Warren & Pell, £14.99
The Spanish Civil War is big business. There seems to be no stopping the flood of books on the subject. The story as told is simple. Following a victory in the general election of February 1936 by the forces of the Popular Front there was in June a coup d’etat led by sections of the military, paramilitary police units and fascist and ultra-Catholic political parties. The coup was only a partial success. The plotters quickly took the south of Spain and much of the countryside, but the Republic held the cities and the north. It was civil war and lasted until March 1939 before Franco and his generals won and a murderous repression followed with executions continuing for almost a decade.
BOOKS: A Cicero with all the ruthlessness of Peter Mandelson
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, January 29th, 2010Lustrum by Robert Harris
Hutchinson, £18.99
Robert Harris well deserves his huge fan club. But I suspect I am one of the last of its members to read Lustrum. Those who got there before me will not need to be told that his latest novel is a magnificent, sweeping, gripping political drama and its placing in ancient Rome incidental to the universal truths it reveals about the grubby lust for power. Anglicise the Roman names and the reader might be in Westminster witnessing the latest machinations against Gordon Brown. The only real difference is that the Prime Minister faces metaphorical rather than actual crucifixion if those plotting against him should ever succeed.
BOOKS: Revealed – the rich and famous friends (and secret socialist life) of Somerset Maugham
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, January 29th, 2010The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings
John Murray, £25
It is not until page 422 of this hugely entertaining biography that we learn of the “socialist beliefs” of the multi-millionaire writer Somerset Maugham and, even then, without elaboration. A little further on, in the context of his role as a wartime propagandist, there is a second reference to his “mildly socialist values” and then a third to his “socialist views”.
RADIO: Rise and shine – but please calm down, for Evans’ sake
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, January 29th, 2010The Chris Evans Breakfast Show
Radio 2
The dying weeks of 2009 piled on the angst. There we were – quivering in fear and submission about the state of the economy, the environment, security, education, health, political correctness, the price of fish, the savagery of dangerous dogs, the brazen unlicensed adults who dare to drive their kids to football practice, and a terrifying list of other things our leaders use to scare us – when yet another boulder of grief fell onto our creaking shoulders. Radio listeners were thrown into apoplectic despair at the desperate news that Sir Terry Wogan was leaving the airwaves.