The deal......about a deal

Well, we now have an agreement in Northern Ireland on policing and justice. Or do we?

What seems to have happened is that negotiators spent 100+ hours to create a 21 page document that is really only a deal about a deal.

You can find the document on the Chambré Public Affairs website and have a wee read of it yourself.

What you will find is an agreement that the DUP and Sinn Fein don't want the Assembly to fall over, while the UUP and the SDLP are a bit miffed at being excluded from the full negotiations.  And the Alliance Party are, well, pottering about somewhere really hoping for the ministry, but trying not to look like they really, really want it.

The deal? Well its a deal about a deal.  An agreement is where to two big parties are both the winners.  But are they?  While the big bit relates to the devolution of policing and justice, there are also to be three committees 

1. A committee on Improving Executive Function and Delivery
2. A committee to look at Outstanding Executive Business
3. A committee to look at Outstanding Issues from St Andrew's Agreement.

There is also a new Parades Commission, that isn't a Parades Commission.  If you get my meaning.

So far the 'not the Parades Commission' has been filled by nominees by the First Minister and deputy First Minster.  The members are Michelle Gildernew, John O'Dowd, Gerry Kelly,Nelson McCausland, Stephen Moutray & Jeffrey Donaldson.

Apparently, Sir Reg only found out he was on the 'Improving Executive Function and Delivery' when he read it in the published document. Hmmmmmm.

The whole thing seems to be 'lets agree to disagree for a while and hope no one notices'.  Nothing overly terrible in itself if we are to keep the hope of a better future alive for a while longer.  

I wonder if they have been looking at all how inefficient this all is.  Whilst, as Ministers, they are demanding targeted efficiencies within their own Departments (which means civil servants being made redundant - sorry - I meant expeditious usage of vacancy control methods.  Not that this is putting any more pressure on the poor civil servant), they seem to be happy to potter about creating loads of committees to sit on.  

I wonder if they will have enough civil servants to take the notes??

Anyway.  The deal seems to already have a few problems.  The SDLP and UUP are not happy with the idea of the Alliance Party lifting the DOJ title as it does not fit into the D'Hondt system (It would be the SDLP's turn).  The Alliance Party are stating that they are not announcing a candidate as the conditions are not right yet (when will it ever?)  The SDLP have nominated Alban Maginnnis and the UUP will probably leave it at that.

The parades bit is complicated but involves the real Parades Commission probably being decommissioned, while the 'I can't believe its not....' Parades Commission probably wrangle away.  The real issue is how grassroots Orangemen feel about the whole thing.  Has the leadership of the Loyal Orders actually asked the rank and file?  I feel a difficult few years ahead. 

There is so much more but i feel a bit of my rant over.  What does any one else think about this? Or does anyone really care?

Official: Third of Britons believe Family Guy is BNP front

According to an article in The Telegraph the voucher website MyVoucherCodes did a survey of over a 1,000 people to see how recognisable politicians actually were.

The result should make UK politicians sit up a wee bit.

The very non-politician Alex Ried, the cross dressing cage fighter of Big Brother and Katie Price fame beat the best known politican in the recognition stakes.  Alex had a recognition rate of 84%, while Gordon Brown (Labour Party) came in at 81%.

David Cameron (Conservative Party) had a 73% recognition rate while Nick Clegg (Liberal Democratic Party) had a recognition rate of 41% - but as Peter Jones (Dragons' Den).


The funniest bit to the whole piece?  A third of people surveyed thought that Peter Griffen (the hilariously idiotic dad from 'Family Guy') was the leader of the BNP, instead of Nick Griffin. (see picture above)

Sometimes, my estimation of people goes up.

I wonder how a similar poll would wok out for our politicians and local celebs on this side of the pond? 

Reporting on the Troubles: Brian Rowan's take on things

I had the privilege of going to the Living in and Reporting on Conflict seminar with Brian Rowan (author and former BBC security editor) organised by Healing through Remembering. The event took place on Monday 1st February 2010.

Brian used his own exclusive archive material to discuss his long time relationships with loyalist and republican groups, how they communicated with the media and how that communication was reported.

I listened intently the Brian and, paraphrasing his speech tweeted what i thought were appropriate. The caveat i bring is that i am more reporting on the jist of what Brian was saying and should not be taken completely as word for word.

It was an interesting experience to hear about the 'Troubles' from a journalists perspective, how he coped with it, how he worked and how he built up his relationships with people who, had they wanted to, could have killed him many times over.

He talked about joining the BBC on a short term contract and the first IRA statement he ever received was the one just after the Enniskillen bomb in 1987. In the time since he has dealt with 5 P O'Neils and 6 Chief Constables.

It was interesting to hear about some of the codewords used to authenticate a paramilitary statement such as 'Titantic', Braveheart' 'Crucible' and 'Pashendale'. He also told us of how he was called to a house in a loyalist area and given a response to the IRA ceasefire statement of 1997, a full hour before the IRA statement was made!

He described how he built up relationships and of when those relationships broke down. He gave us a lot of little personal glimpses into his professional life as a journalist and how he sees things developing in the here and now.

Brian believes that a story is not a not a once off, it is a process and Northern Ireland needs to have a process of explanation, rather than have information recovery per se. He believed that the Eames Bradley initiative was putting cart before the horse in this regard. Brian put forward that we need to come to a better understading of the troubles.

I loved his analogy of the issue of the 'dirty war' with allegations of collusion. He said,

puppets and strings during troubles created a tangled mess.

He stated that convinced war is over, with the current dissident threat being more to do with internal republican differences. In this respect the media, in reporting this area, needs to understand that the war is over.

Brian also said that he believed in telling the story as it is, allowing people to use their own language to fill in the gaps. Meaning he did not go into giving lengthy explanations of paramilitary groupings, but allowed the audience to fill in the description in their own language.

Brian does not believe the legacy commission will happen. An initiative like this can not come from the government, as it requires people, especially in government such as the security forces, to have difficult conversations. He believed the problem was not national security, but national insecurity. Does anyone believe that people who were in Special Branch or MI5 will tell their stories?

A question was asked regarding any training Brian had received on reporting in a conflict arena, to which he replied that there is no real training to reporting in conflict. His experience of reporting was more to do with gut feeling and common sense. He also explained that there is a big difference between covering a story when you live in the area and reporting on conflict situations when on a foreign assignment. What happens is closer to you as an individual. 

Brian put forward the issue that truth/information recovery will only happen if the investigative process stops. People will not want to tell their stories if there is any possibility of a judiciary process, be it criminal or civil. This meant that for the process to work the idea, controversial as it is, of an amnesty would have to be taken seriously. People can see that public inquiries are trying to drag out information rather than looking at a voluntary process. It is still about blame, so people will not talk. The reason that the voluntary process will not work, or the explanation process, or even an amnesty is because of the political process rather than the peace process.

He put forward the idea that any explanation process is best taken forward by those directly involved in the Troubles and that the process is grown from ground up. The state would find it difficult to drive it forward in any meaningful way other than providing funding to aid its growth.

Brian stated that you have to let people tell their stories. Many of statements he has taken over the past decade have remained unreported. He also came off with a poignant statement,

In remembering the past, we tend to forget the present and future. 

‡‡‡

Overall the talk and the discussion was extremely interesting. I found it very enlightening to hear the journalist point of view from a very personal perspective. I understand what he said and why he said it, i am just not sure if Northern Ireland, as a society, is quite ready to discuss the thorny issue of truth recovery. Maybe for some that is all they want, for others nothing less than the judicial process will do. All the while those most affected are getting older and the Troubles becoming less meaningful to the younger generations now coming into adulthood.

The seminar was not a 'do gooder feelgood fling'. We need to understand our role in society and where we have come from, having had our experiences forged in the furnace of the Troubles/war/conflict/terrorist campaign/whatever you want to call it. To understand does not mean forget our experiences, but to put some sort of meaning to the things we have had to experience during those times.

I am married and have two children now. I don't want them to ever have to experience what i and my family experienced as I grew up. I want a better society, a stable government and a freedom from man's inhumanity to man. 

The HTR project seems to be a worthy one. I enjoyed the seminar and would definitely recommend attendance at any similar seminar run by Healing Through Remembering.

Caution: Cigarette may explode

Pure genius hits again with an Indonesian man suing a cigarette manufacturer because one of their cigarettes exploded in his mouth causing the loss of six teeth.
Indonesian roulette or what!

The man said he would now be trying to give up smoking.  Maybe more exploding ciggies might help cut the 60% smoking rate.

The full story can be found on the BBC.

Groundhog Day 2: Policing & Justice in NI

You may or may not realise it but Tuesday, 2nd February 2010 is in fact Groundhog Day.

At least according to the ever accurate and academically sound Wikipedia.

We are in the last run of the talks at Hillsborough which is supposed to give us the finalisation of Devolution to Northern Ireland.  Gregory Campbell (DUP MLA and MP) is suggesting the possibility of a referendum to quantify public confidence in the process.  Gerry Adams thought the idea was 'cool' as it would involve the likes of the Garvaghy Road residents telling the DUP that they can go ahead and devolve P&J. Ooooh, saucer of milk?

I think the real issue underlying Groundhog Day at Hillsborough is electoral cover for DUP & Sinn Fein.  They can not be seen to be giving in to each other too soon.  Though i think the hardest discussions have already happened before Christmas.  A referendum would give them all the cover they need to progress.  However, one thing to keep in mind is the number of people who voted for the Agreement in the referendum in 1998 and slipped back to mow their gardens like horticultural ninjas when it came to actually voting for the parties.

We await with a bit more baited breath to see what happens on Groundhog Day.  

Though it would have been more poignant for the deal to have been 'done' on Holocaust Day, as a significant move for continued peace, than Groundhog Day, which sums up our politics here quite well.