Palintology X – GILF goes foxy

Sarah Palin is back. The GILF is a fox!

Complaints about privacy

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has received 70 e-mails complaining about the TV3 news broadcast on St Stephen’s Day disclosing the cancer diagnosis of Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan, according to the Irish Times. A spokeswoman for the BAI said people would be advised that they had 30 days from the broadcast date to make formal, written complaints.

Convention day

Over 200 SDLP members will gather in a South Belfast hotel tonight to pick Carmel Hanna’s successor as MLA for South Belfast. There are two candidates, Cllr Bernie Kelly and myself.

For eight weeks we have visited many homes and spoke at numerous meeting to talk about the future of the SDLP. The message is clear. People want the party to change. They want the SDLP to have more then just a great past. They want it to be a party with a bright future.

To do this the party has to renew in policy and personality terms.

It must build an alternative to the failing DUP – Sinn Fein coalition and appeal to a new generation who want politics to be bigger then two communities.

I’ll post the speech I’ll be making at the selection convention at teatime. Win or lose I know the debate about the need for a new SDLP has started. It must continue if this region is to grow and the true potential of the Good Friday Agreement is to be realised.

Palintology 2012 – The new President

The Saturday Night Live crew have been imagining a Sarah Palin Presidency. It’s well worth the watch.

BBC losses bad for Northern Ireland. Time to devolve broadcasting policy?

Barry McCaffrey in the Irish News today reports that the BBC is expected to announce major job cuts to its organisation in Northern Ireland tomorrow.

BBC executives are expected to inform around 700 staff in Belfast and Derry of major job losses in a series of meetings today.

This will be unwelcome news across the North. Local news output has been under huge pressure in recent years with less resources for investigative journalism and current affairs coverage. At a time when politics in our region is moving from the predictable to discourse on serious policy issues, the need for a properly resourced regional broadcaster has never been greater.

But its not just politics. Arts, culture and sport have already suffered from cutbacks. Further reductions will undermine much of the good work which has been done over the past twenty years.

Things are no better in the private sector. UTV is under tremendous pressure and is now running its news and current affairs output on what could only be described as limited resources.

That we continue to maintain a good standard of journalism is a credit to the people who report and make programmes on daily basis.

Maybe it is time to have a serious discussion about devolving broadcasting policy and allow NI as a region take ownership of its own talent and seek to build up a vibrant a sustainable regional press in partnership with public and private sector broadcasters across the island and in Britain.

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize. 11 years ago it was Hume & Trimble.

President Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel peace Prize for 2009.

The Nobel Committee has acknowledged his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples.

“His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

I remember well this day 11 years ago sitting in John Hume’s kitchen in Derry waiting for the call from Oslo to tell him he and David Trimble had been awarded that year’s prize. John held an impromptu press conference in Derry before we drove to Belfast to address several hundred children at a school in North Belfast. He then went to Dublin to appear on the Late Late Show. The day remains one of the highlights of my life. He was mobbed everywhere he went. It was the fitting culmination of a career dedicated to peace and the building of a new Ireland.

Just before Christmas we went to Oslo for the ceremony. Phil Coulter and James Galway played at the ball and I got to dance with a princess. Later in the hotel they took over the bar and a session with two of our finest artists went on late into the night.

Green is the new black

Eco fashion is in and brands are out according to trenders.

Real history of the perfect pint

Arthur’s Day has passed. The signing of a lease 250 years ago in Dublin was converted into a global marketing moment and with some success.

Today in the Irish Times Cormac O’Grada, has a fascinating article chronicling the quarter of a millennium search for the perfect pint. Turns out it was invented in London, developed in Belfast and make special in Dublin……

A further irony, since “Arthur’s Day” merges marketing and history, is that for a long time after Arthur’s death, Guinness was far from being our “national” drink. Only after the Great Famine did it begin to make inroads into rural Ireland. Its conquest of the remoter west and southwest came quite late, a century or more after the foundation of the brewery.

A survey prompted by Guinness’s bicentennial, carried out by the then Irish Folklore Commission in 1956 (and now housed in the National Folklore Collection in UCD), highlighted the novelty of the pint of plain in many places as recently as the late 19th century.According to a Longford informant, “all the old men I’ve talked to agree on this, that porter and stout are comparatively new drinks . . . In their young days there was no such thing as porter, and. . . their fathers before them drank nothing but whiskey”.

From Fair Head in north Antrim came a report that McCaffreys, a Belfast brewery, had been the first to produce a black beer in the North, and that Guinness did not appear on the scene until early in the 1900s.

Buzz Lightyear returns to earth after 15 month mission

The world’s favourite space ranger, Buzz Lightyear, returned to earth safely last week after a 15 month mission aboard the International Space Station. His time on the orbiting laboratory will celebrated in a ticker-tape parade together with his space station crew mates and former Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin on Oct. 2 at Walt Disney World in Florida.

The news was celebrated by Naoise McDevitt (aged four) and millions of children around the world who had been worrying about their heroes fate in orbit.

While in space Buzz supported NASA’s education outreach program station,  — Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM, by creating a series of fun educational online outreach programs. Following his return, Disney is partnering with NASA to create a new online educational game and an online mission patch competition for school kids across America.

Malachi on the media

Malachi O’Doherty is always worth reading and I am a big fan of his radio work. He gave an interesting talk on the media in Northern Ireland at a seminar organised by Agenda NI this week.  It’s well worth a listen.

Mixing with the Media «

By the way Malachi is only one half of the best blogging marriage in Ireland. Check our Maureen’s blog here. Don’t tell him but she’s even better with words!