Community relations workers, parents and young people protest against sectarian cuts

I’m just heading down to address several hundred community relations activists, young people, teachers and parents who have come to Stormont today to protest against a savage and unwarranted cut.

The Education Department has announced a 70% cut in funding for schools cross-community projects, on top of cuts in inter-community youth work. These are just about the most short-sighted cuts we have heard of to date anywhere.

Cross-community work pays multiple dividends in hard cash saved as we gradually reduce the impact of division and sectarian violence. Any money actually saved in cuts will end up being paid out many times over on the policing and justice budget. But education and the youth service are not just doing damage limitation at the interface. They are uniquely placed to provide hands-on leadership in the work of achieving a shared society.

The Community Relations Council has already highlighted the danger and eventual cost of abandoning this work, but we fear an even bigger danger. The DUP and Sinn Fein have spent three years dodging their responsibility under the Good Friday Agreement to seek a shared future. Facing this election they finally, grudgingly produced a Cohesion, Sharing and Integration Strategy which provides no practical leadership at all. All it really did was to push responsibility back on government departments for producing ideas for a shared future.

We now know what Caitriona Ruane’s contribution will be – 70% cuts, from £3.5 million to £1.5 million. These two parties clearly have no intention of taking their responsibility seriously. The SDLP will be backing this motion.

Proposals on 37 days notice for public assemblies are Stalinist

Last month the First Minister and Deputy First Minister published the Draft Public Assemblies, Parades and Protests Bill.

If the Bill becomes law, all gatherings involving 50 or more people, and which take place in any “public space” will be required to give 37 days prior notice. They are Stalinist and totally at odds with the promotion of diversity and tolerance which is meant to be at the heart of the DUP – SF coalition.

A Facebook  Group has been established to oppose this legislation. http://www.facebook.com/conall.mcdevitt#!/group.php?gid=104617472916202&v=wall&ref=mf

On a tweet and a prayer

Friends in the aid community tell me Twitter is being used to facilitate communications between aid workers on the ground in Haiti and coordinators in the US and Europe.

The agencies have asked many of their staff to close their networks allowing only colleagues and other aid workers access to their tweets. This has created a virtual communications network which is private to the outside world but allows the flow of vital information within the stricken country and to the rest of the world.

Meanwhile in Haiti the failures of man are at the heart of this tragedy. Government has utterly failed, the people have nothing to turn to but prayer.

To sue or not to sue

Tiger Woods will be wondering what legal recourse he has today as the tabloids have a feeding frenzy about the circumstances leading to his car crash last week.  This is a issue a colleague of mine in London, Rob Clayton, has written a lot about. Here are his latest thoughts on the thorny issue of when to sue and when not to sue.

“Publish and be damned” is one of the duke of Wellington’s most famous remarks. It was his response to Joseph tockdale, a pornographer, who was about to publish the memoirs of Harriette Wilson, a famous ‘escort’ of the time. Stockdale had offered to remove all references to the duke, but the duke refused to pay. The memoirs were duly published, making a fortune for both Stockdale and Wilson. Yet, though he was married with children, the duke’s towering reputation was unaffected, perhaps even strengthened by his standing firm in the face of adversity.

Not everybody is so sanguine at the prospect of the media reporting on matters they consider private. Recently, in England, the trading company Trafigura agreed to pay millions of pounds without admitting any liability regarding certain allegations. When a question was asked about this in parliament, however, Trafigura’s lawyers obtained an order preventing a newspaper reporting the question and a further order preventing reporting of the initial order. American readers used to first amendment protection may be scratching their heads, but English law takes a very different view on where the balance lies between freedom of speech and the freedoms of those being spoken (or written) about.

Hence a number of states in the US have enacted laws nullifying the effect of English libel laws in their jurisdictions. But the difficulty of enforcing such laws nowadays is demonstrated by Trafigura’s lawyers abandoning these efforts after Twitter users worked out and wrote about what was going on anyway.

Of parliament, Wellington’s best known remark is “I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life.” Most of us recognise that our legislatures are not perfect, but the concept in England of parliamentary privilege is clear and we value freedom of speech strongly. In this context, it is surprising if it did not occur to Trafigura and its advisers how massively their efforts could backfire. Once a company makes payments, even without acknowledging any wrongdoing,  the reputation game changes. Fair or unfair, people want to see corrective actions. Certainly, they do not want to see aggressive attempts to coerce the media. It seems inescapably the case that the bulk of the criticism that Trafigura now faces is less about what it is alleged to have done and much more about how it handled those allegations. This is actually bad for everyone. It means that the underlying issues may fester without resolution and, crucially, that the company now has far less chance of convincing the world community that it stands for values that many people would hope to see it (and anyone) support.

A contrasting case is instructive. When Dole Foods’ Swedish subsidiary sued a Swedish documentary maker for defamation, critics accused the company of stifling free speech. It transpired that Dole’s main accusers in the film were paid by a lawyer to say what they said, but Dole dropped its lawsuit anyway. Perhaps it determined that being perceived as attempting to silence criticism could harm its reputation and – given pressure from retailers – its business. So while still maintaining that the film is “fundamentally flawed,” Dole’s General Counsel now says that he looks forward to an “open discussion” with the filmmakers.

Many PR professionals who are averse to “getting legal” with the media may feel that Trafigura’s experience supports this view. Yet it is important to emphasise that legal recourse is usually worth considering and sometimes vital. A false statement published at the wrong time in the wrong place can have devastating consequences.

 It may be imperative to enjoin publication. Without such a defence, rebuilding an unfairly tarnished reputation could take years and may well be beyond the means of many individuals, even of some companies. Investigative reporters pursue agendas and it is understandable that their targets can be concerned not only about getting a fair hearing at the time, but also about how they recover quickly from any loss of reputation.

The big picture is crucial. A successful strategy will have evaluated the benefits of both the assertion of legal rights and the communication of strong, positive messages. Having a close understanding of the opinions of the public and important stakeholders – how you are viewed, how your strategic options would be perceived, what people need to see and know – is crucial in order to get the balance right.

 Far less well remembered than the celebrated quotation with which we started is what Wellington said next. He made clear that “if such trash is published”, he would sue. Many of those mentioned in Harriette Wilson’s memoirs did indeed sue for libel, and their claims ruined the publisher. Yet in the event, Wellington held his fire. Meanwhile the unabashed Stockdale went on many years later to sue the parliamentary publisher Hansard… for defamation!

A night of shame and morning of dispair

Last night Henri cheated his way into the World Cup Finals.

This morning DUP and SF debated the future of education on the radio.  I know football can be a cruel game but cheating is cheating. Next time my nine year old sneaks and sly tackle on some other kid he’ll tell me he is just doing what Henri does. “Its the refs job to spot fouls dad”.

One bad example.

The second comes from those who are meant to have the interests of our children at heart. We now know the crisis in education goes much deeper then the stand off over the 11plus and the creeping privatization of  education.  This time it is the DUP who are playing hard ball over kids futures.

As the BBC reports today:

The Education and Skills Authority was due to take over the functions of the education and library boards and other bodies like the CCMS on 1 January.

The DUP has refused to back the new authority, and the deadlock is unlikely to be broken by the end of the year.

Despite this, education bosses warned no contingency plans are in place.

Their concerns were echoed by Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) chief executive Donal Flanagan, who has advised his staff to “disengage” from assisting in the creation of the Education and Skills Authority (ESA).

The DUP is opposed to the ESA because it is unhappy with the treatment of controlled schools, attended mostly by Protestant children.

So the message from the football pitch and the Assembly is clear. Win at any cost. Don’t worry about the consequences or the signals it sends to children.

Victories are solutions!

Nintendo is your homework!

If I could tell my nine year old boy that he had Nintendo DS for homework  he might even begin to relish the late afternoon revision.

Now, at least two schools in Ireland are starting to view the pocket gaming device in a more positive light. In urban Tallaght and rural Clonlisk, lateral- thinking adults are using the children’s own channels for learning, and the Nintendo DS is proving a profitable platform, the Irish Times reports today.

Unlike a laptop computer, which costs hundreds of euro, poses numerous technological and security challenges and cannot fit into your pocket, the Nintendo DS is small and easy to operate and thousands of Irish children have one.

The Stormont generation gap

Grumpy old men. MLA's are a generation older then the average

The average age in Northern Ireland is just over 36 years. Average age of an MLA is reckoned to be nearly 55. This is older then the British Parliament, the Dail, the Scottish Parliament, the Australian Parliament and the Finnish Parliament to mention just a few.

 Does this matter?

 Well yes.

Apart from the obvious generational disconnect, because of the troubles this age difference also means very different life experiences  here in the North. It’s the difference between been born in 1954 and 1973. Nineteen years is a lifetime and 2/3 of the troubles!

 So your average MLA was ten when the troubles broke out and nearly 45 when the agreement was signed. He or she is old enough to have marched in Derry on Bloody Sunday or manned a barricade during the Ulster Workers Strike.

In contrast the average citizen on the other hand was not even born when the troubles started and under 25 on Good Friday 1998.

 Show else might this generational gap affect our MLA’s ability to govern together?

Let’s look at some other milestones. The MLA was 31 at the time the Anglo Irish Agreement was signed, the citizen just starting secondary school. In fact any 36 year old only knew three years of the troubles as an adult before the 94 ceasefire, the politician was 40 in 94 having lived through more then two decades of war as an adults.

Maybe this does not matter. On the other hand it might well explain why the Assembly appears permanently stuck in the past rerunning old battles and vocalising old prejudices.

Ignoring many of the issues that matter to the 36 year old.

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.

Intimate communications

So do you get it now?

The energy price debate we are not having

Today’s electricity price announcements will spark the usual debate about the need for cheaper energy. Gas prices come down, electricity follows. There will be calls for tighter regulation and competition. Good news and fair comment but only half the story.

What we are still not discussing in a meaningful way is the other ways in which we could produce cheaper and more sustainable energy for our region. Today we spend about 10% of our regional income importing fossil fuels. The general consensus is that fossil fuel prices will remain volatile in the years ahead as the global pressure on a depleting resource tightens. In a couple of decades it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that we might end up spending 20% of our money on imported fuels.

There is a growing school of thought that we should test regional policy to ensure it has a positive economic impact and reduces our reliance on imported fossil fuels thus giving us some protection for the vagaries of the global energy market. Experts believe that for every £1 million saved on importing fossil fuels, £10 million could be freed up to make investments in renewable alternatives. Save £4billion, invest £40billion.

The big difference is that this money invested is spent locally and not paid out to foreign companies selling us foreign gas, coal and oil. Energy policy is a devolved matter. At present customers pay for imported gas when we could be paying for locally generated renewable energy. There is enough biomass potential in this region to heat most of our rural housing. We have enough wind to meet a good chunk of our energy needs yet there is no serious political debate taking place about the opportunity for locally produced cheap energy.