O’Conall Street

The Education Minister Caitriona Ruane stalled on specifics and appeared to back deregulation of education here if she fails to get her way on what replaces the 11plus. Her comments came during a rare TV interview on today’s Stormont live. I asked a respected political commentator how she would sum up Ms Ruane’s interview. “A race to the bottom” was her reply.

I’ll let you  be the judge of that, but one thing for sure, I am none the wiser for having watched ten minutes of her on TV. Just hope she can be a little more specific when she is trying to convince fellow polticians of her plans, what ever they are.

Just one thing though. My dad was a life long socialist and I am very happy to be described as a social democrat. I was always told centre left politics was about levelling up, not levelling out.

Thanks to Pete Baker over on Slugger for the Youtube video.

No one with a titter of wit would spend a cent in the Republic this Christmas when they can make at least 20% savings on many goods by coming North.

The Euro / Sterling rate is hovering at record lows since the common currency was launched in 1999. In real terms this means that with every Euro you now get 82p to spend in NI. This used to be around 63p.

There are also savings to be made because of the possibility of escaping the big mark ups many UK retailers have been adding to goods on their shelves in the South. Even before Sterling’s fall in value the Irish Examiner was reporting in June that:

TESCO and Dunnes Stores are charging shoppers almost 30% more in the Republic than in the North for the same items.

With some items 100% more expensive in the Republic, the European Commission said it is launching an investigation into the matter.

A survey conducted by the National Consumer Agency (NCA) found there was a 31% difference between a basket of 42 branded goods in Dunnes Stores north and south and a 28% difference between Tesco stores.

Own-branded goods showed less of a difference but such items were still 17% more in Tesco, 11% more in Dunnes and 16% more in Lidl stores after prices were adjusted for VAT and excise duties.

The IDA has fired a broadside against the Irish Government for promoting a scheme  which could see jobs go to Northern Ireland rather then the Republic. The Irish Times today has the story of the Cross Border Financial Services Initiative, a scheme which allows Irish banks to set up back office operations in the North in order to ensure access to well qualified staff on this island.

This is a short sighted and very regrettable stance by the IDA. It illustrates the entrenched mindsets about all island cooperation which still exist in certain quarters in the Republic.

One can only hope that this will not become a political football in the South and that the government and opposition will continue to support the development of an all island economy despite the short sightedness of some public servants.

There is no one as Irish as Barack Obama. Yes the boys have a song out to celebrate ‘our’ President!

There are no McDevitt’s on Menin Gate (Belgium) but there are thousands of other Irish names amongst the 58,000 for whom there is no grave. The Irish Peace tower stands on a hill over the final battleground where the 16th and 36th divisions pushed the German lines back in June 1917. There are some wonderful inscriptions as you walk in. They say different things but have a single message best summed up in the words of Tom Kettle:

To dice with death, and, oh! They’ll give you rhyme
And reason; one will call the thing sublime,
And one decry it in a knowing tone.
So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,
And tired men sigh, with mud for couch and floor,
Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,
Died not for Flag, nor King, nor Emporor,
But for a dream born in a herdsman’s shed,
And for the Secret Scripture of the poor.

The drive from Flanders (Belgium) to the Somme (France) takes you along the western front’s most famous sites. Arriving in the Somme valley, seeing the 74,000 names at Thiepval and acknowledging the epic achievements of the 36th Ulster Division, remembered at the Ulster Tower is thought provoking and utterly sobering. The blood sacrifice of the huge international army is everywhere. I counted 83 cemeteries along the was and forty seven nationalities.

Irishmen are everywhere. In the 16th Irish Division the fallen from ‘nationalist’ Ireland lie side by side with comrades from the UK, India, South Africa, Morrocco, France, Belgium, Canada and many more. Many of the states have since decided to erect their own memorials to the soldiers of the Great War. The finest is undoubtedly in Vimy where Canada built the most wonderful monument to its war dead. We arrived there from the living memorial that is the National South African monument at Devilles Wood. A wonderful circular building it makes no bones about South Africa’s own difficult history since the first world war. It’s a monument to everyone who went to war for the African state. From the Afrikaners in the Somme trenches to the ANC activists who fought for democracy, the building quite literally squares the circle and allows the modern republic to remember without undermining itself in any way.

The South African visit was a welcome boost after our pilgrimage to the only monument to the 16th Irish Division in the Somme. Nestled in the church grounds in Guilemont is a celtic cross. Do cum gloire Dé agus onora na hEireann (for the glory of god and the honour of Ireland) is the epitaph to the thousands who fell between the 3rd and 9th of September 1916 on the green fields of France. It is in stark contrast to the Ulster tower built within two years of the establishment of Northern Ireland and opened by the embodiment of the new jurisdiction, Edward Carson. They were quick to remember, it seems the ‘Free State’ was in a hurry to forget.

The flags of so many nations still fly today in France and Belgium. Some are still in the commonwealth although many are not. The empire is gone, Europe is at peace and still the flag that is missing is that of Ireland. Nowhere is the Republic of Ireland remembering its dead as a sovereign and independent state. The peace tower at Messine is wonderful and a fitting tribute to the first battle in which the two traditions fought side by side but it is ultimately a monument to peace and reconciliation on the island of Ireland. It is surely time the Republic of Ireland, free, confident and proud take its place amongst the modern states to honour its sons who went to war for Ireland and who made the ultimate sacrifice.

In March along with a group of friends I went paid my respects to young Willie McBride. He lies on the banks of the river Aucre in Authille Cemetery alongside Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindis and a lone German soldier. Immortalised in song but forgotten by the modern republic that was to share his island.

From an Irish point of view the words on this Remembrance Sunday are surely - We must remember them.

Today 15,000 children will sit down to begin, for the last time, the most discredited selection exam in Europe. There is not a single credible political or academic voice in these islands which believes the eleven plus to be a viable solution to the selection dilemma, yet there is a real crisis about what will replace it.

The Programme for Governmentmentions “children” 45 times in 59 pages and explicitly commits the Executive to “Encourage all our children to realise their potential by improving access to formal and non formal education and provision tailored to the needs of disadvantaged children and young people.” Its does not however mention “primary education”, “selection” or the “eleven plus” once. In fact the whole document ignores the crisis that already existed at the time of its writing about what to do with our children’s future despite another lofty  commitment to: “Educate and develop our young people to the highest possible standards to deliver improved outcomes for all young people, including measurable reductions in the gap in educational outcomes between highest and lowest attainers.”

On Monday the four main churches united to call for a meaningful debate about empowering students and their parents to choose at fourteen. That they felt it necessary to intervene in this was is a total indictment of northern politics.

In their statement the clerics said primary school children were picking up on their parents confusion about what would happen when the 11-plus ends.

“It is clear that there are strong yet unreconciled convictions about the best system of education for the future. Each viewpoint seems to cancel out the other and, in the absence of consensus, we risk heading to an abyss of unregulated arrangements.”

Calling on politicians to do the job they are being paid to do, the statement continued:

“We ask our politicians, and others, to stand back from established positions and to create the space necessary so that, through dialogue between those with different outlooks, the best way forward may be found for all children.”

That we find ourselves in this place is a tragedy of unspeakable terms. In Tim McGarry’s words at the end of last night’s BBC Hearts and Minds; “Sarah Palin is the only person in the world who makes Caitriona Ruane look like a competent politician.”

My son is one of 30,000 P5 and P6 students now in educational limbo. They deserve better from their Minister and from the Executive. These millennium kids were born into great optimism and hope, the promise of new North with a shared future.

They are being failed by grown ups.

There is some speculation Stateside that Carol Wheeler who last summer was appointed President Elect Obama’s Irish Liaison may become the new special envoy to Northern Ireland.

Earlier this year Obama established an Irish Dream team to advise him on key issues relating to this island. Senators George Mitchell (retired, Maine), Chris Dodd (Connecticut), Edward Kennedy (Mass-achusetts) and Pat Leahy (Vermont), Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland and Congressmen Joe Crowley (New York) and Richard Neal (Massachusetts) were the names announced as panel members on Labor Day by the Obama campaign. The panel has complemented Carol Wheeler’s outreach work.

After a shaky start the Obama campaign has to date positioned itself on the progressive side of Northern politics. The President Elect has backed calls for a Northern Ireland truth process and for an independent public inquiry into the murder of lawyer Pat Finucane, according to lobby group the Irish-American Unity Conference.

Earlier this year the Irish Voice speculated that Ms Wheeler could be a future US Ambassador to Ireland.

We are just tidying up the pieces after the happiest breakfast in Belfast for over a decade. Susan Elliot, Consul General of the United States of America here in Northern Ireland hosted some 200 politicians, business people, academics and the press for the dawn celebration of Obama’s victory.

I cannot remember a mood like this since the breakfast on Good Friday 1998 when hope and history rhymed here in our small region. There was not a local party absent, not a media outlet missing. The magical tapestry that is the North came together to mark this moment in history.

We could not have been more proud here at Weber Shandwick to be associated with the event.  

As for Barack Obama. The dream is ending, a new dawn has arrived and the work must begin.

We may well be on the eve of history, a moment in time we will likely to recount to our grandchildren.

Tomorrow America goes to the polls and Barack Obama’s campaign for change looks likely to triumph. He could win the election by millions or conceivably loose it by thousandsalthough the latest polls are as encouraging as you could hope for. Anxiety is reported to be the predominant mood amongst Democratic strategists.

More than 20 million Americans have already voted and registration is at historic levels in many key states. The queues in Ohio were four and a half hours long yesterday. We would never tolerate this in Europe yet millions are patiently waiting because in the words of a black woman interviewed on last night’s 10 O’Clock news ‘it’s time for change’. Worryingly for the Democrats, the long lines may deter many young people who must vote if Obama is to be sure of victory.

There can be no doubting that this election, the first of truly digital age, has triggered online conversations which are mobilising the young, ethnic minorities and independents in a way which is rewriting the campaigning handbook. Elections will never be the same again.

Obama and McCain both have articles in today’s Wall Street Journal making a final case to the establishment. The real fight is on the Internet, the broadcast media and the streets. Online Obama is posting a new YouTube  video nearly every three hours and with 386,000 videos, many backing his case, the battle for cyberspace has been won by his blue American army but will it get the elusive youth vote out?.

Anna Quindlen at Newsweek gives the last word to America’s future generations.

Analysts have learned to be skeptical of the so-called youth vote, but all signs suggest that this may be the moment when the country begins to create a new cadre of lifelong voters.

Evidence of this good news is both statistical and anecdotal. Turnout by young voters in the 2008 primaries and caucuses was nearly twice that of eight years before. Rock the Vote has signed up 2.3 million this year, as opposed to 1.4 million in 2004, which at the time was a watershed. On a more-micro level, the chairman of the Department of Government and Politics at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, who has taken students to the Inauguration every four years, told a reporter that in the past it took months to fill a single bus. This year he is chartering two, since the first one filled within days.

The last big bump among young voters came in 1972, the first presidential election after the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18. Despite revisionist history that suggests that all young people then were antiwar and counterculture, the youth vote split pretty evenly between George McGovern and Richard Nixon. Roughly half of those casting their first vote chose a man who was trounced on election night, and the other half chose a man who had to resign the presidency in disgrace less than two years later.

It’s difficult to figure out how much effect this had on voter turnout in the decades that followed, but the undeniable fact is that Americans have exercised the franchise less vigorously than a participatory democracy might wish. There are dozens of documents in my filing cabinet about proposals to change that, from turning voting into a lottery—civic responsibility and a million bucks!—to moving Election Day to the weekend.

That particular file has grown dusty this year. Primary turnouts reached historic highs, including among new voters. The onetime collateral issues that concern them—and that were often ignored by elected officials—have gone mainstream: gay rights, the environment, the cost of a college education. And the terrorist attacks of September 11, as well as their generation’s racial and ethnic diversity, reinforced their sense of themselves as engaged citizens of the world. These are the millennials, more pragmatic and optimistic than their parents.

Ben Lazarus, co-chair of Yale for Obama, says that the voters of his generation are inclined to move politics out of the long stall of baby-boomer disenchantment. “Our idea of our own American identity is much more open and progressive,” he says. “And I think that goes for both sides. Most young conservatives are just as interested in recalibrating the American identity as liberals. Nobody my age has any interest in litigating the late 1960s over and over and over again.”

With four days campaigning left Barack Obama has dished out a Supersize Party Political Broadcast to launch his final push for the White House.

Politico. comcaptured this piece of campaigning history as follows:

The 30-minute broadcast weaved together American iconography – images of amber waves of grain, pickup trucks and American flags – with portraits of iconic voters, testimonials from politicians and one business figure, footage of Obama speeches and direct appeals from the candidate.

The ad cut to a live shot of Obama at a rally here for the last two minutes, where he told an arena packed to the rafters that “the time for change has come.”

“In six days, we can choose to invest in health care for our families, and education for our kids, and renewable energy for our future,” said Obama with vice presidential nominee, Joe Biden, at his side. “In six days, we can choose hope over fear, unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo. In six days, we can come together as one nation, and one people, and once more choose our better history.”

In a campaign that has made a practice of grand gestures, the broadcast marked a new milepost along an audacious path that Obama hopes will take him to the White House. He paid more than $4 million to blanket the primetime airwaves with an ad that cast him as a bipartisan healer and a family man, a commonsense politician and an American son with Kansas roots.

The imagery of Obama with his head down and his back to the camera was Kennedyesque, but the solemn symphonic strains invoked the heartland spirit of Reagan.

The entire production aimed for one end: to convince voters that Obama isn’t risky, but ready to move into the Oval Office.

“When I read his economic plan, and I saw the people endorsing it and all the new ideas – Warren Buffett and others – I thought ‘this is the right plan for America,’” said Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, the only private-sector figure featured in the ad.

From a communications point of view Sen Obama has rewritten the manual. His capacity to recruit and ignite advocates is unprecedented in American politics. Whether it proves transformational in political terms will be known next week.