Strokes and strikes at the heart of the Empire

In Dundonald this morning, in the red, white and blue heart of the Empire to meet with the progressive folk behind the Ullans Academy, a body which has as its mission: "the promotion of Ulster Scots and Ulster Gaelic culture in a manner which encourages contact, dialogue, reconciliation and mutual understanding, respect and parity of esteem".

Its members include Cllr Ian Adamson, GP and language scholar, Jake Gallagher, Andy Tyrie and Sammy Douglas among others. With the new dispensation upon us, the Academy is keen to work with Irish language who have vast experience of cultural and linguistic promotion and — most importantly — of using language and culture as tools of economic regeneration.

The meeting took place at 9am in the morning in Dundonald and started with an Ulster-style Continental breakfast: i.e. the croissants were there but weren't touched (except by Eimear Ní Mhathúna of An Chultúrlann who is a veggie) as the bacon and sausages were scoffed. Given that an army marches on its belly, it's becoming clear to me now why we didn't manage to get the better of the easties over 35 years!

Two positive developments from the buster: the Ullans Academy will cooperate in a cultural showcase in the Cultúrlann on 25 October which will allow both communities to learn a little bit more about Ulster-Scots and Irish culture; both groups have agreed to press the governments to relocate the Board of Ulster Scots and Foras na Gaeilge, respectively, in the disadvantaged Lower Newtownards Road (where the office could presage the birth of an Ulster-Scots Cultúrlann) and in the Gaeltacht Quarter on the Falls.

Dr Adamson says the Ullans Academy was inspired by the Frisian Academy in the Netherlands, which he first visited in 1978. He also adds that Mata Hari is the most famous Frisian "not counting the cow".

There's a lot uniting us: love of Ulster, love of Belfast, love of the Divis and Black Mountain. And then there's the black humour: When Sammy Douglas put up a welcome slide with the word welcome in an almost indecipherable mélange of 30 languages and as many colours, one wag from the east who thought his eyes were deceiving him remarked: "I thought I was having a stroke."

The words céad míle fáilte and fair fay ye were in there and we ended with 'go raibh maith agaibh'.

I have a good feeling about this so now let's give it a fair wind. Away to search out United Irishman and Ulster Scot poet James Orr's Ode to a Tatie.

Written out of the script?

I put a question mark after that statement atop this week's Andersonstown News editorial to turn it from an angry accusation into a question. Still, I suspect it's a fact rather than an enquiry.

Future sounds

In a recent bid to find out what young people were listening to these days, I went into a record shop and bought Dixie Chicks and KD Laing CDs. Imagine my frustration when I learnt that, while, yes indeed, they were wonderful artistes, they are no longer the next new thing.

This evening, however, I met the next new thing John D'Arcy, a singer/songwriter whose Glasgow single is a harbinger of wonderful things to come. I listened to the Glasgow lament for a friend going to uni there some months ago and the tune has stuck in my head since. No small feat.

I bumped into John at the home of his late grandfather, Jim Cleland. Jim, who passed away last week, was a typical servant leader of the West Belfast community who was a doer in the same mould as his daughter Jackie and will be sorley missed.

The pain and heartache of loss are unbearable when a loved one dies but there's at least a satisfaction when a life being mourned has been lived to the full and enjoyed the three score and ten we're promised. When someone takes their own life, that solace is missing. This evening, I visited a West Belfast wake house to express my condolences to a family — who have been great givers to our community over the past 40 years — on the loss of their son and brother who took his own life. Some illnesses and old age itself we can't defeat but surely we can do something to fight back against this scourge of suicide devouring our young people.

Blinkers on for Shell to Sea

"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth."

They tell me that's a quote from Muhammad Ali and I'm willing to take them at their word.

Meanwhile...I see a solidarity picket with the courageous Rossport Shell to Sea campaigners is to be held at a West Belfast petrol station on Saturday.

The station being targeted belongs to a local, hardworking and enterprising family who have been generous in their support of community uplift activities and regularly back the Aisling educational bursaries to give our young people an opportunity to go to college.

I doubt, in fact, if Shell even own these franchises anymore. But no matter, if the Belfast solidarity campaigners really want to back the campaign why not go after the big boys. Henderson, one of our most traditional companies with profits in the hundreds of millions, owns the majority of the Shell stations in Belfast. One branch in their chain is a three minute walk from the Andersonstown Road. Surely that would be a better place to vent some righteous indigation at the rapacious activities of Shell, rather than at a family business.

(I speak as someone who took part in a similar Shell to Sea protest at a Dublin petrol station in 2005: our reward, the owner called the Gardaí. At the time, it was the only protest I could see but apologies to the owner if he was a one-man show too. As I always say, 'don't do as I do, do as I say'.)

No frills no more

News that Ryanair wants to locate more planes at the City Airport in Belfast if the company controlling the airport can lengthen the runway come complete with an assurance from Michael O'Leary that his aeroplanes are the quietest in Europe.

I'm not sure anyone believes anything which comes from Mr O'Leary's mouth but it should benefit the flying public if Aer Lingus come to Aldergrove and Ryanair launch more routes from the City.

However, the days of bargain basement flights are well and truly over and lowcost airlines bemoaning falling turnover should stop blaming the weather, airport fees or the Dublin Airport Authority.

For no frills airlines are no frills no more. In fact, they now have a reputation not just for lousy service (which is fair enough since that's their calling card) but also for ripping off the customer at every turn.

Yesterday, I booked a flight with lowcost operator flybe. It was a grubby business. As you work through the website from search to confirm to pay, you are automatically charged £4.99 for travel insurance. The customer has to be quick-witted to realise this is an additional charge and to untick the box. As if that wasn't enough, a charge of £5 per piece of baggage was automatically added to the cost as well. I had to untick the box presuming I had one piece of baggage in the hold going out and one piece going in. Due to recent security scares, more people have to put luggage in the hold (otherwise make-up, shampoo, toothpaste has to be effectively bought at your destination). Good to know flybe and other low-cost airlines are benefiting from the war on terror by banging on an additional cost on passengers forced to book on luggage.

The final insult was having to untick the box signing me up for email and other junkmail from flybe. And then, of course, the lowcost airlines are no longer good value. Easyet was more expensive on the Belfast-Glasgow route than flybe but neither was cheap.

Rather than delight the customer, the no-frills airlines are bent on shafting the customer. You can get away with that for a while, no doubt, but long-term your turnover and your share price start to suffer. That's my explanation for the difficulties being experienced by the big boys of lowcost air travel, such as Air Berlin, over the past year. If they would return to their mission of bargain basement prices with the bare minimum of service, the customers would return.

Biting the hand that feeds

This report from Brooklyn, 'Lifeguard Saves Shark From Swimmers', indicates that perhaps that sand shark I spotted off the beach in New Hampshire wasn't as deadly as I thought. Better safe than sorry, though.

Pity Reg Empey isn't still at the helm

This is an interesting news item about new incubator units at the Northern Ireland Science Park down in East Belfast's Titanic Quarter. As the article points out, one of the companies using the new incubator space is Aetopia, which specialises in photo order software for newspapers.

In fact, Aetopia designed our own belfastpix web site which has current and archive pictures from the Andersonstown News and other Belfast Media Group titles.

So how did this burgeoning start-up find its way to the Titanic Quarter? As revealed earlier this year in the Andersonstown News, Aetopia was effectively told by the economic authorities to quit its West Belfast base on the peaceline on the Springfield Road...or else.

It's not only the businesses they aren't locating in West Belfast but now we're seeing the powers-that-be remove the few exciting enterprises we have.

Further proof that West Belfast, Protestant and Catholic, orange and green neighbourhoods alike, are being written out of the city's development scrhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifipt.

You don't believe me? Well then, consider this: In Derry the Brits vacated two major bases which were turned over to the government which in turn 'gifted' them to the Ilex development body charged with regenerating Doire Colm Cille/Maiden City. Ilex describes itself as follows: "Ilex urc was established to promote the physical, economic and social regeneration of Derry~Londonderry and has specific responsibility to manage and re-develop two former military bases of Ebrington (26 acres) and Fort George (14 acres). Mixed-use development is envisaged for both sites and revitalisation of the riverfront is a key objective. Derry~Londonderry has a population of over 107,000 and a hinterland of 350,000."

In the case of the Andersonstown Barracks site, the Department for Social Development put it up for sale to the highest bidder with nary a thought for local people or the economic regeneration of the area. Gerry Adams will reveal in the tomorrow that his recent meeting with Minister Margaret Ritchie to have that decision overturned was a washout.

Why isn't there what Ilex describe as a 'urc' — an urban regeneration company — to revitalise West Belfast and the Shankill?

Finally, great to see Sir Reg Empey, Minister for Education and Learning visit the Conway Mill complex this week (pictured with Mill director Ann Fitzpatrick). Sir Reg was the first minister to visit the Mill, back in the days when it was subject to a government boycott and knows all about the link between education and economic progress. He returns to West Belfast to present the Aisling bursaries this Tuesday night and we'll be rolling out the red carpet for him; after all, he's the minister who had the guts to establish the West Belfast and Shankill Task Force back in 2001. It was only when it reported in 2002 that it ran into the sand. What a pity that he's still not at the helm to get this mess sorted out.

So how many miles is it from Baghdad to Helsinki?

I was actually just making a wild guess as to the distance from Helsinki to Baghada when I placed it earlier at 2,000 miles. A wild guess, mind you, not an informed or educated guess.

Pleased then to realise that, according to this totally reliable webiste (I hope) which measures distances according to the Great Circles of the Earth, it's exactly 2,051 miles city-to-city. That's what I call a good call.

You can see the responses, and soak up the vitriol, at the Guardian blog Comment is Free which published it today.

I'm lambasted by all sides, especially for describing the LA Times as a conservative paper. Apparently, Americans consider it liberal. Happy to go with that and can confirm the two Times (LA and New York) were hauled over the coals by Californian shock jock Michael Savage who memorably described liberalism as a mental disorder.

Belfast's most wanted

So where are these guys? Anyone who knows should let them know there's a reunion for the class of 1977 of St Mary's Christian Brothers School in Belfast on Saturday 10 November.

Anyone who knows there whereabouts should visit the reunion website, we're happy to make any parole representations necessary to the relevant authorities.

I am willing to send a signed catalogue from Conrad Atkinson's Some Wounds Healing; Some Birds Singing to anyone who can pick me out of the line-up; clue: I'm in the second row from the front.

When the superpowers go home, the Iraqis will have to make peace

News that anyone is talking about anything in Iraq has to be good news, even if those doing the talking are 2,000 miles away in Finland and represent parties already in government rather than the insurgents.
Talking now between the parites, urged by those enemies turned partners in government Sinn Féin and the DUP, is essential because having tweaked the tail of the tiger, the Brits and the Yanks are about to quit and run.
Of course, it'll be dressed up, a lá Basra tactical retreat, but the reality is that the Coalition forces repeated every mistake the British made in Northern Ireland...and then some.

Kick in one door, we used to say, and you lose the family, kick in two, you lose the street. Three and there goes the neighbourhood.

How many Iraqi doors have been kicked in over the past five years and how many insurgents recruited by the Coalition recruiting sergeants?

Even the conservative LA Times argued recently for talks to include all sides in the fiasco which is the occupation of Iraq; admitting at last that the more the US and Britain intervenes, the worse things get.

The truth of the old maxim that Britain (and the US) has no friends, only interests, will out.

When the superpowers are gone the Iraqis will have to start the peace and reconciliation process. Martin McGuinness told both sides in the Sri Lankan stand-off last year, ‘ultimately you will have to find a way to share this piece of land together because neither of you is going away’. That message of the necessity to get round the table to hammer out a settlement will have been repeated this weekend to the Sunni and Shia. If Finland marked a start to that process — and it's a big 'if' — then it's game on.

A tale of two cities

Over to Eilish Rooney but part of the answer lies in the 'economically inactive' figures for those who are not officially unemployed but who do not fit the official category of unemployed. According to the Committee of the Adminstration of Justice report on inequality, around 40,000 people who are recorded as economically inactive do want work. "Thee same figures show that Northern Ireland in comparison to the UK generally has the highest rate of economic inactivity and the lowest working age employment rate," says the CAJ 2006 report, Equality in Northern Irland: The Rhetoric and the Reality.

I see Sir Reg Empey was speaking about this very issue on the radio earlier today and warning about unskilled people being left further behind by present policies.

Again, the CAJ: "The religious composition of the total working age population (is) 51.9 per cent Protestant and 48.1 per cent Catholic. However, the religious composition of the economically inactive working age was 44.3 per cent Protestant and 55.7 per cent Catholic. In other words, while Catholics make up 48.1 per cent of the total population of working age, they make up 55.7 per cent of the economically inactive population of working age — an 'over-representation among the economically inactive of 7.6 per cent."

Don't forget, the official unemployed figures went down but only because tens of thousands moved sideways into the DLA and other economically inactive figures.

In reply to our latest poster, I have asked Eilish to give us an idea of how poverty is measured but walk into Twinbrook or the Lower Falls and you will see the evidence in the health of the people — note, immediately, the number of people experiencing walking difficulties — the style of dress, the physical appearance, the number of smokers. It's as stark as that, go to the Shankill and you will see the same thing.

This is very much a tale of two cities, the cars tailing back up the Glen Road in the morning as parents bring their kids to school from the private developments on the outskirts of west Belfast alongside communities which are imploding.

Is there a way to break this cycle which condems one section of our community, Protestant and Catholic to a future of underachievement (especially educational underachievement for the childen of many of those among the economically inactive)? Are the economically inactive, many of whom don't have skills needed by today's employers capable of holding down jobs? And would those jobs pay more than their current benefit package? These are tough questions but those of us who believe a job is key to self-esteem and self-worth believe as well that the economically inactive who wish to work can be 'upskilled' for today's jobs' marketplace.

I believe there is a solution to our joblessness and poverty dilemma. Pádraic White, now head of the West Belfast and Greater Shankill Enterprise Council and formerly head of the North Dublin Partnership, has pointed to that solution in his 2002 Task Force report. There, Pádraic argues, that one-on-one interventions can put the long-term jobless back to work. That argument has won some begrudging support from government but more remains to be done.

Union leader and MacBride Principles signatory Inez McCormack (pictured above with Stephen Rea at a community event in West Belfast) is among those who is raising the red flag on this issue but her entreaties are receiving more attention in the US than at home.

Dismantling the barriers of inequality

Eilish Rooney's lecture, 'Dismantle the Barricades of Inequality' is available in Word format and carefully articulates those who fear being left behind in the rush towards our 'shared future'. Eilish asks how many local people got work on the multi-million pound roadworks at Westlink (pictured) in Belfast. After much research, she turned up one. Does that fufill government obligations to ensure the benefit of all in their operations?

In eight of the 17 electoral areas which make up the West Belfast constituency, Eilís points out, 80 per cent of the children live in poverty. "The data shows that workless Protestant households are closing the gap with their Catholic counterparts. This means that there is a levelling — but it is a levelling downwards. Poverty is worsening amongst workless households in Protestant and Catholic districts. People in work are benefiting from the economic upturn but those most in need are falling further behind."

Some it appears may not be part of that shared future script. For my book, any announcement about new investment in the North should also include a statement of intent to eradicate enduring inequalities. When the recent investments by Citigroup, Aer Lingus and Bank of Ireland were announced, did we hear such statements from our political leaders?

To move on; I see stats for this blog for August reveal that we've had 2,589 visits (1,476 individuals), with readers coming from 49 countries including Canada, Spain, India, Netherlands and the USA (about one quarter of total). South Korea and Japan were also in there. Not sure if that's a community, but you're all welcome.

I also see from our stats that Lá Nua had 1,583 unique users who downloaded its pdf version in August which will cheer those who argue the future of newspapers lies with the new pageturning technology.

Lá Nua

Bear with me on this folks, getting there.

Níl ann ach rac'n'ról ach....

Tá Gearóid Ó Cairealláin ar ais i mbun pinn agus é ag scríobh do Lá Nua faoin cheolchoirm a thug na Clocha ag Baile Shláine: an-phíosa iriseoireachta.

Lá Nua

Now that I know how to work this magic doesn't mean I'm going to do it every day but this Youtube plug for the launch of Lá Nua is just great.

Knee thig liom rith níos mó

This is a diagram of the knee before you pound roads and pavements mercilessly for ten years. In there somewhere is the meniscus which, in the case of my left knee, has started to tear.

Apparently the impact of road again and again and again is no joke as my torn meniscus can testify. Two marathons in 15 days these years, even at my pedestrian pace, didn't help matters considering both were undertaken when the meniscus was already distressed.

Still, the doctors are on it. If they operate, I can run again, slowly; downside is that your knee 'ages' and could provide more trouble down the road. Alternative is to rest, let mother nature do the business and hope the knee repairs itself.

My faith in mother nature: zero.

Of course I could always take up cycling but anyone who sees those Saturday morning cyclists struggle to stay upright as trucks roar past them, knows that's too exiting a passtime for the faint-hearted. The solution I am considering is getting onto the internet and self-medicating. I've already found a hospital in Louisiana with a revolutionary new treatment for knee injury — I can see I'm going to be the type of smartass patient doctors hate.

Fortunately, I'm in good hands. Careful but good: the specialist sent me for a MRA scan even after he had correctly (as the MRA scan proved) diagnosed a torn meniscus. "You're a journalist," he said, "you think I'm going to take a chance getting it wrong with you!"

I can live with that.