Archive for category Northern Ireland

A street. Celebrating a multitude of stories

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Lambeth, Life, Northern Ireland on September 20, 2011

Last Sunday, we held our third annual Sudbourne Road Street Party. As ever it was a personal, neighbourly and community affirmation of the simple power of human connection (http://www.shanepcarmichael.com/2010/07/the-big-lunch-2010-and-the-importance-of-social-capital).

Place and our association with it is a funny thing. The two places I tend to speak of most often are Belfast and Brixton. I’m always interested in how others respond to my stories of these two extraordinary places and how they (among others) shaped and continue to shape me.  The stereotype is of course of two troubled places; gritty, associated far too often (and always sadly) in the minds of others with division and decay (social, economic, political, economic). And yet, for those of us lucky enough to call either of these places home, that is just one story from among a multitude. And one which denies both them and us the glory of their true, complex, gritty, divided and yes, in parts decaying, selves. And in doing so the stereotype prevails, grows stronger, pushes out the possibility of another reality, an alternative narrative.

The danger, the limitations, the challenge of these “single stories” is articulated in this wonderful talk by Chimamanda Adichie: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html 

And last Sunday as I watched neighbours and friends come together in a simple celebration of shared place I was struck by the limitations and distorted reality of Brixton’s oft told “single story” and the possibility in the alternative story we – in a simple act of gathering to celebrate our physical communion in SW2 – were (and are) writing. As I watched friends and neighbours come and go I wondered at the multitude of stories that made last Sunday what it was and our street what it is and Brixton what it really is more often than it is not……and in doing so we too regain(ed) a kind of paradise.

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An Education – our Primary Focus (Part 4)

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Education, Lambeth, Northern Ireland on November 8, 2010

Feeling almost hopeful today after reading The Guardian piece on Frank Field (former Labour minister, now the Coalition’s “Poverty Advisor”)) preparing review on ‘how to prevent poor children becoming poor adults’.

Apparently, Field said he said he was disturbed by research showing how accurate a prediction can be made as to where a child will be in their 20s, by looking at their ability at 22 months and just before five years. Narrowing divisions in children’s readiness for school at five was central to tackling divisions in later life, he said.

He is right to be disturbed. But he shouldn’t be surprised.

Certainly this has been known to the wonderful Sutton Trust Charity for some time and even an uninformed observer such as myself has been bemoaning the lack of interest in and commitment to progress interventions aimed at supporting the development of disadvantaged children in their most formative years. My three previous posts over the past year on the subject: here, here and here.

This has been a particular concern of mine in Northern Ireland where most of last year was spent arguing on post Primary education when the real prize is – as the Sutton Trust continually point out – closing the cognitive and associated aspirational gap among children way way before we start to concern ourselves with means of post primary selection.

Anyway, maybe Field is starting to listen and will follow through on the plans outlined in the article. If so that’s commendable but I also hope this is only the start.

In Northern Ireland I hope @conallmcd and NI Minister for Education, Caitríona Ruane take notice. Closer to home I hope that @cllrstevereed and @chukaumunna pick this up and recognise it is for this very reason that local residents are so concerned about plans for an extension of the Ofsted rated Outstanding Sudbourne Road Primary School (and nursery).

What I wrote in March of this year seems still to be relevant today. Shame. But saves me re-typing:

“Consistently on this blog I have maintained that while some form of streaming or selection is a must in any mature and inclusive education system, our real focus should be on primary education; on ensuring our administration of that education is innovative and inclusive enough to support pupils from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds and encouraging an ethos of and commitment to  ”concerted cultivation” of our young children among parents and local communities.  We are currently failing our young people during their most formative years”.

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Losing my Religion – 4:29

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Life, Northern Ireland on September 16, 2010

Pope Adrian VI (Hadrian VI) (Pope Adrian VI)
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The Pope, God’s representative on earth according to those of the Catholic faith (to which I nominally belong), comes to London in just two days. You may have heard it mentioned on the TV or in a newspaper. Low key stuff in the main.

I don’t know why exactly, but his visit has really hit me hard as a measure of how far removed I have become from the faith that (as a cruel consequence of growing up in a society largely divided along arbitrarily religious lines) shaped such a large proportion of my life until I was 18 years old: my schooling, my sports, my friendships, my political leanings and a strange fetish for incense.

Today I continue my search for meaning and enlightenment. But I am certain that I will not find it in the confines of any traditional ‘western’ religious tradition. For some time even before my Indian adventures I’d already sensed I was slowly nestling somewhere in the wide expanse that lies betwixt the Humanist and Hindu. Though perhaps not that wide in the absence of prescription (spiritual or practical) in both. I hate not having some wriggle room…and I certainly don’t feel the need for institutional guidance on morality thank you.  I think perhaps I realised some time ago that John Lennon struck on something when he said: ‘I don’t like God much when I get him under a roof’.

I’d already drifted from any real sense of Catholicism by the time the recent bout of child abuse scandals broke. I was, like many, so deeply saddened, if not at all surprised.  I was saddened not just for the suffering so many had endured at the hands of those we were taught to trust in above all others as children, but saddened also because I know there are many many good people still within the Catholic Church whose efforts to reach others and share a faith that truly sustains those who believe (as I know it sustains many I hold close) have been made so much more difficult now;  tainted by the shame of not just insidious personal physical abuse of innocents, but by institutional complicity on a grand scale.

I do not suggest that the Pope is a paedophile. But I do believe it is clear he is complicit in failing to take the necessary actions that a man of God, the leader of a Christian faith, would be expected to take to address such desperate and systemic abuse. It is beyond appalling that today Channel 4 reported that almost 9 years on from their conviction for sexual abuse, more than half those Priests found guilty in a court of law in the UK are still practising clergymen. In that alone I believe he has failed his faith, his church, our society and indeed humanity itself.

I could not help but wonder if Chris Patten felt any sense of irony today with his appeal to Rev Norman Hamilton to shake hands with the Pope rather than behave in a fashion more suited to the religious schisms of “the 16th Century”. Leaving aside whether or not The Moderator (great ring name, no?) should in fact extend a hand of religious charity to the visiting Pontiff, I was more interested in Patten’s evocation of the 16th Century….

For those of us familiar with that quiet religious epoch will know that it was a time when religion was used on a grand scale as a cloak for the unapologetic pursuit of many of man’s worst vices by those within (and without) the church – power, wealth, satisfaction of the physical senses, subjugation of the masses and the repression of any dissenting voice.  Although strictly a work of collaborative fiction, I commend to you the extraordinary book “Q: Dance of Death” (written by a number of Italian students under the wonderful pen-name, “Luther Blissett”) which paints a largely accurate (based on contemporary historical accounts) picture of a century of religious excess, intolerance and abuse. A century when the sort of horror which has stained this century already for the Catholic Church was commonplace.

Patten chose his centuries badly. But in this or any other time, Pope Benedict – and the rest of the Church’s hierarchy - should have spoken out. They should have been unapologetic about rooting out this evil from within it’s midst. No stone should have been left unturned. An age of renewal (as the 16th Century is oft referred Mr Patten) for the Catholic Church; a purging, a prayer for forgiveness and for the restoration of it’s moral authority. Alas, alas…

I am minded of the words of Indian author, Arundhati Roy:

“The trouble is that once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable”.

Accountability. Infallibility. Two age old concepts of this Papacy and perhaps the Catholic Church as a whole, that appear to be terribly and irrevocably broken (ice cream advertising excepted of course).

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Alex Higgins RIP

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Northern Ireland on July 25, 2010

Alex Higgins (r) at Queen's University Belfast...
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One of the earliest memories I have is of being allowed to sit up with my Da one night in 1982 to watch Alex “The Hurricane” Higgins win his second and unbelievably his last World Snooker Title. I clearly recall my Da and I sitting on the edge of my bed rooted to the screen as the, even then, sleight figure of Higgins twitched and bewildered his way to glory.

Higgins was my hero on the green baize in the same way George Best was on the green turf. I’d spend hours playing their finest moments over and over, a running commentary in my mind for company. Studies suffered but the imagination (and for a while, my talents) prospered.

Both men came from a different religious tradition to my own. Both were products of the city, I of the rolling country around. Both were flamboyant and self assured, I was shy and uncertain. Both had an eye for a good time and a beautiful woman, I lived in hope.

I saw both play in the flesh strangely. Best in 1983, in a “pay to play” game for Tobermore United vs Ballymena United in the Irish Cup. They lost 8-1. Best was incongruous (tanned, shaggy haired, unmuddied) and anonymous throughout. It was exciting but it was never the same again for me. Higgins I saw in an exhibition series in Belfast when his decline had also already taken hold. The sparks were there but the fire had long gone out.

As someone once wrote: “Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth”.

While it is hard for us to watch our heroes unravel before our eyes, it must have been harder still for them. Both achieved so much, they each changed their sports and how we understood them to be played. Yet they must have known that they could have achieved so much more.

The long decline is something we must all come to terms with. But for some, there is much further to fall. To live out a life once the talent that defined it entirely has begun to fade must be a cruel thing. The subsequent frustrations of that decay and the ill health brought on by the addictions of high celebrity (and no doubt a particularly N Irish penchant for excessive indulgence) an added ignominy to be borne out in the public domain. This is not to excuse the worst of their behaviour – Higgins in particular left his hero status at the door when the cue was set down as far as I was concerned.

Yet still, it is a real sadness that yesterday Alex Higgins packed his cue for the green baize of the next life. The very real emotional and physical damage he had suffered of late had left him a mere shadow of the twinkle eyed genius who’d kept so many of us entertained for so long. It was hard to see that regression, to see a hero reduced by the confines of mere mortality. However, if accounts of his final days are to be believed then it may be a merciful conclusion.

Like Best, Alex Higgins was a NI working class hero. He upset a few, was reviled by some but loved and cherished by so many many more for what he did for his sport. For anyone who was alive to see Higgins in his pomp you will understand what I mean when I say that sport lost one of it’s true, unabated, unbowed and unabashed genius’ yesterday.

Higgins is once quoted as saying after one of his many career knock-backs: “I’m a realist. And me being a realist…I’ll be back”. Not this time Alex. But you’ll be missed. And never forgotten by many, not least by the young man who sat sleepy eyed with his father on the edge of his bed 28 years ago and knew he’d seen something very special; something untamed, something true, something fleeting, something flawed.

A bit like life itself.

Oíche mhaith, codladh sámh. Síochán leat.

 

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Paramilit-tea

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Northern Ireland on July 25, 2010

Majeek.

Teapot. NI style.

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Northern Ireland, David Cameron and his weapons of torture

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Government, Northern Ireland on April 25, 2010

Rt Hon David Cameron MP speaking at the Conser...
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Posted in response to Eamonn Mallie’s piece on www.sluggerotoole.com re David Cameron’s comments on the size of NI’s Public Sector last Friday.

Eammon has this spot on. The analysis was right, the language and timing were naive and amateurish at best.

 I’ll never vote Tory but Cameron is absolutely right in his ultimate assessment that NI must grow it’s Private Sector and reduce our over reliance on the Public Sector. We have an unhealthy imbalance and without a stimulus in the private sector – particularly in attracting a range of jobs which pay in line with and above average Public Sector jobs we are incredibly vulnerable and have been for some time to Public Sector cuts and also any increase in interest rates (likely in the next parliament) which will hit many of our overstretched “property boom” keyholders. I wonder how many interest only mortgages there are in NI held by people borrowing multiples greater than 3 against public sector wages likely to be capped/frozen in the next parliament? 

All our politicians know this is a fact. Many are on record re this in the past. The executive is on record as agreeing with Camerons sentiments on Private Sector growth – the 2009 IREP report recognised it. Many commentators and the occasional blogger like myself have been suggesting for some time that this was the real elephant in the room (http://www.shanepcarmichael.com/2010/01/a-new-vanguard/) while the Executive stalled and bickered over scraps from the sectarian table. An inclusive, burgeoning private sector economy supplementing our proud Public Sector makes sense not just economically but socially and politically – any post conflict society analysis tells us that employment and it’s associated benefits has one of the biggest impacts on the process of “normalisation”. University of Ulster recently published a report telling us we probably already knew – that young people with limited job or development opportunities are more likely to engage in anti social behaviour (including political and racial violence). 

And yet our representatives on the hill have spent the last few years doing exactly what about this? Think of the time wasted while Stormont has been suspended or in sectarian stand off mode when they could have been addressing this issue given anyone with any secular political nous knew it was coming. And maybe that lack of secular nous is at the heart of this. 

 In spite of a rational if poorly executed SDLP call for a revised NI budget last year to reflect the realities of an economy in freefall nothing happened and an opportunity to stimulate a flagging economy was lost. 

More alarmingly, at a public event in Westminster before Xmas i asked a senior political NI figure (vying now for a Westminster seat and to whose political views I am broadly aligned) what he thought of IREP and his views on developing our private sector given the chances of public sector cuts in the next parliament. His response not only suggested he had barely read IREP but he actually went on to say that he “had no time for these multi national corporations coming in for a few years and then swanning off to Singapore or wherever they get a better deal. The future of our economy has to be the 1-2 person family business…”!! Seriously – you couldn’t make it up, particularly as it came 2 weeks after the great news of NYSEs support centre investment and the audience that night contained at least one potential investor from a financial MNC. It’s just an isolated example but part of a larger failure –  Politicians like that should be vilified far more than Cameron on this issue. This problem has not been addressed on their watch.

But here’s the immediate and rather sad reality for Cameron and the Tory/UU alliance. In spite of the fact all other parties agree in principle with what Cameron says, in spite of the fact they are responsible for allowing the situation to develop, all of them have the good sense to know the timing and turn of phrase he used was an act of political naivety at best and suicide at worst. It not only brings into question the nature of the Tory/UU partnership but also his own political judgement.

The scent of blood (and cuts) is in the air. In a more mature political society Cameron may have been lauded for his honesty and it might even have triggered the long overdue advent of a more secular political debate on the issue at hand. It is badly needed –  anyone who thinks a simple cut in corporation tax is the answer to our problems is surely mistaken. It’s a much more complex consideration and needs early attention. But that’s a separate debate.    

Unfortunately it won’t happen now in the mouth of an election – as Cameron should have known. And it might turn out to be a debate shaped by others than the Tory/DUP alliance, for in politics, perhaps more than anywhere else, “to the victor the spoils” and as Helmut Kohl once said: “You don’t win elections by putting the weapons of torture on display”.    

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Images of another Ireland

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Change, Life, Northern Ireland on April 1, 2010

© richard fitzgerald, 2007, all rights reserved

 

Richard Fitzgerald: The Parting Glass

Beautiful images of another Ireland.

Hard to believe how relatively recently some of these images were captured and a timely reminder of the many changes – some good, some not so good – that we have witnessed on our island in the last 30 years.

The book is simply sensational.

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An Education – our Primary focus

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Change, Education, Government, Northern Ireland on March 25, 2010

BRISTOL, UNITED KINGDOM - FEBRUARY 24: Primar...
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I meant to comment on this last month but travel kept me away from the PC:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article7026852.ece

This was a fascinating article on February’s Sutton Trust Report and I was actually genuinely delighted to see an echo of a  few of my suggestions made back in October 2009 in a article on the long running post Primary School selection process in Northern Ireland:

http://www.shanepcarmichael.com/2009/11/selection-its-only-natural/   

(check under “some humble suggestions”)

More and more we are coming to understand that education is a sophisticated and much more social process than any narrow debate in NI about post primary education selection or means of selection would have us believe. Consistently on this blog I have maintained that while some form of streaming or selection is a must in any mature and inclusive education system, our real focus should be on primary education; on ensuring our administration of that education is innovative and inclusive enough to support pupils from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds and encouraging an ethos of and commitment to  ”concerted cultivation” of our young children among parents and local communities.  We are currently failing our young people during their most formative years.

NI has wasted over a year wrangling on the narrow issue of post primary selection. It’s time someone started to address the more formative, fundamental – and root cause – issues associated with Primary Education, otherwise the means of post Primary selection will be entirely a moot point.  There are some easy ‘quick win’ fixes to this challenge as I and the Sutton Report suggest while we understand how to cultivate that wider community and parental ability to contribute to the life-long success of our most precious resources. 

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A New Vanguard?

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Government, Leadership, Northern Ireland on January 31, 2010

Parliament Buildings of Stormont in Belfast, N...
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Very pleased to see Conall McDevitt take his place as SDLP MLA in Stormont just recently.

I don’t know Conall but I follow his blog avidly and have great reports on him from various friends in and around the SDLP and NI Public Relations.

Like Cllr Ian Parsley (whom I have mentioned here a number of times), Conall aspires to a more a secular, considered and constructive Politics for the people of NI.  This should be our simple right. Instead we continue to squander the promises of devolved government on petty scrabbling for scraps from the sectarian table…forgetting that we surely hoped for and certainly deserve something more. 

These are important times for NI and its Politicians. 2010 promises to be a challenging year for all in the UK and NI in particular. Perhaps when our elected officials get beyond settling their self-interested scores on Policing and Justice they might have enough time to consider some more minor issues for the coming year. Oh like:

  • The post primary education shambles
  • The certainty of Public Sector reform whether at the hands of a Conservative or Labour Government….how much longer can we expect to sustain a position when more than 60% of our economy based on the Public Sector? And if efficiencies are required – and let’s agree they will be – what will the effect be on NI’s already struggling economy when we have to cut loose public sector workers on a disproportionately small Private Sector?
  • Improving our Health Care provision in the face of proposals for £100m+ “targeted” cost savings in the 2010 – 2011 year
  • Taking action on the 2009 IREP report…what is the “Northern Irish advantage” to be and who – if anyone – is going to make it happen for the short, medium or longer term?
  • Water Charges….we know no one wants to talk about it but this Ostrich has to come up for air soon surely?
  • The growing crisis of a generation of young men and woman in some of NI most socially deprived areas leaving school with no qualifications, plan for training or hope for employment

Is it just me or do those Parades suddenly seem like a walk in the park? Yet 7 days and counting…..and there they still are while Rome burns.

So Conall – good luck to you. I’ll be following with interest. Its a big job but do not waver from your instincts – they are the right ones and they are shared by far more of us than many of your colleagues at Hillsborough appear to understand or care.

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Tongue Twisters – A Reflection of Culture or just a mouthful?

Posted by Shane Carmichael in Life, Northern Ireland on January 29, 2010

In the course of my last post on “restorative justice” gone wrong I recalled something from my childhood.

One of the favorite tongue twisters of the day was this: “A Scottish soldier got shot in the shoulder”.

And then I thought about my Vietnamese tongue twister incident in 2006…..

And now I’m thinking; are tongue twisters more than just acts of linguistic gymnastics? Are they actually perhaps a useful cultural barometer? Or are the good peoples of Vietnam and N Ireland simply subconsciously drawn to tongue twisters with themes of violence, vengance and victory?

As eXtreme liked to say: “more than words”.

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