Slugger O'Toole

Back in January, Sinn Féin minister John O’Dowd put his proposed three-year budget out for consultation. His statement on the consultation highlighted what he saw as a key issue in terms of the contributions from the British governm...

Patrick Harkness asks what if we reverse the NILT question on the constitutional question and keep the format identical? He explores how question framing sets the political weather in Northern Ireland, and asks whether should we level the field?

Opinion polling sets the weather. That’s why there has long been...

“Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability,  which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.”
— Alfred North Whitehead

Brexit struck me at the time of the referendum (or...

Today, ten years ago, the loyal citizens of Her Majesty’s United Kingdom took to the polls and told that motley crew of French cheese-eating surrender monkeys, joyless German technocrats, lazy Spanish siesta lovers and over-sexed Italians and all the other godless heathens of continental Europe that they take their EU and shovel it up their big jam roll.

Since in there...

Croatia. I was 20 minutes late, having popped into Lidl for cat litter on the way to the pub; meanwhile, Harry Kane was purring for England, having put his country 1-0 up. My heart sank upon entering the hostillery and clocking the score, worried the jeopardy for t...