I don’t know Professor Peter Shirlow’s politics, other than the odd statement I’ve happened to catch in passing. But he said something the other day that struck me as interesting, not to say ironic. He was talking about the fiasco of the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach who came to Stormont as two honest brokers (that’s not nice language, Viriginia) and left abruptly so we’d see what not negotiating looked like. It all revolved around money, as most of us know – all that unimportant stuff like the past and flags and marching we can kick those three cans down the road a few months. Anyway, Peter Shirlow made the point that if we’re talking about money we should be addressing the massive waste of “having two of everything” – notably two separate education systems.
Since Peter is a professor and therefore has thought these things through with a calculator by his side, I’m prepared to accept that we wouldn’t have to spend so much money if we didn’t have two of everything (I’m trying to think what the other twos are…Nope. Nothing will come) and that Peter knows the figures. But if that’s true – if duplication = waste – then the logical position for Peter and those who share his views is to become nationalists/republicans. After all, that’s one of the central arguments (alas, still comprehensively un-costed, despite my advice) of republicans and nationalists: on an island this size, two education systems, two departments of health, two systems of government – two of everything is stupidly expensive. Far more stupidly expensive than any duplication in the six counties, since the six counties is only six, whereas a united Ireland/one system of each would cater for thirty-two counties.
I’m going to watch and listen carefully to see if Peter and others carry their argument to its logical conclusion. He’s bound to: that’s what university professors do, especially when they’re explaining politics to the rest of us. (And yes, Virginia, there are a considerable number of them floating through the airwaves recently – there’s Peter, there’s the two women who both have double-barrelled but different names (talk about two of everything), Professor Rick Wilford…you may be able to add some more yourself. I bet Alex Kane feels quite illiterate from time to time.)
Ah Jude, As well you know “logical conclusions” is not a term which describes the twisting and turning of the Unionist leadership. I’m looking forward to PW s twist on it .
Even by your standards this is a lame attempt as we have said before you don’t have a grasp of economics at all.
Just accept Northern Ireland exists and though it annoys you Professor Shirlow has a very valid point.
It’s a grey, dreary day out there, so my sincere thanks, Neill – you’ve given me a soul-lifting chuckle. You offer nothing except a bit of abuse followed by an unsupported assertion. Nice one, Neill….Oh no, that should be two, shouldn’t it? Never was good at economics, unlike yourself…
If it makes you feel any better I will give you a big hug even two if you wish!
Aw c’mon Neill .It is a valid point worth debate.It makes perfect sense on a wee pissant island like Ireland to tighten things up .One education system is a logical way to look at it . One Health system….well that’s already beginning to happen anyway , so let’s save some cash. It’s not as if communications are as they were a century or two ago when it took forever to go from town to town by coach….. and horses had to be changed every few miles…. and you had to board at the inn overnight if you were going forty miles down the road. .We’re ninety miles away from Dublin ; a journey of about an hour and a half.
It’s also a nonsense to have our children educated in separate schools which instill a mental sectarianism into them from an early age . It’s worth thinking about surely. Most of what we call “normal” life here in Norneverland is right out of Alice in Wonderland.
Constructive ambiguity
The sacred and the secular were in sharp focus today. Sunday Sequence featured the unelected repeating clichés about, democracy, tribal interests and civic society as a substitute for thought. Martin McGill made reference to the need for properly funded mental health services as oft articulated by the leader of the Official Unionist Party predicated on the ubiquitous demand for more money. There was no attempt made to provide an analysis of the obvious flaws associated with this particular suggestion.
Their concept of mental illness is vague and like astrology it offends values associated with personal autonomy and liberty.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse has produced evidence on the abuse of prescribed medication for non medical use. The demand for more mental health services subscribes to a view that there is a need to treat sick people in a normal society. The reality is that we have too many normal people trying to make sense of and live in a dysfunctional society. There is a need to deal with the fundamental cause of the deep divisions in the north of Ireland, not the symptoms such as xenophobia, sectarianism and racism. Xenophobia is defined as an irrational fear of that which is perceived to be foreign including a fear of losing identity and its manifestation in aggression to secure a presumed purity.
In an earlier news report today, a businessperson drew our attention to the plight of one of the few industries west of the Bann. This individual has the initiative and ability to proceed with a business venture in Fermanagh but is constrained by a lack of infrastructure in the area. The oracle that is Invest Northern Ireland suggested a move to Ballymena. If ever the time was ripe for a conscience clause in a quango, this is it.
A little birdie, well, actually a big birdie, name of Google, tells one, Esteemed Blogmeister, that Professor Peter Shirlow is the Deputy Director of the Institute for Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at the Saxe-Coburg-Gotta aka Queen’s University. The one in Belfast as distinct from the one in Cork, like.
Hmm. Deputy. Duplication. Don’t that particular pair of words share a related DNA?
No matter. Staying with Queen’s and the q. of Duplication there was a first phase ceremony held there the other day, redolent of mortar boards, academic gowns and, erm, slightly bemused grins when the rugby player emeritus Brian O’Driscoll was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate in the Lord knows what.
While an awed Warbeck is thrilled to see BOD receiving – at long last ! – some recognition so long denied, nonetheless Perkie’s inner former bureaucrat would like to extend a friendly word of warning. Once one gets into the habit of doing the Academic Aca it can develop into something of a self-repeating ritual. And could stymie one’s medium to long term goals, even unto causing them to be dropped.
If one may cite a precedent.
Without wishing to chant duplication once again, the example one has in mind stems from one’s stellar career in Government Buildings and involves another Peter with his own honorary Queen’s Doctorate. Being the rotund personage of P. Sutherland. BOD might do worse than check out the c.v. of Suds, former Attorney General of the Free Southern Stateen.
During the course of an even more stellar apres-rugga career, Suds has accumulated a wheelbarrow load of scholastic trinkets. From his list of more than Thirty (Three Oh !) awards, including Person of this Year and Commander of that Order, no less than Fifteen (One Five !) are honorary doctorates.
A whole rugger locker room of them. And with the Honorary Conferring game being more a panel than a team concept these days, there is reason to believe that he might yet score the score as the saying goes.
Two elements of this litany of laurels,both suggestive of hands, one an omission, merit a singling out. That omission being the Hands Across (oops, one almost wrote Hands Over) the Border Award. The other being, intriguingly, and the Donkey Derby era that’s in it, The First Cross of Order of Leopold 2 of Belgium. Oui, the same Leo lui meme who once adopted a, erm, hands off policy towards the Wimoweh regions of the Congo.
God alone knows how Suds manages to negotiate the balustraded stairway these days to his sudsy sunken bath in his modest enough mansion. Manya time and oft during his days as an extra energetic A.G. dealing with emergency ledge, Perkie’s outer bureaucrat many a time and oft gawped in awe at the ongoing race to the top.
The top being that of the ceremonial staircase in Teach an Rialtais/ Government Buildings. Most times Suds might be given a headstart by Odd Socks, say,up to the half way landing underneath the renowned stained glass window of Evie Hone’s, ‘The Four Green Fields’.
Nontheless, Odd Socks aka the Three steps at a time Taoiseach aka Garret the Goody Goody would always make it first to the top, and be the first to touch the glass case which encased the duplicate (oops!) Book of Kells, made in Switzerland.
Perkie often surmised that the progress of Suds up the ceremonial s. might have been, if not quicker, then less slow and tortured, if the Evie Hone window had been titled ‘ The Three Green Fields’.
And this was even before Suds was garlanded with 30 odd baubles. Let BOD take note, not least because the very rugga bulldogs in the leafy avenues are barking their predictions in the dark of Dublin 4: that His next goal will be to win the two horse race to Aras Attractive in the Phoenix Park. After a three in a row of Coloratura, Mezzo-Soprano and Alto the feeling among the goys in the Horseshoe Bar of the Shelbourne is that the time is r. for a Baritone.
The other runner being, one, Hugo McNeill. Nay, not at all to be confused with the other Hugo McNeill, for that would truly be, erm, duplication once again. That other Hugo Mac being the Colonel in charge of the firing squad who took out the Dublin 4 in 1923 (one Republican from each province). When the Ulster rep, Joe McKelvey, the only one not to die instantly from the fusillade of the ten man shooting gallery, the pistol-packing Colonel obligingly stepped forward and adminstered the coup de grace.
But that was long ago, in the foreign country of the Past, and besides, the wretch is dead.
This colonel was the nephew of Professor Eoin McNeill and, quite, quite coincidentally, there was some unfinished Border Commission business, as it were, conducted of late by the Alickadoos of the IRFU in Armagh. Under the business-savvy bainisteoirecht of Hugo McNeill, the pitch for the hosting of the, erm, Oval-shaped World Cup was made.
The race to the Park should be just as compelling as this pitch for the Cup. While BOD has a Blackrock accent (more sporty perhaps than the Dorty one of Sir Bob) Hugo goes one better with his portmanteau intonation: Blackroxford.
This is the elegantly cadenced accent which has women interviewers of both sexes on Liffeyside dropping their mikes on their ladylikes. The McNeill voice has a way of drawing down genuflections from female inflections.
So, if won’t be a shoo in, even for BOD. Weighing Himself further down with even more Honorary Doctorates or Freedoms of the City could well diminish His chances.
Far too early yet to call it, but Perkie’s inner diviner already has his favourite fortune teller fish in the palm of his left paw. (Note the discreet avoidance of the h. word, to blindside the d for duplication).
The scarlet plastic fish is moving his head. He’s now moving his tail. Pretends to go right, goes left. Is moving both head and tail now. Prior to curling sides. Plastic fish turns over. Curls up entirely. Redser is now playing dead,sir.
BOD or Hugo?
Yes, it is far, far too early to call it.
One education system in this corner = schools with union jacks,portraits of royalty,poppys,access for British army recruiters and the teaching of an imperialist history.Guarantee none of above will be allowed and I’ll back integrated education wholeheartedly.
My school was nothing like that whatsover and no state school is like that at all would the catholic sector be prepared to hand over the education of their sector do intergrated schooling and lose their control?
Michael
What do you think goes on in state schools?!
Aside from the odd visit of Irish guards and the now defunct RIR home service (everybody at the school had a relative / family friend in the UDR/RIR) I recall none of what you’re talking about (oh, well maybe poppies, but ye can’t ban people from wearing them).
I’m a history bore and I remember learning nothing about ‘the Empire’, we had a massive picture of a famine eviction scene at the class entrance and the teacher (very unionist) was almost evangelical about how much of a dick Cromwell was.
And as for portraits of royalty, it would only be up 5 mins before someone gave the queen a Hitler moustache…
I think, when promoting integrated education, we would have to accept the constitutional status quo because the ‘new’ educational system could not be pro or anti union with Britain. This means that all schools would be, de facto and probably de jure, State schools. For those of us who value the watered down crumbs of Irishness presently fed to our children in maintained schools this would be a step too far. Quite a few ‘catholic ethos’ schools would not need a lot of persuading to assume the whole ‘west british ethos’ and in 2 or 3 generations we would be like the Isle of Man – neither one thing or t’other. Bland , letsgetalongerist – as British as Finchley.
“we would have to accept the constitutional status quo because the ‘new’ educational system could not be pro or anti union with Brita”
Does that mean in Catholic schools people are actively taught NOT to accept the status quo?!
We were taught to accept it as ‘temporary’ and unjust.
Well, there’s part of the problem, if you tell people something that is factually incorrect then you’re preparing them for problems later in life.
Now, I say that only with regards to the ‘temporary’ point.
If it’s written down that NI was to be temporary like say Hong Kong (a lease or whatever) then fair enough, teach away for that’s the officially agreed plan.
If this wasn’t the case but rather the ‘hope’ then it was simply wrong to teach such a thing for it was not written into law or constitution or whatever, sorry.
As for the unjust part, well I can see that argument.
I’m sure there are still some Welsh people who see the establishment of England on their former land as unjust too, but such is life.
Keen eye as always, AG. But I don’t remember anyone saying Hong Kong was temporary. In fact I remember a colleague justifying the Malvinas affair with the statement? “If we don’t act there, what’s next – Hong Kong?” Prescient indeed…
Oh.
I thought there was some sort of 99 year lease or summat for the New Territories or somewhere near?
Is there a hierarchy of esteem in academic circles that makes it possible for only Professors to appear on The View or Sunday Politics?!! Are articulate university lecturers like yourself to be confined to the Nolan Show?!
Argie – why you’re…you’re brilliant!
Hang on Nolan is the show for the people does anybody watch the View?
The good professor mustn’t have majored in Biblical studies or he would have been aware of Noah and his Ark. The animals, birds and all the creatures of the earth came two by two.
God created two sexes of all creatures, including boy and girl.
Even the NI executive has two first ministers – but the prof sees no precedence for pairing.
Would it be the fact that he is English, and last week his master David Cameron spoke from on high, and all of his people must loyally bow to his greater knowledge.
We, here in NI, just don’t appreciate how fortunate we are having such leadership.
Jude
Economic considerations no doubt play a part, but other less tangible motives are I suspect more important, for Unionists as for Republicans.
If the economic case for staying in the UK was clear and undisputed, would you be making that your position based as it is on logic?
I very much doubt it
Hi Dr C
I think you’ve just created an argument for the Republic rejoining the UK or for even greater EU integration… 🙂
Also, the ‘duplication & waste’ argument is one of SF’s main pro-unification arguments.
They also have the dept for education under their watch, if they truly believe what they preach then they could start practicing it e.g. not every mixed village needs two primary schools.
(If it becomes even darker and more dreary outside then you might be bored enough to read this, my previous rantings on the matter: http://sluggerotoole.com/2014/08/05/reducing-duplicity-within-the-education-system/ )
I took some time to have a look at your fine article Am Ghob….You made some interesting and very true points…such as ….
“There is indeed an element of preaching to the converted in that the demographic of people who send their children to integrated schools are unlikely to be movers and shakers in the Orange Order, SF, loyalist bands, DUP, TUV or anyone else who has a hand in stirring the pot.”
You almost derailed me with the Harry Flashman quote until I realised it wasn’t “that Harry Flashman ” of George MacDonald fame. I have to say , as an aside , that George ‘s books were as great a revelation and joy as discovering the “Just William” books as a wee lad ….perfect bedtime reading and very instructive too… Get ’em all ….That’s what I really call “history”.
I didn’t make the Harry Flashman reference clear, I was pretty much addressing fellow sluggerites.
I do love the Flashman series though.
I reckon a movie release with Ray Feines as Flashman would be brilliant. Alas, I doubt Holywood would listen….
I travel round the North in the course of my work and see the butchers apron flown (some times virtually every day at state schools.I see integrated schools commemorating World war 1 and celebrating royal births in my local paper and poppys are openly on sale ,AG’s admission of UDR visits just makes my point for me.
No it doesn’t.
You said if integrated schools have none of the above then you’re ‘in’.
1/ UDR visits – highly unlikely in this day in age, especially in integrated schools. My school might have allowed it (during the Troubles) on account of the large number of people who had family members in the security forces (or construction companies that built their facilities, who in our collective minds needed protecting e.g. Teebane massacre).
2/ The Butcher’s Apron – 1/ That’s very disrespectful 2/ Could equally apply to the flags of France, Russia, Belgium, the USA, Portugal and a few more countries 3/ Are you sire integrated schools fly it year round? It sounds like a board of Governors type thing where the Board of Governors is comprised of TUV types, NOT an integrated school
3/ “I see integrated schools commemorating World war 1 “. It happened. It was horrible. People all over Europe commemorate it, not just embittered Orangemen. Please get over yourself.
4/ “celebrating royal births in my local paper ” – And I saw them going quite giddy over the Royal wedding when I was in Galway city that sunny day.
5/ Poppies – you don’t have to buy one. Your idea of neutrality is actual a zero-sum game isn’t it?
Northern Ireland is the Irish part of the UK and the British part of Ireland. No one has to like that situation but pretending it isn’t so only makes things even worse.
OK, bring in integrated education and watch what happens whe n the jack is flown ,the Brit army comes a calling or a box of poppys appears in the canteen anywhere outside North Down .