Alan in Belfast

Belfast's black hole now has a webcam ... It could have been worse ...

2009-11-09T20:14:00.006Z

The good news is:

the new tunnel, dug as part of Belfast multi-million pound sewage upgrade scheme wasn't damaged as part of the road collapse in Cromac Street;
the air bubble caused the tarmac to cave in early on Saturday morning when traffic was very light rather than Monday morning when it could have had much more disastrous consequences to passing cars, bikes and buses;
they're now looking for any other air bubbles in the vicinity so they can be pumped full of the construction industry's equivalent of dense expanding foam;
and they're checking the state of the cables that come out from the neighbouring telephone exchange and run under the road ... before the concrete slam is laid on top of the hole!
Oh, and you can watch progress via Citigolf Belfast's webcam!

The bad news is ... well, there isn't any. Belfast's unique geology throws up these wobbles. Like the children's book says:

It Could Have Been Worse ...

faith, education (Mike Wardlow), finance (Paul Moore), & postmodern dilemmas (Steve Stockman)

2009-11-07T21:05:00.005Z

A quick plug for a few events coming up at the Centre for Contemporary Christianity (their domain temporarily down) in Belfast in the coming weeks. All the events are free.

In Conversation With ... Mike Wardlow - Faith in Education?

On Tuesday 10 November at 7.30pm, the former Chief Executive of the NI Council for Integrated Education will back to discuss how faith collides with the education system. You can catch a recording of his June talk (synchronised with his slides) when he asked whether the Christian church had anything distinctive to bring to current local education debates and institutions? An illuminating and challenging session.

The venue is the CCCI office, up on the 3rd Floor, 21 Ormeau Avenue, Belfast, BT2 8HD.

Catherwood Lecture: Paul Moore - Finance and Faith: Can Mammon and the Common Good be Reconciled?

The CCCI’s annual lecture is often packed out. This year, it takes place in Union Theological College on 26 November at 8pm.

Paul Moore is the former Head of Group Regulatory Risk at HBOS and was the only senior risk and compliance executive in the UK banking sector to speak out publicly in the aftermath of the financial crisis about what he saw from the inside of a bank.
His influential evidence given to the Treasury Select Committee in February 2009 was widely publicised in the media and led directly to the resignation of Sir James Crosby, the Deputy Chairman of the FSA. He maintained that failures in governance, risk management, compliance and regulatory supervision were at the primary causes of the banking crisis.
Paul was educated at Ampleforth College, an independent school run by a Benedictine Monastery. He re-found his faith in the last ten years. This has given him the strength he needed to speak up.

You can catch Paul Moore being interviewed by Michael Burke on Radio 4’s The Choice on iPlayer (available until around 9pm on Tuesday 10 November).

Looking forward to December:

In Conversation With ... Steve Stockman - Postmodern Dilemmas - Meet a Baby in Straw: Youth and the Incarnation

Tuesday 8 December, 7.30pm, 3rd Floor, 21 Ormeau Avenue, Belfast, BT2 8HD.

Road collapses in Belfast - Water Service looking into it

2009-11-07T17:52:00.000Z

Couldn't resist the post title!

The Water Service have spent the last three or four of years tunnelling under the streets of Belfast with a giant mole to improve the quality and performance of Belfast's sewers - creating pipes large enough for Top Gear to drive electric Minis through.

But this morning, a large stretch of tarmac on Cromac Street collapsed today near the junction with East Bridge Street. I first caught wind of the problems through a series of tweets from CitiGolf Belfast which got progressively more surreal!

Arrived at work this morning at Citigolf Belfast to find the road outside has collapsed by about 5ft, it looks mad.
Looks like the new Belfast sewers have hit some trouble. Outside Citigolf the whole thing has collapsed. Expect Massive Traffic delays
Citigolf Belfast is falling into this hole.This is worrying now. This hole in the ground now looks massive.
Citigolf Belfast. Now organising tours for people wanting a close view of the Belfast hole Booking Essential as we might have fallen into it
Expansion plans for Citigolf Belfast making good progress. Have the diggers out front making new green & bunker since early morning

As well as hosting golf simulators that "allow you to experience the game of golf on over 57 world famous championship courses" indoor, Citigold have a wry sense of humour.

There are a variety of theories to explain the collapse.

The BBC confirm that

The depression in the road is above a storm-water tunnel in the multi-million pound Belfast Sewers Project.

while UTV carry a statement from NI Water explaining

NI Water staff are on site and are working closely with other utilities to secure the site, a full investigation is under way to determine the cause of the road depression."
"NI Water will commence repairs as soon as possible.
"NI Water would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused to the public.

So it could be a sewer problem ...

On the other hand, Belfast Sleech could be to blame.

Roads Service spokesman Colin Brown said the city is built upon a deposit of soft clay, silt and mud known as "Belfast Sleech".
"Periodically we can get voids forming under the roads," he said.
"Sometimes it's very clear what has caused it, other times it's quite a mystery."

The one definite fact about the collapse is that it will not be fixed overnight and will cause traffic problems on Monday. Translink have already diverted Metro and Ulsterbus services around the area, while the BBC report that "an emergency meeting will be held on Sunday to discuss the potential traffic disruption in the city centre."

(Top photo taken from BBC news article, the rest with permission from Colin Parte / @herrbenz.)

Update - Now reckoned to be caused by an underground air bubble disturbed by the sewer work last year and finally rose to the surface. Only one week of traffic chaos predicted!

A market, a boat, a fire, a lease, woolly hats and bad parking

2009-11-07T12:56:00.007Z

Bit of a compound post ...

Lisburn City Council have been running a monthly Farmer's Market up in Castle Gardens for the best part of a year now. Once a month, a white marquee is erected, small traders sell their produce, and a donkey and cart give people rides around the gardens.

It's a cold, breezy spot - but other than the cramped Lisburn Square, it's probably the only space Lisburn has to host it. To be honest, there aren't many stalls selling farm produce. From memory, this morning's traders seemed to offer tempting potato farls, sweets, jewellery, and of course, Bean and Gone's fine coffee (and tea). After the ructions earlier in the year, and the market organiser's determination that there was only room for one stall of each kind, it was a little surprising to see a second coffee stall set up at the tent's entrance.

The great thing today was that there were activities for children on offer.

So Littl'un and I got to make a paper boat, decorate it, and then float it in the fountain.

Fifteen minutes later - after a cup of tea and an impromptu Open Coffee Lisburn meet up - the wee purple boat was still bobbing along, being blown by the breeze across the water.

I'll bet that next month there will be a few more fire extinguishers dotted around the marquee after this morning's fiery escapades. Gas rings can go wrong! And the fire brigade turned up afterwards to check all was okay. (Ironic that the NI Fire Brigade headquarters is only a hundred yards down the road from the market?)

Lisburn can't afford another fire!

I've twice rung the estate agent that manages the house we're renting to ask to extend the lease. First time he forgot to ask the owners! I called in the office this morning to ask if there was any progress ... but he still hadn't made contact with them. So he called the owners there and then, and inside thirty seconds had the positive answer we'd been waiting to hear for a month. Not much use employing an agent to rent out your house when they don't pass on messages.

Finally out to Sainsburys at Sprucefield. Innocent's Great Knit has extended this year from bobble hats on bottles of smoothies to big hats and wraparound scarves for their tubs. A fine festive tradition.

And example of why people driving 4x4s and expensive cars should be given parking lessons before being allowed out on the road!

Monopoly brings Free Parking back to Belfast in time for Christmas

2009-11-06T11:53:00.005Z

Belfast got its very own Monopoly board today with the launch of the latest city edition in the Waterfront Hall.

A Northern Ireland edition was brought out about ten years ago, but eighteen months ago, the makers returned to Belfast to consult with tourist organisations, the media and local people to come up with a short list of locations.

Mark Marriott, the creator of the Belfast board for Winning Moves Ltd, insisted that in a world of computer games and on-screen entertainment, there was still a place for board games in homes - both locally and also with ex-pats. He’d better be right, otherwise the Belfast edition will gather dust in Belfast city centre retail outlets and Amazon’s warehouse.

Asked about the significance of the value of different sites, Marriott said that “we don’t try to rank them too much”. So don’t expect deprivation to be marked out on the cheapest brown sites (Linen Hall Library and Custom House Square take those spots). And the Malone Road doesn’t feature in the high value blue sites. Instead the City Hall comes in at M350 (“M” being the Monopoly money currency) and the top spot at M400 goes to Parliament Buildings Stormont!

While the landmarks have changed, the rules are standard and the player tokens are familiar. They didn’t take the opportunity to swap the top hat for a bowler hat!

In fact, despite playing down the sensitivities, it is clear that the Belfast board creator steered well clear of potential controversy.

“Obviously we are aware of the history of Belfast and we don’t want to ignore that but also we want to focus on the things that are collective in Belfast for everybody.”

Later, Marriott added that it was about “unification not polarisation”. When challenged why well known landmarks like the Falls Road and Shankill Road were missing, he played down the omission, saying that people hadn’t really asked for those locations.

With our local diversity of sporting pursuits, a single colour wasn’t sufficient to accommodate everything, so while the pinky/purple spots are taken by Belfast Giants, Ravenhill and Casement Park, Windsor Park sneaks onto the neighbouring orange spaces, along with the Ulster Hall and the CS Lewis Centenary Statue at Holywood Arches.

Local commercial media outlets got to sponsor the Chance and Community Chest spots, which will help enormously with publicising the Belfast board’s launch. Disappointingly, Free Parking isn’t sponsored by NCP!

Of course, the real fun of the launch was watching the local press photographers come up with ever more creative ways of getting a fun shot of what was essentially a very straightforward story:

“Board game company boost sales with launch of localised city version (fourth this year) in time for Christmas shopping.”

So there were top hats, giant dice, tossing money in the air, and much lying on the floor to get a good angle.

Update - The Belfast Telegraph editor shares a few thoughts on the new edition ...

Two photos taken 24 hours and several hundred feet apart

2009-11-05T22:14:00.004Z

Wednesday November 4. The junction of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, where the Christmas lights are now attracting late night shoppers to a street that used not to have as many empty units.

Thursday November 5. As we took off from Gatwick tonight, the pilot kept a (relatively) low altitude for the first fifteen minutes as we flew over the South East of England. With little cloud below us, it was a scene of darkness and amber street lights, interrupted with glittering sparks as fireworks exploded above houses. Transient flickering. Fireworks, so low down compared with the height of the plane. Guy Fawkes night is definitely the best night of the year to be up in the air and in a window seat.

Prods and Pom Poms - Friday night at 10.35pm on UTV

2009-11-05T19:21:00.000Z

Ben Jones and Paul Hutchinson’s film about Sandy Row Falcons cheerleading squad is finally coming to the small screen on Friday night at 10.35pm on UTV.

I caught Prods and Pom Poms earlier this year as part of the Belfast Film Festival, and it’ll be well worth staying in to watch the squad and their coaches Lesley and Julie as they train and perform. There is energy galore, along with frustration and disappointment. As I commented in the post back in April:

... the tension and feeling of impending doom ratchets up significantly as the industrially spray-tanned squads meet up early on a June Sunday morning to board a bus to the ferry and then up to the Braehead Arena just outside Glasgow: a venue packed out with more than a hundred cheerleading squads and hangers on.
“There’s bound to be people worse than us!”
Will they make it to the venue on time? Will they fall out over platting each other’s hair? Will they make it to the stage on time for the first routine. Will their preparation pay off? Will they win any trophies?

It’s a lovely insight into the squad, and into the community in which they’re based. Laughs, tears, angst - yet respectful and honest. Check out the trailer below.

Just a minute ... Lisburn's Christmas Ice Rink

2009-11-05T12:21:00.001Z

Back in September, I spent an illuminating evening down at Lisburn's Island Civic Centre, as a member of the public witnessing two council committee meetings.

It was disappointing that the first of the two started half an hour earlier than advertised - something that the council staff have learnt from, and they now encourage attendees to let them know by phone in advance so they can be kept up to date with any changes to the arrangements. A positive step.

It was at this quarterly meeting of the Strategic Policy Committee that the possibility of erecting an ice rink in Lisburn city centre over Christmas to round off the 400th Anniversary celebrations was publicly mooted. I blogged about it at the time, questioning the likely cost, and the story was picked up by Good Morning Ulster (who interviewed the city's Mayor) and also the local Ulster Star paper.

While looking for something else, I noticed that the minutes from that meeting were now up on the LCC website. So how would they describe the brief verbal discussion of the ice rink proposal that the 400th Anniversary subcommittee with its delegated powers were discussing?

4.2 400 Anniversary Celebrations
Members had been furnished with, and noted the contents of, copies of reports of the meetings of the Sub-Committee held on 11 May and 6 July, 2009.

It doesn't warrant a mention.

Up to now, the minutes from the subcommittee - which meets in private and was delegated power to organise the celebratory events without recourse to the Strategic Policy Committee - have not been published. The good news is that last week, LCC's Assistant Director of Corporate Service did promise that

"Meetings of the sub committees are not open meetings however it is proposed that these minutes will now be placed on the Council's website."

So the details of what was being discussed and agreed will shortly be more widely available than the zero fact blurb in the SPC minutes.

On the matter of publishing the Voluntary Transition Committee minutes (a forum dealing with council business that will be affected by the 2011 Review of Public Administration, and a forum that will become increasingly powerful in the run up to becoming a statutory committee next year) "a decision has yet to be made", despite their earlier press release that boldly stated that they'd be available on the Council website!

Accountability and transparency inching forward in the right direction.

Talking in the East (part 1) // SDLP // Séamas de Faoite

2009-11-04T12:27:00.008Z

As mentioned yesterday, I’ve been working around the main political parties in East Belfast to find out how each of them views their local area, their party’s future and the level of public engagement with the political institutions that have a lot of influence over the shape of our society.

The SDLP don’t have an elected representative in East Belfast. They have a couple of councillors across in Castlereagh borough (Castlereagh South and West wards) but no one elected to Belfast City Council or representing East Belfast as an MLA at NI Assembly.

So I got in touch with the youthful Séamas de Faoite, seventeen year old prospective candidate for the SDLP in the Pottinger Ward of East Belfast. His youth belies his seriousness about politics and his enthusiasm about his future contribution. The interview was recorded back on 19 October 2009.

I started by asking about his impressions of the opportunities and challenges that face East Belfast?

(Séamas) There are a huge amount of challenges at the offset that face the east of the city, not least so in terms of regeneration. But the opportunities that are there for us to attract investment, to up-skill the workforce and to make East Belfast an industrial and scientific hub that it once was. Once again I think now, in the east of the city, there is that potential ...
I would certainly think that there is a failure of the larger parties to deliver on the investment opportunities that are there and for the sitting MP and some of the other people involved to actually advocate more for the bread and butter needs of the people in East Belfast rather than playing sectarian football on every single issue.

Talking about how Titanic Quarter might integrate with the rest of East Belfast ...

(Séamas) Titanic Quarter obviously has a lot of problems facing it at the moment because of the economic situation that we’re in. ...
So on the offset we have to make sure that if Titanic Quarter is going to work that it’s actually going to succeed in being built and actually filling the units that are going to be there. Not so much my fear but I can see possibly what could happen is that if units aren’t bought up in Titanic Quarter that the government is going to have to step in and intervene.
If Titanic Quarter succeeds, obviously there has to be integration with the rest of East Belfast and especially down in the area that’s going to be linked to it - Short Strand, areas like that. The Titanic Quarter cannot just be Titanic Quarter boxed off away from everyone else. It has to be part of East Belfast as a whole and that’s all part of integration and breaking down the barriers that we’ve had over the past throughout the city. So perhaps Titanic Quarter will give us a stepping stone in the east to try and do that.

Commenting on whether or not there is any evidence of integration between the predominantly nationalist Short Strand area and the rest of East Belfast, Séamas pointed back to the end of August and the violence that erupted at the interface after a rally celebrating the closure of the Mountpottinger Police Station.

(Séamas) ... it’s disheartening especially after you see the events what happened over the bank holiday Monday where we had dissidents on both sides of the divide come out and bring us back to that basic level we were at in the 1970s and the 1980s. I don’t want to see us moving back to that position.
We do things better when we work together. Northern Ireland wastes £1.7 billion every year on duplication of services, we have to seriously ask do we really need that duplication of services. One of the best ways of tackling that is through integration and through saying to people: we are all human beings, we all have the same needs, our wants may be different but we all need the same basic services provided by the government and the best thing to do is to provide them to each person on the basis of them being a human being and not of them being nationalist or unionist or catholic or protestant.

There is considerable voter apathy during the recent European elections and a general lack of public engagement with politics. What did Séamas think?

(Séamas) The generation of leaders that we have in Northern Ireland at the moment have been there for the past twenty or fifteen years. They are basically, it’s like the Muppet Show on repeat at the moment. So I think people are turning off as a result of that. They are seeing the same old arguments played out by the same old characters and they don’t like it.
If we actually had some real, relevant debate and not just about sectarian issues or issues to do with Northern Ireland’s future, but about the economy, about education and not turning it into a sectarian football, and all of these different sorts of things, I think people would actually be less apathetic.

Maybe I’ve missed the story, but I’d never heard the suggestion of moving the Assembly down to Titanic Quarter before.

(Séamas) I think the Assembly is very distant from ordinary people and despite the fact that Stormont Live and all of the other different initiatives to try and get more engaged with ordinary people, it’s very distant. And then when you have initiatives like the Assembly Roadshow which are supposed to get people engaged and they come to East Belfast and only Dawn Purvis shows up for the panel, it kind of says to people, well the Assembly couldn’t really care less about you.
I think certainly if as part of the Titanic Quarter in the future the proposals that the Assembly might be moved where it’s closer to the people, where it’s closer to the ordinary lives of the people of Northern Ireland and certainly in Belfast, I think bringing the Assembly closer to ordinary people needs to happen because it seems so distant.

Doesn’t seem credible to me. I’m sure why the people living in high rise apartments in TQ will be any more “ordinary” than those living within a half mile radius of Stormont?

Asked about his view of the SDLP as it goes forward, Séamas talked about party member apathy and the need for succession planning.

(Séamas) We have huge challenges ahead like any smaller party that was once the top dog ... certainly I think the SDLP has an opportunity to rebuild itself over the next six months and moving into the Westminster elections and the council elections in 2011 ...
In South Belfast we have over 600 paper members, but we don’t have activists and that is certainly something that we’re going to need to look at. And a big issue is succession strategy and getting new and younger people involved in the party and getting them encouraged to run for council, at council level to start of with and building up from there.

Some would explain the last Assembly election results as voters turning away from moderate centrist parties and back to the Sinn Fein and the DUP. I asked Séamas what he though the SDLP could do about that.

(Séamas) I suppose the best thing to say to people is sectarian views don’t put money in your pocket. They don’t hold jobs in Northern Ireland. They don’t help us maintain the NHS in Northern Ireland or to try and improve the NHS. They don’t help us put funds in schools. They don’t help us up-skill workers who have lost their jobs in industry. Sectarian values, not so much values, but sectarian views and polarisation. It doesn’t help. When we work together, we deliver more and that’s been proven time and time again, not just in Northern Ireland but across the world in areas where there has been conflict.

Séamas detailed how he saw the saw SDLP appealing to a wider electoral base.

(Séamas) ... I come from a centre left background, and that would be where my political opinions would be, but certainly I think the SDLP should be appealing to a wider support base of people who not necessarily would agree with us on the question about whether Ireland should be united or not, but certainly people who would agree with us on what the Executive’s economic priorities should be and what we should be doing to try to get us out of this economic crisis.

He felt that the housing crisis in East Belfast was a doorstep issue with voters.

(Séamas) The SDLP holds the position at ministerial level of the Department of Social Development. So we have been looking for the money to build more social houses. And in my own opinion, East Belfast seems to be one of the areas that really needs to benefit from that sort of money. So if people come out and vote for us and support the fact that we’re trying to deliver on a social housing agenda which benefits everybody and especially in East Belfast where there is such a demand, that is something where they are going to get a positive response from coming out and voting for the SDLP.

I finished by asking how Séamas had got started on his journey into politics.

(Séamas) I wouldn’t say it’s the start of my journey. I’ve been involved for the past four years, but not in Northern Ireland. Certainly I see it as that this part of the world and certainly Northern Ireland we have this terrible ability to bring everything down to baseline sectarian politics and I don’t particularly agree with that. I don’t like it. I think really we should be working towards delivering on the things that are mutually beneficial to everybody and I think that is what the Assembly should be for.
So I set out on a journey in politics because I want to make a difference, and I know it sounds like every other young politician has ever started out says that. But when you actually see what differences can be made, and what can be done. Some of my inspirational heroes, people like Teddy Kennedy and the Clintons and the things that they have done in bringing about health care reform and trying to bring peace to Northern Ireland. In all of these different things where they have actually mattered, they have delivered on something. That is an inspiration I think to young people who want to get involved in politics, that if you become involved you can actually get something done.

Mulling over the interview, while Séamas speaks eloquently, he has much to do to extend his knowledge of the local area and build up a repertoire of specific examples to drop in to illustrate his answers. Maybe that’s a harsh conclusion about a seventeen year old - but he is currently the SDLP’s loudest voice in the heart of East Belfast.

I’ll reflect more across the six party representatives and their converging and diverging viewpoints towards the end of the process.

Forget the bloggers, it’s going to be the Flip election - or will they combine?

2009-11-03T16:45:00.002Z

Charlie Beckett, director at POLIS (journalism and society think tank, a joint initiative from LSE and The London College of Communication) recently posted a blog entitled

Forget the bloggers, it’s going to be the Flip election

In it he explains the thinking of the BBC’s Justin Webb who followed the last couple of US elections:

“... speaking at Polis, [Webb] said that it was the guerilla [sic] video activists who made the most impact. He forecast a Flip Election in the UK for 2010.”

I’m not so convinced. I think they’ll combine: that is, the bloggers will become flippers. The size (and cost) of pocket-sized video cameras has nearly equalised with pocket-sized digital cameras. Bloggers are more and more aware that text is boring without a picture or two to brighten up. And thirty seconds of video does no harm either. I’ll be surprised if the larger political blogs like Slugger O’Toole don’t feature a lot more video content in the months running up to May 2010.

Regular readers of AiB will have noticed that I’ve been harping on about political and public sector accountability and engagement over the last few months, and covered the EU election from the perspective of an electoral observer.

One upshot is that as an experiment, I’ve scheduled a series of interviews with representatives of the six main political parties in East Belfast. Two completed, four to go. Not an experiment in terms of putting local East Belfast politicians under a microscope and treating them like lab rats, but in terms of showing that ordinary people can get access and get answers if they bother to ask.

I’m using roughly the same questions each time. Not looking to trip them up or come over all Jeremy Paxman. Just trying to get comparable answers to questions along three simple but relevant themes:

impressions of the opportunities and challenges facing East Belfast (particularly in and around the new developments in Titanic Quarter);
how they think their party is moving forward - with next year’s election(s) in mind; and
how the level of public engagement with politics could change, and why they got into politics in the first place.

So over the coming weeks, expect to see a series of posts featuring answers from representatives of Alliance, DUP, PUP, SDLP, Sinn Fein and UUP. Their words will be broken up with a few video clips of the more remarkable answers. The first one should be posted tomorrow.

Update - first interview now posted online.

popularity(Belfast)=5; influence(Belfast)=2!

2009-11-03T11:51:00.004Z

As well as chairing the Digital Circle group and being mistaken for the Mayor of Holywood, Davy Sims writes a weekly Watching the Web column in the Belfast Telegraph, bring social media and digital content to a wider audience. This week’s piece looks at the (highly unscientific) measures of influence and popularity on Twitter.

WeFollow rank Twitter users by tags and profile information.

Popularity is easy, since the number of followers someone has is a statistic that Twitter measures quite accurately.

In terms of raw popularity, and ignoring organisational Twitter accounts and ones that aren’t real people, the people tagged with Belfast and with the most followers are: (1) @EamonnHolmes, (2) @icedcoffee, (3) @leelowe, (4) @stuartgibson, (5) @alaninbelfast

Of course, by weeding out and blocking the spam followers and those not wearing sufficient clothes in their avatar pictures, popularity decreases! But I’m sure quality beats quantity.

Influence is more difficult to understand. WeFollow have a hidden algorithm that takes account of popularity, but also looks at the network of followers, preferring users who have tagged themselves on WeFollow and are followed by people who share the same tags.

In this great game of taxonomy meets art, Davy lists WeFollow’s top five influential accounts in Belfast: (1) @nomoreart, (2) @alaninbelfast, (3) @icedcoffee, (4) @stuartgibson, (5) @escapeact

The point of this post is to draw attention to Davy’s final paragraph.

“What is interesting though is that all of these people know each other (with the probable exclusion of Eamonn who we all know, but I don't know how many he knows). They talk to each other and meet up at events like Open Coffee and BarCamps. I would wager that most of the people on your Friends Lists on Twitter, Facebook and so on are actual, real, non-cyberworld friends. I shake my head and wonder at the narrowness of those who criticise people - particularly young people - for spending so much time on social media. The internet does not replace real life, it affirms and extends it.”

Other than @escapeact (a band who describe themselves as “lush, upbeat alternative pop from Belfast”), I know every on the top five popularity and influence lists, and would be able to recognise them on the street and have a conversation. Virtual relationships, that spread into real life. Perhaps we should all gang up and visit Eamonn when he’s next across to film The Friday Show!

And to set the record straight, I don’t think I’m terribly influential.

bmibaby – deliberately splitting up families and seating children out of reach?

2009-10-31T22:04:00.005Z

Something is rotten in the state of Derby ... to be precise, Castle Donnington where bmibaby are headquartered.

The three of us travelled across from Belfast International to Birmingham with bmibaby on Tuesday for a half term family visit. Three of us on the one booking. Checking in online, Cheryl and I were given D and E seats in one row, while Littl’un had the C seat across the aisle in the row behind. A woman noticed what had happened – I was going to sit in Littl’un’s allocated seat – and volunteered to swap so we could all sit together.

Seemed strange that a child of four travelling with adults would be allocated a seat in a different row. bmibaby’s booking form captures the age of children (they call them “kids”) at the time of booking.

Checking in for the way home, we experienced another variation. Cheryl got seat 15C, Littl’un was placed over the aisle in 15D and I was condemned to the back corner 24F. Another family with three children and two parents was spread across three different rows scattered throughout the aircraft.

It’s not a matter of turning up late to check-in and finding no suitable sets of seats available. Online check-in happens hours and even days before check-in closes.

This morning at Gate 41 in Birmingham airport’s Terminal 1, bmibaby’s gate staff were busy ensuring that everyone who had checked in online could “comfortably” fit their luggage “into the bmibaby airport hand baggage gauge” before boarding – single item per person, no larger than 55cm x 40cm x 20cm – thus squeezing an extra £30/€30 out of anyone who hadn’t read or believed their paperwork and whose oversized bags would have to be carried in the aircraft hold.

When asked about families being split up by the online check in process, the same ground crew suggested that families should pay the £3.99/€5 per person charge when booking to pre-assign a contiguous block of seats.

It feels like a recent problem. We’ve been travelling over with Littl’un via bmibaby to Birmingham since she was born, and the online check-in seat allocation seems to have become less capable in the last few months. It never used to split us up as a family. Smells of profiteering by the budget airline with the 65p/minute customer service line.

Once onboard, flight crew were a bit more helpful, suggesting that the answer was to wait until everyone was boarded and then find any spare seats, or negotiate with other passengers. The family of five did just that, eventually managing to get all five of them into the one row.

If parents didn’t use their common sense to override bmibaby’s crazy seat allocation algorithm (which seems to ignore the age of young passengers that has been captured at time of booking), would it be safe for a four year old to sit in the row behind her parents, or across the aisle?

After all, I’ve listened to the safety announcement often enough to remember that it explains that if you are travelling with small children: “Put on your own oxygen mask before helping children with theirs”. How would I do that across an aisle or reaching into the row behind?

The Civil Aviation Authority has something to say on the matter too. (Thanks Susan for the link!)

Family Groups
CAA guidelines ask airlines to develop procedures for the seat allocation of family groups, particularly when a group includes children. It is probable that family group members would seek each other out should an emergency evacuation be required, an action that could adversely affect the passenger flow rates towards emergency exits and might seriously affect the outcome of an evacuation.
Additionally, children and infants should be seated where they can be adequately supervised by an accompanying adult in the event of turbulence or a decompression in the cabin ...
Children, accompanied by adults, should ideally be seated in the same seat row as the adult ...
Seat allocation procedures for family groups and suitable seating arrangements for large parties of children should reflect the above criteria.
Whenever small numbers of infants and children are travelling together, the airline should make every effort to ensure that they are allocated seats where they can be readily supervised by the responsible accompanying adult in both normal and abnormal conditions.

I’m not sure that bmibaby’s current approach to automatic seat allocation for four year olds fulfils the letter or the spirit of the CAA’s guidance. It’ll be interesting to see what bmibaby have to say. (Booking G18WCX in case you want to investigate.)

Playing post code Russian Roulette with life expectancy in North Belfast

2009-10-31T10:30:00.002Z

I referred to Malachi O’Doherty’s challenging blog post and podcast during this week’s Blogtalk NI.

Along with other diverging statistics, in North Belfast life expectancy differs by a massive fifteen years between Ardoyne and Fortwilliam.

Malachi asks why this is? He also questions why politicians find it hard to get excited about this reality? Why we can always explain away individual deaths with a good reason, and fail to talk about the annual trend of 5,000 “early” deaths? And he asks why we don’t just build high rise flats in Fortwilliam to solve the problem ...

Well worth listening to the podcast linked to from his blog post.

13.5m tall Airfix "Kit" of famous ship unveiled in Titanic Quarter

2009-10-30T20:27:00.006Z

If I’d been around last night, I’d have tried to head across to Titanic Quarter so see its first piece of commissioned public art launched as part of Belfast Festival. Artist Tony Stallard was to give a talk and then unveil his "Kit" sculpture in the ground floor of the ARC Abercorn Residential Complex (ARC).

The Belfast Telegraph described the unveiling of the “giant toy modelling kit of the Titanic”:

One hundred years after Belfast's ship builders put together the original vessel, scale replicas of its component parts have now returned to docks in the form of an innovative public artwork.
Fittingly, present-day engineers from Harland and Wolff - the firm that built the famous passenger ship - helped in the construction of the towering bronze sculpture, which is inspired by the plastic frames synonymous with Airfix model kits.
Standing at 13.5 metres tall, the £200,000 piece was designed by English artist Tony Stallard and has been erected on the former shipyards at Belfast Lough.

‘Kit’ will be highlighted with blue and white phosphorous lighting at night.

The Essex-born artist said he hoped the artwork symbolised Belfast as an industrial pioneer at the time of building the Titanic.
"It references the industrial heritage of the area and can be seen as a reverie of the past, to create nostalgia of what was once heroic," said Mr Stallard.
"It is designed to act as a contemporary tribute to the shipbuilders. The sculpture is 'see through' and transient, almost mythological."
Mike Smith, chief executive of Titanic Quarter hailed the artwork.
"The Tony Stallard sculpture is magnificent," he said.
"At Titanic Quarter we are building the future from the past and Kit, with its references to the Titanic's creation and the industrial heritage of the area, is a perfect illustration of that."

(Illustrative photos from Belfast Telegraph article.)

Blogtalk NI is back - if it was reality TV, at least one of us would be voted off each week!

2009-10-29T20:03:00.005Z

So after the pilot episode in September, NvTv's Blogtalk NI is back with a weekly run of four grumpy bloggers on a couple of sofas chewing over a few topics they've been reading about on local blogs.

This week's show was brought to you by Matt, Geoff, Alan and Donal, with topics ranging from Trafigura, to the availability of public data and information online, the recent joint statement by the SDLP and UUP about education and finally a word from Mick Fealty about the origins of the Slugger O'Toole group blog.

The panel will rotate over the incoming weeks so you won't be lumbered with me too often! And I'm sure carl AT northernvisions DOT org would love to hear from any female bloggers who'd like to sit and chat on the sofa in future episodes.

(Magherafelt) Council accountability, transparency, FOIs and internal reviews

2009-10-25T19:50:00.004Z

I’ve posted about local council websites a couple of times recently. Some offer their ratepayers a lot of visibility of council business, publishing an online calendar of meetings (some of which the public can even attend) and following these up with links to the approved minutes. But some councils seem to live in a world of obfuscation - either deliberate or by inaction - and give very little information to the ratepayers who they serve.

If politicians want members of the public to take an interest in what they do and come out in greater numbers to vote at elections, perhaps they would need to up their game on accountability and transparency.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is the UK’s independent public body set up to promote access to official information and protect personal information. They enforce and oversee the UK’s Freedom of Information Act. They offer best practice advice to public authorities, as well as mandating a Model Publication Scheme that had to be adopted by 1 January 2009.

In general, public authorities are encouraged to regularly publish a core set of information that would be useful or frequently requested by the public. The ICO’s scheme states:

Where it is within the capability of a public authority, information will be provided on a website. Where it is impracticable to make information available on a website or when an individual does not wish to access the information by the website, a public authority will indicate how information can be obtained by other means and provide it by those means.

Having mentioned Belfast and Lisburn City Councils in the post, someone suggested looking at Magherafelt District Council.

The ICO even give specific examples of the kinds of information that they expect district councils in Northern Ireland to provide in order to meet their commitments under the model publication scheme. This includes information (online or offline) about recent election results, timetable of council meetings, register of councillors interests etc.

Magherafelt District Council mention none of this information in their current publication scheme which is still dated January 2003 ... missing the ICO’s 1 January 2009 deadline by a country mile. And fundamentally, no council minutes online.

So I asked them about it.

And exactly twenty days later I got a response (at half six in the evening). Odd how it takes exactly twenty days to answer questions! Even worse the text of the emailed reply suggested that they hadn’t started processing my request until day twenty and then seemed to be answered in a rush.

Despite the ICO explaining:

A public authority must inform the applicant in writing whether it holds the information requested and if so, communicate that information to the applicant, promptly, but not later than 20 working days after receipt of the request; section 10(1). [text bolded in the ICO original]

Can I have a copy of your minutes?

Given that there’s no online accountability of what the council debate and decide, I asked:

Can you supply electronic copies (or point to an online version) of the full council minutes that have been signed off/approved for 2009 so far ...

Their reply:

Council minutes are not presently available in an electronic format. Paper copies may be obtained on payment of the requisite photocopying charge as detailed in the Councils Publication Scheme. Please advise if you are willing to pay the relevant charges and arrangements will be made to invoice you for the requisite amounts. Council minutes are not presently published online.

Their publication scheme outlines the photocopying charges that were set back in 2003 and presumably have not been reviewed since.

Current charges are as follows:
Photocopies (per page):
1-10 copies 25p per copy (inc. VAT)
11-25 copies 20p per copy (inc. VAT)
26 copies plus 15p per copy (inc. VAT)
Certified copy charges (per page or part thereof):
£2.50 per copy
Administrative/retrieval time £20 per hour
Postage and packing at cost
A minimum charge of £10 will apply.

Didn’t seem very reasonable to me. Unless council minutes are being written out by hand or formatted on a typewriter, a reasonable person might expect that the council use modern word processing and already internally hold electronic copies of their minutes, perhaps as Microsoft Word documents or PDF files! The very helpful ICO website pointed me towards Section 11(1) of the Freedom of Information Act that states:

Where, on making his request for information, the applicant expresses a preference for communication the authority shall so far as is reasonably practicable give effect to that preference.

Many public authorities offer an Internal Review “appeal” process that allows someone independent of the original respondent to reassess the decision to withhold information - and avoids objections reaching the official ICO complaint process too quickly!

So in the strong likelihood of electronic copies being internally available, I asked them to consider whether it would be reasonably practical for the Council to forward them to me by email as requested.

The full response to the internal review of the issue stated

Copies of the minutes from January to May/June 2009 are attached to this email.

It should be noted that the attached PDFs were scans of the printed minutes, not searchable without OCR!

Remarkably, it took exactly twenty days for their response to the internal review - once again missing the spirit of the ICO’s expectation that “internal reviews should also be completed promptly”.

Do you have an offline policy?

Intrigued that there didn’t seem to be any increase in the information published online in the six and a half years since their Publication Scheme was issued in January 2003, I also asked whether it was their policy to not make this information online.

Can you provide documentation (not limited to council or committee minutes) that explain the council's strategy and policy on access to council services through online/web by rate payers within the Magherafelt Council area.

The reply:

The Council does not hold the information requested.

This didn’t feel quite right.

Given the very rapid and last minute response to my request, I feels likely that little effort was able to be put into discovering the evidence to answer question five.
Magherafelt District Councils Publication Scheme is dated January 2003 and specifically rules that some information is available online on the council website and some is not.
The Council’s website was revamped in the six and a half years subsequent to the Publication Scheme being issued. The 2007 copyright notice at the bottom of each website is one such clue. Difficult to believe that decisions were not made and documented about what council services would be made available online as part of the process of tendering or specifying the requirements for the revised Council website.
And it is difficult to believe that the Publication Scheme has not been formally reviewed (even if left unchanged) in the six and half years subsequent to its publication, resulting in discussion and note of whether to extend the material or services made available online.

To still have so little information and so few services available online perhaps points to a deliberate and continued strategy that is likely to have been reviewed and renewed at intervals. So I asked whether they would reconsider their response to question five in case a less cursory search would show that they did hold discoverable information that explained the council’s strategy and policy on access to council services through online/web. Alternatively, they might want to confirm the kind of assets did not hold this information.

All council policies and strategies are approved by council and as such would be recorded in council minutes. A search of the council minutes indicates that council does not hold the information requested. However extracts from the council minutes, as listed below, indicates what might be considered aspects of a policy:
Meeting 08/03/2005 – It was resolved that arrangements be made for the Minutes of Council meetings to be put on the Council’s website as soon as possible.

Meeting 13/11/2007 - It was resolved that the council would only allow external links to official Government websites.

Meeting 17/01/2006 – It was noted that Mr Johnston advised that they were acutely aware that a number of the members had expressed concerns regarding the standard and level of presentation on the council’s website. He reported that following internal discussions regarding this matter the Chief Executive had instructed each department to visit their section of the website on a monthly basis and provide updates as appropriate.

So there was more information not provided in the response to the original FOI request. And although the council resolved in March 2005 to publish Council minutes on their website as soon as possible, four and a half years later, they still haven’t managed it.

Picking on Magherafelt District Council might seem a bit unfair. It’s a reasonable case-study into what happens when you apply FOI, and then request an internal review. Magherafelt are not the only web-averse Council. Castlereagh Borough Council - due to merge with Lisburn City Council - doesn’t publish a calendar of meetings or any minutes online.

Firstly, hats off to Lisburn City Council

And despite asking Lisburn City Council back at the beginning of September (and chasing a couple of weeks ago) whether they would consider publishing details of the Lisburn/Castlereagh transition meetings (visited last week by Lisburn councillor Edwin Poots in his guise as Environment Minister, but normally doesn’t publish its timetable of meetings, location or minutes) - as they promised to do in a public press release - they have still to formally respond.

DPP website update: still offline

2009-10-25T19:28:00.005Z

At the end of September I mentioned in a post that the District Policing Partnership websites were no longer just not being updated, but were in fact totally offline.

Three and a half weeks later, and they’re still not online. And there’s still no mention of alternative contact details on the “temporarily unavailable” banner. (Google’s cache of the old Contact Us page will help if you need to contact them in the meantime!)

My understanding is that as part of upgrading the old DPP website and moving it from its external host to run inside a NI Civil Service data centre, they ran into problems complying with the very strict security requirements for operating in this new environment.

Incredibly, it has taken well over a month to sort out the problem, on top of the website freeze of many months before that. Few commercial organisations would tolerate such a prolonged outage. A while the world may not stop rotating with the unavailability of DPP information, as tax payers we are underwriting their funding.

And it all falls very short of the NI Policing Board’s own (April 2008) DPP Code of Practice that expects

Reports of Meetings in Public
... Not later than 7 working days after the report of the meeting in public of a DPP has been formally ratified, the report must be available on the DPP website

The Black Void - Miroslaw Balka - How It Is - Tate Modern (The Unilever Series)

2009-10-25T13:02:00.000Z

I used to spend quite a lot of time with work in London. One upside to the travelling was the ability to keep track of the kind of cultural events that you normally hear about on the news but never stand a chance to experience in Northern Ireland. One such annual tease is the opening of the latest exhibition in the Tate Modern's enormous Turbine Hall.

Back in October 2006, I stumbled upon the press preview of Carsten Höller's Helter Skelter slides and got some early snaps of adult playground.

The next year, Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth consisted of a large crack running the full length of the Turbine Hall's floor. I completely missed last year's Unilever Series exhibition.

However, last week, I spent two days in a workshop in a building that has great views of the Tate Modern across on the other side of the River Thames. So one day at lunchtime I wandered over the Millennium Bridge to investigate this year's madness.

Set on stilts, and called How It Is, Miroslaw Balka has built a huge steel box in the back half of the Turbine Hall, away from the sunlight that streams in the open entrance at the other end. You enter by walking up the gently sloping ramp, and then proceed into the dark void.

As you move in, your eyes adjust to the darkness, and you start to make out other people inside the space. Its walls are covered with soft felt, its roof some eleven or more metres above your head. I walked, drawn into the structure, curious what was at the far end.

For me, the far end arrived with a surprise and a bump as I literally walked into the back wall. And there I stood for a while, looking back at the other people coming up the ramp and gradually being sucked into the darkness.

Walking over to one side, even though I thought I could see the wall, I still bumped into it - perspective and distance are hard to judge when all you've got is black felt to focus on in next to no light!

And in the midst of the normally hands-off London where people pack tube carriages like sardines but still don't acknowledge the existence of any fellow passengers, there was a softening as people brushed against each other or bumped into each other in the dark. "Oh, sorry" people giggled as they collided and passed. Somehow the removal of colour and vision humanised the normally frigid London.

It was lunchtime, and there were a couple of school groups exploring the exhibition. Some people taking flash photos - which makes for a bad photo as well as ruining other visitors' night vision.

On the outside, the 30m long structure seems large. Yet inside in the dark, it has a smaller more intimate feel. Part of me suspected that there's a false back wall? But perhaps not.

Somewhere between art and architecture, what does the dark void ask or say? To me, it makes be wonder about people who find themselves locked in darkness - whether kidnapped or prisioners. People who feel depressed and emotionally dark. Blindness.

This Is What We Sang

2009-10-24T22:20:00.001+01:00

Belfast Synagogue has been a recurring location in my life over the past few years. I’ve toured it, been to a concert in it, and on Wednesday night returned to see the play This Is What We Sang as part of the 2009 Belfast Festival at Queen’s.

Written by Gavin Kostick, the play looks back at the story of a Jewish family in Belfast. Kabosh Theatre Company specialise in drama constructed for a particular space, and the 1960s synagogue is a marvellous setting.

With their white clothes shining in the limited spotlights, the five characters remain on the stages constructed around the synagogue throughout the single act performance. First to speak, Lev’s back story begins with his arrival on a boat into Hull rather than New York. Landing short he felt swindled.

“Hull, a stinky smelly place ... worse than Manchester.”

His opening monologue charts how he moved across to Belfast, along with his brother. While Saul‘s gift was music and revolving around singing in the synagogue, Lev went into partnership with a local furniture maker, building up a good business, and buying a three bedroom house. But aged 39, affluent and single, he travelled across to Leeds to meet 23 year old Hannah.

For her it was love at first sight ... when she saw Lev’s brother Saul at Belfast dock. But she stuck with Lev, and had a double wedding with her sister who married Saul. And so the foundation for the dramatic tension is laid.

The only present-day character is Bill - Lev’s great grandson. Laid off from the collapsed Lehman Brothers, he’s come to Belfast at the request of his dying Great Aunt Sissy, Lev’s daughter. Single all her life, she’s putting her estate into order.

It is as Bill explores Sissy’s life story that the audience learns about the complexity of the other characters lives. There’s a steady pace as the layers build up: marriage, children, betrayal, loyalty, death. Each character starts off talking about what they might repent of. For many there are certainly regrets. But repentance is harder. Near the end, Bill explains:

“Who am I to judge? Do I have a right to say this was a good thing to do; this a bad; so and so was a good person; so and so was wicked? What can you say? That they lived. They were here. They did the best they could. in the time they were in.
When I come to the end of my days and my story is told, will I abide the account? But I have no desire to get to the end of my days yet. You know you can’t put right what was done wrong.
Atonement - it’s too big for me.”

Yet in the process of exploring his family’s past, the contract-driven, legally minded Bill discovers a freedom from duty and a joy in being driven by feelings rather than results. And perhaps his new approach to life is a form of atonement for his past career.

One actor never speaks. Saul sits and stands in the middle. As cantor, he rises to sing at various points in the play. We know that he’s poor but happy. No gets rich being cantor, but the Jewish community value him. He’s crucial to the family’s story, yet he remains a mystery. Only expressing himself - beautifully - through song.

It’s an excellent play, with minimal cast and set. A docu-drama in which whilst the unravelling family tale is fictional, the geographic and historical scaffolding is true. As the play unfolds, you hear about Rabbi Hertzog (who went on be Chief Rabbi of Israel while his son became President of Israel), the Millisle Farm (that sheltered Eastern European children from Jewish families during the Second World War), the Belfast Blitz as well as customs and traditions from Jewish culture. The information is dropped into the dialogue quite naturally, and you come out feeling better informed rather than formally educated.

There are still some tickets available for performances next week. It’s well worth a trip up to Somerton Road to see.

District 9 - catch it if you dare

2009-10-23T23:14:00.001+01:00

I came to it cold. Prompted by remembering that someone had said it was a must see film, and finding an Odeon guest pass tucked in beside my Oyster Card, I sat down in screen 3 last night totally unprepared for what unfolded during the next two hours.

As the opening titles flick across the screen, it’s initially comforting that Peter Jackson is in charge. South Africa, Johannesburg. It’ll be a story about hardship in a township, contrasted with wild animals and state brutality, I thought. Not a million miles away from the actual plot ... though completely missing the alien connection.

An alien ship appeared over Johannesburg, and remained there, hovering above the city. Curiosity got the better of them, and the military flew up, broke in, and’ discovered a ship full of malnourished aliens. They rescued them, ferrying them down by helicopter to the ground.

Hospitality extended to building a camp in the city’s District 9 slum to house the newcomers, fencing and barbed wire to keep them separate. Gangly, with crustacean-like exoskeleton and facial fronds, the aliens were nicknamed “prawns”.

And then it’s as if apartheid is happening all over again. Except as Peter Bradshaw points out in the Guardian’s review:

But just as no one in EastEnders watches EastEnders, no one notices the apartheid parallel here and gasps: “Hah ah-roneeck!”

Dehumanisation. Segregation. Prejudice. Community tension. A black market underworld emerges. Nigerians enter District 9 and trade meat and cat food for alien firearms. (No surprise that District 9 is banned from cinemas in Nigeria!) Though there’s some kind of biological trigger that means humans can’t fire the powerful weaponry.

After twenty years of squalor and deprivation, the city decides to move the alien refuge camp out of town. Eviction notices will be served on the million or so dwellings in District 9, giving 24 hours warning of the move outside the city boundaries to District 10 - more like a concentration camp with its tiny tents and zero facilities. IMDB reveals unexpected parallels between this allegory and real life:

“All the shacks in District 9 were actual shacks that exists in a section of Johannesburg which were to be evacuated and the residents moved to better government housing, paralleling the events in the film. Also paralleling, the residents had not actually been moved out before filming began. The only shack that was created solely for filming was Christopher Johnson's shack.”

An unlikely leader, Wikus Van De Merwe is put in charge of the process. Accompanied by the Blackwater-like private corporate militia and expecting trouble, Wikus and his co-workers go door to door getting alien scribbles on the eviction notices. Trouble flares. Arms dumps, contraband, resistance. Searching for weapons, Wikus unintentionally inhales a strange substance and that’s when everything changes for him and the film’s plot crunches into top gear.

No longer the top dog, and on the run, cinema goers get a chance to figure out their stance on bio-ethics while Wikus reconsiders his own relationship with the refuge aliens. He needs their help, and they need him. Family bonds, trust, misinformation, aggression: it’s all flying around in the maelstrom of inter-planetary hostility.

“I will fix you , but first I must fix my people”

states an alien - with the perhaps unlikely name of Christopher Johnson - who’s been working on a cunning plan since they arrived.

It’s a fascinating film, fast paced, and you never quite know what will happen next. It has violence - at times like a gruesome video game as blood and gore splats on the camera lens. There is an enormous amount of CGI, but you’ll hardly notice as the unspeakable horror unfolds.

Man’s inhumanity to man extends to man’s inhumanity to the very aliens they chose to rescue. Replace the aliens with another human ethnic community, and you could be transported to the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, the South Africa I heard about on the radio over breakfast as I got ready for school ... or I’m ashamed to say, maybe even Northern Ireland.

If you can stomach it, go and see this film. (Though I seem to be late to the party and it may no longer be runnign in local cinemas.) And then vow to never allow yourself or others around you perpetrate hatred and segregation. A fine film to see on the evening that Nick Griffin took his seat on the BBC One Question Time panel.ne

The Unforgettable Choir ... choir good, but concert disappointing

2009-10-22T22:55:00.001+01:00

I couldn’t get tickets for the Urban Hymns concert in May Street Presbyterian Church last year, though really enjoyed the fabulous film of the evening that was shown later during Belfast Film Festival.

The idea for Urban Hymns was simple: ask well known singers to sing one of their own songs followed by a cover of a gospel song, both backed by wonderful Inishowen Gospel Choir. The film was spine tingling, and the original concert, with performers in the pulpit and people crammed into the pews must have been an amazing experience.

Monday night’s concert - The Unforgettable Choir - was the reprise as part of the 2009 Belfast Festival at Queen's. Away from the cramped setting of an inner city church, it promised a similar musical format in a larger and more luxurious venue. Belfast City Hall has just reopened after 18 months of renovation, and it has flung open its doors and rooms for Belfast Festival events.

But the Great Hall lacked the intimacy and character of the church. Lots of credit to Stuart Bailie for pulling together a strong line-up. The performances were good, but the audience were distant from the stage, the sound was a bit muddy and the atmosphere was restrained. Last year the guest artists were stuck in the pulpit above and behind the choir. This year the band were tucked in behind the tiered staging creating a strange visual dynamic.

Bronagh Gallagher - the only female artist last year - was back, throwing her heart and soul into a set that didn’t get the audience reaction it deserved. To be honest I didn’t recognise all that many of the names of the performers - I’m obviously not enough of a music nerd to appreciate what I heard. But Bap Kennedy and Henry McCullough (the latter achieving a two-person standing ovation that beat the rest!) were amongst the on-stage talent. Leave me a comment below and I’ll fill in the rest of the names!

As a long time Moya Brennan fan - my claim to fame could be that I once ate a Chinese takeaway in the same kitchen as her - I expected great things from her as she performed the penultimate two songs of the night. Amazing Grace was good, but the song before dragged.

I hope Stuart does it again. The choir are a treasure. Enthusiastic, adventurous and not afraid to sway and dance, given the right material they really lift the performances. But the venue needs rethought. Even the slightly rounded Assembly Buildings with its balcony might work better if numbers are essential to pay for the artists.

Salford, a plane door that wouldn’t close, and a Chinese restaurant with a long memory

2009-10-17T23:26:00.000+01:00

Last week was frantic. On top of a busy week in work, I was over in Salford on Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday. This district of Manchester is part way through a massive regeneration.

Out of the derelict Manchester Docks in the shadow of Old Trafford football ground has emerged Salford Quays. The hotel room overlooked the waterways, modern high rise apartments, The Lowry centre and MediaCityUK.

From the top of The Lowry, the MediaCityUK complex can clearly be seen which will include the BBC buildings that will house five major BBC departments (Sport, 5 Live, Children's programmes, Learning, Future Media & Technology) moving north from London by 2011.

A far cry from the time when it looked like a continuation of the Coronation Street set, and no doubt a considerable distance from redeveloping a thriving local community spirit.

With the alarm clock ringing at 04:15, Thursday morning was meant to involve catching the 06:30 flight from Belfast International to Gatwick, a train journey into Blackfriars, and the start of a two day workshop.

All went well until the hinge broke when a member of the cabin crew who had perhaps breakfasted on spinach closed the front left door. With no spare hinges in stock in Belfast, the solution looked like a short delay while the door was sealed and then everyone piling down to the back of the plane to sit in-between the working over wing and rear emergency exits.

But this fine plan was overruled by the weight distribution graph that predicted that the aircraft’s tail might hit the runway as we took off. So the pilot came out of the cockpit and delivered the bad news from the cabin, explaining all that had gone wrong and the consequences. It was a master-class in how to deliver bad news.

The flight was cancelled, and everyone was ushered back to security to make their way back to a check-in desk to rebook onto later flights. That’s the point that it really all went wrong. Security wouldn’t let us out. Menzies ground staff were scolded for even suggesting we walk back through the security area. Eventually security found a key for a door and escorted us all out to the public concourse.

With half an hour’s notice it all seemed a bit of a shock for the staff when 95 of us arrived at check-in desk 15. Some went home, many of us booked onto the 10:15 to Stansted, and others onto the afternoon flight to Gatwick. While the “happy path” process for boarding a plane seems well understood, the ground crew seemed a lot less sure about the “unhappy path” process to follow when things went wrong.

An hour later, while I sat scoffing the tea and a muffin that a £3 airline food voucher can buy, the tannoy announced a two and a half hour delay to the 10:15 Stansted flight. The plane I’d originally boarded was meant to fly Belfast -> Gatwick -> Belfast -> Stansted. With non plane arriving in Gatwick, there was an inevitable delay moving the “spare” plane down from another airport, which delayed the Gatwick -> Belfast arrival, and consequently delayed my replacement flight to Stansted.

Another voucher, a plane with a standby crew and a front door with a working hinge (pictured), I arrived in central London some six hours after I intended to. The last two hours of the first day’s workshop turned out to be very worthwhile – even though I was exhausted.

The pinnacle of the day was wandering across to Yung’s in Chinatown. They still recognised me and still remembered by usual order. Not bad after a nine month absence.

And back to a grim hotel with a familiar view.

Spot the missing vital fact?

2009-10-17T22:52:00.003+01:00

Flicking through the Lisburn Echo free sheet, this article at the top of page three caught my eye.

Priest Idol returning to resurrect a US church (down the street from the White House)

2009-10-12T21:48:00.006+01:00

Sitting watching William Crawley and Losing Our Religion on BBC One, I came across an article about another holy matter.

If you can remember back to November 2005, Channel 4 ran a short series of three programmes with the slightly disingenuous title of Priest Idol. It focussed on the appointment of a new priest for the Church of England parish of St Mary Magdalene Church in Lundwood, Barnsley.
Like many smaller congregations, it was a shrinking urban church, with an ageing attendance, and buildings in a bad state of repair soaking up money.
James McCaskill took up the challenge and was filmed for the first year as he sought to revive the parish. A sympathetic advertising agency created a set of ideas under the brand Church Lite ...

Over the last few weeks, many churches have been celebrating harvest. This time last year, I posted about James McCaskill who took the Lundwood harvest service to the local Asda supermarket. In an email exchange after that, he explained:

"Our Harvest Service at Asda was an excellent opportunity to encourage our congregation, many of whom were not church goers prior to three years ago, to consider our outreach to the community. We had a successful morning in terms of having many people of the congregation join us at Asda outside the safety of their usual seats in church."
"There were two goals in this exercise. The first was to offer a friendly glimpse of our congregational life for many who find stepping inside a church either a scary or boring experience. The second goal was to collect money for Self Help Africa, a charity that helps farmers in very poor regions of Africa to become self-sustainable."
"It was a learning experience for all us in terms of how we might conduct a similar event in the future and how we might increase our hospitality and our willingness to be flexible in order to communicate better with contemporary society. Bridging the gap between the pew and the community has been a major part of my ministry at Lundwood starting with television cameras and a major marketing firm, but then trying together as a congregation without the bright lights to be flexible, creative and welcoming."

Now the Yorkshire Post brings the news that James McCaskill is moving on from Barnsley to take up the challenge of rejuvenating "a failing congregation in his native America".

Mr McCaskill ... said goodbye at the weekend.
He said he had not taken the decision lightly to leave but said he was looking forward to using the skills and insights learned in Barnsley to help rebuild the congregation at a church in Washington DC – just down the road from the White House. "The past five years in Lundwood have offered some of the most challenging and I think some of the most rewarding experiences I have ever faced.
"Again and again, people ask me 'if it has worked' and my response is that I leave behind a church that is completely transformed compared to the one I first visited in September 2004. The building, the grounds, the congregation, and importantly, the community perception of the church have risen from depths of bleakness to new heights of possibilities and hope for the future."

Good luck James.

Dawn Purvis – PUP leader’s address

2009-10-10T23:06:00.004+01:00

It’s a small party in comparison with the big four (or even the big five), and it won’t get much coverage beyond a few minutes in weekend news bulletins and a report on Sunday’s The Politics Show. But perhaps there’s merit in listening to what the smaller groups have to say?

With the resolutions and motions behind her (including that one), the sessions about restorative justice and education digested, and Denis Bradley’s input carefully listened to, Dawn Purvis closed the PUP’s annual conference with her leader’s address.

For Dawn Purvis it was a year where the peace process moved forward but the Executive didn’t. A year where the UVF and Red Hand Commandos had completed decommissioning and the UDA had made a positive start. A year where “the criminal murders of Sappers Quinsey and Azimkar and of Constable Carroll could have derailed the process”.

She quickly moved to the challenge of “dealing with the past”.

“In order to build a peaceful and stable future we must deal with the issue of our conflicted past ... Loyalism needs ... to get their story out there, to write the agenda, to listen to, and answer those who ask questions in order to meet the needs of a society crying out to move on.”
“People are not born bad, nor did paramilitaries parachute in or land in a rocket from another planet but if you listen to some in the media and some political parties you get no sense of the social, political or economic context in which the conflict took place. You get no sense of the poverty, the slums that passed for houses, the sectarian rants and rabble-rousing politicians ...”
“We cannot allow a one-sided narrative to explain the causes of the conflict in Northern Ireland and we need to get to the point where we recognise and acknowledge the diversity of experiences from the last thirty or more years.”

Turning to the Consultative Group on the Past:

“[they] did a pretty good job of providing us with their honest assessment of what was possible. The ensuing debate over the recommendation for a recognition payment was unfortunate.”
“And whilst I understand the thinking behind the recommendation and I agree with the sentiment I think recognition or acknowledgement comes at the end of a process when you have been presented with evidence or knowledge that there are different experiences of the conflict, but that all hurt is the same. I think at the start of a process people are poles apart.”

She welcomed the efforts of the First and Deputy First Ministers “to secure an acceptable financial package for the devolution of policing and justice” but went on to challenge them:

”Now get on with it!”

Like nearly all the speakers at the party conference, upcoming elections weren’t far from Dawn Purvis’ mind.

“I have a message for the DUP and Sinn Fein – if you engage in out-oranging or out-greening your opponents as part of an election campaign then you make their message relevant and heighten tensions in the community. You need to move away from the politics of fear.”
“Wake up to sectarianism!”

She touched on the inefficient departments with education “split between two”, “planning spread over three departments” and “five departments responsible for some aspect of our economy”. But she was less keen to cut the number of Assembly members (something that was brought up at the recent ill-fated Assembly Roadshow in East Belfast):

“The DUP are arguing that we have too many MLAs at an unnecessary cost to the public. Yet they are the party holding the most multiple mandates.”
“... any reduction in Assembly members below 100 means that it fails to be representative of the whole community. We loose women representatives, we loose the smaller parties and independents – effectively the only opposition that exists in there at the moment. So their policies are about making politics exclusive.”

The speech finished with an articulation of the PUP’s vision:

“A society at peace with itself and its neighbours, where people can live together, go to school together, work together and socialise together. A society that celebrates diversity, promotes human rights and equality and looks after its most vulnerable citizens. We are not idealists but we do have imagination and we do know what can happen when people work together for every section of our divided society.”

While it went on an hour longer than timetabled, for me attending the PUP conference in the capacity of a blogger was an interesting and thought-provoking experience. Conference delegates were more varied than the party’s loyalist working class roots, and the party policies looked beyond their heartland to see vulnerable groups across Northern Ireland. No one and no where seemed out of bounds. Education schemes in Short Strand were celebrated, Denis Bradley was warmly welcomed, and gate-crashing bloggers even got printed copies of the main speeches!