Those Hatfield House Talks
The ones between Friends of the Union and Lord Cranbourne in November 1998 of course.
The Wave Belfast
After two years of Ringing the Changes, campaigners will mark this year’s International Day of Action on Climate Change, on Saturday 5 December, by surfing The Wave of desire for a just international treaty at Copenhagen.
At an outdoor concert and mass action, organised by Stop Climate Chaos Northern Ireland, activists will get the opportunity to enjoy great music and take part in a visually impressive display of support for strong, government-led action on climate change.
The event will take place in Bank Square in Belfast city centre – just behind Tesco and right next to the famous Kelly’s Cellars pub – from 1pm onwards.
Acts confirmed so far include: violinist/composer Ruby Colley; singer/songwriter Ken Haddock; and multi cultural music collective Beyond Skin. Radio Ulster DJ Joe Lindsay will compere the event.
Those wishing to participate in the event are asked to bring along anything blue that can be held aloft during the action. People can dress in blue or paint their faces or hands blue.
Come together to stop climate chaos
Atheist advertising
Apparently the above billboard has just been erected by the British Humanist Association on Great Victoria Street (and in a few locations on the island next door) – cue great consternation and denunciations from the usual quarter.
According the BHA the idea behind it is “The billboards are being unveiled to coincide with Universal Children’s Day, 20 November, which is the United Nations ‘day of worldwide fraternity and understanding between children’. Labelling children as if they innately “belong” to a particular religion, while ascribing incompatible beliefs to infants who “belong” to other religions, can only serve as an obstacle to understanding between children around the world”
I wonder if they know what they’re up against
John Hume on Credit Unions and Housing Associations
John Hume speaking here
When I come home from university, of course, I thought that I had a duty to help those that weren’t as lucky as I was. And, the first thing I did was not — I wasn’t getting involved in politics, because the politics of those days was basically flag-waving and I had always felt politics should be about the living standards of people. But, when I come home, I wasn’t interested in politics in those days, but I was interested in helping people, and I got involved in the Foundation of the Credit Union movement. And, of all the things I’ve been doing, it’s the thing I’m proudest of because no movement has done more good for the people of Ireland, north and south, than the credit union movement.
Before the arrival of the Credit Union, people who were from the poor background or a working class background couldn’t borrow from banks. Banks wouldn’t have them, and when they needed to borrow money for rearing their children and for furniture, et cetera, for normal things, then the methodology in those days was either from loan sharks or from pawn shops. And, of course, that meant that people were made poorer by all of that, particularly by the charge of loan sharks. So, what the Credit Union movement did, of course, was not only help the ordinary people to have the true value of whatever their income was, but it helped local business, small business, as well, because the money that would have left your city in loan charges remained and were spent. Therefore — I mean, when we started the Credit Union in those early days, the first few meetings, a few people joined, but very soon it spread rapidly. And today, that Credit Union — which I was involved in starting in 1960 — has 22,000 members, and has something over 40 million pounds in savings of the people. And, of course, all over Ireland today, there’s 2.2 million members in Credit Union in a population of five million, and I am very proud that I was President of the Credit Union League of Ireland, of the whole of Ireland, when I was 27 years old.
What I got involved in was founding a housing association to build our own houses in the same manner as the Credit Union, but in the first year or so, we housed about 100 families. Then I put in a plan to build 700 houses, and the local politicians wouldn’t give us planning permission because it would upset the voting balance in their gerrymandered system, and that led me straight into politics, led me straight into the civil rights movement. And of course, in the 1960s, civil rights was very much in the international news because of the leadership of Martin Luther King in the United States, and that had a very major influence on people like myself, and we got involved in the civil rights movement, seeking equality of treatment for all sections of our people, and of course, my involvement in the civil rights movement led me straight into politics.
