Basically @deptinfra has done nothing to support cycling and walking. Truly shocking NIAO report with huge costs loaded onto health and environmental damage and zero accountability. www.niauditoffice.gov.uk/files/niaudi...

Great launch of our Taking Boys Seriously Art Exhibition in the Great Hall of @UlsterUni in Derry-Londonderry this morning. Perspectives,Voices and Images to be displayed to the public in the Train Station.

Students moving in: stocking up for a long winter at the cash and carry open night!

One small step for Hill Street: maybe a giant leap for Belfast? Good News at last. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Each alleged mass shooter is even more On the Computer All the Time than the previous one. Probably nothing to worry about there

If Americans won’t or can’t limit gun ownership when their children are being killed and there is a universal sense of tragedy, why would they limit guns when the targets are political and contentious figures? This is existential.

This is how you protect your democracy. The US is a demonstration of what happens when you don't. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/o...

Everybody in NI politics needs to make clear that violence against people of colour is incompatible with civilisation let alone culture and everybody in a church should be repeating that it is incompatible with Christianity. Violence should be a red line. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The predators alliance. A view from Paris.

Farming in NI is going to have you change fast. What has happened to Lough Neagh - and the refusal you prioritise doing anything about it by DUP and SF Ministers- is an inter- generational scandal. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Farage can explode or dump the GFA-seems rash. He can also drive a new majority in Northern Ireland for a United Ireland- maybe what he wants? Or he can turn the Irish Sea border into a trench- harder to sell. But he cannot negotiate human rights out of law making or policing- nobody to talk to.

It is unfathomable to me that western politicians have not found a way to distinguish the cruelty of what is happening in Gaza from self-defence after 2 years. In turning a blind eye to killing on this scale, every tyrant in the future has a new precedent- and international law appears impotent.

After Hiroshima, the only way to stop escalation to the extremes is to find ways to escape our conflicts before they escalate to the extremes. Otherwise, ‘doing what it takes’ means justifying mass slaughter as ‘collateral’ to a higher end

80 years today since the world lost its innocence about the potential for human beings to destroy all human life. news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi...

So, it can be done. No traffic-related deaths in a year in a city of 700,000. www.politico.eu/article/hels...

Torture is playing out in front of our eyes in real time. We cannot avert our eyes or pretend we didn’t see. I feel like a complicit bystander every day now. Surely no security rationale justifies this? For the sake of all our futures , we need action not words now. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The failure to stop the starvation of Gaza is one of the disasters of our time. On top of the appalling civilian suffering, the collapse of any reality to the concept of an ‘international community’ will haunt us for years. And Israel’s isolation will deepen.

Build it and they will come.

Hard to think of a more diabolical image. We are losing a grip on our humanity.

Turner skies not sweltering heat in Belfast tonight

The failure of a government Department to pay attention to its own laws and rules once is unfortunate, the failure to do it time and time again is careless. www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/courts/...

Getting to the shocking human, social and economic cost of racially-motivated violence in NI at today’s seminar on ‘Planning our way out of Division’ @ulsteruni.bsky.social Despair and determination.

Not normally in the Taliban about these issues- but this is a crime against the apostrophe…

This is a problem of adult origin: some of us are giving children the idea that attacking their peers is is acceptable behaviour. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Just returned from the hospital where my sister is seriously ill and being intensively cared for by nurses and staff who came here from Africa and Asia. Doing the night shift. So this is unbearable, shameful actually. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

As I walked out by Annadale this morning.. I saw a visitor

Excellent Conference of the European University Information Systems (EUNIS) @ulsteruni.bsky.social this week. Vital discussions and signposts on the future of AI, education, engagement and ethics which should be part of a wider conversation. Great graphic recording by Ruth Graham. #EUNIS25

It's King Kong vs Godzilla all over again, isn't it...

I'm just glad one of these men has the nuclear codes and the other has all our personal data.

Only one sun in these two solar systems - but even quicker fallout than anticipated. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06...

I’m convinced the association of cycling with the carry basket more than with lycra is a key step in normalising it as an everyday activity for all ages and genders. Not getting into the hemet debate -but few on view in Meran/o last week while the off-road tracks were brilliant.

Ken Bloomfield was a crucial advocate for change in NI from within the system. His work after retirement was groundbreaking, especially in relation to victims. Along with Maurice Hayes and George Quigley he was a key public servant enabling NI’s transition in the 1990s.

Great turnout for the Taking Boys Seriously Educators Conference @ulsteruni.bsky.social Focussing on how to engage with boys and young men in a time if significant challenges for boys in education

The problem with the UK's trade deals isn't the negotiating agility of the government. It is the strategic weakness of the UK's position. Neither the deal with the US nor with the EU restored the status quo of previous years: they may limit the damage but they do not erase it.

Closer alignment has been the solution to the Irish Sea border since the beginning. Good to see reality catching up.

The starvation of Gaza in front of our eyes without a significant action from anyone to stop the onslaught has become both a crime and an unbearable stain on every western state. www.lemonde.fr/en/internati...

Posting this weather forecast for Belfast as proof that it actually happened..

Sunshine days in Belfast: City Hall, St Anne’s Cathedral, St Patricks and Carlisle Memorial while Napoleon sleeps on Cave Hill. Views from @ulsteruni.bsky.social

The failure to pedestrianise Hill St is genuinely bizarre. It would cost next to nothing and all the key stakeholders want it: but for some reason Ministers won’t budge. What explains this? www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/colu...

Dancing on the street in the sunshine 🌞 to celebrate 50years of a Ballynafeigh Community House and one if the most successful community-based intercultural districts in Belfast. A genuinely remarkable story.

On the banks of the Foyle this morning

A man with literally no concern for others. Quite remarkably infantile. And actually mad.

The UK Labour Party now has two role models and fewer excuses.

After Canada, now Australia votes against the right. And, as in Canada the opposition leader loses his seat.

Labour home in Australia as Liberal leader Peter Dutton loses his seat.

Labour's biggest issue is neither being too socially conserative or not socially conservative enough. It's cuts. People have had enough.

America First turns the USA into a threat to everyone else. The paradoxical outcome of Trump's campaign against Canada was to turn the left into the patriots and raise suspicions that the right was soft on the nation - with instant effects in the polls.

The Trump effect onboard the Canadian election as captured by the opinion polls. Has there ever been a similar dramatic electoral effect triggered by a foreign politician?

Well, Canada tells you not to believe the polls 100days before an election. Events, dear boy, events.