Slugger Podcasts – Slugger O'Toole

The State of the State Report 2025 .

David McCann on March 27, 2025, 4:16 pm

| Readers 969

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Powered by RedCircle The State of the State Report is back for 2025. With a full year of devolution under Northern Ireland’s belt, this report surveys sector leaders in Northern Ireland the public to find out their attitudes towards key issues. Northern Ireland has the biggest appetite for lower taxes of any region in the UK. 42% of people said they favoured lower taxes and lower spending. 27% said they preferred the opposite. For the third year running, the cost-of-living …

Slugger TV talks with Senator Mal O’Hara

David McCann on April 26, 2024, 10:15 am

| Readers 983

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Slugger TV – 26th April 2024 from Northern Visions NVTV on Vimeo. Slugger TV speaks with Green Party Leader, Senator Mal O’Hara about the future of the Greens, remaining in government in the Republic and the party’s strategy going into GE 2024. David McCannDavid McCann holds a PhD in North-South relations from University of Ulster. You can follow him on twitter @dmcbfs

Slugger Podcast: Looking at the boundaries for #GE24

David McCann on October 17, 2023, 12:44 pm

| Readers 6744

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David McCann and Peter Donaghy look at how the proposed new constituency boundaries could impact the next election results in Northern Ireland David McCannDavid McCann holds a PhD in North-South relations from University of Ulster. You can follow him on twitter @dmcbfs

Slugger Podcast: The Crisis in the GP service…

Brian O'Neill on December 1, 2022, 10:37 am

| Readers 1079

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In this episode, we discuss the crisis in the GP service in Northern Ireland. What are the issues, and more importantly, what do we need to do to address the problems? My guests his guests are: Dr. Michael McKenna – A Belfast GP. Prof. Ciaran O’Neill – A Economist from Queen’s University Belfast specialising in health. Michael Donnelly – a facilitator with Future Search who works on helping groups address complex problems in society. You can listen and subscribe to …

Slugger podcast: What is behind the University Strike Action? With Professor Dominic Bryan…

Brian O'Neill on November 25, 2022, 10:28 am

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This week University staff are on strike across the UK. I talked to Professor Dominic Bryan from Queen’s University Belfast about the reasons for the University Strike Action. We also talk about the increasing commercialisation of education. The two main issues are: Pensions: this is the usual story of being asked to contribute more to their pension scheme but getting less out of it when they retire. Pay: they are looking a 12% pay rise. When you consider that inflation …

Slugger Podcast looks at the State of the State

David McCann on November 11, 2022, 12:45 pm

| Readers 1152

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Powered by RedCircle The Slugger Podcast is back! In this episode, we are looking at the State of the State report which surveys the attitudes and opinions of sector leaders and the public about how they think things are going in the UK. we speak with Ed Roddis, Head of Public Sector Research and Marie Doyle, Partner at Deloitte This report is published by Deloitte, which surveys these attitudes every year. The research includes a survey by Ipsos UK of …

The Birthday Lunch…

Lynda Tavakoli on January 16, 2022, 8:00 am

| Readers 882

restaurant, street cafe, loaf

She was waiting for me, sitting at a picnic table in the dappled shade of a silver birch, its leaves delicately coloured the new green of spring that we’d both come to value and love. Gravel crackled and scrunched beneath the soles of my shoes as I walked the final few yards along the path to meet her and I could feel the first real warmth of a May sun seeping through my jacket and deep into my back. It …

#TheReset Podcast: “Why can’t government do things (anymore)”?

Mick Fealty on October 28, 2020, 1:41 pm

| Readers 1441

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Ed Straw has been in and around government and state led projects for a large part of his later working life. He has also been involved with the UK Labour Party using his trained engineer’s eye to look at how things work. His new book throws new light on the problem of poor “government agency”. Powered by RedCircle In it we cover: Governments are hooked on a systematic approach which assumes society remains as simple as it once was. This results …

#TheReset: NI’s opportunity lies in attracting new people as well as new jobs

Mick Fealty on October 21, 2020, 7:29 am

| Readers 1022

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Today I spoke with my old friend and Lagan College alumnus Shane Greer, who now owns and publishes Campaigns and Elections Magazine and lives and works in Washington DC about whether in order for Northern Ireland to get a good reset we need to think more globally, not to mention bigly. The main impetus for the start of the discussion was his recent Reset essay on what he sees as a live opportunity to exploit the new home working arrangements …

Siobhan O’Neill on the need to develop “pack leaders” at every level of society in our responses to Covid 19…

Mick Fealty on October 14, 2020, 3:44 pm

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Now today’s Cargo of Bricks with Siobhan O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s mental health champion was recorded before this morning’s announcement of a four-week circuit breaker lockdown, which in reality is some way short of the near-total lockdown we had in Spring. But in today’s podcast, we cover what we have learned so far and what are the issues that come with facing the uncertainty of a second wave and trying to balance a number of factors external to the core concern …

Covid has unleashed a vast global economic experiment, #CargoOfBricks…

Mick Fealty on October 7, 2020, 6:38 pm

| Readers 1293

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In today’s Cargo of Bricks, we take our first look at how the southern economy is coping with the shocks to the labour market in particular. With my guest Dan O’Brien, chief economist at the IIEA in Dublin we cover… Powered by RedCircle It is absolutely impossible to read too far into the success or failure of what amounts to ‘the biggest social policy or political experiment in decades’. Government is able to hold to it’s massive intervention in the …

#CargoOfBricks: Strategic response needed from Stormont for “education leavers”

Mick Fealty on September 30, 2020, 8:00 am

| Readers 571

One of the key reasons for having #TheReset project in a space like Slugger is to look behind the headlines and try to assay the effects of the Covid emergency, not just in health, but in other key areas of life. As we prepare for a second wave, the effects on those leaving education are acute. So this week I spoke to Professor of Education Tony Gallagher, to get his take on what that means in practice… Powered by RedCircle …

#TheReset Podcast – Steve Bradley on the future of Derry…

Brian O'Neill on September 20, 2020, 9:13 am

| Readers 2634

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Steve Bradley is a regeneration consultant, you can follow him on Twitter. Steve is a very popular writer on Slugger with some of his posts getting over 40k readers, you can view an archive of his posts here. In this podcast, we discuss the future of Derry and the Northwest. In particular, we discuss: The future of Ulster University in Derry or lack thereof The potential for an independent University How Covid-19 will affect Derry, in particular, fewer people having …

#TheReset: What does Jürgen Klopp have to do with democratic renewal? #CargoOfBricks #Podcast

Mick Fealty on September 16, 2020, 7:00 am

| Readers 927

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Do we need a re-set in political culture? We often tie ourselves in knots thinking that Northern Ireland is an exception to the rest of the world, but this week’s guest on #CargoOfBricks Richard Wilson’s experience is much broader and he thinks politicians are falling far short of current needs. Powered by RedCircle In it we cover… How our Victorian ideas of how representative democracy actually works are being quickly outrun by a connected electorate which is losing its patience …

#TheReset: Sheer fluidity of technological change means our cultural industries should be more central than ever

Mick Fealty on September 9, 2020, 6:58 am

| Readers 557

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It’s hard to think of a working sector in society that delivers quite so much social, cultural, and economic benefits to society at large but where the living for those talented individuals who often devote their lives to it is quite so precarious than in the Arts and Cultural industries. In today’s Cargo of Bricks, I speak to Ali FitzGibbon and discover how the long slow and steady bottom-up development of Northern Ireland’s cultural industries over the last thirty years …

#TheReset: Time to wake up to Covid’s economic challenges and get beyond our long sleepy capture by the Status Quo…

Mick Fealty on September 2, 2020, 7:00 am

| Readers 1230

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And after a brief break after the first series of the Cargo Of Bricks, we start the second series in partnership with Ulster Bank with a brief introduction from Richard Ramsey to the Reset Project, an overview of where Northern Ireland finds itself regarding Covid and how to get involved in #TheReset. Powered by RedCircle In it he covers… How politicians need to take heart from their ability to work under the pressure of the crisis and change things that …

#InConversation Podcast with Professor David Rooney from Queen’s about renewable energy and electric cars…

Brian O'Neill on August 29, 2020, 9:48 am

| Readers 974

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David Rooney is a Professor in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast. In this podcast, we chat about improvements in battery technology and how this will affect the growth of electric cars. We also discuss Hydrogen as a fuel source for transport. Already nearly 50% of the electricity generated in Northern Ireland comes from renewable sources and this figure will continue to rise. We discuss new ways of generating electric such as anaerobic digestion and …

#InConversation podcast with Tim Attwood on the life and legacy of John Hume…

Brian O'Neill on August 22, 2020, 9:24 am

| Readers 991

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Tim Attwood was an SDLP councillor and party worker who knew John Hume well. We discuss Hume’s early years, the setting up the Derry credit Union as well and John’s business ventures with a Donegal Fish Smoking House. We move on to the importance Hume placed on his Irish American connections and how he saw it as crucial to get investment into Northern Ireland. We also discuss what Hume was like at a personal level. His sweet tooth and love …

#InConversation podcast with Greg Keeffe from Queen’s about rebuilding our cities and societies after Covid-19…

Brian O'Neill on August 15, 2020, 7:47 am

| Readers 386

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Greg is one of my favourite guests. He is a very imaginative thinker who really makes you see the world in a new light. He has a very down to earth casual manner that explains complex topics is an accessible way. You will be guaranteed to learn something interesting from our chat. Greg is Head of the School of Natural and Built Environment. He is an academic and urban designer with 25 years of experience. In this podcast we chat …

#InConversation Podcast with Michael McCoy. From the Ormeau Road to Tokyo and other tales…

Brian O'Neill on August 8, 2020, 2:54 pm

| Readers 661

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Michael is a regular in the comments, I thought to myself a chat with a Belfast guy who now lives in Japan would make a great podcast. Originally from the Ormeau Road in Belfast, Michael McCoy has lived in Japan for the past 30 years where he works as an executive coach. In this conversation, we discuss growing up in Belfast in the 1970s as well as getting his take on Brexit and what we need to do to stimulate …