SLUGGER O'TOOLE

The overwhelming majority of police officers are decent, courageous public servants — but a small minority exploit the trust and access of their uniform to prey on vulnerable women seeking help. Rooting them out demands better vetting, sharper supervision, a properly focused Police Ombudsman, and a whole-system commitment to ensuring those entrusted to protect victims are worthy of that trust.

Archive : police vetting

What you need to know Prime Minister Andy Burnham made his first visit to Northern Ireland this week, as part of his cost-of-living “listening tour”. He sought to take the constitutional question “off the table” and focus on bread-and-butter issues instead. However, with Drumcree back in the headlines and Stormont still without an agreed budget, this will be easier said than done. In this week’s blog, my colleague Dr Karli Gibson writes that the Executive’s draft AI Strategy is “another instance of …

Earlier this month, the Executive published its long-awaited draft Artificial Intelligence Strategy . While it recognises that AI can support economic growth and the public sector, the strategy also gives consideration to the vast risks the technology generates. As such, the strategy’s eight principles for responsible AI include human oversight; accountability and redress; data governance; technical safety and security; fairness and transparency; sustainability; societal benefit; and training and literacy. At times, though, there exists a tension between the document’s appropriate caution about AI’s risks and its far greater confidence in AI’s potential. The “tortoise and hare” metaphor has been regularly referenced to describe a mismatch between the …

This year sees a quarter of a century pass since one of the basest, most depraved ‘protests’ in our conflictive history – the Holy Cross ‘protest’ in North Belfast. While there had been a number of shameful protests before Holy Cross, such as the blockading of Ballymena’s Catholic Harryville Church. And after when ‘protestors’ attempted to reignite the sectarian hatred of Holy Cross at the disgraceful Carnmoney Cemetery ‘protests’ a year to the month after Holy Cross had ended. None …

I have been quiet lately as I find the current atmosphere even more depressing than usual. Drumcree was a particularly bleak time in our history and I, like most of us, had assumed the issue was put in a concrete box and dropped somewhere in the middle of Lough Neagh. That unionism is keen to bring back this utterly toxic issue is another example of how useless they are at any strategic thinking. As the old saying goes, “Unionism never …

Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. Seamus Heaney, “Blackberry-Picking” I visited the Seamus Heaney HomePlace this month, and on Bank Holiday Monday found myself out among the hedges picking blackberries, coming home with stained fingers and enough for a pudding. I am eating the last piece as I write this. There’s something genuinely comforting for me in these small, seasonal traditions. I need such mindful distractions, particularly as I watch a …

Some readers may be old enough to remember both a TV series and movie from the 1980’s called Whoops Apocalypse. These were satirical fictions about global catastrophe caused by human carelessness. The narratives concerned chains of events which lead to the detonation of nuclear weapons. In the real world that has always been a possibility. In 1983 a wise and brave man called Stanislav Petrov averted such an accidental catastrophe during the Soviet nuclear false alarm incident. However there seem to be two more significant, …

Pour aul Robbie Butler. Well respected as one of the nicest men in politics there were concerns that he would be completely out of his depth as Health Minister and so it has come to pass. Less than a month into the job, he has pulled a Father Ted and announced yet another review into health services. You might recall me writing about this when Peter Weir was Education Minister. Baron Weir of Ballyholme decided rather than take any useful …

It’s 1987. I’m working in war torn Northern Ireland. Worse, I’m in west Belfast. In a big shopping centre, the first major retail development in that area for decades. The good news is that it’s my week off. I’m listening to Raintown the debut album from Deacon Blue. The album is mainly about Glasgow. It’s dreary. Glasgow, not the album. Belfast too is dreary, but unlike Glasgow, the tribes here are slaughtering each other. Literally. Only half a mile from …