Irish radio station 2FM's no old music policy - If I was putting them in the right direction, I wouldn't start from here

Is no old music really the best way to revamp radio?

So Dan Healy is the new boss of 2FM. Right. It’s not an easy job he’s just landed, as 2FM is struggling with a problem substantially worse than being a radio station that everybody hates: it’s a station nobody’s all that bothered about. So what is his first big announcement of regeneration? Songs before 1990 will be generally banned. Oh.

On one level. I can understand the rationale. 2FM is Ireland’s ostensible youth station, hence a music policy that focuses on recent music is the way to reel the 18-34 punters in, right?

There’s just one problem with that point of view: it’s bollocks.

This year, the song of the summer came straight from 1977. A song so catchy and imagination grasping that it’s been made into hours-long mixes featuring the likes of Alan Partridge and Ron F*cking Swanson. It came from an album that features contributions from the guy behind this and this, from a band that derived their name from a magazine review when they were an indie group named after a Beach Boys song. A band, incidentally, who have made their career from taking awesome old songs and making them awesome new songs.

This is also the year of Spike Island, a much-vaunted film inspired by the Madchester scene. Under Healy’s rules, most of the previous work of Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder and Stone Roses, three of the most important musical figures of this year, would be technically banned.

So too would most of Glastonbury’s big hitters this year. Apart from the aforementioned Chic, the likes of the Stones, Public Enemy, Elvis Costello would have a lot of their key work seen as music non grata. Primal Scream and Nick Cave would just about survive. Even the Arctic Monkeys are embracing their retro selves, as Alex Turner looks like a cross between Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent these days. Why is that Public Image Ltd can sit easily with Monsters And Men, or Kenny Rogers followed by Vampire Weekend at the gold standard of music festivals, but not on a national radio station?

This is the thing Dan Healy appears to be overlooking: age and relevance are not the same thing.

When you listen to music on YouTube, or iTunes or Spotify or Grooveshark or the many, many other ways you can circumvent listening to radio these days, you might start contemporary but it won’t be long before you’re referred on to other similar songs or whole playlists full of stuff that may be a good bit older than where you started, but it still holds together. Shouldn’t a radio station do the same? Shouldn’t a radio station be a place where people can hear good music, all kinds of music, and hear skilled presenters enthuse about it and the connections between the artists of today and where they drew their inspiration? Ultimately, despite it being obsessively genrified nowadays there are only two kinds of music, good and bad. Automated algorithms on websites seem to be better at realising this than radio bosses.

So, it seems, are ad men. In recent times songs by Fleetwood Mac, the Bellamy Brothers and Jona Lewie have enjoyed a resurgence due to their use in wildly popular TV ads. The youngest of those songs was released in 1988. We’ve come to the remarkable and preposterous situation where a bank, a mobile company and a Scandinavian warehouse that sells things called Pöpli or whatever have more influence over what we listen to than radio.

If Dan Healy was trying to make a wholesale change to 2FM’s appeal, a bit like when Matthew Bannister led a bonfire of the Smashey and Niceys from BBC Radio 1 in 1993, then this plan of his would make a whole lot more sense. If he genuinely wanted to rebrand 2FM as a brash, unapologetically youthful Radio 1 full of Grimmys, Coxys and Scott Millses, and formally cede the BBC Radio 2 demographics to Today FM, I’d applaud his daring. But he’s also said that he hasn’t thought about a shake-up of presenters, none of whom in the crucial 7am - 7pm timeframe fall into the 18-34 demographic Healy is so keen to attract.

I’m not suggesting that 2FM consistently play oldies of the vintage parodied in clips like this, or have the same old DJ’s trying to be something they’re not (although Terry Wogan as a Garage MC would be a welcome addition to any roster), but an arbitrary ban on music before a certain date is a daft cure based on the wrong diagnosis.

2FM might have its problems, first among them a lack of a compelling identity, and a public perception of calcified indifference .Stopping DJ’s from playing too much Deacon Blue will hardly change that.

Ireland's national broadcaster should not pander to special interests from gay pride to pro-life protests

Gay Pride Dublin 2013

The conservative Catholic cultural commentator and alliteratively described David Quinn had a problem recently. He took exception to 2FM, a constituent radio station of the national broadcaster RTE, being the official media sponsor for Dublin's Pride Festival. Quinn, a vocal opponent of French moves to legalize same sex marriage and, you get the impression, every liberal reform since Vatican II, asked if RTE would do that, why not the next big pro life event? He expanded on this, wondering whether 2FM should also sponsor, say, Muslim and Catholic events.

It's just as well David Quinn is a writer, as with an apples and oranges argument his career as a greengrocer would surely be a disaster.

The notion that a pro-life rally and a gay pride event are remotely analogous is, to be generous, bizarre. A pro-life rally is a nakedly political issue. Gay rights and celebration, while certainly having a political element to it, ought not to be. Gay is also not a religion, and you can participate in a pride march without being gay, welcomed in fact. The same can hardly be said of a "pro-abort" (as some of the Youth Defence crew refer to pro-choicers as) showing up at the Vigil for Life.

Loathsome as it may be for some, Dublin Pride as an event has much more in common with St Patrick's Day or National Healthy Eating Week than, say, the Catholic World Youth Day. It's a community event in a way a life vigil never could be.

I don't doubt the sincerity of the views of Quinn and similar conservative commentators, but you get the opinion when you hear them railing against RTE bias, what they really mean is "Why aren't people listening to and agreeing with us?". In fairness, the same can be said for anyone who rails against bias, it's just they're the worst offenders. Besides, the conservative assessment of RTE as a liberal haven of anti-Catholic bias is pretty much struck dumb by the fact the bells of the Angelus are played on Radio 1. Every single day. Twice.

That's not to say the left-wing doesn't have it's problems with RTE either. A look on the likes of sites like Indymedia cast RTE as the stooge of a massive neo-liberal orthodox establishment. It even gets trouble from the centreground, as this damning video comparing and contrasting the Late Late and Graham Norton shows.

But this is the challenge that public service broadcasting faces. It can't and shouldn't aim to appeal to just a certain section of society, it has to at various points cover everybody. Public service broadcasting  has to be as broad as possible, and yet instructively niche at the same time. You may not always like it, but it would do us all a disservice if a public channel played to the gallery of our preconceptions all the time.

A lot of media commentators often claim that certain opinions or voices shouldn't be heard on the public broadcaster. These same commentators are invariably employed by privately owned media, who seem to think that the airing of views is their gift to dispense. It's not. Public broadcasting is here to serve everyone, either through the proliferation of different voices, wide coverage and, yes, endorsing the odd event, and to do so free of a money-making agenda.

The same day as Dublin's Pride march, across the water at Glastonbury another group concerned with liberation of another kind, Public Enemy, were playing. At one point during the set, Chuck D "I ain't here to sell shit, I am at your service". Assuming you could get that past the censors, it wouldn't be a bad new slogan for RTE.

"Guns & Roses" - How left wing coalition might be Ireland's Labour Party's only hope

Eamon Gilmore discusses the Algerian hostage situation on Irish TV

I was in a hotel room in London last week, and switched on the TV for the news at the time the Algerian hostage crisis was being covered. Half way through the bulletin, I see Eamon Gilmore being interview by a press pack in his capacity as Foreign Affairs Minister. My first instinct was to think, "Oh yeah, that guy. What ever happened him?"

For a while now - specifically, since February 2011 - that question has been reverberating round my head. "What ever happened to Eamon Gilmore?". Or indeed, "What ever happened to the Labour Party?". Despite their best ever showing in an Irish election ever in 2011 they have since gone into hibernation, choosing to prop up the political status quo by going into coalition with Fine Gael rather than taking their place, for the first time ever, as Ireland's main opposition party. Now, you might say that nobody achieves anything in opposition, but then again they haven't achieved anything in power either. Seriously, can you think of anything worthwhile Labour have done in the last two years? Answers on a postcard please.

Their choice to take the leather of ministerial Mercs and office chairs poses a serious problem for the party in this, the year of their 100th anniversary, and indeed beyond. As people cast their minds back to the nostalgia-doused heroism of Connolly and Larkin, today's Labour top brass will look all the more ridiculous and feckless. And as for the next election, the problem gets more serious. If Labour couldn't properly assert themselves with 37 seats at the height of their powers, how will anyone believe they can get anything done after five risible years in power and an inevitably diminished parliamentary presence?

At this stage, there seems to be only one option, one that isn't all that palatable to some, but it's not like Labour have a choice: alliance with Sinn Fein. It won't be easy for the ex-Stickie dominated Labour to countenance a move jokingly referred to as a "Guns & Roses" coalition, but ultimately what choice do they have? The long wished for unification of the left  in Irish politics should and could have happened a few times over in the last two decades, but for Labour to maintain any relevance in the next decade and beyond, they need to become a senior partner in a cogent force advocating genuine social democratic principles. Once the old embarrassments of the Sinn Fein parliamentary party finally stand down, and it's only a matter of time before they do, the only obstacle remaining will be outright snobbery. But if Labour can't detach themselves from their death grasp with Fine Gael for the "politically naive" or "economically illiterate" Sinn Fein, then pride will surely come before a very large fall.

Home thoughts from abroad can cause serious January blues - New year blues for immigrants leaving their families again

Heading back to reality after the holidays can be hard

As I start writing this, on the 6th January, it's not the just the Christmas decorations that are on a come down.

Post-Christmas malaise hitting you like a juggernaut of omni-problems and January's role as an austere counterweight to all the December revelry is a familiar trope and a feeling we're all au fait with, but for the emigrés among us who returned home for the holidays, the feeling hits a little harder.

I, for instance, now living in Manchester, got home for a little over a fortnight. At least, that's what the calendar indicated, but I'm convinced I've been swindled by the space time continuum somehow. There's no possible way that lightning fast pop-my-head-round-the-door of a holiday was 16 days long.

There's a lot to pack in to such a short space of time, and that's what makes that great big expanse of January all the worse. While at least you get some degree of solid family time, it's the important people outside that circle that proves problematic. You try and catch up with all your friends, but inevitably there are a few you can't meet up with, and that's vexing. But what's almost worse is the friends you do see, but just barely. When there are a slew of people you want to catch up with, people you might not have seen in ages, a whistle stop visit a mile wide and an inch deep doesn't really cut it. In the season of goodwill to all, you really want to have time to say more than "Merry Christmas!" to them all.

Meetings can also be bittersweet because the geographical distance can show up other forms of distance. When you don't see someone in ages, and you have a long list of developments to share in a short space of time, the new names and new factors you've been missing out on while away can cause considerable lament.

With the new year rattling inexorably on, full of appraisal and longing as much as hope and resolution, the one thing we in the places we've left behind can resolve to do is make sure the links of our life don't become rusted over. "No man is a failure who has friends", so said Clarence the Angel in the Christmas classic It's A Wonderful Life. The festive season may be over, but the effort to make time for the people who matter to us most shouldn't stop, whatever the time, and wherever you are.

2012 a tale of two Northern Irelands - from the celebrations of the Queen's Jubilee and the Olympics to the violent Union flag protests

Protesters with covered faces object to the removal of the Union flag from Belfast City Hall

I lived the vast majority of this year in Belfast, and a very happy time, for the most part, it was too. It was a very busy year, with "Our Time, Our Place" posters strewn about the place, Titanic and Solemn League & Covenant centenary celebrations, and a Diamond Jubilee revelry in there for good measure.

In July, Martin McGuinness even shook hands with the Queen. At the height of summer, City Hall was baked in sunshine as it blasted out the Olympics from their jumbo screens. It seemed that Belfast, and Northern Ireland as a whole, had genuinely moved on and was realizing its potential as a modern, vibrant, confident city. But just under the surface, something was amiss.

In the aftermath of Belfast City Council's decision to only fly the Union flag only on special occasions, what quickly became known as the "Flegs" debacle soon exploded in everybody's face, and still drags on as we speak. The effects are palpable and varied. Not only is it having an adverse affect on business, the Christmas market, shopping and a general ability to get on with life, but the violence was so bad at one point that Childline had to vacate their building for a time. Sure, some vulnerable kids might not have been able to get through to someone they needed to talk to, but hey, it'll be worth it if those brave loyalist souls get their flag back!

While the violence and laughable uproar has caused a flare-up the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time, the underlying problems did show themselves earlier in the year. In May, perennial agitant Willie Frazer sounded off about a primary school in Tyrone having an Irish flag outside, suggesting the IRA was training kids to use weapons in there. Except, possessing narrow vision to match his narrow mind, it wasn't the Irish flag he saw, but the Italian. It was there as part of school project, along with the Polish and Turkish flags which he somehow missed.

This year also had people on the other side of the fence fulminating over Rory McIlroy daring to say he felt British. Honestly, the gall of him! You'd think a man raised Catholic would know better! Following his revelation next came the inevitable boycott campaigns, which mercifully gained negligible purchase. And in fact, amdist the depressing elements of community relations this year, that is something we can take a positive from.

In times past, such altercations and conflagrations such as this would carry with it a certain degree of community justification, as ammunition in an eternal rally of "Whatabouttery". But in today's Northern Ireland at least the daft actions of the 1% are ridiculed by the rest of us. All progress, so it's said, depends on the unreasonable man.Northern Ireland has made great progress in this last year, sportingly,civically, commemoratively, things we can be proud of and build on for 2013. It's important we don't let the unreasonable flag-beaters undo it all.

The Irish langauge, the X-Case and youth voices heard: Being Young And Irish Seminar concludes

President Higgins with participants at the Young and Irish Seminar
with the Minister for Children , Frances Fitzgerald

After months of preparation, discussion and debate, President Michael D Higgins’ much-vaunted Being Young And Irish seminar season reached its culmination at Áras An Uachtaráin on Saturday 17^th November. And what a day it was.

Scores of young people from all over the country came to the Hyde Room to issue the “Take Charge of Change” Declaration, the piece de résistance of a lengthy consultation that took in the  views of nearly a thousand young people at home and abroad.

A building as grand as the Áras is pretty good impetus for work on that scale, but moreso is a speech from the President himself, who in his barnstorming opening remarks said that “There is no part of our lives that should not be subject to critical review”. In the ensuing workshop discussions, the young people in attendance went on to very much prove him right.

During the seminar we were presented with analysis from DIT as to what was considered the most important topics throughout the whole consultation, with top of the list perhaps unsurprisingly employment, enterprise and social security, closely followed by political reform, education and equality and involving young people. But it was when young people started voting on what to include in their Declaration vision and what needed to make it a reality was far from predictable.

In a gripping session of instant voting, each table would propose various things to include (or exclude) from the final declaration, and as this was the last chance saloon to include what they thought though important for the country, the young people put their cases passionately. Some of the choices, such as a proposal to add the word “empowered” in a section pertaining to caring for vulnerable people and changing “bilingual” to multilingual” were passed easily, but others were not such slam dunks. A proposal, for example, to mention civil liberties in the declaration narrowly failed by 51% to 49%. And while a resolution to mention political reform sailed through, one that mentioned transparency and accountability was defeated by six points. From there, the debate intensified.

When a vote was taken to arrange the priorities on how to achieve their vision, the young people in the room’s top five was, to considerable surprise, headed by an emphatic commitment to the Irish language, with the social development of the language placing third. A call to legislate for the hot button X-Case placed second, with the top five rounded up by a strong statement for marriage and adoption equality and absentee ballots for Irish citizens abroad. More on that one, no doubt, in future columns.

But it was the noticeable lack of any reference to health, especially mental health, in the Top 5 that caused one of the biggest stirs of the day. Some claimed if those were the priorities, he’d probably be emigrating. But it was Aisling Concannon, Officer for Students with Disabilities at Trinity College, who became the de facto spokesperson of the case for mental health as a priority. She became the focal point of the discussion after stating on Twitter she was “livid that priorities were all wrong”, and that given the importance of the topic at earlier discussions (and in general), it was very disappointing that it didn’t feature. 

When I talked to her afterwards, she thought it was scant consolation that while health came up as a topic, it wouldn’t be mentioned in the declaration, especially given the age group represented in the room. “The people reading the declaration won’t know how much time we spent on it in the workshops. (For health as an issue) to get noticed and get attention it should have been in there, and should have been one of the prime points in there.”

While Aisling maintains her crusade for more attention to mental health (and a more holistic approach to health in general) in other ways, once the voting was done the President came back for the final declaration, and was clearly delighted with the outcome. “If anyone is still affected by the myth”, he said, “that young people are disengaged, here is your answer”, and insisted that the consultation not become “a lost conversation, it must find a real, rapid, positive response”. One hope for such a response is the Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald, who also spoke at the Declaration. Her speech, apparently pre-prepared, was slightly cautious and bloodless but that did not dim the positivity and determination of the room, who in their declaration committed themselves to action, to fighting apathy and encouraging participation. In fact, within hours of the Being Young seminar concluding, a legacy project was set up which will meet by the end of the year.

In 1916, Padraig Pearse made his Proclamation of the Republic to a handful of bewildered passers-by outside the GPO. In that Proclamation, he put the case for cherishing all the children of the nation equally. 96 years later, a small bit up the road, hundreds of young people of the nation followed that legacy not just by asserting their voice and engaging in debate, but also committing their actions. The seminar may be over, but the work is just beginning.

You can see the full report here:

Belfast's Marie Stopes clinic -- the last thing vulnerable women need is a culture war over abortion

Dawn Purvis at the Marie Stopes clinic in Belfast

At the very start of October, I became one of the official diaspora. I have a new job (in the glamorous world of TV production) in a new city (Manchester) and generally couldn’t be more chuffed.

What I am decidedly unchuffed about though is news from the city I left behind: Belfast. It seems that the unholy (and I use that term advisedly) forces of anti-choice zealotry are to descend upon Great Victoria Street this week to protest a Marie Stopes clinic that is opening there and eventually try to shut it down. Those opposing the clinic such as politician Jim Allister, a man who has found himself back in the 1950’s without a DeLorean, and Precious Life spokeswoman Bernadette Smyth claim that there is no need or want for such a clinic in Northern Ireland. Riiiight...

1,007 women went to England and Wales from Northern Ireland last year for an abortion. Expressed as a percentage of the whole population that accounts for 0.056% of the population; a twentieth of a percent. Bernadette Smyth suggests herself the amount of women traveling for abortions has reduced by a third over the last 15 years.  So why then, given the NI public’s supposed attitudes to abortion and the statistically miniscule amount of women from there who’ve availed of them, does a Marie Stopes clinic constitute such a moral menace? You’d think if that was the case they’d just let them set up, see tumbleweed go through their premises, lose money and pack up again. But no, logic never was one of the hallmarks of the Every Sperm Is Sacred Patrol.

Read more: Major security for Northern Ireland’s first abortion clinic in Belfast

Alas, the abortion debate lies uneasily at the intersection between compassionate pragmatism and pupil-dilating absolutism. The Marie Stopes clinic will provide a range of sexual health services, one of which will be providing a pill for women up to nine weeks pregnant to take if they, for only the most serious health reasons, no longer wish to be pregnant. Even though Northern Ireland’s abortion laws are literally an era behind the rest of the UK (abortion has been legal since 1967 in England, Wales and Scotland), this much is currently legal. And yet, as is the case in the South, hardline anti-choicers want to take something that isn’t legal (and isn’t even under threat of becoming legal any time soon) and make it super duper illegal.

One thing pro and anti choice people do agree on though is that the ideal number of abortions a year would be zero. But, living as we do in a far from ideal world, there has to be some facility for those thousand or so women who desperately need help. If it were only one woman in the whole province in need of that help, the Marie Stopes clinic’s presence would still be justified.

But try telling that to those who proclaim to be pro-life but never say a word about a child’s welfare post-womb, picket services for vulnerable women and throw words like “murder” around while they’re doing it. It never fails to amaze that for people who seem to care so deeply about the life of the unborn, they can be so callous in their treatment of actual human beings.