One of the most bitter election campaigns will be in East Belfast. In 2010, Naomi Long of Alliance took the Westminster seat. It was a surprise. She rode the perfect storm of DUP Scandal and a divided unionist vote.
The DUP have made it a priority to win back East Belfast…the jewel in their crown. They hit back hard over Alliance taking their fleg down at Belfast City Hall. And Alliance have been the victims of loyalist violence on their offices.
Naomi Long has of course more balls than any of her Alliance colleagues….with the possible exception of Anna Lo. And if Naomi loses East Belfast, she wont be going down quietly.
According to David McCann at Slugger O’Toole…Naomi has been getting some online abuse and has gone public and is reading out the tweets on a video. Presumably she has decided that playing the “victim” card will benefit her campaign.
Let me be clear. I find the abuse of politicians of ANY Party to be an absolute disgrace. The Internet in general and Twitter especially have cheapened political discourse. For about three USA Presidential Elections and maybe four British General Elections, the Internet has been hailed as making a difference to Politics. It probably does…and it is probably negative.
So Naomi …understandably…seeks to turn this to her electoral advantage.
But I could not help notice that Naomi Long has 11,900 followers on Twitter. This indicates that she uses it (or her staff uses it for her) to get her political message across to a large number…a VERY large number of people. Certainly looks like she and/or her staff dont decline a request to “follow” her.
So…perhaps oddly…Naomi Long is following only 325 people on Twitter.
Obviously famous people have more followers than the not-so-famous. It is the “Big Fish” and “Small Fish” thing. Naomi Long seems to be a rather big fish, who is rather more interested in her own opinions than other peoples opinions.
Reading out the mean tweets is a stunt.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
Going to the internet to publicly express your opinions and expecting to be greeted with nothing but respect or even adulation is delusional. Would any of these people seriously expect to be able to stand on a street corner with a megaphone and just have passing folk stop and listen without response? The internet is the commons of the 21st century. A meeting place of ideas and ideologies. Of course it is rancorous. Was it not ever thus?
If you don’t understand how the internet works then go teach yourself. Someone bothers you on Twitter? Don’t read their tweets or direct messages, just block them! If you are being hassled by an annoying neighbour you don’t invite them into your house to sit them down to have a row with them so why do it on the web? You ignore them! I hate this self-entitled, self-pitying, utterly whiny crap.
If I was to pay attention to the nasty messages and threats I’ve received since I started blogging I’d be living in a bunker in my back garden!
I agree absolutely.
I condemn the abuse.
The lesson is that if you cant stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen and with 11,900 followers, she goes to the hottest part of the kitchen to complain about the heat.
But I think we can expect her to play this card for six weeks.
Oh, I agree. She’ll bang this drum for all its worth, though what good it will do her. She did herself no favours with her “outraged” reaction to the DUP-UUP pact. I initially thought it was played up for the cameras but I now believe that she is genuinely that possessive about “her” East Belfast seat (and her political career). It is the flip-side of the DUP’s dismay at loosing it in the first place. The Alliance are the ultimate set of self-regarding elitists. I do believe I have taken a serious dislike to them!
There is a sense of Entitlement about Alliance. Normal rules dont seem to apply to them.
She will fight tooth and nail. And play the “wee girl surrounded by nasty bully boys”.
So I sense there has been a council of War in Alliance and this is the tactic Naomi has chosen.
i expect her to be even more outraged in front of the cameras for six weeks and she has to walk a fine line appeasing softer unionists in the Belmont Bowling Club and keeping her own little unofficial pact with Short Strand voters and left leaning voters who might think about Alliance and “cuts”. Certainly the Greens will get a few votes.
Theres probably some internal politics in the Alliance Party. If she loses “three into two” wont go in East Belfast in 2016 and she either bows out of Politics and takes on a Quango or there would be musical chairs in East Belfast, South Belfast, Strangford, North Down to accomodate her.
And then theres the small matter of Ford, Farry and Long in a leadership tussle.
The Alliance Party can be brutal behind closed doors.
> Certainly looks like she and/or her staff dont decline a request to “follow” her.
The joy of Twitter is that you follow someone, you don’t request to follow them (unless they’ve set their account to be private). So 12 thousand odd people chose to follow Naomi and the only choice she has made is not to block them …
She likes to be followed rather than to follow.
I hope David Ford takes note.
I think Naomi Long would seem an obvious soul to take over in Strangford, though I have the sense that Mr K McCarthy really loves his job and wants to go for another term. If that is the case then she might be a good solution for South Belfast when Anna Lo departs, to fill those big shoes.
Thats only one of the factors.
Consider at the moment that the so-called “cross community” party has 8 MLAs and one MP.
I dont know about Farry (his wikipedia entry is not helpful) but McCarthy is certainly a Catholic.
Normally I would consider it irrelevant but in the context of Alliance public assertations of “cross community” it IS relevant.
Veterans like Ford, Lunn, Dickson…have no obvious replacement except who is “Catholic” and those three are as “churchy as Cochrane and Lyttle in East Belfast.
So consiider the options if McCarthy goes and the rest stay.
Alliance are fielding a different woman in 2015 than in 2010. Is either an heiress apparent to McCarthy? McCarthy has done a lot to squeeze back SDLP in Strangford.
Clearly Long would retain that seat but I think Cochrane was a Castlereagh councillor.
Who are the heirs apparent to Ford and Lunn? Doesnt seem to be one.
In the case of Dickson it might be Mulvenna.
But if you look at the others who are sniffing around for an Assembly seat…Duncan Morrow and Paula Bradshaw, youd have to say that Alliance is losing traction as a Party that can be truly “cross community”.
Is it possible for a party to be “cross community” AND have the entire Assembly Party drawn from one community? YES it certainly is possible…..but this was the Party of Sean Neeson, Oliver Napier, John Cushnahan, Jim Hendron and Seamus Close.
Mean tweets is a social media trend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDocnbkHjhI. Old new according to my kids.
That should read, Old news..