SIR – I hope Vernon Bogdanor is right in saying that the Dunlop report on strengthening the Union, completed in 2019, is to be published at long last.
I was assured again and again in the Lords that it would appear before the end of 2020. Some recommendations, I was told, were being put into effect.
Why then the continuing secrecy on the part of a government that is supposed to be firmly committed to the Union? We have been cursed for too long by the policy of “devolve and forget”, as Professor Bogdanor says.
It is erroneous, however, to say that in the past “devolve and forget” in Northern Ireland “legitimised discrimination by a majority-ruled Stormont against the minority Catholic population”. Discrimination was practised, above all in housing, by both Unionist and nationalist local councils.
my father was a pump operator at the city water plant. he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when my brother and i were young. even as a kid, i knew there were plenty of days when he was in pain. i knew there were plenty of mornings when it was a struggle for him to simply get out of bed. but every morning, i watched my father wake up with a smile, grab his walker, propped himself up against the bathroom sink and slowly shaved and but in his uniform. and when he returned home after a long day s work, my brother and i would stand at the top of the stairs of our little apartment, patiently waiting to greet him, watching as he reached down to lift one leg and then the other, to slowly climb his way into our arms. but despite these challenges, my dad hardly ever missed a day of work. he and my mom were determined to give me and my brother the kind of education they could only dream of. [applause] and when my brother and i finally made it to college, nearly all of our tuition c