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Martin McAuley

@martinmcauley.bsky.social
288 followers 327 following 103 posts

📍 Belfast 🏳️‍🌈 he/him www.instagram.com/martin_mcauley

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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Well this looks even sillier now. Political communications shouldn’t be left to easily excitable activists.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
An interesting comms decision by the Green Party here to brief their internal polling which shows that if they convince a full 30% of 2024 Labour voters to switch to them… they’ll still lose.
Huffington Post article clip which says:

HuffPost UK has learned that the Greens are
mounting a huge campaign in the final days of the campaign to persuade 2024 Labour voters
to switch to them.

If around a third of them do, Labour's lead would be cut to four points, insiders say.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Two very happy homo(wner)s. Now schlepping all our earthly possessions up the road to the new house 🏡
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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Pondering the difference between “social media star” and “content creator”. #Strictly
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Politics is ultimately the nexus between human opinions. Art is a form of expressing human experiences, emotions and opinions. They’re parallel concepts. Hard to imagine how Sheeran could have taken a worse position to defend among a community of artists. And it’s, deservedly, backfiring big style.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
A colleague told me her husband went into M&S the other week for a pair shorts but came out scandalised asking who would wear anything as short as they’re selling. Me and every gay man I know is the answer. We are now the M&S demographic. Our time has come.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
This must be a great time to buy eclipse glasses. The bottom has really fallen out of that market.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
The Fleadh in Belfast has been immense.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
The Friday night of Belfast Pride might be my favourite 🏳️‍🌈
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Second year we’ve been third in the Belfast Pride quiz 😅
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Jim Hacker may not have been a fan of the brief but Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is one of the few cabinet posts that still has its own grace and favour pad at Hillsborough Castle. Not a bad silver lining for Chris Bryant!
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
It’s not a proper clearout until Burnham sacks that layabout Larry.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
The bar is low but that was a good start for Burnham. Engaging, no notes (bonus points), setting out an actual narrative with the start of some good messaging and story telling and a big eye catching promise on ending rough sleeping. No lectern a good call too (superficial as it is).
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Sunday funday runday. Little before and after the Belfast Pride Run 🏃‍♂️
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
My feed has been pummelled with recommendations for this. So we’re giving it a go!
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Married a 3x Pride Award winner with Quire Belfast 😍
Standing with my husband at the Belfast Pride Awards 2026
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Have I volunteered for a gay charity run? Yes. Will I be dragged across the line by paramedics? Possibly. Am I vibing with the run shirt? Absolutely 😅
Me standing in my kitchen wearing my Run with Pride 2026 shirt.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
I would like to be photographed exclusively surrounded my marble from now on please.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
It’s 33°C and we’re strongly considering never returning to Ireland.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
This is the discourse I’m here for. Is he more The Gloaming or The Corrs? www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/202...
irishtimes.com
How Irish is Andy Burnham, the possible next British prime minister?
Ancestral links suggest Makerfield byelection winner is somewhere between Joe Biden and Tony Blair
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Reposted by Martin McAuley
Sam McBride @sjamcbride.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Long read on Northern Ireland’s week of chaos: What it’s like inside a riot, being threatened by paramilitaries at a 'peaceful protest', being assaulted by a masked man, and why we can expect this to return again and again and again.
belfasttelegraph.co.uk
NI’s snarling serpent isn't migrants, but mob rule of thugs who assaulted me under nose of the police
Mingling among the Belfast rioters, I saw a child being led by his father’s hand to get a better view
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Cartoon characters have an angel and a devil on each shoulder. I have only devils. And I am also the devil. I need at least 3 coffees before any human interactions today 🫩
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
It is quite literally unfathomable. For reference a million seconds ago was last Monday. A trillion seconds ago was the year 29,684 BCE. Just a damning indictment of our moral and political priorities that one person can amass that kind of capital without intervention.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Sun’s out so I will be staring off into the middle distance and topping range balls 20 yards every week for the foreseeable ⛳️
Picture of me addressing a ball at the driving range.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Car crash. If you’re going to agree to do a media round defending a critical government policy document, you should have read it first. If you haven’t (even for NS reasons), you’re volunteering to be mugged off on national TV and you are a fundamentally unserious person.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
✨ Gay powers restored at last ✨
Selfie in front of the River Lagan with a fresh haircut.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Wonder if Downing Street civil servants have commissioned a new lectern yet. Carpenter will need a bit of time to get whittling.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Starmer’s claim that ‘the country will never forgive us’ if there’s the ‘chaos’ of a leadership challenge seems to me to completely overlook the fact that people in Britain are experiencing chaos under his premiership and the evidence, from actual elections, is that they already won’t forgive *him*.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
I’m *starting* to think Morgan McSweeney might not have been the strategic genius we were led to believe 🤔
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Downing Street comms not hugely regarded over the last 18 months (to put it mildly) but one of the interesting things they’re doing is really plugging an active influencer strategy to reach established audiences. It’s a bit rough around the edges (and cringe) sometimes. But interesting.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Here we go 🚀
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Yeeeeooooo ☘️ 🇮🇪 ☘️ #sixnations
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Alex Hern @hern.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... the audio here is genuinely jaw-dropping in the context of repeated claims from Polanski that the Sun interview was entrapment in which he was baited into saying things he didn't believe
bbc.co.uk
Zack Polanski stood by breast enlargment hypnosis claim
A newly unearthed interview from 2013 casts doubt on the Green Party leader's claim to have apologised.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Starmer has changed the British political landscape remarkably (in the short term at least). Just nowhere near the way he wanted. Disaster.
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RTÉ @rte.ie · 22/02/2026
NASA has set 6 March as the earliest possible launch date for Artemis II, the first crewed flyby mission to the Moon in more than 50 years. www.rte.ie/news/world/2026/0220/155…
rte.ie
NASA sets date for first crewed Moon flyby in 50 years
NASA has set 6 March as the earliest possible launch date for Artemis II, the first crewed flyby mission to the Moon in more than 50 years.
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The Irish Times @irishtimes.com · 21/02/2026
‘I hope everyone at home is just as proud as well’ - Andy Farrell hails Ireland’s ‘special day’
irishtimes.com
‘I hope everyone at home is just as proud as well’ - Andy Farrell hails Ireland’s ‘special day’
Head coach delighted with how both his experienced and novice players showed up in victory over England at Twickenham
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
Today we bought a car, had a rake of pints, watched Ireland win and then went for a doughnut. Pretty successful Valentine’s 😍
With my husband at a coffee shop.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
We got new kitchen knives yesterday and I have, of course, sliced the top of my finger off using them for the first time trying to cut a bit of sourdough. Happy Friday 🤕
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Boucher Road Playing Fields is a shite music venue. Annoying to get to, no signal so there’s always a crowd who haven’t got their tickets downloaded, the queue for a pint is 7 hours long and the dystopian march home across the three-abreast railway bridge is grim. Belfast should be more ambitious.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
Only met Morgan McSweeney a few times but undoubtedly his biggest success was convincing so many people, himself included, of his own brilliance. Others are probably better positioned to judge the substance of that…
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
This is right - funding for opposition is deficient and amounts to less than 2 members of staff in practice. When party funding was renegotiated recently, there was a push against properly funding opposition parties. Makes the work of the SDLP/UUP opposition in 2016/17 more remarkable.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Gordon Lyons & the DUP obviously feel very hard done by today (having been found to have breached the Ministerial Code of Office AGAIN). But there were families forced from their homes who then saw the place they were given shelter torched. They’re the victims. Has Lyons met and apologised to them?
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
I’ve heard Jon Burrows say, a few times, that Opposition needs reformed to have ‘shadow’ Ministers. Entirely a UK Parliament tradition that wouldn’t change the operation of our system at all. But I haven’t heard him acknowledge that would require cooperation with other parties in the Opposition 🤔
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
We were at Cape Canaveral a couple of years ago and this was the big project they were excited about. Class to see it start to take shape www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Artemis II: Nasa's mega Moon rocket arrives at launch pad
Final preparations now get underway for the first crewed mission to the Moon in more than 50 years.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Really muddled thinking from Jon Burrows on Good Morning Ulster today. By denying him a contest, Robbie Butler hasn’t just deprived him of a bit of legitimacy, he hasn’t given him an opportunity to clarify his thinking about what the UUP needs or is for. Which it sounds like he sorely needed.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
The smarter move for Burrows would be to seek to build a broader consensus with a range of parties on the issues they can cooperate on. If he wants to squeeze Alliance and pull back some of that eroded UUP ground, he needs to look pluralistic, not entrenched.
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
if the Labour defector to Reform is Kate Hoey that would be the dampest squib ever
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
Respectfully, most people would struggle to pick Robert Jenrick or María Corina Machado out of a lineup. Not saying the stories aren’t interesting - they’re compelling drama but they’re being profiled far, far above their public interest value.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
Telling, isn’t it, that we can geoblock the RTÉ player on the basis of commercial broadcasting licenses for a football match but the UK Government is on the fence about geoblocking a different website which is creating sexualised images of children. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
X could 'lose right to self regulate', says Starmer
It is currently illegal to share deepfakes, but the law against creating them has not yet come into force.
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Martin McAuley @martinmcauley.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
I’m unlikely to be competing in the Commonwealth Games so the flag doesn’t really bother me. This reaction is instructive though - for all the unionist political parties demanding (rightly) to know what compromises will be made in a new Ireland, they’re unwilling to make ANY themselves today.
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