Elections – will there be any progress after January?

IT is sort of inevitable that when 2011 dawns on an unsuspecting country that our politicians will contrive to argue about everything.

In a sudden realisation that we pay their wages to actually do some legislative work there is a mad rush to consult us on everything, scrutinise a shed-load of Bills and generally get some real political work done.

There are more than 20 Executive Bills rummaging around Assembly committees, and a further six non-executive Bills. Of these how many will be completed by Christmas? Add in to this the potential for the ongoing process of several major pieces of work at consultation stage. The reality is that many key issues will fall by the wayside.

Ahh, but you can be reassured that after Christmas we will be back to the traditional Northern Ireland pursuit of blaming the ‘other side’ for work not getting done.