Well
it was all in the back of the cupboard…
LYING around,
somewhere, in the coffers of the Northern Ireland Executive is a stash of cash,
from which the Executive pulled £200m this week.
The money is being
ploughed into an economic and jobs package. For this the Executive should be
applauded.
Any initiative that
sees jobs and training boosted, while helping the hard pressed construction
sector gets a wee hand by speeding up school building and road projects is to be welcomed.
But where does one
find £200m in these cash-straitened times? It
not exactly new money and in subsequent media, there was a suggestion that it will come from some of the monies
that departments weren’t going
to spend. Rather
than handing it
back to the Treasury, better to
invest it.
As Gordon Brown
would say, this is prudence at the heart of government.
A larger mystery,
however, has emerged in the wake of the announcement…on any given day in any
given country this type of investment would have been trumpeted and analysed in
the media for a week.
Here in Norn Iron,
rather than celebrate this, the focus has been on doom facing sector ‘a’, while sector ‘b’ is in free-fall or some such cliché.
It seems that in
the absence of a good old political feud the newsrooms are rather pre-occupied
with a determined race to the lowest common denominator.
Wants
it all before he’s 17…
THERE is a line in
a song from the 1970s,
which goes: “just a kid with a crazy dream, wants it all before he’s 17”. Now
while that may be a yearning for success, it is not clear that the “kid” wanted to be a participant in democracy.
However, in these
less decadent days,
the urge to rock ‘n’ roll excess has been tempered by the lure of fifteen
minutes of fame on the Simon Cowell production line of talentless media whores
and…the desire to vote from the age of 16.
This week, a majority of MLAs voted to lower the
voting age from 18 to 16. Not that this will happen any time soon without
Westminster’s say so. The lowering of the voting age for the Scottish
referendum seems to have been part of negotiations between Salmond and Cameron.
And the Tories have not been the party of progressive extension of the
franchise in past times.
There is, however,
a compelling argument to lower the voting age. (Well we think it’s compelling!)
By the time the
average teenager has emerged from the exuberance of 13, they have become a wonderfully sullen bulk of a proto-adult,
occasionally capable of conversation and normally engrossed in ‘gaming’,
unfulfilled desires and the urgent need to do everything that they’re not
allowed to do until they are 18, like buy booze…and vote.
The one thing that
we did note during the fascinating debate in the Assembly was the failure to
deploy any scientific, psychological evidence, or seek evidence from the
wonderful world of neuroscience. We didn’t either, but you get our point.
Much was said about
maturity, and much was said about the issues on the age when a teen can legally
buy a lager, watch an 18 certificate movie, or play an 18-rated computer game.
We hate to break it to the members of the assembly but observing the real world
only briefly we know that a significant proportion of 16-year-olds have downed
an alcopop, watched an 18-rated DVD or played a gore-riddled computer game…they
have also probably watched some really dodgy material on the internet.
The facts of this
show that regulation in these areas does not work effectively; that speaks more
about the regularity framework, parental supervision and what a 16 or
17-year-old is capable of absorbing and digesting and acting upon. Despite the
birth of violent computer games we have yet to see the
streets of our wee country ripped asunder with teenagers on crime sprees
á la Grand Theft Auto.
Thus, it seems the
average teen can distinguish between reality and fiction. Therefore, we judge
that the average teenager will be able to tell the difference between an MLA’s
reality and the reality of life as a 16-year-old, which makes them almost the
perfect voter.
Educmakhasion
APPARENTLY we’re
putting pupils first; that is according to the latest educational initiative
from the Department of Education.
Far be it from us
to criticise this, no doubt, well intended vision of our ‘learning’ system,
delivered at a timely juncture with the Education Bill being considered. But we have a major problem with the title
of this plan.
‘Putting Pupils
First’ - who
else would you put first? The entire education system is designed to provide
education for the pupils! If we are now putting pupils first, who was first
before the Minister made his Assembly announcement?
And, if we are
putting pupils first we wonder will pupils be asked about these wonderful
proposals? Dangerous radical times we are in, should we ever ask the people who
are being put first to have first say.
We fully anticipate
the day when the pupils queue up to give evidence to the Education Committee,
rather than the teachers, the officials, the churches, the unions, the
department, some bloke from round the corner and a lecturer or two.
Next thing they’ll
be talking about shared education…ohh wait a minute! That’s next year’s
opportunity to confuse us all about education.