Some double talk even makes sense half the time

THERE is a curious sort of malaise creeping into Northern Ireland politics: it is doubletalk that kind of makes sense. It’s the sort of speeches that confound the listener and the reader so much that they are forced to think deeply about what is being said.

The prime example comes this week from the Minister for flooded farms...sorry Minister for Agriculture, Michelle Gildernew.

Announcing almost £5m for a scheme to take pictures of farmland from the air, Ms Gildernew pointed the finger firmly and unerringly at the bureaucrats in Brussels. These faceless types had been so audacious to fine Northern Ireland (actually it’s a disallowance, but semantics were never the strong suit of our politicians) for EU subsidy overpayments to farmers.

Put in simple terms: the vast majority of Northern Ireland’s farmers are decent hard-working sorts. There are others who are hard-working chancers.

As a result a highly detailed map of farmland is to be created from the aerial photographs – Uncle Hugo Duncan’s sat-nav system having been deemed not to be sufficiently accurate.

Ms Gildernew has said that it is all rather unfair for the EU not to pay up in such hard economic times.

But let us drill through that argument for a moment. Would it be okay for the EU to penalise us if economically we were a stable and growing economy? Is it unfair for agriculture to take a hit for what appears to be a blatant attempt to con money out of Europe?

The Minister’s stance appears to be that we would not have had to spend £4.8m mapping farms if it wasn’t for some of these European types being downright nasty to us.

One wonders if it ever occurs to her that if the Department of Agriculture had been better at tracking the chancers then the situation would never have occurred...

We’re doomed...we fight against doom...we’re still doomed

SINN Féin and the DUP have not always seen eye-to-eye. That is as basic a truism as they come in Northern Ireland politics.

At a time when the Con-Lib coalition of terror is warning that if it can be cut they have the knife ready to slice away, one would have thought that our esteemed ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive would sit down and agree what way to play this.

Not a bit of it. Behind closed doors they may sit down, share anguished glances across the room and sip thoughtfully at a snifter of orange juice or green chartreuse, but when it comes to statements for public consumption...then they kick into another gear altogether.

First Minster Peter Robinson has been telling us all that we are doomed: an economy stuck in recession almost in perpetuity, with cuts piling upon cuts to the value of £2bn on top of existing efficiency savings.

Meanwhile Sinn Féin’s Mitchel McLaughlin has said we must fight the British Government’s cuts, and the Executive shouldn’t just roll over at the behest of their Treasury paymasters.

One detects the subtle influence of forthcoming elections.

Every half sensible person knows that the cuts are coming. The unions may be right that the banks helped cause the mess, and that they should pay. However, the massive budget deficit was as much to do with the Brown administration’s profligacy, as it was it was to do with the banking crisis.

All manner of cuts to services are being contemplated, both nationally and locally.

Is Peter Robinson positioning himself as the man who will take the tough decisions? And is Sinn Féin positioning themselves as the party that will ‘resist’ the Brits and their sneaky slicing away of Irish life?

Whatever, this week has also seen the emergence of that wonderful euphemism: “efficiency savings”. An efficiency saving is usually when someone sees a better, more efficient way of doing something.

In the public sector parlance it usually means you are getting less money this year; so make do!

Which, in most languages, translates to a ‘cut’!

First in the firing line is the Department of Culture Arts and Leisure. After a warning last week from a senior official, this week the DCAL committee heard that sports as we know it, and the arts will be no longer able to deliver all the services that previously delivered.

Damn!

We were so looking forward to that interpretive modern dance routine that encapsulates the ‘north’s’ passion for Gaelic sport with a musical parody of the English football team’s World Cup flop, with a penalty taking master class from David Healy!

However much we want to make jokes at the expense of the language of Ulster-Scots or artists’ tendency to spend too much time navel gazing, or sports innate ability to shoot itself in the foot, the point is a serious one.

DCAL’s cuts are the thin end of the wedge. After this, the Executive will need to speak with a common tongue to explain just what the hell is going to happen come October 20th.

Before the May elections that is, unfortunately not likely to happen.

Who would be a UUP MLA?

WHO would be a UUP MLA these days? No, it’s not a rhetorical question: who would be a UUP MLA?

You face potential de-selection, and then, if selected and fortunate to be elected you could have a party leader you neither agree with nor do you like.

Such is the background to the current turmoil in the UUP camp.

So much for modernisation! Perhaps it is time for a rethink all round, but there will have to be some serious sorting out over the winter lest the UUP be cast adrift by its already indifferent electorate.

I solemnly swear not to sit in Westminster!

THE Secretary of State, Owen Paterson, this week displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of Sinn Féin. Under pressure from the DUP to cut Sinn Féin Westminster expenses altogether, the SoS asked the Shinners to come up with an alternative version of the oath of allegiance, so that they potentially take up their seats in the ‘Mother of Parliaments’.

According to Sinn Féin dogma and doctrine, the ‘Mother of Parliaments’ is the bastard child of an imperial hegemony created in the blood of the colonies and seared with injustice on Irish people the world over.

The likelihood of Sinn Féin taking their seats in Westminster is so far-fetched as to be unbelievable. The only oath to Westminster they are likely to agree to, is one that swears to abolish Westminster when England acknowledges its place as a subsidiary county to the provinces of Ireland.

To make matters worse, they’ve put up the price of beer in the MPs bar!

We are not amused

BEING amused is a charge rarely levelled at the level-headed Minister for Social Justice, Alex Attwood. And, he is less than amused – not even breaking into a half-grin – when talking about proposed reforms to the welfare system.

After a meeting with the visiting Tory representative for right-on, right of centre caring, Iain Duncan Smith, Mr Attwood harrumphed and said that we’re special over here. In some schools being labelled as ‘special’ can lead to bullying. In enlightened educational establishments being labelled ‘special’ means that you are provided with support and care to enable you to achieve...

So, is Mr Attwood arguing that we are the UK’s ‘Special Needs’ country, requiring a classroom assistant and someone to make sure we pay attention, even when our condition means we can't concentrate in classes like economics?

No-one is arguing that Northern Ireland’s situation is not unique in the UK (although the North East and many parts north of the Watford Gap could argue similarly). But by self-consciously arguing that we need special treatment there will come a time when it is argued that we no longer need help, with all the wailing and gnashing of soundbites from MLAs that is sure to follow

Also, the inevitable consequence is that we are seen as ‘drain on the public purse’, as a dependent state; dependent on help from Westminster, Washington or even, heaven forbid, the Dáil.

But, as every parent knows there comes a time when your dependent child must step up and fend for themselves economically. When will our turn come?

Cheap at half the price

SURE there’s no bargain quite like an entire country. And, the estate agents must have been licking their lips at the prospect of putting the For Sale signs up on Northern Ireland...

One journalist, tongue in cheek, we are led to believe, said that if Northern Ireland was ‘sold’ to the Republic of Ireland for a nice round fee like £9billion, then it would help reduce the Treasury’s mounting debts, do away with all those broad northern Irish accents in Parliament and give someone else a headache instead.

We on the other hand think that selling to the Republic represents a narrowness of vision that has too often afflicted the political elite.

Why just focus on the Republic of Ireland, and instead hold out for the highest bidder. Has not one member of the NI Executive ever pulled a sickie and watched Homes Under the Hammer? The concept is fairly simple. Someone turns up at an auction, buys a rundown property, spends a few quid doing it up and hey presto an estate agent tells them at the end of the show how much their renovations have added to the value.

Next we hope to pitch to Sky One, or a rival US channel, the concept: Countries Under the Hammer.

With Northern Ireland as the pilot show, the producers will invite countries along to an auction to bid to buy ‘our wee country’. The presenter will outline all the positives such as outstanding natural beauty, friendly folks, the annual pageantry of summer rioting, and wonderful views of twilight in Twinbrook and dawn over Derry’s cultural shoplifters.

We’ll let the population pick those countries we would want to invite to the auction, and almost everyone will plump for the US (except the TUV, who will denounce it as a republican plot until they realise Obama is a Democrat). But we’ll make sure it is countries that can afford to be there. China is a cert; they’ve the money. As has India. Iran may also be interested, as it will save on developing intercontinental ballistic missile costs, and we have a few ‘fixer-up’ sub-let properties with in-house skills in things that go boom.

However, knowing our luck we’ll end up being auctioned off to North Korea, and every day we’ll be expected to acknowledge an all-powerful leadership that demands respect, brooks no challenge, requires we exist to fund the ruling classes and regularly expects nothing much from the leaders. Question is, whether anyone would notice the difference?

Take yer f**k**g airport and f**k**g shove it up yer f**k**g...etc etc

WELL no-one ever accused Michael O’Leary of subtlety, but his rant over the George Best City Airport runway extension – or rather lack of runway extension - was exceptional even by his standards.

Mr O’Leary denounced the lack of decision-making on the extension to the runway and announced that Ryanair was pulling out of Belfast on October 31st.

Thereafter followed a raft of MLAs and even ministers of the executive queuing up on the airwaves to denounce the decision... There were even a few who took a pop at Mr O’Leary’s low-cost airline.

Indeed, at a time when our economy is, in the words of Minister Attwood on meeting Iain Duncan Smith, lagging behind the rest of the country, it did seem a bit churlish to lambast Mr O’Leary.

We do wonder, however, whether those self-same MLAs and ministers are ever forced to use a low-cost airline to visit loved ones, to keep business costs low, to see-off children to college or university, or even simply take a break from the doom and gloom pronouncements of the NI Executive.

We suspect few have.

Say what you like about Ryanair and Mr O-Leary (there now follows a space to allow you to say what you like within existing libel laws..._____________________________ ) but he did make a decision.

Yes, a decision. That’s a strange concept in Northern Ireland. For those of you not sure what a decision is, it is when someone decides to do something, rather than debate endlessly, call in lawyers, appoint barristers, take a judicial review, mumble half-heartedly about the other side, ask Assembly questions and waffle on every possible broadcast outlet.

McCausland’s revenge

MINISTER for Culture, Arts and Leisure had a beef a while back about the Ulster Museum dealing in facts about the origin of Planet Earth, the universe and mankind rather than the bibical scribblings of the ancient Israelites.

Readers may chose to disagree with that viewpoint, but we’re backing the biologists, physicists, geologists, chemists, astronomers, astro-physicists, and even that bloke Dawkins on this one.

Now, it could be that Minister McCausland could have the last laugh. No, the award-winning, best in the UK Ulster Museum is not about to ditch credibility, but rather could, like many museums and libraries in Northern Ireland suffer slashed budgets, reduced staffing and in some cases job losses.

So said a DCAL official this week at an Assembly committee...

Thus institutions of learning, buildings, where that precious commodity of knowledge is kept, and treasured could close or be diminished. And those citadels of the free printed word and reference books, our libraries could also be closed.

But fear not, Minister McCausland has decreed that the Ulster Scots Agency should face no cuts...

Credit to DUP flickr for photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/dupphotos/3707225203/

Step away from the duvet

MINISTER for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, Arlene Foster, this week warned that some people are “hiding under the duvet” about the public sector cuts that are on the way.

Commenting on a NICVA report that the cuts will be worse than expected, otherwise known as the ‘we’re all doomed’ theory’, Ms Foster was quite clear that the cuts to the public sector would create “very serious issues”.

It is worth remembering that the public sector funds quite a lot of voluntary and community groups, so, yes, it will be a very serious issue - even more serious than putting public sector workers on the dole.

Perhaps a way to alleviate a tiny amount of the cuts coming down the line next month will be to look at the Invest NI edifice that dominates Belfast’s Bedford Street; this architectural masterpiece surely must have some spare offices that could be rented out. Or even some of the car parking spaces it commands could be offered up for renting to all the private sector entrepreneurs, because we’re culling the public sector, aren’t we? And maybe that may include some of those in Invest NI who benefit from those car parking spaces?

Another option Ms Foster may chose to look at is boosting tourism. Especially the tourists who save on fares to make sure they can spend in Northern Ireland. You know the sort of tourist that might use Ryanair...

She may instead, decide that we should all hide under the duvet, with the nice cardboard box round it and the newspapers stuffed down the jumper as it gets so cold when sleeping rough.

Solar Power

WONDERS, as they say, will never cease. In an astounding leap forward Larne Borough Council has installed solar powered bins.

These ingenious devices use the power of the life-giving star we all orbit to compact waste and send text messages and emails to council staff when the bin is full to the brim and attracting a higher than average amount of wasps.

Which led us to thinking that solar power really could be a benefit to the Assembly! No, not huge panels around Parliament Buildings, but rather make our MLAs solar powered. There are quite a few that, shall we say, with a slaphead lack of hair who qualify for panels atop their heads. Fit these bald spots with miniature solar panels and they can generate enough power for them to text and email their latest pronouncements to the press. And for the ladies and those gents with a few strands still left they can be fitted with a natty range of hats (with the Assembly logo, of course) which can help recharge hard-pressed Blackberrys and iPhones, as well as power their jaws when they become tired.

But, in reality this scheme from Larne actually highlights the paucity of thinking in local Government. This seemingly innocuous proposal will make emptying litter bins more efficient. And that saves money.

Larne are to be commended for this, but had the reduction of our local councils went ahead such innovative practices could have spread more widely…alas such lack of wonder at the Assembly’s lack of decisive action will never cease.