Now that’s a bit rich!

WHO would have thunk it! MLAs are spending a wee fortune to have someone tell them how much they should be paid.

Now stay with us here, much as you might feel the urge to throw things around and stamp your feet please keep calm and remember there’s always BBC Radio Ulster’s Nolan Show to ring up and harangue.

Last year, the Assembly, not wanting to appear greedy, passed a law that said if and when they set up an independent panel to decide how much they get paid, they had to absolutely, without question, accept what it said.

So despite all their concerns about quangos and arm’s length bodies, MLAs have created a quango to decide how much they will get paid.

The cost to taxpayers will be £100,000+ and for that we’ll get three part-time ‘panellists’ at a cost of £19,000. Doing some simple maths that’s about £6,333.33 per panellist per year for what will probably amount to a day or two per month. Who will these panellists be? We are willing to bet they will be drawn from the hordes of non-executive directors floating from quango to quango in the twilight years of their earning.

The rest of the money will be £60,000 for support staff and £20,000 for specialist advice – for that read management consultant!

According to a BBC report, after the first year, annual costs will drop from £100,000 to £15,000 per year. We haven’t a clue why - although once they’ve said how much the men and women on the Hill are to get in their pay packets, what else will they be doing?

Now, almost certainly this panel will recommend a pay rise, given that MLAs for a long time have noted that colleagues in Scotland and Wales get loads more dosh than they do.

And the genius thing is that they have to, no doubt with heavy heart and much protestation, accept the pay rise: because they passed a law to that effect.

But before you all go “well they work hard and £43,000 isn’t a lot for the work they do” think again.

A fare whack of the MLAs get an additional salary, if they are “office holders”. This additional salary ranges from just over £2K up to a whopping £66k for the FM and dFM.

Ministers get an additional £37k and chairs of committees get over £11k.

No doubt the independent panel will up those rates too.

Before you go any further, have a wee think about the expenses they receive too. For driving into work they get 40p a mile, which means some members pocket several thousand pounds a year. And cyclists aren’t left out, they get 20p per mile for, well we’re not exactly sure what they get it for.

Sure and then there’s the double jobbers...

Let’s face it, being an MLA is hard work, but is it any harder work than a nurse or a teacher? Yeah that is simplistic, but it’s hard not to think that way when the MLAs are going quango crazy to get a pay rise.

Marshall Mathers for Bangor!

THERE can, perhaps be no stranger sentence in the English language that associates North Down with Marshall Bruce Mathers III a.k.a. Eminem.

What will the residents of Cultra, Crawfordsburn, West Bangor and Groomsport make of Eminem – a man alleged to be a foul-mouthed misogynist, with criminal convictions – headlining the Tenants Vital concert in Bangor’s Ward Park?

Last year Ward Park was adorned by the ever so polite nice young men of Snow Patrol, and now the foul mouthed rapper comes to North Down.

It hasn’t arrived yet, but wait for it, there will be predictable cries for Eminem to be banned from, well, the predictable sources.

Some say that the greatest triumph of the DUP was when Ballymena Council managed to ban the innocuous and pleasantly melodious Electric Light Orchestra on the grounds that they would attract "the four Ds Drink, Drugs, Devil and Debauchery”. So what will they make of Eminem?

Goodness only knows what sort of apoplexy TUV leader Jim Allister will slide into trying to link rappers’ potty tongues to Sinn Féin plotting “sordid deals” with the DUP.

Times have moved on since the DUP banned ELO, we have had raves in the Kings Hall and estates around Antrim, we’ve had death metal bands playing all across Norn Iron, but will Eminem be enough to raise the hackles?

However, before the disapproval bounds forth on to The Nolan Show, rips on to newspaper pages and mounts a pulpit, those who are preparing to pontificate should consider two things: Seamus Heaney – Nobel Poet Laureate reckons Eminem is a pretty good wordsmith and secondly, Marshall Mathers knows what it is like to be cast as a cliché.

Just as our politicians can be unfairly stereotyped (we always try to satirise fairly!) so entertainers are too:

“Cause I am whatever you say I am
If I wasn't then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news, every day I am...”

And, as our politicians sit back of an evening, how many cast aside the tie and suit jacket and consider whether they have become the persona that the public says they should be.

The Allister Employment Scheme

TUV Leader Jim Allister! All hail the Allister Employment Scheme!

In a stroke of absolute genius the one, the only Jim Allister has managed to set up a scheme that guarantees public sector employment of dozens, if not hundreds of humble civil and public servants.

Mr Allister’s cunning plan kicked in almost as soon as he signed up as a Member of the Legislative Assembly – yep that’s the very same one he howled a wee bit about when it was the UUP in charge, and then when his erstwhile DUP friends took charge.

Mr Allister – rather cunningly – has been disguising his employment scheme as “a thorn in the side of the DUP”. Phase one has been to make a lot of noise: always useful in providing cover for the real plan.

Next stage – and here’s the really clever bit, we only wish other MLAs had thought of this – is ask loads and loads of written questions.

These are good because – and it’s not the obvious reason such as getting an answer to cause embarrassment – those questions need answered. The answers come not from the ministers, but from the ranks of civil and public servants who have to dig through records, pull out emails, generate reports, get an Excel spreadsheet together, save it in a format the drones can save in the font that the Assembly uses, and then post it to Mr Allister, and then to its website...phew, that’s a lot of work for a lot of workers.

With barely two working weeks under his belt Mr Allister has lodged more than 10 written questions to the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister alone! At this rate, any hope for cuts in public services will disappear under an avalanche of paperwork and questions, thus ensuring the jobs of many, many people!

Thank you Mr Allister for keeping so many people in employment!

Spin city

THE Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has a definition of what public relations means. It says on its website that PR is:

“…the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.”

This is of course, what each and every new minister seems to be undertaking since they were appointed…

Within 36 hours of taking their Ministerial pledge, there were stories with culture minister Carál Ní Chuilín and education minister John O'Dowd on a double page spread in the Irish News.

Then we had the exclusive BBC interview with new health minister Edwin Poots. Chunks of airtime, despite the wall-to-wall Royal visit down south coverage, were devoted to Minister Poots.

The first part of the CIPR definition of PR is about reputation. So, combined with the quotation above, we have a clear agenda to gain a better reputation for ministers, goodwill towards them and their decisions, and – get this – mutual understanding.

Well that’s all right then. Our ministers will work to make sure that not only are they going to tell us what’s happening through their organised media management, but they are also going to listen to what service users want and need.

We suspect not. In fact, call us cynical (most people do) but the whole exercise of ministers in the media this past week smacks of a concerted effort to make sure that the public recognises their faces.

So who is behind this propaganda effort? (We’ll not dignify it as PR because the charm offensive will die out as soon as hard choices need to be made)

Is it the Executive Information Service? Is it the party’s themselves? Is it the legions of ‘Special’ Advisers?

Whoever it is, we expect that journalists will find that the word ‘goodwill’ shall be dropped from any definition of PR that equates to ministerial communications.

An invidious position

SINN Féin must have been greatly relieved that the visit of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II – or Elizabeth Windsor, if you are from Óglaigh na hÉireann – came after the recent elections.

It has meant that they have not had to face all that awkwardness surrounding the visit of the Queen.

Gerry and his beard have looked particularly uncomfortable; with a sort of ‘not the right time’ and ‘some more apologies from the Brits please’ beginning to sound distinctly churlish in the wake of wall-to-wall coverage.

In fact, some of the coverage passed ‘over-the-top’ on the way to complete and utter overkill.

The media struggled for another commentator to repeat the word ‘historic’ every few seconds of interview time.

Which left the half-hearted dissention of Sinn Féin and the rabid dissidents casting stones and vitriol: and in an ironic twist one of those rabid protestors was wearing the shirt of an English football team…

To a certain extent it was not in Sinn Féin’s interests to make too much of a deal about the Royal visit. Their focus in the Republic is on the economy; and Barack Obama’s advisers look closely at recent statements of political parties before he touches down.

And in Norn Iron Martin McGuinness is shoulder to shoulder with Peter Robinson on their personal agenda of making it all better here in the north.

Obviously Martin couldn’t be seen at the state banquet in Dublin Castle but such is the new found, if tentative, matey-ness of the two that Peter is said to have brought back a wee doggie bag of leftovers for their plotting sessions on the downfall of the UUP and SDLP.

Whether the Queen managed to notice the absence of Sinn Féin at the banquet will remain unknown in line with protocol, but at the Irish National Stud could it have been the case that Sinn Féin like all the other politicians, were waiting for a tip from Her Majesty on the 3.15 race at Chepstow…

Whatever the case, the visit of the Queen leaves Sinn Féin with a dilemma in terms of their public positioning. If they maintain their vocal anti-royalist stance, tying the monarchy into past issues, the public will largely ignore this, or worse still lambast them. If they choose to let the wedding and royal visit furor die down then the hardliners may ask why they have kept relatively quiet.

Whatever the case a wee secret bad part of Gerry and Martin must be hoping for a tabloid royal scandal exposé very soon…

If you’re happy and you know it…

IT’S getting down to business and, in case you doubt it, Peter and Martin are going to tell you that it is so! The new, shiny face of the Norn Iron Executive is that of an executive ready to get down to the hard work of government.

How long the honeymoon period actually lasts is another matter, for as sure as the sun rises and the day darkens at dusk there will be rows and hissy fits.

So in the meantime, there’s a certain sense of knuckling down to the hard tasks. And who said that our ministers must work together? Well it was the electorate according to Peter and Martin.

There was, however, a hint that a window of opportunity exists in the next 18 months or so to get the really awkward decisions taken. Peter did mention that it is three years until the next election.

Compare that to the last two years – a European election, a Westminster election and then May’s double whammy – and it is easy to see that it was difficult to agree on whether the Executive would have tea or coffee let alone agree a budget!

So, with real politics/bread and butter politics [delete as applicable] on the table can we expect all to be sweetness and light? Well, no.

For a start a clear signal has been sent from Minister of Cuts, Sammy Wilson that the hard times are coming down the road. The warnings have been given over the past year and now the stark reality is coming to pass.

Add into that there is the switcherooney planned by the DUP in two years time, with ministers stepping aside for a new tranche of bright-eyed DUP guys.

Translate this simply: the new squad of ministers will not have to bear the blame for the harsh decisions. In two years time, pummelled by cuts and the harsh decisions, the electorate will welcome with open arms the new set of DUP ministers, as they bring light, beneficence and bigger budgets to bear. And, at the same time they can slag off the rest of the Executive.

No doubt their coalition partners, Sinn Féin, will be immune to the battering, but the SDLP and UUP will be firmly in the sights of the DUP ministers. No real change there then!

Welcome back?

IN media circles there was much popping of corks, high fives across newsrooms and celebrations akin to the ending of a long war.

The reason for their success? The election of Mr Jim Allister to the Assembly! It does not matter to the media that Mr Allister’s party was not even close elsewhere in the Assembly elections. It does not matter that Mr Allister was not elected on a wave of popular dissent against the DUP.

What does matter is that they no longer feel awkward about inviting Mr Allister to speak about everything or anything he objected to when he held no democratic mandate.

That of course begs the question as to whether the exposure of Mr Allister in the media in the months leading up to the poll helped or hindered him in the poll. Would another party – let’s say the Green Party, the Worker’s Party or UKIP – have benefitted from similar pre-purdah exposure?

But, Mr Allister now stands as an elected Member of the Legislative Assembly. The media were already hanging on his every utterance as the election of the speaker and his deputies got underway.

As a piece of political theatre it was engrossing, but theatre it was. It added nothing to our understanding of the future path of the individuals, parties or the assembly itself. It did, perhaps, signal to other existing and future MLAs that shouting loudest and stirring an already cooked pot gets the most coverage if not the most progress.

“We just hate everyone” – a statement from the masochistic martyrdom paranoia complex society

THE politics of condemnation is one that all politicians and almost all commentators have become all too familiar with over the period of the Troubles and in more recent weeks.

But sometimes there is sheer bewilderment at the stupidity, arrogance and hate-filled spite that spews from some.

If it was not bad enough that some of the so-called dissident groups murdered, in cold blood, Constable Ronan Kerr, or that morons targeted a football manager, we had to listen to a litany of targets and collaborators from a masked idiot.

The police were targets, with Roman Catholic officers being prime targets, and anyone else they might come up with on a Saturday night. But, they also slammed Church men, constitutional politicians, the GAA and no doubt were adding anyone in the rest of the population of Ireland, north and south, to their potential legitimate targets, along with the entire nations of Scotland, England and Wales, with the EU to follow shortly afterwards.

They are the worst sort of masked idiots; ones with no real agenda other than hatred and violence. Whatever agenda they may pretend to have is so out of touch with the reality experienced by the majority of Northern Ireland’s 1.8m residents. Sure we rarely agree on anything, but the days of sectarian murder, town centres crippled and pulverised, lives and limbs torn apart are behind us. What sort of twisted nostalgia wants that all to happen again.

We have a theory: masochistic martyrdom paranoia complex. It’s a personality disorder that feels that the sufferer’s life is not complete unless a notional state entity, is wedded with conspirators in churches and politics, working with every civilian to punish illegally the sufferer’s ‘cause’.

The sufferers of masochistic martyrdom paranoia complex are easy to spot by their actions, such as wittering on to a few dozen halfwits, murdering people and trying to destroy the economy.

Unfortunately they are harder to identify as their idea of fashion is a balaclava and they prefer to skulk about in the dead of night committing their foul deeds against humanity.

We’d like to offer a final message to sufferers’ of masochistic martyrdom paranoia complex from a Republican background: we slag off anyone and everyone in a form of humour sometimes called satire. We’re not always good at it, but we are even-handed, so sufferers from a Loyalist background have been our legitimate targets too. But we target with words. Perhaps you’d be so kind to seek psychiatric help in the meantime.

Colour coding Norn Iron

WE’RE a thoughtful bunch here in Norn Iron – we colour code areas of staunch sectarian attitudes. We can safely lay claim to being the first, if not the only country to colour code sectarianism.

No, not something straightforward as flags or bunting: no, we go one step further and colour code our pavements’ kerbing.

Although the practice is dying out as quickly as traditional industries and support for paramiltarism, there are still parts of Belfast were you will know by way of a green, white and gold kerb, or a red, white and blue kerb, just what the general affiliation of the inhabitants is.

But with the passing of the majority of pavement artistes there has emerged another reliable sign of when you move from one demographic affiliation to another; that is the election poster.

If you see a large amount of DUP and UUP posters then in all likelihood you’ll know you are in a Loyalist/Unionist ward. Similarly, a large amount of Sinn Féin and SDLP posters and you are in a Republican/Nationalist ward.

And, if the net value of the houses in the ward is well above the average then you might see Alliance posters.

[In terms of balance we’d like to say there are other parties contesting the election, check them out on reliable media; or failing that try the local papers, BBC and UTV].

With such sectarian colour coding, it reveals a deep flaw in Northern Ireland politics. The four largest parties do not aspire to gain votes from, wait for it, “the Other Side”.

Much as a token member or voter will appear when politically opportune, or for media purposes, the parties have not the confidence in their message to have any ambition of winning voters by argument. If they did, the arguments on so-called bread and butter issues would justify campaigning in every ward.

Instead we have what we have: the old saying that we get the politicians we deserve may well be true after all.

Aren’t bank holidays inconvenient?

THERE has been much moaning about the Royal Wedding by those fed up with the wall-to-wall media love-in, and privately even the staunchest Royalist unionist politician must be fed up with the whole affair...err not that we’re suggesting a Royal Affair!

First there was Easter and the Assembly election campaign on the stumps stumbled as banks were closed Good Friday and Easter Monday, while some other employers offered staff Easter Monday and Tuesday. Canvassers didn’t know what the score was at all.

Then there was the big yellow ball in the sky...sunshine in Norn Iron at Easter? It’s practically unheard of. Voters were seen in cars actually preparing to go the beach! And, they weren’t wearing seven layers of thermals and a knitted sweater.

A late Easter and then the nuptials of Prince William and Katherine Middleton... With the beneficence of a medieval Lord, Prime Minister Cameron granted us another public holiday.

At the time even nationalists raised a brief huzzah at the thought of another day away from the sweatshop. But now political parties are muttering.

Four days when you can’t guarantee if the punters will be in to harass with good weather, and Champions League semi-finals to boot...

But while they have been bemoaning the wedding, weather and days off voters beware! With all that time off we believe that they will be all marshalling their energies, gathering the canvassing troops and heading to doorsteps and media studios across the land.

Baton down the hatches, get the dog ready to bark the loudest, or simply tell them that you’ve made up your mind, so please, go away. If only it was that easy.