Do you wanna be in my gang?

ADIEU Monsieur Elliott as the Ulster Unionists bid a sort of fond-ish goodbye, farewell to you after your not-so-long reign as their divine leader.

It’s been fun and all that. Well for the rest of the parties it has been, even if it has been less than a barrel of laughs for you and your colleagues.

Being briefed against, caught with off-the-cuff faux pas, heading off rival factions, seeing MLAs defect and publicly slate you – it has been a politically bruising period for you.

As you shuffle to the backbenches we wonder who will take your place as the UUP supremo. More to the point, who would want what you must have felt, was a poison chalice with a bitter after-taste of bile and invective.

Will it be that whipper-snapper McCrea up for a second go in the ring, or will we see someone perceived as a ‘safe pair of hands’ such as Minister Kennedy.

And, more importantly will it be someone who will take the decision as to whether to go into opposition? And will they have the confidence in themselves to recover from the bitter electoral reverses of 2011.

Are they, like you Tom, truly a believer?

Have they a vision? Will they survive the winds of misfortune that battered you? And, vitally, will anyone care?

Research into the bleedin’ obvious published

IN an attempt to provide a reasonable piece of evidence for the one foot forward, two step back theory of Norn Iron politics the Community Relations Council has published a research paper in the bleedin’ obvious.

The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report’s conclusions will probably only surprise the more insulated residents of Cultra, Crawfordsburn and Cherry Valley in north Down. It says there are more peace walls, 90% of social housing is delineated by religion and just over 90% of children are educated in schools that are perceived as green or orange.

Homer Simpson might say: “D’oh!” having failed to notice this since the birth of Norn Iron and throughout the so called ‘Troubles’….

Once you move through the highways and byways of Belfast, the divided nature of the Greater Belfast area is clear. True there are less colour coded pavements than in the past, but you are rarely in doubt as to which flavour of resident you are a fellow road user with…and as for buses, you can be pretty sure about your fellow passengers on the Metro by which stop they board.

However, it is easy to dismiss reports with headlines in the media such as the BBC’s “14 years after deal NI ‘still divided’ new report suggests”.

What we should be thinking about is not the headline but the society – political and cultural – that reinforces division.

Oh, we’re not talking about social engineering, nor are we putting down the report author’s valuable outlining of the issues surrounding why we are still a divided society.

The real people who should be hanging their heads in shame at having to read this bleedin’ obvious material are the politicians, community leaders and other worthies who pollute our airwaves telling us, the great unwashed, why the prod/catholic, nationalist/unionist, republican/loyalist view is right/wrong. At this point authors usually say ‘delete as appropriate’. We say get on with deleting division.

[Editor’s note: We have now turfed the author of this piece off their high horse so we can satirise their polemic in a time and manner we see fit!]

Well, well welfare reform to upset mobile pensioners

ERE’S to our pensioners, freewheel burning through the highways and byways on buses and trains thanks to free public transport from the ever generous Norn Iron Executive, spending their hard-earned state welfare pension and income monies on sweetie snacks for their far-flung grandchildren and great nephews and nieces.

But hold on there – what’s this! Welfare reform means that some money has to be re-allocated to the needy. The thinking being that some pensioners are not so needy…

Well string us up in a flat cap, stick a pipe in our gobs and we’ll tell ya a tale of past hopes and glory.

Many of our pensioners have worked all their days to enjoy retirement, contributing to the national purse through their taxes and national insurance. Indeed their private pensions are currently being taxed too.

So, some mandarin in Whitehall and a pencil pusher in Stormont is sitting in a darkened room with a calculator, abacus and an accounting book working out how to sort out who gets what. A figure of £300m emerged to make sure the right people won out and the wrong people didn’t.

But, and here’s the rub, to decide who is entitled to free transport requires an administration team, with all the audit trails, checks and balances and loads of public sector workers. While this all seems reasonable, it will cost a fortune. How many managers will be required for this? How many trained bean counters will be required? How many administration staff will be required?

It would be our guess that it would be a considerable chunk of change that will eat into the £300m that ‘needs to be’ re-allocated.

So let’s not pick on grandpa and grandma. Celebrate their ability to roam far and wide spending their meagre pensions.

And, let’s face it, many of us are not too far away from when we will be considering whether we’ll be getting our pension and free bus pass. We’ve always wanted to visit Ballygobackwards in Co. Tyrone for ourselves.

Moneybags Executive

EXCUSE us, but is there not a recession on? Is the world not teetering on the edge of economic meltdown? Is a run on European banks imminent should the economy all go south (that is ‘bad’, not down the road to Dundalk).

Did not our finance minister Sammy Wilson spend most of 2011 making doom-laden speeches? The end of times seemed a real possibility as the budget debates trundled on towards their inevitable interminable conclusion among the lesser-spotted MLAs.

But this week £580m popped out of the Norn Iron executive’s pockets to sprinkle cash for roads and hospitals. Huzzah, we cried, lit a cigar and reached for the champagne! Surely good times are here again!

Millions for roads! Millions for hospitals! Hooray! The good times roll on - but at what price? As the embers of our cigar are tapped into the ashtray and the fizz fades from our bubbly we got to thinking - must have been the champers that caused that - how come Mr Wilson and his executive chums can come up with these millions at the drop of the proverbial hat?

Maybe there is some sort of wishing well over which a chosen executive minister waves a magic money wand and out pops millions. Teachers need a generous redundancy package - wave the wand. Schools feeling the pinch, here comes the wand. Radiography for Altnagelvin? With a swoosh and a sway, abracadabra, wave the wand and here comes the money.

Does Mr Wilson have a wee shed at the back of Parliament Buildings were he stashes all this largesse, ready to dispense it like a latter-day philanthropic moneybags?
Unfortunately we fear not. A vertiginous feeling pervades our post celebratory blues.

Unless the UK coalition government’s welfare reform proposals are stopped in their tracks, which not very likely, the benefits cap and housing benefit qualifier will chew and gouge at the available cash as the norn iron executive struggles to plug the gap. This week’s slight drop in unemployment also saw an increase in claimants. When employment is low, crime is higher and the bill for health burgeons.

While the money was being announced, jobs were being shed at a call centre, and it was announced that the executive had missed out on essential targets, especially in the field of public health.

Public health is not glamorous, nor does it have the roar of heavy machinery that comes with road building. But it saves in the long term. Cancer screening can not only save lives, but can keep someone earning wages and paying taxes. Or what about the unpaid carer, which is often the euphemism for a grandparent providing childcare, or an elderly spouse looking after their disabled partner.

Unfortunately none of these things bring the government a-approved headlines: “we’re doing stuff, so pay attention you peasants!”

We have solutions - albeit fanciful ones.

Option one: employ a Greek financier and blow the lot. That way we’re guaranteed year long rioting and not just the sectarian summerfest of stone throwing. This will justify the clamour to Whitehall for more money for policing, and the police officers getting all that overtime have got to spend their money somewhere.

Option two is the more drastic: employ a really good squad of forensic accountants and a battalion of white shirted, bespectacled, calculator toting cash counters to see where the money is coming from; and secondly carve a swathe through the upper echelons of departments, recommending that the top tiers of administration are reduced while protecting those who actually do the work.

Will either of these options be deployed to solve the tsunami of trouble coming our way? Well, we can but dream. In the meantime it will be supermarket own brand cheapo Cava instead of champagne!

A man of wealth and taste

WHO would have thunk it - Financier for the Norn Iron executive Sammy Wilson is a man of wealth and taste, a patron of the arts no less.

Last week social development minister Nelson McCausland came over all Dick Dastardly and announced that all those artistes and artists congregating around the Cathedral ‘Arts’ Quarter would no longer be able to dance to the tune of public money tinkling into their grant pots.

This week, Mr McCausland announced that finance minister Sammy Wilson had come up with £200,000 and he would add another £50,000 to keep the whingers as silent as a mimer in a quiet contest.

Throughout the week, Mr McCausland has been arguing the case for cutting arts funding; but he was clear that his sudden about turn had nothing to do with negative publicity, phone-in criticism or newspaper stories. There is a Belfast saying that summarises most people’s response, with more than a touch of irony; it goes like this: “Aye! Dead on Nelson!”

Cynical? Us? Never!

Crayon funding under threat

A COLOURING in crisis of vast magnitude is striking at the heart of Norn Iron arts sector.

A vast shortfall in crayon stocks, poster paint and little plastic smocks to keep clothes clean will not be met from the public purse.

In a shock move the Minister for Social Development, Nelson McCausland said that several leading crayon manufacturers had upped their prices and are working on Sundays.

As a result the Department is on the horns of a dilemma: if they stop funding crayon colouring in and other arts projects, the result will be less arty farty types clogging up the capitalist advance towards a retail driven society, but will also mean more lovies clogging up the dole queues.

Yes, it looks like the Laganside events grant will close next month, throwing the likes of the Festival of Fools (Editor’s Note this is not the weekly Festival of Fools at Stormont – the arts festival of fools is intentionally funny) and the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival.

There is no doubt, despite our earlier jibes, that the arts community brings valuable life to parts of the city and the region. But in a time of austerity they are both an easy target, and in the cold hard glare of bean counters, a reasonable one.

That is not to say that there should be a complete ending of arts funding. Tourists like it when we have a party in Norn Iron – as do the restaurant and bar owners.

Therefore, Mr McCausland should grab his own personal crayon collection and hurriedly scribble, in his best joined up writing, a note to his friends in the Executive asking them to share out some good will and poster paints to make sure that when they go for their food and drinkie poos in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, there’s a wee bit of life about the place.

A good week’s work...

THERE are times when we wonder what worth is the work of the denizens of Satan’s seventh sulphurous circle of hell, also known as the Assembly’s Chamber. For a change the stench of futility was over-powered by the sweet whiff of virtue.

“What!” we hear you cry, surely some mistake, if the cynics spotted something good!
Well, much as we do enjoy working with the malaise of misguided political shenanigans, we also have to doff our cap when there is a result worthy of praise.

This week’s Norn Iron Assembly plenary sessions saw a debate take place on the horror of people trafficking. Let’s lay our cards on the proverbial table here: those who traffic in their fellow human beings - often involving prostitution - are the lowest form of life to walk on legs; all the punishments of our penal system are not enough for them.

Any steps our MLAs as legislators may take to clamp down on human trafficking and those who avail of the services of these modern day slaves must be welcomed.

Thus when it emerged that an Assembly debate on human trafficking had prompted the Minister of Justice to bring forth legislation to combat this bestial trade, it was all we could do not to break into spontaneous applause.

Speakers from all parties spoke passionately on the Sinn Féin motion, and for once there was cross-party consensus that brought a real result.

Also this week, there were pointless debates on Lurgan’s Millennium Way and car insurance that won’t do a thing, there was some waffle about the educational maintenance allowance that won’t solve the problem of youth unemployment and some other platitudes voiced during various ministerial question times.

The Assembly has proven through this high profile action that ministers can make real change for people. While it is doing other good work, it is so disappointing to have these efforts over-shadowed in the public mind by pointless debates.

Let it be a lesson to legislators that work to change people’s lives can be started, and hopefully completed, lest the electorate boycott the ballot box in their droves, come the next election.

Quackers counting

RIGHT we apologise for the pun about being quackers, but it was South Antrim MLA Mitchell McLaughlin’s fault.

“If it walks like an overspend, quacks like an overspend, then as far as the public is concerned it is an overspend,” said Mr McLaughlin about a government ‘overspend’ on an accounting software procurement designed to improve accounting...

The software package concerned, called Account NI, is designed to make procurement in the civil service more efficient. Seriously, you really couldn’t make this up.

Of course, the civil service had a perfectly rational explanation why something budgeted at almost £1m ended up costing ten times that figure. For those like us with limited mathematical skills, we’ll save you reaching for the calculator - it works out as almost £10m.

Now while this is a shocker in terms of how such a figure grew to such wallet choking amounts, it does give legs to the issue of the deep, entrenched relationship between the public sector and the private sector.

As good, balanced people, we can regularly argue for both public sector cuts and protection of the public sector, sometimes at the same time. However, pushing the political soundbite generators known as MLAs to one side for a minute, the reality is that for some companies the deep pockets of the civil service can be picked to see what pounds lie within - consultancies specialising in telling the civil and public sector exactly what they want to hear are two a penny here.

In the public’s perception this must lead to some confusion.

There now follows a gratuitous selection of puns: This whole thing is quackers; we need to identify who ducked this issue; and we cry fowl on the whole thing!

And that’s before the news that the Public Prosecution Service, the Departments of Justice and Finance are expected to have to cough up around £2m to settle a lawsuit taken by…over 50 lawyers.

Is it any wonder that various species of duck come to Norn Iron as part of their annual migration: with so many people quackers they feel right at home.

Peace sells…but who’s buying?

SO Europe has said that they’ll cough up the cash for the new peace and conflict resolution centre at the site of the former Maze prison.

Complete with a centre to explore past divisions, workshop with international groups, tour trips to an ‘H’ block and visits to the former prison’s hospital and chapel it sounds wonderful.

The bill is not so wonderful. Europe is contributing £18m. The total cost of the re-developing the entire Maze site, including the Peace Centre thingy is £350m, a serious wad of cash in these straitened times.

But, really it’s not the cost that is really irksome. It’s the length of time it takes for the executive to get round to getting the blooming thing done. By our calculation most prisoners spent less time in the Maze than it has taken to actually develop the new place!

Belfast is spending £233m developing parts of the city and seems on schedule to spend it in three years. C’mon Maze development team! Get yer act together. If you’re going to spend our money do it quickly so we can have a nice wee row about your spending our money.

Tory Transfer Talks

AS if Tom Elliott didn’t have his sorrows to seek, the Tories in Northern Ireland are on the march again with the official formation of a new political party going by the name “The Conservative and Unionist Party of Northern Ireland”.

Given previous elections results, this is less an ominous threat and more a damp sponge casually tossed at the battlers within the UUP.

However, with at least one prominent candidate publicly jumping ship to the Bangor based Conservatives, will other UU’s be tempted to throw in their lot with the blue brigade, thus leaving the ranks of the increasingly blue-rinse backers of the Ulster Unionists.

After the re-buff from Tom Elliott to the Tory advances for a union with unionists, the new party will initially have an observer seat on the Conservative party’s national board and its own party leader. Will this be enough to attract UU members or like-minded independents? And how will the ‘unionist’ in its new title (not to mention the union flag logo displayed prominently on the party’s website) go down with that constituency that supports the values of a centre right party but is fiercely proud of its Irishness?

We have our doubts that the new party will be an instant success, but having its HQ in Bangor is an astute move. While Lady Sylvia Hermon attracted a sizeable vote for her personal constituency work and independent minded nature, there is a rump amongst the cognoscenti in Cultra, Helen’s Bay and Bangor West who might be persuaded at council, and eventually Assembly level to take a gamble.

Oh the horror of it all! We, and the average voter are confused enough with the Single Transferable Vote and sorting out the green and orange vote before trying to think through who is right wing, who is left wing, who is centre right and who is centre left. And then putting them in order on the ballot paper…spare the poor voters like us who struggle counting beyond five without taking one glove off.