Narnia and the Norn Iron Executive

ROLL-UP, roll-up for yer extra student places! Step forward young man, step forward young woman, because the largesse of the Norn Iron Executive knows no bounds.

Welcome one and all to the wonderful, weird world of Higher Education in Narnia, otherwise known as Stormont.

Just one step through the magic wardrobe at Parliament Buildings and you could get one of the extra 700 places being created in Norn Iron’s universities. The wonderful generosity of Employment and Learning Minister, Dr Stephen Farry means that not only are degree fees £5,500 cheaper than England, but there are even more places!

Excuse us if we swoon here with all this beneficence coming to our young people, it all is a little too much.

But, here comes the proverbial fly in the ointment (go on, you knew there had to be one!). It seems that at the same time that many parts of Belfast will henceforth be known as ‘Student City’ there may be no-one to fill the places.

“Surely not” you say! “Surely so”, we say. Because, Dr Farry’s Executive colleague, Education Minister John ‘High Tower’ O’Dowd is talking about drastic cuts in, not only the number of schools, but of each school’s budget...

So we may have loads of extra places in low-cost science, technology, engineering and medical degrees. But too few teachers and schools to make sure that the young ‘uns get the ‘A’ Levels necessary; that is unless the grammar sector gets some more...oh wait a minute! There be a political minefield ahead.

One and one equals WHAT!

WE are being told constantly that the resource we have amongst our educated workforce entices global companies to adopt the mantle as Foreign Direct Investors with a little Invest NI help and the possibility of Corporation Tax cuts at some stage in the future.

There is no doubt that we have a workforce available to start at the drop of a hat. In fact drop one near a dole office and you’ll have a ready made staff group clambering over each other to grab a pay cheque.

Whatever the rights and wrongs about the current education system, or your political perspective, a well-educated work force is pretty much needed. And to have a good well-educated work force you pretty much need schools.

So, what better way to prepare for the future than to cut back school budgets? Sure it all makes sense when you think about it. Or, maybe it doesn’t.

The reality, according to the Education Minister, John ‘Too Tall’ O’Dowd, is that Dick Dastardly (David Cameron) and Mutley (Nick Clegg) have teamed up with Skeletor (George Osborne) to impose cuts. That dratted British Administration has been blamed for each school having to cut five per cent off their budgets.

So, we have a bloated school estate, and no-one wants to see their local school close; we have at least five types of schools (well we can only remember five, but there are sure to be more); and there is a curriculum that doesn’t even seem prepared for 21st Century computing challenges.

A plan for the way forward? Audit the schools, cut budgets and well that seems about it.

According to most commentators (well those that manage to get on the media) we have a lot of high achievers and a lot who leave without qualifications. This seems to have existed for some time. And a plan to sort it all out? We’re sure that there is one, but in the meantime let’s cut schools’ budgets.

As we said it all sort of makes sense when you remember that we live in the Twilight Zone that is Norn Iron: do not adjust your sets you’re watching Stormont TV…

In other news more children are falling into the poverty trap. Sure at least they’ll be warm and fed in school, if it hasn’t been closed already!

In through the out door

SOMETIMES we are alleged to be a little bit cynical. Yes, I know that may shock you, but it is true: we have been taught to be suspicious of every move that every politician takes, every time they open their mouths.

Which is perhaps why it was with a little jaundiced jeer that we toasted George Osborne’s announcement that Norn Iron was to get a cool £200m extra to spend on whatever the Executive saw fit when the Chancellor made his autumn budget statement.

No matter whether Norn Iron has had its begging bowl held out to Tories or Labour, it is a good idea to see what strings are attached to the outreached 30 pieces of silver.

But, for a time we couldn’t quite see where the catch was. At the heart of every cynic is a romantic hoping for the best while fearing for the worst.

And lo, behold, the Secretary of State for Norn Iron, Owen Paterson has announced that a date is to be set to consider allowing Norn Iron to have a wee bit special corporation tax rate to entice those Yanks with stuffed wallets to empty their contents here.

Great, after all the waffle then maybe a decision!

And then we looked at the figures. Estimates are that reduced Corporation Tax in Norn Iron will cost us between £100m and £500m. Not even the most rash bookie would offer odds on the final figure as being £200m – exactly what Mr Osborne is handing out...

Of course, such a cynical suggestion could have one rated as being paranoid, but it all sorts of makes sense when you look at head on, rather than through the prism of news stories churned out.

We don’t blame the Tories in the same way it is unfair to blame Labour handling of Norn Iron’s weird economy.

Giving with one hand, while taking with the other is a perfectly reasonable approach when dealing with the Norn Iron political ‘elite’.

In the middle of the muddle will be, for another 18 months at least, Mr Sammy Wilson, Minister for Finance and Personnel. We all feel much reassured...

Who ate all the pies?

RIGHT own up now or the entire population gets detention! Who amongst you has been eating all the pies? C’mon, quicker that you own up, quicker that we can get on with decent ranting!

Well you pie eaters and salad dodgers, you’re going to cost us a fortune, and not just because of the hike in pastry prices across the land as a result of excessive demand.

Turns out all you burger munchers and chip addicts are going to cause a tsunami of obesity related illnesses that will result in huge demands on our already over-stretched waistlines, sorry health budget.

Which, given the parlous state of Norn Iron finances means real trouble. The bill will become ever more exacting in human lives, not to mention the costs of treating diabetes, strokes, heart attacks and respiratory illnesses, something our politicians are all too well aware of.

But what can any self-respecting, if slightly tubby MLA do about it apart from adopt a healthy lifestyle as an example to all?

We have been known to indulge a little like the rest, but we also know the success of public health campaigns on smoking, drink driving and the like. Yet, we spend so little on the public health budget in Norn Iron that an Ulster Fry, with all the trimmings (that means double bacon, double sausages and double fried eggs) seems at times like a national cuisine d’art.

The alternative is for the Health Minister to begin a serious re-evaluation of spending on public health as part of the ongoing review of health.

Or could all of you who have been eating all the pies own up and leave lest you tip the island into the Atlantic!

Fracking fracker of a frackin’ row

WE do confess to being not at the top of the intellectual discipline that is geology. We do know what a rock looks like, and being resident in Belfast some of the time we know what the best weight of a rock is to heft during a riot.

However, when it comes to the practice of extracting deep buried sources of fuel from within (DUP Young Earth Creationists look away now) the boundaries of rock laid down millions of years ago, we’re not quite sure.

Norn Iron seems to, for all intents and purposes, to be bereft of natural fossil fuel sources. Had we oil or vast reserves of coal we’d have American ‘peace’ keeping forces here in 1969.

As it is, apart from strong winds from MLAs mouths, wind power is our only abundant natural energy resource.

But it recently turned out that we may have some ‘shale’ gas in Fermanagh: which comes with a slight catch. Shale gas is difficult to get out of the ground, even if some dissident republicans might suggest that they have some explosives that can do the job, scientists did explain that mixing gas and explosives is not a naturally good thing.

To get this gas out of the ground they use hydraulic forces to, erm well to hydraulically force the gas out. This technique is a wee bit controversial, even if it seems that we are to be reassured that some nice Australians are to be given the licence.

After all their ancestors were probably shipped to Oz as a punishment for some minor offence, so it might seem right and proper that they come back looking not to extract overdue revenge, but to extract our gas.

All well and good so far?

Well controversy between environmentalists and business men aside, this issue is not normally the subject of political satire.

But then pops up the Green Party saying that Energy Minister Arlene Foster’s hubby owns some of the land to be ‘exploited,’ or developed if you prefer.

Surely, claimed Mr Steven Agnew, it was a faux pas not to mention this when the Minister was answering questions on the licence to ‘frack’?

Not a bit of it, saieth the First Minister, Peter Robinson!

Who may be right as to whether profiting from property was a cause for investigation? Is it Mr Robinson? Is it Mr Agnew?

Or will this whole fracking mess just go away without the Speaker having to make a ruling.

Now as mentioned in the start we’re no experts in geology, but we do know how to use Wikipedia, the same as the next ignoramus. And we did come across an article suggesting that fracking may, or may not, have been the cause of a minor earthquake in Blackpool.

If fracking was to cause a political earthquake rather than a geological one in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, even Mr Agnew might welcome it.

PfG2 - The Delivery Begins!

DEEP in the bowels of Parliament Buildings, Stormont lies a darkened room.

Occasionally a door opens letting in light, causing the denizens of this secret cabal to blink and shrink from the glare.

The rare times it does open is to admit a pizza delivery, or multi-packs of stimulant drinks.

Here lies the geek.

Here lies the programmers; that secretive bunch of nerds who crouch and stoop as they bend over their keyboards, using their programming skills to shape and adjust the figures and avatars flitting across their screens.

Here they are ready for their latest release, with a fanfare almost as big as any Xbox 360 release, dripping with the same hyperbole PlayStation3 games the nerds let loose their latest product “Programme for Government 2.0 – the delivery Begins!”

Players of PfG2 are immediately faced with the first challenge, controlling rival speakers as they bore endlessly without tripping up, or worse still, disagreeing.
Next navigate a host of media interviewers were reporters shoot barbed jibes and awkward questions.

Finally beware the end of level boss: earn experience points from ‘Da Speaker’ before facing the End of Level Boss – The Allister.

Pass by The Allister and you’ll move on to Level Two, where you must extract the secret elixir called ‘Money’ to deliver your Level One Promises into the strangest yet of environments. It’s called the real world. As yet few MLAs have passed that level consistently for more than a few fleeting moments.

The programmers of Pfg2 – The Delivery Begins promise four years of gameplay before the ultimate stage ‘The Election’. Before then thrill with your ‘Sword of Cuts’ as you slash into the bloated dragons of Local Government, reducing their numbers until you can manage them; and discover the secret hoards of gold hidden in the mysterious caverns called ‘Monitoring Rounds’.

Less advanced PfG2 players still have the option of downloading a player guide in hard copy where you can join in by picking a page and rolling a dice to see whether any Programme for Government promises can be met.

Collision course

THE prospect of closing schools seems a nice wee idea for saving money, although no-one has yet explained how this will be achieved as there is unlikely to be a queue to buy old school buildings, but at least they’ll save on the costs of those pesky teacher’s wages.

So, while we’re all welting away thinking about what the Education Minister, John ‘High Tower’ O’Dowd’s audit of schools will result in, some schools in the South Eastern Education and Library Board area are already ‘earmarked’ for closure.

One such school is Knockmore Primary School in Lisburn, an integrated school with a special needs unit. Who should pop up there on Friday, but Health Minister Edwin Poots. And the Department of Health’s press release duly issued a press release with much made of the speech and language work done there.

But surely it could be construed as inappropriate for an Executive Minister to visit a school while its future is being decided. If he was visiting as the constituency MLA then fair enough, but then the gathered press officers would not have needed to pull together a few well honed phrases and issue the release via the Executive Information Service.

Has a nod been tipped to ‘Big John’ or will this see mutual huffing?

Nothing like a crisis to get us all motivated

NORTHERN Ireland’s politicians have adopted the motto of the Boy Scout movement to “Be Prepared” by planning for a crisis over the next Justice Minister six months in advance.

For those of you too bored to pay attention, Alliance took on the mantle of the devolved Justice portfolio in April 2010 after much faux brinkmanship between the DUP and Sinn Féin. But that deal will end in May 2012.

Who will then become Justice Minister? Sinn Féin quite fancy a shot at it, but the DUP will not look forward to facing their core electorate with that in place, so are suggesting that the number of executive departments be reduced so the posts can be doled out to prevent such embarrassment. Either way we could be see D’Hondt run again (Oh, go and look that up on Wikipedia because we’re not going to explain it again!).

Alliance leader and current Justice Minister, David Ford said he would willingly step aside to make sure that the devolution of justice would not fall.

And, an agreed way forward? We can’t be having that! Otherwise there would be no sense of crisis to work towards in May. After all we’ve no election to get worked up about!

On yer bike!

HEALTH staff! Out, get out right now! Yep, Health Minister Edwin Poots wants you gone! And especially if you're what he calls non-essential staff...

Mr Poots claimed this week that he had secured £15m to offer voluntary redundancies and early retirement packages to health staff and wasn’t able to rule out that ‘frontline’ staff would not be included. So, does that mean that if a member of the ‘frontline’ turns up asking for early retirement,Mr Poots will say no until there are enough non-essential staff collecting their cheques? And, who exactly qualifies as non-essential? And, how soon will they be back as management consultants?

Past efforts have been less than successful, or have seen swathes of the health service, like cleaning services, contracted out to the private sector. And who are we to say that it was a mere coincidence that Mr Poots was recently in the US of A, where people who don’t have health insurance yearn for the luxury of the NHS, even our less than perfect version of it.

Right here, right now more operations are being carried out, ever more complicated procedures are undertaken regularly, cancer sufferers have better survival rates and people are living longer than any other period of history.
This means that the ministerial portfolio attached to health is one which will forever be a victim of the success of those under their titular command.

Therefore spending £15m to get rid of some staff to save £9m a year seems a good deal. But, we suspect – regular Clouseau’s that we are – that all will not run smoothly, and the law of the health service unintended consequences will kick in almost immediately.

Fox, Tories and the UUP

WE hate the term lobbyists. It conjures up images of sharp suited types smarming round the corridors of the Congress and the Senate in the US to make sure more kids are addicted to tobacco and oil companies are allowed to kill wildlife.

Here in Northern Ireland there are few lobbyists. These include professional, dedicated consultants who work in an open transparent way with their clients and politicians. As opposed to say the way a certain Mr Werrity is alleged to have operated…

Mr Fox stood up in the Commons and, like a naughty school boy on front of the headmaster said he done wrong, but if it wasn’t for them touts in the media…

Now, much as we have the occasional dislike for the media and their scurrilous ways, it is a bit rich to say the media were misbehaving because I was misbehaving and that wasn’t fair; if you catch what we mean.

Instead of the mutual respect public affairs professionals here in Northern Ireland share with politicians, policy officers and their aides, the Fox affair has the potential to cause the sort of chaos that occurs when…well when a fox gets into the henhouse. (You can now park all your ‘long runs the Fox’ comments, we’ve heard them all)

While this year’s Tory party conference was marked by there being more “lobbyists” than Conservative Party delegates, here in Norn Iron party conferences are generally more sedate and, well more gentlemanly type of affairs. A long weekend, getting to know candidates and colleagues, influencers and decision-makers alongside the politicos and their acolytes.

And lo and behold this weekend the Ulster Unionist Party conference is to be a much truncated affair, a private session for party members to work out where it all went wrong this afternoon (Friday) and a brief opportunity for those lobbyist types to mingle tomorrow morning (Saturday), before the main session concludes at lunchtime.