All fun and games at the UUP

WELL the lengths the Ulster Unionist Party go to get more media coverage know no bounds after their poor showing at the last elections!

First off, hold a leadership election. That way you get all the political correspondents' knickers in a knot with speculation apparently “rife” as to who will win out between John McCallister and Mike Nesbitt.

So desperate are the party to gain media coverage that Mr McCallister decided to deliver his own baby…mother and child are both safe and well after the leadership candidate was talked through the procedure by paramedics on their way to his South Down home. One can only imagine the conversation:

Paramedic: “Now Mr McCallister, please make sure your wife is safe and comfortable and that you have warm water, towels and a press release to hand.”

Mr McCallister: “Hurry up, the contractions are close together…”

Paramedic: “When you tell her to push, you’ll see the baby…as soon as its born I’ll let the BBC know.”

Of course, that’s not right, Mr McCallister’s baby was due next week and no parent wishes to be in that situation.

Mr Nesbitt’s plan to deliver a speech didn’t quite come up to his rival’s performance, but whether it will influence the result remains a moot point. Polling suggests that the votes will be close, but one man who will not be casting a vote is Strangord MLA David McNarry.

Mr McNarry, who got into a wee bit of a spat with outgoing leader Tom Elliott has been kicked out of the UUP for nine months…we have to wonder who he would have been voting for.

Then to compound matters an ex-UU member and former deputy leader crawled out of the woodwork to talk up how bad the party is. Lord Kilclooney delivered his devastating verdict on the party in an interview to the BBC on the eve of the leadership election.

We, being natural cynics, reckon this was a very clever wee plan. You see if the new leader doesn’t manage to halt the decline, then he can point to Lord Kilclooney’s verdict and say “no-one could have stopped it!”

On the other hand, should the party stage a Lazarus-like resurrection, then he can claim to have listened.

How likely that is, well, having cast the stones and read the runes, we aren’t about to become hostages to fortune other than to say that stabilising the UU ship is their best hope for the moment.

Can someone find me a political football please?

IN the absence of a credible opposition at Stormont, MLAs of all shades have been looking for something to get well and truly het up about. Preferably something monolithic, caricatured as faceless and the ‘common man and woman’ as victims.

What better target than… the health service!

Asides from the occasional tragedy and stupid political decision, the health service has committed some really damnable crimes against Norn Iron’s population! They’ve been forcing people to live longer through dramatic surgical interventions, through life-saving drug treatments and even, heaven help us, highly skilled doctors, nurses and other staff performing feats to make sure we live well into our twilight years.

No wonder we need an Older Person’s Commissioner - there’s tens of thousands of old people cluttering up the streets, bullying their way on to buses and joining the queue for a wee message to acknowledge they’ve reached treble figures in terms of age.

So politicians, as is their normal practice, have picked up on some failings to launch attack after attack on the health service. Yes, the failings at one A&E department out of several were awful and the conditions there made battlefield surgery look calm, but the picture isn’t all bleak.

Instead, the politicians should be launching a concerted attack on the general public!

Stupid people are having the audacity to eat healthier, moderate their alcohol intake, stop smoking, take regular exercise…where will this madness end?!

Do these people not realise that all this means you’ll be hanging around for years, upon years, upon years for a place on the surgery list after pulling a muscle doing Pilates?

Politicians! Act now!

Encourage smoking, force feed booze to teenagers, tell single mothers where their nearest drug dealer is, close leisure centres, ban fitness classes and make an Ulster Fry compulsory three days a week.

That way you can slash waiting times for older people within a few short years, and all the regressive taxes from booze and cigarettes can roll into coffers…

Seriously, well we weren’t being that serious earlier. The threats from Health Minister Edwin Poots to cut a swathe through management, investigations after investigations roll on and on.

Yes, such investigations are required, but more importantly the Compton Review has put forward a path for Norn Iron’s health service. That path may be right or wrong, but the MLAs who occasionally turn up to vote in Parliament Buildings need to realise that they must evolve beyond village pump politics and understand that we are a relatively small geographical area and as such we cannot expect a gold-plated regional standard health service. The target can only be ‘best possible’.

And stop getting old!

Can I have a small glass of chardonnay…

SO, the momentum is building for a minimum alcohol price to stop binge drinking morons etc etc.

In England and Wales the target is 40p minimum price per unit, which would mean, for example a cheap bottle of a cheeky red would shoot from £2.99 to £3.75 according to the BBC.

Now we know why there was no increase in the duty on booze in the budget: increase the price and the duty earned will rise accordingly.

No doubt the politicians here will join in this stupidity tax, for it is a stupidity tax on two levels. It is firstly designed to stop stupid people getting stupidly drunk. It is also stupid because it does not address the problem - it is tackling the symptom not the disease.

Heavy drinkers will always drink heavily. Teenagers will always try and get booze illicitly. Alcoholics will always manage to get hold of alcohol.

The minimum unit pricing may not really address the problem of pre-loading, but may open yet more booze cruises and access to illegal sources such as the belovedly dangerous poteen.

Is this a populist tax? In all probability, yes. Alcohol consumption has actually been falling.
Once a perception has been ingrained it becomes reality.

The so-called city centre lager louts…are they really any different to traditional Norn Iron booze fuelled rioting; or any different from booze fuelled rioting at the start of the 20th Century? Or worse still, is it any different from domestic violence by an alcoholic husband on his partner?

Alcoholism is a terrible disease, and alcohol has a dramatic effect on even the most stable of people.

The minimum pricing argument appeals to the soft centre voters who will never be in the city centre after 1am, and rarely have occasion to be in A&E departments. It is the politics of being seen to do something as opposed to addressing the issue of city centre infrastructure, treatment resources, education programmes, and diversionary activities.

There is this supposed aim of creating a café culture with us all sipping lattés and maybe once in a while sipping a glass of chilled chardonnay or a full-bodies merlot.

Before Norn Iron’s moral core (the MLAs) jump on the bandwagon they should institute a full examination of the issues. We know that’s not likely, but we live in hope.

Alternatively they should go the whole hog and make off sales state-owned with maximum purchase limits and arrest on the spot anyone in possession of more than one tin of weak beer.

After all the Rev Dr Ian Paisley did warn us about the evils of “the devil’s buttermilk”…

Here comes the reality check...

THERE are lies, damned lies and statistics, according to anyone who needs a cliché to throw around at the right time in the wrong place...

Hence we have the First Minister and deputy First Minister appearing on camera to tell us all how wonderful Norn Iron is doing and how their plans for the next three years are going to make it better.

Here in Norn Iron we're below the UK average of this and that - especially when it comes to employment statistics. No mention about the statistics for economic inactivity. Norn Iron doesn't compare quite as well in this category.

However, one must understand (as far as a sane person can) the mindset that chooses to ignore this set of statistics.

From the DUP view, as represented by Peter Robinson, economically inactive means those damned statisticians and their compatriots in the media are determinedly ignoring the economic impact of the stay-at-home mum in the "traditional" family, the plucky farmer's wife cooking up the chow for when her man comes back from the field and the dedicated l'il lady devoting her time to voluntary work in the church.

From the Sinn Féin perspective, as voiced by Martin McGuinness, it means those damned statisticians and their compatriots in the media are determinedly ignoring the voluntary community 'workers' who appear as rent-a-quotes on demand, the ex-combatants who are pursuing degrees in an "-olgy" in their spare time, and the l'il lady who is hosting those kitchen cabinet meetings loosely called "constituency" meetings.

If enough of the party faithful/deluded (please delete which one fits your belief system best) reinforce these views then it is likely that forever and forever, amen, the view will not change.

Goodness knows that it would be a shock to the system if either of our 'leading' politicians were to step outside the confines of 'high office' and attendant advisors, press officers and party officials, hangers on and visit an area which has multiple indicators of deprivation. Occassionally they do visit such areas, with TV cameras, picture opps and a media release. One wonders what the people in those areas must think after they have gone? Did the sun shine better that day when these political deities granted them a few minutes of their time? Will they now, like the Polynesian Cargo Cults, start to construct spurious projects to encourage the deities to visit again with their media largesse?

Should Peter and his compadré Martin ever go incognito and unaccompanied into the estates and ghettoised neighbourhoods then they may receive a shock to the system. For here people may offer uncensored opinions on giving MLAs a pay rise; Peter and Martin may then decide to grab the paper offering a pay rise to MLAs and rip it into shreds before it reached the light of day.

It would be a fool who argues that MLAs don't work hard. For the most part they are hard-at-it as well as doing some constituency work. It's a long week for them with only about 18 weeks when the Assembly is in recess each year. They deal with vital matters of scrutiny and help many an "ordinary person" with difficulties.

But is this more deserving than a nurse juggling the bloodshed and waiting times of an A&E department, or a classroom assistant whose role might help a child with special needs live a fulfilling life? Of course, the argument goes that Peter and Martin's decisions affect a greater number of people.

The efficacy of a Government is not just in what it delivers in terms of policy and legislation, but in the confidence of the populace, not some spurious statistical notion called an "electorate" has in that Government.

How will the confidence of the electorate be judged when there is an extra £100 or so a week being trousered by MLAs? How many of the MLAs gurning like media sluts actually turn down the pay hike? How will the electorate feel that 11 MLAs claimed 'expenses' of more than £60,000? Were the other 97 MLAs just not as good as filling their forms in?

Peter and Martin should have waited in a corridor in Parliament Buildings with a crack team of policy officers, special advisors and press officers ready to ambush the 'independent' people who proposed this pay rise, lock them in a darkened room in the basement and instead claim that the report called for a pay freeze for five years on MLAs pay...

Seeing as the rest of the population have been putting any significant expectation of a pay rise in the realms of fantasy fiction for a number of years now they might, just might, have been pleased to see the men and women of the benches to share the pain.

After all, when there is justice for all, all can feel equally aggrieved at the common enemies of evil bankers and Westminster mandarins...

But here is the cruellest cut of all...where are the MLAs getting that extra £5k a year from? Their constituency expenses. Oh, you remember that service where these public servants are meant to support their constituents...

To recap: independent bunch of people appointed by MLAs says MLAs should get more money; MLAs howl and say this is "bad" but there is no indication of how many MLAs have written to say 'no thanks'; the constituency services to the populace may be cut; and we are to believe that in the words of Bob Marley "Everything's gonna be all right".

On reflection there is a certain logic to that...we're just trying to figure out what it is.

Always and never should we reflect on the messages we're being given: always to see where the spin and airbrush has been applied; and, never because reality might be more frightening than a dark fairy tale read at bedtime...

Leader of the (rather small) pack

WE'VE been crunching some numbers, well as much as our basic understanding of mathematics allows, on the leadership "battle" to be top Ulster Unionist dog.

There are 15 UUP MLAs. Mr Elliott, in stepping aside as party leader reduces the group of MLAs who may be considering running for leader to 14. Danny Kinahan says he is backing Mike Nesbitt, effectively ruling himself out of the race.

That leaves the number at 13. Basil McCrea is said to not be running as leader again, thus reducing the number of MLAs running to be leader to 12.

Mike Nesbitt and John McCallister have said they're ready to lead, while the media, with seemingly unparalleled access, have been talking about potential collaboration – clarified today when Danny Kennedy announced that despite what the media said he wasn’t running to be leader, but he had had discussions with the other candidates.

So take away the two now wanting to be leader and we have ten other MLAs who can help decide.

Observant readers who got past P7 maths may have noticed the flaw in our "adding up" but bear with us...

The election of a new leader for the UUP will fall to around the decision of about a dozen MLAs and the party executive.

From once being an electoral hammer of - and for - the north, the UUP has been reduced to deciding the new boss with few still in post to help make the decision.

Whoever sups from the potentially poisoned chalice of leadership will need to ensure they have a heart to resist poisonous internal struggles; the heart for making a decision on whether to go into opposition; and, the poisoned heart of the real politician who is ready to exorcise malignancy and both demand and encourage loyalty.

Combining aspiration, pragmatism and ruthlessness...good luck with that!

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!