FINALLY, a chink of light has appeared at the end of a very long tunnel. The existential threat which hung over the world is finally receding. A vaccine has been found to the pernicious poison – which is Trumpism – and it’s called Joe Biden.
Not that we can ease up our vigilance; as with all viruses, Trumpism won’t disappear tomorrow – residues of it’s odious poison will wash through society for years to come. But at last there is hope; we can begin to return to normality with a new president who behaves like an adult rather than a child.
The damage done by Trump will slowly be washed away and the US will once again take its place in both the World Health Organisation and the Paris Climate Accord. Foreign relations will be recalibrated, with old friendships renewed and despots and dictators spurned rather than courted.
President-elect Biden makes no secret of the importance he places on his Irish ancestry and will act as a counterpoint to the disingenuous Brexit dealings of Boris Johnson. He will never accept a hard border in Ireland and after Brexit the UK will be ever more reliant on a favourable trade deal with the US, so all the cards are in Biden’s hands.
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WHILE the rest of the world celebrated the historic election of Kamala Harris as vice-president-elect, one sour note was raised locally. Lord Kilclooney referred to Harris in a tweet as "the Indian", something he’d done previously when referring to Leo Varadkar.
I’m not going to add to the universal condemnation apart from pointing out that these comments will define his legacy. After a lifetime spent in politics, they’re all he’ll be remembered for, which is some justice.
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EARLIER this week, Dr Julie-Ann Maney bravely spoke out about the endemic poverty she witnessed working as a paediatrician in Belfast. Dr Maney didn’t mince her words, rightly calling it a disgrace that a third of children in Northern Ireland live in poverty.
She went on to give real-life examples of the insidious effects of such deprivation. A 14-month-old infant to whom she gave milk and toast, "stuffed the toast into their nappy as they knew they weren’t going to see another bite", and seven-year-old children were so hungry when offered Rice Krispies, they’d eat three bowls. She went on to explain the majority of general anaesthetics in Northern Ireland are given to children whose teeth need extracted due to their poor diet.
I defy anyone to read her interview and not be shocked. In my case, shock was quickly followed by anger because while our children starve, politicians in the assembly enjoy a subsidised canteen, resulting in a bill of £1 million pounds over the past five years.
Adding insult to injury, while MLAs were on their paid holiday, almost 35 tonnes of unused food at the assembly was dumped. The situation wasn’t much better during the years the assembly was sitting, with an average of 10 tonnes per annum wasted between 2011 to 2014.
Having recently received yet another pay rise increasing their salaries to £51,000, many MLAs saw no hypocrisy in debating free school meals for our poorest children while benefitting from subsidised food in their own canteen. It would be wrong to paint all our politicians with the same brush; I’m certain there are good, decent people in the assembly. I hope they read this, and do the right thing.
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DURING the week, a senior police officer said that he believed republican and loyalist criminal gangs were working together. I suggest we should invite them up to the assembly to show our politicians how that’s done.
The dysfunctionality of our executive was laid bare this week as the assembly ground to a halt over ongoing Covid restrictions. At the time of writing this column on Thursday, they’re still deadlocked. Once again, the DUP abused the ‘petition of concern’ to thwart the other parties reaching a consensus; it’s time they renamed it ‘petition of concern we’re not getting our own way’.
As Arlene Foster warned of a "tsunami of mental health issues" if the restrictions continued, Health Minister Robin Swann pointed out that "doing nothing" wasn’t an option.
Utterly frustrated with the paralysis at the assembly, some publicans announced on social media they were opening on Friday. We then discovered politicians had been mistaken about the actual date the current restrictions ended. Forget pubs, this crowd couldn’t organise a pi**-up in a brewery.
