WHEN you think of Stormont, you probably get angry.
Angry at the ridiculous pantomime, the seemingly continuous crises and petty point scoring that brings Northern Ireland to a grinding halt every few months, along with the never-ending talks that prevent us moving forward.
It makes us angry too. Alliance is just as frustrated as you and we understand your impatience at the speed of change. But on May 5, you can move things forward faster by voting Alliance.
You deserve better than go-slow politicians who use the pause button because it suits their selfish agenda. Or even worse, those on permanent rewind, constantly replaying the same old arguments and backward language of division. The same politicians who claim fairness and equality, yet continually reject the rights of the LGBT community, or allow remarks about “ethnics” by their constituents to go unchallenged. The same politicians who claim to have overcome segregation, yet prop up a system which allows a discriminatory fair employment exemption for Catholic teachers and refuse to allow our future educators to train in one institution.
That’s why Alliance is offering a sharper, smarter direction for you – an approach based on issues you find important, designed to deliver faster results for all of us. It’s a politics that ensures vital matters get debated and decided quickly. It doesn’t involve pausing, slow-motion politics and it definitely doesn't allow rewinding.
It’s a fast forward plan built around our ambition to refresh and invigorate Northern Ireland, accelerating energetic changes in health and education to both save money and put it back into frontline care and teaching.
It will drive the creation of thousands of new jobs in high tech industries. It will speed up the redistribution of hundreds of millions of taxpayer pounds currently squandered on needless bureaucracy and over-administration. It will transform policing priorities away from managing street disorder and into more neighbourhood patrols.
Most of all, it will build on the many achievements Alliance has already delivered over the past five years – under Alliance ministers, public safety has increased while crime rates have decreased; skill levels are up, while unemployment is down.
Through investing in science and apprenticeships, and reinvesting money seized from criminals into communities, Alliance has made a real difference to the lives of everyone in our society.
You’ve seen what Alliance can achieve with eight MLAs. Imagine the progress that could be achieved with even more. An Alliance team with progressive policies. An Alliance team that challenges anti-European and anti-immigrant rhetoric.
An Alliance team that supports the protection and extension of human rights for all. An Alliance team that knows the importance of freedom of religion and freedom from religion. An Alliance team that fights against the Government’s cuts agenda.
An Alliance team that delivers high quality, shared services without sectarian carve-ups. An Alliance team that wants to see a progressive, prosperous and peaceful Northern Ireland in which everyone reaches their potential. But we need your help. To increase the speed of change. To get to better, sooner.
On May 5, vote Alliance and help us move forward, faster, together.
