A witness at Stormont’s Nama investigation has claimed to have hundreds of hours of tapes revealing “an ingrained culture of inappropriate and possibly illegal conduct” across the political, banking, legal and accountancy sectors. Like the existence of the IRA, this is a shock announcement that may not shock anyone on reflection. Authoritative allegations against the professions have been made before, for example by Westminster’s Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in 2006. While such reports invariably focus on paramilitary links, it seems absurdly obvious that our white collar can get grubby on its own. Consider the substantial private wealth in an economy with no substantial private sector; the recent property boom and bust, twice as pronounced as in the Republic or any other UK region and by some definitions the most severe in the world; or the implausible edifices all around us, which have somehow cleared a planning and building control system that will not let most people extend their front porch.
**
So farewell then to transport minister Danny Kennedy, whose departure could yet be the only actual consequence of the UUP’s Stormont walk-out. As the welfare reform deadlock squeezed budgets over the past two years, Kennedy engaged in a series of high-impact but financially rather trivial cuts to road, verge and street light maintenance. This appeared to owe much of its provenance to a row with successive DUP finance ministers over a £20m annual ‘release of value’ from Belfast Harbour, originally earmarked for Kennedy’s department then withheld when the welfare crisis hit. As the new transport minister will be from the DUP this row is presumably concluded and Northern Ireland’s motorists, unlike its politicians, should once again be able to see around corners.
**
You would never have guessed that the DUP has first dibs on Kennedy’s empty chair judging from party statements at the beginning of this week, with Arlene Foster repeatedly ‘asking’ if the UUP wanted to see a Sinn Fein transport minister. There is no scenario under the current Stormont mandate in which this could happen. Equal mystery surrounds Peter Robinson’s failed attempt to have the assembly suspended for four weeks while the executive discusses its problems. The assembly is not the executive and its primary role is to discuss the executive’s problems. Presumably it is a coincidence that suspending the assembly would also have suspended its committees, whose primary role of late has been discussing the Nama problem.
**
DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson, who opposed bombing Syria, has argued for Northern Ireland to take Syrian refugees by citing the Vietnamese boat people housed in Craigavon in the 1970s. Amnesty Northern Ireland director Patrick Corrigan has likewise noted our “proud record”, citing the Jewish ‘kindertransport’ children who spent the 1940s in Millisle. However, most of the Jewish and Vietnamese people headed to England as soon as they had the means to do so - a pattern repeated by every refugee group to arrive in Ulster after the Huguenots. Any attempt to restrict internal movement within the UK would fall at the first judicial hurdle. It is easy enough for politicians here - and in Scotland - to throw down the welcome mat, when they know that what it says on the mat is ‘Welcome to London’.
**
Belfast City Council has voted to stop funding paramilitary ex-prisoner groups until a formal assessment process is in place, reversing an earlier decision to keep handing cash over on an ad hoc basis. Sinn Fein is blaming this on a unionist “electoral battle” after the murder of Kevin McGuigan. However, the motion for an “open and transparent” system was proposed by the SDLP, supported by Alliance and the Greens and opposed by the PUP - a significant unionist presence on the council. Although the decision is related to the murder, what really caused councillors to think again was the newspaper tribute signed by 60 republican community groups to Gerard Davison, former head of an IRA vigilante gang. When this was published in May, Queen's University Professor Liam Kennedy - a veteran campaigner against punishment attacks - said it: “clearly brings the community sector into disrepute.”
**
Ulster University has implied that course closures announced this week, mainly at Coleraine, are due to Stormont’s budgetary problems. However, vice chancellor Paddy Nixon has conceded that “course closures were always inevitable” as “sectoral alignments” deliver the “long term vision” of making each campus a “centre of excellence”. Driving the need for this rationalisation is the new £300m central Belfast campus, which is where the money has gone. Among the courses just closed are maths, now the UK’s most popular A-level subject; and Mandarin, which UU is supporting in schools via its Beijing-funded Confucius Institute. So much for long term vision.
**
The election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader would be awkward for the party’s Northern Ireland branch, given Corbyn’s closeness to Sinn Fein. Fortunately, most members here are backing Andy Burnham - who has just promised to “fight nationalism wherever I find it.” Oh dear, oh dear.
newton@irishnews.com
