The executive’s final meeting on new Covid restrictions was delayed by a day due to ministerial bereavements. Before that it was delayed by several more days for the usual reasons of argument and horse-trading, causing enormous public frustration.
There has been a pattern throughout the epidemic of Stormont arguing for a week over bringing measures forward or back by a week. Under normal circumstances this would be considered miraculous speed but now it threatens lives and livelihoods.
The executive explained this week it wanted to take time to issue one clear, agreed message. There might be public understanding of that, given the complexities of the challenge and of our political system, if it were not for ministers and parties leaking, briefing and tweeting snippets of information and jibes against each other throughout the process. In terms of Stormont’s Covid communication, there is an extent to which less would be more.
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In its combative statement announcing a single transfer test will go ahead, the AQE board said academic selection remains “much better than the postcode comprehensive system which operates elsewhere”.
As this is a classic argument for the 11-plus it should be pointed out ‘elsewhere’ means Britain, where there are stretches of city, suburb or countryside large enough to fill an entire secondary with pupils from mainly one social background, be that rich or poor. However, there are only a few places in Northern Ireland, mostly in Belfast, where drawing a simple catchment circle around a school would fail to provide a balanced mix. In most of our towns, a secondary would have to be open to the whole town plus surrounding area to fill its sustainable minimum of 1,500 places.
Also, the ‘which’ in the statement should have been a ‘that’. Tut tut.
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Doctors’ union the British Medical Association in Northern Ireland seemed unusually put out about its members having their second vaccinations pushed back from three to 12 weeks. It threatened legal action over the measure, which is being applied across the programme to get more people a first dose.
As doctors know, the standard three-week interval between vaccinations has little to do with medicine. It exists only because longer gaps are observed to cause a sharp fall-off in patients bothering to come back - an uncanny echo of the initial prediction from behavioural scientists that people would only tolerate three weeks of lockdown.
Covid vaccines were tested on this basis, so there is no data on longer intervals, as the BMA has complained. However, theory and other testing points to a longer gap being more effective, with the first dose offering excellent protection in the meantime.
It took a few days for the BMA’s true objection to emerge: it appears some senior health trust managers were prioritised over front-line medical staff to receive their second dose. Admittedly, this would infuriate anyone.
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DUP MPs Sammy Wilson and Jim Shannon have been criticised for travelling to Westminster for votes, despite the speaker saying no MPs should do so “unless absolutely necessary”.
Far more dubious is what the unionists, present or not, have been voting for.
On Wednesday, England’s latest Covid restrictions passed in the Commons by 524 votes to 16. The opponents comprised 12 Tory rebels and four DUP MPs, with no DUP votes in favour. In fact, all other MPs from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales abstained as this was an England-only bill. They did so through courtesy as the ‘English Votes for English Laws’ (EVEL) process has been suspended for the epidemic to help speed legislation. Even Scottish nationalists highly critical of EVEL have continued to observe it in spirit, as exploiting current difficulties for grandstanding would be considered outrageous. Yet certain DUP figures are repeatedly trashing the convention, at the risk of provoking English nationalism, for apparently no better reason than wanting to look edgy and dangerous.
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The Department for Infrastructure officially encourages anyone to request traffic calming in their street but it is notorious for refusing if there have not been any “personal injury collisions” in the past three years. It is apparently too much to hope for pro-active measures.
Alliance MLA Paula Bradshaw has uncovered another dubious excuse for inaction after requested traffic calming in east Belfast. She was turned down because not enough people have been run over yet and also because traffic on the street has exceeded 5,000 vehicles per day, beyond which “current policy stipulates” no speed bumps can be installed. This is twice the average volume on a minor urban road. So if your street is turning into a rat run and you do not cajole the department into acting before traffic doubles, it is too late.
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Secretary of state Brandon Lewis has been ridiculed for insisting there is no sea border. Unionists joining in the mockery might reflect on how much better a job their opponents made of the same sleight of hand. By clever deployment of just two absurd terms - invisible and frictionless - nationalism persuaded the world the land border did not exist, requiring it to be moved to Larne.
Alas, Lewis cannot get past absurd.
