Unionists have badly over-reacted to Joe Biden’s St Patrick’s Day remarks in support of the Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol.
The UUP has accused the US president in strident terms of taking sides on the protocol and thereby undermining the agreement. The DUP seems equally uncomfortable, although it has been circumspect in public - Arlene Foster shared a smiling first ministers’ video call from Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris.
In reality, the White House has been remarkably diplomatic and even-handed, as has Congress on the same subject. Statements from senior Biden administration officials have stuck religiously to peace process platitudes on the agreement and explained carefully that they cannot be taking sides on the protocol because both sides, the EU and UK, have agreed it.
This is a far gentler outcome than unionists have any right to expect, on any day let alone St Patrick’s Day, given recent lobbying in Washington by Dublin, Brussels and Sinn Féin, plus the dire trans-Atlantic messaging from London and unionism itself. Biden’s record suggests it would not take much more provocation for him to say what he really thinks.
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The A5 Aughnacloy to Derry dual carriageway may well have been sunk by an interim public inquiry report. SDLP transport minister Nichola Mallon is putting a brave face on the findings, saying she remains committed to the £1.1 billion scheme. However, her department has accepted 27 of the report’s 30 recommendations, many of which require major redesigns or damn the project’s rationale altogether. In retrospect, the A5 was doomed when Dublin pulled its half of the funding a decade ago. The funding offer was restored last October but policies and priorities have moved on. Rather than improving infrastructure west of the Bann, the project has wasted time, money and effort that could have delivered more practical investment - including along the A5 corridor. Over £80 million has already been spent without a sod being turned - enough to build the proposed Cookstown bypass twice over.
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Sinn Féin has been ridiculed after abstaining in Stormont on a DUP motion on abortion, in order to pretend it had been both for and against as northern and southern audiences require. The DUP has fooled nobody by abstaining in Westminster on a law to restrict protests, then claiming to have opposed it, to try keeping onside with the government without upsetting loyalists who might want to wave placards in Larne.
The moral of the story is that these procedural manoeuvres might sound clever when plotted out in a committee but all they achieve is antagonising the handful of voters who care enough to follow them closely, while spreading a vague impression of double standards across the public at large.
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Grammar schools should not receive “preferential treatment” when extra places are decided for the next academic year. The call was made in the assembly by Green Party leader Clare Bailey, addressing DUP education minister Peter Weir.
Every year, funding for additional places is spread around oversubscribed secondary schools who request it. Grammars are certain to be particularly over-subscribed this year due to the suspension of selection tests. Yet for opponents of selection, there is a case to encourage grammar growth: it puts a long-term downward pressure on entrance requirements, broadening pupil intake.
Hopes have been voiced in the past that this could be an organic erosion of selection, creating de facto comprehensives with a ‘grammar ethos’ - the best of both worlds, in many eyes. Perhaps this year is a unique opportunity to give that process a nudge.
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The Department of Justice is to set up more ‘Nightingale Courts’ to clear a backlog of 10,000 cases. The first and so far only such court opened in January and has helped get the backlog down from almost 13,000 - but as the pre-Covid figure was 8,000, the epidemic has only exacerbated chronic delay.
More drastic solutions could be considered. Over 40 per cent of cases in Northern Ireland’s magistrates courts’ are motoring offences, with almost all ending in a conviction and nine in ten resolved through a fine. Offering everyone waiting a trial a recorded fine, possibly reduced, could wipe out most of the magistrates’ backlog overnight. This would not mean leniency for serious motoring offences, which go to the Crown Court.
Another 12 per cent of cases in magistrates’ courts are for television license evasion, again almost all ending in a fine. It would be cheaper for Stormont to give the BBC its money than pursue these cases.
Alas, any of this would require legislation at Stormont or Westminster, making it the slowest option of all.
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Surprise has been expressed at the renewal of Bloodlands, the BBC drama set in Strangford. Despite huge audience figures across the UK, critics here have complained of a daft plot full of holes. Local familiarity must have bred contempt - Bloodlands is a conscious attempt at ‘Nordic noir’, a genre that expects viewers to ignore a preposterous plot and just wallow in the dark mood and scenery. Obviously, it helps if the setting is Scandinavian, which Strangford has not been for some time.
