Sinn Fein has backed the phantom budget in the assembly - not a great surprise after backing it in committee last week, but still a further indication that the welfare crisis is, if not a sham fight, at least a sham crisis. Brandishing his wooden sword at secretary of state Theresa Villiers, Martin McGuinness let it be known he had quoted the latest child poverty statistics at her during all-party negotiations, before saying “stick that in your pipe and smoke it”. As those figures delighted the Tories by not rising as predicted, this was a particularly hammy lunge. Meanwhile, back in reality, significant pressure has been removed by the news that most of the £12 billion in welfare cuts planned by the UK government will focus on tax credits. Because these are made through the tax system, nothing about them is devolved. So Stormont can fudge its outstanding welfare reform issues without the problem immediately recurring.
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Free expression is the topic making headlines as the Public Prosecution Service tries to outlaw one religion slagging off another, in a move we should probably not refer to as ‘crusading’. However, the Orange Order has failed to get in on the debate after a billboard advertising its new taxpayer-funded heritage museum was removed from Belfast’s Carrick Hill, reportedly following complaints from nationalist residents. The DUP tried comparing this to the Asher’s Bakery case but that was just a reminder that unionists want businesses to be able to discriminate. The Order has expressed its disappointment that people could not show “tolerance”. If Carrick Hill residents accepted the billboard’s invitation en masse and marched towards the museum at the top of east Belfast’s Cregagh Road, how far up that road would they get?
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Two brothers in their early 20s from Belfast’s Sandy Row who went to watch a loyalist parade were attacked by supporters of a band from outside the area, causing Ukip representative and former UUP councillor Bob Stoker to say: “People coming to watch band parades need to realise they are guests of the community they are visiting and need to show respect for the area they are in.”
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DUP MLA Edwin Poots has accused republican victims campaigners of shouting abuse at him, the SDLP’s Alban Maginness and other MLAs in Stormont’s Great Hall after an assembly debate on collusion. Speaker Mitchel McLaughlin said he would refer the matter for investigation but then digressed at length on how MLAs “set a very poor example indeed” by their conduct in the chamber and should “give a lead” by “treating each other with respect”. For the speaker to equivocate over the abuse of MLAs in Stormont at all, let alone in this victim-blaming manner, was absolutely extraordinary.
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Never mind Gerry Adams and his Trojan horse. Northern Ireland depends on a gift horse - and Stormont is trying to look it in the mouth. A report from the committee on finance and personnel, which has cross-party backing and is likely to be adopted by the executive, has advised lobbying Westminster to clarify the infamous Barnett formula that determines the block grant. Since its back-of-the-envelope devising in 1978, the formula has been more of an art than a science. Because it is not reset to zero every year and recalculated consistently, the effect of its errors and arbitrary decisions has been cumulative. However, that is why public spending per head here has reached 24 per cent above the UK average. Formula reform (‘reformula’?) would make welfare reform look like a parking ticket.
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The Good Friday Agreement will be damaged if the UK government repeals the Human Rights Act, according to Emily Logan, chief commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. Addressing a Leinster House committee, she explained that the agreement requires equivalent rights protections north and south so repeal “would have negative consequences for the uniformity of human rights standards.” In fact, the agreement’s precise requirement is for the Irish government to “establish a human rights commission with a mandate and remit equivalent to that within Northern Ireland.” Last November, Dublin unilaterally merged its human rights and equality commissions to create the very different body headed up by Logan. How damaging is it to perpetuate the notion that breaking agreements is only wrong when the other side does it?
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A fact not widely reported about the transatlantic flight diverted to Belfast by a disruptive passenger is how narrowly it missed taking off again. The accused had been offloaded and the plane had been refuelled and taxied to the start of the runway when the captain announced he could not reach Chicago without exceeding US working time regulations. This window had been missed, according to different passenger recollections of the captain’s words, by “two minutes” or “a minute or two”. Almost 300 people were thus doomed to spend a night on the terminal floor.
newton@irishnews.com
