Bombardier and Airbus announced their C-Series deal at midnight on Monday, as ex-hurricane Ophelia was still howling. It was easy to see a parallel, with little Northern Ireland buffeted around by forces beyond its control.
Bombardier’s wing-making jobs Belfast have been secured for the medium term, along with huge opportunities for growth. But the interplay between corporate, international and Brexit politics, as revealed by the deal, is so complicated it is hard to know which way the wind will eventually blow.
One constant to emerge is the value of a well-trained workforce in a high-tech facility. Cutting edge production is difficult to move to cheaper locations and worth enough to offset concerns over tariffs and subsidies. Once we have stopped obsessing over customs paperwork and other border trivia, we may see survival in the post-Brexit world as mainly an issue of education and skills.
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Secretary of state James Brokenshire has announced a new deadline of November 6 to restore the executive, ensuring everyone will go right up and over that wire in time-honoured Stormont fashion. Meanwhile, what Brokenshire calls the “glide path” to direct rule has encountered turbulence from Jim Allister.
The TUV leader claims the extra £40 million found for health last week was “always likely”, so the £70 million cut announced in August was “a crude attempt to try and force a Stormont deal, at the cost of patient anxiety.”
While we await any proof of this widespread suspicion, an interesting question arises. Could such a tactic be counter-productive? Alliance has accused Sinn Féin of a “chaos strategy”, in which all government failings are blamed on the evil Tories. Deliberately causing anxiety over health spending would be a daring government response.
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Translink has unveiled the branding for the Belfast Rapid Transit system, henceforth to be known as Glide. In a week of warnings about a glide path the timing was unfortunate but the branding itself is classy and clever - as it will need to be, given the compromised nature of the infrastructure.
‘Glide vehicles’ will just be bendy buses, albeit fancy ones, while Glide stops will just be bus stops, without the raised platforms that give other bus-based systems a tram-like feel. In a statement accompanying the launch, Translink group chief executive Chris Conway said passengers can expect a service “which integrates with our existing bus and rail network.” This was also unfortunately timed. Last week, it emerged that Translink’s new Great Victoria Street transport “hub” will not connect to Belfast Rapid Transit.
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The Northern Ireland Civil Service has advertised for permanent secretaries - the top mandarins in each Stormont department, who would become our de facto executive under direct rule. Paying up to £133,327 plus benefits, the posts are supposedly open to anyone with five years management experience in the public, private or voluntary sectors. Bringing in outside skills at permanent secretary level is a live issue in Whitehall - but here it is unusual for them to come from outside the public sector and the curious recruitment process for the latest posts will not help. There are no current vacancies and successful applicants will be placed on a “merit list” that remains valid for 18 months, should jobs become available. While recruitment for top roles everywhere takes time, this seems particularly suited to civil servants just below permanent secretary level who can wait their turn for promotion. Never let it be said the civil service cannot innovate - it appears to have invented a whole new form of employment discrimination.
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Children’s television producer Sixteen South - one of Northern Ireland’s most admired media businesses - is opening a Dublin-based studio to protect itself from Brexit. EU directives require quotas of airtime for programmes of European origin. As always with Brussels, it is possible for non-member states to negotiate exceptions - but as nobody in London appears to have noticed the need to do so, Northern Ireland’s booming TV and film industry has to hedge its bets. It seems appropriate that Sixteen South is leading the way. One of Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness’s first engagements after the EU referendum was opening Sixteen South’s new Belfast headquarters. The photo-op turned to farce as staff and management spoke openly of having to relocate.
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This was Hate Crime Awareness Week - no better time to become aware that a “F*** the DUP” poster may well be a crime. The offending item was briefly displayed at August’s Belfast Pride parade and has since been investigated by the PSNI, leading to justifiable ridicule at policing priorities. However, ‘political opinion’ is a category protected from hatred in Northern Ireland, due the anti-sectarian origins of our hate crime legislation. The gay cake ruling showed political opinion has the same status as sexual orientation in discrimination cases. Hate crime is a bit more complicated as it usually requires an initial offence of some other kind, which is then aggravated by hatred. But a “F*** the DUP” banner would certainly meet the PSNI’s criteria for a ‘hate incident’.
You would have needed a heart of stone not to laugh as this dawned on the rights sector throughout this week’s events.
newton@irishnews.com
