The recent gathering at Stormont to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was ironic of course because devolution is non-functional. Some believe that the future will come and the young people will supply it. However, the young people are the Ninja generation – no job, no income, no assets – and yet there are those who feel the young people will deliver what the previous generation laid the foundation blocks for. That in some way, it will just happen if we wait long enough for young blood to drive it forward. The young generation, unlike the old, see no future for themselves. They are completely frustrated in their lives in having no stake or opportunity to make any difference while those which came before them speak highly of their achievements with the GFA, though it has not worked as desired. A lot of young people cannot find a life partner and form relationships because they are rejected out of hand if they do not have a job or prospects. Many young people cannot see any future with the older generation having all the wealth and assets. The older generation are millionaires in comparison to what the younger generation have. The younger generation are spending their lives in schools and colleges competing for jobs, with more and more exact requirements because of technology, and ending up on welfare in too many cases with no lives to live or opportunity to make a positive difference. The big question is when are the old generation going to leave it to the younger? It’s all very well having them read the text of the GFA as they did recently at Stormont, but they did not create any of it. It is not their creation, but a creation of an older generation. The peace process and devolution is in an A,B,C, mode. A being the Troubles, B being the GFA. But cannot get to ‘C’ because the older generation or architects of the peace process in which some were part of the conflict, it needs to be said, cannot get to C or workability. If the older generation expects the young generation to get them to the C, they better give them a future now and stop acutely underpaying and using them.
MAURICE FITZGERALD
Shanbally, Co Cork
Normalisation of unjust actions has to be a worry
BRIAN Feeney’s article – ‘You can’t have normal politics because this is not a normal place’ (March 29) – addresses why ‘normal’ politics do not apply here. He points out that the building blocks are not in place. Historically there is much evidence for this also, where abnormal and cohesive politics become ‘normalised’.
And day to day there are many proofs of how consistent undermining of the civil and human rights of people here become ‘passe’ in the everyday lives of citizens. As an example of this take the cost-of-living crisis that has haunted people for so long. The outrage that this provoked has been gradually replaced with a (of necessity) ‘make do’ in families and communities concentrating on ‘making ends meet’.
It is only one example, which includes the destruction of the NHS. This ‘normalisation’ of abnormal practice is evident in how people have perceived the DUP boycott. This boycott has the effect of slowly strangling the already depleted resource of families, communities and services in pursuance of protest against something that has nothing to do with these. This normalisation of unjust actions has to be a worry. One is entitled to ask where is the tipping point? We look at France and citizens there in their outrage at that government’s decision over changes in pension law. Here we are told there is a tranche of money locked in the Stormont coffers which cannot be accessed because of a political party protesting about an international agreement. The only response being, much of the time, a debate based almost solely on the agenda of that political party.
The image of a political party, prepared to see the society around it sicken, become poorer and more deprived in pursuance of some goal, is chilling to watch. To watch them being given the time, space and legitimacy in pursuance of this is truly depressing. The DUP actions here will have society sickened from top to bottom in its headlong, unjust and fanatical pursuit of its ideological goal.
MANUS McDAID
Derry City
Solving NHS pay dispute
Last year NHS workers in England were given a 4 per cent pay increase which Robin Swann immediately accepted but was unable to implement because, as is usual, there was no Stormont executive. In December 2022, Chris Heaton-Harris instructed the Department of Health to make the award and Robin Swann issued a statement hoping it would be made before Christmas. The reality is that the total pay award for the year was made on the final monthly payment for the financial year at the end of March 2023. By that time, a new pay award had been made to NHS workers for England and Wales that updates that pay award for 2022/2023 and made a pay award for 2023/2024, but does not apply to NHS workers here. So, as before, NHS workers here are expected to work for less than their counterparts in England/Scotland and Wales for providing the same work. The joys of Brexit.
The unions are calling for industrial action but Chris Heaton-Harris claims he has no power to negotiate.
That being the case, trade unions should advise members to resign their posts en masse. I guarantee that, if this is done, the dispute will be resolved within weeks and all those employees who resigned will be reinstated on equal or more favourable terms.
SEÁN O’FIACH
Belfast BT11
The real Easter question
Colin Nevin – ‘Maundy Tuesday?’ (April 5) – questions whether Maundy Thursday might have fallen on a Tuesday this 2023 Easter week. Alistair Begg deals with the real Easter question (a very personal one!) in a four-minute online broadcast entitled ‘The Man on the Middle Cross Said I Could Come’. The central truth, defining the Apostle’s Creed faith as followed by millions or billions of people, is not at all complicated. But it does demand a personal response, as Luke’s passage about the penitent and impenitent criminal remind us, each time the passage is read or referenced.
JAMES HARDY
Belfast BT5
