NORTH’S PROBLEM IS THE RULERS WE HAVE ELECTED
Posted By: April 19, 2014
NEWTON EMERSON. Irish News ( Belfast). Saturday, April 19, 2014
Like the queen, Secretary of State Theresa Villiers does not make major statements
without the imprimatur of the UK government.
So her keynote speech this week means the government believes Stormont must "evolve"
towards a "formal opposition" that preserves power-sharing while allowing voters to
"remove [their] rulers". Or perhaps the government just believes Villiers needed to
echo this and other unionist demands to get any progress back on track. There is
scope for Stormont to evolve but the fact that the UUP and SDLP have gone from first
ministerial chairs to executive back seats in a decade should answer the
parliamentary delusion of a democratic deficit. Stormont is a normal large council,
not an abnormal little Westminster, as Westminster really must know. The problem is
the rulers we have elected, not an inability to remove them.
***
FLAG protester Jamie Bryson has announced he is to "step back" from politics for
"personal reasons", after his fundraising drive for the european elections raised a
humiliating £165. However, he leaves a legacy. Bryson was considered important
enough for the DUP to brief him and equally marginal figures during the latter
stages of the Haass talks, with Bryson claiming the party was "petrified" of doing a
deal without loyalist approval.
What is thought to have specifically petrified the DUP was a threatened wave of
'band culture' protests modelled on the flag protests, should Haass's parading
proposals have been accepted. There is no sign that this fear has abated.
***
HAVING said that as a Protestant he would have no "desire" to meet the Pope, Peter
Robinson has changed his mind. Or has he? Speaking to The Belfast Telegraph, the DUP
first minister said he "could" meet the Pope if he made a state visit to northern
Ireland but would still have no desire to meet him on a pastoral visit. This is the
kind of pinhead-dancing Ian Paisley used to call "Jesuitical", which seems
appropriate for equivocation over meeting the first Jesuit Pope.
***
LEADING Sinn Fein politicians, including culture minister Caral ni Chuilin, joined a
large Irish language rally in Belfast last weekend but curiously chose to do so
behind a banner proclaiming 'Irish Language Act now'. NI Chuilin played a prominent
role in January's de-funding northern Ireland's Irish language lobbyists, whose
principal goal was an Irish Language Act. The party is instead channelling funds
towards practical projects, which is the correct decision, as the Act envisaged by
groups like Pobal was both politically hopeless and a dry public-sector dead end.
Does Sinn Fein not agree with its own decision? The Irish for having your cake and
eating it is: "is ionann é sin agus an craiceann agus a luach a bheith agat".
***
AS part of the UK government's case against Scottish independence the Treasury has
published new figures showing Scotland would have the second-highest budget deficit
of any advanced country, totalling £9.5 billion in its first year after succession.
If this figure sounds familiar that is because it is precisely the budget subvention
northern ireland requires to sustain just a third of Scotland's population.
***
IS Belfast's festival partitionism coming to an end? The Belfast Festival at
Queen's, always a much larger event than the West Belfast Festival, has recently
lost some of its corporate sponsorship and all of its european funding. at a
Stormont culture committee hearing, arts Council chief executive Roisin McDonagh
responded to a Sinn Fein question on the Belfast Festival's future with some rather
loaded questions of her own. "Should it continue to be called the Belfast Festival
at Queen's?" she asked. “Is the current model the best one. Could it be located
elsewhere and operate in partnership with others, making it much more rooted across
all parts of the city?"
***
AT the same Stormont hearing, arts Council chair Bob Collins told MLas there is a
"fundamental difficulty" recruiting "working class people" to his quango's board and
indeed to all quango boards. Everyone then tip-toed around the issue with
patronising evasions about a 'white, male, middle-class' appointment process for
'people who are very skilled at filling in the forms'. Of course, the real
difficulty is what the public sector now means by 'working class', which is no
longer 'people who sell their labour for wages and do not own the means of
production' but rather 'Jeremy Kyle viewers'. If you define the people you claim to
want as those incapable of filling in appointment forms, no forms shall be
submitted.
