Shane Greer awakens a hornet’s nest over NI’s £7 billion annual ‘dig out’ from England
Just been listening to Shane Greer getting it in the neck on the Nolan Show… It was extraordinary, for the amount of raw abuse he took for, wait for it, his mid Atlantic accent… He had to go early to catch a business flight to DC… Here’s some quotes from callers:
“Nolan is mad for having you on… You need to take lessons in speech.. All Americans are stupid anyway”
“Your accent is not like any American accent I have ever heard… It’s because you are ashamed of where you come from…”
And more on the topic of conversation (the £7 billion subvention from HM Treasury), from ‘Robert’:
“England owes us and they will have to pay to rectify it. Until the people are united whether you like it or not”.
Several things strike me:
- Some of this ill-tempered reaction may have arisen from the shock of being aggressively presented with the raw facts of Stormont’s deeply embedded parent-child relationship with Westminster;
- How inadvisable it is to completely lose your accent when you leave if you want anyone to listen to what you have to say when you come home (and that goes for the pub as well as the TV or Radio);
- There is something in this smouldering English resentment at being paymasters for the Union that is serving to fuel emotional fires that have always been there culturally, but now have political impetus, certainly in Scotland where the Tory gloves have been off for some time.
And what’s fascinating too is that he was getting it in the neck from everyone, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter…
So, my hmmm… at the end of yesterday’s post is not so much aimed at the coherence of Shane’s economic argument (let the private sector grow), so much as whether the new Conservatives actually care about the political life of the United Kingdom any more, or is the electoral reality forcing them to act as the England only party they have been for more than a generation now?
Topic: Economy, Politics, Society and Culture
Region: Northern Ireland, Scotland, UK
1. Basis for the block grant – does NI get more per head than elsewhere under Barnett. I’ve read elsewhere that as we have a growing populatio we get less than we oughta.
Otto has that covered.
Sterling and the Euro caused the republics downfall ? Really ? Here was me thinking it was inept politicians.
If I was going to imitate being a smart-ass historian type, I’d point out that since the dismantling of the Irish fishing industry (to the advantage of that from Scotland) just after the Act of Union added to the long term trend of quashing Irish textile production, then the necessity of an east to west subsidy was always going to come home to roost (even across a couple of centuries).
You then have to factor in the cost of duplicating services, disconnects in production, distribution and marketing that were caused by the creation of the border in the early twentieth century. Ironically, the Irish Free State (as was) traded a waiver for the pro rata transfer of British public debt in return for suppressing the Boundary Commission report, so it began with a clean financial slate, as did NI.
Can it be so coincidental that there are failed economic entities on both sides of the border?
John,
“You then have to factor in the cost of duplicating services, disconnects in production, distribution and marketing that were caused by the creation of the border in the early twentieth century”
Are you advocating that ROI returns to the Commonwealth:)
VH
“Slow learners eh Mick? Hope my first post deals with the matter although I referred to it as London Metropolitan Area which encompasses ‘Greater London’ and brings in 30% [slightly more] of UK GDP.
In fact the subvention then supports all regional areas of the UK including geographic areas of England.”
We pay £8bn a year to sudsidise their transport system, have our lottery spending slashed to pay for the London Olympics and CrossRail etc do not get Barnettised.
VH – eh, no. Plan B…
Plan b is a non starter John.
The vast majority of people don’t want it.
Even if they did,who pays for it ? Sovereign ireland ?
“Had the English in the past, distant past, stayed in their own back yard, they would not be in this position.”
You assume that this country is yours. Where is the everything for that? The genetic evidence shows that we have all been sleeping with each other and genetically we are all one people – a mix of Norman, Scandinavian, Celt, Spanish and even north African. There is no genetic evidence of some once great Celtic nation that ruled these lands and from which you descend. It’s all nonsense dreamed up over years of story telling.
So nobody owes you anything. If you want it, get out and work for it