Slugger O'Toole

Jim Nicholson: UUP, Tory or a bit of both?

Mick Fealty — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:43:13 +0000

An anonymous source suggests Slugger look more closely at the position of Jim Nicholson who despite the parting of the ways between the Conservatives and the UUP is still apparently taking the Tory whip in Brussels and Strasbourg [Are they still here? - Ed].

However, at home he has, from yesterday at least undergone a conversation from a Conservative and Unionist to a UUP MEP on his press statements. So Tom, Jim, are you guys still taking the Tory whip after all that’s been said in recent weeks/months?

$cientology loses appeal against fraud ruling

Pete Baker — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:49:43 +0000

The Irish Times reports from France, where the inheritors of L Ron Hubbard’s greedy and manipulative anti-science cult of scientology have lost their appeal against a 2009 ruling that “two French branches of the US-based organisation were guilty of “organised fraud” and gave four of its leaders suspended jail sentences of up to two years.” A Huffington Post report notes

During the appeals process, the prosecution had asked for the church to be fined at least euro1 million ($1.3 million) and its bookstore euro500,000. But the appeals court on Thursday instead ordered the same fines as the trial court, euro400,000 ($530,000) for the church and euro200,000 for its bookstore.

Five members of the church who were convicted in the first trial were ordered to pay fines ranging from euro10,000 to euro30,000. Four of them were also given suspended sentences between 18 months and two years.

In the original trial, prosecutors had tried to get the group disbanded in France, but the court declined even to take the lesser step of shutting down its operations, saying that French Scientologists would have continued their activities anyway.

[Other supernaturalists take note! - Ed] Well, it’s been a tax-empt religion in the US since 1993… Blame the IRS…

As the Huffington Post report adds

Karin Pouw, a spokeswoman for the church in Los Angeles, denounced Thursday’s decision, calling it a “miscarriage of justice.”

She said the group would appeal the decision to the Court of Cassation and plans to bring a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights. Another complaint is pending with a U.N. special rapporteur.

If you haven’t seen it before, I highly recommend this 1967 World in Action documentary with access to the inner sanctum of the cult that simply would not be allowed today… Video via XenuTV.

Is Crotty killing off any sane domestic consideration of Irish foreign policy?

Mick Fealty — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:25:41 +0000

Before the landmark Crotty vs the Taoiseach judgement in 1987, the Irish Constitution had amassed nine amendments in the previous fifty years of its existence. In the twenty five years since it has scored another seventeen. Some of those were responses to the massive social changes the country has undergone in those years.

Three originate from reversals of previously negative decisions over the very sorts of treaties Anthony Crotty originally hoped to stymie, and a fourth though approved is still awaiting enactment. Every other European treaty has failed to fall at the hurdle. In other words, with regard to Foreign Policy in this recursive reference to the people, the government always win.

I recently heard of a study of a number of otherwise similar Swiss cantons, which found a rate of happiness marginally higher in those where the relied more heavily on plebiscites than those which didn’t. It doesn’t mean that referenda make for a happier demos, but perhaps people are happier where their sense of wider agency is tangible than where they are largely ignored.

The question is what sort of agency do referenda offer? Paul Evans has previously warned of the dangers of simplification posed by the Referendum mechanism. It does make some sense at the constitutional level, as in the Scottish situation where there is anything up to three years to frame the problem and the more thoroughly explore what the options mean on a human scale:

Paul notes quite a long list of problems:

Time and time again, the public don’t answer the question they’ve been asked. They use one question to send an unrelated message to an unpopular government.
Referendums privilege the weight of opinion (in numbers) over the weight of arguments.
By making policy questions explicit, as Cass Sunstein illustrates at length, youpolarise the arguments instead of promoting a rich debate and useful complex legislative responses.
People who don’t have the capacity to engage in the debate on a given issue are effectively disenfranchised – especially when the referendum makes decisions that could be taken by elected representatives who would deliberate on everyone’s behalf and defend their decisions at subsequent elections. The low-paid, people who work long hours, people with enough problems of their own, people who don’t have the confidence to express their views or the opportunity to discuss them become unrepresented
In referendums, power is exercised without responsibility. No-one is under any pressure to obey The General Will or to ensure that a policy is actually in the long-term public interest.

That last is one of the bugbears of many in the constitutional reform lobby, though avoiding the calling referenda is by no means a guarantee that long term policies are intelligently set. A few years back Gavin Barrett wrote on the ongoing controversy that this habit of calling referenda on any piece of European legislation has become a habit than acting in accordance with precedent:

The responsibility for Ireland’s unique record in holding referendums on European issues is usually attributed to the 1987 Supreme Court decision in Crotty v. An Taoiseach. The majority ruling in Crotty gave an extraordinarily broad (and, it must be said, extraordinarily unconvincing) interpretation of the description in Article 5 of the Constitution of Ireland as a ‘sovereign’ state. Although there is far more to Crotty than this, it was on the basis of this interpretation that the Court held ratification of the rather innocuous foreign policy provisions of the 1986 Single European Act unconstitutional, effectively forcing the then Government to hold a referendum before it could ratify it.

Crotty started a trend. Since Crotty, wary Irish Governments have unvaryingly made every major EU Treaty the subject of a constitutional amendment (and referendum), thus fireproofing each successive Treaty’s ratification and incorporation against any constitutional challenge. However, notwithstanding the almost monotonous regularity with which Irish referendums on European Treaties have subsequently been held (with no less than six in the last 21 years), the supposed legal requirement to have a referendum post-Crotty is much less cut and dried than is sometimes thought. It is far from clear that the application of Crotty would invalidate the ratification even of the entirety of the Lisbon Treaty without a referendum. Current suggestions to ratify only part of the Lisbon Treaty without a referendum would be even less likely to fall foul of Constitutional censure. It is even unclear whether the present Supreme Court would even follow all of its own reasoning in Crotty (at least insofar as its finding concerning sovereignty is concerned).

Sovereignty is probably the most undercooked dish in the Irish polity. If there is a problem with this recent convention of submitting anything remotely sombre regarding the Irish state’s relationship to the European Union to the will the of the people is fine. But what use is it if every time they are asked again they just change their mind?

In research, if you get confused and messy answers, the first place you look is to the question you asked. The major questions at the centre of these techno referendums are nearly always obscured by reference to an inscrutable international treaty, that very few people in the country actually understand. A battle of the white coated experts ensues.

So that every time someone shouts: “Ref-er-end-um!” the cynicism deepens. Something has to give.

The sooner society finds a way to confront the past the better…

Mick Fealty — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:54:55 +0000

Northern Ireland’s DPP, Barra McGrory has made an interesting intervention. Gerry Moriarty in the Irish Times:

“I think there is an imperative in the public interest that society finds a mechanism to deal with the past,” he said.

“Whether that be simply giving more resources to the investigators to get on with the investigating, and then consequentially the prosecution service to prosecute cases if the evidence emerges, or whether or not society is ready for a solution to the past outside of the prosecutorial system, is a matter that I think this society needs to confront,” he said.

“In my view, the sooner it confronts it the better – but confront it, it needs to. I think at the moment there perhaps isn’t a will to confront it in political circles because of the enormity of the decisions that have to be taken . . . But that is not for me, that is for politicians and for society.”

The shadow of the past falls too readily on many individual life’s even as our politicians are rightly focus on increasing the beneficial shadow of the future…

Where would a No vote for the ‘Fiscal Compact’ leave Ireland?

Mick Fealty — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:46:20 +0000

Apparently, according to economist Jim Power in today’s Irish Examiner, in a very odd place indeed:

It is intended that 12 out of the 17 eurozone member states would be sufficient to ratify the treaty. It appears this will be achieved easily enough. Consequently, unlike the case with the Lisbon Treaty, if Ireland were to reject it in a referendum, that would not be sufficient to prevent it from becoming enshrined in EU law. The big question then is where that would leave Ireland?

Presumably we could remain part of the euro area but would not have access to funding mechanisms and the like. Longer term, we couldn’t remain part of the euro if we do not sign up to the rules governing it.

Unlike in previous referenda, the European political system would not lose too much sleep if Ireland were to hold a referendum on this issue and reject it. Ireland would be placed in a type of limbo situation.

Those who are pressing for a referendum, even it is not legally required, should ask themselves what they would do if such a referendum were to be rejected.

It would ultimately place a serious question mark over Ireland’s continued participation in the single currency. If that is the choice of the people, fine, but they should be made aware of the possible consequences.

Quite so. His point is bolstered somewhat by another of today’s op eds, this time in the Irish Times by lawyer Gavin Barrett (of whom more later):

The treaty’s core consists of debt and deficit rules. However, its preamble provides that the treaty is not to be interpreted in any way as altering the economic policy conditions under which financial assistance is granted to a state (like Ireland) in a stabilisation programme.

Thus the treaty’s deficit and debt requirements simply don’t apply here for the duration of the present bailout (or any second one). Moreover the exemption under existing EU law from the application of debt-reduction provisions for three years after any such programme ends will evidently also continue.

Only after this transitional period will the fiscal treaty’s debt-reduction requirements apply: article four requires an annual reduction of one-20th of the excess of national debt-to-GDP ratios exceeding 60 per cent. However, precisely the same obligation already applies under EU “six-pack” regulations – adopted by EU leaders with little protest last November. The treaty’s debt rules thus involve nothing new.

He continues:

We have just seen that after Ireland’s stabilisation programme exit, existing EU “six-pack” debt rules will require an annual reduction of one-20th of the excess in Ireland’s debt-to-GDP ratio. In other words, Ireland will be required to run structural surpluses rather than deficits for many years. The treaty’s ban on structural deficits of over 0.5 per cent will thus involve no extra burden, because under existing law, we will not legally be entitled to run deficits anyway.[Emphasis added]

It’s been taken as read by some parts of the Dublin establishment that there must be a referendum, and that the AG has no choice in the matter. Ireland has never had monetary sovereignty in any real degree. The crunch point is whether this treaty actually interferes with fiscal sovereignty (an important matter for countries much larger than Ireland).

Barrett believes that the nature of the preamble puts an important break on any sanctions that might be applied, is the deal maker on this matter, which he claims:

…provides that the treaty is not to be interpreted in any way as altering the economic policy conditions under which financial assistance is granted to a state (like Ireland) in a stabilisation programme.

So it’s another promise to be good, not an enforceable treaty. Whether or not that applies the necessary oil to get Irish wheels under it, the country, short of seceding from the Euro, is going to be stuck with the conditions it sets and if not willingly opted-in, may, as Power notes, eventually find the heat is too much to bear.

Which I suspect is part of Frau Bundeskanzlerin’s cunning plan to weed out the fit from the unfit and sustain the Euro as a credible currency on the world markets.

Advocate General to take up case for NI students going to Scots Universities?

Mick Fealty — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:32:55 +0000

Interesting snippet from across the water regarding the £9k fees students from Northern Ireland now have to pay if they want to follow what’s become for many a traditional route to graduation at Glasgow, Edinburgh, or St Andrews. Dundee even runs a fairly successful degree course in Northern Irish law.

The Rutherglen Reformer reports a spat in the House of Lords:

Peers from all sides angrily hit out at the “unfairness” of allowing Scottish students to study for free at universities north of the border, while those from the rest of the UK had to pay up to £9,000 a year.

Advocate General for Scotland Lord Wallace of Tankerness agreed to take up the issue with his ministerial colleagues, but he also warned that to challenge the Scottish Parliament’s policy risks undermining the principles of devolution.

Cross-party unrest over the imposition of tuition fees north of the border emerged during committee stage debate on the Scotland Bill, which hands further powers to the Scottish Parliament.

John O’Dowd: the education debate is “continuing in a better atmosphere” but it’s not yet time for all-party talks

Alan in Belfast — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:50:12 +0000

I grabbed a very quick interview with Education Minister John O’Dowd as he headed down the corridor in Ashfield Boys School to go home after last night’s East Belfast Speaks Out community hustings.

In the past few months he’s announced reductions in school budgets, given a partial reprieve after finding extra money for his department, and most recently announced a shake up of SEN/statementing. I asked whether this was all not a lot for school principals to have to deal with? As well as explaining the sequencing, John O’Dowd expressed his hope that further money would be secured for education “in the latter years of this Executive”.

Asking @JohnODowdSF about education & unblocking the transfer debate (mp3)

The transfer conundrum hasn’t gone away. Stalemate is the default position. So what could happen that would free the logjam? In his answer, John O’Dowd suggested that the debate was slowly changing.

… the voice of the non-selective sector is beginning to be heard … schools that do not practice academic selection are providing first rate education and they want to be recognised and identified and acknowledged for that, and they’re out there making their point heard … we await the report of the Catholic Commission in terms of the future shape of post-primary education in the Catholic sector.

He said “the debate continues, it’s continuing in a better atmosphere”.

So is it time for all-party talks on education? During the previous Assembly, all parties except Sinn Fein met to talk about education. John O’Dowd characterised those meetings as being about “how you keep academic selection” rather than “putting all the issues on the table”.

I’m not sure political talks at this stage would be beneficial … I think there has to be a wider community debate, a wider debate about all the issues around education … let that take place, and then allow the politicians to catch up.

East Belfast Speaks Out – a community hustings that was in the hands of the people

Alan in Belfast — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:00:28 +0000

East Belfast Speaks Out was back for a third time last night. Having eliminated the warm up act, this year it was straight into questions after a brief introduction from chairperson Mark Devenport.

The panel consisted of Alliance MLA Chris Lyttle, DUP MLA Sammy Douglas, Sinn Fein Education Minister John O’Dowd, UUP MLA Michael Copeland, PUP councillor John Kyle. (For the third year in a row, Owen Paterson didn’t turn up at the event. For the first time, the reason may have been that he wasn’t invited.)

Women were under-represented on the panel – though Chris Lyttle was a late substitute for Judith Cochrane who was originally meant to be representing Alliance. However, the audience was very mixed, and my recollection is that a shade more than half the questions came from women in the packed school assembly hall.

Avoiding the pitfall of allowing each panellist to comment on each question, panel were steered through an enormous number of questions.

What’s been done to help young males in East Belfast? Educational underachievement in (Protestant) males. Educational maintenance allowance. Why is doing 4 or 5 exams in a strange school better than sitting 2 in a familiar place? Supergrass trials. Increasing number of unemployed graduates. Bill of rights. Cutting school budgets and the SEN review. Integrated education rather than sectarianism. NI Housing Executive complaints. Belfast City Airport. Supergrass trials again, brought up this time by a representative from FAST. Difficulty a family faced getting suitable rented accommodation when their child was ill and had to use a wheelchair. Corporation tax. Young people leaving NI to study elsewhere. Mental health issues.

Drama came in the form of an intervention from Occupy Belfast. Reading from several pages of notes, the man asked about Iris Robinson and a sum of £5,000 before going on to decry politicians over the course of the next few minutes. John O’Dowd’s challenges to him proved too much and the gentleman left the hall of his own accord. The protester’s performance unfortunately did little to bring credit to the Occupy movement, nor to highlight any of the group’s issues in a manner that would encourage members of the audience to explore them.

You can listen to the audio of the ninety minute community hustings in four parts. [There is a dip in sound at one point during the question from FAST to avoid contempt of court.]

Jenny Muir has an excellent summary of the evening’s event on her blog – East Belfast Diary.

Kudos to James Smyth and his team for pulling together the event and handing over control to those who attended.

East Belfast Speaks Out (part 1) (mp3)

East Belfast Speaks Out (part 2) (mp3)

East Belfast Speaks Out (part 3) (mp3)

East Belfast Speaks Out (part 4) (mp3)

Six Nations – wide open.

Dewi — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:55:42 +0000

This weekend sees the start of the most unpredictable Six Nations for a while. (There’s still time to make your predictions here).
Are those Polish freezers still working for Wales? (BBC)
Keith Earls has some pretty big boots to fill….(Belfast Telegraph)
If you were Mr Lancaster would you like to start things anew at a freezing hostile Murrayfield…..?

From the Record Andy Robinson is pressing the right buttons. Of England’s World Cup:

What surprises me about England is they fell into a downward spiral while winning. It wasn’t results that undermined them but the other stuff. They self-destructed.

Italy? – Joe.ie previews here. Targeting the Scots probably…

France, as always, find new stars…meet Wesley Fofana (You Tube)….hmmm!

It’s a defining first weekend - from the Herald:

France meet Italy seeking revenge for the biggest shock in tournament history; Scotland take on England in the oldest international fixture in the world; and Ireland welcome Wales for a rematch of the best match at last year’s World Cup.
Just a routine start to the RBS 6 Nations Championship, then.

This could be fun.

A call for mentoring support @SOEtrust Together conference #SOEconf12

Mr Ulster — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:19:21 +0000

In a work capacity, I was invited to attend the Spirit of Enniskillen’s annual Together schools conference at the Wellington Park Hotel, which brought together over 100 Year 13 pupils from 20 schools across Northern Ireland, to explore and discuss 6th Form leadership for the Sharing in Education programme that is supported by the International Fund for Ireland.

I arrived for the afternoon workshops, and we were introduced to a video highlighting the overall work of the Spirit of Enniskillen, who were the winners of the Guardian Charity Awards 2011.

The first workshop was among practitioners. In our group, former SoE Director, Chuck Richardson, expressed his fear that the Northern Ireland Executive may support shared education programmes for economic reasons (i.e. the inevitable need to reduce stock of school buildings), but not include programmes that will prepare pupils for the mixed contact that will bring. Robin Wilson added that this risks what has developed in parts of Scotland, where pupils end up segregating themselves within the shared space.

The second workshop was with a group of about a dozen Together participants; I was the only non-participant. They asked themselves a series of questions about leadership among young people, how it could be developed. Some of them didn’t see themselves as leaders, yet, but I said that I thought they were being a little hard on themselves — the fact that each of them care enough to want to change something they don’t see as right in their community and that they’ve put themselves through this course was evidence that they were already leaders.

But it became apparent to me that these young leaders aren’t necessarily getting enough mentoring support. They all had praise for the facilitation during the course, and acknowledged those in their school environments, but felt they weren’t yet given due respect in the wider community. Indeed, one participant remarked that she came up against a gatekeeping scenario, where the young leaders weren’t given true ownership of a particular external programme.

My concern is that without leadership developed beynod these programmes, through mentoring, each tranche of SoE participants become pioneers but ultimately frustrated. An important factor for some consideration.

It was great to hear feedback from the participants themselves, in an informal plenary session:

http://mrulster.podomatic.com/player/web/2012-02-02T09_31_13-08_00

Some points made were:

Together programme is useful because it brings people together to do things together, which otherwise isn’t going to happen
Talking about contentious issues doesn’t change your identity, but it does improve understanding of another’s perspective
It builds confidence in speaking with those that you do not know
Participants serve as advocates for this work in their own schools
The importance of mixing with others at a younger age, “because we all live in the same place”
Discussions with others can be hard at first, but easier as you get to know them
The positive role that facilitators play

Department of Education Minister, John O’Dowd MLA, was a guest speaker and he made positive remarks:

http://mrulster.podomatic.com/player/web/2012-02-02T09_32_56-08_00

The Minister said that building a new society requires leadership, and that the Good Friday Agreement was created to serve as a device to build a new society, with leadership at all levels. He said more than once not to let the politicians get away with all the leadership roles.

And that leadership can be lonely, and when they feel this way, to remember why they joined this SoE programme, why they set out on this journey — to make change.

Ms Mary Southwell, International Fund for Ireland board member, also made some brief remarks, describing all the programme’s participants as role models for society: “There is no doubt that our future is in really good hands.”

It was up to Maeve Grimley (SoE School Support Worker and acting emcee, and as the Education Minister would have her, a future journalist!) to conclude the conference. She said that she hoped the participants enjoyed the programme’s opportunities to meet others and discuss important issues. And fittingly, she evoked the memory of SoE founder, Gordon Wilson, whom she described as someone who wanted to enable ordinary people to do extradorinary things with good leadership.

Odyssey Marine to recover Victory, but lose ‘Black Swan’ treasure

Pete Baker — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:08:59 +0000

Last seen somewhere off the Irish coast, US company Odyssey Marine Exploration have announced that they have “executed an agreement with the Maritime Heritage Foundation for the financing, archaeological survey and excavation, conservation and exhibit of HMS Victory (1744) and artifacts from the shipwreck site.”

That’s Admiral Balchin’s HMS Victory - a 100-gun first-rate ship of the line lost in 1744 in the English Channel.

It confirms an earlier report in the Sunday Times. There may be four tonnes of gold and silver coins in the vicinity of the wreck…

Odyssey Marine found the wreck site back in 2008 and, in cooperation with the UK Ministry of Defence, recovered a 42 pounder and 12 pounder bronze cannon – after a little legal flurry Odyssey and the UK Government came to an arrangement.

Although there has been no sign, so far, of the Victory ‘bonanza’, the agreement covers the potential recovery of “any private property including coins”. From the Odyssey Marine press release

The agreement calls for Odyssey’s project costs to be reimbursed and for Odyssey to be paid a percentage of the recovered artifacts’ fair value. The preferred option is for Odyssey to be compensated in cash. However, if the Foundation determines, based on the principles adopted for its own collection management and curation policy, that it is in its best interest to de-accession certain artifacts, the Foundation may choose to compensate Odyssey with artifacts in lieu of cash.

Odyssey will receive the equivalent of 80% of the fair value of artifacts which were primarily used in trade or commerce or were private property and bear no direct connection to the construction, navigation, defense or crew of the ship, such as coins or other cargo.

Odyssey will receive the equivalent of 50% of the fair value of all other objects typically associated with the construction, crewing and sailing of ships including, but not limited to, the ship’s hull, fittings, fasteners, construction elements, clothing, organic remains, foodstuffs, cooking utensils, pottery, weapons, ammunition, ground tackle and navigational equipment.

For any private property including coins or other cargo administered through the Receiver of Wreck, the Foundation has agreed that Odyssey shall receive 80% of the value.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports an update on the long-running saga of the treasure of the ‘Black Swan’, aka the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, a Spanish vessel that perished in 1804. I mentioned it in detail in this post from September last year.

From the Guardian report

It is one of the greatest underwater treasure troves of all time, a glittering haul of gold and silver recovered from a mysterious sunken Spanish galleon and secretly flown across the Atlantic to the US.

But now an epic battle over ownership of 594,000 gold and silver coins scattered on the ocean floor has ended with victory for the Spanish government, with the American treasure-hunter Odyssey Marine Exploration ordered to send the valuable haul back home.

A jubilant Spanish government announced on Wednesday that the $500m-worth (£308m) of gold and silver coins found at a site that Odyssey called “Black Swan” would be back on Spanish soil within 10 days.

“This sentence gives Spaniards back what was already theirs,” said the culture minister, José Ignacio Wert. “There is a space of 10 days in which the coins must be returned.”

The court decision puts an end to nearly five years of intrigue on the high seas since Odyssey scooped the precious haul from the Atlantic seabed in May 2007. To the fury of Spanish authorities it secretly landed the trove in Gibraltar and flew it out in chartered aircraft to its base in Florida.

Odyssey Marine haven’t noted that ruling on their website yet. But a spokeswoman for the company is quoted in the Guardian report

A spokeswoman for Odyssey, Laura Barton, indicated an appeal might be forthcoming. “Currently, there is no final order from the court to give the Black Swan coins to Spain,” she told the Guardian without giving further details.

“It is certainly reasonable to assume that should the cargo recovered by Odyssey be transferred to Spain, it will never be returned,” the exploration company had argued before the appeals court.

What’s in Belfast City Council’s draft investment programme?

Alan in Belfast — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:30:43 +0000

Belfast City Council launched their 2012-2015 Draft Investment Programme (PDF) this morning. The 44-page colour brochure is packed with optimism, bullet points and potential. But away from the headline £233m figure and the photocall with Peter Robinson, Martin McGuinness, Niall Ó Donnghaile and Deirdre Hargey, what’s the real story?

It should be recognised as a plan with cross-party and cross-institution agreement. All the parties represented in the City Hall have put their name to the plans. It’s a coordinated effort with OFMDFM, DSD, DFP (small business rate relief) and other departments. And yet, it’s not a plan full of mirrored investments: notably, there’s no Falls Road plaza to match the Shankhill Road piazza. While it’s been dubbed Belfast’s “Marshall Plan”, it should be noted that the US version started in 1948. The Belfast plan has taken a lot longer to agree since the “end of the war”. You can see the result of the cross-party negotiations in the small pockets of money set aside for a myriad of minor activities, £300k here, £700k there.

Not all the money is new. And not all the money is guaranteed and in place. It’s a basket of new and existing initiatives, plans, and funding requests. While no one would want investment to be delayed until the Review of Public Administration concludes and council boundaries are changed, it should be noted that these plans are all within the existing BCC wards, and will need to be reviewed post-RPA.

£75m capital investment in council facilities. New “third generation hybrid pitches” and “state-of-the-art changing facilities” are promised along with playgrounds and refurbishment of local facilities. [Ed – a zero-value prize for the first person to explain what can be state of the art about a changing room?] And another £75m capital (partnership and European money) split across large and small city regeneration projects, as well as economic infrastructure and sectoral development.

A £20m extension to the Waterfront Hall will provide exhibition and conference space. (They could build a glass walkway/bridge across to the nearly-complete building opposite the Waterfront for a lot less than £20m!) Improving the Waterfront’s conferencing offer is at the expense of other smaller commercial venues. Will the council invest public money to help a public facility become more popular at the expense of competing commercial facilities, or will bringing bigger conferences to Belfast boost the smaller venues too?

£300k bursary fund to help 16-24 year olds move into further education, training and employment.

Belfast City Council employs over 2,500 people. The draft investment programme will target the creation of 400 work placements, internships and apprenticeship opportunities within Belfast City Council (focussed on graduates, young long-term unemployed and disabled people).

Belfast City Council spends £170m locally. There’s a commitment in the draft programme to buy local – targeting a rise from10% to 60% of local council spend with local suppliers by 2015. (No indication of what qualifies as ‘local’). Suppliers will also be delighted to hear that the council are committing to pay 90% of their creditors within 28 days to improve business cash flow, something they should have been doing before now.

On top of any capital investment, there’s £34m to grow tourism/major events, arts and culture, and targeted sectoral business growth. Working with Invest NI, 400 “local companies” will be helped “explore export opportunities for the first time or grow into new markets”, and 60 community organisation will “explore the potential of becoming social economy enterprises”.

Belfast Enterprise Academy (and competitions) will introduce 150 undergraduate students to the practicalities of managing a business, with a target of creating 80 new business start-ups. A positive move, but a drop in the ocean.

£29m overall investment for people, communities and neighbourhood. Includes £2.4m for advice/support centres. Playgrounds (ten in total) and community gardens get £2m along with £4m to tart up Dunville and Woodvale Parks (with matched funding from DSD). £3m for community safety, including £700k for further alleygating.

Councillors voted through a below inflation 2.6% rates increase last night. (Small business rate relief should offset much of this rise for local traders.) This additional money is ringfenced for capital initiatives in the investment programme. The parties have agreed to keep future rates increases at or below the level of inflation. Social and community benefit clauses will be introduces to contracts.

Reading through the brochure, North Belfast seems to be the weakest area. A bid of £8m to develop an green business park on the North Foreshore. Improving the recreation/community facilities on the Loughside. And a £9m EU PEACE III funding proposal for a community hub at Girdwood. A partnership proposal to regenerate St Kevin’s Hall and develop a cultural corridor linking the city centre to north Belfast. OFMDFM and DSD want to reopen Crumin Road Gaol as a tourism and business centre. Little of this is committed funding yet.

There are just four paragraphs devoted to “positive relations and shared space” mentioning just £4m of EU PEACE III funding. The creation of an interfaces regeneration strategy that amongst other things will include “sensitively [work] towards reducing barriers” may not deliver much change on the ground.

While there is a commitment to monitoring and review, there is no indication of any provisional payback period or targets for how the city’s ratepayers will recoup their investment.

In all, the draft investment programme is underpinned by a strategy to raise and spend additional public money in a bid to boost confidence in Belfast and encourage private investment, inward investment from businesses in GB, Ireland and beyond, and lift tourist income.

Attendees I spoke to at this morning’s launch were pretty positive about the Council’s plans. They welcomed the forward thinking, and felt that the investment was credible and would benefit the city.

Belfast City Council are consulting on their draft investment programme. Deadline for responses is Friday 27 April 2012.

(Photo by Belfast City Council.)

Northern Ireland’s never had it so good?

Mick Fealty — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:26:18 +0000

Leo Tolstoy began his novel Anna Karenina with the memorable assertion that “happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Last night even the Belfast City Council was a fount of brotherly love. In the Bel Tel, Lindy McDowell has been counting the ways in which Northern Ireland’s been getting happier:

…cynicism may be missing the public mood. Because for once the public mood seems to be one confident step ahead of the eternal realists.

There aren’t many people here, for example, who didn’t get that wee jolt of shared pride at the accomplishments of our hat-trick of golfing heroes last year. Ditto the MTV awards. All of that made us look good.

This year we’ve got the Titanic centenary – finally we’re making something of our connection with that legend. And MTV will be back for that too – an endorsement in itself.

Then there’s the Irish Open. And now the All-Ireland Fleadh which we are assured will rake in somewhere in the region of £40m for the local economy.

So are we getting less and less like our old unhappy selves with every passing year?

UUP: Confused boxer without a decent right or left?

Mick Fealty — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:30:30 +0000

There isn’t really an upside to the UUP’s problems at the moment. Although they were never what you might even remotely call political friends, Mr McNarry’s exit bears a lot of resemblance to the early departure of Trevor Ringland. Already the consequences are closing in.

So early in his career as leader to have lost allies or potential allies from both the right and the left, is a little more than careless. His problem is – not dissimilar to the SDLP – is whilst that his party is more open, gregarious and sociable, they are not really fit for the new political game.

Elliot is leader partly because he is all those things. His constituency association almost along can cheerfully outgun almost any other in the party. HIs instinct, as an innately small ‘c’ conservative is to swing to the right. But there is no political space for his party in particular to exploit out there.

And any credentials he might have won on the left (by going to a GAA match for instance) have now been collected in magisterial style by the First Minister. The best analogy I’ve heard (pre Tom) is that the UUP is like a boxer who genuinely doesn’t know which fist to lead with.

Miliband’s on the hunt – but he desperately lacks a clarion call

Ruarai — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:41:14 +0000

In today’s New Statesman, David Miliband has released a new essay on building Britain a social democratic future. It’s disappointing.

Miliband’s focus on Labour’s electoral strategy neglects a more urgent and, for progressives, a more difficult question: What’s the point of the progressive project anymore?

Against the backdrop of mass bankruptcies and near-bankruptiies – and, consequently, the bankruptcy of supply side economic policies – could there be an easier, more ripe time for progressive parties to articulate the dangers of unregulated finance and, more importantly, an agenda for remedying the follies wreaked by the unchecked financial sector? Yet, instead of piercing analysis and a compelling vision, Milliband rifles his only almost-zinger towards the not even low-hanging so much as long since plucked, Mr. Roy Hattersley.

“But in his article, liberty, rights, social justice and equality are listed as a range of desirable values, when the issue is how to resolve clashes between values, not whether you can make a list of them.”

A passable criticism – if you’re on the high school debate team. Less so if you’re attempting to re-imagine and inspire the realignment of middle and working Britain’s political passions.

Having set his bar so low, I politely await the underwhelming all-too-easy grand finale he’s obviously teed-up. Instead, New New Labour serves up this:

“…we are enjoined … to put power as well as wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many, not the few.”

Got that? And that abstract nothing-speak was one of his more impassioned sentences.

At a time when, as Miliband concedes himself, Europe has 24 out of 27 left-leaning parties out of power despite the FT running a Capitalism in Crisis series while one populist GOP presidential candidate is attacking his Republican colleague as a “Vulture Capitalist”, the question, while it still retains some relevance, must be: Progressives: Is this all?

Where’s the progressive critique for the new century? Is there none?

McNarry: “the party will close ranks and anybody who wants to be a hypocrite will get their photograph taken”

Alan in Belfast — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:10:35 +0000

It’s the story that keeps on giving. And that looks to be David McNarry’s intention.

Now free of having to notify the UUP press office about media interviews and statements – something that Tom Elliott has adhered to as Party Leader – David McNarry is everywhere. This morning’s News Letter. The Belfast Telegraph. Though nothing fully authored by him in the Irish News. [Ed: Maybe he's saving that as a treat for Thursday?]

In recent days he has appeared on UTV Live, Stormont Today, and this morning gave a remarkable thirty minute interview to the Nolan Show. He opened with the statement:

McNarry: I haven’t really wanted to be making the headlines. I’m not really concerned about me when you put it into perspective, Stephen, from what I hear on your programme about sick babies, about the economy, and dissidents and job losses and vulnerable families. They’re all more important to me.

McNarry then went on to discuss at length the talk, his involvement and his impression of the UUP leader, suggesting that Tom Elliott dithers.

He said that “other senior figures” agree with him that “[Tom Elliott] has a problem” with how he was dealing with the DUP/UUP cooperation talks (before McNarry gave the interview and resigned).

Nolan: Are you suggesting that there are senior members of the Ulster Unionist Party who agree with your assessment of Tom Elliott?

McNarry: Yes.

Nolan: Are there many?

McNarry: Yes

Nolan: Would they be in the majority?

McNarry: In terms of senior members? Yes.

Nolan: So you’re suggesting this morning that Tom Elliott does not have the support and confidence of the majority of the senior members of the Ulster Unionist Party?

McNarry: Not to the same extent as I have. People react in different ways. It’s quite possible that the Ulster Unionist Party will organise a photocall today or Monday and they’ll have all MLAs and senior people around Tom and they’ll be smiling. That’s all it would be, a photo.

With bridges well and truly ablaze, it would be amazing if McNarry could ever take back the UUP whip.

Nolan: Could you see yourself joining the DUP?

McNarry: No. [later] I don’t jump ship. My heart is in the Ulster Unionist Party.

Also writing in this morning’s News Letter, DUP MP (and UUP escapee) Jeffrey Donaldson remarked that “the plight now facing David McNarry is one with which I am very familiar”. Yet even if McNarry softened on jumping ship, would the DUP be able to control David McNarry’s fury? Numbers-wise, McNarry’s exit from the UUP assembly group helps Sinn Fein (in terms of extra committee positions) more than it impacts the DUP.

More likely that a career as an independent unionist beckons, sitting beside David McClarty and Jim Allister in front of Alliance in the Assembly chamber.

Stephen Nolan asked what would happen next?

McNarry: I think what will happen – and it will happen because this is what parties do – there’ll be more disinformation and bad mouthing circulated, briefed about me David McNarry and the party will close ranks and anybody who wants to be a hypocrite will get their photograph taken. But it is quite amazing what people say to me in private and then say in public.

At times, it feels like more of a human interest story than a political one. It’s very one sided at the moment. Over the weekend, there were those within the party who viewed McNarry’s resignation as “one of the best things to happen to the UUP”, expressing “[relief] that he’s finally done it, as he’s threatened to enough”. The bad mouthing in public has yet to begin.

In the meantime, David McNarry is eeking out Tom Elliott’s punishment. What started of as “panto” is becoming more damaging.

By only revealing a few details at a time about the UUP/DUP talks, and by being so available to the media, he is singlehandedly keeping the story in the news agenda. Think what it would be like if McNarry could use twitter!

Only time can tell whether McNarry can claim his leader’s scalp.

“I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor.”

Ruarai — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:24:43 +0000

McGuinness wants to support Northern Irish football team?

Mick Fealty — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:52:43 +0000

Erm, don’t tell Squinter [aye, like he didn't know already - ed], but Martin McGuinness is contemplating a reciprocation the First Minister’s visit to watch the McKenna Cup final last weekend…

Martin McGuinness has revealed he would cheer on the Northern Ireland football team and hopes to get the chance on a visit to Windsor Park.

With many nationalists hostile to the international team, viewing its home stadium in south Belfast as a cold house for Catholics, the remarks from the Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister potentially represent another landmark in improving cross-community relations.

Romney up, GOP down, populism ailing?

Mick Fealty — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:32:50 +0000

There’s a good discussion to be had about the tensions between populism and parliamentary politics. If there is a side lesson to taken from the ups and downs of the Republican party, it’s probably buried in here somewhere. As Mike from PoliticalBetting notes, the famous victory of Mitt Romney in Florida (one of the big ‘swing’ states) came at a drop in turn out:

In Iowa the number of self-identifying Republicans was down by 11%, in New Hampshire 15% the reduction was 15% while in Florida overnight it was 16%.

Only Newt Gingrich managed to pull them out in South Carolina… Lack of agency (expectations of which have grown exponentially on either side of Congress since the onset of the net)… Or maybe they just don’t think any of the candidates on offer have what it would take to knock Obama out of the Whitehouse?

“This is a read-back into the so-called ‘dirty war’…”

Pete Baker — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:36:59 +0000

In yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph, Brian Rowan attempted to explained the thinking behind Sinn Féin’s expressed concerns about the “Dark Side” [It's "a sound working partnership and one that is to be commended" - Ed] Indeed. From the Belfast Telegraph article

…this is not a row for the sake of being awkward. It is a serious attempt to engage Matt Baggott sooner rather than later.

I think it would be fair to say that a degree of briefing was involved in the writing of the article.

Which, if we are to take those concerns at face value, as the timely front-page story of today’s Irish News would suggest – the gist is in the BBC newspaper review and it relates to a previous intervention by the NI deputy First Minister in an ongoing police investigation – makes this section of the Belfast Telegraph article of particular interest.

The dissident threat means a continuing intelligence need. But explanation is required when suspected agents are seen at play in republican communities.

At play in terms of articulating the thinking and strategy of armed dissidents, including those behind the killing of Constable Ronan Kerr. And at play pulling the strings in riotous confrontations with the PSNI. [added emphasis]

This is a read-back into the so-called ‘dirty war’.

[Well, it worked the last time! - Ed] That was before the dissidents, erm, dissented…