Tuesday, October 16, 2007
UPRG project’s funding withdrawn
As anticipated. In the Assembly the NI Executive’s Social Development minister, Margaret Ritchie, has just announced the withdrawal of funding for the UPRG’s CTI project describing the project as “risk-prone from the start”. [Adds The minister’s statement can be viewed here (RealPlayer file)] Update Finance minister, the DUP’s Peter Robinson, has just accused stated that [he believed] Margaret Ritchie had gone against the legal advice to the Executive, and was therefore in breach of the ministerial code of conduct, in making the announcement and the Speaker has suspended the sitting. Meanwhile in the BBC studio, SF’s Martina Anderson said that the Social Development minister “should have been more measured” and criticised the minister for not seeking “collective responsibility” from her Executive colleagues. A BBC report on the minister’s statement here. Further report here. Back in the chamber. The Speaker has quoted the head of civil service [Nigel Hamilton] as having “serious concerns” about the legality of the announcement, and he also referred to conversations with other members of the Executive who had similar serious concerns, but the Finance minister’s point of order is not accepted. During questions, Sinn Féin seem to be focused on critising the minister for continuing to fund the project after devolution - Although Jim Gibney didn’t agree with that criticism. Along with her own party members, the Alliance party has been the most vocal in support of the decision while the DUP are focusing on questioning the legality of the decision and the legal advice she was given - which is described as “privileged information” by the minister. The minister also responded to repeated questioning by SF - “I will not be funding the UDA now or in the future.” More below the fold
Update Full statement from the Social Development minister via the SDLP website.
And now on the Executive’s website
More This clip from the BBC’s Stormont Live coverage caught the end of the statement, the point of order, and some of the subsequent in-studio conversation as noted above.
Pete Baker @ 11:46 AM
“both the Nationalist and Unionist parties still seem more interested in political point-scoring”
Depends on your point of view - it seems to me that both the SDLP and Alliance are fairly straight various individuals in the unionist parties do try. They are politicans however and the rule is ‘let the buyer beware’.
Personally I’m finding it very interesting to watch our politicans as they manouevre. They do have huge disagreements and a way has to be found for them to express those disagreements while still staying in the one Executive.
Ritchie is definitely scoring points at the moment, not least for forcing the DUP into the open about the UDA. Since Dodds won the race to give political support at Holy Cross no-one doubted where they stood but it is nice to have the evidence out where we can see it.
Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 02:19 PMConcerned Loyalist: “There is no alternative for working-class Loyalism.”
*shrug*
Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again and expecting different outcomes from the same inputs. The DUP have made it clear that they do not value your votes, and yet you still vote for them.
Concerned Loyalist: “We are more concerned now with the bread and butter issues of socio-economic regeneration (the Union is safe) but both the Ntaionalist and Unionist parties still seem more interested in political point-scoring than actually addressing the hopes and fears of the people they represent, who voted for the weasels and who got them paid… “
If, as you argue, the Union is safe, then this would be *PRECISELY* the time to explore other options, given the DUP’s unwillingness to actually represent your interests.
Right now, y’all don’t have a seat at the table—hell, you don’t even have a seat at the kiddies table, politically speaking. What have you got to lose? The Union is safe and the DUP don’t represent you—how is voting for independent candidates (with DUP transfers as early preferences as insurance) going to make anything worse? Who knows—get the right independents and you might get a seat at the table.
Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 02:19 PMlib2016: “Ritchie is definitely scoring points at the moment, not least for forcing the DUP into the open about the UDA. Since Dodds won the race to give political support at Holy Cross no-one doubted where they stood but it is nice to have the evidence out where we can see it. “
There is a difference between scoring point and making one. Ritchie did the latter, not the former. Her point, that the gov’t should not be in the business of handing out money to criminal organizations (or their sock-monkeys) is, admittedly, an uncomfortable one for some of the other parties… but whose problem is that?
Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 05:05 PMCL
Can’t get anyone to represent your views? Then stand for election yourself.
What people can’t do, and Margaret Ritchie (God bless her for doing it) is making this clear, is hold democracy and law and order to ransom just because they have a few guns and a violent attitude.
If you can’t get elected, then tough. It’s how democracy works, ask Bob McCartney. As for the likes of you calling Jim Allister a dinosaur. I don’t think much of him, but at least he is a democrat. He isn’t fronting or cheerleading a collection of rabble trying to hold democracy to ransom. In fact, all told, for all his many faults Allister makes for a hundred of the clowns you have aligned yourself with.
Spare us the self pity act, nobody is buying it.Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 07:04 PMUrguhart, I’ve just pointed out that Ritchie’s current stance is now the opposite of that promoted by Hume. When did the SDLP position change? It would be good if it could be sustained and that it could be endorsed by the other parties - as well as by London and Dublin.
Also the street politics of the likes of Hume and Paisley did a lot to put our ‘tribes’ at each other’s throats.
Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 07:33 PMNevin
Your insinuation is rather vague (you took me to task too, earlier). Can you be more specific so that I can give you an answer?Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 07:49 PMCertainly an interesting day politically. Unsuprisingly I 100% support Mrs Ritchie’s decision. The fact of the matter is that funding is being pulled from UDA/UPRG fronted groups. This is a good thing. If the projects where ran anything like their other pet projects that I’m aware of such as Gae Lairn it would be a huge waste of money. There are hundreds of worth while projects in loyalist areas starved for funding. I worked in one such project that collapsed when Learn Direct pulled out of NI along with over 90% of our funding. Where was Peter Robinson then to fight the corner and threaten legal action?
Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 07:51 PMI made several insinuations, Joe!!
I’ve put up the link about Hume’s argument that decommissioning was a ‘dangerous distraction’ whereas Ritchie’s Decommissioning must happen could have come from a Trimble speech. I’ve not yet seen an explanation for this apparent SDLP about turn.
The confrontational nature of the partisan street politics of the likes of Hume and Paisley was likely to lead eventually to sermons in stones and worse eg Derry riots inter-communal long precede the arrival of both Hume and Paisley.
Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 08:38 PMOK Nevin.
The link you provide is actually to a speech by John Major which refers to Hume’s statement. Since we don’t have Hume’s statement in context, it’s hard to comment. But although decommissioning may have been a “distraction”, Hume was always clear that violence had to stop.
Similarly, Ritchie made it clear that decommissioning wasn’t the sole issue.
She also said “I will also want to see evidence that the UDA has moved irreversibly away from criminality and violence to positive and lawful community transformation.” Carrickfergus and Kilcooley blew any case the UDA might have had clean out of the water. And, it continued last weekend.
I am not a spokesman for the SDLP btw. Just an interested observer.Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 08:50 PMThis has taken way too long. Debate necessitates time, but i don’t see why politicians in Northern Ireland need to make a spectacle out of every event.
Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 09:08 PMJoe, Hume’s comment is fairly straightforward; he also argued for inclusion even when paramilitary violence was ongoing.
Arguing for violence to stop was rather disingenuous when you consider that Paisley-Hume street politics fomented it.
Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 10:18 PMNevin-
“Arguing for violence to stop was rather disingenuous when you consider that Paisley-Hume street politics fomented it.”
I’ll not argue much with your Paisley point, but on your claim that the actions of John Hume caused violence, well pardon my French, but you’re talking bollocks. You seem to be insinuating that because Hume and his associates who formed the SDLP dared to stand up against the elective unionist dictatorship and its bigoted excesses, they were somehow responsible for those who took up arms. Rubbish. Hume et al always preached the need for peaceful action and never did anything to encourage people to use the bullet or the bomb. To suggest anything else is nothing short of libel.
Perhaps you should look at the response of the unionist regime and its London-based backers to see why some people may have turned to the gun- internment, seriously assaulting peaceful protestors and slaughtering innocent people during a march do not make for peace. It doesn’t excuse the violence of the groups like the IRA, but it is a much more likely cause of it than John Hume and his street politics.
Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 10:32 PMWell Nevin
If you are going to equate Hume’s public rabble rousing with Paisley’s, all I can say is that you must be very much younger than I am and/or else have a very selective memory.Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 @ 10:35 PMAbdul-Rahim: “This has taken way too long. Debate necessitates time, but i don’t see why politicians in Northern Ireland need to make a spectacle out of every event. “
Rule of thumb—the smaller the stakes, the larger the spectacle. Not sure why, but in bureaucracies, that is just the way it seems to go.
Posted by on Oct 18, 2007 @ 01:56 AMSurely Magraret Ritchie could spare a few quid for Samantha Duddy’s Funeral.
If not she has a stone where her heart should be
Posted by on Oct 18, 2007 @ 10:40 AMMe thinks that Abdul-Rahim is unfamilure with politicians in general. All politicians are out to grap headlines and sound bites. In NI there is just the opportunity for more of them due to the fickle nature of the electorate here.
Posted by on Oct 18, 2007 @ 10:45 AMOops the above should have been posted as me, Pounder. Please be advised I am not sock puppeting.
Posted by on Oct 18, 2007 @ 10:46 AMNevin: “Joe, Hume’s comment is fairly straightforward; he also argued for inclusion even when paramilitary violence was ongoing.”
And I expect that Margaret is probably happy enough to keep talking to them, making the case for decommissioning.
The difference, which I thought might have been pretty obvious, is that she doesn’t think the taxpayer should be bankrolling them.
Posted by on Oct 18, 2007 @ 10:58 AMFrankly (pardon the unintended pun) the UPRG called her bluff and ended up with egg on their faces. To slightly miss quote another prominant female politician “The lady wasn’t for turning”.
Posted by on Oct 18, 2007 @ 11:04 AMUrguhart, the taxpayer, directly and via international funding, has been bankrolling paramilitaries for years. The SDLP, in the form of Margaret Ritchie, has ‘flip-fopped’ - and caught lots of people out. Let’s hope no decent folks become victims of this dramatic, though welcome, change in direction.
PS I chanced upon a gathering on the day of Stormontgate where Farren, Empey, Parlon and a clutch of civil servants were wining and dining before doling out large wads of EU cash to inter alia paramilitary loons.
Posted by on Oct 18, 2007 @ 11:53 AMPounder it wasnt a bluff the UDA drew in to a pat hand and lost their table stakes
Posted by on Oct 18, 2007 @ 12:07 PMJoe, I wasn’t equating their rabble-rousing; rather I was equating their street politics which predictably put the ‘rabble’ at each other’s throats. Hume should have known better; he’s studied history, including the history of Derry.
I’m a wee bit younger than Hume; I also had the privilege of going to Queens University in Belfast in the early 60s when relationships between the tribes had begun to thaw. Ray, QUB Chaplain and founder of the Corrymeela Community, was a great source of inspiration and it was natural that I should then have got involved in an inter-schools program in Coleraine - in addition to my day job.
I started dabbling in genealogy, history and politics in the 90s; I expanded Hume’s partisan three-strand analysis of our politics to include the Unionist aspiration in the early 90s.
Posted by on Oct 18, 2007 @ 12:10 PMMaybe we met sometime. It seems we’re Queens contemporaries.
Posted by on Oct 18, 2007 @ 01:38 PMWe used to have great crack in the Glee Club sessions in the old Union at the foot of University Square.
Posted by on Oct 18, 2007 @ 02:30 PM
