Peter Dixon
Another conflict of interest in yet another NI Water review team…
You can never quite guess which way this Northern Ireland Water story is going next. So now there’s another question hanging over the appointment of a review team set up to look at the foul up over Christmas announced within hours of the conclusion of Mr MacKenzie’s negotiation over his departure deal on Friday. Two [...] more »
NI Water: Minister failed to pick up Board’s early questions about Dixon?
Okay, another bullish performance from Minister Murphy here on the UTV report, though it is rare to see such a normally competent performer stuck for words in front of a camera. What’s complicated things for him was the robust nature of the questioning from Conall McDevitt, on the amount of work the Minister did to [...] more »
Priestly drafted Dixon letter of complaint to PAC
The BBC are reporting, ahead of this evening’s UTV Live [added link], that they have seen an email sent by suspended NI Regional Development Permanent Secretary Paul Priestly to Independent Review Team member Peter Dixon following the 1st July PAC meeting. From the BBC report The email sent by Mr Priestly on 2 July followed a meeting of [...] more »
NI Water: “As for the minister, he’s not commenting…”
I see Senator Mary White’s husband Padraic is taking on the role of Chair for NI Water. I hope he has a guarantee that he cannot be sacked for failing to address a problem he’s not been told about until he’s actually under investigation. Okay, back to the main story. There’s a nice piece by Martina Purdy [...] more »
NI Water: Board prevented from acting on contents of Internal Audit?
The Coalition government at Westminster clearly attach great public importance to Non Executive Directors on Departmental Boards. On his appointment as lead Non Executive Director to the Government, Lord Browne of Madingley laid out this description of the role of NEDs to departmental boards: “This is a role within Government but also independent of it. [...] more »
NI Water: What was Dixon’s competence to adjudicate on a GoCo/NDPB?
Gerry Loughran’s letter to John Dallat re NI Water makes for interesting reading (Update: the BBC covered the letter story this evening). Loughran is Peter Dixon’s Chair at Phoenix Gas, and a former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. In his response leaves both John Dallat, and Paul Maskey, the chair of the PAC [...] more »
NI Water: Dixon was a DRD appointment to the Belfast Harbour Commissioners
Here’s another little snippet that further highlights the Permanent Secretary’s lack of candour with Stormont’s PAC. When asked by Patsy McGlone about the apparent conflict of interest in pulling Peter Dixon into the Independent Review Team when both the Phoenix Gas CEO and Mr MacKenzie were such close colleagues, Paul Priestly gave this answer: I [...] more »
NI Water: “No, I do not believe that there was a conflict of interest.”
Slugger understands that there is growing unease amongst members of Stormont’s Public Accounts Committee with Peter Dixon’s unprecedented attack on the Committee’s line of inquiry, and the apparent silence on the matter from their own chair, Paul Maskey. This passage from Hansard is illustrative of the line which drew fire from the Phoenix Gas CEO: Ms Purvis: On [...] more »
Two named (and two unnamed) staff members of NI Water under investigation.
As reported on Slugger yesterday, two of the MLAs who came under direct attack from Peter Dixon for their role in the Public Accounts Committee’s masterclass interrogation of the Permanent Secretary of DRD and the Chief Executive (and Sub Accounting Officer) of NI Water have written both to the board of Phoenix Gas and their [...] more »
Matters arising from PAC’s interrogation of NIW and DRD
Slugger has had sight of the letter (update: copied – below the fold) on Phoenix Gas headed note paper and signed as Group Chief Executive, Peter Dixon sent to Paul Maskey, chair of Stormont’s Public Accounts Committee complaining of insinuations made by PAC members Patsy McGlone, John Dallat and Dawn Purvis against him as a [...] more »
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Books
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Debating the Churches’ Role in the Peace in Northern Ireland
This morning’s Sunday Sequence featured a substantial debate (about 35 minutes into the recorded programme) on a new book,Religion, Civil Society and Peace in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press 2011), written by sociologists John Brewer, Gareth Higgins and Francis Teeney. The debate was framed in an opening vignette by presenter William Crawley in uncompromising terms, [...] read our review » -
Stay out of Libya: counterinsurgency doesn’t work
A moment of some significance in journalism perhaps, as the New York Times reviews the current talked about book, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan by Bing West. The author is no bleeding heart but a former assistant Defense Secretary from the Reagan era who stomped his way round the Afghan [...] read our review »
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Spare us a phoney row about racism, we’ve got enough on
A silly media row about racism just had to figure in the riots’ post mortem. Was the Tudor history expert David Starkey racist on Newsnight when he said: The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in [...] read our review »
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