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SpAd Bill passes final reading at the Assembly…

on 3 June 2013 , 8:38 pm 35 | 64 views

It now goes on for Royal Assent before becoming law… From what I heard there were 28 SF votes against (I’ll confirm with full figures when I have them), with the SDLP and the Green MLA abstaining…

  • toaster

    Ms Travers should be ashamed of herself. She and her new best friend Jim Allister have brought colossal hurt and sadness to the Kavanagh household.

  • Granni Trixie

    On the contrary toaster.instead she has demonstrated the efficacy of speaking truth to power and the social control ordinary people can exercise through the
    court of public opinion

  • Mick Fealty

    I think people should be wary of ridiculing victims. If this difficult passage of legislation (and don’t forget it is one of the very few pieces of law to pass in the last six years of continuous sitting Assemblies) means anything it is that treating them with distain and contempt is counter productive.

  • Mick Fealty

    We await to discover which SF MLA was missing from the Chamber… Stormont Today should be interesting…

  • Seamus

    It was Alex Maskey and Chris Hazzard. Stephen Agnew also voted against the Bill.

  • Seamus

    Actually Alex Maskey did vote against. Read my own notes wrong.

  • Seamus

    Michelle O’Neill was the other missing MLA.

  • Mick Fealty

    Thanks Seamus!! Will correct the above..

  • belfasthobo

    I wonder how well this will turn out for Agnew once the unionists start publicising it in North Down.

  • Comrade Stalin

    I’m wondering how it’ll turn out for Jim Allister.

    He can’t simultaneously say that the Assembly is a broken institution where you can get nothing done, while taking the credit for piloting this SpAD bill through that same institution.

  • sectarianheadcount

    So Sinn Fein are upset because their people can’t advise a government of Northern Ireland. Is that the Northern Ireland the wannabee advisers spent years trying to smash? And we still call SF republicans? Confused.

  • Dixie Elliott

    When you get down on your knees to what Gerry Kelly calls political Unionism you must expect a few kicks in the face.

    Marty could always phone up the Queen to complain like he used to do with Mo Mowlam.

  • Alias

    Well done to Jim Allister for bringing a little bit of human decency back into Stormont politics.

    He offered to help Ann Travers when the Shinners deliberately spit into her face, and he made good on that offer. And well done to Ann Travers for her little bit of human decency made public in abiding by the memory of her sister.

    What bugs the Shinners about this isn’t the money (they’ll still get 90k from the British state for every toady they appoint as an ‘advisor’): it’s that one of their victims has held them to account.

  • GEF

    Had Alex Maskey and Chris Hazzard attended and voted along with all other SF MLA’s and Stephen Agnew joined them, sure that would have been the 30 votes needed to block the bill? If this be true then the 2 SF MLA’s mentioned must have egg all over their faces this morning.

    Or am I missing something?

  • cynic2

    “Had Alex Maskey and Chris Hazzard attended and voted …….”

    And had Kavanagh not murdered all those people he’s still be in a job today

  • Reader

    GEF: and Stephen Agnew joined them, sure that would have been the 30 votes needed to block the bill?
    SA voted against the bill, but 30 votes against wouldn’t have blocked it – 30 votes in a petition of concern would have been needed. SA may not have been willing to go so far.

  • Reader

    sectarianheadcount: So Sinn Fein are upset because their people can’t advise a government of Northern Ireland.
    SF can continue to receive advice from whoever they choose, and those people can still be paid at the Industrial average wage (whatever that is). It’s just that the party will have to front up another shinner to collect the salary from the Assembly coffers.

  • iluvni

    For once, decency has won the day in the ‘peace process’. Doubtless these moral bankrupts will look to inflict their mass murderers on the people in other ways

  • GEF

    “SA voted against the bill, but 30 votes against wouldn’t have blocked it – 30 votes in a petition of concern would have been needed. SA may not have been willing to go so far.”

    Thanks Reader, that clarifies the situation.

  • Jack2

    SF were hoisted by their own petard on this issue. Rewarding terrorists beyond what 99% in N.I could hope to earn honestly is a slap in the face for decent people.

    Now for the next piece of legislation:
    Criminal background checks to be published on all ballot papers.
    IQ test results to to published on all ballot papers.

    Holy crap imagine that. Ruane and Poots with the combined IQ of a cabbage.
    They’d probably get the same votes but it may give us decent folk some light relief once every four years…..

  • GEF

    “Ms Travers should be ashamed of herself. She and her new best friend Jim Allister have brought colossal hurt and sadness to the Kavanagh household.”

    toaster, Ms Travers has absolutely no reason for being ashamed of herself. Me thinks your quote is one of sour grapes against this woman who has taken on a bunch of former IRA tough guys of yesterday year and won legally.
    The proverb “long runs the fox ” the big fox advisor to the DFM was caught in the end. Justice has been served.

  • pauluk

    Well done Ms Tracers and Jimbo!

    Courageous stand by SDLP. Something intrinsically decent about their action.

  • pauluk

    Ms Travers, of course.

  • Morpheus

    I’m sorry, “courageous stand by the SDLP”??

    Taking the emotion out of it, as we should when passing laws, the SDLP allowed a piece of legislation to pass which they believe to be flawed and then took the easy way out by abstaining. That is not courageous. They should have fought their corner and whipped the bill into something that was acceptable to all and then voted ‘Yes’ on it with pride.

    What they did was average politics, not good government and certainly not courageous.

    But the people have spoken and it’s a good day for Northern Ireland in my opinion.

  • Alone and Easy Target

    CS

    I’m wondering how it’ll turn out for Jim Allister.

    He can’t simultaneously say that the Assembly is a broken institution where you can get nothing done, while taking the credit for piloting this SpAD bill through that same institution.

    Surely the point is that the Executive is incapable of making such legislation as it acts as a black hole that proposals go in but never come out. When it gets to the executive table items such as the libel law changes and the National Crime Agency do not re-surface.

  • GavBelfast

    It’s hardly likely to have done Jim Allister anything other than good, is it?

    The DFM may have said that he took the SDLP by the tails, but he’s also had the others with Unionist in their designation trailing in his wake.

    As for it disproving the notion that nothing productive gets done in that place, well it can also be seen as an honourable exception that proves the rule. If the place WAS more productive, this may not even have attracted quite as much attention.

  • son of sam

    Where stands Declan Kearney ‘s outreach to Unionists now?

  • iluvni

    So, has Kavanagh been sacked yet

  • Morpheus

    “Where stands Declan Kearney ‘s outreach to Unionists now?”

    It is probably right beside Peter Robinson’s outreach to Catholics programme which makes me wonder if we any further ahead.

    “So, has Kavanagh been sacked yet”

    Does it matter, this was about the victims was it not?

  • GavBelfast

    By the time it gets Royal Assent, and then beds-in, it could be the New Year before it takes effect.

  • sonofstrongbow

    You can rest assure that SF will stretch this out as long as possible. Expect a legal ‘human rights’ challenge (they’ve got to spend all that British dosh somewhere).

    Strangely all those Shinner drones gurning about denying folks employment were the same people who demanded that retired RUC officers should be barred from working with the PSNI, HET and PONI.

  • son of sam

    According to Liam Clarke in the Belfast Telegraph ,”In Stormont’s Great Hall yesterday Colm Eastwood was surrounded by Bloody Sunday families.They were imploring him to add his name to Sinn Fein’s petition of concern”.I had always assumed that one of the strengths of the Bloody Sunday campaigners was their (at least officially ) insistence on being non party-political .It would appear that this stance has been abandoned at least by some of the families.

  • Dixie Elliott

    What SF also did not tell people is that two weeks ago the SDLP tabled an amendment to the bill to stop the bill being retrospective, i.e meaning Paul k would not have lost his job. SF voted against this amendment, presumably so they could look like victims when he lost his job.

  • cynic2

    IQ test results to to published on all ballot papers.

    Great idea. Some of the MLAs cant even fill in their own claims or walk and talk at the same time …….but then we all still vote for them

  • Monty_Carlo

    Dixie is spot on there. cynic2, I stopped voting for that shower of shite on the hill a long time ago. I have no sympathy whatsoever for SF. They signed up to the institutions and all the trappings of “power” that went with it and now they’ve been shafted, tough! I do not think that Paul Kavanagh should have lost his job, the guy got gripped and did a long stretch in gaol. I tend to agree with Jude Collins’s assertion, that this is punishing people twice. The problem is, when SF were in talks leading up to the signing of the GFA, they should have insisted that anyone being released under it should have had their records wiped clean (especially lifers). They didn’t, because they couldn’t wait to get into Stormont to, you know, put manners on the cops etc. etc. etc. zzzzzzzz, look how well that worked out for them!