Brian Walker

You would have missed it. While the UK national media were preoccupied with Gordon Brown’s climb down on a winter fuel payment, the really memorable part of his speech addressed the future of Scottish devolution. In what the Times calls “ a seismic event” Gordon Brown has performed a U turn and flagged up his willingness to give the Scottish Parliament tax raising powers. He talked in code, but the message was clear: “while he would do nothing to put …

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Alex Salmond’s bold stroke to propose replacing council tax with an extra 3p on the basic rate of income tax is the real business of government the main parties in Stormont should turn to once they’ve got over their crisis of confidence and the other parties come out of deep freeze. Powers to raise taxes which Stormont doesn’t have but could bid for, matter far more to people’s real lives than the macho struggle over P&J. There are two ways …

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Whatever he says about making sure the devolution of policing and justice goes ahead, Gordon Brown will have other, bigger things on his mind over the next few days. First he has to cope with the humiliation of having to postpone today’s planned announcement of phase two of his economic rescue plan, a one-off payment of £100 to the poorest families to help with soaring fuel bills. As the FT puts it: “Ministers are locked in a high stakes negotiation …

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More on the psychosis front. Forget the “uterine activity”, mother and daugther, forget the sexism fightback. It’s hard to dig out from front line comment but it’s in there somewhere. Is everybody happy with this then? Creationism “It is hard to tell whether Palin herself is a creationist or not and, frankly, that’s far less important than the policy positions she holds in the matter. (Though, of course, having a Vice President who is deluded about basic aspects of reality …

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Just as the stamp duty cut fails to overwhelm, the forecasters pile on the agony. “UK is the only major economy to face recession this year, OECD warns. It said the UK economy will shrink 0.3% in the third quarter, and 0.4% in the fourth. It believes the UK economy will grow by 1.2% for the whole of 2008, well down on the 1.8% forecast in June.” Ireland knew it was walking the plank in June, courtesy of the Economic …

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Want to know how devolution works? Pick yourself a running sore that annoys everybody – and cure it. It’ll catch on. The SNP government has taken a huge trick by scrapping that curse of the already stressed, the hospital car park charge. Right away, a small avalanche has followed, first England – “Health chiefs in England were under pressure to scrap hospital car parking charges…” … then even someone at Stormont woke up to the possibilities. “Northern Ireland should follow …

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Update 2 From Slugger contributor jenny: “The big question in NI is – why no brought forward cash for more social housing, to take advantage of lower land and labour prices at the present time?” It’s done already I’m told. Social Development minister Margaret Ritchie’s £250 million additional budget secured in the New Year will add 1,000 extra social housing units to an existing 600. Itll fall far short of meeting the full demand but its something. And she’ll announce …

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With the pound hitting a record low against the euro on the eve of Gordon Brown’s “recovery programme”, it’s an ill wind for the UK generally that blows fairer for Northern Ireland. A weak pound works wonders for selling to southerners, as has been well noted before today. “Northern Ireland has seen the biggest influx of cross border traffic since the 1970s especially after a National Consumer Agency Ireland June report revealed that a basket of goods is 30% cheaper …

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I don‘t want to major on the Irish Language Act right now – we’ll save up for it later. But just taking up the point from Henry McDonald’s Observer piece. Quote: “The government won’t bring it in via Westminster because the danger is they would be legally bound to recognise other languages such as Urdu, Hindi, Arabic and so on as being of equal legal status to English. Which would cost millions and millions to implement in a time of …

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Any truth in the FoI inspired report that the US and UK are leaning on Ireland to tighten up the 12.5% corporation tax regime? Pity, if it hit NI hopes of winning a slice of Tiger action at last. The UK has long been fearful of a mass exodus of multinationals to Ireland. Two more big ones went west last week. It was the last straw after they heard that our tough talkin’ Chancellor will after all refuse to abandon …

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A wonderful opportunity for the centre ground in NI politics is going a-begging. Why can’t the so-called parties of the centre see it? What the SDLP, the Ulster Unionists and the Alliance party ought to do together or in any combination is to say now: the extremist parties the DUP and Sinn Fein are too far apart to hack it. We always told you so. Here are our ideas for sorting out P&J, Irish Language act, the stadium etc. You …

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The MP Kevin Macnamara now retired, who legend has it was once described by Jim Callaghan as “ the Fianna Fail MP for Hull north” used to come up to me from time and time and ask “ what are you doing about Deepcut?” “Er, nothing just now, “ I would reply, not really my beat, that sort of thing and maybe I thought – unworthily as I now believe – Kevin was just a bit too keen to find …

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“ Michael, Richard and Dan are the only newly ordained priests for Dublin’s million-plus Catholics”. Its not exactly news but it’s written up in the usual limpid McKittrick style of letting the story tell itself which requires far more skill than you might think. (Note the avoidance of redundant value judgments.) It sounds as if another journalist for whom value judgments are meat and drink, Malachi O’Doherty, is partly to blame for a revival of this touchy subject, as his …

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Here’s a glorious piece of revisionism about my home city.

From Monday, faith schools in England will be able to adopt religious belief as a criterion for appointing teachers. The move crystallises exactly two urgent and increasingly controversial debates in England. One, is multiculturalism or integration the goal for society? Two, will a new range of Blairite “specialist” schools including faith schools produce selection by the back door, or will they genuinely improve standards and widen choice? New freedoms for specialist schools reverses a trend set by Brown who had …

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His words can make stock markets quake. They pushed house prices down further when he failed to quash rumours of a cut in stamp duty. Yet here is that flinty character Alistair Darling confessing all to one of the most winsome women in the interviewing business, Decca Aitkenhead of the Guardian. Confesses the Chancellor: “We knew the economy was going to slow down.” But he hadn’t the faintest inkling of the financial crisis about to unfold before him? “No, no …

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It’s wonderful how a little detail can scale down a story as a day develops…UTV and The BBC’s Mark Devenport report that changes to the “massive” strategy development document Conor Murphy failed to bring back to the Executive for clearance amounted to around “150 changes, many involve references to “Northern Ireland” being changed to “the north”.” Are you being serious, First Minister? The air is going out of this story’s balloon. Sinn Fein ministers may well have a case to …

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Northern Ireland comes second among the four parts of the UK in the amount spent per patient, according to a breakdown just published by the respected Health Service Journal. “Huge contrasts found between UK nations. Patients in the UK’s four nations have dramatically different experiences of the NHS.” Scotland came highest in spending per patient at £1262, compared to NI at £1214, Wales at £1186 and England £1,086. NI has the second highest ratio of GPs per 1.000 patients, 0.63 …

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Breaking news… The Belfast Telegraph is selling hard the story of deepening crisis in the Executive, although as I type, nobody else seems to have picked up this latest twist. Peter Robinson’s charge is constitutionally a serious one, that the Regional Development minister SF’s Conor Murphy breached the code of office by failing to bring a ” massive” regional strategy to 2025 before an Executive meeting. “Mr Robinson said he wanted an immediate Executive meeting to deal with the issue …

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Have you ever heard of Blanchflower ? You have now. To most of us, the name conjures up fond memories of two great Belfast footballing brothers of the 1950s and 60s. But now there’s a new Blanchflower – David. (no relation as far as I know). David Blanchflower moves into history as the first member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee (MPC) to break ranks and give a stark warning of deep recession – in public. You aint …

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