Brian Walker – Page 57 – Slugger O'Toole

After the Stormont House Agreement, will the latest initiative to bring state actors to account become the one that succeeds?

Brian Walker on February 18, 2015, 4:26 pm

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The UK government stands accused of continuing to cover up state misbehaviour in a humdinger of a Report just published by the legal experts of the Committee on the Administration of Justice. The report is the supporting analysis for renewed pressure on the authorities who have pledged to set up “ new mechanisms” in the form of an Historic Investigations Unit under the Stormont House Agreement. The CAJ report adopts a sharper tone and levels more direct criticism at the government …

Northern Ireland Executive spending dribbles out without a clear narrative. Does anybody care?

Brian Walker on February 18, 2015, 12:51 pm

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Taking a break from the minutiae of party battle, let’s just see how we’re faring on policy – you know the stuff that politics is supposed to serve. The current results are mixed. Three points for more progress on school sharing between Protestant and Catholics. Why not go the whole hog and integrate them for heaven’s sake? One point for raising the idea of prescription charges – not because they’re necessarily a winner or would raise much revenue. But at least the …

Signs of real politics emerging from Stormont House Agreement

Brian Walker on February 11, 2015, 12:13 pm

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Be grateful for small mercies. With less than a hundred days to go before the election, implementing the Stormont Hose Agreement has had the effect of postponing the worst kind of dog-eat -dog sectarian campaigning – so far. Sinn Fein like the rest of them have had to swallow the basics of the Welfare Bill in the interests of political reality. Syriza type resistance has collapsed. To ask a different question: are there any signs at all of left-right politics …

Well done SDLP for coming out of Sinn Fein’s shadow over the National Crime Agency

Brian Walker on February 4, 2015, 8:36 pm

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With less than a hundred days to go before the general election, the SDLP are to be congratulated for breaking free of Sinn Fein me-too-ism to vote in favour of terms which permit the National Crime Agency to operate fully in Northern Ireland. A clap on the back too for David Ford for bringing long negotiations to a successful outcome . To the outsider admittedly not in full command of the details, the final local accountability arrangements seem little different from what was …

Gordon Brown, the lone voice in defence of the Union

Brian Walker on February 4, 2015, 12:10 pm

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In his latest interventions on the future of the Union, Gordon Brown proposes wider devolution for Scotland than the Conservative-led UK government proposes but less power than the Conservatives recommend for English MPs to vote on English laws, which he seems to believe could be fatal for the future of the Union. Brown has drawn up battle lines to oppose the Hague plan produced yesterday. Brown casts himself as a lone voice in defence of the Union. He dismisses the …

Making haste slowly in dealing with the past

Brian Walker on February 3, 2015, 1:57 pm

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In the words of the old witticism, in dealing with the past there’s no Northern Ireland equivalent to the Spanish mañana that has quite the same sense of urgency, despite the £30 million earmarked for legacy issues by the Stormont House agreement. Or is that too bleak a view? Patricia Bell (67), is seeking to challenge the estimated 2025 target date for a Police Ombudsman report into the circumstances surrounding her father’s death. Patrick Murphy was shot dead on his 63rd …

Is no DUP in the TV debates good for Northern Ireland’s image?

Brian Walker on February 1, 2015, 7:51 pm

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If I understand him rightly, Newton Emerson in the Sunday Times (£) regrets the absence (subject to expensive legal action if it happens, which I doubt) of the Northern Ireland parties from the UK national TV election debates – if they finally happen. What Newton regrets tongue in cheek is the absence of a national airing of all sorts of vigorous DUP opinions of the subjects of race, immigration, private lives, confessional beliefs etc that put UKIP in the shade. Who …

At last our leaders are starting to take a realistic line to cope with cuts

Brian Walker on January 26, 2015, 6:14 pm

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Credit where credit’s due, while commending Bystander’s vigilance. Simon Hamilton cuts a competent figure as minister of finance, blowing the trumpet for the financial aspects of the Stormont House Agreement. This is what a finance minister is for, rather than sniping at colleagues. Meanwhile the Agreement has attracted the rare attention of the Economist which has a global reach and a strong private sector, fiscally conservative leaning … THE good news about Northern Ireland is that it now has normal problems… …

The PSNI’s latest move against the Boston archive is unintelligent

Brian Walker on January 25, 2015, 12:14 pm

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Henry McDonald in the Observer has picked up on the PSNI’s latest incursion into Boston tapes morass. There is a blinkered police logic to this that contradicts the stated expectations of the law officers of the low likelihood of future prosecutions. Pursue the Bloody Sunday paras and give Gerry Adams lousy food in Antrim Police station for a couple of days. If the PSNI go after the Army and the Provos they have to go after the loyalists, don’t …

A spirit of genuine power sharing is needed to make more powers work for the Scottish Parliament

Brian Walker on January 22, 2015, 6:08 pm

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Power sharing of the genuine sort is clearly needed to make work the complexity contained in the 44 draft clauses of legislation to grant sweeping new powers to the Scottish Parliament. But not for a while yet, if ever. David Cameron’s visit to Edinburgh to present the Command Paper was marked by political jostling much more complicated that the heady simplicity of Yes or No in the referendum. It was preceded by the Chancellor yesterday pledging to try to bar Scottish MPs …

Lessons from Chilcott apply to dealing with the past

Brian Walker on January 22, 2015, 11:56 am

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Why is it when the search is on for instructive examples, that Ireland is seldom looked at by British movers and shakers? Over the behaviour of militantly anti-austerity parties when the focus is on Greece, an alternatively financed health service, the behaviour of coalition governments, what a constitutional convention might achieve, Ireland has a wealth of experience good and bad, to draw on. I suspect the reasons for ignoring Ireland is rooted in a mixture of British guilt and its close …

Spreading the word in the Irish language requires a new beginning

Brian Walker on January 18, 2015, 12:57 pm

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I thought I’d tiptoe into the minefield of the “Irish Language Act”, an area where the massed ranks of persuadables risk getting wasted by the zealots, but here goes. Concubhar is right, there should be a mature discussion. I’m one of those who shrugged off Gregory Campbell’s leaden humour and hoped that most language supporters felt secure enough to do likewise. I can be as mildly irritated by Sinn Fein’s little chants of Irish phrases as I am at one with …

Tony Blair to face OTRs’ grilling by MPs

Brian Walker on January 8, 2015, 11:54 am

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The Commons Northern Ireland select committee delving into the undergrowth of the On the Runs controversy have won one major battle but lost a separate skirmish with the NIO. Tony Blair has surrendered to their pressure and will appear before them next Tuesday. However, Theresa Villiers and the Northern Ireland Office are being unnecessarily defensive in refusing to allow officials who were directly involved in the letters scheme to give evidence alone. At very short notice – and after the civil service …

It’s the economy, stupid. Not a federal Ireland

Brian Walker on January 3, 2015, 8:53 pm

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In the Irish Times Paul Gillespie floats the idea that the North might benefit by a federal deal with the south. He invokes the useful hand played by the Republic in the recent Stormont House agreement. Certainly Charlie Flanagan waxed more eloquently than Theresa Villiers but that isn’t saying much. I discern a much bigger hand played by HM Treasury in setting the financial deal and in monitoring future Executive performance. This is surely appropriate as they put up such …

The star of wonder shines through the Christmas Agreement

Brian Walker on December 23, 2014, 6:46 pm

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In Northern Ireland God seems to work in mysterious ways his wonders to perform at peak moments in the Christian calendar. Sixteen years after the Good Friday ( or Belfast ) Agreement, we have the Christmas ( or Stormont House) Agreement. Behind the details the main features are: Apparently genuine efforts by the parties to end deadlock by tackling it through a highly ambitious, comprehensive agenda . Against expectations, the dam seems to have broken. Regular monitoring of the conduct of the …

On Welfare and the Budget, reality for Stormont is acceptable

Brian Walker on December 20, 2014, 1:42 pm

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Only the rashest observer would claim that s/he has a complete understanding of the complexities of welfare payments and reform and the other details of the negotiations that are said to be reaching a climax. My feeling is that they are less about negotiations and more about accepting realities they can live with. On welfare and other public expenditure issues it hardly came as a surprise that most local politicians – and not only Sinn Fein – at first adopted …

Outsourcing solutions may be the secret of dealing with more than the past

Brian Walker on December 19, 2014, 4:42 pm

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Well, perhaps amid the encircling gloom the political parties have seen some light at last. The details of the agreement on welfare reform are awaited but it looks as if any new money will come from Westminster mainly to deal with the past which is surely fair. Adds: United Executive request for a total of £2.1 billion over 10 years. Quite a gap with David Cameron’s £1 billion extra borrowing.. but perhaps smoke and mirrors will narrow it once the welfare deal surfaces. Nothing from that …

Time for other parties to break Executive ranks as Sinn Fein sacrifices northern interests for southern ambitions

Brian Walker on December 18, 2014, 5:56 pm

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Following on from Mick, let’s begin by making the best possible case for Sinn Fein, the party which seems the most intransigent in the inter- party talks. The Conservatives’ strategy for the next five years to a produce budget surplus of £23 billion by 2019-20 is probably unsustainable, unless the rate of growth picks up dramatically. Why tamely accept it? By contrast Labour’s plan to balance only current expenditure would result in a continuing deficit of £25 billion over …

What Stormont must do to convince Cameron to up his offer

Brian Walker on December 17, 2014, 3:32 pm

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Are the political parties still hoping that David Cameron will turn into a White Knight and Save Ulster from Austerity? What does Stormont have to do to persuade him to answer their pleas to up his offer? Among the elements are: devising a proper three year plan for the first time so as the world can see how they’re spending mainly GB public money; and even more difficult, to hold out at least the prospect of following the Republic in …

Assembly reform without real change in political outlook means little

Brian Walker on December 16, 2014, 6:53 pm

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The reform ideas for the beleaguered Stormont Assembly disclosed by the BBC are well intentioned. but they’re the wrong treatment on the wrong diagnosis, as the disease is the failure of our politicians to work together effectively. Note that they’re being put forward by the British government five months ahead of the deadline of May set for the Assembly and Executive Review Committee to produce reform agreements. Westminster is at last showing a little initiative. On subject after subject – …