11th july

Synchronicity? Or cribbing?

| Readers 1

A quick aside. I see Tommy Burns MLA quite regularly at our gaelic club and we have an occasional chat. We’ve never discussed Slugger to my recollection and certainly haven’t chatted about my posts on the costs of 11th July bonfires.

I’m surprised to see that completely independently he has asked the exact same questions on costs to the Fire Service that I had answered back on 19th August.

The Irish News, Belfast Telegraph and UTV all say;

The figures were revealed by the Assembly after a freedom of information question from the SDLP’s Thomas Burns

mmmmm…..

Update: As per Nevin’s comment below – it was synchronicity. What are the odds on that?

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11th bonfires – what the Councils pay

| Readers 32

Yesterday I examined increasing expenditure over the last five years for the Fire Service in dealing with 11th July bonfires (circa £4 million in total) Today I will provide some figures showing the increase in Council funding for events linked to these bonfires over the same period. Unfortunately only half responded within the time limits set under Freedom of Information. I will follow up with the slackers for the grand total at the end of series. The figures for 2010 …

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No water – just the cost of (bon)fires

| Readers 45

Slugger can’t handle much more water. So I will start what will be a series of blogs attempting to discover an absolute figure for public expenditure on 11th July bonfires. First up is costs to the Fire Service. Reports for the last five reporting years show callouts on the 11th night alone have consistently fallen across all areas. However, the total number of calls to what the NIFRS classify as a ‘bonfire incident’ between May and July reached its highest …

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