PSNI data breach
THE PSNI data breach was “a simple human error”, according to Assistant Chief Constable Chris Todd.
Most of us will hear that and think we have all sent the wrong attachment with an email, but talk to anyone in IT and they are aghast.
Systems should be set up to ensure a simple error cannot have such a disastrous result. The PSNI’s explanation has only cast further doubt on its competence.
ACC Todd added the personal data “is limited to surname and initial only”, not enough to identify anyone, even in a place as small as Northern Ireland.
However, it would allow a target to be confirmed and there are 30 other fields of information for malign actors to cross-reference.
At least there was no leak of addresses. It is hard not to recall former Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde’s response to a 2005 data breach: “Everyone knows where everyone lives, frankly”. But it is also hard to imagine the PSNI’s recent run of ineptitude happening under his watch.
Read more: PSNI liaising with Cobra as dissidents claim to have leaked staff data
Sinn Fein called on to clarify puberty blockers' stance
SINN Féin is facing calls for clarification after its MLA Emma Sheerin said puberty blockers should be available to young trans teenagers on the NHS “as part of normal healthcare”.
Questioned further at a Belfast Pride debate, she said this was the party position and should be backed by legislation.
As Alliance MLA Eoin Tennyson noted at the same debate, decisions on medical treatment must be led by medical professionals - and NHS England has just banned puberty blockers for young teenagers, apart from in clinical research.
It falls to politicians to point this out because the NHS is fantastically hostile to staff speaking to the media, about anything. So the voice of clinicians is largely missing on this issue, despite being the first and often only voice worth hearing.
Wolfe Tones complaint
THE Charity Commission has tied itself up in knots over the West Belfast Festival by rejecting a complaint about the Wolfe Tones, then referring itself to its own appeals body.
The farce led DUP MLA Jonathan Buckey to tweet: “In what world do the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland seriously believe that IRA terror chanting at a publicly funded event organised by a registered charity is compatible with charity law?
Presumably it is the same world where the DUP and Sinn Fein carve up ‘bonfire diversion’ funds at Belfast City Council between the festival and loyalist areas, then bamboozle their supporters with diversionary arguments.
Drugs trade
THE INLA is heavily involved in the illegal drugs trade.
A major cross-border policing operation against it is ongoing, regularly seizing drugs and cash and making numerous arrests.
During a previous operation in 2021, involving 150 PSNI officers and 60 Gardai, the head of the PSNI’s criminal investigations branch said: “in the north west, the INLA are at the higher end of the drug dealing networks and they are also connected into other drug dealing networks.”
That has not stopped the IRSP, generally considered the political wing of the INLA, from protesting outside a homeless support centre in Belfast’s Lower Falls, complaining it is attracting drug users to the area.
A better approach to this issue is staring the IRSP in the face - or even the mirror.
Electoral can of worms
A RECOUNT of a council seat in Derry and Strabane has taken place following a legal appeal by the Alliance party. It was necessary due to genuine confusion over Northern Ireland’s PR-STV system, rather than any simple error.
Belfast-based electoral reform group the De Borda Institute has long complained that while officials are above reproach, the rules are “capricious” and can produce results that are “unbelievable nonsense”.
The courts and the Electoral Office have now effectively admitted there is a problem. A large can of worms has been opened.
Starmer and the Union
FORMER Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has criticised his successor, Sir Keir Starmer, for pledging to campaign for the union in a border poll.
“The Good Friday Agreement says the governments of Ireland and Britain have to stay out of the debate and be neutral in it all,” Corbyn said. This is incorrect.
The agreement requires only the “sovereign government” to be impartial when exercising its functions in Northern Ireland - in other words, not to practice discrimination.
This does not rule out the UK being in favour of its own existence. The Agreement also requires self-determination north and south to be decided “without external impediment”.
This means no interference with a poll, rather than forbidding participation in a campaign. Sinn Féin must concur, as it wants the EU to campaign for a united Ireland.
Read more: Brian Feeney: Keir Starmer is wrong on his support for the Union
Are cars litter?
BELFAST'S pavement parking problem has reached epidemic proportions, as motorists realise traffic wardens have been left legally powerless by their Stormont employers.
Perhaps council litter wardens might have more luck. Under the Litter (Northern Ireland) Order 1993 it is an offence “if any person throws down, drops or otherwise deposits in, into or from any place open to the air, and leaves, any thing whatsoever in such circumstances as to cause, or contribute to, or tend to lead to, the defacement by litter of any such place”.
As this appears to define ‘litter’ as ‘anything whatsoever’, could that not include a car? Items on wheels are certainly in the frame, as the same law has a whole section on abandoned shopping trolleys.