SINN Féin party bosses held a ‘strategic review’ ahead of next year’s assembly elections aimed at reversing declining voter appeal in Derry. This review resulted in Derry MLAs Martina Anderson and Karen Mullan being ‘invited’ to ‘deselect’ themselves – they accepted the ‘invitation’. A blind man on a racehorse can see why SF Derry in the last two elections lost five council seats and their Westminister MP by more than 17,000 votes to SDLP leader Colum Eastwood.
On the doorsteps they did not focus on the Derry job famine. Of course their doorstep focus on a border poll, fixing the health service and opposing Tory cuts were important but it was a clear strategy on helping to end the Derry jobs famine which was of the first importance to voters. SF Derry did not have one.
In next year’s assembly elections the job famine in Derry will once again be the main issue.
The pandemic has made the Derry jobs famine even worse. The usual emigration of our best and our brightest to Canada, Australia, New Zealand after graduating last summer did not happen and will not be happening this June either.
The same is true for newly qualified electricians, plumbers, carpenters and other trades persons. Are these jobless, well qualified folk going to vote next year for any party, never mind SF Derry, not focusing on a jobs strategy? That’s a lot of votes.
All parties visiting Derry doorsteps must therefore have a jobs strategy for the assembly election, the party with the best capturing the votes.
And that strategy must include influencing Invest NI to get overseas manufacturing jobs into Derry.
For instance, Derry voters are angry and upset we have no health products manufacturing jobs – unlike within a 30-mile radius of Belfast with more than 6,000 well-paid jobs in that sector.
Craigavon, for instance, has a US company making stomach medications and Larne a big Japanese company manufacturing medical oxygen delivery products; all well-paid jobs.
Derry people are aware Invest NI successfully chased after these overseas companies. So we want the new Derry MLAs to chase after Invest NI to get firms like these to anchor in Derry. But are Derry SF aware of all this. Economy minister Diane Dodds and Invest NI both have a vision this sector will generate well paid jobs.
Invest NI jobs generated in any sector will of course be greeted with a celebratory peal of bells in the city.
In conclusion, if SF Derry wants to retain their two assembly seats they must respect on the doorsteps that jobs are the Derry people’s priority – otherwise they may lose one or maybe both.
TOM BRADLEY
Derry City
Same old, same old
Despite his fleeting reference to the Glenanne gang killings, Patrick Murphy, in his article on a ‘Troubles’ amnesty (May 15), follows the well-trodden path of biased British media and the historical unionist narrative of two main protagonists to the conflict here.
Notwithstanding the committing of more than 1,000 murders between them, unionist politicians and the British press could barely bring themselves to mention the involvement of unionist/loyalist paramilitary groups of the UDA, UVF, PAF, RHC etc and Patrick Murphy seems to have willingly stepped into this trap. He glibly reels off republican atrocities like La Mon, Bloody Friday, Enniskillen etc, with no mention of the likes of McGurk’s Bar, Loughinisland, The Rose & Crown, Greysteel, The Top Of the Town, The Britannia Bar, Graham’s Bookmakers, etc. Presumably the perpetrators of these execrable actions would also benefit from the granting of an amnesty but Mr Murphy deems this not to be newsworthy and prefers instead to concentrate on the hoary old chestnut of the two main protagonists, British and indigenous security forces and republicans, with the role of unionist/loyalist paramilitaries reduced to an afterthought.
Those of us of an age to remember these sectarian crimes as they occurred will also recall, in many cases, spokespersons for the RUC stating that “we are keeping an open mind as to a motive” when the victims were clearly and unequivocally innocent Catholics with no paramilitary affiliations, thus casting aspersions on their character and sowing doubt about their innocence.
PHILIP MURRAY
Dunmurry, Co Antrim
Talking rubbish
Reports that we are paying for 200,000 tons of our rubbish to be exported every year highlights the appalling incompetence of much of our society. As a Belfast City Councillor some 10 years ago, I was a proponent of an energy from waste plant. This followed detailed study by Arc 21 and many site visits by local councillors to European cities which successfully and safely used this technology. After about 20 years of work, we still have not reached an outcome. This was as a result of an uneducated political decision. What a waste - not just rubbish, but the costs of doing nothing, all the planning applications, the complaints about insufferable bad smells and people employed achieving nothing.
But this is not all. We have not the drive to complete the main roads west and south, the York Street interchange in Belfast, reduce the duplication of services (£1 billion a year according to Deloitte), sort out the continuing under-education and the brain drain to the bigger and often better world.
There are too many people who instinctively say ‘no’, whose task in life seems to be remain in a historical backwater, who find every reason to obstruct.
If we reduced the waste, we could revamp and improve the health service as well as our educational structures and create more and better jobs. This will make for a better society. It is not hard to do. We just set our standards to those of our best near neighbours. It is never too late to start.
TOM EKIN
Belfast BT1
Walk Together in support of bowel cancer
Next month marks Bowel Cancer UK’s Walk Together fundraiser, a five-mile sponsored walk to show support for people undergoing treatment for bowel cancer, to remember loved ones and help stop others dying from the disease.
This year, we’re asking you to walk together on Saturday June 12 in your area, with your household or in small socially distanced groups. By walking on this date, we’ll be united as one bowel cancer community, completing our walks on the same day. However, if this date doesn’t work, you can walk any time in June that suits you.
Bowel cancer is the UK’s fourth most common cancer and the second biggest cancer killer, but it shouldn’t be because it is treatable and curable, especially if diagnosed early.
Please, if you can, join us to Walk Together to help ensure a future where nobody dies of bowel cancer. Find out more at bowelcanceruk.org.uk/walktogether.
GENEVIEVE EDWARDS
Bowel Cancer UK
