Carving up of public funds by Sinn Féin and the DUP is a key reason loyalist paramilitaries still exist three decades after their ceasefires. This has almost been confronted in a new report from a unionist think thank, whose members include academics and well-known figures from unionist and loyalist politics.
The report makes concrete recommendations to turn transition into a process, rather than an eternal form of bribery. An end date should be set for “civilianisation/demobilisation”, along with a clear definition of what that means and the sequence of steps towards achieving it. There should be proper funding for “structures of change” but it should be withheld if “timelines and outcomes” are not delivered.
If we must have a transition approach, as opposed to a lock-em-up approach, this is the way to do it. However, it does not address a question many loyalists and unionists are bound to ask.
What happens to the matching funding Sinn Féin insists on handing out to its favoured groups and events?
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Sinn Féin was not trying to hide a paedophile – but it may have been trying to hide dodgy expenses claims. That is the emerging explanation for the party’s press officer scandal.
It appears Michael McMonagle was paid from a Stormont fund that should not be used for party staff or public relations, being registered as a constituency worker for a rotating cast of assembly members. Westminster expenses may have been used the same way.
Little wonder there was confusion over who was responsible for giving McMonagle references, or not giving him references. Either Sinn Féin has learned nothing from previous expenses scandals, or it has learned it survives them and the damage to others and to politics is a price it is prepared for the rest of us to pay.
The DUP and Sinn Féin are currently committed to the executive’s survival, for various reasons, so devolution will not fall over this controversy. A TUV motion of no confidence in Michelle O’Neill, in reality aimed at embarrassing other unionists, failed to attract a signature from any other party.
But next time could be different and this is hardly an isolated example for Sinn Féin. Two decades after decommissioning and disbandment, the republican movement needs a forensic audit.
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Belfast is facing a year of traffic chaos as streets are closed to remove a bridge beside the new Grand Central Station.
Translink is “encouraging everyone to consider using public transport” but of course the traffic will cause bus and Glider routes to grind to a halt as well – many already have.
The best thing Translink could do for commuters of all types would be to encourage its colleagues at the Department for Infrastructure to start seriously enforcing the rules on bus lanes, urban clearways and yellow box junctions. Sadly, it is not the done thing for a quango to scold its sponsoring department.
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Keir Starmer has sacked his chief of staff, Sue Gray, who famously ran a pub outside Newry before becoming a senior civil servant.
As a consolation prize she has been made the prime minister’s envoy for the nations and regions, a previously unknown title. This was just in time for yesterday’s first meeting of the Council for the Nations and Regions, a body Labour has spent years planning as part of a larger programme of constitutional reform. The meeting in Edinburgh was attended by Starmer and the first and deputy first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, although Gray did not attend as initially expected.
When the council was created in July, Pat McFadden was made minister of intergovernmental relations, a post whose holder “leads coordination with the devolved administrations on the prime minister’s behalf”, according to the government’s website.
A classic trick of dictators is to give their underlings overlapping roles so they squabble amongst themselves for the boss’s favour. As it is unlikely Starmer would do this on purpose, he has presumably delivered the same dysfunction through basic managerial incompetence.
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The Green Party in Northern Ireland has distanced itself from a proposal to change the voting system in a border poll. Leader and Irish senator Mal O’Hara told The Irish News he is “against any change in the parameters of the Good Friday Agreement”.
The proposal for what is called Modified De Borda voting was circulated by party founder Peter Emerson (no relation). It would allow more options on the ballot than yes or no, in what would hopefully be called a De Borda poll.
Emerson has campaigned for decades for voting reform and he has some interesting ideas and criticisms on the conduct of Westminster, Stormont and council elections. It would be a shame if they were dismissed due to the unfortunate naivety of applying the same thoughts to a border poll.
Its simple majority requirement under the Agreement is politically untouchable.
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James Nesbitt will star in a comedy film to be released next month on student life in Belfast’s Holylands. The plot involves “one last blow-out” before graduation in “the party capital of Ireland”.
This has raised concerns among the area’s beleaguered permanent residents that the film will encourage anti-social behaviour.
With so much new student accommodation being built elsewhere across Belfast, it is also possible the comedy might be seen as a period drama. There was no reported trouble in the Holylands around St Patrick’s Day this year and perhaps more tellingly, nobody even seemed to notice.
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If you ever wondered what it would take for the DUP to praise Northern Ireland’s academic community, wonder no more.
In an assembly statement, North Down MLA Peter Martin has queried the appointment of former Alliance MP Stephen Farry and his former special advisor to new posts at Ulster University. Martin encouraged anyone else who would have liked the roles to contact the Equality Commission.
“We have an amazing academic and professional talent pool in Northern Ireland, all of whom were sidelined in this process,” he added on social media.
Next week: the TUV pleads for more research funding for post-colonial gender studies.