Absentee politicians an ongoing disgrace

WHERE else would we see it? Political leaders and politicians, who show their faces on our screens continually, with no apparent shame, are not doing the job they have been elected to do for 1,000 days.

Yet, this is what we are subjected to continually in Northern Ireland.

As local politicians pontificate on national and international issues, the Northern Ireland public continue to lose all faith in local governance and in politics here.

This is very sad indeed and also very dangerous, for when the public loses all faith in local politics, it sets us on an extremely bad road and an entire disconnection between the general public, who want this small part of the United Kingdom to prosper and be better for them and their family, and those we are all supposed to look to and trust to deliver it.

Let us not pretend, of course, that Stormont has a list of great achievements when it has actually been at work.

It has failed in many areas, most of all on our sad and destructive past, where it has kicked the can down the road repeatedly in a cruel and callous way, rather than making the decisions needed to address it.

Even when it came to handling welfare, it ran away from responsibility, bizarrely wanting others in London to make those decisions.

The biggest single failure, though, exists every single day that passes without a Stormont Executive.

With record money being made available to Northern Ireland, in all areas, our politicians don’t wish to go into Stormont and control it, try to spend it wisely and run their relevant departments.

I long for the day when some of these chancers are found out by the public, for only then will we see a Northern Ireland that genuinely works for everyone. It might seem a long way off currently, but if enough good people get involved in our politics, together we can bin this diseased set-up which calls itself our democracy.

GARY HYNDS

Northern Ireland Conservatives