Not a single business would be allowed to run like Stormont
which the citizens delegate responsibility.
It is the responsibility of The State, which society finances, primarily through taxation, to provide society with its collective needs, regardless of who is in government.
Northern Ireland is not a State. Like the Scottish and Welsh Administration Units, it is no more and no less than an administrative unit of the UK State to which certain responsibilities have been devolved.
The State is the United Kingdom.
How people feel about that has no bearing on its reality. Neither does The Good Friday Agreement!
Stormont’s debt is therefore the State’s debt to itself. The Chancellor could and should strike it out.
Failure to do so condemns Stormont to inevitable failure, or drives them towards the UK Tory goal of privatisation, and commodifying social need.
This is called ‘asset stripping’, and is a fairly standard move by unethical private profiteers, before putting the company into administration and selling it off as ‘scrap’. The First Minister and Deputy First Minister might have been better spending time facing down St. George’s dragons in London than strutting their stuff for the highest bidders in Washington, in the political interests of genocidal geriatrics, and private venture vultures.
“A WEEK is a long time in politics.” Harold Wilson coined this phrase way back in 1964. The occasion of the quote was the election of a Labour government.
That well-known gambling den – the ‘financial market’, which dictates the rules of Western democracy – responded with considerable hostility, creating a crisis in the value of the British Pound.
The speed of the crisis was not unlike that which welcomed the short tenure of Liz Truss as Prime Minister of a Conservative Government more recently.
If the independent research capacity and memory of the average political commentator on social media was not less than mediocre, everyone would already know that.
Perhaps, it is in the best interests of Keir Starmer’s ambition to be Prime Minister that they don’t.
I don’t think Tory-lite will be Tory enough for the market, or Labour enough to compensate for the chill.
The Israel fund for influencing politicians will also have run dry by then.
APRIL marks the start of another New Year – the financial year.
My best wishes go to all those managing community and voluntary organisations, for whom this is a stressful period of chasing final invoices, turning around annual financial reports for funders, 95 per cent of whom will have received quarterly financial and on-financial reports throughout the year, as well as prior notification requests for permission to move funds from one expenditure heading to another to meet changing needs.
Deadlines will not automatically have taken account of the early Easter. Stress levels will be high.
Managers will have taken work home over the Easter break, and will be returning to their place of employment even more exhausted than they were last week.
Many people working within public services, including our too-often maligned civil servants, are also under significantly increased pressures under the weight of a collapsing policy and administration infrastructure, and the return of ministers and politicians.
Currently full of themselves with about as much contrition for their shenanigans as Genghis Khan, they will be playing catch-up, and clicking ‘entitled’ fingers at the people who translate their rhetoric into policy and practice; output and outcomes, evaluations, statistics and end-of-year reports.
I am now relieved of such pressure, but send solidarity to all those up to their ‘oxters’ in it as Northern Ireland starts the new financial year, 2024-2025, without Stormont having agreed a budget.