One would have imagined that the idea of issuing bad news on a late Friday afternoon would be a little dated, perhaps. But no one seems to have told Sir Keir Starmer’s PR team.
They chose a Friday evening to hit the poor auld Northern Irelanders with a double whammy….one to the body and a swift one to the chin. Not only did they say that they wouldn’t be stumping up for the all singing, all dancing Euro friendly Casement Park, despite what Sue Gray expressly asked for, but they also pulled the rug out from under the various City Deal funding packages for four of our regions.
That one didn’t last long, to be fair. Within hours, they’d backtracked and given the money back to Derry & Strabane and to Greater Belfast. But they’ve left the Mid South West (wherever that is) and the Causeway Coast & Glens out in the cold. Finance Minister Caoimhe Archibald, a native of those parts, is fair rippin’.
It’s all been very ham-fisted and looks very much as though the decision-making was left to an under-pressure junior minister who just wanted to get home to leafy Surrey to get the barbeque fired up.
But that doesn’t make things any better on this side of the Irish Sea. We’ve already got a bit of a complex, a well-developed chip on our shoulder. But now it looks as though they really don’t care. It’s enough to make any grown unionist cry into his or her afternoon tea. As for nationalists, it’s even worse.
It’s a strange piece of decision-making, to be sure. Will Westminster backtrack on the other two City Deal packages? Surely, it’s possible. Then again, it Ms. Reeves digs her kitten heels in, the chances are slim.
As for Casement, the long-running s***show just gets worse. Colum Eastwood suggested on the radio the other morning that the only way forward was to get everyone into a room and thrash it out. A bit like the Good Friday Agreement, then Colum, but you know how long that took….
Secretary of State Hilary Benn didn’t make things any clearer earlier this week when he seemed to be suggesting a ‘back to the drawing board’ approach to the stadium plans. What? When the GAA already has planning permission for a scaled down version of Casement, one good enough to host the annual Ulster football final. That’s all they want, don’t forget.
Does Mr. Benn think differently or hadn’t he done his homework. The latter looks more likely.
Back in the day, for the younger generation out there, hiding a spot of bad news was easy. Ask any good PR guru. You waited until 4.30 or 5.00 pm on a Friday and then sent your bad news text to the newsrooms. By that time, of course, the journos were all safely in the pub. Ah, them were the days.
We’re In The Sh*t
There’s a school of thought in certain quarters that the wider business community has yet to grasp the full enormity of the Northern Ireland Water crisis.
It’s not so much a water problem, though. The taps aren’t going to stop running and you’ll always be able to fill your kettle or bath. The big problem revolves around what happens when we get up off the bog and flush it. Our sewage infrastructure can’t cope.
And it all means that connections to the sewage network are grinding to a halt. What does that mean down the line? No new housing developments, no new commercial developments, no new hotels, office buildings, shops and so the list goes on.
The problem, of course, goes further than a lack of understanding…especially in the media. The only remedy – as is always the case – is more funding and lots of it. Our water and sewage infrastructure needs large-scale investment.
The question came up yesterday morning at the North Down DUP Business Breakfast (we get invited to all the best gigs……).
Emma Little Pengelly and her boss Gavin Robinson must have had Lee Reynolds’ words ringing in their ears when they made the trip to Bangor for a hearty Ulster Fry.
Reynolds, a former DUP big cheese, had suggested that the party was seen as too negative and out of touch and therefore should change its name. So Emma and Big Gav came over all happy clappy and positive whilst in sunny North Down. Gav even regaled us with several reasons to be cheerful, in which he included the weather.
But did they answer any tough questions, especially on water investment or revenue raising.
Erm, no. They didn’t. Still….the breakfast was good.
Sue’s Salary
The supposed furore over poor old Sue Gray’s salary is a load of nonsense. Apparently her £170 grand is causing anger, fury and gnashing of teeth.
The story was broken by the sanctimonious Chris Mason, the BBC’s Political Editor, who waffled on about how some people were righteously furious about public money being spent in this way. But what does Chris get paid? Turns out that he’s a whole lot better off than Sue. He gets somewhere between £260,000 and £264,999, to be precise. And who pays him? Yep….the public through BBC licence fees.
So, if a Downing Street Chief of Staff isn’t worth £170k, is a BBC journo worth another £90 grand on top?
This the same BBC, don’t forget, that pays Gary Lineker £1.35 million a year to sit in a studio and present highlights of some football matches. And it also paid that Welsh pervert Huw Edwards close to half a million quid for pretending that he was a nice chap whilst reading the news on our TV screens.
Apart from anything else, ask anyone in the tech industry, or the law for that matter. £170K ain’t that much.
Sweet Home Alabama
aOnce our very own Finance Minister (and Belfast’s Lord Mayor) back in the day, Mairtin O Muilleoir, is back and forth across the Atlantic as often as many transatlantic celebs these days.
As publisher of the Irish Echo, the Irish American media group based in New York, he’s been building business partnership around the US, and to great effect. All too often, efforts like his go unrecognised by the wider business establishment back home.
One of his latest ventures if the first ever Belfast-Birmingham (that’s the Alabama Birmingham) Business Partnership. It’s holding its first Round Table event in the Magic City (….as they call it) on 9th and 10th of October. The event is being hosted by Unosquare, who might be based in Mexico, but have operations in both Birmingham and Belfast.
An impressive line up of speakers and guests will be looking at Seizing The AI Opportunity.
It’s not a bad title. Too many of us are so worried about the threats of AI that we risk missing out on the opportunities.
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Och Aye The Noo
Nice to see that our good friends in Europe haven’t forgotten about Northern Ireland and its big issues even though we’ve left the Brussels fold.
Just this week, language experts from the Council of Europe waded in with the view that street signs here remained a ‘highly contentious’ topic. We suppose they do, for those with enough time to worry about that kind of thing.
Here’s the thing, though. They’re not just fretting over how many street signs need to be in both England and Irish. Ulster Scots speakers, they say, are in a ‘very weak position’ in Northern Ireland.
Not just when it comes to street signs, mind you. Och, nat at all. They’re getting’ in a fair bluster about the fact that there aren’t enough Ulster Scots speakers in public life.
So it seems that the European do gooders are going to monitor the UK’s compliance with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
You just couldn’t make this sort of thing up…..
They’ll be laughing their aul’ holes off in parts of County Antrim. That’s where all the native speakers live, isn’t it?
Rolling In The Deep (Rough)
We should have learnt a long time ago that it’s not sensible to write about what the weather is going to do here in Northern Ireland.
There we were last week imagining that the world’s top golfers would be waddling around Royal County Down in jumpers and anoraks, trying in vain to swing a club with frozen hands. As things turned out, they strolled around in light jerkins at worst in the bring autumn sunshine.
And didn’t the golf course, the Mournes and the Irish Sea coast look absolutely spectacular. John McGrillen his team at Tourism Northern Ireland must have been over the moon. As they’ve said many times before, you cant buy that kind of exposure.
Rory McIlroy might not want to remember it, though. When we turned on the telly on Sunday afternoon, he was three or four shots ahead of the rest of the field, and none of them, let’s face it, were really big names.
Now there’s nothing wrong with spraying a few shots into the hostile County Down rough, or with missing a few easy-ish putts. We used to do it all the time when we played a bit of golf. In fact, a shot landing on the fairway was often a bit of a bonus.
But it’s not supposed to happen with McIlroy, is it? And, inevitably, while he was starting to look increasingly jittery, Rasmus Hojgaard was knocking it in from all over the place. And didn’t he enjoy spoiling the party for all the locals? Who wouldn’t? Maybe Rory should put his name down for the Norwegian Open next season, if there is one.