When Sir Keir Starmer stood up and started talking about the Middle Eastern sausages the other day at the Labour Party Conference, there were a few Northern Ireland types dotted about the hall wondering why he was droning on about butchery items when he could be addressing the big issue.
Hopefully none of them are still there, languishing in an empty hall while the victory banners are taken down. Because Sir Keir didn’t mention us at all. Not even a name check, a passing reference or even something that could have been taken as a passing reference. Nada. Zilch. Sausages 1 Northern Ireland 0.
What our political leaders would like to have heard goes something like this…..
Sir Keir turns to autocue: But that’s enough of Gaza and sausages, let me talk about Northern Ireland, a hugely important part of the UK/Ireland (delete according to taste). I want to be straight with you. Money is tight and we have to face tough times together, yadda, yadda, yadda. But Northern Ireland is a special case. So, never mind English and Welsh pensioners freezing in their draughty little bungalows, I will make sure that Northern Ireland gets all the money it needs to have proper policing, a health service that might just work, a few new roads, and pipes for all of the poop to flow into. Oh, and a nice new stadium in West Belfast. The British people want me to do this, and they expect me to do this……
Instead, they heard nothing. Just like they’d heard nothing over a couple of days in Liverpool. Some business organisations still made the short trip over, like the Chamber of Commerce and Retail NI. But it was largely in hope rather than expectation. The only mention of Northern Ireland came at fringe Northern Ireland events. It was a waste of good air fares.
What does it tell you? What you already know. There’s never been a lot of interest in Northern Ireland at Westminster level. But this Labour government with its whopping majority seems to have even less than the Tory one that preceded it. And that’s saying something.
Picking Up The Tab
Whilst the Executive continues to put its fingers in its ears and hum every time the subject of revenue raising comes up, there’s no doubt that they’re starting to turn their beady little eyes towards the fat cats of the business world (as they see us….).
There’s still no talk – at least publicly – of upping business rates, but it’s bound to have crossed their minds. But news this week that at least one Minister is starting to look towards business to help solve one of the biggest problems should be cause for concern.
The Minister is John O’Dowd at Infrastructure. The problem, of course, is Northern Ireland Water and our sewage system in particular. The possible solution? To get housebuilders and developers to stump up to help pay for sewage system upgrades.
Minister O’Dowd told the BBC this week that his officials were examining whether legislation would be needed to “allow developer contributions”. Words that seem to suggest that our construction companies and developers are queueing up to throw their money into the government’s pot.
It might not be very popular in some quarters, but at least John O’Dowd is working to solve the problem. It’s a terrifying statistic that housebuilding in Northern Ireland fell to a 60-year low last year, largely due to a block on new connections to an underfunded water system.
It is estimated that plans for some 19,000 new homes are being held up. That simply can’t be allowed to go on.
Easy Come, Easy Go
Without doubt one of the best commentators on the current local roster is Newton Emerson, distinguishable from the pack because – unusually – he talks and writes a lot of sense.
Newton has been banging on of late, in the Sunday Times and on Nolan, about how the NI Executive has plenty of revenue-raising measures at its disposal, and about how it needs to stop avoiding tough decisions like the proverbial plague (our words, not his). About how it can afford a lot more than it’s suggesting.
He’s pointed out, and so have others, that one of the easiest takes would be to raise tuition fees for students living here. Our’s are capped at £4,710 compared to £9,250 in GB. It has the potential to raise a useful £98 million, which would pay for a few more policemen (or women, of course) or a decent number of sewage pipes.
Our local universities are unlikely to object either. Whilst there’s an argument that higher tuition fees would put some off the idea of university, that’s just a bit too facile to hold any water. And scrapping the local tuition fees cap would also help attract more students from outside of Northern Ireland to our universities.
And, with the likes of the new Ulster University Belfast campus now in full swing, they’re in a better position than ever to do that.
Playing Chicken
We just can’t get enough of that there fried chicken, it seems, although it’s news to us. We’ve been avoiding the unmistakeable aroma of KFC for quite a few years now. Anything that requires industrial strength hand cleaner to get the grease off your mitts after eating it is worth avoiding.
But fried chicken, we’re told, has moved on from bits of greasy poultry that slip through your fingers. Witness the queues at Forestside (sorry, Lesley Forestside) the other week for the opening of Popeyes, billed as the original Louisiana chicken from the good old US of A.
Now it seems we’re going to be getting Chick-Fil-A too. Now there’s a brand name that could only come from the good old US of A. This lot, although we hadn’t heard of them (no surprise there), have some 3,000 restaurants dotted around the States, Canada and Puerto Rico. And from Puetro Rico, sure it’s a logical next step to come to Belfast.
Rather than just reporting it in the usual fried chicken kind of way, one of our local papers, the Irish News, chose to highight the fact that Chick-Fil-A had got itself embroiled in a spot of controversy across the Atlantic.
Apparently it’s CEO made a comment or two opposing same sex marriage….not an unusual point of view in the Deep South. The result? Some American activists called for protests and boycotts while others called for the opposite of boycotts. What’s that then? Enforced eating?
Doubt if anyone around here will care too much, though. We just luuurrrvve our fried chicken……
There’s Something About Eamonn
The Belfast Telegraph‘s fascination with Eamonn Holmes continues unabated. In fact, it seems to have deepened. Pretty much every day, we’re treated to another story about what the big lad has been doing since he parted company with his latest wife.
We’ve had lots of speculation about what he said or what she said, we’ve had tales of emotional trauma, humble apartments and the pain of loneliness, and we’ve heard about foreign trips with potential future wives. In fact, Eamonn seems to have been transformed from a wheelchair-bound perpetual sufferer into a modern day Lothario and Casanova all rolled into one.
Whatever floats his boat, to be fair. We’re just not sure we really need the almost daily updates. And what about the photographs?
Now, as an editor, we know that it’s not always easy to have the right photograph to hand to go with a certain story. We’ve all got to fall back on what we call stock shots. But isn’t that one of Eamonn sitting in his wheelchair licking an ice cream whilst grinning at the camera just a teensy bit overused?
Cheers, My Dears
The most expensive pint of Guinness in Belfast, according to another story in the Telegraph, is at the Europa Hotel, where you’ll pay £7 for a pint of the black stuff. Pretty steep, to be fair. Around these parts, a shade more than a fiver will get you a decent pint….with a view of the sea thrown in.
Mind you, if they think that £7 is the priciest pint of stout around, maybe it is up in the big smoke. But venture out to the cutesy Old Inn at Crawfordsburn and you’ll be expected to pay another 70p on top of that for the pleasure.
It’s all the work of the new local Pint Tracker on the social media platform Reddit which has been asking local punters to send in receipts for their pints to that a league table can be assembled. And it’s a work in progress so the Europa will almost certainly be knocked off a perch that it doesn’t really want.
The cheapest place, currently, is the Irish National Foresters Club a stone’s throw from the Europa, where a pint can be bought for the princely sum of just £4. Now that’s a bargain in anyone’s book and we’re sure they shift lots of them. After all, those forester types must have quite a thirst on them after chopping down trees all day.