The first few days of September can be a bit depressing, can’t they? Especially if you’re of school age and have to put that scratchy, over sized new uniform on and trudge out into the rain to go to school. Or trudge out to Mum’s luxury SUV, it all depends on demographics. Or if you’re a teacher, under-paid, under-appreciated and under the weather as you head back to the classroom.
But, enough of that, spare a thought for our not under-paid and rarely appreciated local politicians. They have to go back up to Stormont once again and, to add to their gloom, it really is starting to look as though they’re actually going to have to make some real decisions once they get there. How terrible for the poor lambs.
Yes, the music has stopped, the chickens have come home to roost, the writing is on the wall (any more cliches, anyone?) and our Executive Ministers are going to have start making themselves very unpopular. Not that they were ever very popular, but that’s another story.
Late last Friday, poor old Gordon Lyons had to become the first to take one for the team when the pensioner-bashing DUP Communities Minister (sorry, Gordon, couldn’t resist…..) had to announce cuts to the winter fuel payments made to older people.
Not all older people. That nice Mrs. Fotheringay rattling round her big house in Helen’s Bay won’t be getting a handout this winter, while Sadie up the Shankill will still get her readies. But, judging by Big Nolan’s breathless coverage, you’d have thought Gordon was out there personally strangling local OAPs.
Nolan is great at this kind of thing. For days, he was lambasting the lazy, absent, holiday-addicted MLAs and telling everyone that they needed to get back to work and make the big decisions. So one of them got back to work, made a big decision and ended up at the wrong end of the Nolan treatment come Monday morning. It will be the same in coming days and weeks when more big decisions will have to be made.
There’s no two ways about it. Our lot are going to have to act, and it ain’t going to be pretty.
Look at what happened in Scotland on Tuesday, when Finance Minister Shona Robison stood up to announce up to £500 million worth of cuts to public services. The Scottish Government hasn’t outlined where the axe will fall, but it’s safe to say that it’s going to be a busy axe indeed.
Of course the Scots blame Sir Keir Starmer and the UK Government. Just like Gordon Lyons blamed Sir Keir Starmer and the UK Government at the end of last week.
Both the DUP and Sinn Fein – and the other parties as well – seem to labour under the misapprehension that Northern Ireland has always been a special case and will always be a special case.
Almost certainly, though, the UK Government doesn’t share that view any more.
Let’s hear it for water charges, bus passes, prescription charges (add your own personal favourites as appropriate).
But let’s hope against hope that our craven MLAs don’t fix their beady little eyes on a potential easy target – business rates. Hit the general public and they’re not going to like you. Hit the business community and the general public doesn’t care. Harsh but true.
All Change At The Top
No sooner had the Ulster Unionists wrapped up their non-existent leadership contest by crowning Mike Nesbitt once again did we find out that their mid-market rivals, the SDLP, were also shedding a leader. And it looks as though they’ll follow suit by anointing Claire Hanna as their new top dog.
Colum Eastwood decided that his days were numbered. Not because he’d fallen out with the party officers or anything like that. Just because he was a bit tired of the job…..or something like that. He didn’t really explain.
In a lot of ways, they’ll miss him. Cast your minds back to the last election and Colum wiped the floor with the other party leaders when it came to the TV debates. Mind you, he didn’t exactly cover himself in glory when he boycotted Joe Biden and the White House because of his Palestinian leanings.
A bit like Nesbitt of the Unionists, Claire Hanna is the obvious replacement. She’s been a leader in waiting for a while now. And the next leader in waiting, should she make a pig’s arse of things, will be Matthew O’Toole. Just so you know.
Claire Hanna is another consummate media performer, natural communicator and she seems to have made the South Belfast Westminster seat her own. But, a bit like Eastwood, that’s no guarantee that she’ll be able to revive the fortunes of a party squeezed out by its more extreme compatriots.
Maybe a cup of coffee with Mike Nesbitt might be worth it. They’ve a lot in common.
Stop Crying Your Hearts Out
We didn’t manage to secure a couple of tickets for Oasis in Dublin come next August. Although, to be honest, we didn’t try very hard. In fact, we didn’t try at all.
It’s a mystery to us why anyone would want to give that obnoxious pain in the hole Noel Gallagher (and his brother) any of their hard-earned cash. OK, some of the songs aren’t bad, but really?
Those who did try weren’t all that happy. The majority, it seems, didn’t get any tickets at all. Those who did had to pay £350 or so, in some cases, for the pleasure of standing up for a couple of hours at Croke Park.
Oh, and if you’ve got any distance to travel or don’t fancy a late night drive back up north, you might want to add a hotel. The Marker, maybe, a nice trendy luxury place on Grand Canal Quay to the south of the city. That’ll be £969 for the night, thank you. And breakfast will be extra.
Add in the price of your train tickets or petrol, maybe a spot of parking, and a nice meal and a couple of swift pints at Dublin prices.
You could be off for a week in Tenerife where they play Oasis in all the music pubs.
Oh, and by the way, everyone else has been using Oasis song titles as headlines. Why shouldn’t we get in on the act?
Dance Until You Can’t
Staying with a musical theme, the very word ‘nightclub’ has long filled us with dread. It conjures up images of trendy people, music that’s just far too loud, and worst of all, the prospect of being expected to dance. Even when we were young enough (in theory) to do it, we were to dancing what Jim Allister is to cross-community relations.
But, if we really had to go to a nightclub, we could try a new one launched in Dublin city centre. The action there doesn’t end at 5.30 am. In fact, it kicks off at 5.30 pm (now there’s a good sensible time) and it’s all over at 10.30 pm. Yep, you can be back in time for the end of the evening news and a nice cup of cocoa. You can even get the last bus or train home to beddies.
Mind you, it says that it’s for Over-35s. Seems a tad young, we thought. Are people really reduced to going home at 10 pm when they hit 36? It seems a bit far-fetched.
But, when you get to our own advanced years, it makes perfect sense. Falling asleep in the corner of the nightclub isn’t a good look, after all. And nor, we suppose, is fiddling with one’s newly acquired hearing aid.
Going Through The Motions
Living next door to the coast, as we do, we’ve often thought of embracing the idea of sea swimming. We often watch others wading into the sea whilst walking the Business Eye border collie, and we even invested in one of those trendy full-length Cosimac robe things, albeit for reasons of comfort and warmth rather than any real intention to take the bloody thing off and go swimming.
But we’ve gone off the idea now, not just because it’s autumn, but because we read about the prodigious amounts of untreated waste (otherwise known as sh***) pumped into our seas on a regular basis.
According to former Undertone and now the UK’s leading clean water campaigner Feargal Sharkey, bathing water scores are a bit of joke and we’re basically swimming in our own sh*** most of the time. How do we know its our own sh***, though, and not someone else’s…….?
It’s all a bit alarming. Apparently, one local pumping station a stone’s throw from Newcastle’s beach pumped out untreated waste 146 times last year for well over 1,500 hours. That’s a lot of waste in anyone’s book.
Close to us, two pumping stations less than a mile from each other on the North Down coast spewed out waste 104 times for a total of 600 hours or so.
Think we’ll keep the Cosimac (Bangor-made and highly recommended) but forget about the bracing dips. We all know that there might be a shot of two of pee-pee in most swimming pools, but it’s better than coming face to face with a big brown battleship at Ballyholme.