Tied down by devolution
We had been given a heads up. Gerry Adams was about to threaten that the Stormont institutions' survival was in peril. His logic being that unionists were engaging in "irrational hostility" to Irish language schools. This came during a DUP sponsored debate alleging that Caitriona Ruane had been giving favourable treatment to an Irish language primary school in Derry. The Sinn Fein President was about to argue that if the parties failed to work together in the common good we could "march back into meltdown and failure".
Then, as Gerry was about to get to his killer quote, Peter Weir jumped to his feet. Was the DUP member going to fight fire with fire? Well not quite. What the North Down MLA wanted to check with the Speaker was whether Gerry should be wearing a tie.
Puzzled looks all around. The Speaker Willie Hay confirmed that the Sinn Fein President, wearing a jacket but no tie, was not breaking any dress code.
Mr Adams tried to pick up his thread, and delivered his warning about "meltdown" but somehow Mr Weir's bizarre intervention took the stuffing out of him. Memo to SF: next time you threaten to bring down Stormont, remember to wear a tie.
I'm 
© MMX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~13~RS~)
Comments
Sign in or register to comment.
Mark, I'm surprised the BBC appears to have missed the Rathlin ferry operator story. Google with 'rathlin ferry operator'.
Complain about this comment
Mark
I’M OFF-THREAD BUT I DON'T CARE - SUBBING SCANDAL NEEDS EXPOSURE
Sorry for going off-thread but a scandal in the education field that was highlighted yesterday has attracted very little critical comment but I can tell you, Mark, it has me spittin' feathers. The issue is the re-employment, in a subbing capacity, of retired and prematurely-retired teachers. In the past year, over 1900 retired teachers, including over 1500 who took redundancy, were used as subs. * In among this lot are many who "retired" because they could not cope with the pressures of the job. So what's the big deal? The problem is that there are hundreds, if not thousands of qualified/newly-qualified teachers unable to get employment in the profession because of the blockage caused by these retirees.
I make the following accusations:
1 The Education Authorities are guilty of gross negligence in allowing this subbing scandal to flourish.
2 The Assembly is guilty of ignoring a serious problem that could be solved at the stroke of a pen.
3 The majority of those retired subbers are a shower of workshy, money-grubbers. Everyone in that majority should take a good, hard look at themselves and acknowledge that their behaviour is nothing more than a display of individual avarice of the most disgusting kind. Their wanton greed is having a harmful impact on the careers of young teachers who are simply not able to get a foothold in the profession. Those retired subbers should hang their heads in shame.
This scandal symbolises the worth, sorry, worthlessness, of the Assembly. Until this issue is addressed, each and every MLA should also hang their head in shame.
And what would I do if I had the power to tackle this issue? Well, for a start, I would name and shame those among the retired subbers who swung the lead to get a generous redundancy package plus pension plus subbing top-up.
A final word for the subbers: YOU’RE A DISGRACE! A BLOODY DISGRACEFUL!
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/foyle_and_west/7472012.stm
Susie
Carryduff
Complain about this comment
Mark,
In support of #2 above I agree there is a real issue here and something that must be addressed.
Perhaps there is an even deeper issue in N Ireland namely the numbers employed by the public sector who enjoy the benefit of a final salary pension scheme and worse the numbers who retire early on grounds of ill health to be fully cushioned by their gold plated pension benefit.
Will the assembly do anything about it? ...No.
Why?
...They all enjoy an even better final salary scheme.
...The only issue of concern in Education seems to centre around selection.
The time must be coming when political commentators start asking awkward questions on the real issues.
Our MLA's may be able to afford to play games with politics cushioned as they are by the public purse meanwhile the electorate suffer.
Complain about this comment
View these comments in RSS