I like the idea of branding in order to compete for investment and attract new people. People need a sense of branding in order to act as shortcut to decision making in terms of visiting destinations for tourists.

However, the brand needs to be truthful and believable, I believe the people are open and warm and do have great heritage; however, our local high-profile politicians up that mile long madhouse of an electoral mansion, aka Stormont, are seriously working against such pleasant notions.

Take Iris for example and those seriously deficient homophobic comments, take the complete lack of cultural recognition cutting across Irishness to Orangeism in the political system, take the Maze situation hesitancy and unshared vision. Then to cap it all off, Sammy Wilson and his inexplicable stance on the environment. Seriously bad stuff.

You need only see the aftermath in the media to see that the way certain people talk about this region/country to see the damage of caused to the reputation of Northern Ireland from having such loud mouths. Would I want to stay here and spend money after hearing all that, also the Paddywagon bus was also burnt out, seriously bad stuff for the tourists.

This executive is like a basket full of crabs, all moving in their own direction and standing out for being completely out of sync with the populace and more worryingly the concept of regional identity which needs a clear strategy which all executive members should work to. And such comments above are in contrast to such a principle.

I do like the idea, but without buy-in in the form of sincere actions from politicians and people, branding will stand out only because of its expensive packaging that is wasted for the want of a true consumable product.