Mop politics

Mop politics is the order of the day stateside this week. Its not just how you hold the mop and what you choose to mop up. Now the President is slamming the ’socialist mop’ pursuing him!

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze

Our regional economy is caught in a triple squeeze.  These are the known knowns which will shape our regional finances in the year ahead.

What is worrying is that the DUP and SF seem more interested in partisan bickering then addressing them.

UK Stimulus Squeeze

Over the past year the British Government has injected a lot of cash back into the economy. This is all due to stop. The VAT rate goes back up on January 1^stand expect more rises to follow.

The car scrappage scheme will also be wound up on February 10^th.

NI Stimulus Squeeze

Water rates will be introduced. Their postponement has had a stimulative effect on the regional economy as the money we would have all had to pay up in charges is being spent on goods and services.

There is a strong possibility that the delayed introduction rates on vacant property will also have to be implemented.

The expected cash injection from the sale of government land and property will now not happen and Invest Northern Ireland’s Short Term Aid Scheme will be wound up at the end of the year.

Tory Squeeze

There is nothing the Tories like more then cuts. They are the party of small government and by this time next year we will know all about it. There is already a £370million hole in the regional budget and you can bet your bottom dollar London will not be in bail out mood in 2010.

Meantime the duplication of public services because of sectarian divisions is costing us an extra £1.5billion a year. That might be a good place to start looking for efficiencies.

The Man From God Knows Where

A blue plaque will be unveiled at the Linenhall Library today in memory of Thomas Russell, The Man From God Knows Where. United Irishman, Librarian at the Linenhall and proud Corkman his life was cut short when hanged at Downpatrick

The poem is an old family favourite and was one of my late grandfather’s many party pieces.

The Man From God Knows Where

Into our townlan’ on a night of snow
rode a man from God knows where;
None of us bade him stay or go,
nor deemed him friend, nor damned him foe,
but we stabled his big roan mare;
for in our townlan’ we’re decent folk,
and if he didn’t speak, why none of us spoke,
and we sat till the fire burned low.

We’re a civil sort in our wee place
so we made the circle wide
round Andy Lemon’s cheerful blaze,
and wished the man his length of days
and a good end to his ride.
He smiled in under his slouchy hat,
says he: ‘There’s a bit of a joke in that,
for we ride different ways.’

The whiles we smoked we watched him stare
from his seat fornenst the glow.
I nudged Joe Moore: ‘You wouldn’t dare
to ask him who he’s for meeting there,
and how far he has got to go?’
And Joe wouldn’t dare, nor Wully Scott,
And he took no drink – neither cold nor hot,
this man from God knows where.

It was closing time, and late forbye,
when us ones braved the air.
I never saw worse (may I live or die)
than the sleet that night, an’ I says, says I:
‘You’ll find he’s for stopping there.’
But at screek o’day, through the gable pane
I watched him spur in the peltin’ rain,
an’ I juked from his rovin’ eye.

Two winters more, then the Trouble year,
when the best that a man could feel
was the pike that he kept in hidin’s near,
till the blood o’ hate an’ the blood o’ fear
would be redder nor rust on the steel.
Us ones quet from mindin’ the farms
Let them take what we gave wi’ the weight o’ our arms
from Saintfield to Kilkeel.

In the time o’ the Hurry, we had no lead
we all of us fought with the rest
an’ if e’er a one shook like a tremblin’ reed,
none of us gave neither hint nor heed,
nor ever even’d we’d guessed.
We men of the North had a word to say,
an’we said it then, in our own dour way,
an’ we spoke as we thought was best.

All Ulster over, the weemin cried
for the stan’in’ crops on the lan’.
Many’s the sweetheart and many’s the bride
would liefer ha’ gone to where he died,
and ha’ mourned her lone by her man.
But us ones weathered the thick of it
and we used to dander along and sit
in Andy’s, side by side.

What with discourse goin’ to and fro,
the night would be wearin’ thin,
yet never so late when we rose to go
but someone would say: ‘do ye min’ thon’ snow,
an ‘the man who came wanderin’in?’
and we be to fall to the talk again,
if by any chance he was one o’ them
The man who went like the win’.

Well ’twas gettin’ on past the heat o’ the year
when I rode to Newtown fair;
I sold as I could (the dealers were near
only three pounds eight for the Innish steer,
an’ nothin’ at all for the mare!)
I met M’Kee in the throng o’ the street,
says he: ‘The grass has grown under our feet
since they hanged young Warwick here.’,

And he told me that Boney had promised help
to a man in Dublin town.
Says he: ‘If you’ve laid the pike on the shelf,
you’d better go home hot-fut by yourself,
an’ once more take it down.’
So by Comber road I trotted the grey
and never cut corn until Killyleagh
stood plain on the risin’ groun’.

For a wheen o’ days we sat waitin’ the word
to rise and go at it like men,
but no French ships sailed into Cloughey Bay
and we heard the black news on a harvest day
that the cause was lost again;
and Joey and me, and Wully Boy Scott,
we agreed to ourselves we’d as lief as not
ha’ been found in the thick o’ the slain.

By Downpatrick goal I was bound to fare
on a day I’ll remember, feth;
for when I came to the prison square
the people were waitin’ in hundreds there
an’ you wouldn’t hear stir nor breath!
For the sodgers were standing, grim an’ tall,
round a scaffold built there foment the wall,
an’ a man stepped out for death!

I was brave an’ near to the edge of the throng,
yet I knowed the face again,
an’ I knowed the set, an’ I knowed the walk
an’ the sound of his strange up-country talk,
for he spoke out right an’ plain.
Then he bowed his head to the swinging rope,
whiles I said ‘Please God’ to his dying hope
and ‘Amen’ to his dying prayer
that the wrong would cease and the right prevail,
for the man that they hanged at Downpatrick gaol
was the Man from God knows where!

Dennis Carroll “The Man from God Knows Where: Thomas Russell 1767 – 1803

Parading politics is bad politics

Over the past decade this region has transformed its relationship with parades. There are still problems but the situation is so much better today because politicians have largely stepped back and let the Parades Commission get on with doing the just it was established to do.

Why having reached a point where the is general acceptance of a process which appears to be working would you want to hand control back to the problem – politicians?

What the First Minister proposed yesterday in the House Of Commons makes no sense nor is it in the regional interest. But then neither does what the DUP did on Lisburn City Council when the so called “City for Everyone” ignored advice and excluded SDLP councillors from a key committee.

Broadcasting policy

A Westminster Select Committee is holding hearings in Belfast on broadcasting policy today.

In its submission the National Union of Journalists has argued that Northern Ireland is not the same as other nations and regions of the UK. It is a post-conflict society and as such the provision of local news is of even greater importance to society.

The proposed justification for reducing news and current affairs coverage because of the changing political situation in Northern Ireland is simply not valid. The nature of news may have changed, but its importance has not diminished.

Journalists are very worried about proposals to cut the number of hours dedicated to current affairs journalism here will  be asking MPS to reflect on the impact these proposals will have on the NI Assembly.

Cross border shopping rockets

250,000 households in the Republic are now regularly doing their grocery shopping in the North, up 25 per cent since the end of last year, according to new figures published in today’s Irish Times.

There has also been a major increase in cross-Border alcohol shopping, the latest figures from market research firm Nielsen Ireland show. Off-licence sales in the North have risen by 30 per cent in the year to August, while off-sales in the South are down by 7 per cent.

Separately, figures compiled by InterTrade Ireland, a North-South business development body, show the proportion of Southern-registered cars in shopping centre car parks in Newry, Enniskillen and Derry has increased from 40-50 per cent over the summer to 70 per cent now.

Cross-Border shopping will cost the Republic’s economy over €810 million this year, it is estimated, compared to €640 million last year and €393 million in 2007.

Time for 20mph zones?

Ask anyone living in an urban area and they will be worried about traffic speeding through residential areas.

Speed bumps, chicanes and cameras have all been deployed to keep motorists at 30mph in built up areas yet the simple fact is that you still stand a one in five chance of being killed if  hit by a vehicles travelling 30mph.  Drop the speed of impact to 20mph and the chances of surviving skyrocket (only one in forty chance of being killed).

A couple of years ago Bereaved families in the North launched a campaign for Northern Ireland drivers to slow down.

Gareth Ellesmere was just 13 when he was knocked down and killed by a bus while crossing a road in Newtownards, County Down, in February. Lauren Finlay was killed aged 15 by a lorry while trying to cross a dual carriageway near her home after a school trip in 2005. Today, Gareth and Lauren’s families are attending the Belfast launch of National Road Safety Week where road safety charity Brake will unveil the Northern Ireland results of its UK-wide survey of school children. Almost three-quarters (72%) of Northern Ireland children said drivers should slow down near their homes and schools.

I know the issue has also been picked up by some local groups including the Green Party at Queens. Maybe it has already been discussed by the Assembly and maybe there are trial areas here in NI which I am unaware of but it strikes me that a serious debate about dropping the speed limit to 20mph in residential areas would be a good idea.

Carbon saving from car free summer

Curious about the impact of my six months car free stint is having on my carbon footprint, I visited ActonCO2 to compare my results with other urban dwellers in a similar size house to my own.

Turns out I still produce a similar amount of CO2 to other households living in relatively new well insulated urban homes. My home’s footprint is 0.96 tonnes per year compared with an average of 0.99 for this type of dwelling. Likewise my appliance’s score is only marginally below the 0.49 average and 0.30.

The big difference is in Transport. By elimintaing my car (we still keep a family car) the footprint has gone down to 0.8 tonnes against an average of 3.93 tonnes for people like me.  My footprint still allows one family holiday in Spain per year by air as well as occasional car use for family trips.

This is a spectacular saving but still at 2.06 tonnes per year I am personally using enough energy to make 118,000 cups of tea. That’s enough to quench the thirst of nearly every adult in this city. 

Cuppa anyone?

Clean Energy can change the North and change the World

We spend 10% of our regional GDP on gas imports. This is the fuel we then use to generate our electricity. We are one of the least energy independent regions in the European Union. No wonder our consumer prices go up and down like cork floating on the turbulent tides of globalisation. Think of it another way. Your NIE bill may well be paying for the Chelsea Football team such is the amount of money we give to Russian gas companies.

This needn’t be so. We have enough biomass to fuel every rural dwelling in the North for example. There is also a lot we could to be be more energy efficient. Simply having proper insulation in our homes would be a good start as would simply moving to low energy lighting.

Energy policy is devolved and there is no reason why the Assembly and Executive should not be taking a major lead on this issue.

Others have. The Scots are energy obsessed as is Obama. He gave a speech this week calling on Congress to embrace the economic opportunity of clean energy. He tackles the climate sceptics and the cynics who see no economic opportunity in clean energy. Have a watch.

Bad night for the BNP

Nick Griffin came, he saw the cameras, and he couped. No two ways about it he lost the debate, not because of Jack Straw’s performance but because of the pincer movement by English Asian woman and a black American one.

Race, gender and ignorance caught this fascist out again and again.

The BBC was right to let him on. It was a good night for politics and free speech and a bad one for the ultra right.