The DUP has joined calls for SDLP MLA Cara Hunter to apologise after she referred to the “coloniser mindset” of unionists who object to Irish language on signs.
Hunter has stood up to the outrage her comment provoked and it is hard not to admire anyone who defies this sort of tiresome recreational anger.
Nevertheless, it is generally preferable to compare Northern Ireland to Belgium than to the Congo, for the sake of both peace and understanding.
Irish and Ulster Scots are regulated under the European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages because our language quarrels, like most of our quarrels, can easily be seen in modern European terms – as ethnic tension around a disputed border, more than as a legacy of colonialism. This is also how our dispute is framed under the Good Friday Agreement.
The lesson for nationalists is that dislike of another language is normal cultural unease, rather than uniquely dreadful supremacist intolerance.
We are not even unusually uneasy: two years ago, the Flemish government tried banning Belgium’s other official languages from being spoken in its schools, including playgrounds.
The lesson for unionists is that it is normal to have to live with things you do not like.
Hunter has stood up to the outrage her comment provoked and it is hard not to admire anyone who defies this sort of tiresome recreational anger
**
Additional patrols have been deployed in the Mournes, using 4x4s, motorcycles and quad bikes, as police insist they are taking the problem of deliberate gorse fires seriously. One of the three PSNI helicopters has also been used “for an aerial overview of the mountains”.
It might be more practical to use its fleet of 20 or so drones and to ask for help from the many private drone users who take their hobby to the hills.
Although catching arsonists is extremely difficult, cheap arial surveillance means it is no longer a completely unrealistic expectation. The areas at risk are well-known, few in number and have unobstructed visibility.
It is usually possible to determine exactly where a fire started and it should be practical to trace and question people recorded nearby.
While that might still sound like a lot of work for an overstretched police service, the miscreants would soon get the message. They are probably few in number as well.
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Belfast City Council is planning a zero-tolerance approach to overflowing bins and the use of wheelie bin liners.
Both can damage bin lorries and injure staff; lined bins also pour goo onto staff and streets while being emptied. A ban is reasonable and has been instituted by at least five other councils in Northern Ireland.
However, one issue appears to have been overlooked: the liners are a valued hygiene measure for people who need to bring their bin through the house or who have limited outside storage.
Many of Belfast’s ratepayers must be in this position, yet there is no mention of it in the council’s discussion documents.
The issue simply does not seem to have occurred to the big house unionists, nationalists and others at City Hall.
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The Department for Communities has resumed ‘naming and shaming’ convicted benefit fraudsters, with the first two cases publicised this week. DUP minister Gordon Lyons restarted the policy five years after it was stopped by his Sinn Féin predecessor Deirdre Hargey.
Benefit fraud imposes social and economic costs on everyone, as citizens and taxpayers. It is wrong and should be tackled. However, in devolutionary terms, preventing fraud is something of a reverse-RHI.
Stormont does not get to keep any of the savings – every penny that would have gone to a fraudulent claimant here stays in London.
Ministers could try negotiating a ‘profit-sharing’ deal with the Treasury, where the executive could keep some of the savings and be incentivised to find more. This has never been attempted, despite its extraordinary potential. Getting Motability claims down to the UK average would save £260 million a year, for example.
It would be helpful if the resumption of publicity raises awareness of the bizarre way benefits are devolved to Northern Ireland. That might spur, or indeed shame, Stormont into doing better.
**
DUP MLA Diane Dodds has criticised the “eye-watering” cost of health service management and administration in Northern Ireland, having obtained the figures through a Stormont written question.
The totals last year were £264 million for management and £305 million for administration, covering the Department of Health and all its arms-length bodies, including the health trusts.
These are enormous sums and no doubt they could be spent more effectively but they are tiny compared to the department’s £8.2 billion annual budget.
Management’s share is 3.2% and administration another 3.7%. A large corporation with similar numbers would be considered highly efficient.
For a huge bureaucracy to achieve them is remarkable – although not necessarily positive.
Many experts believe the problem with the health service across the UK is that it is under-managed and needs more bosses and bureaucrats to deliver continuous improvement.
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Hamas has filed a legal case through lawyers in London calling on the Home Office to remove it from the UK’s list of proscribed organisations. The filing argues Hamas is a political organisation and compares it to Sinn Féin, but oddly the closest comparison in this instance would be the Red Hand Commando.
In 2017, the loyalist group applied to the Home Office to be removed from same list via a rarely-used ‘deproscription’ process. It was turned down.
The application was supported by the Loyalist Communities Council, founded two years previously with the help of Jonathan Powell, formerly Tony Blair’s chief of staff and now Keir Starmer’s national security advisor.
At a conference at Queen’s University Belfast in 2021, Powell said the British government should talk to Hamas, just as it talked to Sinn Fein and loyalists. Perhaps Hamas will summon him as a witness.
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