“There’s no more money! How many times do I have to repeat it?” That was Gregory Campbell, being his stone-wall self on BBC TV’s The Nolan Show last night. He was referring to the famous British subvention, whereby we are all expected to clap hands and sing because every year, being a kind Mother Country, Westminster unlocks its Treasury and send some £10 billion over to us. Because they like us. No point in talking about how, if that’s the case, we in the north live in a cripple economy. No, it’s worse than that: we live on a life-support. In recent years Britain has gradually been reducing the amount of oxygen and nourishment fed into us, and now it’s all set to narrow the flow to the point where parts of us are going to be permanently damaged. Gregory urged Alex Maskey and everyone else to accept the fact that the amount of oxygen and nutrition had been delivered in full, no point in saying anything else, accept it. Alex Maskey noted that Scotland apparently had brought about a considerable change in Westminster’s attitude when it had looked like it might vote for independence. “There’s no more money” became “Here, we swear in writing that if you stay we’ll give you loads and loads more”. In short,Alex’s point was that there is more money in the British Treasury, and that if we stand united against them, we’d be surprised how Westminster’s arithmetic would change. But Gregory reckons that wouldn’t happen. And Naomi Long of Alliance, who took Peter Robinson’s seat last time round and who knows it’ll be up for grabs in a few months’ time, managed to sound as if she rejected both Gregory and Alex’s position. Which is a good trick.
So where are we now? Well, the DUP can’t afford to look as if they’re softies who are persuaded by anything the Shinners say or do, otherwise there might be more than Peter’s seat up for grabs. Maybe you noticed how often Gregory stressed that he’d been in Westminster voting against the cuts, unlike some across the table from him. Alex Maskey could have responded with “And a fat lot of good it did you”, but the fat issue wasn’t scheduled until later in the programme. Sinn Féin say they are going to have no hand, act or part in implementing these cuts the Tories in London are so keen on delivering, a la Thatcher.
The big question is, will this disagreement/stalemate between the Shinners and the DUP result in Stormont collapsing? It depends on what you mean by collapsing. If it means there’ll be a fresh election, with Sinn Féin and the DUP seeking a new mandate for their respective positions, I’d say it might. Certainly Sinn Féin wouldn’t feel particularly worried: as an all-Ireland party they would have permanently spiked the guns of those south of the border who keep going on about how the Shinners are fighting cuts in the south and implementing them in the north. The DUP would hope that their stance as cold-eyed realists (Gregory looked very cold-eyed last night) and agin all that the Shinners were saying, would carry them home. If you’re talking about Stormont permanently collapsing: I don’t think so. The British government might step in and grab the steering wheel for a few months, but there’s no way that all the years of effort, all the arrangements and balances and especially hard-won peace would be thrown away for keeps. Because if ever there was an invitation for more violence here, a permanently dissolved Stormont would be it. And I haven’t even mentioned the MLAs’ salaries.
So I’d say let’s test if there really isn’t any more money. If refusal to loosen the purse-strings further would set in motion a series of events which ended in a return to bloody conflict here, you may be sure the Tories would be very, very loath for that to happen. Not because they like us; but because it’d show them as using a wrecking-ball on the carefully-constructed edifice that Labour built. And of course while the DUP may complain about being locked into government with,um, men of blood, there’ll be two blue moons in the sky and another on the midden heap when they toss away all that nice power and all those monthly salaries. No more money? As one texter said during the programme, “There’s no more money” sounds a bit hollow when you remember four words: the Trident nuclear programme.
The key problem is that we don’t hold a single trump. The Treasury has all of them, plus the other three aces, and they know it – Westminster doesn’t have to give us any extra money if they don’t want to, and if the Assembly collapsed, they would just take over, implement the cuts, implement welfare reform, increase the regional rate and impose water charges to sort it all out.
I think Welfare Reform is misjudged and will hit the honest poor more than the dishonest poor who will probably just keep getting what they want while everyone else suffers.
Unfortunately for all of us, we are in a perfect storm of backloaded cuts in the block grant, plus only having welfare funded at post-reform levels. We are stuffed.
No more money…., plenty for pursuing hopeless wars across the globe and these wars do not end when hostilities cease there is a long drawn out ongoing cost supporting those injured in the fighting.
Also from yesterdays news “two Tornado GR4 aircraft took off from Akrotiri in Cyprus in support of Iraqi government forces west of Baghdad, and overnight fired four Brimstone missiles in a “precision attack” against two IS vehicles, one of which was an armed pick-up truck, said the Ministry of Defence (MoD).”
A missile costing £175000.00 to destroy what was probably a clapped out Toyota held together by rust the whole thing costing about $150.00.
We are told this is to go on for years while at home the numbers resorting to food banks reportedly on the rise.
No more money?When they are already revving up for another foreign adventure….somewhere else to eventually send young men to get maimed and somewhere else to play with very expensive war toys.There’s always money for a good old war .
“There’s always money for a good old war”
Wings over Scotland shows how the demand for billions for the war on ISIS (or whatever it’s called today) is satisfied by 3 billion welfare cuts off the poor http://wingsoverscotland.com/demand-and-supply/
any chance of the Republic helping out? Hundred million would do nicely.
Norma
In return for which they would get…A few thousand less Loyal Order marches in the north?
The problem is the total support given by the Unionists to their imperial masters from across the sea, they would rather subject the poor and unemployed to further hardship than be seen supporting anything those horrible Nationalists might like .Gregory and the othe rUnionists are loyal you see,so if chinless wonders who went to Oxford say there is no more money, well, that`s just the way it is, sure aren`t they educated men, Cameron and Osborne and the other Bullingdon bullies? It never ceases to amaze me the way Unionists still have that slavish attitude towards the man in the big house, they have always condemned Catholics for listening to their Church leaders yet fail to see the irony in their abject following of rich, spoilt Englishmen.
Good grief you inability to grasp the most simple of economic facts is astounding if you dont accept welfare reform were do you cut to make the relevant savings?
I know – just another of those economic illiterates who won’t see things the proper way. As Michael McDowell said circa 2007 before the economy went pear-shaped…
Jude a simple question perhaps you would be willing to answer it please
If you are not willing to implement welfare reform what are prepared to cut from the budget?
Yes Neill, lets cut the money going to the poor, unemployed, disabled, etc in order to make savings while on the other hand spend tens of billions of pounds on a nuclear programme which wont even be used (Thank Goodness) and while we’re at it, lets cut the taxes to the richest in our society, lets increase MP’s salaries by around £10,000 a year and lets turn a blind eye to mega corporations and businesses dodging their taxes at every opportunity, which runs into the hundreds of billions of pounds.
Yes, the poor and most vulnerable must pay for the financial crisis because they are to blame for bankers taking huge risks with money that wasn’t even theirs.
I’m starting to see a pattern when it comes to your comments Neill
I have no problems about money being spent on the disable and those unfit to work i however have a problem giving money to those who are fit and able to work but dont.
The rich are wealth producers so why tax them more?
Who said I agreed that MPs should get more money?
Yes, the poor and most vulnerable must pay for the financial crisis because they are to blame for bankers taking huge risks with money that wasn’t even theirs.
Sorry its the middle classes that have suffered the most during the financial crisis there real income has gone down whilst those on benefits has gone up is that right?
I’m starting to see a pattern when it comes to your comments Neill
Oh the irony indeed!
Yeah jude, maybe we should join up with the South and their fully functioning welfare state, can’t wait
You won’t have long to wait the way things are going in Britain, don’t worry.
If the UK wants sovereignty over the six counties, Norma, it has to pay for it. When the Republic has the sovereignty, it will have to pay for it.
Not beforehand.
The big difference between the Wee Six and the Twenty Six Counties during the past week has been, as usual, the number 20.
Though expressed in the following terms: ‘cuts’ and ‘Cats’. ‘Cuts’ as expressed by the cold-eyed realist called Campbell in that unmistakable Gregorian chant of his and ‘Cats’ as caterwauled by the equally clinical and cold-eyed Cody-keyed Kilkenny caman-wielding hurling team.
Now, Esteemed Blogmeister, while you accurately describe Campbell as ‘cold-eyed’ the fact remains in situ that the last place on Planet Earth one would associate the same sporran-squeezer with is a grim glen in the Scottish highlands ‘though cruel be the snow that sweeps Glencoe’ (for it is it).
And though high, indeed, be the moral monetary ground upon which the Laird of Loose Change is wont to position his penny-pinching self. No, it is not the chill of cruelty which resides in those key-cold Campbell eyes but rather the refrigerated chill of realism. Which, of course, is a synonym for ‘the higher charity’.
Besides, take a look at those gaunt Gregorian features. Do they belong to a man who has feasted on Supermacs, slurped his fill of McFlurries?? The lad has never been under the Golden Arch and inside McDonalds’s in his life. He would no more massacre a Bigmac than he would speak a wee word of Leprechaun.
Now, with regard to the ‘Cats’ aka, the all-conquering Kilkenny hurling team.
Misguided folk were in the majority ahead of the replay in forecasting a Tipperary victory. PW, the numerologist, was not among them. Not only did Perkie calmly predict an emphatic KK victory but he is also on record (his own) as prophesizing (not for nothing is he known as Prophet Emeritus) that not a solitary single syllable of the Q’s English would be heard during the ten-minute trophy-bestowing ceremony after the game.
Yes, Perkie, the numerologist. What the Wee Six and the Twenty Six need is more numerologists, not less. As will become even more evident.
Consider the omens. The number 20 has already been mentioned and while ‘score’ is sometimes called off the bench to substitute, this can be discounted as being too obvious to the lay man.
No, the crucial number here was always conspicuous: 35. Conspicuous, that is, to the numerologist. In these enlightened times, numerology is associated with the paranormal, alongside astrology and other such divining arts. And with the island of Ireland being the global area most densely populated with paranormals, woe indeed is the economist who is not versed in the art and science of numerology. That is why Perkie and Greg can so often be heard to sing from the same hymn sheet, even on days not normally associated with the Sabbath.
Consider the following: last Saturday, the hurling cats of Kilkenny won their 35 th title. 35? Yes, indeed precisely the same number as the Statues of Kilkenny enacted in 1367 by King Edward and not King Henry. And that is Statutes with a ‘t’. A small ‘t’ unlike, say, T for Tipperary.
The numerologist Gregory Campbell, no doubt, would have all 35 off by heart but a handful will suffice as an example: Thou shalt not marry an Irish person; thou shalt not wear Irish clothes; thou shalt not speak the Irish language; thou shalt not play Irish games; and crucially, thou shalt not ride a horse in the Irish fashion, that is, without a saddle.
The Statutes were designed to halt the popular game of backsliding among the Anglo-Irish garrison who had begun to become, as the saying had it, more ‘Irish’ than ‘Anglo’. No doubt the numerologist in Gregory will see a certain Pat the Pattern emerging, to resurface some six hundred years later, in the Anglo-Irish bank, anchor of the Free Southern Stateen economy.
Of course, the 35 Statutes, while deeply moving documents in themselves, somehow failed to move the targeted audience. Thus, the sight of the the non-playing, leprechaun-speaking captain of the cats holding the All-Ireland trophy aloft for the 35 th time, the Kilkenny captain with the ultimate Anglo-Irish name: Lester Ryan.
For those who wish to delves more deeply into the art and science of numerology, Perkie cannot speak too highly of ‘Numerology, or What Pythagorus Wrought’ by the legendary Underwood Dudley. It is specifically tailored to suit the mindset of those who prefer to surf the Elliot wave principle of stock market analysis.
It is how both Perkie and Gregory got into numerology, surfing the principle waves off the key-cold coast of Londonderry.. We both prefer to do so sans saddle, not unlike our common mentor, Underwood Dudley.
Break out !
The DUP are the great cheerleaders for these cuts. Maybe now we know the reason why they were wined and dined by Cameron himself in No. 10 a few weeks ago.
The English Tories who NOBODY in this country voted for, are cutting benefits to help pay for their latest pathetic imperialist war. Fair play to Sinn Féin for standing up to them.
The cuts being proposed do not affect only those out of work but in fact the biggest impact would be on those who work but are on low incomes and rely on Tax Credits and Child Benefit. The local economy would be devastated with thousands of low paid workers in retail and hospitality facing redundancy and yet the Tories claim that the Welfare Reform Bill is designed to boost employment!
In reality we are witnessing the single biggest assault on the Welfare State since it’s foundation and for the life of me I cannot understand why Unionist leaders are willing to permit this given the impact it will have on their own constituents.
We are fortunate to live in one of the wealthiest parts of the world and the economies of both Britain and the 26 counties are capable of sustaining a safety net for the elderly and less well off. What a pity that both jurisdictions are governed by politicians who are committed to destroying this safety net and seem happy to allow poverty and disadvantage to increase. The real price will be paid by the generations that follow.