It's a slow time for news in Northern Ireland, you know that when one of the 'big' stories of the week is that the leader of a pressure group masquerading as a political party has been appointed to a position on the Privy Council, a position in which he will wield zero power or influence. These slow times though give us all the opportunity to step back and analyse just what's going on in the province at the minute. What's up with the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive?

Follow up:

The IRA have declared an end to the 'armed struggle' and decommissioned their weapons, although nobody knows how many they’ve kept, or why they wouldn't let a Unionist nominated clergyman witness the arms dump. Meanwhile we’ve witnessed loyalists declare that they're all victims, that the IRA have been given too many concessions as part of what they see as appeasement and betrayal emanating from London. Due to this then, they decided to vent their frustrations by tearing up their communities. Hmm...

The way I see it, the few demands that the loyalists have been able to string together into near-English as reasons to explain the recent violence are unconvincing. There is a feeling that the IRA/Sinn Fein are "getting everything" and that working-class nationalist communities are getting more funding than working-class loyalist ones (which they may well be). What bothers me is that certain unionist politicians seem determined to feed the feelings of anger and resentment by exaggerating the importance of minor (largely symbolic) issues that don't really affect the majority of people*. While this succeeds in solidifying their own image as the guardians of the people, it does this by creating more bitterness and often fear, amplifying the sense of alienation and the victim mentality in our communities. This is the last thing Ulster needs.
* Since I drafted this story, it seems Reg Empey has conveyed similar sentiments to the Ulster Unionists at their party conference.

However it's a symptom of Northern Ireland's local, tribal political setup that parties here enjoy (and one more than most) the environment of perpetual opposition, and are content that they can always blame someone else when things go wrong. This allows them to escape responsibility when things go wrong (and yet claim to have been a vital influence when things go right), but it also leaves them completely unready to take such decisions themselves and be unprepared to face the consequences. Essentially what we have are pressure groups, continually shouting from the sidelines, seeking to take a (large) part of the glory, while leaving someone else (quangoes and/or government ministers) to take the risks, so to their supporters they always come up smelling of roses!

This country's in a mess. It's economically far, far too reliant on the public sector and it's socially segregated. What's more, I don't trust the local politicians to sort it out, especially not while the likes of Paisley and Adams (and others who have been instrumental in causing the troubles of the past 30 years) have a hand in matters.

The problem is that the direct rule ministers from London have proven themselves completely inept as well. They don't care about Northern Ireland because their jobs in the Northern Ireland Office will last only a few years and are a chance for them to prove themselves worth of a 'real' post in government. They took what the executive had been doing right, and reversed those decisions (see the enormous cockup surrounding Northern Ireland’s new national stadium – at least our local executive were heading down the right lines on that). At the same time they've carried on with all the disastrous decisions the executive made, like Sinn Fein’s decision to scrap the 11+ post-primary transfer test against the will of the people they balloted.

Unfortunately this leaves us in a catch 22. Do we want to continue to function under imperfect direct rule from Westminster because we can't trust the local parties with that decisions, or do we want to reopen the devolved institutions in the hope that this forces the local parties to accept responsibility and learn to work with what the resources at hand (and that includes each other)?

Tony Blair and Peter Hain have made their minds up, not only do they want to give our local politicians the power they wielded previously when the Assembly was running, they also seems determined to grant local politicians power over policing and justice – probably the single most controversial issue going. That sounds insane to me. Sinn Fein have long called for devolved policing and justice powers, but the PSNI already recruits on an unfair basis (50-50 Catholic/Non-Catholic) in an effort to boost the number of Catholics on the force and Sinn Fein seem to actively encourage "community restorative justice" schemes which have been criticised as an attempt to establish an alternative police force. How can they be trusted with policing and justice? It's not just Sinn Fein either. If the DUP get it things won't be much better; I can actually see us going back to the good old fashioned policing – witch hunts and book burnings. Remember this is a party that includes members who think Harry Potter is “evil” and that films shouldn’t be allowed to show sex and that Jerry Springer the musical was sinful (because it was blasphemous, not just because it was crap!).

At the very least, if Tony insists on making us select representatives from the pool of political 'talent' we have here, they should be made to prove themselves before they get anywhere near something as important as policing and justice!