I'm yet to be convinced of the merits of throwing £33 million at loyalist communities over the next few years in the hope it will encourage them to play nice. There's no doubt that some of the areas are in a desperate need of regeneration, but the government doesn't seem to be very good at spending money like this (£85 million for a stadium no one wants, for example).

There will apparently be a large emphasis on education, with a fast track scheme to encourage pupils to remain in education/training post-16. The idea of promoting the importance of education to young Protestant folk is admirable and Protestants do tend underachieve moreso than their Catholic counterparts in Northern Ireland (of the 15 worst performing electoral wards, 13 are predominantly Protestant), but in recent days it has become evident that very little happens when the government throws money at poor education standards.

Follow up:

The audit office released a report recently which found that despite investment of £40 million into education standards here, very little had actually been achieved - 23% of children still leave primary school with reading skills so underdeveloped that they will struggle with the demands of secondary education. 41% of pupils in secondary schools fail to achieve the expected basic standard of maths at Key Stage 3 (age 14). The situation is so bad that even Sinn Fein and the DUP agreed the situation was pretty dire.

It wasn't enough however, to stop Sinn Fein having a hypocritical whinge. Gerry Kelly said it was a "a serious mistake to sectarianise poverty" - just 2 days after saying "poverty and disadvantage is more widespread in nationalist areas... it must also be accepted that there are more serious levels of poverty, deprivation and unemployment in working class nationalist areas." Do you have no shame Gerry?