Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Now that Northern Ireland's power-sharing institutions have been back at work for a couple of weeks, David from  The Dissenter and I met up to discuss how things have been going. So far, the new Assembly has been dominated by complaints about funding and the debacle over MOT tests, which are currently suspended due to equipment failure in the test centres. At the start of the last decade, we were in the midst of another crisis caused by crumbling water infrastructure. In the News Letter last week , I pointed out that nothing much had changed in the last ten years. By 2030 will Stormont have addressed the most pressing issues we face today? It's doubtful while the focus is always on attracting more money, rather than spending what we have wisely or effectively. There is little emphasis on genuine collaboration or a shared message from the new Executive. Instead, any difficult conversations about policy are immediately shut down. This is given visual expression by p...

William Murphy [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)] In the latest PoliticalOD podcast, we ask whether the New Decade, New Approach document really promises a new dawn at Stormont. A wave of optimism accompanied the deal - anything to get the institutions back together - but already, as I pointed out at CapX , the atmosphere is beginning to sour. An unseemly wrangle over money has broken out, as the parties struggle to explain how they'll pay for a wishlist of new commitments. As ever, their answer is that the Treasury should stump up the cash, but there is an atmosphere of wariness in London about funding Northern Ireland even more lavishly, thanks to the RHI inquiry's revelations. David and I examine more of the agreement's pitfalls. It was published in a way that flouted Strand 1 of the Belfast Agreement, it leaves key issues cloaked in ambiguity and it fails to address the structural frailties that cause Stormont to crash repeatedly. I wro...