Stormont might not collapse but paramilitaries continue to disfigure Northern Ireland
The devolved institutions in Northern Ireland are supposedly ‘teetering on the brink’ of collapse yet again. After repeated failures to agree a balanced budget or implement welfare reform created months of uncertainty, the Executive’s future is now in doubt because the PSNI believes members of the IRA were involved in murdering a republican hit man. Despite its apparent seriousness, this particular predicament is unlikely to bring the shaky edifice at Stormont crashing down. The IRA was supposed to have disbanded its military ‘structures’ and decommissioned its entire arsenal of weapons back in 2005. It was on the basis of this understanding that power-sharing resumed in 2007 and the DUP entered government with Sinn Féin. From the outset it was a fairly flimsy pretext. Less than a year after John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general, oversaw decommissioning, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA retaine...
Comments
Sammy Wilson
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/member/1374&showall=yes#divisions
Willie McCrea
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/member/1376&showall=yes#divisions
Gregory Campbell
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/member/1693&showall=yes#divisions
Nigel Dodds
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/member/1551&showall=yes#divisions
David Simpson
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/member/1892&showall=yes#divisions
Peter Robinson
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/member/1400&showall=yes#divisions
Jeffrey Donaldson
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/member/1666&showall=yes#divisions
Iris Robinson
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/member/1846&showall=yes#divisions
Sylvia Hermon
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/member/1551&showall=yes#divisions
Her husband's health condition was not good prior to 2005. As I understand it he is receiving good and appropriate care for his condition.
Also Sylvia Hermon is not the only NI MP with family commitments that call upon their time. For example Nigel Dodds still has a young child and recently lost a close relative.
The voting record was simply the wrong stat to use for a jobbery attack.
Pavlyuchenko won't even take his seat. United Russia (and other parties if they can) do it all the time - they stick 'stars' on their party candidate lists, and then when the votes come in the celebs resign their posts, and some professional politican lower down the list takes their seat. Andrei Arshaivb was also elected a short while back to the St Petersburg legislature on the United Russia ticket. Then he resigned.
Thanks for giving my book (Football Dynamo) a plug by the way.
Thanks anon (or Marc?). Yes I know about the list system and Arshavin. I must admit to slightly underexplaining in order to make the DUP crack.
"Thanks for giving my book (Football Dynamo) a plug by the way."
No problem. I enjoyed it a great deal.