« COMMENT: Brown and out | REVIEW: Iron Man 2 »
OPINION: ConDem-ed
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance has led to David Cameron clawing his way across the threshold of 10 Downing Street. The result is the worst possible for Northern Ireland and could lead to an increase in tensions between Stormont and Westminster.
BY BEN FINCH
This is because of Cameron’s ill advised statement on the Northern Ireland public sector and how it needs to be reduced. The public sector in Northern Ireland has reduced the effects of the recession here and has kept thousands of people in employment throughout the Troubles. While a reduction in the Civil Service may be necessary, it should be slow, controlled and not affect frontline services. It should also be met with an increased investment in the local economy, rather than trying to lure big business from overseas. However the vampiric George Osborne has been preparing for “Slash and Burn” all over the UK and it is very worrying that Northern Ireland is top of the hitlist.
In the regions of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales there has been a clear rejection of Conservatism. Only 8 Tory MPs, out of 117, were elected from these areas, seven from Wales and one from Scotland, with 9 Lib Dems in total from the regions, if Naomi Long is ignored. This means that Northern Ireland is essentially being ruled by England, by a government that the electorate has shown they don’t want by removing the two UUP seats held. While the DUP has traditionally voted with the Conservatives (about 90% of the time) they took the decision to support a possible Labour Government to protect Northern Ireland’s interests.
On top of all this the Conservatives show stronger support for the Union than Labour have done and are likely to take a harder line on Nationalism, which will push its supporters further away from the government. The result seems to have led to an increased unity among politicians from the province, as the SDLP, Alliance, DUP and Sylvia Hermon all decided to join the potential rainbow alliance in order to oppose cuts in the public sector and the block grant. It also appears that, along with Scotland and Wales, there has been an increase in Nationalism as people would prefer to rule themselves due to fears about the state of local economies as the Conservatives tend to ignore and underfund the regions. This can only lead to further tensions between regional government and Parliament.
Universities are likely to see a decrease in funding from the Government, which will only see them wanting to increase the already unfair tuition fees, which are a premium on education and discourage many people from furthering their knowledge. As students we have to be prepared to resist this and anything that we see to be bad for our regional economy, where we expect to be employed soon and a double dip recession could destroy.
The Lib Dems appear to have pulled the Tories to the left but it remains to be seen just what has gained their support and just how far right they have allowed themselves to go in order to get bums on government seats. Hopefully they can temper the excesses of a generation that has grown up with Thatcherism. But in deciding to take the Tory whip they may not be able to without bringing down the government.
The Tories will have to affect a central stance in relation to Northern Ireland and treat the electorate fairly or else a situation, slowly becoming more dangerous and only supported by a few, could explode. Cuts to public services, such as education and healthcare, could destroy the increasingly fair and harmonious society we live in. We have already used our democratic voice to oppose these cuts and we will have to continue to use it over the next few years to ensure society remains.
Tags: Ben Finch, Gown, newspaper, Queen's, queen's university, student, students, The Gown
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 15th, 2010 at 2:39 pm and is filed under News, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
@Benny Ben Ben Ben - If I gave you £850 and asked for £6 back would you make a fuss?
and @unknownmale sorry, when writing I assumed empty Reg had lost his seat, but seems he never got elected in the first place, congrats.
Firstly David Cameron did not say he was going to cut the Public Sector in Northern ireland, he said Northern Ireland was over-reliant on the public sector. Its not the same thing.
Secondly, and I work in the NI Civil Service, Northern Ireland IS overly reliant on the public sector. But that's purely a legacy of the troubles, both in terms of lack of investment, a disproprtionate number of benefit claims and the associated impact on health and well-being, Northern Ireland NEEDS its bloated public sector for the forseeable future, these problems aren't going to go away overnight.
We can take what's going to happen in Fermanagh over the next couple of weeks and months with the loss of the Quinn Direct jobs as a micro analysis of what we could expect across the board in Northern Ireland if there are wholesale public sector cuts.
And Ben, just on a factual note, you seem to point to the electorate unseating TWO UUP MPs. Could you perhaps name them? I know one was Lady Sylvia Hermon who resigned from the party but I'm at a loss to name the other.
If you're thinking of Donaldson he defected before the 2005 Election
Ben - if they took the money from the Bank profits it would effectively lead to banks leaving the country and operating from outside it.
The government has no right to pick a group of organisations and ask for money from them just because they have a lot of it.
I think the government should get 70% of RBS profit - because it owns that much of the shares. If government wants money from other banks it can start buying shares off them as well.
The government has a responsibility to govern fairly - not spend spend spend - crash - steal.
The planned £6,000,000,000 in cuts this year could come from bank profits. It looks like they received £850,000,000,000 from the taxpayer and appear to be back making billions and billions profit while the rest of us have to take cuts in services. If it came out of each bank's profits it would be pocket money to them and would possibly halt the reliance of the economy on gambling.
The cuts we're looking at could mean that Pater and Martin may as well holiday in Greece too.
Everyone knows a Con-Lib pact of some type was the only form of government that could stably rule, given the parliamentary mathematics. You’ve reflexively stated that you are against cutting funding for Northern Ireland, but have not constructed a fact-based argument as to why.
Northern Ireland has relied enormously on a hugely disproportionate level of public sector funding, paid for mostly by English tax-payers – a point your comments regarding a Northern Irish/Scottish/Welsh “rejection” of conservatism conveniently overlook.
In the long term, uncontrolled debt represents a mortal threat to our ‘fair and harmonious’, liberal society. Now that the election is over, the three major parties all agree that significant cuts are needed. The Stormont politicians up in arms never paid the bills to begin with. Perhaps Peter and Martin should holiday in Greece this summer.
Loading ...
"assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups"
- Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Like