Stormont do nothing politics

On August 22 2011 Alex Kane wrote that "it [had] been 5,605 days since the Northern Ireland assembly was first elected, on June 25, 1998 and practically no movement [had] been recorded in any area of politics here in all that time."

800 days later and little has changed. No meaningful programme, no agenda, no business, no focus on the issues that matter to the people. Where there is activity it's the politics of lets piss-off the other side. A grand theatre of torpidity and estrangement.

The Richard Haass talks are a grand illusion which give the impression that much is being done. Other gestures and morsels are handed out to prop up the illusion of a functioning government. Like when politicians debated the decision to privatise the Royal Mail after the decision has been stamped, sealed and placed in the out-tray. Like the latest news on the duplication of legislative effort; as the DUP's Alastair Ross is introducing a Bill on a matter that is already in the system.


The public need to demand more and better from their representatives. Alex Kane wrote in summer 2011 that "thirteen years is a long time, a very, very long time, to get your act together and do what you were elected to do." Now standing 15 years post-Good Friday Agreement, we're very quickly approaching the realm of the absurd.

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