I believe it was Mahatma Gandhi who said “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”
By this principle our nation we call home, regardless of where you draw a border line, has nothing to be proud of.
Since Stormont fell a year ago time and time again we’ve sat back and watched how our most vulnerable and disenfranchised people have been consistently beaten down, battered and bruised by the actions of the political representatives elected to protect them.
All across the country vital budgets in health, education and the voluntary sector have been slashed, frozen and screwed with. As our MLAs have sat comfortably at home – whilst being paid a full wage over the last year – our schools have been forced to cut vital members of staff who care for our children, charities have been forced to reduce the work they do to help and support our vulnerable and, well, the less said about the state of the health service the better.
Former Secretary of State James Brokenshire laid down deadline after deadline, moved the goal posts more times that I can count and still he couldn’t broker a deal with the stubborn forces behind Sinn Fein and the DUP who are more concerned with one-up-man-ship than their constituents.
Last week as Tory MP Karen Bradley steps up to the plate to replace Brokenshire it will be interesting to see if she has any bright ideas that might get the kids to return to the talks table with anything resembling a compromise. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Whilst we wait in anticipation for the miracle that clearly isn’t going to happen or for the UK Government to find a backbone of some description another demoralising blow is wielded on our vulnerable.
Also last week the BBC reported that a £19.2m pot of money, which was Northern Ireland’s share of the UK’s Dormant Bank Accounts Fund, was unable to be allocated or spent as a result of having no working Assembly. This is an initiative which distributes money from accounts unused for 15 years.
The BBC revealed that since 2008, £360m has been recovered and spent – it comes as no surprise that not one single penny has been spent in Northern Ireland.
There had been a proposal for the money to be administered by the Big Lottery Fund, however, some groups were uneasy about being associated with gambling so the then Finance Minister Mervyn Storey (DUP) and his team developed a new application process. But, once Máirtín Ó Muilleoir (SF) was in the post he decided there were changes that needed to be made and so while he was tinkering away with his team under the hood Stormont collapsed.
It would seem that FOUR Finance Ministers Sammy Wilson, Simon Hamilton, Mervyn Storey and Máirtín Ó Muilleoir have now announced – on separate occasions – that this money was to be made available to the people of Northern Ireland since 2007. All taking credit for it, none actually managed to give it to any of the many needy charities spread across our country.
How on earth has it taken over 10 years to spend this much-needed cash? From what I can see there’s a bit of a running theme here of political parties taking the opportunity to announce windfalls of cash into the NI economy which we’ve yet to see the fruits of. Tory bribe money included.
According to the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport £10m is already available right now – and a further £9.2m was earmarked for distribution over the next two years.
Given that this money is specifically set aside to be distributed to charities across the country – or so we believe – I find it unfathomable that we can ignore the Stormont deadlock any further. The only thing holding the release of applications for this money is a signature from an Executive Minister.
Call me a conspiracy theorist but I still believe there’s more to this. I believe they’ve all more to gain by not being in the decision making seats right now – that way they can blame everything from the funding crisis to Brexit on everyone else but themselves.
Meanwhile our disadvantaged, disenfranchised, vulnerable and needy neighbours are suffering whilst our politicians brush off their tailored jackets and designer suits to go head to head in another round of farcical theatrics to make us believe they’re actually trying to resolve the problems that they created.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – get back to work!