It’s the economy, stupid, or so it goes.
We’ve seen over the last number of weeks a great and welcome sense of unity shown by our politicians over the ‘dissident’ murders – the message went out loud and clear, ‘peace is here to stay.’
One of the clearest signals our Assembly and political parties collectively and independently can take is to show everyone that it’s business as usual.
The issue facing everyone at the moment is undoubtedly the financial situation we are in and how we are to deal with it. I have met many, many constituents who are finding themselves suddenly out of work. There is no doubt that our government needs to step in, in fact it is long over due. That is what they are saying. That is what we are saying.
Yes this is a global crisis. Yes this did start somewhere else. Yes this is a problem bigger than our little government.
But no, this is not something our government can’t give ordinary people assistance with. No we should not be sitting on our hands (as the DUP/SF are doing by standing by their failed budget) and no we should not be settling for a budget that was written when economic times where good and not bad.
The SDLP say it’s time to budge on the budget. We need a new budget for new times. Our economists are saying so and the DUP’s answer is that the economists are sitting in ivory towers.
How arrogant can a party get? I don’t care how precious they think their budget is, the fact is, it’s failing us, it needs changed and the government needs to do more. The reality is that people are seeing no tangible benefits to devolution that they can talk about and that needs to change.
The DUP and their SF friends need to stop burying their heads in the sand………..
Hmmmmm – must start visiting the blog more often