The Equality Commission told Lisburn Council that they are in breach of equality law and their own equality scheme after the DUP and UUP colluded and excluded the SDLP.

The DUP, with Minister Poots and MP Jeffery Donaldson in the chamber, argued this week that the necessary legislation would be through in January resolving the issue, and there was therefore no need to follow the equality commissions ruling.

This argument was proved to be false, as the legislation dealing with transition committees is held up with everything else in the Executive, which isn’t really dealing with very much to be honest.

So the DUP, not content to abide by the Equality Commissions ruling proposed that Lisburn Council use an informal system to nominate members to the committee. The UUP, bar one member, supported this. This is a system that can well be used with a Unionist majority to exclude any party.

The Minister has serious questions to answer around this; how can minorities be assured that they will be protected in the new councils if the Minister is over seeing a carve up in Lisburn? What confidence will minorities on other councils have? Why are the DUP not content to share power proportionally? And why is the Minister not abiding by his own Departments guidelines on this set by his predecessor?

I strongly suspect that the Equality Commission will be back to Lisburn when the Unionist parties attempt once again to exclude minorities, and they wonder why others think it’s important to have built in protections!

As Chair of SDLP Youth (SDLPY) I was part of an SDLP delegation that met with Irish Environment Minister, John Gormley TD to discuss North South arrangements, Climate Change and the SDLPY campaign “The Countdown is on” regarding international climate talks in Copenhagen.

When it comes to the North South bodies, it remains the fact that the DUP are blocking Climate Change being discussed at these meetings. So on the most important issue facing a generation, the DUP are blocking discussion and action.

They really are out of touch.

There is no denying that it still remains encoded in the DUP’s DNA the need to exclude and squeeze nationalists and Catholics, you can see that in how they behave in government, central and local, particularly over how they continually put down pre conditions on policing and justice negotiations.

These pre conditions are usually attacking what the SDLP fought for in the Good Friday Agreement; such as the Parades Commission, Equality Commission, Bill of Rights or North South Arrangements.

Sinn Fein are slow to the game but my party’s been saying that for a long time.

But this is the environment we are talking about, what rational reason can there be for excluding discussion and action on the most crucial issue facing us?

We pushed the Minister to get tough on the DUP on this and get this on the agenda. Time will tell if that will be the case.

SDLP Delegation meet Irish Environment Minister

For those that didn’t catch this on slugger.

Apologies for the delay in getting this up – it’s a debate I took part in, focusing on local Councils and councillors and how they interact, or not, with rate payers and the general public, as well as a discussion on education and the SDLP and UUP call to have the Executive deal with it.

It’s well worth a watch.

West Belfast SDLP held the second of a series of public meetings around major community issues, following the highly successful conference on terror threats and national security. The second meeting was on academic selection and the transfer mess that parents, teachers and children are currently faced with.

We will be holding other events around this issue, it was clear from the mood in the room on Tuesday night (30 June 2009) that parents, teachers and most worryingly, children are in deep stress and concerned about this situation.

It is important that this issue does not to go off the political radar, particularly over the summer months. In fact, while this issue represents a crushing failure in our politics and our system, if politicians take the summer recess off from the Assembly – that would clearly represent a slap in the face to all those parents.

The SDLP has already called for the Assembly to be reconvened over the summer, to tackle this issue and many more.  

We want to provide a platform for parents and teachers to air their views and ideas around finding a solution to the current untenable situation.  Many concerns as well as ideas where expressed on Tuesday, and we will be submitting these to the Minister, the Assembly Education Committee and all party leaders in a report drawn up from the meeting.

It is quite clear that Sinn Fein and the DUP have to shoulder a massive burden of blame for this mess. But both the State and those Catholic grammar schools that by their stubbornness have contributed to this situation must also equally shoulder a share of the responsibility. 

School children deserve better than this, better than the unregulated, unfair and unstable system. The SDLP will be keeping pressure on all the parties involved in this mess.

Sinn Fein failed to turn up which was noticed by those in attendance.

While claims where made (after the event) that this debate was an exercise in trying to make SF look bad on this issue, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. But in anycase, their failure to turn up clearly highlights a nervousness in SF around this issue, argubly demonstrated by their own exercise in distorting the Departmental consultation around the Ministers guidelines as well.

‘I said I’m a communist and I vote for SF, your not a communist, your a right winger, so I would never vote for you’

I proceeded with a few simple questions.

‘How do you reconcile that, you do realise that the SDLP voted against the Programme for Government mainly because it is right wing? 

You also realise that SF wrote the ring wing programme and stick by it to this day, even in the current economic climate? 

Tell me how does a communist SF supporter view the current privatisation in education, on Sinn Fein’s watch?’

I could see his mind trying to process what I was saying and then thought I was about to get an answer.

His response. He tried to kick me. The nice but noticeably odd little man tried to kick me. And then shouted me off his front door. Nice.

My blog has now adopted another function…. to report weekly on the Andersonstown News and it’s coverage. Why?

Over a year ago I decided to refuse an award from Belfast Media Group in protest of the Squinter/Adams stuff and ever since then the paper has censored me from their pages. Literally, cut me out of press releases and cut me out of photos when they printed them (but then published the full photo on their website)

If I’m being honest the paper, as a NEWSpaper just doesn’t measure up. They need exposed for what they are: unprofessional, poor, partisan, stalinist, spineless with amateur editing. The paper is a farce if ever there was one.

Take today for example, 14th May. I am taking part in the Lisburn Half marathon, along with Alex Attwood in aid of Tiny Life.

Now that’s a nice story isn’t it?  The paper has the head line, ‘SDLP members going on the run’ (fair enough) but it’s print only mentions Alex, why does it say ‘members’ and then only mention one?

Well that’s because it’s been censoring me for over a year for having the ’cheek,’ as one person put it, to criticise the paper over it’s handling of the Squinter/Adams farce.

The SDLP has been recording every instance of censorship  that the paper shamelessly and regularly indulges in, including altered photographs. The report will soon be launched.

The paper should be exposed. Anyone who has been censored by the paper, who dislikes it’s partisan view of the world, who believes it’s a waste of tress should comment. 

P.s. did they run the story about SF claiming excessive expenses from your pockets… what do you think?

SDLP 2009 PEB

The room was full, there was a great atmosphere, considering this was, I believe, the first event of it’s kind in the north.

As a blogger beside me said ‘ This is a bit of a coup for the SDLP.’ I think that statement maybe summed up both the nature and substance of the event (although there was a slight technical issue with the sound for a second or two!!).

I’m sure others will give their thoughts on the event on sites such slugger, and their own personal blogs, later, and the reporting of the event should make for interesting reading.  

Alban’s blog also went live today. And his website has been up for a few weeks.

The message is simple: You haven’t had a pro European voice in Europe for too long now, We can win: and When We Win, You Win.

I want to draw people’s attention, (albeit at this late stage) to the SDLP seminar on ‘Policing and it’s Oversight at times of threat.

The details are here.

The calibre of the speakers and the theme of the event speaks for itself. It will prove to be a very informative and worthwhile event.

For those that can’t make it but want to, I will be providing an overview of the content of each of the speakers speeches, and of the seminar in general after the event.

Throughout the event I will also be ‘twittering’.

Following an SDLP proposal from myself in Lisburn City Council, it was agreed that Lisburn would join the 2848 cities and towns across 84 countries by joining Earth Hour.

Earth hour is not just about the symbolic gesture of switching off the lights for an hour, it is about sending out a wider message that people want global leaders to take urgent action to tackle climate change.

It has been demonstrated that there exists huge potential in the ‘green economy’ for creating new jobs and new enterprises. We need to invest in training our unemployed workforce new skills and get them ready for a new economy – based strongly on a green economy. This opportunity exists, and it’s exists for the north particularly.

I think people are catching on to this reality – even if our ruling parties are not! For Lisburn to take this step sends out that strong message. Sure, there was opposing voices (or one rather squeaky one more precisely) but it passed, and more to the point, it was agreed to send this decision to our so called Environment Minister.

My thoughts and those of the vast majority of people across Ireland and Britain are with the family and friends of the two murdered soldiers, Mark Quincey and Patrick Azinkar, who where killed in cold blood on Saturday night and the murdered PSNI officer, Constable Carroll murdered Monday.

I am the SDLP’s youngest political representative at 23 years old, I am the same age as the murdered soldier Mark Quincey and two years older than Patrick Azinkar. That made me and Mark both 11 years old and Patrick only 9 years old when the last British soldier was murdered here, in South Armagh.

Those that carried these attacks out at the weekend have absolutely nothing to offer this society or our people other than misery and pain and they need to be brought to justice. Any true Irish man or woman, Irish nationalist or Irish unionist, Catholic, Protestant or neither, should recognise this and give any information they have that could bring them to justice forward.

In Stormont on Monday (09-03-2009) a sense of unity unseen before was shown, which was again shown On Tuesday and today, and I’m sure will continue – showing the dissents that they will not destabilise the peace process or the institutions – and this is very welcome, for it defeats what the dissidents set out to achieve.

There is no doubt that my generation owes a great debt of gratitude to the past generation of Hume, Mallon and Rodgers, and others from all parties, for helping secure an end to violence and establishing power sharing institutions – although slow to start.

We owe a great sense of thanks to this present generation for getting the institutions back up and running and enshrining democratic politics above all other forms, however rocky.

My generation, the future generation, have no desire to go back to the horrific and pointless destruction and murders of the past. We have no desire to revisit the heartache and pain that others had to endure.

We grew up at the end of the troubles, as did the murdered soldiers, who at the time of ceasefires where most likely very much like me, interested in football or liked climbing trees, and had no interest in politics.

In fact, not only has my generation no intention to go back, we have every intention to go forward, much more forward than ever before in our history and continue un deterred the process of truly uniting our people. We are ‘ceasefire babies’, less tainted by the violence and divisions of the past and we know peace to be normal.

What these murderers carried out is to us abnormal, sickening and deplorable and they will not prevent my generation from sowing the seeds of the unity of our people and peace for our people. The next generation deserves nothing less and we will not let so called ‘Irish republicans’ stop that progress.