Northern Ireland Editor of the Belfast Telegraph & Sunday Independent. Author of Burned: The Inside Story of the Cash-for-Ash Scandal. Any views mine alone.
Sam McBride
Loading...
Last year, Jon Boutcher said the budget Stormont gave him meant it was "probably going to get worse before it gets better". He specifically highlighted "our ability to deal with large-scale public disorder". Stormont then went on to find money to hike every MLA's pay by £14,000.
A really ominous sign about the capabilities of the PSNI, whose Chief Constable has for years been begging Stormont to properly fund it: Just hours after serious racist violence broke out, already the PSNI can't cope and is requesting mutual aid support from GB police forces.
Months after Sinn Féin defended the erection of a statue of an IRA man without applying for planning permission, multiple SF figures are engaged in organised opposition to planning permission for a Stormont stone commemorating Northern Ireland’s centenary.
The party that built Northern Ireland is in revolt over the leadership of the most popular man in unionism. This is about far more than the UUP. The centre in NI politics is getting softer - but the DUP & SF aren't gaining from their rivals' woes.
Inside the moral quagmire of Troubles spying: How two informers expose State dishonesty at the heart of agent-running. Long after the Troubles ended, there’s a grim paradox about agents which society still hasn’t faced up to.
Woman who says former DUP leader raped her as primary school child told police: “I remember I couldn’t tell anyone...I remember telling my imaginary friend”. When asked the name of the man, she paused before saying: “Jeffrey Donaldson MP”.
Sam McBride and I will be at Hinterland in Kells on June 28th.
www.hinterland.ie/p-669-fintan...
Sinn Féin has become the Northern Ireland Civil Service Party, rubber stamping recommendations and not rocking the boat. The reason for SF's abandonment of radicalism, especially on economic matters, is genuinely baffling - and isn't working in NI or RoI.
