Dear Stormont. Frig away off with your ‘consultations’ and do something!

I read the Draft Programme for Government, so you don’t have to. It is 88 pages of vacuous waffle. Vague generalities like ‘Our Plan is an ambitious agenda of change for Northern Ireland. We will make it happen by working in partnership.’

The core issue is there are no specifics on anything, just vague aspirations. I give you the strategy for solving homelessness:

We will focus on preventing homelessness, making it brief, rare and non-recurrent by working collaboratively, prioritising housing solutions for those most in need and developing innovative funding models with third sector partners to purchase homes.

Well, there you go. That’s fixed.

The depressing thing is that this document took 7 months, hundreds of civil servants, and thousands of work hours, running into the millions, to say not much at all.

BUT the thing that really pushed me over the edge is Stormont wants to ‘consult’ on the proposals. Consult is management speak for do bugger all and push the issue down the road. Consulting is the illusion that the public has some involvement in the process. When an organisation wants to avoid an issue or avoid making a decision they consult or call for another report.

Back in 2020, then-Education Minister Peter Weir’s response to the issue of educational underachievement in working-class Protestant boys was not to do something to address the problem but to call for another report. This was to add to the seven reviews already into this issue over the last ten years.

Educational underachievement has only gotten worse in the four years since that story.

So, I have some feedback for our glorious leaders. I have conducted extensive research at my own time and expense, and here are the wishes of the good people of Northern Ireland as regards the Programme for Government:

• We would quite like to get treated when we are sick
• We would like some houses to live in
• We would like our kids to be educated
• We would like to have decent-paying jobs
• We would like good roads to drive on and nice buses and trains
• We would like clean water to come out of the taps, and the lights to come on when we flick the switch

There you go, that will save you several million in consultancy fees. Now feck away off and do something!

I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.