PMS

It sounds looks like the proposal the Northern Ireland Executive developed a number of months ago to compensate the PMS Savers has been accepted by the Treasury.

Milliband blows it

Ed Milliband will be extremely glad that Osborne's announcements will be dominating the news agenda.  Astonishingly bad performance in PMQ's.

Quote of the day

"Michael Gove was heckled about tuiton fees a few mins ago - he said 'Vince Cable is in charge of universities!'"

Quote of the day

This slugger comment about the UUP raised a smile:

"Its like a whole party of Raymond Kennedys."

Meanwhile Raymond has done the decent thing.

The dog's breakfast

Perhaps the Ulster fry has not been completed because the UUP were busy making the dog's breakfast.  Yesterday, they released a brief document on the budget crisis.  Unlike the wall to wall coverage of Sinn Fein's proposals, it receives skant media attention.  Whether they realise it or not this is probably doing them a favour as the less attention brought to the document the better for them.  However, the fact it is not on their website maybe shows they do realise it. So despite it being called "You heard it here first" not from their website you don't. (In the absence of this it can be downloaded here.)

On first reading I thought it could be so bad that it would be deserving of a cult status - so monumentally weak that its direness is worthy of appreciation. However, it even fails to achieve that.  The document is by and large incoherent noise and babble with some economic cliche bingo thrown in.  It barely has a single actual proposal.  

The sole thing it does do  is isolate the  UUP Health Minister Michael McGimpsey with no backing for ring-fencing.  It rejects:

"Narrow departmental priorities cannot be allowed to usurp Northern Ireland plc’s priorities..."

Then offers a sentence on health that is near non-sensical:

"All research suggests that front-line health services are at the head of the public’s list of public service delivery which should be protected."

If Sinn Fein's proposals were economically illiterate then the UUP document is the equivalent of cave paintings. I had suggested the Sinn Fein proposals should be placed on the fridge for the UUP I have an alternative suggestion.  One of the most memorable quotes from my time in the UUP was John Taylor during a UUP Executive refering to a Maginnis/McGimpsey drafted negotiation document as "toilet paper". This follows in that tradition.

Arse in the seat

Tom Elliott was elected as the UUP leader on 22nd September 2010.  Yesterday evening was 18th October, a unknown collection (in terms of size and importance) of UUP members decided to gather together to plot against Elliott's leadership. The man has barely got his arse in the seat.  In the four weeks he has been leader he has not made any big strides in any particular direction if there are any grounds for complaint it is more the low profile he has adopted.  Yet this has led some to complain that:

"They are increasingly disenchanted with the direction in which the leadership of the party is moving."

The fact that they have chosen a notional name "The 2010 group" that will be out of date in a few weeks probably indicates we aren't dealing with the most inventive group of people.  Neither does their outline strategy which reads like a re-tread of UCUNF. 

"...the possibility of realising a new bridgehead in politics the goal of which would be to appeal to a wider political and business community...One source said, ” we’re open to reaching out to other parties here and in London.”

The use of language would also give a strong indication of who is involved in leaking it to Mallie. The justification for this plotting is the claim:

"...there is an impatience among many of these figures from within the business community at what they see as backward looking politics gripping the Ulster Unionist Party."

If anyone thinks the UUP is a serious topic of boardroom discussion in Northern Ireland then they have little connection to the real world.

No soda and potato bread?

The eggs are taken care of and so are the sausages where is the rest of the Ulster Fry? (Assuming it can still be called that without being accused of being a closet nationalist).

Privatisation

The Adam Smith Institute has highlighted the potential income from a new privatisation programme in the UK (pdf file).  It claims there is £90 billion in potential income from such a programme.  A figure not to be sniffed at in these chastened times.  It includes on its list the ideas of selling ports and water companies.  It estimates that NI Water is worth £500m (but provides no estimate for the sale of ports here).

Previously, privatisation would have been seen as a non-starter because of Sinn Fein's opposition to the principle.  However, their proposals for the de facto privatisation of the Housing Executive and assets sales may have made this percieved wisdom outdated. Another practical impediment is getting an agreement with Treasury over who receives the receipts for such sales. Plus you have to accept that any sales in the next few years will produce returns on the lower end of the scale and that it will take a couple of years to provide any returns.

The Sinn Fein option of borrowing against sales in the future has been turned down by Treasury before and carries the future risk of what happens if the sale doesn't realise what you expected - how is that hole filled?  There is some suspicion that privatisation/asset sales will be the means of Paterson 'keeping' the capital spend pledge but we should get clarity on that this Wednesday.

The Scottish experience

Following the commencement of the debate about the future of our education system it is relevant to look at the attempt to move the system on in Scotland.  It highlights the difficulty of the half-way house of sharing campuses.  They have faced Church opposition as the process developed.  Also experiences of a shared campus seem to question if they are genuinely shared at all:

Lauren Morris, 18, from Midlothian, attended St David's Roman Catholic School when it formed Scotland's first shared campus with a non-denominational secondary, Dalkeith High, in 2004. Morris believes the strict segregation of the two schools by teachers prevented any kind of integration between the pupils.

She says: "We shared a dinner hall and some of us had friends at Dalkeith High, but we weren't even allowed to go over and say hello to them or we'd get into trouble. I think teachers used the excuse that we'd fight to separate us, but they should have helped us all integrate and get along.

"The pupils wanted to integrate but the teachers wouldn't listen. It got to the point where you would sneak across the dinner hall to the other side just to talk to your Dalkeith High pals. Even in the playground, we'd take off our school jumpers and go across to their side of the playground. I wasn't scared of the teachers, I just wanted to talk to my friends.

"The teachers used to have walkie-talkies and if they saw a pupil in a different side of the playground they'd radio each other and take that pupil back to their own side.

"One time there was a Dalkeith pupil in front of me as we were walking along the corridor and a teacher stopped him and said where are you going?' He said he was going to his class, and this teacher said get back to your own side, you're not one of us, get back to your own school'. She'd never say you're not one of our pupils', it was always you're not one of us'.

"It was quite confusing for me because I was Protestant at a Catholic school and had been taught that being a Catholic meant you treat everyone as one. Even though you could tell no-one really cared if you were Catholic or Protestant, they'd still call us Fenians', and folk from our school would be shouting Proddies'."

There have also been other practical challenges:

"Look at the case of Broomhouse Primary school and St Josephs RC school, ultra-modern buildings on the same campus but with different entrances and the sole joint facility shared on a regular basis being the dining room. The children don't even play together at break...Added to this unhappy scenario is another serious cause for conflict. The Broomhouse school is larger than St Joseph's but now has a much smaller school roll...Also, St Joseph's is seen as offering a first-class education and so its school roll has swollen...St Joseph's has a simple solution - swap buildings. But this proposal has been met with indignation by Broomhouse parents. The Broomhouse Parents Council has suggested St Joseph's uses two surplus classrooms, but this has been turned down for being too far away from St Joseph's to feel part of the school. The corridors and classrooms would have to be blessed by a priest, iconography would need to be installed and the Catholic children would run a gauntlet of insults when walking through the non-denominational school."

In the same area the situation is comparable at secondary level:

"It will be little better when these children move on to secondary education. Most will either go to Forrester High School or St Augustine's RC High School, two schools in brand new buildings, and, like the primary schools, sharing a campus. Like their primary feeder schools, they share only one facility, but here it is a swimming pool."

A New Young Consumer

An odd moment (for me anyway) in Waterstones yesterday. (Well two I actually had 4 books in my hand to purchase at one stage but somehow managed to put three of them down.)  While I was prowling about upstairs the youngest was being wheeled about downstairs who decided to pick a book off the shelf (it must have appealed as what had been the fav book until now had been cast aside and took a few minutes looking to locate again).

We progressed to the till and when we went to take the book off the wean to pay for it. This was refused.  The first assumption was a tug of war was about to ensue but no it was willingly handed over directly to the shop assistant and patience displayed until it was returned. At 19 months, and before the first proper words have been spoken, being a consumer had been sussed out.  I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with it working out in that order even if book buying has been successfully passed on.

Vote Dem or the puppies get it

Who's afraid of the big bad church?

Martin McGuinness apparently.  Following Peter Robinson's speech on Friday (the main point of which has been missed in the kerfuffle - the proposal of a long-term strategy to transform our school system), the Deputy First Minister who has repeatedly called for leadership, bravery (insert your peace process cliche) over the past decade or so is fearful of 'taking on' certain interest groups:

"If Peter thinks taking on the Catholic Church, the Catholic bishops and indeed the Protestant churches for that matter and other interest groups is a sensible route to go, I think that is a big mistake,"

Quote of the day

"What Lennon needed was a sympathetic housemaster telling him to pull his socks up. Instead, he got Yoko Ono.”

Sounds good - UPDATE

It appears that Owen Paterson has announced a reversal on the position of the capital cuts and now apparently we can cash the capital spending cheque agreed as part of the St Andrews Agreeement package.  Caution makes me want to see the detail, you always do when the Treasury is involved.  However, this does appear to be genuinely good news.  Capital cuts are the easiest but not the most strategic.  It will help us address the infrastructural underinvestment that dogs our economic development as well as help the construction sector through the tough years ahead.

However, two challenges remain.  If it has been secured then we must ensure it gets spent.  Furthermore, this does not solve the revenue spending problems.

UPDATE It doesn't bode too well on the details when it appears that the figures the NIO released are wrong. Some claim it increased the spend by £800 million more than had been spent.

One for the fridge

I've been re-reading Sinn Fein's economic proposals to get us through the budget crisis again.  The crash and burn of Sinn Fein on this topic in the Republic of Ireland should be appreciated so they have at least tried.  Therefore, like a child's drawing we should be kind in our treatment of it.  Let us congratulate them on their effort, stick it to the metaphorical fridge, send them happily on their way while the real conversations get going.

Principles and Practicalities

Sinn Fein has produced proposals for dealing with the cuts (pdf file).  Once you wade past the All-Ireland guff, in terms of principles there are a number of very interesting shifts that probably provide more basis for advancement than the individual ideas.  They have accepted the principle of cutting down on government (assembly costs and quangos but not departments).  They have accepted in principle a pay freeze (but limited it to higher earners).  They have accepted in principle asset sales.  They are also seem to imply an acceptance of cuts coming (if trying to dissipate it).

In terms of practicalities of their proposals, additional tax powers being an answer is dubious.  If the powers are to be used to "generate income" then they will have to rise (significantly) undermining their ability to then "stimulate development".

In terms of savings the RPA claims don't stack up.  Curbing consultants in government is already underway.  In terms of revenues the phone mast tax would most likely be passed on in increased costs to consumers and businesses or if it succeeded in getting companies to share masts then it would achieve less revenue than predicted. (UPDATE Chekov highlights another issue about this). The plastic bag tax may have some possibilites.  However, by my back of envelope calculations, it'd raise only £5-6 million a year so it represents loose change.  As for the environmental issues, shops have been making some headway on reducing their use without a tax involved.  They specifically rule out water charges or removing any rate reliefs which would include the property value cap at £400,000.

A number of the proposals are essentially means of the Executive borrowing money itself but Treasury rules will almost certainly block this (unless of course the body is privatised).  They have an interesting suggestion how asset realisation could release cash now but avoids selling at the bottom of the market. However any relaxation of the rules is unlikely considering that central policy is to reduce the national debt not increase it by rebranding it as belonging to different parts of the nation.  The expectation of generosity from the four main banks is heartwarming but I wouldn't be relying on getting £400m out of them any time soon.  You'd be lucky to get a cup of coffee out of them.

There are two proposals as regards European money.  The Regional Innovation Strategy set a target of 50m euros from the 7th framework over the 07-13 period.  So a target of 100m euros in the next couple of years is extremely ambitious.   As for the JEREMIE and JESSICA programmes this largely falls under the domain of DSD with the rumour that it hasn't been pulling its weight as regards trying to access these (so perhaps a little bit of intra-nationalist politics at play there).

As to the Green New Deal being an answer that all depends on your belief or otherwise in the underlying premise and the value for money represented by the public subvention involved.

Overall has it really found £1.9 billion of the potentially £2bn hole? Nope, not even close but it still represents a step towards the harsh realities we will face after 20th October.

PS I don't know how many times they used the phrase all-Ireland (they annoyingly disabled the word search function on the document). After counting 14 references I got fed up and stopped counting.

The RPA Panacea

Sinn Fein have pulled the tired old rabbit of RPA out of the hat as part of their answer to the financial squeeze. It is at least progress that they are accepting there is a problem rather than the denial that continues to the party faithful.  Regrettably RPA doesn't come even close to providing us with a solution.

It is estimated that in the next four years that our budget will be cut by approximately £1.5-2 billion.  So cash in the next four years is the priority.  There are five options as regards RPA with Option 5 producing the greatest level of savings - the £400m that is oft mntion but  £438,682,338 to be exact.  However, these savings are spread over 25 years.  The economic appraisal estimates that it would produce an annual saving of £41m. However, the savings come with one-off implementation costs of £126.6 m.  This means real savings don't come in the early years, a problem they are wrestling with at a nation level.  We'd also have to find the £126.6m from somewhere, this would require even deeper cuts now, not less. 

Also Option 5 includes setting up a strategic waste authority and a business services organisation.  This produces £280m of the savings.  Sinn Fein opposed these elements at the Executive.  The £438m in savings can't be reached without them.  So either SF is preparing to reverse its position or it is misrepresenting how much would be saved.  There is also a need to be honest about RPA. It is not simply a book movement of cash but will involve the pain of job losses.

PS As for ESA a number of amendments to the legislation and it could pass.  However, the standard answer for why this has not occurred applies, Catriona Ruane.

PPS This also does not mean RPA is a bad idea but simply that it is not the solution our immediate budget problems.

Undecided

Another ad from Americae, this time for embattled republican Senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell.  She has not had her troubles to find as regards her campaign with the republican establishment as unhappy as the Democrats are about her.

As regards the ad, I get the concept - address a negative stereotypes upfront (the witch story and judgementalism) and try to redefine by playing to the strength, in this case being an outsider (and even just ordinary citizen).  However, I'm just not sure if she manages to pull it off.

Sweepstake

"Sinn Fein will unveil details tomorrow on how £1b savings can be made here. They will also argue £800m can be found for development."

How many times will the phrase 'All-Ireland' will be used?

Quote of the day

"One backbencher even managed to make ghost noises all the way through Cameron’s response to a question about Claire Rayner’s last words."

Our parliamentary democracy at its best.