“This little piggy went to market, this little piggy went to town and this little piggy went to Cancun where he caught a cold and infested the planet….”
Ah, they don’t tell them like they used to.
While some in the media were having a field day filling bulletins and pages with stories about the impending demise of mankind, swine flu was already claiming its first victims in Northern Ireland.
Although the absence of Executive legislation has apparently become a standing feature of Stormont (not that we’re keeping count, but it’s one item this week, nothing next week), even toothless Private Members’ business is no longer safe. Three debates were pulled this week because the Health Minister, understandably, was pre-occupied with piglet’s little pandemic and wasn’t available to respond to the debates.
Given that a Ministerial response is probably the only tangible outcome of such debates, the motions were pulled and MLAs knocked off early on Tuesday afternoon.
Help is at hand though in the form of the Big Bad Wolf, also known as the Finance Minister, Nigel Dodds, who is promising to huff and puff and blow the House down – well at least the “ugly scaffolding” of Stormont’s bloated Departmental structure.
The ‘Wolfman’ believes that we could save £50m a year by halving the number of Departments – that would involve larger Ministerial portfolios and possibly enough work for one Jnr Minister per Department who could deputise if his boss caught a nasty cold.
Surprisingly, given the need to save taxpayers money, the response by other parties to the court ruling that the DSD Minister was “wrong” to cut funding to a loyalist conflict transformation initiative was decidedly muted – even though it has cost taxpayers £300K in legal fees.
Now, that’s not a sum not to be sneezed at.
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