Community relations: Living together?
Monday, March 8th, 2010The housing selection scheme could increase division, according to Housing Minister Margaret Ritchie. Ryan Jennings looks at how integrated housing could be encouraged. When the Housing Executive was set up in 1971 its main aim was to move away from the evident inequalities in council housing allocation. Up until that year, as is still the norm over the water, ‘council housing’ really did mean housing owned by the council. The executive is now charged with ownership of the social housing stock. While the waiting list has fluctuated, it now sits at over 40,000, with another 20,000...[full story]
Reform: Risk and rapid change
Monday, March 8th, 2010Scenario planner Gill Ringland talks about the key risks facing organisations in today’s world and why ideas need to be tested, not just dreamed up. Making robust decisions in uncertain times was the key theme for Gill Ringland, Chief Executive of the St Andrews Management Institute (SAMI), when she spoke at agendaNi’s managing risk seminar in February. Her talk covered the themes of a forthcoming co-authored book – ‘Beyond Crisis: Achieving Renewal in a Turbulent World’ – due out this month. Many systematic changes are taking place globally, notably the shift in economic...[full story]
Policy: Projecting population
Monday, March 8th, 2010Why does counting people up matter to governments? Peter Cheney looks at how Northern Ireland’s future population is estimated and some uses for the statistics. Since Babylonian times, countries have counted their people in regular censuses. Our next one is next year. As well as these snapshots in time, governments also find it useful to look ahead and predict whether and by how much their populations will grow or decline in future. Every two years, a population projection is brought out for Northern Ireland and the most recent, published in October 2009, covers the period 2008-2013. Two...[full story]
Economy: Recounting the cash
Monday, March 8th, 2010A review of a spending review, as a tight new financial year approaches. Money is on the mind of most MLAs as inevitable budget cuts loom. In draft form, the Executive has now set out how it intends to use its money in 2010-2011. Finance Minister Sammy Wilson presented the draft revised spending review plans to the Assembly on 12 January and they are currently being debated in the Assembly’s committees. The Executive’s original budget was approved by the Assembly in January 2008 and covers 2008-2011. As Sammy Wilson openly admits in the revision paper’s introduction, times have...[full story]
Policing & justice: The deal unpacked
Monday, March 8th, 2010agendaNi unpacks the Hillsborough Agreement and the early steps after its launch. Launched with less hype than its predecessors, the Hillsborough Agreement is the product of two weeks of gruelling negotiations in the castle, while the media mostly looked on from the wintry outside. This latest step in the political process is now public for anyone to read and comment on, although given the efforts which led to its creation, some have cast doubt on whether it will now be amended. Essentially, the four major subjects which feature highly in the agreement and its aftermath are: justice...[full story]
Meg Hillier interview: Controlling borders
Monday, March 8th, 2010Home Office Minister Meg Hillier talks to Meadhbh Monahan about immigration’s impact on the province and why a UK-wide approach is relevant. There is no reason to think that Northern Ireland is exempt from the risk posed by Islamic terrorists, according to Meg Hillier. During her visit to Stormont – Hillier who is also an MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch and a former journalist – echoed comments made by Northern Ireland Secretary of State Shaun Woodward. Woodward told The Politics Show that the threat of Islamic terrorists striking Northern Ireland is a primary reason why national...[full story]
Westminister 2010: The locals in London
Monday, March 8th, 2010Labour’s Newtownabbey-born Kate Hoey and former Inst pupil Glyn Chambers are preparing to stand against each other for the Vauxhall seat in London. Ryan Jennings spoke to both candidates as they prepared to fight it out. Northern Irish people move around the place, that’s no secret. In London, it would not be hard to find a few but in Vauxhall, an inner area of the city, there are two who will be fighting for the same seat. Kate Hoey is well-known. She has sat as an MP for the area for over 20 years and yet still holds onto her accent. Lesser-known Glyn Chambers, the Conservative...[full story]
Assembly committee: Consensus building?
Friday, March 5th, 2010Ryan Jennings talks to OFMDFM Committee Chair Danny Kennedy on the intricacies of being a chairman and building a consensus. Like the department, the central point of the OFMDFM Committee’s work, Danny Kennedy says, is the Programme for Government, or in its lesser-known guise, the “government manifesto”. While his party of course are aspiring to greater things, Danny Kennedy believes that both his and the committee’s work is “critical” to the good working of government up on the hill. As a statutory committee, it has full scrutiny powers but he prefers instead to focus...[full story]
Politics interview: Margaret Ritchie
Friday, March 5th, 2010Peter Cheney talks to the new SDLP leader about her plans for nationalism and aims for the forthcoming Westminster poll. Taking the economy seriously and bringing more power to Northern Ireland are two major priorities for Margaret Ritchie as she takes up her party’s leadership. While she takes on that job on the eve of another election contest after a long electoral decline, the new SDLP leader believes the party still offers a real alternative to its rivals. Ritchie has spent 30 years in the party, serving as a Down councillor from 1985 to last year, a Northern Ireland Forum member...[full story]
