Another fig leaf for the DUP.

The DUP looks set to gain chairmanship of the Assembly scrutiny team which will monitor the new Justice Minister. But it remains unclear whether Sinn Fein or the SDLP will take up the vice-chair of the committee. The 22 chairs and vice-chairs of the existing committees are up for grabs after a decision by the procedures committee to re-run the entire process. As leader of the largest party, DUP leader Peter Robinson has first choice and is thought likely to opt for the role to scrutinise the minister — almost certainly Alliance leader David Ford. Sinn Fein appears likely to stick to its first choice of retaining the Finance Committee chair.

The reality is that EVERY decision made by the Justice Minister requires the co-First Ministers to approve it. The reality is that EVERY decision made by the Justice Minister is subject to Sinn Fein veto in the Executive.

The DUP have sold out on Policing and Justice and are desperate to get as much cover as possible. Still, I suppose the fact that the Chairman of this new Committee gets extra cash and maybe that's the main thing the DUP aspire to?

I have an article on the Education Minister Caitriona Ruane's latest attack on Prep School funding here on Open Unionism - give it a visit! 

I note that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged Turks living in foreign countries to take out citizenship of the new homelands – not to integrate, but rather to become more politically active, according to the website of news magazine Der Spiegel.

Fair enough, one more reason NOT to allow Turkey into the EU. Yet all major UK political parties support Turkey entering the EU. It's as if they actually want to see the Islamisation of Europe accelerate!

I see that police officers have been banned from asking for 'Christian' names for fear of offending other religions.

Officers taking down a suspect's particulars must now refer to their 'personal' or 'family name' as the word 'Christian' could offend Muslims, Sikhs and other faiths, according to new diversity guidelines. They state bobbies on the beat should refrain from using phrases such as 'my dear' or 'love', when addressing women for fear it may cause embarrassment or offence. Well-meaning gestures like handshakes or putting a comforting arm around a victim or grieving family member are also prohibited as it could be deemed 'unprofessional'.

Whoever in the Kent Police who issued this guidance should be sacked. It is removing the humanity from Policing in order to be politically correct through a left-wing prism.

 

Here's how left-wing politics works. 

The Trade Union behind BA strike receives £18m from taxpayers in ‘money-laundering’ deal with Labour, meanwhile Labour has received almost £30m from the Trade Unions and is kept financially afloat by the Unions. The Unions, themselves, represent the State sector with 85% of members working for the State.

So, the State in the form of Labour funds the Unions who fund the Labour Party. And so it goes. 

So, Pope Benedict has written a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland with guidelines on preventing and punishing sexual abuse of children by priests.

This comes as more scandalous revelations come only from Ireland but also in his native Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and even Australia. What was first perceived in Rome as a series of local scandals has now escalated into a worldwide problem for the Catholic Church with new allegations emerging each week from Catholics claiming they have been victims of sexual abuse by priests.

The betrayal of the faithful by the Church is bad, the abuse of kids is worse, and the failure to get to grips with the CAUSE of all of this paedophilia is shocking. There are many in senior office today in the RC Church that need to do the decent thing and resign. Writing a letter is a poor substitute for effective leadership in this situation, don't you think? I believe that faith in God is a keystone of life but those who covered up the abuse of kids by Priests in decades now gone are a moral disgrace WHEREVER they now are to be found and should be expelled from the Church.

The eco-tyrants seek to strike again.

"Householders could be fined up to £1,000 if they fail to comply with complex new rules on refuse sorting. Food scraps, tea bags and vegetable peelings thrown into the wrong dustbin could land them with hefty penalties under government plans to be unveiled today. Families could end up with five different bins and receptacles - including compulsory slop buckets for food waste - and be forced to sift through rubbish for anything that can be recycled, reused or converted into electricity. The proposals are the brainchild of environment secretary Hilary Benn, who wants to banish all food, cans, paper and glass from landfill sites to increase recycling rates and slash greenhouse gas emissions. Residents who persistently flout the rules by not sorting rubbish properly or refusing to recycle would be fined.

Same mantra. Use the AGW green agenda to punish people. What a load of old rubbish! Why do these people not realise that using the stick to coerce us to embrace their agenda simply alienates and irritates?

Did you see that more than 500 doctors are being mobilised to assess whether the 2.6 million people on incapacity benefit can work?

Yvette Cooper, the Work and Pensions Secretary, will announce next week that claimants will be told when they will be tested, and to be ready to work. The Government has promised to cut the number of such claimants, who cost £12.5 billion a year, by one million over the next five years. At the planned rate of 10,000 assessments a week, however, it will take until 2015 for doctors to examine all those receiving the benefit. The programme is a key part of Budget measures to get people back into jobs, saving up to £4 billion a year.

Those deemed capable of work will be told they can receive only jobseeker’s allowance of £64.30 a week, rather than employment support allowance, which is replacing incapacity benefit and pays up to £30 a week more. Conservatives say the Government has fostered a culture of dependency, with half of such claimants having received the benefit for more than five years.

The motivation to claim incapacity benefit is obvious but so is the political benefit. Rather than seeing the numbers claiming jobseekers allowance swell it is much more convenient to see those on incapacity rise. Until now. 

Did you read that Iran is assisting al Qaeda by facilitating links between senior terrorist leaders and affiliate groups? So says the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the U.S. Central Command, also said Iran's nuclear program is facing problems, and as a result, Tehran is not expected to emerge with a nuclear weapon this year.

The exact details of when U.S. intelligence agencies estimate Iran will have a nuclear bomb are classified, but the timeline for developing a nuclear device has "thankfully slid to the right a bit," he said. On Tehran's ties to al Qaeda, Gen. Petraeus said the group "continues to use Iran as a key facilitation hub, where facilitators connect al Qaedas senior leadership to regional affiliates."

Good. If there is going to be some slide on the timelines of the Mullahs getting nukes then that can be usefully filled by attacking their nuclear sites and reducing them to dust. 

Has the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland a death-wish?

A senior member of the Roman Catholic Church has provoked outrage after he said he would not stop a child being abused if it breached the confidentiality of a paedophile. Monsignor Maurice Dooley was speaking amid calls for Cardinal Brady’s resignation over a failure to tell police about one of Ireland’s most notorious paedophile priests, Father Brendan Smyth.

Is he right? Should the confidentiality of a paedophile be respected at all costs and should the price be continued child abuse? I don't think so. I think this man is a disgrace and should be thrown out of the Church. Those who prey on our children deserve no prayers and Dooley should be ashamed of his comments in my view. Your thoughts?