Kicking Off

Not really sure if I should do this blog thing, but at work at Public Achievement, we're all into new media these days - particularly through WIMPS which is a finalist in the 2008 Stockholm Challenge Awards. Even our olde worlde PA website has been getting some significant hits - I suspect via the WIMPS traffic. Anyway, I encouraged by David Wilcox and his encouragement for the 'Blogging Boss' - so here goes!

I have a significant worry about our new Executive, and its capacity to deliver real change in Northern Ireland, and I have felt this worry as a citizen, as a voluntary sector leader and also as a relative of a dying man. As a citizen (and parent) I am particularly dismayed by Caitriona Ruane and her complete failure to deliver any kind of vision or leadership on replacing the atrocious 11 plus academic selection process. One of my kids has just been through it (she's done well and will be going to a Catholic Grammar School - that's a whole other story for a guy from the Woodvale in a ' Mixed Marriage'), the other was supposed to be the first year group into the new system but it seems today that the new system is a long-way off. According to the BBC the new vision of the Minister appears to be a watering down of the existing system in a weak sop to the vociferous Grammar School lobby. My main problem with her however is not her lack of ideas - but rather her apparent inability to do deals - to do politics - real politics.

True - tennis playing and wandering around the jungles of Colombia are probably not the best preparation for political office, but I am shocked by her lack of sophistication and that of most of her colleagues. Maguinness impressed me when he had the education portfolio - he really seemed to be able to work with people - all kinds of people - and his preparation of alternatively hiding from the Brits and then killing them, was probably not the best foundation either, but he has something that she clearly lacks.

As the head of an NGO then, my worry is about the collective lack of vision on the part of the Executive. The Programme For Government may well have been a work of compromise of which the parties are in large-part proud, but there is a significant amount of baby being thrown out with the bath water in the desire to focus on economic development. I wonder if the Comptroller of New York who stressed the importance of peace walls coming down got the chance to read the Deloitte report into the cost of division in Northern Ireland? Deloitte (not renown for its left-wing leanings or wild exaggerations) estimated that 1.5 Billion Quid is poured into the cost of keeping this society segregated annually. When we phoned up to get a copy last summer, we were interrogated as to who we were and why we wanted it! From where I am sitting, the poor will be ignored in pursuit of a little piece of the Celtic Tiger for the 'six counties'. As with the 11 plus, the poor are sacrificed in the interests of the middle classes. The advantaged have more advantages heaped upon them.

And the third part of my sad trilogy is the most personal and difficult. My father-in-law is dying - and there is little the system can do to stop the inevitable - but there is much more that could be done for him and his family in the short term were the health system not so delapidated, demoralised and decayed. His family are constantly ignored and kept in the dark, and no part of the system seems to talk to any other part. I had the same experience over years with my mother - who spent weeks in a filthy ward in the Ulster Hospital, run by embittered and disillusioned staff. I am not unexpert in these matters - I have spent the greater part of my life dipping into the health system through a growing complex of complaints, and the more time goes on, the more dismayed I become. The new part of the RVH is beautiful, has great art and landscaping (things I approve of as part of a health promoting environment), but something fundamental is wrong, and perhaps it is the same thing that is fundamentally wrong with our whole society.

I was recently at an event where some journalists were speaking about community relations. They were unanimously agreed that it was not their role to bring peace to Northern Ireland or to improve community relations. On one level I think they are right, but on another thoroughly wrong. What I mean is, we can all say that - it wasn't us - it was THEM. It is too easy, and it ignores the fact that we all were and are responsible for the mess - and individually and collectively, we need to take responsibility for building better solutions.

All this dismay brings me back to the importance of the kind of work that I do - because it suspends cynicism, and encourages people to take responsibility for the things they want to change. The challenge it to amplify the voice of hope and of reason, and to turn politics back into the art of the possible.

Rant over for now - let me know what you think, and whether I should spend my time more usefully!