Expanding Fuel Poverty

I must admit to having had a bit of a chuckle when I was leafing through the newspapers and spotted this in the Fermanagh Herald:

Sinn Féin MP MLA for Fermanagh South Tyrone Michelle Gildernew has welcomed the intervention of the Office of the First and deputy First Minister to expand the fuel poverty to ensure that it now includes an additional 36,000 pensioners.

I assumed a journalistic rush to meet deadline for going to print was the reason for this. However, a simple Google search revealed that the mistake had appeared elsewhere- attributed to another Sinn Féin MLA:

Sinn Féin Social Development spokesperson, North Belfast MLA Carál Ní Chuilín has welcomed the intervention of the Office of the First and deputy First Minister to expand the fuel poverty to ensure that it now includes an additional 36,000 pensioners.

The Dawn Of A New Era

Today marks a major milestone in American history. For the first time in a country which not so long ago had slavery and even more recently had segregation, a black man has become President.

I haven't seen before anything that compares to the tide of goodwill which has accompanied Barack Obama to the White House. The positivity in recent months, and in particular today as millions took to the the streets of Washington DC to greet the new President, is in stark contrast to the gloom invoked by global financial problems.

And these are the problems which will greet the President as he takes his seat in the Oval Office. The goodwill will sustain him for a decent amount of time, but he will need to deliver the goods to meet the almost impossible expectations which have been placed upon him.

Good luck and best wishes.

Interesting Options

Conall has an article detailing how the SDLP Conference this weekend in Armagh will debate the creation of a New Ireland Coalition. In the same closed session, the party is also scheduled to debate the option of setting up in the south. This would mark a new departure by the party and send out a very clear signal to southern parties who want to come north and think the SDLP will stand aside that the SDLP is going to fight its own corner.

The people of the south have always been very supportive of the SDLP and there's a gaping hole between the centre-right position of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and the varying leftism of Labour into which a strong centre-left party could fit. Of course, the SDLP already faces problems in the north, but perhaps setting up in the south could provide an impetus of talent, an influx of good people who actually believe in the SDLP's principles.

Enough Is Enough

I'm not going to bother analysing the respective views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict- there's plenty of that already going on elsewhere on the net. But on a purely humanitarian level the current onslaught by the Israelis must be stopped immediately. This rubbish that they want to avoid civilian casualties is wholly unsustainable. If you bomb places that are packed with civilians like schools, you're going to kill them. It's simple really. There's nothing to be gained from killing swathes of innocent people- it'll simply serve to create a new generation of angry combatants.

And while the Israelis may have the superior firepower, censure must also fall on Hamas. What do they hope to achieve by firing rockets at Israeli communities? They know perfectly well how the odds are stacked on the military front, and for every few people that they kill in Israel, dozens of Palestinians will be killed in return. By now they should know that if you tread on the paw of an angry dog, it'll take a lump out of your leg. Regardless of whether their ideology is right or wrong, so long as Hamas launch pointless attacks on the Israelis, it is their own people who will suffer. That is the reality of the situation.

The leaderships on boths sides need to step back and have a think about what they are doing. The people of the Gaza Strip are suffering terribly and absolutely nothing can justify putting them through such horror.