IN November 2024, the Executive found a spare £17 million for a one-off winter fuel payment for pensioners who had lost the benefit when the government decided to means-test it.

Stormont took until the following March to issue the payments, a delay that was universally ridiculed, as winter was over and spring had sprung.

SDLP MLA Mark H Durkan summed up the reaction when he described it as “utter madness”.

March has rolled around again and the UK government has found £17 million for a means-tested home heating oil payment in Northern Ireland.

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Stormont is not sure how to distribute the money, so it will probably be the height of summer before payments are made.

Why is this not being viewed as an unseasonable extravagance? Everyone is simply complaining it is not enough.

Perhaps the absurdity would be clearer if we framed it as a sectarian argument. Presbyterians have probably turned their heating off already.

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MOST of central Belfast will be closed to private vehicles for the week of August’s all-Ireland Fleadh.

Belfast City Council, which is hosting the event, has made detailed plans to ensure continued access for residents and delivery vehicles and has coordinated with Translink to provide an enhanced public transport plan for everyone else.

Yet absurdly, almost the whole affected area is meant to be under similar restrictions on a permanent basis.

Restrictions are simply not enforced by the two bodies responsible, Stormont’s Department for Infrastructure and the PSNI.

If the council delivers enforcement, albeit through Eamon de Valera-style maidens dancing at crossroads, this should contribute to the debate on transferring responsibility to councils.

Before unionists start complaining about the closures, they would be better pointing out that a succession of nationalist infrastructure ministers have been unable to do their jobs.

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MANCHESTER’s Labour mayor Andy Burnham was the star speaker at last weekend’s Alliance Party conference.

Claire Hanna and Matthew O’Toole, the SDLP’s leader and assembly leader, knocked the shine off this coup by escorting Mr Burnham around St George’s Market in Belfast on the morning of the conference and publicising it online.

Mr Burnham presumably felt he had to pay tribute to the SDLP-Labour ‘sister party’ arrangement, especially as Alliance has a similar arrangement with the Liberal Democrats.

While Alliance will have been furious, the real dismay will have been in Labour’s branch in Northern Ireland.

Burnham has been the most high-profile supporter of the branch’s campaign for Labour to lift its ban on running candidates here – a ban the SDLP devotes significant lobbying efforts to maintain.

He made no mention of the subject in his speech to Alliance, despite listing other proposals for electoral, regional and constitutional reform.

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HILARY Benn, the secretary of state, is “the sticking block” to Stormont reform, according to Alliance deputy leader Eoin Tennyson.

Speaking to UTV after his party’s conference, Mr Tennyson said the UUP, Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the Irish government have all “moved” towards Alliance’s position but Mr Benn will not “engage with the parties locally to institute” reform.

The DUP was conspicuously missing from this list, nor is there much sign of movement from Sinn Féin: it and the DUP opposed an SDLP motion two weeks ago to retitle the first ministers.

Mr Tennyson may have been attempting commendable tact by deflecting the blame towards the secretary of state.

The reality is that Mr Benn has correctly judged there is no point pushing reform while it lacks the support of one or both of the two main parties.

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THE apprenticeship levy is complicated in Northern Ireland, particularly for firms that also operate in Britain, because Westminster collects the tax but education and training are devolved.

However, this is simplicity itself compared to the Youth Jobs Grant the government has announced with great fanfare as its solution to rising youth unemployment and economic inactivity.

Employers will receive £3,000 for every person they hire aged 18 to 24 who has been on universal credit and looking for a job for six months or more.

That will involve the benefits system, which is uniquely devolved to Northern Ireland in principle but not in practice; education and training, which are devolved across the UK; and employment law, which is only devolved to Northern Ireland, permitting trials of the scheme to go ahead in Scotland and Wales, although it will only be fully implemented in England.

Precedent suggests Stormont will be given a top-up to the block grant to try running an equivalent scheme but it does not have the devolved power, or the financial fire-power, to do the one thing that would most help young people find work: reversing Labour’s idiotic increase in employers’ national insurance

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ANOTHER brilliant Labour wheeze in England will have implications for devolution here.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is drawing up plans to share income tax and possibly national insurance revenue with the mayors of major English cities, such as Andy Burnham in Manchester.

As usual with the tight-fisted control freaks at the Treasury, this will be less impressive than it sounds.

The chunk of revenue mayors will be given will be matched with a subtraction from their central government grant, so they will start with no more money overall.

The idea is that they will keep a share of rising revenue, rewarding policies that encourage economic growth.

However, mayors will not be allowed to change tax rates, so they cannot spur growth by cutting taxes. Other approaches will have to be used.

Scotland and Wales have devolved income tax properly, albeit partially, giving them control over tax rates as well as revenue.

Sinn Féin officially wants Stormont to do the same but this is at least a decade away, if it is even possible.

The English approach could be a workable short-cut. It could also help re-start the almost-finished process of devolving corporation tax, which is stalled in part because it is unclear how Stormont would share the proceeds of economic growth.

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AS the agrifood sea border looks set to be lowered, the transgender sea border seems destined to rise.

The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that transgender women are women, contradicting last year’s UK Supreme Court ruling that transgender women are men.

There is ambiguity over whether the UK ruling applies here as it relates to an equality law that only covers Britain.

The European ruling relates to EU discrimination law that definitely applies here under the Windsor Framework, although it is our own courts that apply it.

The Northern Ireland Equality Commission was already seeking clarification from Belfast High Court on the UK Supreme Court ruling. The commission is now much likelier to get the verdict it clearly wants – that the EU ruling applies.

Unionist parties will obviously be outraged, and there may be less than universal delight within nationalism.

This issue did so much damage to the SNP that it can plausibly be said to have destroyed the cause of Scottish independence.

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EARLIER this month, Sinn Féin said it opposed the BBC becoming an anchor tenant at the Belfast Stories tourist attraction planned by Belfast City Council.

The party has declined to explain its objection and the BBC is not making matters any clearer.

An article has appeared on its increasingly eccentric website headlined “BBC clarifies link to new Belfast attraction”.

The interview it contains, with BBC Northern Ireland director Adam Smyth, only obfuscates the BBC’s potential involvement.

Comments such as “a space within a space” and “lean into the content” are the sort of BBC management waffle parodied by the sitcom W1A and Private Eye’s ‘Birtisms’.

If the BBC will be telling stories at Belfast Stories, will anybody understand them?

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