If it were done......
Harland and Wolff has been dying for as long as I can remember, decades of decline, false hopes, lost orders, desperate re-financing and job cuts and still it is just about alive. Why?
When your most famous product sank on its maiden voyage because of hubristically bad design, and you make more money from the museum built where it was launched, you must really know deep down that ship building is not your future, or even your forte.
But for a whole host of emotional, regional and political reasons the small rump of H&W has been allowed to linger on. Now it has launched an investigation into the spending of £25 million of its own money and has its back against the wall having been denied a new government bail out.
The Labour government is also refusing to bankroll the redevelopment of Casement Park for the Euros, and a good thing too. Belfast and Northern Ireland can no longer expect to just be bailed out by London every five minutes, the region is doing better than most of the rest of the country because it has stayed in the EU’s Single Market.
Given that the Ulster Unionist’s price for supporting the May government was a cool £1 billion in extra spending you have to realise that they are now taking the micky and milking the cash cow has to stop.
There are much better things we can do with the money, and these vanity projects nearly always end in tears, wasted money, crumbling infrastructure which is used just once and failure; just failure after the minister responsible is long gone.
H&W should be allowed to go, the land alone is ripe for re-development, there are better things to do, the zone is already a high tech software hub. We cannot compete in shipbuilding and only really make naval vessels now, why must we throw good money after bad?
Do it quickly and get it over with.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
Your point about Mrs May’s government is well made and sums up how the UK in general should deal with NI -deal being the operative word.
The decision by Hilary Benn to open an inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane is I believe a welcome ‘reset’ in the dealings between this government and NI and the EU and may become part of a wider strategy.
As Sunak said, NI has “the best of both worlds” - just wish the rest of the UK had the same benefits. Sod any more bailing out