Friday, April 2, 2010

Comment is free, but frequently frustrated

I seem to recall leaving a couple of comments on the Northern Ireland politics hub Slugger O'Toole in the past without any problem, but when I tried to comment tonight on Brian Walker's piece The wee parties won't weigh in the Westminster balance (predictably he's talking more about the SNP and Plaid Cymru than the considerably 'wee-er' NI parties) I encountered all sorts of difficulties. Apparently I now have to wait until an administrator manually approves my registration on the site before I can even submit the comment, so instead I'll just post what I was going to say here -

"'Fair funding' in this context categorically does not mean "no cuts". In Wales it means the replacement of the Barnett Formula with a new mechanism that recognises the true needs of Wales, and in Scotland it means full fiscal autonomy for the Scottish parliament, which would also render Barnett redundant.

The line 'too late now' in relation to the leaders' debates is a bit odd if it's meant to indicate that the SNP have in some way been slow on the issue - they've been trying to get even the slightest access to the negotiations for months now, and have had the door repeatedly slammed in their face. It's not, of course, too late for legal action. I've no idea if the SNP and Plaid are taking that option seriously, but given the high-handed way they've been treated, I don't see how anyone could blame them if they were."

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