UUP Trade & Tourism Spokesman takes Robinson to task over Outrageous Spin of Budget
Cllr Mark Cosgrove, the UUP Spokesperson on Trade and Tourism has released the following statement on the outrageous spin and bluster of Mr Robinsons budget announcements.
“Freezing” the Regional rate for 3 years comes after Direct Rule ministers outrageously put it up by 18% only last year.At the time Mr Robinson rightly condemned the Government for their unaccountable madness at the time but he has now “pocketed” the millions raised from the hard working people of this province and has the cheek to spin it as a “freeze”. It is day light robbery.
The same applies to freezing Industrial Rates for 3 years at 30%. It is only in the last 3 years that our hard pressed manufacturing sector paid any rates and again in opposition the DUP made it clear that they were opposed to this move. Whilst keeping it at 30% represents a moral victory for the Northern Ireland Manufacturers Group in general and the politician who actually gained cross party consensus for that campaign, my colleague Basil McCrea, it is still the economics of the mad house to have Invest NI running round the world at a cost of hundreds of millions trying to entice Foreign Direct Investment and at the same time creating additional taxation burdens for the companies who are already here.
But of course outside of not telling the voters that they had created the new DUP/Sinn Fein coalition government the biggest con job ever was that concerning the imposition of water rates. They are coming, they were always coming and no amount of dressing up and spin will change that fact.
It is clear that at just over 1% that the Health Budget is seriously under funded and the Health professionals at the UUP conference were disgusted at their allocation and in particular at the disgraceful comments of Iris Robinson. The cynic in me cannot help but wonder whether this was politically motivated after the Margaret Ritchie argument but the fact remains that whilst announcing a lot of goodies for other departments most of which are Sinn Fein/DUP run, the department which employs the most people and is by the far the publics highest priority gets seriously under funded. Are Roads and free travel for our pensioners really more important than helping those citizens in their time of greatest need.
Mr Robinson is beginning to find that the harsh realities of being in perpetual opposition and being in government are two very different jobs and that if you are a minority government you must govern with consensus. By all accounts, including that of his own back bench MLAs, the only consensus that exists in the Robinson household is that of wealth creation and claiming for over £400,000 per annum out of the public purse. How many nurses would that employ?