Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.
The trip to Israel by DUP education minister Paul Givan has raised two questions: should he have gone; and should his department have promoted it as an official visit?
The first question is largely a matter of opinion. Parts of the visit may have breached UK foreign policy by entering occupied territory, but this is unlikely to earn more than a scolding.
The SNP has thumbed its nose at UK foreign policy for years. The worst it has been threatened with is loss of consular support for ministerial visits and even that has never happened.
The second question is potentially more dangerous for Givan, his officials and the Executive.
At least part of the visit was made in his official capacity, so civil servants could issue press releases accordingly. However, there must have been an internal debate about this that other parties could try to investigate.
Sinn Féin could complain the invitation was not brought to the whole Executive as a significant or controversial matter.
However, neither party wants to establish a pattern of ministerial trips requiring Executive approval, as it could spiral into tit-for-tat vetoes.
The first and deputy first ministers do require each other’s permission for official visits. Tellingly, this almost never seems to be refused.
Civil service impartiality was far more clearly compromised in a statement from the Department for Infrastructure.
Asked about the delayed repairs to Kilrea bridge, a spokesperson blamed “budget allocations as a result of austerity by the British government”.
This is the same line Sinn Féin ministers have been mocked for using over the pedestrianisation of Hill Street in Belfast.
Northern Ireland has never experienced austerity and the department’s budget is entirely in the Executive’s hands. Officials should not be parroting party lines to the contrary.
Families in Northern Ireland have incorrectly had their child benefit cancelled because they flew out of Belfast on holiday and returned via Dublin.
UK immigration checks thus detected them leaving the country but not returning. Child benefit stops after eight weeks abroad.
Families in Britain have also been affected when the system fails to register their return by sea or air.
The checks are part of a new immigration and welfare crackdown by the government, which has started cross-referencing Home Office travel data with HMRC child benefit records.
This clearly needs an adjustment for the special circumstances of Northern Ireland but it is impressive it works at all, considering the hapless bureaucracies involved.
Stormont can take neither credit nor blame. Although social security is devolved and Stormont administers most benefit payments, child benefit is a rare exception as it is managed by HMRC.
SDLP MP Colum Eastwood has accepted a police warning for taking part in an un-notified procession during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Derry last year.
The former SDLP leader had been facing prosecution but police, prosecutors and the courts were clearly happy to give everyone an honourable exit.
Three others charged after the same event have refused to accept a warning.
This was an opportunity for Eastwood to acknowledge the importance of respecting Northern Ireland’s hard-won parading law.
Instead, he has defiantly declared “the case should never have been taken in the first place” as he was “protesting against genocide”.
This is not an either-or situation. Eastwood could have protested about the war and upheld parading law by submitting a short form to a police station, as others seem to manage without difficulty.
Unionists have complained about a Windsor Framework requirement for EU labelling on boxes of Remembrance Day poppies.
The Royal British Legion, which runs the poppy appeal, has refused to be drawn into the row, merely stating it will comply with all the rules.
The armed forces, including veterans organisations, generally dislike attempts to embroil them in political grandstanding. That also applies to use of regimental flags.
People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll has condemned the number of “immigration raids” the Home Office is performing in Northern Ireland and called on the Executive to query it.
He made his call after presenting a report at Stormont from the London-based Migrants’ Rights Network, which found Belfast has had the most raids in the UK since 2018.
The report says its definition of raids “includes what people would traditionally think of as a raid, where [immigration] officers enter a person’s home or workplace and arrest them, but also encompasses public checks of immigration status, like at a checkpoint on the street outside a place of worship, a community hub or transport hub.”
The postcodes where most of these raids occur cover Belfast Harbour, Belfast International Airport and Larne.
In other words, the vast majority of ‘raids’ are routine checks at ports and airports, which will always be higher in Northern Ireland due to the Common Travel Area. The same report found comparable levels of ‘raids’ in Stranraer and Liverpool.
The Migrants’ Rights Network makes no secret of its politics – it is a left-wing organisation opposed to all border controls. People Before Profit is the same.
“People shouldn’t be deported at all,” Carroll said after presenting the report.
However, the event at Stormont was also sponsored by SDLP MLA Cara Hunter and independent unionist Claire Sugden, a former justice minister.
Is it really their position that there should be no border or immigration controls?
DUP communities minister Gordon Lyons is cutting the grants for new social housing in order to deliver more social housing.
Unsurprisingly, this has led to some confusing headlines, but the story does add up.
Stormont typically funds only half the cost of social housing, with Housing Associations raising the rest, often through private loans to be repaid from rental income.
By reducing Stormont’s average contribution from 54% to 46%, Lyons hopes the grant budget will be spread more widely.
Housing Associations are being encouraged to make more use of Financial Transactions Capital, a public borrowing power the Treasury gives to Stormont but which Stormont struggles to use.
Casement Park is also to be funded through FTC. More private borrowing is a realistic hope as the world is awash with funds to lend.
Housing associations sound unenthusiastic about this ‘less is more’ strategy but the head of the Housing Executive, Grainia Long, has said she thinks it will work.
The Housing Executive wants its own borrowing powers and this has cross-party support at Stormont but it is being held up by the Treasury, which fears it would count as UK government debt. It is extraordinary how much depends on such technical quibbling.
Marlborough House, the brutalist office block in Craigavon city centre, has been listed just as its owner and last occupant, the Department of Finance, is moving out.
Listing is the correct decision from a heritage point of view but financially it is disastrous. No public body or private investor will want to take on the staggering cost of preservation so the landmark will be left to rot, like so many other listed structures across Northern Ireland.
As it slowly falls down it will inevitably become a magnet for vandalism, anti-social behaviour and arson.
Difficult buildings are often preserved through ‘facadism’ – keeping the exterior and putting a new building up inside.
Marlborough House might be particularly suited to this approach as its exterior was delivered in prefabricated sections, each containing one of its distinctive oblong windows.
But if anything like this was ever viable, it is no longer an option. The B1-category listing Marlborough House has received requires the whole building to be preserved, inside and out.
One of the great cliches of debate on a united Ireland – Commonwealth membership – could be about to look very different.
Private Eye reports that Prince William has given up on the Commonwealth after his disastrous tour of the Caribbean in 2022, when it was made clear he was unwelcome.
The magazine says “he will not be disappointed if he isn’t invited to succeed [King Charles] as the next head of the Commonwealth”.
Nothing requires the British monarch to be head of the Commonwealth. The leaders of members states can choose anyone for the role.
Unionists might be less interested in a Commonwealth without a king, and nationalists less averse to it, which could make membership less contentious.
But what it is most likely to do is to make it of even less relevance, to everybody.
