The UUP-SDLP Hokey Cokey 2
Next week the assembly votes on the Executive's Programme for Government and Budget. Given the criticism of their recent budget allocations from both the Health Minister Michael McGimpsey and the Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie, will the UUP and the SDLP vote with their Executive partners, or will they follow the precedent set this week by backing critical Alliance amendments? If so, where does that leave the Stormont coalition.
To debate whether you can be in opposition and in government at the same time, I'm joined for tomorrow's Inside Politics by the UUP's Basil McCrea and the Alliance's Stephen Farry. Basil McCrea hints that if his party's ministers don't get the resources they need then the UUP will have to do some "hard thinking" about remaining in government. Stephen Farry says that if the UUP and the SDLP pull out it would be "high unlikely" that Alliance would join the coalition, although he stops short of an absolute guarantee.
As usual the programme goes out at 12.45 on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Ulster.
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Correct me if I am wrong but I thought I read in the past few weeks that Margaret Ritchie agreed to the draft budget but her party were opposed to it? Also Peter Robinson is in the public domain saying that the Civil Service needs to make efficiencies. Then why are the Civil Service currently running a recruitment drive looking for people to join up at nearly every grade possible below senior civil service? In this recruitment drive the 2 bottom grades which do all the work now states it is not compulsory to have GCSE's. Are we going to have an illiterate bunch of people processing claims from benefits to roads to agriculture? The society will be in meltdown.