Latest news with #UlsterUnionistParty
BBC News
31-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
Obituary of Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, former Northern Ireland Civil Service head
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield was one of the most distinguished civil servants in Northern Ireland's the 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles, he was a key figure behind-the-scenes, trying to ensure public services ran as normally as death was announced on Saturday. He was Kenneth was born in Belfast on 15 April 1931 and he was educated at Royal Belfast Academical Institution (RBAI) and Oxford entered the Northern Ireland Civil Service in years later, he was appointed private secretary to the then Stormont Finance Minister Captain Terence O' rose through the ranks, and in January 1974 he was given a key role working with the new power-sharing executive, led by Ulster Unionist Party leader Brian and nationalist politicians came together to govern for the first time but the cross-community executive collapsed after five months due to hard-line unionist opposition, including a loyalist workers strike. IRA attack In 1988, the IRA tried to kill Sir Kenneth at his family home in Crawfordsburn, near Bangor, County Down, in a Semtex bomb attack.A colleague who was in the civil service at the time remembers how calm Sir Kenneth was after the Nigel Hamilton, who also became head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, said: "Within an hour (of the bombing) he had put out a statement and within a couple of hours he was back in the office, working again."He wanted to show leadership."He wanted to show that we were all resilient and he wasn't going to be deflected from his public sector service because of what had happened." After he retired, Sir Kenneth reflected on the downfall of power-sharing in May said: "It was the worst day of my official career of nearly 40 years – it was the worst single day. I could foresee that we were going to be plunged for further decades into a situation when there would be no local hand on the tiller."He was right. It would take another quarter of a century for power-sharing to the interim, violence raged in the political attempt in 1985 by the then UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher to improve the security and political situation by signing an Anglo-Irish Agreement with the Dublin government led to sustained unionist civil servants trying to keep public services going, the challenges were huge. After Sir Kenneth stepped down from the job of head of the civil service in 1991, he took on a wide range of public and private sector roles, including Northern Ireland national governor of the BBC; vice-chair of the National Museum and was also senator at Queen's University Belfast; the inaugural victims' commissioner; and co-commissioner of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' also worked outside of Northern Ireland, consulting on issues in Jersey, Israel, Austria, Bangladesh and the received honorary doctorates from Queen's University Belfast, Ulster University and the Open University. 'I played by the rules' Sir Kenneth also wrote a number of A New Life, published in 2008, he wrote: "I enjoyed access to ministers and the opportunity to make recommendations and suggestions to them."They might well decide to do something different as was their prerogative."I played the game by the rules, and any disagreement while serving, I kept to myself."Once he left the civil service, he was more free to speak his mind about politics past and wrote a book called A Tragedy of Errors: The Government and Misgovernment of Northern it came to Stormont politics, he was an eyewitness to history, and played his part, in good times and in bad.
Agriland
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Agriland
NI NAP proposals labelled ‘challenge' to farmers' way of life
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) politician Lord Tom Elliott has said that the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) approach through the Nutrient Action Programme (NAP) proposals to farmers appears an 'out and out challenge to their way of life and livelihood'. Earlier this month, Minister for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland, Andrew Muir launched a public consultation on the NAP for 2026 to 2029, which he said contains 'additional measures which have been developed based on scientific research'. The main additional measures include further restrictions on use of chemical phosphorus fertiliser and a farm phosphorus balance limit for more intensive farms. Lord Tom Elliott said: 'We are aware that in many areas of life, including agriculture much action is required to improve the environment. 'I have always encouraged the minister to do that in cooperation with the farming sector, as opposed to direct confrontation. 'The farming community have already made significant progress towards reduction of nutrient and other positive environmental matters. However, they need the minister and DAERA to work with them as opposed to resistance of farmers. 'I agree with Dr. Sinclair Mayne, who is former CEO [chief executive] of the Agri Food and Biosciences Institute [AFBI] and former departmental scientific adviser for the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development that it is essential that proposed new measures are based on robust science, based on peer-reviewed scientific papers, rather than subjective assessment,' Lord Elliott added. The UUP chairperson stressed that this was the basis for the first action programme agreed with the European Commission in 2007 and subsequent reviews. Elliott claimed that Dr. Mayne has detailed a number of areas where DAERA has not presented the appropriate scientific evidence base for the proposals. 'DAERA [has] done little to even attempt to persuade farmers of the merits of these most recent proposals; they seem more intent on pushing the farming community beyond what it can achieve, with little cooperation or working together,' he continued. 'I repeat my earlier calls, before it's too late for the minister to work with the farming sector, as opposed to him being seen by many farmers as an enemy to their way of life and someone who seems to many as set on destruction of the agricultural industry in Northern Ireland. 'The farming sector has so much to offer the entire society, it is vital that the DAERA and the agricultural community work together.'
BBC News
21-05-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Winston Irvine: Doug Beattie to write to PPS over loyalist's sentence
The former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader has said he will write to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) over the sentence handed to high-profile loyalist Winston Tuesday, the 49-year-old of Ballysillian Road in north Belfast was given a two and a half year sentence, after previously admitting to a range of firearm and ammunition will spend half of his two and a half year sentence in custody and the other half on Beattie described the sentence as "bizarre" following Irvine's choice to not give any explanation for the weaponry discovered in June 2022. Belfast Crown Court heard Irvine had made no comment during police interviews, providing a prepared statement outlining his reputation as a "trusted interlocutor" during Northern Ireland's peace sentencing, the judge said despite the guilty plea, he did not consider the crimes to be connected to said that reasoning was "appalling". "Here we have a man at a time when tensions were heightened in Northern Ireland due to issues around Brexit and the protocol who was found with weapons and ammunition," he told BBC Radio Ulster's Nolan Show."How on earth the judge can say there was no terrorist link to this is utterly bizarre if we don't know what the weapons were for." 'Sentence' sends out a bad message Irvine's co-accused, 54-year-old Robin Workman, of Shore Road in Larne, was sentenced to five years - the minimum custodial said there were questions over why Irvine did not receive the mandatory term and said he will be writing to the PPS over the decision."I don't think that there is any exceptional circumstances to carrying guns around our city," he added."You can't say you're a peacemaker on one hand, and then during the day time you help move deadly weapons and ammunition around the place. "The two don't match together."The UUP's justice spokesperson said that the sentence sends out a bad message, and said the judiciary needs to get "a grip of this".
Irish Independent
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Independent
John Downing: Poll reveals Irish are split over border referendum and a knighthood for Rory McIlroy
Back in March 2002, Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble lobbied London for a poll on Irish unity to be held on the same day as the Northern Ireland Assembly elections.
Daily Record
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Daily Record
Keir Starmer 'is a Unionist' insists official spokesman after PM ducks question
The Prime Minister refused to say whether he was a Unionist when asked by a Northern Irish MP during PMQs on Wednesday. "Of course" Keir Starmer is a Unionist despite avoiding the question in the House of Commons, his official spokesperson has said. The Prime Minister had refused to say whether he was a Unionist when asked by a Northern Irish MP during PMQs on Wednesday. But his official spokesperson confirmed that Starmer wants Scotland and Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom. When asked after PMQs if Starmer is a unionist, his official spokesperson said: "I think the Prime Minister said before that, of course, he is the Prime Minister for the whole of the UK, including in Northern Ireland." When pushed if he was a Scottish Unionist but not a Northern Irish Unionist, the spokesperson said: "The Prime Minister if of course Prime Minister for the entire United Kingdom. "So of course he is a Unionist." Starmer had been asked by Ulster Unionist Party MP Robin Swann to restate his commitment to unionism during Prime Minister's Questions. Swann said: 'Could he speak to his Northern Ireland team about their understanding of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, because the Secretary of State in an interview seemed to think that it had been negotiated by Ian Paisley rather than David Trimble and my party? ' His Northern Ireland minister has said at the start of this week that the future of Northern Ireland as part of the union is dependent on opinion polls, and she wasn't sure if she was a unionist. "Can the Prime Minister confirm to me his understanding of the principle of consent, and confirm to this House that he is a unionist?' But Starmer refused to say that he is a unionist. He instead paid tribute to politicians who put together the Good Friday Agreement. ' I absolutely stand four square behind the principles, some of which I was doing my part to help implement when I was working in Northern Ireland, they will always drive me on the issues that he raises with me,' he said.
