The DAERA Minister’s Lough Neagh Report got short shrift from the Audit Office.

I was beginning to think it was only Friends of the Earth, and John Manley, and I, who thought it didn’t amount to a can of beans.

The report from the Office for Environmental Protection stated the obvious when reporting that “a plan should have been in place to manage pressures on Lough Neagh and other loughs”.

Since there was no plan in place, Stormont itself is in breach of its legal responsibility, and probably the law itself.

Consequently, instead of improving, our water quality is deteriorating.

Recent photographs of blooming algae on Lough Erne, and the upper Bann before the river even reaches the lough, provide further evidence of the extent of the problem.

NI Water recently provided a stark wake-up call to the housing and business sectors that Northern Ireland’s failing wastewater infrastructure “is unable to take connections from new houses and businesses in major parts of our cities and over 100 towns, and this is leading to inadequate environmental protection through increased sewer flooding and pollution”.

This is not new information. Five years ago, the NI Water annual report stated: “Northern Ireland is the only region in the UK where the water utility is not funded to the levels required by its independent regulator.

“The impacts of underfunding are not something we can allocate to future discussions; they are happening now, and are undermining our resilience to the challenges brought by the climate emergency and a growing population.

“The scale of the problem currently facing NI Water requires major, inescapable investment.”

People here are said to retain their perspectives, information and experience for far too long.

Not a bit of it – far too short is the truth of the matter.

Some 26 years of direct rule which preceded the new Stormont are as if they never existed. These were years of deep disinterest and neglect of our regional infrastructure beyond those of security.

NI Water is funded from the Department of Infrastructure, but that minister has no party colleagues in Westminster.

Perhaps the DAERA minister could ask his party colleague at Westminster to ask the current United Kingdom government what capital investment in upgrading the infrastructure of our water supply and sewage disposal was made between 1972 and 1998?

He might ask, as a follow up, how much of the revenue that was collected from the local ratepayers and taxpayers was assigned to the Northern Ireland Water Service over that period.

The NI Executive might then gather up its courage and send Westminster a reparations invoice.

We have already paid for 26 years of neglect. We continue to pay for water through our domestic rates and taxes. We will not pay additional water charges for an essential public service.

Society pays taxes to the government it elects so that the government will meet society’s essential needs.

It isn’t a difficult concept. Those who have more, pay more. Those who need more, get more.

The formula produces a cohesive, safe and sustainable society.

And that, dear reader, brings me to the Programme for Government.

More about that next week, but as Aidan Dunbar, the brilliant actor and native of the parish of Enniskillen, might say at this point via his character in ‘Line of Duty’: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey!”

*****

I’ll say very little this week about the world going to hell on a Zionist handcart, other than Israel and the US are playing a very dangerous game of ‘chicken’ in both the Middle East and Ukraine in their ruthless effort to widen the military conflict in their own interest, while Biden still holds the reins.

The same intelligence agents who conspired with Blair and Bush to create fake news and false arguments for the illegal invasion of Iraq have warned us all, via the oligarch-owned and state-owned media on both sides of the Atlantic, that we are the victims of Russian sabotage creating social havoc in the West via social media.

Gone are the days when there were only ‘Reds’ under the bed – the Liberals and the Rightwing have seemingly joined us there in being unwitting ‘Putin-puppets’.

Who makes this drivel up? How much do they get paid for it, and why is it called ‘Intelligence’?

The same intelligence agencies have also taken on themselves to actively encourage further Ukrainian military incursion into Russia, for which Ukraine is already paying a heavy price in the lives of its soldiers and civilian population for the temporary occupation of wasteland.

Usurping the authority of government is supposed to be a criminal act!

When the peace negotiations come to pass, as they will, Russia is far more likely to tell them to keep their gained territory rather than return the Donbass region to Ukraine in order to get it back.

Meanwhile, Israel – now declared by the International Court of Justice to be illegally occupying Palestinian territories – has attacked Syria, as well as Lebanon and the West Bank.

It seems everybody who opposes genocide is now ‘a puppet of Iran’, and to be bombed with US weapons.

Last week, the USA and EU increased their existing sanctions on Iran for selling warplanes to Russia, the USA having already sold theirs to Ukraine – and still Israel is untouchable!

Both Russia and Iran are to China what Poland was to Britain and France in 1939.

China has no great interest in the internal affairs of either, but it is not in their interest for the USA to try their hand at regime change. Does the USA hope to draw China into war? Why?

Who was it that said, “It’s the economy, stupid”?

Lough Neagh has enough problems to be getting on with, so now mightn’t be the best time to mention St. Brendan’s prophecy on who will be ‘watering their horses’ on its shores before the world ends.

I’ll leave that for MI6 and the CIA to research and fill you in on the scéal.