Top of the A-level tables but bottom of economic tables

Friday 20 August 10

Last night as part of a government plan to soften the blow of economic cut backs 44,000 proposal where voted on by the general public.

Out of the thousand of issues discussed Northern Ireland was raised several times. 

Whilst some of the proposals where tongue and cheek, such as the UK giving up Northern Ireland and throwing in Liverpool for good measure, many took the cost of running Northern Ireland more seriously. 

Suggestions such as there should be equal spending per capita throughout the UK, as public spending in Northern Ireland is far exceeds that of anywhere else. 

Reducing the amount of Northern Irish MPs was suggested and a dramatic cut in the number of Stormont MLAs was also advocated.

The consensus that emerges from this public meeting is Northern Ireland is not producing and running of the province rests entirely on the shoulders of the English tax-payers.

While the unproductive nature of Northern Ireland is not anything new I think that the release of this information coinciding with the release of the A-Level results makes for an interesting point. 

For a region, which continually underperforms economically you would think that our students would fail academically, however, the situation is quite the opposite.

Northern Ireland consistently achieves the highest grades in the UK and this year is no exception, as Northern Ireland outperformed both England and Wales.

For the size of the region there are also two large Universities both which achieve academically.

It seems like a paradox then that Northern Ireland has some of UK brightest students and yet is failing economically and is completely reliant on the English tax-payer.

The simple reason why academic achievement out stretches economic performance is that Northern Ireland faces a huge brain drain. This has always been a problem following on from the saying, Ireland’s greatest export is her children.

However the failure to invest in Northern Ireland’s future could ultimately destroy the economic viability of the region.

It seems that politicians are so engrossed with the constitutional issue that they have forgetting that their actions have a very real effect on society. 

There is large talent pool ready to contribute and unless the focus of Northern Ireland politics becomes economic viability, the debate in Northern Ireland may no longer be whether NI should remain in the UK or whether Ireland should be united, but really a case of, could the last person to leave, please turn the lights out?