New Victims' Commissioner(s): Cockup or Conspiracy?

UPDATE: 12 April - still no application form has been forthcoming and the closing date is on 20th April!

Is ofmdfm trying to keep candidates for a new Victims' Commissioner to a minimum? I doubt this but making it difficult to apply may have that effect, however unintentioned.

Associated Press [AP] posted a story on 30th March stating that The Office of the First and Deputy First Ministers [OFMDFM] was advertising for one or more Victims' Commissioner(s) in "local papers".

A lot of local papers carried this Associated Press story.

I do not know whether or not the newspapers carried the actual advertisements.

Searching online for more information about what the story is and how to apply, I went to all the usual places.

I went to the OFMDFM website: Nothing about these openings could be found on 30th March.

Still today a week later, there appears at 8.30 am to be no information about how to apply. (http://www.ofmdfmni.gov.uk/public-appointments)

Nor could I find anything on the Northern Ireland Civil Service recruitment website (and I still can't find a thing, as at 8.32am today): (https://irecruit-ext.hrconnect.nigov.net/jobs/vacancies.aspx)

And the Commission for Victims of Survivors website said (and still says today as at 8.30am): there are no current vacancies within the commission. (http://www.cvsni.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=103&Itemid=92)

I finally managed to find an actual ad online on the GuardianJobs website which states that the closing date is 20th April.

This advertisement also says: For further information and application details please contact HR Connect ref. IRC133661 (http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/job/4436125/commissioner-s-for-victims-and-survivors-for-northern-ireland/)

I emailed the HR Connect email address on Wednesday 4th April at 9.07am seeking further information, including an application pack.

I received an acknowldegment immediately, but some 48 hours later, neither an application pack nor any further information has been forthcoming.

So, the mystery of how to apply continues, with just 15 days before the closing date.

I'll keep you posted.

Against Xeroxing English Planning Statutes

A letter by the Northern Ireland Tories - shared over 200 times in last Friday’s Bel Tel - is one of many recent examples of how ideology can sometimes blind us to the good things in our own back yards.

This letter (Lessons in planning policy - Letters, Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk) - shared a mere 18 times, since you ask (not that I'm counting or anything) - in this week’s Bel Tel, necessarily briefly, deals with the main issues at stake.

Our own dear PPS1 Article 10 planning framework states: “The key [principles are] ... sustainable development, mixed use, quality development and design”.

The now superceded English draft planning framework states apparently quite reasonably (just before it goes on to give developers carte blanche to ruin the unsurpassed beauty of the English countryside): “There is no necessary contradiction between increased levels of development and protecting and enhancing the environment, as long as development is planned and undertaken responsibly”.

It was this draft framework published last July which the National Trust and basically anyone who hasn't dined with Cam recently reckoned was a limitless Maestro card for greedy aesthetically challenged developers.

After pushing back very hard against the draft framework our nature loving heroes scored an inspiring victory in the changes their lobbying wrought to the build anything, anywhere, anytime components of the draft framework.

The English framework that actually came into force last week holds that: “Pursuing sustainable development involves seeking positive improvements in the quality of the built, natural and historic environment, as well as in people’s quality of life”.

I maintain our framework is better than even the improved English framework for many reasons, once one is considering the frameworks independent of the instruments of their implementation - that's another day's work!

This is because ours is more flexible than what the Tory led government came up with even now the original draft was improved upon.

The NI framework conceives of valuable factors of proper development outside of the concept of sustainable development.

And it succeeds in doing this without subjugating our planning framework and indeed our lovely countryside to the interests of rapacious and aesthetically challenged capital obsessed developers (not that we have any of them (ED: left?) here anyway).

Happily for me personally, the Northern Ireland tories won't have their wicked way quite yet with our countryside.

But perhaps we all have a role to play in remaining ever vigilant against an unreflective 'everything elsewhere is necessarily better than what we have here' kind of provincialism.

We already have clone towns the length and breadth of these islands, let's not have xeroxed planning statutes too.