Anthony McIntyre muses on how it must feel being burned.


When I first picked this book up to read, the pandemic had not long started. I thought it would be a quick flick-through but the pandemic had its own way of slowing things down. Locked down syndrome had promised to open the way for a period of sustained reading, allowing me to get through the ever growing pile of must-reads. But as with locked in syndrome, its locked down counterpart had a way of disincentivising. Reading, like much else, suddenly appeared a chore rather than a respite. Despite not having yet fully recovered, I got there.

Burned is detailed, something under every cinder and ember. So much so, that it can feel repetitive and allows the book to run longer than maybe it should have. But the close reader appreciates that the author is not repeating himself but is laying out the number of times many of the characters in Burned repeated their tricks of evasion, frauds, excuses, falsehoods, deceptions, ineptitudes. Sam McBride, arguably the North's foremost investigative journalist, did not set out just to tell a readable story but to set down a record of fiscal mismanagement, sleaze, grift. He achieved his aim in forensic and clinical style. 

It is hard to look at Stormont and think of corridors of power; easier to see in it corridors of perdition, where those who slink furtively around its rooms have given up on living a meaningful and straight shooting life, preferring to reside there solely for the purpose of scamming the communities who housed them on the hill rent-free. 

There was nothing in Burned that would disabuse the reader of that feeling. The spirit of generosity that imbues the linguistic concept of power sharing has been usurped with the parsimonious spectre of power splitting between rogues and rapscallions. What was shared more than anything else was an avarice coupled with an aversion to transparency.

Burned is a tale of systemic dysfunction and systematic malpractice which all started out in 2012 as part of a broader initiative in the UK to cut back on carbon emissions into the atmosphere by dispensing with fossil fuels and in their stead use renewable resources, through what was called the Renewable Heat Incentive. But the North, being the North, there was little appetite within the political class for acquiescing in Thatcher's oft cited view that it was a place as British as Finchley. It was happy to continue much as it had when Thatcher's monetarist civil servants had sneeringly termed it the Socialist Republic of Northern Ireland because of the large nature of its state subvention. 

Superfluous to go into the technical detail: the poultry farms and factories, emails and meetings, texts and paper trails, allegations and denials. Enough to point out that cost controls were considered as something as alien to the wee Province as the Anglo Irish Agreement had been back in the day. It was a consumer's market: the more you used the greater your reward in handsome financial dividends. Money for old rope, so long as the neck of another was destined for the noose fashioned from it. The standing joke became that famers were using oven gloves to open their sheds, the heat generated was so intense. 

It was not that Arlene Foster and her officials were unaware of what was happening on their watch. It was spelt out for them from the outset by a whistleblower and Ofgem, the consumer watchdog. Someone had done the sums, found that 2 X 2 made 500. Unless of course you were a creationist to whom any old nonsense can pass muster, that simply did not add up. Nevertheless, when you are robbing Peter to pay Paul you can always rely on the support of Paul. In this case Paul was not quite ready for a Damascene conversion to probity. He was going to make hay while the sun shone and make sure the sun had plenty of fuel to keep it going. 

Stormont's handling of RHI was always meant to generate more heat than light. It took Sam McBride to bring light to bear, although the bible bashers suddenly found let there be light an offensive piece of gospel, not fit for god fearing Ulster folk of good Presbyterian stock to bathe in. The politicians of the DUP were apoplectic at having being caught in the headlights with their grubby hands in the biscuit tin, pockets brimming with what they had already salted away. Still, they couldn't silence a single journalist with more ethical probity than they collectively possessed. 

RHI was a like a runaway Bombay train brimming with passengers, all of whom thought they could get on board, pay their fare and have it returned in multiples when they disembarked.

Burned - the brilliant but sorry tale of Cash for Ash approved by Trash. 

Sam McBride, 2019, Burned: The Inside Story of the 'Cash-for-Ash' Scandal and Northern Ireland's Secretive New Elite. Merrion Press. ISBN-13 : 978-1785372698.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Burned

Anthony McIntyre muses on how it must feel being burned.


When I first picked this book up to read, the pandemic had not long started. I thought it would be a quick flick-through but the pandemic had its own way of slowing things down. Locked down syndrome had promised to open the way for a period of sustained reading, allowing me to get through the ever growing pile of must-reads. But as with locked in syndrome, its locked down counterpart had a way of disincentivising. Reading, like much else, suddenly appeared a chore rather than a respite. Despite not having yet fully recovered, I got there.

Burned is detailed, something under every cinder and ember. So much so, that it can feel repetitive and allows the book to run longer than maybe it should have. But the close reader appreciates that the author is not repeating himself but is laying out the number of times many of the characters in Burned repeated their tricks of evasion, frauds, excuses, falsehoods, deceptions, ineptitudes. Sam McBride, arguably the North's foremost investigative journalist, did not set out just to tell a readable story but to set down a record of fiscal mismanagement, sleaze, grift. He achieved his aim in forensic and clinical style. 

It is hard to look at Stormont and think of corridors of power; easier to see in it corridors of perdition, where those who slink furtively around its rooms have given up on living a meaningful and straight shooting life, preferring to reside there solely for the purpose of scamming the communities who housed them on the hill rent-free. 

There was nothing in Burned that would disabuse the reader of that feeling. The spirit of generosity that imbues the linguistic concept of power sharing has been usurped with the parsimonious spectre of power splitting between rogues and rapscallions. What was shared more than anything else was an avarice coupled with an aversion to transparency.

Burned is a tale of systemic dysfunction and systematic malpractice which all started out in 2012 as part of a broader initiative in the UK to cut back on carbon emissions into the atmosphere by dispensing with fossil fuels and in their stead use renewable resources, through what was called the Renewable Heat Incentive. But the North, being the North, there was little appetite within the political class for acquiescing in Thatcher's oft cited view that it was a place as British as Finchley. It was happy to continue much as it had when Thatcher's monetarist civil servants had sneeringly termed it the Socialist Republic of Northern Ireland because of the large nature of its state subvention. 

Superfluous to go into the technical detail: the poultry farms and factories, emails and meetings, texts and paper trails, allegations and denials. Enough to point out that cost controls were considered as something as alien to the wee Province as the Anglo Irish Agreement had been back in the day. It was a consumer's market: the more you used the greater your reward in handsome financial dividends. Money for old rope, so long as the neck of another was destined for the noose fashioned from it. The standing joke became that famers were using oven gloves to open their sheds, the heat generated was so intense. 

It was not that Arlene Foster and her officials were unaware of what was happening on their watch. It was spelt out for them from the outset by a whistleblower and Ofgem, the consumer watchdog. Someone had done the sums, found that 2 X 2 made 500. Unless of course you were a creationist to whom any old nonsense can pass muster, that simply did not add up. Nevertheless, when you are robbing Peter to pay Paul you can always rely on the support of Paul. In this case Paul was not quite ready for a Damascene conversion to probity. He was going to make hay while the sun shone and make sure the sun had plenty of fuel to keep it going. 

Stormont's handling of RHI was always meant to generate more heat than light. It took Sam McBride to bring light to bear, although the bible bashers suddenly found let there be light an offensive piece of gospel, not fit for god fearing Ulster folk of good Presbyterian stock to bathe in. The politicians of the DUP were apoplectic at having being caught in the headlights with their grubby hands in the biscuit tin, pockets brimming with what they had already salted away. Still, they couldn't silence a single journalist with more ethical probity than they collectively possessed. 

RHI was a like a runaway Bombay train brimming with passengers, all of whom thought they could get on board, pay their fare and have it returned in multiples when they disembarked.

Burned - the brilliant but sorry tale of Cash for Ash approved by Trash. 

Sam McBride, 2019, Burned: The Inside Story of the 'Cash-for-Ash' Scandal and Northern Ireland's Secretive New Elite. Merrion Press. ISBN-13 : 978-1785372698.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

6 comments:

  1. Snarlene said she ran her" legal eye over it "and passed it .the quislings hoped on board also ,the orange and green division was set aside in the common interest of self serving greed, akin to lions and hyenas feasting of the same corpse, out of the woodwork crawled the high and mighty , villains and the well connected ,we were witness to greed at the top on a massive scale ,and pensioners were left to either freeze or starve ,we had the farce of Stormont collapsing albeit over the farce of acht na gaeilge,a subsequent inquiry and as usual noone was found guilty of any corruption or wrongdoing , but steal £20 from universal credit and you,ll be in shit street ,an excellent review of a book that needed to be written,I listened to prof Deirdre Heenan last night on creepy Paul Clarkes the View from Stormont ,she was regaling to us all how wonderful an institution Stormont is and what an example to the world it is, this is the same institution that stumbles from one scandal ,crisis to another , more power to writers like Sam Mc Bride those gangsters will I,m sure keep him in material for years to come ,

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    1. Marty - the book is a tsunami tearing through Fagin's Den. The Decadent Unionist Party was badly exposed but its partners in perdition helped create and sustain the culture of secrecy that made accountability a joke.

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  2. Yes indeed Anthony for a change ,it wasnt just "themuns" the smell of filthy lucre transcended party politics here and the wink and nod to the boys and girls in the know dragged that corrupt den beneath the waves , quisling McGuinness knew it wasnt only him that was fucked.the joke to me is that like the quislings the DUP will fit nicely into the cute hoor politics of the south,,

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    1. I was speaking with Juice McMullan at Roselawn a few years before he died and he just shrugged his shoulders and said to me "it's all about the money now" when I had commented on how badly it had all worked out. Money is liberating and for that reason I agree with Camus that "it is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money" - but how much do they need? At least, let them make it honestly.

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  3. RHI proved beyond doubt that in the main those who talk for the "pravince"and maintaining the union are as we say ,more loyal to the half crown than the crown, the fallout amongst them over RHI amid the praying before Nolans alter was a joy to watch,they are gangsters and fucking hypocrites, and as we clearly see these days ,the political wing for drug dealers and murderers,

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