Low Balls and High Rawls
The politicians bowled plenty of low balls at each other during this morning's budget debate. Sammy Wilson taunted the UUP and the SDLP as cynical opportunists. Basil McCrea hit back by referring to the "Emperor's New Clothes", a not so veiled reference to the minister's famous naked ramble through the woods. Then the SDLP's Pol Callagahan chimed in with an assertion that the promises in the budget were as false as "the First Minister's fake tan" - although he admitted later that he wasn't sure if Mr Robinson had been toning up for his St Patrick's Day trip to Washington or was still red with anger from the Executive clashes last night.
But amidst the low balls, the Finance Minister tried to treat his audience to a bit of high-falutin philosophy, when he likened his budget to the theories of Amongst Rawls' ideas is the concept of the under which society is best organised when individuals and groups don't know exactly which role they will be assigned.
Sammy's argument is that since the parties don't know exactly which portfolios they will take on the other side of the election, the budgetary process forced them to consider the greater good rather than looking after number one. And you thought when I mentioned Stormont and "veil of ignorance" in the same blog you were going to get yet another cheap unworthy jibe.
(In a recent private conversation Owen Paterson raised the hypothetical possibility with Martin McGuinness that the UUP and the SDLP might go into opposition. I had heard that the Deputy First Minister replied "they wouldn't have the balls". I now realise what he must have intended to say was "they wouldn't have the Rawls" - a reference to the capacity of the SDLP and the UUP to put themselves, in a Rawlesian way, into the shoes of their Executive colleagues.)
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