{"id":224836,"date":"2025-06-29T20:15:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T20:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/224836\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T20:15:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T20:15:15","slug":"sam-mcbride-a5-court-outcome-is-insane-but-its-not-the-judge-whos-mad-its-just-classic-stormont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/224836\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam McBride: A5 court outcome is insane, but it\u2019s not the judge who\u2019s mad &#8211; it\u2019s just classic Stormont"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom4 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">NI\u2019s preposterous government is ultimately unsustainable&#8230; Stormont still can\u2019t take the action necessary to reverse crises of its own making. Parties calling for work to go ahead are the same parties that tied the judge\u2019s hands\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"For years, while Stormont was down, many people hoped that if devolution returned, it just had to be better than in previous incarnations. If anything, it\u2019s getting worse.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/c8ba9574-82e2-4afb-abaf-5fda8cf96faf.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">For years, while Stormont was down, many people hoped that if devolution returned, it just had to be better than in previous incarnations. If anything, it\u2019s getting worse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Last week, Belfast High Court blocked the building of a major road on technical grounds, even though the judge accepted his decision would likely lead to people being killed and seriously maimed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">That sounds insane because it is insane, but it\u2019s not the judge who\u2019s mad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NI\u2019s preposterous government is ultimately unsustainable&#8230; Stormont still can\u2019t take the action necessary to reverse crises of its&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-224836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114768493044424508","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}