All change

There’s been plenty of change in the next parish over — New York — this week which will have a bearing on ourselves. Controller Bill Thompson — the man who invested $150m of pension funds in the North — ran against sitting Big Apple Mayor Michael Bloomberg and narrowly lost.

Meanwhile, winning the election for Controller was the fresh-faced John Liu, the first Asian-American to hold such a senior elected position in New York. Controller Liu will now have to look long and hard at those investments in the North of Ireland and decide what benefit, if any, they bring the people of New York (fact: none of the $150m has yet been spent).

The good news: Controller Liu has made two visits to the offices of our sister paper The Irish Echo in New York and has already expressed strong support for the MacBride Principles on Fair Employment and is a strong advocate of ethical investing and economic justice.

No doubt, these issues will be aired when the President of New York City Council Christine Quinn arrives in Belfast next week to address the Aisling Awards. Interestingly while we beat New York in many political milestones (for example, New York has never had a female mayor), the Big Apple beats us on one. Christine Quinn is the first openly gay President of the Council. To my knowledge, we have no openly gay political leaders.