Northern Ireland gets a pay day loan

Hey! I've got Peter Robinson on the line.

Not so much Wonga, as a cash advance from next year's block grant. But only on the proviso that we can come up with next year's budget which will have to account for the £100m that has been brought forward to this year to deal with the indecisiveness of the Executive to make hard decisions this year.

There is a problem though. Next year's budget has got to be sorted out by the end of this month or else the deal is off. It has taken Northern Ireland's politicians a lot longer than 3 weeks to reach the current impasse as they seem unable to make any tough decisions on cuts. So what hope do we have that over the next three weeks it will be any different to find similar cuts for a different period?