Earlier this week, Secretary of State Peter Hain announced that home-owners in Northern Ireland are to be hit next year with a massive rates increase of 19 per cent.
Mr Hain said that the increase was needed to fund priority packages for children and young people, science and skills and the environment and energy.
Over the next two years, £25 million will be used for health and education facilities and care of children; £15 million next year and £20 million the year after will go to tackle unemployment among young people and promote skills-training; and £50 million is to be allocated over two years for research and development of renewable forms of energy.
He said that expenditure on health would rise by £450 million by 2007/08, a 13 per cent increase on this year. In total, £16 billion has been earmarked for public spending by 2008.
In making this announcement, Mr Hain was also making clear to the people of Northern Ireland some stark, new realities.
Reasonable-sounding remarks about the increase being necessary to pay for public services and there being a need to bridge the gap between what ratepayers in the North pay in comparison to council tax bills in England served only to reinforce the other two-pronged message he was determined to deliver.
First, the days of the North being treated as a special economic case by the British government are almost at an end. From now on, the people of Northern Ireland will be expected to pay the same for essential services as those living in other parts of the United Kingdom.
Second, by mentioning the likelihood of revisiting the rates gap again in the near future, Mr Hain was making clear that we can expect more of the same.
On this last point, no doubt, he was referring to his plans to introduce water charges in Northern Ireland in 2007, which will add a further 6 per cent to regional rates bills.
Other more subtle points were being made as well. The fact that Peter Hain chose to make his announcement at a press conference as opposed to on the floor of the House of Commons and, more particularly, without consulting or giving prior warning to any of Northern Ireland's elected representatives, was hardly accidental.
By deliberately ignoring the North's MPs and MLAs, he was, in effect, saying to them: "You have freely chosen not to take on the responsibilities for which you were elected. So I, who have been left to do your job, feel under no obligation to consult or forewarn you about difficult decisions I have had to take in your stead. You can't have it both ways."
Mr Hain was also signalling that, even in the absence of a working assembly and executive, politics is not going to be allowed to stand still, and hard and painful decisions will continue to be taken, with or without local input.
For the electorate, an obvious, if unanswerable, question presents itself.
If an assembly and executive had been operational, with accountable local politicians in charge, would such a rates rise have been introduced or would water charges be in the offing? It seems probable, to say the least, that elected Northern politicians would have been far more reluctant to impose extra financial burdens when faced with the prospect of having to explain themselves to an irate electorate.
Public reaction to Mr Hain's announcement has been that the introduction of water charges (which already form part of the existing rates system) and the proposed increase in regional rates is unfair. And those who say this have a point. There is no gainsaying the fact that Northern Ireland's water, sewerage, roads, rail, education and health services are all in a deplorable state and will need substantial investment to bring them up to an acceptable level. But the local populace can hardly be blamed for decades of neglect by successive secretaries of state and their ministers.
Peter Hain cited the higher cost of public services in Britain as justification for introducing water charges and raising rates. But what he failed to take into account is that, in the main, wages in the North are lower than in the rest of the UK and prices for basic necessities, such as fuel and electricity, are much higher.
So ordinary people have every right to feel aggrieved. Less easy to justify, however, has been the chorus of protest which has come from various elected representatives - particularly those who, by failing to work the assembly and executive, have abdicated their responsibilities and left the way clear for an unaccountable secretary of state to implement whatever measures he likes.
Besides, MLAs in particular can hardly complain about the Northern Ireland public being overcharged when they themselves have had no qualms about continuing to draw millions of pounds in assembly salaries and allowances for doing virtually nothing.
The lesson to be learned from Peter Hain's announcement is that direct rule from Westminster, while it lasts, is going to cost the people of Northern Ireland dear, both in political and economic terms. It is probably too much to hope that the locally elected politicians will be moved to do something about that.