So last night after an extensive courtship, the Ulster Unionists and the Conservatives finally consummated their relationship and are now officially linked together under their rather unwieldy but politically expedient name of "Ulster Conservatives and Unionists - New Force". Cue inappropriate wisecracks about the Third Force and the NF.
Alternatively you can visit which bills them more snappily as just "Conservatives and Unionists", and which in an earlier incarnation had claimed to be the official website of the two parties' Joint Committee.
In the joint spirit of the new experiment I invited both Sir Reg Empey and Owen Paterson to talk to me for tomorrow's Inside Politics. Amongst the topics covered in our discussion are the likely attitude of the party's only MP, Lady Sylvia Hermon, to the "New Force", how a future Conservative government might tackle the designation system at Stormont and whether Sir Reg will take the opportunity provided by David Burnside's resignation to add a woman to his all male team.
As usual the programme will be broadcast on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Ulster at 12.45 pm.
P.S. Whether it's a political success or not, the "New Force" promises to be good news for whoever gets
I flew over to London today for a mixture of two stories. Denis Bradley and Lord Eames were facing a grilling from MPs on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. Although Shuan Woodward's intervention, ruling out the £12,000 "recognition payment" looked likely to take some heat out of the occasion, the hearing hadn't been going long before there were some pointed exchanges between the two witnesses and both the Committee chair, Sir Patrick Cormack, and the DUP MP Iris Robinson, who invoked memories of the La Mon bombing.
Mrs Robinson's colleague David Simpson called the payment proposal "obnoxious". He expressed disappointment that the fingerprints of Lord Eames, who had officiated at the MP's relatives' funerals, were on the recommendation and accused Denis Bradley of pushing an agenda. At this point the SDLP's Alasdair McDonnell got up from his committee seat in protest and Sir Patrick Cormack had to calm proceedings. Later Mr Bradley hit back by criticising politicians who had responded to their report "obnoxiously".
When I talked to Lord Eames and Denis Bradley this morning they wouldn't admit the proposed payment had been a mistake, and predicted that society would have to return to the need for some kind of "recognition" in the future. At the same time they didn't seem at all surprised about the Secretary of State's decision and looked forward to some of their other recommendations being implemented.
My colleague Vincent Kearney will have more on these exchanges on Evening Extra and ´óÏó´«Ã½ Newsline.
I then headed towards the Commons to hear how discussions between Gordon Brown and the heads of the three devolved administrations had been going. Their meeting had been scheduled to deal with financial matters, and in the run up to the encounter the Scottish First Minister has been warning that London imposed efficiency savings could lead to thousands of job losses in Scotland. The SNP took heart from the opposition of the Finance Minister Nigel Dodds to the proposed £5 billion proposed efficiency savings.
During the meeting Gordon Brown repeated London's position that all the devolved administrations should play their part in making efficiencies. Messrs Robinson and McGuinness countered that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had made financial promises at the time devolution was restored which should be honoured.
Today's encounter doesn't appear to have led to any conclusion. The details are going to be chewed over in a meeting of Finance Ministers in mid March.
On the margins of the meeting, the First and Deputy First Ministers again raised the plight of the savers at the Presbyterian Mutual Society. Martin McGuinness says they have a promise from Gordon Brown of another meeting on this subject, but again there's no sign as yet of any real movement from London on this score.
During today's Agriculture Committee meeting on the Farm Modernisation Grant debacle, two MLAs, the DUP's William Irwin and the UUP's George Savage declared that they had themselves applied for a grant. It's not clear whether they had to queue in person or took advantage of the postal application system.
MLAs had a terrifying ordeal around noon today. They were in the Assembly departure lounge about to board a budget airline debate about Belfast City Airport, when a call went out over the Stormont tannoy.
The Captain (aka First Minister and East Belfast MP Peter Robinson) warned his passengers that they might be about to enter constitutional turbulence.
The motion due for debate called on the Environment Minister Sammy Wilson to set up an inquiry into the proposed runway extension at the airport. But, in an assembly used to making calls that come to nothing, Captain Robinson wanted to make MLAs aware that their motion might actually make a difference.
Under existing planning law, he pointed out, the Environment Minister had to weigh all kinds of criteria before ordering an inquiry. The First Minister said if the Assembly passed its motion it would place the Minister in an impossible situation.
The motion's advocates weren't convinced they had the power to direct the Environment Minister to order an inquiry. But the close shave with the possibility that a Stormont debate might make a practical difference caused MLAs to shudder.
In the end a majority voted in favour of a watered down motion calling on the Environment Minister to "take note" of the Assembly's support for an inquiry.
Martin McGuinness, Sir Reg Empey and Nigel Dodds were all on their feet this afternoon answering questions. But the focus was on two politicians with Ulster Unionist and Antrim connections, although for very different reasons.
First we heard about the death of the former junior minister James Leslie, who was killed in a diving accident whilst on holiday in Costa Rica. Just 50, Mr Leslie was a courteous man, well liked around Stormont, and politicians from across the spectrum expressed their sympathies to his family.
Mr Leslie left the Ulster Unionists for the Conservatives and was involved in the two parties' recent courtship. Away from politics, he had started growing willow trees on his land for use as renewable energy.
Later it emerged that the South Antrim MLA David Burnside has decided to step down from the Assembly. A sceptical unionist and a thorn in the side of David Trimble, Mr Burnside stuck with his party rather than following Jeffrey Donaldson's example and moving to the DUP. He lost his Westminster seat to William McCrea, but hung on in the Assembly.
Mr Burnside frequently asked acerbic questions of the First and Deputy First Minister. Just this afternoon he wanted to know whether Martin McGuinness thought there was any chance to the parties moving towards a voluntary coalition in the future (the answer was no). However he found the demands of attending committees difficult to balance with his other business committments. Last month the DUP attacked his attendance record.
So who will the new MLA be? Well that's up to the UUP leader Sir Reg Empey but ywo names in the frame are local councillors Adrian Watson and Danny Kinahan.
I've been at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis since last night, when Mary Lou McDonald set the theme for the weekend by calling for corrupt bankers to face jail.
During the day other republicans have been criticising the "fat cats" they hold responsible for the financial crisis, and Gerry Adams has demanded that the Irish governmet should be replaced.
The thrust of Sinn Fein thinking now seems to be towards a broad left coalition, working together with Irish Labour as a voice of the disenchanted. With tens of thousands of angry workers out on the streets of Dublin that's clearly the populist course of action. But will Irish voters deem Sinn Fein relevant to the credit crunch, or could they once again get squeezed to the margins of the big economic debate.
Fittingly for a money obsessed era, next door to the Ard Fheis the RDS is also hosting a coin collectors exhibition (one prize exhibit appears to be Arthur Griffiths' watch chain). A collector told my colleague Martina Purdy that if you have an old Northern Bank note in mint condition you can get a lot of money for it. But in truth anyone who we mentioned it to in the hall said they wouldn't know where to get one (Barry McElduff suggested trying "New Forge Lane").
Whilst the focus may have been on the south the north hasn't been totally forgotten, with Martin McGuinness saying the Orange state had been replaced by an Orange and Green north "and evolution, like climate change, is undeniable".
Whilst Declan Kearney had a tough message for dissident republicans, on Inside Politics Gerry Adams seemed to accuse Sir Hugh Orde of making too much of the threat to return to the old policing ways. Got to go now as about to be live on air.
UPDATE: Had to rush for the train, so wasn't able to blog again on Saturday night. However I conributed an analysis piece on the Ard Fheis for the main news website, which you can read
Wednesday's evidence from the Northern Ireland Economic Research Institute's Victor Hewitt to a joint session of the Regional Development and Finance Committees made for gloomy, if perhaps realistic, listening. The economist sketched out his belief that we cannot avoid the consequences of what might be the worst recession in 60 years.
Tonight's it's been revealed that is down around £7 billion in January (that's only about a billion less than the annual discretionary spend by local departments, not including recurring costs like welfare benefits). This shows the kind of uphill struggle the Finance Minister Nigel Dodds might face in his declared intention to resist
As I reported on the news last night, the Institute's draft action plan questioned flagship Executive policies like free prescriptions and free travel for the elderly. Another of Victor Hewitt's ideas for generating revenue would impact directly on the Stormont estate.
He suggested that civil servants should pay a levy for their parking spaces, arguing that in the private sector such a benefit might cost £1000 a year. Ian Paisley Junior jumped to the defence of low paid civil servants, but would the general public share his view?
On Monday Peter Robinson took the Deputy Speaker David McClarty to task for lapsing into Sinn Fein language by adopting the term "Joint First Minister" to refer to Martin McGuinness.
Today the unrepentant UUP MLA hit back, accusing Mr Robinson of being more concerned about his personal status than the big picture and "ranting whilst Rome burns".
I notice over on the the party has come up with yet another formulation, referring to Mr McGuinness as "Co-First Minister". Gone, it seems, are the days when he had to grin and bear it as Ian Paisley treated him like a deputy dawg.
Between Co-First Minister and Joint First Minister, our top two politicians appear, in republican eyes at least, to be getting ever closer. They may be constitutionally Siamese, but to paraphrase it looks like one of them isn't pleased at all about this attempt to erode his legal title.
When he apologised over his green post box comments, Barry McElduff told MLAs "if a handful of words which I used in August 2008 broke the public duty of members as set out in the code of conduct for members - which now appears to be the case - then of course I would want to apologise for this."
So he's now absolved from his sins so far as the Stormont Standards Committee is concerned, but what about the Stormont Plagiarism Committee?
The phrase "handful of words" sounds familiar to those who witnessed a recent apology from the SDLP leader Mark Durkan withdrawing comments about the First Minister Peter Robinson. "I was asked by the Deputy Speaker to address the offending term, so I did. I am being asked by the Speaker to withdraw the offending term, so I will. If, in my challenge to the First Minister, I used a handful of words that were procedurally incorrect, I withdraw the handful of words that are procedurally incorrect."
Something else both politicians share in common is the use of the conditional "if" in their apology. This cleverly introduces the possibility that the complaint about your conduct or words is spurious, but in the unlikely case that it is not then of course you would say sorry. Hence the apology becomes not quite an apology.
In a similar vein I might say that if a handful of words I used on Stormont Live yesterday led a TV viewer at home to drop off to sleep, whilst smoking a cigarette which upon falling from their hand sparked a blaze that destroyed their home, then of course I would be sorry. I don't imagine that occurred, but it's always best to get your conditional apology in first.
Last month I registered my disappointment about the dropping of the TV version of the "Folks On The Hill". However the show lives on on Radio Ulster and my colleagues there tell me it is now available as a podcast.
If you want to see some of the folks in the flesh, they are out and about for a series of roadshows,starting in Coleraine on 18th March. Full details can be found on the new
Far from playing down his dove shooting past Jim Shannon raised it of his own volition yesterday when Jim Wells used a figure of speech in his contribution to the budget debate. We revisited this on Stormont Live, but here's the transcript
Mr Wells: Perhaps, we could kill two birds with one stone by bringing our roads up to an acceptable level and by --
Mr Shannon: Is that the first time that the Member has killed two birds?
Mr Wells: As someone who boasted about going to Argentina to kill 8,000 pigeons, that statement is a bit rum.
Mr Shannon: I did not boast about killing 8,000 pigeons; it was rumoured that I killed 8,000 birds.
Mr Wells: The honourable Member has not informed the House whether he killed more than 8,000 pigeons or fewer, but, if I was an Argentinian pigeon, I would be extremely worried if I saw him coming through Buenos Aires again.
As predicted on a recent Stormont Live, Barry McElduff had to say sorry to MLAs today for breaking the Stormont Code of conduct. This followed an investigation by the over the West Tyrone MP's newspaper comments commending young republicans for painting local post boxes green. The ombudsman upheld the complaint from the DUP's Tom Buchanan that this condoned vandalism.
Thanks to Niall from Sinn Fein for pointing out that Barry has painted himself into a corner over this one.
If you are a feeling a bit hot under your wooly collar, don't worry. You have nothing to be concerned about regarding global warming. You are thriving. Your future is safe.
How do I know this? Well I heard it today directly from our Environment Minister Sammy Wilson, answering Sinn Fein's Cathal Boylan. According to Sammy, the world's polar bear colonies have never had it so good.
After the revelations last week about that global warming advert, you might have expected today's Environment question time to be even better than usual knock about stuff. However the failure of the Assembly to adopt a system of topical questions once again rendered the exchanges less than gripping.
There were questions about planning (after having scolded his own officials about the rejection of the Aurora building in Belfast the Minister is commissioning a tall buildings policy for the city). Then some MLAs attacked Mr Wilson over his continuing membership of Belfast City Council (he rejected the argument that combining this role with responsibility for local government represented a conflict of interests and pointed out that other ministers had held on to their council seats).
But the great global warming story stayed largely untouched apart from attempts by Cathal Boylan and Daithi McKay to work it into other topics. Mr McKay welcomed Mr Wilson back from "the DUP sin bin". But the minister, alluding to a previous quote from Gerry Adams, insisted that "I'm not going away, you know".
Just back from Enniskillen (hence no blogs yesterday), where I've been shadowing Enterprise minister Arlene Foster, for a documentary on "Ministers and Motherhood." The radio documentary focuses on Ms Foster and the farming minister Michelle Gildernew, who also has three children.
Ms Foster's daughter Sarah, aged 8, is certainly proud of her mother - but admitted in interview she preferred it when she was Environment minister because she brought home books featuring "Oscar the Otter." In fact young Sarah was so enthusiastic about conservation her family dubbed her "Junior minister of the Environment."
Ms Gildernew has been bringing her three month old baby daughter to work on occasion - including Executive meetings. Find out which Ulster Unionist councillor has been left holding the baby....
The documentary airs on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Ulster on February 21 at 11.30am.
The Stormont restaurant is advertising a theme night: the last meal on the Titanic. On Friday February 27, for £22.50 the restaurant will serve the same menu as the ill-fated liner before it hit the iceberg. There are seven courses:
First Course - Hors D'Oeuvres
Oysters
Second Course - Consomme Olga
Third Course - Poached Salmon with Mousseline Sauce
Fourth Course - Saute of Chicken, Lyonnaise Vegetable Marrow
Fifth Course - Sirloin of Beef, Chateau Potatoes, Green Pea, Creamed Carrots, Parmentier & Boiled New Potatoes
Sixth Course - Waldorf Pudding, Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly, Chocolate and Vanilla Eclairs, French Ice Cream
Seventh Course - Earl Grey Tea
Numbers are limited to 60 - as long as it doesn't end in disaster for the SS Stormont....
The DUP's Alistair Ross has issued a press statement headlined "Ruane is right shocker." He recalls her answer to a qusetion he tabled. Here is the exchange which refers to the controversy over the education minister praising IRA Hunger Striker Bobby Sands on a school visit to West Belfast.
Mr Ross asked "if it is appropriate to praise a convicted terrorist in her capacity a Minister when speaking to school children."
The minister replied: "It would not be appropriate to praise any terrorist under any circumstances."
Mr Ross declared "At last, the Minister has said something we can all agree with."
Can't see this agreement sticking somehow.....
Sinn Fein's Caral Ni Chuilin and the SDLP's Carmel Hanna clashed on Stormont Live yesterday about appropriate language in the assembly. While Ms Ni Chuilin had successfully complained about Nelson McCausland referring to Gerry Adams having a past in the IRA, Mrs Hanna scoffed at other complaints. The Sinn Fein MLA pointed out that it was wrong tthat other members refer to Provisional Sinn Fein. This apparently was because it was used by unionists to cause offence. But there's a raging debate on Slugger O'Toole about another website that is different from Sinn Fein.ie
The following website uses Provisional Sinn Fein - so which is it? And why is Provisional so upsetting?
PS It appears that this is indeed an old website from the previous assembly.
https://www.sinnfein.org/
Environment minister Sammy Wilson may be the scourge of the Greens but he is certainly in demand. The minister is in the spotlight over his refusal to run an ad encouraging energy efficiency and the reduction of carbon emission as a means to tackling global warming. Mr Wilson was interviewed on PM Radio 4, Drive on Radio 5 Live, Europe Today on the World Service, and Newshour on the World Service. And of course good old Stormont Live!
I'm back at last...and so one wonders is the ice age?
The creative people who run the Stormont blog have put up a new image for Stormont today. They used a snow covered image of one of the decorative lions on the front of Parliament Buildings.
Is that a DUP lion frozen over - so soon after Ian Paisley, former leader and First Minister, declared an end to the ice age in north-south relations. It seems the freeze is back - with today's DUP motion demanding a rethink on north-south bodies.
Anyway, speaking of the weather, Sammy Wilson is insisting that climate change is linked to factors such as a the sun and is not man made. So he's not showing a Labour government advert which attempts to encourage fuel efficiency to tackle global warming.
Still he insists is he an environmentalist - perhaps that why he is against the ad? The couple featured, observed one wag, have three kids. Hardly in line with fears of a global population explosion.
After meeting the Chamber of Commerce at the offices of All State in central Belfast, the Business Secretary Lord Mandelson emerged to chat to the press. Recognising Downtown Radio's Eamonn Mallie from his time as Northern Ireland Secretary, Lord Mandelson quipped "Eamonn, have you never thought about retiring, not that I am wanting to lead you in that direction".
No, responded the veteran hack, "I have an unblemished record, and I'm still here."
And on that note, I'm bringing my blogging to an end for a few days. I'm off next week but my colleague Martina Purdy has kindly agreed to blog-sit in my absence.
14 years after the loyalists declared their ceasefire and 3 and a half years after the IRA destroyed its arsenal to General De Chastelain's satisfaction, the UVF and the UDA have yet to put their weapons beyond use. Now they have been given a final 6 month window of opportunity by Shaun Woodward.
My guest on Inside Politics this weekend is the Progressive Unionist leader Dawn Purvis. I ask her about the chances of the loyalists moving during the next 6 months. We also discuss her views on academic selection, abortion and the proposed extension of the runway at Belfast City Airport.
As usual the programme is on air at 12.45pm tomorrow on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Ulster or via the listen again facility.
The Business Secretary Lord Mandelson is in town, starting his tour with a visit to Bombardier who yesterday confirmed that they were letting 300 temporary workers go.
In these credit crunch times there are few enough jobs around, so I thought I'd better let anyone interested know that the Assembly will be recruiting 18 researchers in the next few weeks. I'm told the going rate is around £30,000, which strangely is about £4,000 less than you would get if you were doing a similar job for Belfast City Council.
Recently Stormont hired 30 assistant clerks. About 170 people competed for the posts.
Aside from recruitment, I gather that a number of Stormont staff will soon have to make decisions about whether they stay with the assembly or return to the wider Northern Ireland Civil service. This is all part of the review headed by the former Scottish parliament presiding officer George Reid which recommended back in 2007 that the Assembly should create its own independent Parliamentary Service by 2010. The benefit is that the staff don't have divided allegiances, but the downside for employees is that you are not part of such a big pool when it comes to career development.
The Bank of England has cut interest rates by half a per cent to 1.5%. But will it make any difference to the general lack of credit? And apart from its obvious impact on individuals and businesses what difference might the credit crunch make to the way the Executive goes about its business?
Yesterday the Society section of the Guardian highlighted as an example of the increasing doubts about funding public works through Private Finance Initiatives, or PFIs. In December the project received
Before Christmas, the Public Service Trade Union, NIPSA published a report
The credit crunch has dried up many of the private sources of funding for PFI consortia. In addition, the NIPSA report predicted that a change in accounting practices due in April could make PFI much less attractive as the borrowing involved will have to be included on the public sector's balance sheet in the future.
The Assembly has revamped its website, and this lunchtime the home page sports a photo of
It seems ages since the blog last documented Jim Allister's thoughts on the Euro anthem "Ode To Joy". Now the MEP thinks he has spotted a division in the attitude of the two MEPs to the anthem. Mr Allister claims that during a recent plenary session of the European parliament, Bairbre De Brun stood for the anthem, whilst Mary Lou McDonald remained seated along with Euro sceptics like himself.
Politically significant, or a commentary on who happened to be feeling more tired at the time?
I was contacted recently by the former teacher David Bell, who received an absolute discharge after pleading guilty to assaulting a pupil at Laurelhill Community College in Lisburn back in June 2002. The facts of the case are well summarised by Liam Clarke, whose article published in November last year I am reproducing in the extended entry below.
Mr Bell has had his application to the Northern Ireland Office for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy turned down, but is appealing the decision. He reckons that since Liam's article was published he has gathered more support from local politicians, with over 70 MLAs backing his campaign to clear his name and remove a conviction which prevents him from ever teaching again.
Read the rest of this entry
The DUP did their best today to kill off the Maybe they are opposed to unelected second chambers, unless they happen to be called the House of Lords. Former FSB chairman Bill Jeffrey leapt to the defence of the Forum, which, in his view, was a veritable powerhouse of original ideas. Appearing on Stormont Live Bill revealed that he was in fact the shortest serving member of the forum, having been appointed on the day the body was suspended. He served between 11 am and 4 pm, so never got the chance to attend a meeting.
This is a bit like the jockey Tony McCoy trying to notch up 3000 winners or David Beckham waiting patiently to get his 100 caps for England. Let's start a campaign now - if the Civic Forum is to be killed off then at least it should meet once more, just so Bill Jeffrey can say he's been there, seen that and got the tee-shirt.
Yesterday Basil McCrea accused Caitriona Ruane of bringing the Assembly into disrepute by her handling of the post primary transfer issue. Sinn Fein's Chief Whip Caral NÃ ChuilÃn objected to what she regarded as unparliamentary language. But today Mr McCrea says he has been cleared by the speaker. The moral of the story is that you can accuse any MLA of being disreputable but don't imply they have misled you, unless you want to spend a day locked out of the Stormont grounds.
Responding to the SDLP's calls for the Executive to show more imagination in tackling the economic downturn, former minister Edwin Poots sounded in scathing form. Mr Poots took Declan O'Loan to task for suggesting that the answer to the all our problems is building more social housing.
"With such an immense and extremely vivid imagination, Mr O'Loan should not be sitting here today; he should have been in Davos to advise the world's economists on how to progress" Mr Poots argued. "Barack Obama could do with such a man in his advisory group to help him to improve the situation in the United States of America."
Davos O'Loan, however, didn't want the DUP man to have the last word. The North Antrim MLA returned to "Mr Poots's earlier point about my alleged failure of imagination. I did not refer to the Maze stadium -- and I could have used that as a rather nice example: there was a place where there was a total failure of imagination by those who are walking away from that scheme -- but that is one point on which Mr Poots would probably agree with me."
The former champion of the Maze multi sports stadium thanked Mr O'Loan for his intervention, but seemed keener to concentrate on his argument about how spending more on housing might mean cuts in health, rather than dwelling on the painful business of Gregory Campbell sinking his precious project.
That's the number of unclaimed cars less than 10 years old and worth less than £5000 that were crushed last year by the Driver Vehicle Agency, according to a written answer given to the Ulster Unionist MLA Roy Beggs. Mr Beggs reckons it's a waste for such valuable vehicles to be put in the crusher. As a result of his inquiry the DVA has now taken steps to reduce its crushing limit to £3000. The MLA says no impounded unclaimed cars have been sold at public auction since April 2006. He acknowledges that many of the older cars destroyed weren't road worthy (974 cars were crushed last year), but argues that selling the newer models could provide much needed additional revenue.
Last September this blog reported on the controversy over Ogra Sinn Fein painting West Tyrone's post boxes green. Local MLA Barry McElduff spoke up in support of the young republicans. Now Barry has been hauled before the Standards and Privileges Committee to atone for his comments. It's understood he may have to make a statement to the Assembly explaining what some view as his support for vandalism.
I'm 