Sir Reg makes his pitch
I'm just off air with the last election edition of "Inside Politics". Sir Reg Empey responded to Shaun Woodward's assault on David Cameron as posing a "terrible risk" to the future of Britain. I questioned him about his party's committment to a report on cutting corporation tax - Sir Reg countered that this wouldn't be a Varney Report Mark 2.
We also discussed, amongst other things, whether he had a precise idea of the extent to which a Tory emergency budget would impact on the local budget (the answer seemed to be no), the Tory plans for cutting the number of MPs and whether David Cameron's rise in the UK wide polls might end up laying into the hands of the DUP, should it leave them as kingmakers.
I was joined by our regular commentator Fionuala O'Connor and Nicholas Whyte whose has long been a sine qua non for those of us reporting local politics. Nicholas will be joining me as number cruncher in chief for the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s overnight coverage of the results as they come in, which will go on air at 10 p.m. on Thursday night on ´óÏó´«Ã½1.
On the topic of hung parliaments, today's factors in the potential role of the unionists, but gets the arithmetic wrong. During an election rehearsal, Nicholas and I tried to work out how they calculated that 311 Tories plus unionists equals a majority of four, but our calculator blew up.
I'm 
Comments