³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Those with the best memories amongst you will know that the blog has already trod boldly in these footsteps before.

Merry Christmas

But on the grounds that you can never have enough season's greetings, I'd like to repeat myself on this occasion.

I'm not expecting to file on a daily basis over the holiday period. But please keep the comments coming in and, whenever possible, I shall try to publish them. I'd like to thank Joe O'Brien who helped me with the comments in recent weeks, and wish him well with his new career.

Later today the Inside Politics producer Robin Sheeran and I are due to record our review of the political year. Tomorrow there's no programme, as Talkback will take over our slot. But the hour long review is scheduled to be broadcast on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Ulster on Saturday December 29th, starting at noon.

Presuming all goes according to plan, my guests will be the SDLP Deputy Leader Alasdair McDonnell, the Alliance Deputy Leader Naomi Long, the DUP Strangford MLA Simon Hamilton, the UUP MLA Basil McCrea and the Assembly's youngest MLA, Daithi McKay of Sinn Fein.

I'll be asking the politicians to look back on the momentous changes during 2007 and peer forward into 2008. Will all the Executive parties sign off on the budget in January? If the May target date is missed, when will justice be devolved? Hopefully, between the six of us we can provide a bit of Christmas and New Year craic.

UPDATE: The more keen eared amongst you will have noticed that there WAS an Inside Politics on December 22nd, presented very expertly by Jim Fitzpatrick, on the topic of the political fallout from the Omagh trial. My thanks to Jim for turning the programme around at short notice.

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• - What's this?

The curse of the Christmas period, or a necessary social lubricant? On his way out from talks at Hillsborough with the Secretary of State, Ian Paisley gave his customary warning to the ladies and gentlemen of the fourth estate to "stay off the devil's buttermilk".

Sinn Fein, meanwhile, has been doing some strategic thinking on alcohol related isses. Concerned about under age drinking, Sue Ramsey has tabled a motion calling for "the clear and identifiable marking of carrier bags provided by off-licences". And with an eye to the litter problems posed by bottles and cans dumped in the streets, Mitchel Mclaughlin wants the Environment Minister to introduce "a refundable deposit sufficient to encourage people to return containers to the point of purchase".

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• - What's this?

Sinn Fein have long enjoyed a close relationship with Ken Livingstone. Now they want to follow the London Mayor's lead in seeking a special relationship with the Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez. Mr Livingstone has struck a deal with President Chavez which should secure a 20% discount on oil to fuel London buses.

Now Martina Anderson has tabled a motion calling on the Executive to explore the possibility of entering into partnership with the Venezuelan Government, in order to provide low-cost home heating oil to low-income households here.

I am already looking forward to the joint Paisley McGuinness visit to Caracas.

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How much the Social Development Department paid towards the planning costs associated with the Big Wheel outside Belfast City Hall. The rest of the costs have been met by the World Tourist Attraction Company.

It's certainly given the City Hall Christmas Village a more striking backdrop this year. So was it money well spent?

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• - What's this?

That's how many of the Stormont security guards, officially known as "doorkeepers", are Catholics. Sinn Fein's Martina Anderson asked the question. The Assembly Commission told her that of 27 directly recruited doorkeepers, 5 or 18.5% were Catholic. There's a secondee whose religion cannot be revealed as it would break his or her privacy rights under the data protection rules, and the Commission doesn't keep any information on 19 agency staff employed on the Assembly doors.

But will Martina enquire how many are indigenous Catholics and how many are migrant Catholics?

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• - What's this?

That's how long Paul Quinn's father, Stephen, said he spoke to Conor Murphy, when the Newry and Armagh MP phoned his home. Mr Quinn wouldn't prolong the conversation because he wants the Sinn Fein MP to first publicly clarify that his murdered son was not a criminal.

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• - What's this?

I haven't been involved in our coverage of the Omagh bomb trial, and the acquittal of Sean Hoey on all counts. But as a humble viewer of News 24 I witnessed a classic example of how not to handle the press. A PSNI press officer approached the live camera and told reporters that Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter would be making a statement but not taking questions.

The Chief Superintendent then made his statement which covered his team's initial investigation and how strong they believed their preliminary case to be. But his chronology halted well before the damage inflicted on his team's evidence in court or the judge's swingeing criticism and referral of the evidence given by two officers to the Police Ombudsman.

Not surprisingly reporters wanted this rather salient part of the story addressed, but when one tried to ask a question he was accused of breaking "the deal" with the police and pursuing a personal agenda. From what I saw there was no "deal" but simply a rule laid down by the PSNI.

It would have been commonsense for any statement to camera to have addressed the judge's ruling, even if only to express regret at the distress caused to the victims and an intention to study the details to ensure any shortcomings can be addressed. In fact, a written statement issued by police headquarters did just that. However the on camera appearance looked evasive and bad tempered.

As I write our internal news system informs me that the Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde is not available for interview, Sir Ronnie Flanagan is not available for interview and the Police Federation are not available for interview. Meanwhile the Human Rights Commissioner has backed the victims' families in calling for an independent cross-border inquiry.

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I was listening to Good Morning Ulster playing a snatch of Cliff Richard's memorable ditty this morning

"Christmas time, Mistletoe and Wine, Children singing Christian rhyme".

It's a lyric which still has the undeniable power to stop you in your tracks for all the wrong reasons. But I think our Traditional Unionist MEP Jim Allister could be running the lyricist close.

Earlier this week he reacted to the rejection of a demand for lower corporation tax with "Varney explodes devolution Blarney".

Now the Eurosceptic MEP is arguing that the EU anthem should not be called "Ode to Joy" but "Code to Destroy".

Move over Andrew Motion
Its time for your rhyme to desist
The object of our devotion
Is Jim, the traditional unionist...

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A fishermens' representative, speaking on Talkback today, remarked that sending in Michelle Gildernew to negotiate fishing quotas with the EU was like ordering Boy George to fight Joe Calzhage.

Earlier in the year Alastair Campbell called Michelle "as tough as boots", but I imagine this is the first time she has been compared to Boy George.

Any nominations for more unlikely comparisons/inappropriate metaphors etc...?

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An interesting one from Sinn Fein's Martina Anderson today in response to the latest statistics from the Equality Commission. These show that 56.3% of the workforce is Protestant, whilst 43.7% is Catholic. The Commission says this fits in with "the long established trend of growth in the Roman Catholic share of the workforce".

However Martina Anderson argues that the Catholic percentage is being "artificially inflated" by the practice of counting migrant workers, many of whom come from Catholic countries, as "Catholics" rather than "others".

The Foyle MLA says the monitoring is intended to address sectarian discrimination and imbalances between the nationalist and unionist communities. Because employers do not perceive migrants as belonging to either community, she argues they should not be counted as "Catholic".

So should we be asking workers whether they are "nationalist" or "unionist" rather than "Catholic" or "Protestant"? And if the Equality Commission did that how would they deal with someone who does not see themselves as belonging to either community, but is "perceived" by others to come from one side or the other?

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Given that the NIO generally hold their Christmas drinks in January the new Special Adviser might not be too late to avail of some much needed hospitality. The latest statistics for the cost of NIO Christmas receptions, released in a Westminster written answer, have already caused some controversy, given they show a 9000% rise.

The trend seems to show that Peter Hain did Christmas full on, whereas the pious Paul Murphy was a bit more Scrooge like when it came to celebrating the festive period.

Back in Christmas 2002, Paul Murphy's first in the job, the NIO spent only £426 on a Christmas reception and nothing at all on decorations. Presumably the Secretary of State rummaged around in the loft, just like the rest of us, and decided that last year's baubles would dust off just fine.

By Christmas 2006, Peter Hain's reception bill had risen to a whopping £37,578 and the decorations cost £2,573. He saved a bit on cards though, spending only £2,630 which was down on his first Christmas in the job and down on Paul Murphy's card bill.

We shall have to wait until Philip Hammond MP asks another question next year to find out how Santa Woodward's Christmas habits compare with his predecessors.

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Shaun Woodward has just appointed a new Special Adviser. Oonagh Blackman quit the Daily Mirror in November where she was Political Editor. She'll be starting in January.

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• - What's this?

I'm not sure who said "success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan", but I do know that there were a distinct shortage of people queuing up to clutch the Varney Review of Corporation Tax to their bosoms today. In his review, the former head of the Inland Revenue comprehensively dumped calls for a cut in Corporation Tax here to match the Republic's 12.5% rate.

No one was really expecting he'd say yes, but flicking through the report's pages I can't find anything in terms of alternative sweeteners. Sir David is being commissioned to carry out another review on how our private sector can be boosted. It may be that its publication time will be more propitious, coming in the run up to next year's US Investment Conference in Belfast, but on this showing don't hold your breath.

Sir David hasn't been put up for interview, nor has any minister from the Treasury who commissioned the report. So the Secretary of State Shaun Woodward was left to put the best gloss on the report. Here, gathering for a North South meeting, the Deputy First Minister and the OFMDFM Junior Minister Ian Paisley Jr. weren't prepared to comment ahead of the report's release (although by this stage Sir David's line on the tax cut was pretty well known). The Finance Minister Peter Robinson has decided not to speak until the Executive discusses the report tomorrow (although in a written statement he has described the Varney Review as "disappointing").

The review is 130 pages long so will need some detailed study (for example, I have some reservations about his use of the equation p = a + b1t + b2 g + gX on page 84). However if Sir David had recommended a slashing of local tax rates it's my guess we would have been beating some of these potential interviewees off with a stick.

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I'm not sure if it was the excitement of preparing for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Political Unit's Christmas do, or the diversion of having to update a "shelf piece" which was out of date but might get used over the festive period, but i forgot on Friday to post my customary plug for the weekend's Inside Politics.

This was a shame as my guest, Sir Hugh Orde, had quite a few interesting things to say about the future of the IRA Army Council, the Paul Quinn murder, the threat from dissident republicans and other matters.

If you want to listen again to the programme on the web you can get it from the following link.

Inside Politics

Don't be deterred by the fact that it says Saturday October 6th - when I clicked on the link it was the right programme, even though it starts with the last couple of minutes of the Talkback edition which ran immediately before it.

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Further to Maze: the Screenplay, I can report that Mischa Barton accompanied Ministers Poots and Dodds down to the Great Hall where they were interviewed by reporters and snapped by a line of waiting school girls. Mischa was resplendent in a hugging red dress and silver shoes several storeys high.

The starlet's fame is a cause of consternation to both myself and most of the more veteran members of the Stormont press pack, who admitted privately that they didn't know who she was. But the crowd of waiting school girls most definitely did.

After assiduous research on the web, though, I was able to inform a Sinn Fein MLA that our guest was a star of the American teen drama television series, "The O.C." The politician in question had spent most of his formative years behind bars. He shook his head and told me "in my time the OCs never looked anything like that".

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I'm not sure if it's a rom-com or a farce, but Stormont witnessed some chaotic scenes today as unionists on the Culture Committee refused to look at some architects' design plans for a potential multi-sports stadium at the Maze. The members argued they should have been shown a business plan first. The architects, who flew over from London, were, at the time of writing, due to go home without making their presentation.

The scenes outside the Committee room were rendered all the more surreal by the presence at Stormont of Lord Attenborough, Shirley MacLaine, Pete Postlethwaite and other stars of the "Closing the Ring" movie. When I last looked the glamorous Mischa Barton had not arrived, but was due to attend a reception.

The Culture Minister Edwin Poots had to divide his attention between the rebellious Culture Commitee members and the film stars, whilst the architects hung around waiting to hear if the Committee would reconvene to see their drawings.

As I looked on increasingly bemused, I wondered whether there might be a film in it....

Opening Image: An aerial tracking shot of the Stormont estate zooms into the Assembly building and moves seamlessly through a window to reveal angry exchanges inside a Committee Room...

Flashback: We are in a jail, fly on a wall style, listening in to prisoners planning their escape. Some of the inmates look strangely familiar..

Dissolve into: an image of the Olympic torch being plunged into a Beijing stadium bowl (a clock can be seen ticking in the background)

Wipe to: David Healy scores the goal which completes his hat trick against Spain. Long panning shot captures jubilant crowd reaction but rests on ominously creaking base of stadium stand...

That's as far as I've got...perhaps others would care to develop the plot and the characters, before we apply to the Culture Department for development funding.

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One of my regular commenters, RJ, has asked for a specific thread on the Ballee land deal in County Antrim. Belatedly, here it is.

I was away in London last Thursday when Martina Purdy's initial report on the deal aired on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Newsline. But I was on duty at Stormont this Monday when the SDLP's Declan O'Loan put out a statement saying he was referring Ian Paisley Jr.'s role in the deal to the Assembly Standards and Privileges Committee and the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister. Viewers of that night's ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Newsline will have seen Ian Jr. join me for an impromptu live appearance during which he accused the SDLP of launching a "witch hunt" against him.

The facts related to the Ballee deal are fairly complex and have been recorded elsewhere on this website.

Some commenters on this site and over on Slugger O'Toole view the deal with their usual scepticism.

However others think that a mountain is being made, if not out of a molehill, then out of nearly 100 acres of County Antrim. On Friday last week a political update from the lobby firm Chambre Public Affairs dropped in my e-mail in box. It accused the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ of finding Ian Jr. guilty of nothing more than lobbying for his constituents. I shall put the full Chambre comment in the extended entry below.

Aside from the details of Ballee, one issue which may be worth mentioning concerns the Stormont ministerial code.

So far we have had Peter Robinson accusing Margaret Ritchie of breaking the code, Basil McCrea raising questions about whether Caitriona Ruane has broken the code and Ian Jr. facing a similar line of criticism in relation to both his comments about gays and now the Ballee deal. In relation to the "gay" comments he was exonerated of breaking the Stormont MLAs code of conduct by the Interim Assembly Commissioner for Standards, Tom Frawley.

But neither Mr Frawley nor the Assembly Standards and Privileges Committee have any remit over the Executive's Ministerial Code, only over the rules that govern ordinary MLAs. That's why Declan O'Loan also referred his complaint to the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister. The Ministerial Code has legal force, so I suppose that ultimately it could be tested in the courts, but in terms of investigating whether or not it has been upheld there does not seem to be any other system of external assessment.

Read the rest of this entry

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Making a statement on the loss in the post of two computer discs containing names and addresses of more than seven and a half thousand motorists, the Environment Minister was interrupted by the sound of a mobile phone ringing. Arlene Foster quipped "I'd be very happy if that was Parcel Force calling".

Later Ms Foster's party colleague Sammy Wilson compared her to the Chancellor, who has famously suffered his own child benefit data loss difficulties. Mr Wilson referred to the minister as "Arlene Darling", which was presumably a bit of word play as well as a term of endearment.

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• - What's this?

With that Argentinian dove shooting holiday just a distant memory, Jim Shannon is focussing on different kinds of wild life. The Strangford MLA has asked the Environment Minister about what consideration she has given to culling grey squirrels, in order to support the indigenous red squirrel.

More exotically, he wonders what approaches Arlene Foster has received in relation to the introduction of wild boar into Northern Ireland. She says no organisations or individuals have made such approaches.

Perhaps we could start with the Stormont estate, which would no doubt benefit from a few more wild bores, sorry, wild boars.

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The subtitle (or aston as it's known in the trade) which appeared on screen when I was on Stormont Live this afternoon referred to me as Mark Devenport MLA. I don't think it identified which party I was representing.

This weekend we took the children to the Ulster Orchestra's Christmas Concert, featuring a rendition of the "Snowman" whilst the film played in the background.

At the end of the concert, a cloud of massive white balloons floated down onto the audience's heads, much to the children's delight. Without pausing for a moment, a man in a nearby seat, who I didn't know, quipped "I suppose you must have lots of experience dealing with big balloons."

Now was he referring to our MLAs, or my ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ colleagues?

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It's okay to call a Stormont politician a "lapdog". That was the ruling from the Assembly Speaker Willie Hay today after a complaint from Sinn Fein's Raymond McCartney. Mr McCartney objected to the catcalls (or should that be dogcalls) aimed at his colleague Paul Butler when he rose to defend Caitriona Ruane's vision for education last week.

Today the Speaker asked MLAs to ensure their barks are no worse than their bites (well he didn't use that exact metaphor), but declined to rule that "lapdog" is unparliamentary per se.

I suppose it would be a different matter if an MLA picked on someone who is quite obviously a debating rottweiler (David Burnside for example) and called him a "lapdog". Then they would be misleading the doghouse.

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So when the US President met the First and Deputy First in washington he paid tribute to them, adding ''these two men have dedicated themselves to embettering Northern Ireland through courage and conviction and desire to put aside the past and focus on a hopeful future." When I put the word "embettering" into the spell check on my computer it suggested i should change the text to "embittering". But I am sure that's not what President Bush had in mind.

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is the time to set your watches for Inside Politics on Radio Ulster. I'm joined by the DUP Deputy Chief Whip Peter Weir and Sinn Fein's Mitchel McLaughlin for a discussion which ranges across Jim Allister's new unionist movement, the Paisley- McGuinness trip to the White House and Caitriona Ruane's vision for education.

P.S. I think Mr Allister has to be congratulated for finding an acronym that, so far as I can tell, has not been used before. Traditional Unionist Voice translates as TUV. Apparently in Germany that's an organisation which inspects industrial safety. But I can't think of a previous unionist or loyalist TUV. Maybe it could merge with "Love Ulster" to become TUV LUV.

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• - What's this?

Is the one who is doing all the real work around here. As I write, she is about to cover Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness shaking hands with President Bush (if not with each other) and she has just sent back some pictures of the Stormont 2 meeting Hillary Clinton. The Presidential hopeful said she had enjoyed reminiscing about old times with both men. I find it hard to imagine this included repeating all those things the Big Man used to say about her hubbie during the 1990s.

Not only has Martina been covering the US trip, she also had a long film broadcast last night about Ian Paisley Junior's role in a £50 million land deal at Ballee near Ballymena, which also involved the developer Seymour Sweeney of Giants' Causeway fame.

Whilst Ms Purdy has been slaving away in Washington, I have just returned from London where I had to fulfil a long standing engagement with the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s internal "College of Journalism". Delayed at Heathrow on the way back, I wished I could be beamed, "Star Trek" style, back to Belfast.

I am guessing David Clement, a prominent member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, has similar day dreams. Next week he will address a Transport and Environment seminar in Belfast, advocating the development of a tunnel between Northern Ireland and Scotland in order to enable train travel from the south west of Ireland to South Korea.

I am not sure that I want to go to South Korea anytime soon, but I am sure others do. Let's get this imaginative project off the ground (or should that be below the ground?). Who could take on such a venture? Perhaps if he doesn't secure the Causeway, Mr Sweeney might have the time...

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That's how many people the Statistics and Research Agency think will be living in Northern Ireland by the year 2046. Their latest estimate - for June last year - puts the population at 1 million 742 thousand. We should pass the 2 million mark sometime between 2031 and 2036, provided global warming, the apocalypse or whatever disaster takes your fancy doesn't get us first.

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What does the future of our children have in common with the Spreadable Fats (Marketing Standards) (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2007 or the Folly Lane, Downpatrick (Stopping- Up Order (Northern Ireland) 2007 or even the Animals and Animal Products (Import and Export) (Circuses and Avian Quarantine) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2007?

Well these are all examples of matters that have been dealt with by our Assembly under its rules subject to negative resolution. Generally these things go through on the nod.

It's thought that if the Education Minister uses "regulation" rather than "legislation" to push through a new system of transfer to post-primary schools it could come the way of a "negative resolution". But if it does the DUP is waiting in order to insist that it must be forced to a cross community vote.

Sinn Fein sources acknowledge that such a vote will have to occur. But they add that the eleven plus is dead and buried so all parties must work together to create an alternative. If unionists try to re-introduce academic selection, Sinn Fein sources insist, they will find that nationalists use cross community voting to stop such a move in its tracks.

So if things work out this way the Assembly Examiner of Statutory Rules, Mr W. G. Nabney, may find himself dealing with more contentious matters than is the norm.

That's the Assembly route for the education changes. Of course the matter could also come to the Executive, should 3 ministers invoke the St Andrews procedures deeming it significant and controversial.

The Employment Minister Sir Reg Empey has vowed that he will bring Ms Ruane's announcement to the next Executive meeting. But it's not clear whether this discussion will be limited to his objections to the short notice he got of her announcement, or whether any Executive debate will deal with the wider educational issues at stake.

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• - What's this?

That was what the DUP's Michelle McIlveen called Caitriona Ruane after the Education Minister announced her proposed shake up of our schools. Although I suspect from the way Sammy Wilson chortled at the joke that he had suggested it to Ms McIlveen before she road tested it on the Chamber.

Talking of road testing, Sammy Wilson missed his briefing with Ms Ruane on the changes because he got stuck in traffic. The Minister asssured the Education Committee chair that if her changes are adopted there will be less traffic on the roads as most children will be going to their local school.

Unmollified, Mr Wilson reckoned the statement contained a "spoonful of substance and a plateful of platitude".

The Ulster Unionists complained that such an important topic should have been brought to the Executive first. The Culture Minister Edwin Poots declared that he had not been informed. But Ms Ruane responded that the Minister had obviously not checked his post, as she had already written to him.

In terms of substance, the Minister appears to be leaving it up to local areas whether they have new junior high schools from 11 - 14, or whether they continue with 11 - 19 schools. But so far there are no maps of exactly what those areas will be, and no firm idea yet of who will sit on area based planning groups which will decide the structure of local schools. Despite this emphasis on geography, Ms Ruane denies she's setting up a "post code lottery".

The Bain review on education said that such educational areas should "as far as possible lie within a single local council area to facilitate links between education planning and community planning". But of course our council areas are still very much in flux.

Finally there was a sting in the tail of the Minister's statement when she warned grammar schools that if they adopt independent admissions arrangements the Education department will feel under no obligation to assist with funding. I'm not clear at the time of writing whether this refers to funding independent transfer tests or to funding the grammar schools themselves.

That threat prompted a predictable response from pro-grammar unionists. The DUP's Maurice Morrow warned that she would never get the changes through the Executive or the Assembly. There's no doubt this will test the St Andrews' rules on collective Executive action to destruction.

UPDATE: Since I made this entry Minister Ruane has clarified that her threat to the grammar schools is to refuse funding any independent tests they might adopt, not to stop general funding to the schools themselves. She hasn't clarified whether her proposed changes will be subject to a cross community vote, although her use of the word "regulation" implies that she believes she can push a new system through without recourse to legislation, which would require such a vote. This may be technically possible, but it's hard to imagine that the issue will not get escalated somewhere along the line.

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• - What's this?

The Culture Minister Edwin Poots has been generating a lot of publicity over his statement to my colleague William Crawley that the world began in the year 4000 B.C.

Click here

Which helps explain why the Environment Minister Arlene Foster decided to leave the exact age of the Giants Causeway open to debate.

Click here

Meanwhile the Upper Bann MP David Simpson has been getting very technical in his arguments over creationism with the Education Minister Caitriona Ruane. He want her "to detail whether or not the occurrence of polystrate fossils spanning more than one layer of strata, and the implications of this on Darwinian evolutionary thought, is considered by (i) her department; and (ii) the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment, as presenting (a) evidence-based; or (b) belief-based data to school children in science classes."

He would also like her "to detail whether or not outlining the methods of Ernst Haeckel in support of the evolutionary assertion that 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' is regarded by (i) her department; and (ii) the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment as presenting (a) evidence-based; or (b) belief-based data to pupils in science classes."

And for good measure could she "detail whether or not recent discoveries that the majority of what was once regarded as 'junk' or 'vestigial' DNA, which is now known to undergo transcription and to have a function, is considered to be presenting (i) evidence-based; or (ii) belief-based data to pupils in science classes."

Ms Ruane is probably concentrating right now on re-arranging the entire school structure to fit her conviction that 14 is the best age for children to make choices, something she is expected to expand on in the Assembly tomorrow. She tells Mr Simpson that her "focus is not on joining debates that continue within the science and religious communities on such matters but on supporting the education of all our young people across all areas of the curriculum".

So I am presuming that candidates for what may be the last transfer test in 2008 should not waste time mugging up on questions about vestigial DNA, polystrate fossils and that old 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' debate....

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• - What's this?

Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness should by now have visited the New York Stock Exchange. A few weeks back we expected they would be ringing the bell, but instead it was just a photo opportunity. According to the NYSE website the bell ringing was conducted by the CEO of a firm which specialises in health care for senior citizens - so maybe he had some interests in common with the First Minister.

The First and Deputy First are opening the NASDAQ on Wednesday before heading off towards the White House at the end of the week. The NASDAQ is the largest US electronic stock market trading shares in technology, retail, communications, financial services, transportation, media and biotechnology.So who needs to ring an old bell anyway?

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• - What's this?