Back in the office
That's not just me, but also our MLAs, or some of them at least. Today the Committee which shadows the work of the First and Deputy First Ministers returned to the house on the hill to examine, amongst other things, the Public Assemblies and Parades Bill prepared after the Hillsborough talks by a joint DUP Sinn Fein working group.
Since the bill's publication we've had the trouble in North Belfast, the Orange Order refusing to back the proposals, and complaints about the 37 day notice requirement for public meetings not connected with parades controversies. After today's meeting, the SDLP's Dolores Kelly demanded that the bill should be withdrawn, but the DUP and Sinn Fein appear intent on marching on regardless in the hope that, perhaps witha few judicious amendments, the doubters can be won over.
It also emerged that the First and Deputy First Ministers will shortly publish the final draft of their long awaited Cohesion, Sharing and Integration Strategy. Expect lots of aspirational phrases about building a better society. The Executive has been repeatedly criticised for putting the "Shared Future" on the back burner. But once the latest policy is finalised and implemented, will it make any difference on the ground?
(UPDATE: The strategy has now been published and can be found via this
Someone else taking a busman's holiday this summer is Ian Paisley Senior, now Lord Bannside, scotching talk of one grand unionist political party and decalring that if the voters decide there will be a Sinn Fein First Minister next May, he will have to accept it. Lord Bannside goes on to pledge to do all he can to avoid that eventuality, but can you read his remark that Sinn Fein did not become a majority party "on my watch" as anything other than a not very veiled dig at his successor?
Incidentally did anyone see the archival piece printed in this weekend's Sunday Times from November 1968 in which a reporter described the invective at an early Paisley rally, culminating in the journalist getting rumbled, then ejected with a bloody nose? It was fascinating not just as another mark of how far Ian Paisley Senior has travelled but also as a poignant reminder of the different fates which await us all. Whilst the man who ordered him out of the rally is now Lord Bannside, sitting on the benches in the House of Lords, the reporter was
Finally ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Newsnight's Michael Crick predicted last night that Sinn Fein MPs could get their allowances severely curtailed by a vote likely to take place in the Commons this autumn. The issue was raised by the new Conservative MP Kris Hopkins who previously served as a soldier in Northern Ireland.
I'm 
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