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Living at the edge

• Mark Devenport
• 27 Feb 07, 03:18 PM

Not everyone can see the point of this election, but the management of the Edge Bar on the River Lagan would beg to differ. They have hosted a number of SDLP events, culminating in the party's manifesto launch yesterday. Then today it was the same bar, same collection of tired hacks, but a different bunch of politicians gathered together for the Alliance launch.

David Ford once again argued that only his party provides an alternative to "tribal" politics. Amongst the ideas in the manifesto are proposals for fewer MLAs, a local income tax to replace the rates, scrapping tuition fees, enabling the hot pursuit by the police of crime suspects across the border and making savings by closing segregated schools and other facilities.

On the margins I got a chat with the South Belfast candidate Anna Lo. Like most candidates, she reports a warm response on the doorsteps, although she says she has taken two racist abusive telephone calls at home. She is sending out a Cantonese election leaflet, but even though South Belfast is the most ethnically diverse of all the local constituencies it seems unlikely that the Chinese voters on the register would be that decisive in any vote. Anna Lo reckons there are 167 households which might translate into 300 plus votes.

Ms Lo was the first ethnic minority candidate to stand in a Northern Ireland election. But since her campaign was launched the Green party has added another in the shape of Stephanie Sim, who is from Singapore and is standing in Strangford. She has drafted her parents in for assistance, not least because she's just had a baby, seven week old Amhairghin.

The Green Party leader in Dublin, Trevor Sargent, was up here today in his bio fuelled bus. But I think the politician who is getting around the most must be the Conservative Neil Johnston, who is standing in Lagan Valley. After interviewing him at his own manifesto launch yesterday I spotted him at the Alliance's launch today, and he readily admitted to attending the DUP's manifesto event last week. It's not that Neil is keeping all his political options open, but that he wants to stay informed for his day job as a lobbyist.