Down the Greasy Pole
The Sunday Times reported yesterday that a DUP councillor in Craigavon had to get stitches after being struck by one of Diane Dodds' posters falling from a great height. This may be considered an example of "the biter bit" by all the anti-poster people out there.
News reached me today of another hazard for the "poster putter uppers". When an SDLP team arrived to put up Alban Maginness's visage on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown they found that the lampposts had been smeared with axle grease. Wearing overalls, they managed to slide up the greasy poles and down again.
There has been a lot of slip sliding around for the Conservatives and Unionists these days with today's resignation of the UUP North Down Constituency chairman, Mark Brooks, following Lady Sylvia Hermon's explosive comments.
At the weekend Jim Nicholson didn't try to hide his annoyance at the turn of events when he spoke to me for Inside Politics. Jim Allister once again spelled out his opposition to power sharing and talked about the impact of the expenses row on the campaign.
At Stormont there were some entertaining moments. Peter Robinson and the UUP's Ken Robinson picked out Martina Anderson's "day-glo" orange outfit for comment. Shortly afterwards the Foyle MLA was joined by the Agriculture Minister Michelle Gildernew in green and white, with the tow Sinn Fein politicians combining to create their very own tricolour.
Maybe distracted by this the Deputy Speaker Francie Molloy introduced the DUP's youngest MLA as "Jonathan Ross". There were chuckles as Alastair Ross corrected Mr Molloy. Maybe the Deputy Speaker had listened in to the sharp exchanges between Gregory Campbell and Stephen Nolan earlier in the day and got his DUPs and Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ús mixed up. (During that show, by the way, Gregory said MPs shouldn't keep any profit they make from their second homes which built on comments made by Peter Robinson to me on Friday where he talked about them giving up the portion of the profit linked to taxpayer funded interest payments).
On Stormont Live today we talked to Sir Reg Empey about all the latest North Down developments and Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness declared his opposition to any changes to the departmental structure at Stormont which might alter the unionist nationalist balance. He also told us he didn't believe the landlord charging Sinn Fein MPs those high rents in London is a donor to the party.
On air we didn' get time to cover it, but off air Martin McGuinness was interesting on the topic of the recent bloody end to the civil war in Sri Lanka. The Deputy First Minister travelled to the island to try to persuade the goverenment and the Tamil Tigers to follow the Northern Ireland model of conflict resolution. Instead they chose to fight to the end.
The government in Colombo is celebrating an historic victory but the Deputy First Minister believes the failure to seek a negotiated resolution means the conflict in Sri Lanka will only re-emerge in some other form in the future.
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