Snowbound in County Down
It's Friday lunchtime and, in common with people across Northern Ireland, I'm snow bound. Thanks to the wonders of telecommunications, though, I can blog and, as listeners to Talkback can testify, broadcast on the radio uninterrupted. Uninterrupted by the weather that is - the demands of children wanting me to help them build a snowman is quite another thing.
Anyway it's provided a chance to reflect on a couple of things from over the last couple of busy days.
First, my surmise in the last blog that there could be a Christmas truce betwwen Michael McGimpsey and Sammy Wilson proved rather over optimistic. It was merely an overnight truce with the Health Minister hitting the TV studios to declare himself £100 million short.
Money is obviously tight, but there were indications from Tuesday night's negotiations that several millions could have been moved around to the benefit of at last one Ulster Unionist minister if they had turned their abstentions into a positive vote for the budget. SDLP sources also suggested they'd been offered some inducements (by way of additions to their departmental budgets) to harden up their support. If so does this cross the line between party politics and assessing real departmental priorities? Or is it common sense in what is inevitably a bargaining process And will we see any more flexibility being shown before the budget is finalised, or will the battle lines harden as we approach the end of the consultation period in February?
Second, the balance in the Stormont budget between cuts and taxes. When George Osborne announced his Spending Review in October there was some analysis indicating it equated to 75%/25% ratio between cuts and taxes. We couldn't get a definite figure from the Stormont Finance department for the ratio in Sammy Wilson's effort to plug the projected £4 bilion hole in the local budget over the next 4 years.
Sinn Fein has been particularly anxious that the Executive should not be seen as merely passing on Tory/Lib Dem cuts, and in a series of statements On the face of it, as I said on Good Morning Ulster on Wednesday, this would imply £1.6 billion in extra revenue and £2.4 billion in savings, which is a 60%/40% ratio (similar to what Labour's Alan Johnson has talked about as his preferred option for tackling the UK deficit).
However Finance department officials only specified £840 million in extra revenue in the budget package - around half the Sinn Fein figure - and some of the detais for, say, the disposal of assets sounded pretty vague. But if you work on this basis the cuts/tax ratio would be more like 75%/25% or even 80%/20% (which is similar to George Osborne's ratio).
Frankly I haven't got to the bottom of this one yet, and if there are any number crunchers out there who think they have the answer I'd be glad to hear from them.
Third and finally, the rather clunky antics politicians get up to in order to appear on the TV. There's the phalanx - appearing before the cameras with an array of supporters behind you trying to nod sagely. It's designed to demonstrate group solidarity but the viewer can be distracted by the extras in the background.
Then there's emerging from negotiations to walk around outside with your colleagues in apparent earnest conversation. It's intended to give the impression of great concentration on the job at hand, but the real job is to ensure your picture gets on the TV.
Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness did this, fairly memorably, on the night of the Good Friday Agreement talks. On Tuesday night the Deputy First Minister appeared together with junior minister Gerry Kelly on the steps of Stormont Castle with a similar plan in mind.
Not to be outdone, the SDLP Social Development Minister Alex Attwood strolled out on the steps together with his adviser when I was live on our late news bulletin on Tuesday night. But I had already arranged to talk into a clip of Mr Attwood recorded earlier in the evening, so the news became a sequence of live Attwood/pre-recorded Attwood/then live Attwood again.
Job done or overkill? One SDLP insider made his views known within seconds, texting the minister's aide with the pithy comment "buck eejits!"
I'm 
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