November 24 is virtually come and gone and, for all the hard talk of Secretary of State Peter Hain about deadlines and drinking in the last-chance saloon, the Assembly show is still on the road – sort of. If, as he claims, Dr Paisley will accept no nomination for the post of First Minister, he will thus effectively block any nomination of Martin McGuinness as Deputy First Minister. Mr Hain now says that even without nominations, or votes, the duo are to be informally acknowledged as 'shadow' ministers, without having any real power to wield until March 26 next year, on which date the Assembly and its Executive, it is proposed, will go 'live'. In the meantime, early in March, there is to be an election.
The people of Northern Ireland have trooped out to the polls more often than any other people in the world over the past 30 years. There have been elections for Parliament, for Europe and for local government which are all to be expected, but there have also been elections for Conventions, Forums, Border Polls and Assemblies, all in the pursuit of setting up some sort of regional government here which will endure. It seems to be the external panacea when Downing Street or Whitehall come up against a stalemate in the "troublesome province of Ulster". Far from the two tribes moving towards an inclusive settlement, the rash of elections have driven the two communities even further apart, to a degree where society here has never been more polarised.
The elections are viewed as a sort of virility contest within the tribes, and the hardline elements in both camps are in the ascendancy. The British and Irish governments have been of the belief, for years now, that only a deal made between the DUP and Sinn Féin has any chance of sticking, as there would be no grouping to put pressure upon them from the margins. That, anyway, was the theory, although a recent poll indicated that 54% of DUP voters are not happy with the deal on offer at St Andrews. There are also SF voters who are not happy with the proposals on policing. But it is early days yet and Mr Hain and Co. still live in the hope that something may turn up.
The Irish government, and the British government at one stage, favoured ratification of the acceptance of the St Andrew's Agreement by a referendum, held on an All-Ireland basis, as in the ratification of the Good Friday Agreement in May 1998. Cynics will tell you that, as far as Bertie Ahern is concerned, any old topic will do as the subject of a spring referendum, to give the party troops a dry run in preparation for the Republic's general election to be held next May or June. The DUP pressed for an election, no doubt in their anxiety to mop up what is left of the Ulster Unionist Party after the electoral massacres in the elections of May 2005.
Mandates have to be refreshed. The last Assembly was elected in November 2003 and, although it never really sat (even the speaker had to be appointed rather than elected), its mandate is beginning to run out.
For all that, it would have been wiser to hold the election after a referendum. The trouble with an election is that parties such as the DUP will put clauses into their electoral manifestoes, and so create hooks to impale themselves upon, and from which they will claim to find it difficult to extricate themselves. Presuming that they want to, that is.
You will meet many people who will tell you that the Assembly should be wound up, and the salaries of the 108 elected members discontinued completely, and the money spent on the Health Service, or some other deserving cause. Democracy is a precious asset, and it does not come cheap. It is not the fault of many of the MLAs that the Northern Assembly is not functioning. They still maintain a full-time constituency service, their constituents viewing them primarily in that capacity rather than as legislators. Many have given up careers in other professions and, if the whole apparatus goes to the wall, they and many like them will not be attracted to such a political career in any future experiment. The job will be left to wide-boys or people who will view the job as a nice little supplement to their full-time, or real job. So, it is worth one final heave. But if deadlines, purportedly 'set in stone' can be ignored with impunity, then there may well come a stage, when patience is finally exhausted, and the prospect of a devolved local administration may disappear for a long time, leaving us all to the tender mercies of part-time British ministers.
In evidence the court heard that the plaintiff claimed that he had invented the Internet. He had a long list of defendants, including several international communications companies, all of whom, he claimed, had profited from his research and experimental work in this particular field. He began to read out a mass of highly complicated technical material which, he alleged, would support his claim. So complex was this documentation that no one could follow his drift. Eventually the bench lost patience. "It is apparent to me," said the presiding Judge, "that what we are being subjected to is patent nonsense."
Rupert Murdoch's press and television conglomerate has decided not to go ahead with the publication of a book, and a proposed broadcast, by O. J. Simpson, explaining how he would have murdered his wife. There was a public outcry. Mr Murdoch should confine himself to Homer Simpson.
The Spurs and England goalkeeper Paul Robinson, who let in the funny goal in the Croatia game last month, is being referred to in the business as 'Robinson Clouseau'.
A Belfast newspaper has quoted a spokesman for a dissident paramilitary group, dismissing allegations of punishment shootings, as a "knee-jerk reaction."
A Tipperary councillor has lost the whip from Fine Gael after telling a local radio station that he saw no harm in his practice in driving home after three or four pints down the local. By a strange irony, the councillor, Mike Fitzgerald, lives in Rathcloheen House, once the home of the temperance crusader Fr Theobald Mathew, who died 150 years ago come December.
One of the participants in ITVs 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here', one Matt Willis, has told viewers that "he hasn't had a Number Two for four days." Then again, another jungle dweller, the singer Jason Donovan hasn't had a Number One for ten years.
