Wow. As I was recovering from a hangover today I heard the post and got up to find I had been inundated with election material. Every party from the UK Unionists to the Workers Party to the "Procapitalism" candidate.

Included in this was a leaflet from the DUP. Of all the literature, and I include Sinn Fein's leaflet in this, the DUP one was the most depressing. It was cynical and base. There was virtually no mention of policy other than the obligatory 'we oppose water charges' statement. Unsurprisingly, the first quarter of the what little actual content there is in the leaflet is spent attacking the Ulster Unionists, basically for going into government with Sinn Fein. It gets worse though. Remember a few weeks back I predicted that the DUP would use the threat of a Sinn Fein First Minister to try to blackmail unionist voters into voting DUP rather than other unionist parties even though it was the DUP that are to blame for this situation in the first place? (They negotiated the "majority designation" clause out of the agreement at St Andrews)

Well, surprise surprise, the last quarter of the content reads "Any unionist votes which are cast for minor unionist parties or political mavericks will be votes, which could diretly help Sinn Fein increase its number of ministers in any Executive and increase the chances of Martin McGuinness becoming First Minister."

Maybe it's just me but I would have thought that a party with a few half-decent ideas would be able to give enough reasons to vote for them without having to resort to threats and scaremongering (the NI Conservatives, in contrast, have become the first party to develop a pair of balls and come out publicly against the Maze stadium proposals AKA 'the white elephant'). I refuse, on principle, to be bullied into voting for anyone so I think the DUP have just secured a position near the bottom of my vote. If they're lucky they'll be just above the SDLP and Sinn Fein.