Over the past few months it's become clear that the DUP won’t take Gerry Kelly and Sinn Fein won't take Jeffrey Donaldson as Justice Minister. This has led to the crazy notion that the Alliance should do it, and utterly predictably they seem amenable to the idea. So much for their principled stand against the "sectarian consensus" (sic)

Liam Clarke in his column on Sunday suggested that this was the "missing piece of the jigsaw" and that the Alliance are the potential answer to a tricky question for the chuckle coalition.

Alliance is a creature so useful that if it didn't exist it would have to be invented. In some ways the party, which is linked to the Progressive Democrats in the republic and the Liberal Democrats in Britain, acts as Northern Ireland's conscience - a coalition of reasonable, middle-of-the-road folk united around an agenda which is liberal, pragmatic and non-sectarian.

It is just me suspects he write this specifically to get name checked on Alliance election literature next time out? This sort of gushing praise doesn't really add anything to the argument. After all, he is simply dressing up a party that stands for nothing more than "we're not them and, we're awfully nice". That isn't an ideology or an agenda; its political activism built on nothing more than middle class snobbery and intellectual cop-out.

Alliance have spent their time in local government, not as Clarke states ensuring power sharing, but selling their pretence of principles for office. I suppose it's only surprising it took them this long to sell themselves for ministerial office. They call themselves an opposition, yet we are now apparently seriously considering taking an executive with 97 of the 108 Assembly members represented, and making that 104. We need LESS of the legislature tied up in the programme for government, not more! The power sharing arrangements were designed to be short to medium term, SF and the DUP spent a little too long trying to fight their way out of their Belfast Agreement boxes, but now that they've accepted them the timer is going again. Progress towards normailising the governmental arrangements here will only be hindered by putting the Alliance into Justice just for the sake of spiting the UUP and SDLP. Look at the figure again, 104 out of 108 MLAs. And when one adds the rest of the Alliance's quasi technical group, it leaves only Dawn Purvis outside the Executive loop.

If the Alliance want ministerial office so badly, give it to them. But if it happens, my Party and the SDLP shouldn't be there. We would have moved from an involuntary coalition, to a voluntary one with Alliance's admittance to the Executive, which is a fundamental change to the situation. Critically for the UUP and SDLP though, the situation with a five party Executive would be utterly untenable, a bizarre elective dictatorship where the wranglings over legislation would take place behind closed doors in the Executive, with the Assembly as a rubber stamping body. Sound famaliar? It should.

It's something politicians, particularly in Northern Ireland, seem to be especially adept at. OK its their job, but some outlays seem to be more worthwhile than others.

A few figures appeared yesterday:

• Policing George Bush's one-day visit: £300k
• 1 prosecution out of 1,100 cold-cases re-opened: £34m
• Bloody Sunday enquiry: £188m (to date)
• Enquiries in the next year: £100m (estimate)
• Subsidy to Citi to create 145 jobs: £2m (£13,793 per job)
• Cuts to ambulance services to save £1.5m: priceless!

Ah well, at least Larne's council aren't paying for red, white an blue bunting.

I'm preparing to go on a two week holiday and as I was out buying sun cream and collecting some Euros I noticed an odd headline on the chest of one of those guys selling the Tele at busy junctions. According to the ever-reliable Belfast Telegraph and an anonymous source, Sinn Fein are contemplating refusing to nominate a Deputy First Minister because they are frustrated at the lack of progress over what they see as key issues (mainly the devolution of Policing and Justice I'd imagine).

Leaving aside the fact that Sinn Fein knew fine well that there were no guarantees on that target date (as has been pointed out over and over on Slugger O'Toole) what exactly have they got to gain by refusing to nominate? The DUP won't be able to elect their new leader Peter Robinson as First Minister, which, I gather, means no executive, which, again correct me if I'm wrong, means no Assembly. They expect the DUP to back down and hand over a few concessions to keep the Assembly alive?

Ballocks. If Sinn Fein want to bring about an end to the Assembly then let them, it will be no great loss as far as I'm concerned. It will also be a PR disaster for the provisional republican movement, with the world able to see clear as day whose fault it was that our beloved institutions collapsed.

No, they're far too canny for that. This is either a couple of Sinners shit-stirring in the shadows, tabloid journalism at its worst or a bit of both.

Elections to the 11 new councils won't take place until 2011.

NIO minister Shaun Woodward has announced that the local government elections due to take place in Northern Ireland in 2009 have been put back to 2011 at the request of executive ministers.

Effectively the councillors who were elected for 4 year terms in 2005 are getting the length of their contracts extended by 50%. The official reason is something to do with the local government reform that will see the reshaping of the council boundaries and the reduction in the number of councils from 26 to 11.

What I want to know is which executive ministers, and why? I have my suspicions about certain currently dominant parties being worried about losing vote share with voters quickly realising that this wonderful new dispensation has delivered precisely the square root of fuck all, but of course they are only suspicions.

Jonathan Powell, advisor to Tony Blair in the Good Friday Agreement era and a man attracting a lot of press on Slugger lately regarding his new book on that time, was on Simon Mayo's show on Radio 5 at lunch time today talking about his book and the events leading up to the Good Friday Agreement. He said something that got me thinking.

That was that the deal Tony Blair had been trying to strike originally was a deal between the 'moderate' and dominant parties in Northern Ireland: the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP. When the SDLP said they couldn't come along without Sinn Fein, Powell claims that it then became a case of ensuring that a deal could be done between the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein.

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For some unionists, discrimination in 50:50 recruitment in the PSNI, whereby 50% of new recruits had to be "members of the Roman Catholic community", was perhaps the bitterest of bitter pills swallowed to garner nationalist support for policing here. The silver-lining appears to be that it is actually working.

Although it's impact upon clear-up rates and general police effectiveness is questionable, the 50:50 recruitment practice is succeeding in recruiting more Catholic police officers. In 1998 the percentage of RUC officers from a Catholic background was 8.3%; in February 2008 this figure for the PSNI was 23.7%. Paul Goggins, the minister responsible for security matters in Northern Ireland, said that this put them on course to achieve a target of 30% in 2010/2011.

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The traditional view of Americans participation in the "Peace Process" here is generally seen as "cynical playing to the green Irish vote" by taking the side of nationalists and/or republicans. This was particularly true under the Clinton years.

With the new presidency race I think the best some of us were hoping for was that any new administration would have more important things to worry about than the rather tedious affairs of Northern Ireland, yet still its hard to shake the feeling that the votes of 36 million "Irish Americans" may prove too tempting to ignore.

That's why I was so surprised to read today that President Bush's special envoy to Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, has criticised Tony Blair for giving too much to Sinn Fein/the IRA, who he said became used to the government "doling out benefits" whenever it came time for Sinn Fein/the IRA to do what any democrat should do, i.e. end criminality, endorse the police, decommission illegally held weapons - that sort of thing

Reiss had placed a ban on the provisionals fundraising in the US after he became frustrated at the lack of movement from Sinn Fein on these issues. Later when Gerry Adams wanted to do some fundraising in New York, he contacted Reiss to have request the ban be overturned. Reiss refused to Gerry went to his best mate Tony at Number 10 to get the British government to go over Reiss's head to get the ban lifted by the White House.

Relations with No. 10 got a bit "open and nasty" when Reiss insisted the fundraising ban should stay. The Americans thought the British government was about to fudge the issue of policing (surely not!). Reiss kept the ban in place knowing that, for Paisley and the DUP, support for policing was a pre-condition for power sharing.

The Saville Inquiry was established in 1998 to re-examine the events of 30th January 1972, AKA "Bloody Sunday". We knew then that soldiers shot dead 14 people in the Bogside in Londonderry's. 10 years and £181 million later and that's still about all we know and Secretary of State Shaun Woodward said he still doesn't think we're going to see the report any time soon.

From the beginning I've been of the opinion that this enquiry is a waste of money given that people have already made up their minds on what happened. If it's proved that the army were in the wrong, it will be seen in some quarters as a sop to Sinn Fein. If it's proved that the army were in the right, Sinn Fein will argue that there's been a cover up (as was claimed of the original tribunal). Whatever happens, the only people laughing at the end of it all will be the lawyers and anyone seeking to exploit what happened to demonise either the soldiers (and by extension the British government) or the deceased (and by extension, republicans).

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

It's past time the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission was abolished. It was a waste of time and money when it was set up and it's a waste of time and money now.

The Human Rights Commissioner Monica McWilliams helpfully demonstrated this point for me when she asked the Northern Ireland Office of the government to go over the heads of our oh so wonderful democratically [sic] elected executive and assembly at Stormont and implement legislation on the Irish [sic] language on the spurious basis of a little-known piece of decidedly dodgy European Union bureaucracy called the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.

Assuming we accept that Irish constitutes a "national minority" in Northern Ireland (or, more likely, the United Kingdom) they (we) are not disadvantaged by not having our car tax forms available in Gaelic which none of us speak as a first language anyway. We are not denied access to public services because we all speak and understand English as a first language (despite the efforts of some to create language barriers). We would all, I am certain, be much better at defending ourselves against police charges in court using English than broken Gaelic.

Ms McWilliams is not doing Gaelic any favours by trying to have it imposed on the people of Northern Ireland. She was a supporter of the Good Friday Agreement and that means supporting whatever form of "democracy" it is that we have because of it, not running to central government every time they do something she doesn't like. By couhcing support for the language in terms of "rights" she's making the same mistake* of Sinn Fein and some other language "enthusiasts" in Northern Ireland.

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Despite overwhelming opposition, the DUP seem determined to foist the Maze white elephant on Northern Ireland's sports.

As Lawrie Sanchez's Green And White Army marched up to 33rd, equalling their highest ever position in FIFA's rankigns, the DUP were plotting the destruction of that same side. Tonight the "Democratic" Unionist Party outraged Northern Ireland football fans when they hinted that a decision would be made to build the new "stadium for Ulster" at the Maze. Speaking on BBC Newsline tonight (no online stories yet) Ian Paisley Jr, who has already admitted his interests are in motorsport and not football or rugby (and certainly not GAA), all but confirmed that he and his DUP colleagues would consign Northern Ireland's football team to playing their matches in a half empty stadium designed for another sport and built in a field outside Lisburn beside a museum to the loyalist and republican terrorists that blighted this country for decades, despite the opposition of the vast majority of rugby and football fans and ambivalence from the anchor tenants, the GAA.

There have been allegations that some Lisburn unionists see Lisburn as a new symbol of "Protestant Ulster" and view the idea of a stadium at the Maze as some kind of jewel in the crown (despite the fact the stadium won't actually be in Lisburn!). Have any of our local hacks pointed out the irony of this given that it will be helping fund a Bobby Sands memorial museum centre for conflict whateverthehelltheyr'ecallingitthisweek and the fact that the major use will be for... (wait for it)... Sunday sport!!?. Have they fk!

The local coverage of the stadium issue in the media has been pathetic, with "journalists" for the most part content to rehash NIO press releases and pass them off as reporting. You wouldn't be surprised from a state broadcaster like the BBC but the Belfast Telegraph and UTV have been worse for the most part.

They've all sat back and allowed shocking comparisons between the Maze and MK Dons' stadium (in a built up area with many times the catchment), Wembley stadium (ditto) and completely ignored the received wisdom of Juventus (built a stadium out of town and had to massively reduce its size because nobody was going) and Galatasary (ground derided by Liverpool fans there for the Champions League final as a nightmare to get to/from) and umpteen out-of-town stadia developed for baseball in the USA in the 80s.

Belfast City Council seem to have given up the ghost too. We've heard a lot of talk from them about building a stadium at Ormeau Park but for the last lot of months now there have been no new announcements or any signs of progress.

For all the gassing our new overlords do about being better than direct rule ministers, it appears they're content to make the same mistakes. They're just going to make them more quickly.

The Amalgamation of Northern Ireland Supporters Clubs aren't giving up though and are meeting with the Irish FA and with MLAs to try and persuade them to do the right thing. They have called on the new minister for DCAL, Edwin Poots (DUP) to ensure that the information on the decision-making process which he previously complained wasn't publicly available, and was withheld even following freedom of information requests, is placed in the public domain.