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.

11 "Super Councils" - the changing face of local government in Northern Ireland

Things have been a bit slow at EU here over the last couple of days. It's awful when real life gets in the way of blogging. Anyway, apparently a "deal" has been done on the councils. We've been spared the silly idea of a reduction to 7 super councils (which Sinn Fein alone wanted) and instead we're getting 11 councils which, as far as I can tell, nobody wanted (except maybe the DUP).

It seems like the areas proposed under the deal would see Newtownabbey and Carrick spared the indignity of joining up with Lisburn (as well as the massive potential expense of funding Lagan Valley's white elephant), although they look like being split from each other too, which is odd considering it's nearly impossible to spot the boundary. Of course there's no shift in Belfast because any expansion would probably bring in a net increase in the number of Prods in Belfast, and that would never do, not matter how much it makes sense in terms of planning, transport etc.

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Limavady Borough Council: redefining "offensive"

Nationalist councillors (who hold a majority) on Limavady Borough Council have ordered the removal of several items from council premises in order to create a "neutral working environment".

Unfortunately they weren't totally sure what should be removed and had to search the internet to decide whether or not they were offended by a statue of Limavady man William (Ferguson) Massey, who had been Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1912 to 1925 and founded New Zealand's Reform Party (now the conservative National Party, the largest opposition party in New Zealand at this time). As it turns out they are offended by the statue. Why? You may well ask. Apparently some hotshot detective work by nationalist councillors turned up that Massey had been a Protestant member of the Orange Order in New Zealand. Thank God for Wikipedia, eh?

Other items which had to be removed include a coffee mug celebrating Prince Charles and Princess Diana's wedding and a toy dragon.

The Equality Commission said it advised the council, which was seeking to adopt a "policy on neutral public space". The Commission said they prefer the objective of a "good and harmonious" environment to a neutral one.

"The Commission advised that the Fair Employment Code of Practice refers to promoting a 'good and harmonious environment' and drew attention to fact that this concept is preferred to that of a 'neutral' environment... The Commission has not provided advice regarding the removal of any specific items or emblems."
Equality Commission spokesman

But nationalist councillors would not be deterred by that, or by the anger it caused amongst their unionist colleagues. They spent a year and brought in an independent consultant to hunt out anything they might be able to take offence at. While they were doing this, one wonders where it fell on their list of priorities in relation to the loss of 900 jobs in Limavady or allegations of bullying of council staff. But what do they matter when you can protect the citizenry from the horrors of a Charles and Diana mug sitting in a council's display case that most of them will likely never see?

Seems I'm not the only one to be depressed by the recent spoutings from the DUP's Lisburn crew. Things are pretty dire when the Corporate Services Committee of the local council demand that schools in the area teach Christianity creationism as a scientific theory (maybe this is what they were thinking of).

Even if the councils were responsible for education, surely it wouldn't be in the remit of some poxy committee whose primary job seems to be HR for the council. Don't you idiots get it? This sort of crap is why our local councils can't be trusted to take anything to do with education! Thankfully the local headmasters have politely told the council committee to blow it out their ass.

Of course this sort of nonsense is nothing new. Those readers who remember it may think back to some previous issues that got the local bible-bashers riled up. From Harry Potter being a dangerous cult to Line Dancing with its "sexual gestures and touching" being "an incitement to lust." (Guess who!)

Meanwhile the minister with responsibility for culture believes the Earth is only 6,000 years old. God only knows what information's going to end up being displayed at the Giant's Causeway's visitor centre (if we ever get one).

Frankly I'd normally let them live in blissful ignorance but these nutters are running the country. I have to wonder if this is our collective punishment for all the years of bigotry and sectarian hatred; God must be in quare vengeful form!

Belfast City Council has effectively voted down two existing proposals to build a national sports stadium at Ormeau Park. The plans by two private developers would have seen the corner of Ormeau Park that currently houses the O-zone leisure complex and tennis courts converted into a 25,000 seater multi-sport stadium.

Instead, the Council have voted to develop a "business plan" for the concept of a stadium in the city without a preference to any one set of plans or location.

It makes you wonder if the council aren't actually serious about a city-stadium. They're certainly making it look like they're just throwing rate-payers money away in an effort to make themselves look like they're trying to do something good for Belfast as well as for sport in Northern Ireland (it could cost them a lot of votes if they didn't make an effort after all), but at least a business case for a city-stadium will give the council something backers of the Maze are yet to see, and at a tenth of the cost!

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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.

Another twist in the shacking up of the UUP and PUP in Stormont has seen 25 year old Ulster Unionist party officer and Down councillor Peter Bowles is defecting to the Conservatives in protest over the party's new links to the UVF. As well as becoming the first Ulster Unionist to defect, he will also become the Conservatives' only current elected representative in Northern Irleand.

Interestingly Bowles has chosen a party that has traditionally struggled to attract votes in Northern Ireland over the 'easy option' of joining unionist rivals in the DUP. I for one hope it pays off.

I've been watching a couple of threads over at the Young Unionists blog with interest recently, following David Ervine's decision to join the UUP grouping in Stormont, allowing the Ulster Unionists to claim an extra seat in any potential executive.

I can't make up my mind on the merits of this idea. Frankly the motive of taking one of the 10 executive seats from Sinn Fein under the d'Hondt formula is about as appealing a motivation as one could find in Northern Ireland politics, but the fact that Ervine is the leader of a party with links to active terrorists is a very obvious and very large fly in the ointment. Nationalists and republicans have been understandably angry, accusing the UUP of double-standards - the fact is: so have many unionists.

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That's what Gerry Adams thinks of discussing "education reform, water charges, health and rates increases" when the assembly reconvenes on Monday. He has said that his party, Sinn Fein, will not take part in any discussion on these matters, and has criticised the SDLP for not saying they will be equally irresponsible.

It's not like discussing the issues would alter the 24th November deadline, which has already been imposed, for the Assembly to approve an executive, which is after all Sinn Fein's main current objective. It's fairly safe to say the election of the executive will only take place in the last breath before the deadline, such is the flair for the dramatic in local politics. The question is, would our local representatives discussing the above issues in the mean time, in an attempt to hold direct rule ministers to account while they try to agree an executive, be "pointless" as Gerry Adams says, or is this just a case of Sinn Fein throwing the toys out of the pram because they're determined to get their power-hungry mits on lucrative executive posts as quickly as possible?

It's one thing to suggest that the 11+ needs to be replaced, but it's quite another to say that, despite evidence to the contrary, getting shot of academic selection completely will lead to anything other than a second-rate, comprehensive, education system like the one rejected by teachers and by parents in England and Wales.

As someone who benefited from a grammar school education, it saddens me to think that future children from backgrounds like mine will be placed in schools based on ability to pay rather than ability to keep up with the work, because liberal do-gooders decide that everyone (and therefore no-one) has the right to be a winner.