The Sewel Convention states that if Westminster is to legislate for Scotland, it must seek the permission of the Scottish parliament first. It is somewhat different, in that the Assembly couldn't have made this decision at present but the Government has decided to legislate for Northern Ireland against the expressed wish of a majority of the Assembly.

I wont comment on the substance of the legislation in question, but if they're willing to pull a 'nanny knows best' stunt with the age of consent, no one should be under the illusion they wouldn't do it with an aberration of normality posing as a bill of rights.

If the Sewel Convention ever applied to Northern Ireland, the Government has just sought to let us know that it doesn't anymore. This throws out the window any promises the DUP made on the Irish Language Act, the protection of academic selection, anything. Mark Devenport suggests that this is nothing more sinister than a throwback to the Hain days. I wish I were so sure.

There seems to have been an awful lot of downtime here at EU lately (including most of today!). I am monitoring this and will move hosts if I have to to combat this should it recur. My hosts assure me, for the 3rd or 4th time, that they've found the source of the problem and corrected it (this time it was too much server load). Hopefully normal service will now have resumed, but I'll keep an eye on it. In the mean time I'm sorry for the hassle.

Update: I've moved the site to a new host. If you're reading this your ISP's DNS records have already updated, i.e. your ISP knows the site has moved (unfortunately as of an hour ago my own hadn't). The rest of the interwebs should catch up over the next 48 hours or so and normal service will then resume.

Colm Bradley has outlined some ways he thinks the GAA can remove the barriers to Unionists joining. Just over a year ago I outlined that the GAA has a de facto ban in Unionists joining. Unfortunately Google hasn't cached it, so some of the substantive points are below the fold. The main contention I have though, is that the GAA is explicitly a political organisation, and should not be treated as a sporting organisation unless and until it sheds the vestiges of a political pressure group.

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It's one of those times when life comes between me and my internet so I'll not be blogging for about a week or so; be good while I'm away!

Nearly two years ago I wrote a piece outlining why I believe that the House of Lords is undemocratic and untenable in a modern democracy. I'd be interested to hear what EU's readers think. Rather unfortunately, Charter88's Elect the Lords campaign seems to have stalled last August.

Seeing as no one has bothered to comment on this on Slugger, we'll see if it can prompt a little debate here.

As far as I recall, public bodies aren't required to publish FOI disclosures, but it's quite good practice to do so. The NIO do (or at least seem to - the list is remarkably spartan) and it makes interesting reading. In particular the most recent disclosure has some interesting information in it.

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To anyone who is concerned about the effect hip hop culture is having on western society - I have some evidence to submit. With exibit B.

Finally the inevitable has happened, and the octogenarian First Minster has decided to quit. I just got a text which is very incisive. "If you listen carefully, you'll hear O'Neill, Chichester Clark and Faulkner laughing".

And well they might. O'Neill was insensitive to both his own base and the Catholics he was genuinely trying to each out to. But he had broadly the right idea. Chichester Clark was a good man, who would have been a better Prime Minister than Brooke (who I think was the best of the 6) has he been PM in happier times. But he came to power with uncharacteristic ruthlessness that he couldn't keep up, and events conspired to make his premiership a moderate failure. Faulkner didn't have the trust of the liberals (for repeatedly knifing O'Neill) not the traditionalists (who could only see his liberal actions over local government), and as a result was vulnerable to what happened to him. He wandered into a cul-de-sac where Hume and the NIO persuaded him to back a Nationalist deal. Which, inevitably, failed.

What can one say about Paisley? Karl Rove has returned from hibernation to say "Good bye and stay gone. No man has ever done Unionism more harm than you".

I won’t quarrel.

Robin Bury has an excellent letter on the Reform Movement blog. Well worth a read.

This really pissed me off. I heard on Radio 5's Drive programme in the car on the way home from work today that Prince Harry has been in Afghanistan, fighting on the front line, for 10 weeks. The media knew this and said nothing. Obviously this was necessary to protect Harry and the other soldiers working with him from becoming walking bullseyes for the Taliban.

There were complaints about the media doing a deal with the government to keep this secret. The deal was they get fairly up-close and personal to Harry in exchange for not reporting it until after he's back home. I'm not one to praise the media very often, but the fact that the whole of the British media kept this secret, I think, demonstrates that they do actually have the ability to recognise that there are one or two things more important than circulation.

Sadly an American web site seems to have blown the whole deal, showing blatant and selfish disregard for the safety of the Prince and the other soldiers of a supposedly allied nation. By reporting on Harry's whereabouts, they have, I'm sure, guaranteed that the Prince is forced to return home early to ensure his own safety and that of his colleagues.

Apparently two smaller sites had published this previously but the story hadn't hit the mainstream. With a larger US web site, publishing the story today (originally crediting Australian and German magazines but later dropping those references and calling it a 'world exclusive' over 7 weeks later - that's integrity!), it's now common knowledge. It's very unlikely that multi-millionaire Matt Drudge will ever read this, but I'd like to take this opportunity to send him a big FUCK YOU anyway.