Following recent, rather hypocritical, criticism of culture minister Edwin Poots after he stated in a written answer (AQW 4045/08) he hadn't attended any Irish language events during his first 9 months in the job, Edwin Poots will today attend an Irish Gaelic language event in Belfast. Isn't that a turn-up?

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The Assembly Commission, which runs the estate at Stormont, has drawn up new rules that mean events held in the Long Gallery now require "cross-community backing of three MLAs" (I'm guessing this means three from each community?).

This effectively means that Sinn Fein's murderer commemoration day at Stormont will not be allowed to go ahead in the Long Gallery. Sinn Fein are to hold the event in their members' room instead, though the commission has said TV cameras will not be allowed in.

Sinn Fein's Jennifer McCann, organising the event, said the decision was "unfair and undemocratic". What a laugh; the DUP, UUP, Alliance and SDLP all support the decision . That's 74% of voters represented there; I think you'll find that's quite democratic. It's a bit late now for the Sinners to turn round and demand an a la carte approach to the deals they helped devise and endorsed.

If the building at Stormont cannot be a shared space that reflects the history and culture of all the people in society then it must become a neutral space
Jennifer McCann, Sinn Fein MLA

This has nothing to do with history and much less to do with "culture". This is about having a bit of consideration. McCann can't be that much of an idiot (can she?). She knows she's fooling nobody and that everyone is perfectly aware this Farrell event was deliberately provocative. Now she has explained exactly why. I'm not the only one to notice that this whole debacle was nothing more than a smokescreen all along, with Sinn Fein's real aim being the removal of any historic artefacts they might decide to deem 'offensive' from Stormont a la Limavady.

I'm sure this has nothing to do with raising Ms McCann's profile, or giving something back to the basest, most bigoted elements of Sinn Fein's support (sure they've got Martina 'wrong kind of Catholic' Anderson for that), even if nothing appeals to a sectarian moron more than sticking one to the huns/taigs (delete as appropriate). Maybe it's just to distract from the fact that Sinn Fein, in common with the Assembly as a whole really, have achieved exactly diddly squat since the restoration of devolution last May.

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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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.

Everyone likes some good news once in a while so here it is. On the day when the Grosvenor road junction on the Westlink opened, regional development minister Conor Murphy said the Westlink upgrade might be completed up six months ahead of schedule, which is excellent news for those of us who use the busy road on a regular basis.

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Some time ago I gave a few examples of practical, everyday benefits of being a part of the United Kingdom as distinct from the Republic of Ireland. I've stumbled across further examples on a semi-regular basis since then, but I couldn't believe that the iPhone hadn't been released (officially) in "Ireland" [sic] yet.

Apparently there are a few complaints that the price of the iPhone in the rip-off Republic is going to be even higher than the price in the United Kingdom (of rip-off Britain and rip-off Northern Ireland) when it is finally launched down south (where it also looks like being an O2 exclusive), just 4 months after UK consumers got their mits on the device.

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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.