It is a very particular kind of flu that leaves you well enough to launch a manifesto but too unwell to take any questions. Arlene Foster described it as “man flu”. Many journalists thought the man was Gerry Adams, and the DUP leader was mocked for repeating the Sinn Féin president’s name.
What must make this doubly frustrating for the DUP is that, by its definition at least, the bearded bogeyman is real. Adams took a closer involvement in Sinn Féin’s Stormont team from mid-November last year, when the seriousness of Martin McGuinness’s illness became apparent. Adams was presumably behind the mid-December decision to cancel an RHI inquiry deal, which would have avoided Foster standing aside. He single-handedly appointed Michelle O’Neill as ‘northern leader’ - and nobody believes he is not pulling all her strings.
He has happily admitted Brexit is too good a crisis to “waste”. Yet Adams still gave the DUP three weeks from mid-December to avoid an election. The awkward question for Foster is why man-flu’s offer was sneezed at.
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Unionists are unhappy about Michelle O’Neill addressing an IRA memorial vigil in Coalisland, with some casting aspersions on her background. The dissident bomb attack on a PSNI officer this week puts matters in perspective.
Sinn Féin wanted a ‘clean skin’ for its new northern leader but - given the mood against Stormont in the republican grassroots - that person still has to be credible in the western wilds. In fact, if devolution is to be suspended for any length of time, this could the only leading O’Neill ever does.
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The Belfast Telegraph has caught a senior Alliance press officer plotting to bombard Radio Ulster’s Talkback with loaded questions under fake names. Talkback naturally picked up the story and let every other party complain, as if they do not all do the same thing.
Perhaps the most embarrassing aspect of the tale is that, despite plotting via a Facebook page, press officer Scott Jamison advised “hijack” by call and text. Programmes like Talkback may still be called ‘phone-in shows’ but they are now steered by social media, to the extent that anyone tweeting about a live broadcast can expect to be contacted immediately and invited on air. Shouldn’t a press officer know this?
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Crumlin International Airport has regained its connection to New York, sort of. The United Airlines service to Newark, ungratefully withdrawn last month after years of Stormont tax breaks and subsidies, will be replaced by a Norwegian Air budget service to Stewart International, 70 miles from Manhattan.
The coach or bus and rail connections involved are far more awkward than just going to Dublin and flying straight to JFK, even without the advantage of immigration pre-clearance. Stewart still seems to be expecting us, however - its bus and coach links are provided by Leprechaun Bus Lines.
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The DUP’s mysterious EU referendum ad in Britain’s Metro newspaper has made donor secrecy in Northern Ireland a national political issue, now that MPs have spotted our regional loophole in UK-wide political funding. Caroline Lucas MP, co-leader of the Green Party in England and Wales, has tabled questions in Westminster calling on the secretary of state to publish all party donations here since 2014 - a reminder that donor secrecy has been at the NIO’s discretion since that year, when former secretary of state Theresa Villiers gave a backdated commitment to lift it.
Parties remain free to publish donor details voluntarily, as practised by Alliance and the Greens at Stormont. DUP MP Jeffery Donaldson said his party was “looking into this” with the Electoral Commission, forcing the commission to issue an unusually assertive statement that no talks had taken place - not that such talks would even be necessary. Only in Northern Ireland could promises of transparency end up being so opaque.
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Border Communities Against Brexit, a non-party political and cross-community campaign in no way run by Sinn Féin no sirree, has staged six mock customs checkpoints to show what life would be like if people were constantly getting stopped at the border by Sinn Féin. Curiously, the sheds at the checkpoints were marked “British Customs”, although if there are any physical inspections post-Brexit they will only be required inside the Republic. An RTE report also noted organisers were not using the term ‘Northern Ireland’. If they have not noticed Northern Ireland exists, how were they able to find the border?
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The long-awaited ferry service between Greencastle, Co Louth and Greenore, Co Louth, will be up and running by June, according to its operator. Plans for ferry and fixed crossings across Carlingford Lough have become a faintly republican cause in recent years, with Sinn Féin promoting them and the DUP opposing them at both council and executive level. But could there be a niche unionist market in sailing across the border? It creates an appropriate sense of occasion, while a return trip via Lough Foyle’s Magilligan ferry could make the Republic feel like a whole other island. In a couple of years, you might even need a passport.
newton@irishnews.com
