Weeman! Where are all yon weeman?

PAULA’S gone as a candidate. ‘Flash’ Harry Hamilton is gone and the UUP looks set to produce another raft of candidates for election who are very much more of the same.

This could mean that the party is trying to return to its roots, and lots of sensible suits, sensible shoes and a slight greying around the edges of the hair.

If so, it is a desperate gamble that relies on a lot of the allegedly stay-away voters suddenly realising that the 1950s are the political era they want to live in.

Progressive politics and Northern Ireland never sit comfortably together in this wee country.

But even for the Ulster Unionists this all seems a little strange.

Internal political machinations now seem like a series of constituency level ‘night of the slightly blunt, but still long knives’ have taken place.

While other parties could never really accused of having a truly youthful vision of the future, the UUP is in danger of seeming like a relic of the past.

All of those could be seen as a reaction to the failure to retain or gain a Westminster seat in the link with the Conservatives; but how closely were those results analysed in terms of who could gain an extra quota?

Mathematics – how many UUP councillors and MLAs have a Maths GCSE or ‘O’ Level?