This is ground control to Major Ian….

Friday’s post ‘Libya and irony…important lessons’ missed the biggest irony of all. Whoops…

While the DUP condemned the decision to send PSNI officers to Libya to train its police as “totally inappropriate and offensive", it was revealed that Ian Paisley Jnr was among those who’d signed off on the decision. According to Mr Paisley, sending local police officers on the Libyan jaunt was good for gathering intelligence.

Yet he didn’t pass on the intelligence to his own party leadership that PSNI officers were providing support to a State that had once been one of the biggest suppliers of weaponry to the Provisional IRA. You couldn’t make it up.

Best Facebook post award goes to…

CARRICK councillor Stewart Dickson said of councillor Ian Parsley’s defection to the Conservatives: “All the night in the rain for that [expletive deleted].”

Other Alliance members have been a little more temperate in their language in public, but privately…!

Strangely Parsley seems to have disappeared off Councillor Dickson’s Facebook friends list…

Other news…

Devolved policing no nearer despite the obvious need…DUP and Sinn Féin fighting over who’s a victim and who isn’t…UUP and SDLP publish policy documents and no-one notices…majority of population continues to despair at our politicians.

White van riot

THE idiots want to take over the asylum. More pointless wrecking and rioting have once again taken place in Lurgan. White vans burnt out, drivers left in terror, masked gunmen compensating for a lack in the trouser department by waving phallic weapons in the air and acting all macho.

Revolutionaries? Republican freedom fighters? Dedicated guerrilla soldiers? Or just plain idiots?

After careful consideration of the options…yep plain, stupid, ignorant idiots. And that’s a more sophisticated political analysis than they will ever come up with.

Libya and irony…important lessons

PARIAH states sometimes become good mates. This is a fact of international diplomacy that seems to fly in the face of logic, reason or even the ability of a reporter to understand.

Libya is likely to be a case study for future studies of the paranormal in politics.

To recap: Libya once was a ‘bad country’; Libya stood accused of being behind the Lockerbie plane bombing; Libya pays compensation to victims of Lockerbie; Libyan man convicted of said bombing released from jail in Scotland because he was dying; Prime Minister accused of dodgy deals on release of bomber; victims groups in Northern Ireland want compensation over Libya arming IRA in the 80s; and UK and US oil companies vying for contracts in the north African state.

And now, to complete the ever winding moral maze of relationships it emerges that PSNI officers have been helping training Libyan police officers in the UK and Libya.

Cue unionist politicians’ outrage and disbelief…which underscores the irony of not having policing and justice devolved. Had these powers been devolved, a Northern Ireland Executive Minister would, at the very least, have been informed of the location of deployed officers seconded to the National Police Improvement Agency.

Irony point number one: Libya which used to back paramilitaries who killed Northern Ireland police officers now has its police force being trained by Northern Ireland police officers.

Irony point number two: Sinn Féin, who used to care about such things don’t even raise an eyebrow at these conundrums.

Irony point number three: Nobody outside Northern Ireland cares about any of this, and no-one in the United Nations will notice.

Testing times

THESE are testing times for Northern Ireland…especially for the 12,000+ P7 children about to sit ‘unregulated’ tests for 8,000 grammar school places.

Against a backdrop of bickering politicians, burning vans on the front pages of newspapers, a recession, and the prospect of harsh cuts in public spending, anxious children and their families are occupying their times in the final push of revision and associated nerves.

Applied mathematicians are currently calculating the probability of common sense breaking out in the post primary transfer debate.

They are basing their calculations on the number of years the fiasco has been going on, the number of pointless statements being made by both sides, the acreage of Scandinavian forests cut down to meet newsprint demand for pointless re-treaded arguments and the capacity of a Northern Ireland politician to make sense in two consecutive sentences.

It is anticipated that the mathematician who cracks this puzzle will be in line for a Nobel Maths prize…and a well-earned break.

Five year plan

A LONG time ago in the USSR – for younger readers that was Russia with knobs on - someone decreed that there should be five year plans to ensure planned development.

This week the Ulster Unionists - in their party leader’s absence (Sir Reg is out of the country) and without recourse to their Conservative bed fellows (you know, that lot that may be in power next year) announced their belief that there should be a five year plan to devolve policing. It is to be called a ‘test period’.

The plan, involving ways and means to extract more money from the cash-strapped Treasury, appeals to conspiracy theorists… and the SDLP…as a sign that the DUP would use the UUP opposition, to devolution of policing and justice, as a way of stopping it without being caught at the scene of the crime.

The Ulster Unionist plan appeared in the document ‘Putting it Right’. Disappointingly for conspiracy theorists, much of the document was about criticising the DUP (or was this a cunning double bluff?!?) and the planning for financial planning of Northern Ireland’s planned economy. Did I mention there was a plan in there somewhere?

But there is a fatal flaw in calling for urgent cost savings – the DUP wants to slash Government departments, which under D’Hondt would mean less Ministerial posts for the Ulster Unionists.

So here we are once more…

SUMMER’S final fling is upon us; the last few weeks to scrape together to get the children new school clothes, wonder how to pay the holiday credit card bill, and yawn at what is now becoming the traditional end of August Parades’ Commission row.

But as this is a new media age we live in, campaigning for and against parades has moved into cyberspace.

The planned Rasharkin parade by the loyal orders this weekend has been labelled contentious and a Parades’ Commission ruling to allow it has been both criticised and welcomed (depending on which of the proverbial sides you may or may not be on).

But there have been extensive tweets from a Twitter on the issue. Sinn Féin MLA, Daithí McKay has as of Friday morning posted 12 Tweets on the parade.

From these Tweets we learn that Daithí is generally opposed to the Parades’ Commission determination, and has given interviews to BBC Radio Ulster, Radio Foyle, UTV and U105 on the matter.

He has also attended a meeting of the Resident’s Association, Tweeted on the ‘anger’ of residents and the fact that a DUP councillor briefly attended the meeting.

The new wave of interactive politicians isn’t quite upon us yet, but the first wave is riding high on the ability to directly offer us their opinions and wisdom without the media filter…but what are we to make of the fact that Daithí is a follower on Twitter of the DUP, éirgrí, the SDLP, the UUP and DUP MLA Michelle McIlveen.

By contrast, the PUP’s Dawn Purvis Tweeted on Friday about how good the Woodstock R&B festival has been!