I know this blog is compulsive reading, but I hope that wasn't the reason someone "half inched" four lap tops from Parliament Buildings on Friday. The brand new lap tops were samples which the Assembly got whilst it was trying to determine which models to purchase. If you know where they are watch out - the PSNI is on your trail.
I've always thought of the Stormont Speaker, Willie Hay, as a gentle soul, but someone must have put something in his tea this morning. During the proceedings shortly after noon he swatted away an attempted point of order on Ian Paisley Jr's "gay" comments by the SDLP's Dolores Kelly. Similar short shrift was given to Alliance's Kieran McCarthy. Then when the Ulster Unionist David Burnside tried to make what his erstwhile colleague Jeffrey Donaldson described as a "supercilious" point about policing and justice, the Speaker weighed in by reminding Mr Burnside that he had been a member in another place (i.e Westminster) but for a shorter time than he has been a member at Stormont. This reference to Mr Burnside's defeat at the hands of Mr Hay's DUP colleague William McCrea came rather close to party politics, but the new macho Willie got away with it.
General support in the Stormont chamber this morning for our hard working farmers, and demands that there should be no delay to their "Single Farm Payments". But will the Agriculture Department continue to publicise exactly how much our sons and daughters of the soil get from the EU? They did so under direct rule but some farmers were incensed about what they viewed as a breach of their privacy. Some farmers' representatives hope to persuade the devolved government to end the publication. The word from the department is that publishing who gets what is considered EU best practice, but no decision has been taken about future publication of the subsidies.
There's an old joke about a plane coming in to land at Aldergrove. The pilot tells his passengers to get ready to land and to re-adjust their watches as the "local time here is 1690".
Is that what was running through the mind of Lord Kilclooney (aka John Taylor) when he enquired if the government would clarify
"(a) how many time zones there are within the European Union, and (b) which nations belong to each of these time zones; and whether they will take steps to ensure that this information is widely known and understood"?
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I'm Mark Devenport, BBC NI's political editor, and I'll be blogging here on all things politics. For the latest updates across BBC blogs,
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