The Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond is on Hearts and Minds tonight, ahead of his visit to Stormont on Monday. He is planning to travel to Northern Ireland courtesy of Whoosh, a Polish airline which has just started up flights between Dundee and Belfast. It's definitely a new Europe..
Just before the First and Deputy First Ministers meet the Scottish First Minister to discuss a Celtic Confederacy, the Deputy First Minister is meeting a group of Canadian Native Americans to discuss the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois confederacy. The Native American "Clan mothers" are veterans of battles with the Taser armed Ontario State Police over what they regard as the illegal annexation of their land.
I am sure there are all kinds of interesting historical analogies to be drawn. But for now I don't know whether to watch "Braveheart" or "The Last of the Mohicans" to prepare for what I may have to report next Monday.
Peter Robinson must be the envy of fellow MPs. Bad luck to have your constituency hit by flash floods. But good luck to be the Finance Minister, able to put your hand in your pocket to alleviate some of the hardship. Of course six to eight council areas have been affected, and the Environment Minister Arlene Foster will have to distribute the new £5 million flooding disaster fund fairly between them. But it's a fact that East Belfast bore the brunt, and Mr Robinson must be happy that restoring devolution has meant that he can do more than just complain about his constituents' plight.
The Finance Minister is less happy about what he regards as the "direct rule mindset" of some of his fellow ministers who he believes approach every problem on their patch by asking for a handout. He thinks that instead
of giving a knee jerk response to every lobby group and demanding cash, ministers should come up with an imaginative solution. Such as? Well Finance Department sources point to the sale of the Crossnacreevy agricultural research site by Sinn Fein's Michelle Gildernew as an ingenious approach to solving a problem over funding slurry tanks, despite criticism from the Ulster Farmers Union.
So Peter Robinson thinks Michelle did okay, even though his former colleague Jim Allister accused her of selling off the Agriculture Department's family silver.
On a wider level, the Finance Minister warns of inevitable tensions between social based priorities and economic growth and points out that the Irish Republic suffered some short term pain in order to deliver long term gain. With no sign of a Gordon Brown pot of gold, this sounds like a warning of some tough times ahead, whether or not this monsoon weather continues.
I'm 
