The Stormont Broadcasting Ban
I spent today recording Inside Politics. Our guest is Sir Reg Empey who talks about the prospects for unionist unity after Ian Paisley and predicts unionists might cooperate with a new British Irish parliamentary assembly.
As usual, the programme goes out at 12.45 on Radio Ulster.
I would also advise you to tune in to Stormont Live on BBC2 at 2.15, but, as things stand, the show could be banned. The new rules drawn up to deal with Sinn Fein's Mairead Farrell event limit filming to the press point in the Great Hall.
Theoretically that means the Chamber proceedings can not be televised and our basement studio would also be a no go area. We would probably have to get in touch with all the actors who used to do the voices for Gerry Adams to re-enact the Chamber debates.
Somehow I don't think it will come to that. The betting is this will all be sorted out before we go on air, but tune in just in case we are replaced by the test card.
Something else I noticed about the new rules is that for an event to be sponsored in the Long Gallery you need 3 MLAs "on a cross community basis". That phrasing was used to accommodate Alliance concerns about specifying unionist or nationalist designations. I wondered, however, what would happen if Sinn Fein's Billy Leonard joined together with some of his Catholic party colleagues to sponsor an event - is that cross community or not? I suspect that, if tested, Assembly officials will return to the political designation system as their baseline.
These interim criteria may well change but for those who want to peruse them I shall reproduce them in the extended entry.
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