Blood on His Tongue
Well we got through "Stormont Live" without our cameras being switched off by the Assembly security staff. The most memorable item in the show was Basil McCrea and Jeffrey Donaldson picking up a furious argument which they had begun earlier on the Nolan show. Normally I try to butt in, assisting Jim Fitzpatrick with a few additional questions, but in this row over whether the Maze stadium is "dead in the water" I simply couldn't get a word in edgeways.
The official DUP line is that no decision has been made, and the Finance Department will present the Executive with unvarnished economic facts before ministers start weighing up political considerations. However the political reality is that, with Ian Paisley on his way, the Maze project appears to have fewer and fewer friends in the DUP. Some senior party sources have expressed grave doubts about the stadium's financial viability and referred to its cross community dimension as "a con" because the different crowds for the different sports will, naturally enough, gather there at different times. So don't put your money on watching any Olympic football at the Maze.
Later in "Stormont Live" we talked to David Burnside, who told the Assembly that Ian Paisley might not have had blood on his hands during the troubles but did have blood on his tongue. A striking, if rather strange, metaphor.
I am away from the Assembly tomorrow, when MLAs will debate a report on the devolution of justice, but normal service should be resumed later in the week.
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