Castlereagh council has two SDLP COUNCILLORS out of 23.

Get a grip on reality.

God Save The Queen.

Mick, I feel you have let yourself down recently with your increasingly anti-nationalist 'jabs' in what is meant to be an intro paragraph to a story. Perhaps the site would benefit from you restraining your own bias?

In any case, you are wrong to link Feeney's article to this non-story. Participation on such bodies is often shared out disproportionately between parties. Maybe that should be looked at.

But you let yourself down by trying to compare it to Feeney's central contention, proved yet again this week in Castlereagh: namely, that unionists IN ANY AND EVERY SITUATION, have signalled their opposition to sharing power when they are in the majority. The sole exception, of course, being the Executive set up under the GFA- and look what happened there: unable to cope with fenians about the place, unionists simply walked away.

That is what Feeney is talking about Mick. Perhaps in your next Unionist Discussion Paper, you could tell us how you propose to deal with the undiminished supremacism rampant in the unionist psyche.

Irishman, your comment is fair enough. None of us are free from bias. What I hope happens here on Slugger is that people can, if they so wish, seek to 'correct' what they perceive as bias through this comments section.

Does anyone else get annoyed by the constant mispronunciation of the word "d'Hondt" as though it were "de Hondt" with the "h" pronounced? I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced correctly.

Willowfield:

I disagree strongly. I find nothing out of the ordinary about Brother Fealty's pronunciation of d'Hondt.

How does mine sound?

I've never heard Mick pronounce the word. I'm referring to politicians and political commentators on TV and radio.

This is an interesting site with a NI Issue from 2003 for download.

The Global Review of Ethnopolitics

I oftimes thought that it should be pronounced with a silent 'h', but as everyone here seems to pronounce it 'de hondt' i was under the belief that no one would know what i was talking about, and think i was weird.

as regards the application of the aforementioned word, it is time for the DUP to put their money where their mouth is and show whether they are committed to power-sharing in Stormont by introducing it immediately in councils.

Methinks it's all a bluff, and der fuhrer Ian is just waiting to lull everyone into a false sense of security before he installs himself as the arch-chancellor of NI