Pete,

One of the lessons of the Prisoner's dilemma is not to be over optimistic, neither does it pay to be over pessimistic.

Bertie is careful here to address himself in terms that are meaningful only to talks insiders, since the rest of us can only guess at what might or might not already have been agreed.

It won't be over in fact until that fat lady finally comes out in public and agrees to sing (Crying in the chapel?).

Mick

My last paragraph points out that it doesn't signal an end point.. but I hope it is a wake-up call.

Of course, I'm only posting the 'notes' as they appear on my horizon.

Since when is a constitutional settlement comprehensively endorsed to be allowed to be vetoed by one or two parties. Lets have the next executive a little less inclusive and an assembly that is a little more inclusive, with some opposition voices. There has not been a sustained period when assembly government has enabled local MLAs to properly represent their constituencies, so until we get this and more stability we should elect MLA's from an NI wide franchise on a proportional basis.

PRSTV as practiced here has become a means to guarantee the presence of politicians committed to sectarian instability and rewarded by it.

"that fat lady finally comes out in public and agrees to sing"

Aaaggghhh....

I don no know how this happened, whether it was a combination of Yogi and Stengelisms but the fight or game never started until the national anthem was sung. Since The Star Spangled Banner is unsingable by we mere mortals, especially when the red rockets start glaring, an opera singer or Kate Smith was on hand to assault the scales.

Other than that Zzzzzzzzzzz...

Morning James :)

How you keeping ? Flippin' cold here - freezing fog.

If there's onething that my local TD (Ahern) is famed for, it's his caution. After last year's fiasco there is no way Ahern is going to build up the level of expectation only to end up with egg on his face as people interpret any new agreement to suit themselves.

While I can understand people's impatience, surely we must learn from the mistakes of 1998. Hard deadlines lead to rushed decisions and rushed decisions lead to a flawed agreement. If it takes days or weeks to find an unambiguous agreement which has support in both vcommunities, this is time well spent.

We cannot have another situation where SF/IRA signs up to an agreement one day and then shoots down (pun intended) one key clause les than a month later.

aquifer "Since when is a constitutional settlement comprehensively endorsed to be allowed to be vetoed by one or two parties." Which constitution settlement was this. As you're aware the UK does not have a written constitution and the only elements of the Belfast Agreement incorporated into the Irish constitution remain unaffected by the new agreement.

"PRSTV as practiced here has become a means to guarantee the presence of politicians committed to sectarian instability and rewarded by it." Actually there's no truth in that. The FPTP system for Westminster is even worse in terms of rewarding parties along sectarian division. What is sustaining the sectarian nature of designation which was introduced in the Belfast Agreement and which will either be totally removed or wateered down in the new agreement.

"How you keeping ? Flippin' cold here - freezing fog. "

That was my last rant of the day as I logged off and fired up the barby. It was a beautiful, clear night as Betelgeuse's red eye poked out from behind the neighbor's palms that were hiding the rest of Orion. There was frost on ye olde palms this morning with the Mercury News reporting the Santa Clara Valley as colder than Minnesota. Yeah, right.

Your mommy should tuck you in earlier.