Those were the days
It's a weird situation we find ourselves in, as the compere of the annual Ulster Champ Breakfast at the Labour conference, Channel 4's Gary Gibbon pointed out. In between chomping on their soda bread, guests heard Sinn Fein's Pat Doherty bemoaning the fact that Ian Paisley is no longer the leader of the DUP ("Peter Robinson doesn't have Ian Paisley's charisma"). Then the DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson argued that Gordon Brown's speech at Stormont last week showed he was no Tony Blair.
It all sounded a bit like Lloyd Bentsen's famous line "Senator, I knew Ian Paisley/Tony Blair, and you're no....(delete as appropriate)"
This outbreak of nostalgia, of course, takes us no closer to sorting out the gridlock. But at one point Jeffrey Donaldson acknowledged that devolving justice was something that "was not in the realm of the never, never" and Pat Doherty agreed that it could once again be a matter of sequencing.
There was a brief trilateral wrangle as the SDLP's Mark Durkan objected to Pat Doherty's characterisation of his Oxford speech on designations. But generally, in the absence of the First and Deputy First, this was a fairly flat event. Held in the Radisson hotel's Richter suite, it did not register on the earthquake scale (I owe lawyer Michael Smith for that one).
Apropos of nothing the best story I heard at a fringe event came from two veteran Labour stewards who grew up in Carrick Hill but have been living in Manchester for decades. They recalled, as kids, going into Belfast City centre to throw tomatoes at the young Ian Paisley. But they made it up to him when he visited the Labour conference two years ago by seeking him out to shake his hand.
They would certainly have fallen foul of their fellow Labour stewards these days. A colleague was stopped bringing fruit into the secure area around the conference. He explained he was trying to ensure he got his five portions a day. The security staff told him they were on the look out for eggs and tomatoes. I am presuming they weren't trying to prevent an impromptu Ulster fry event.
I'm 
Comments