Stakeholder

Dear Santa

It’s been a long year and I am sorry for this belated letter.  With recessions, dead cat bounces, floods and excessive MPs- I have been busy.  I would like to ask for some presents for a few of my friends – presents- I guess they would not ask for themselves

Moats and bell-towers are so 2009- that no-one has requested any this year but Bialetti Expresso makers for the BT9 lefty, leaning, cappuccino sipping labour luddites are all the rage.  Some backroom baristas even aspire to being politicians but sometimes even they can smell the coffee.

Firstly, you may have noticed but things have not been going so well up at the Hill. Long gone are the golden days of the Chuckle Brothers.  Marty and Peter are struggling to remember their St Andrew’s wedding vows and as the old saying goes ‘love goes out the window- when hunger comes in the door’.  Odd as it seems, Sinn Fein is hungry for justice and policing; odd because most of their members spent the greater part of their lives trying to avoid contact with either.

Martin and Peter could do with a copy of that book called ‘Unionists are from Mars; Republicans are from Venus’.  They could also benefit from the services of Jeremy Kyle and his live lie detector test.  Most of all, Peter and Marty need to get away from slumming it around the corridors of the Assembly where they are constantly being carped at by the bumpkin brigade. No doubt there is some five star golf resort or luxury castle where they could go to try and re-kindle the fire that once ignited their love. After all when in Washington last summer they made a lovely couple – in a platonic way of course.

This leads me nicely to lovely Iris.

As you know, Iris has a keen interest in psychiatry: the voodoo kind that turns gay people straight.  Apparently she may want a year’s subscription to the Flat Earth News too; in particular the back issues; ‘Science insults your intelligence’ and ‘Galileo was a liar’. It is also rumoured that she may theme one of her living rooms Liberace. After all, he was not gay- just a happy man with a fine taste in candelabras and sequins.

My old friends in the SDLP are having a hard time finding a leader.  Nevertheless, it is Christmas, and they deserve to be well led and as they never tire of saying-, they did give us -The Good Friday Agreement and err.. The Good Friday Agreement.  They also gave us Alex Attwood, without whom there would be ‘No folks on the Hill’.  But with the glass half full and a good Deputy Leader in place- Alasdair or Margaret deserve a nice reward.

My dear friends Sir Reg Empey and Lady Sylvia Hermon really need a dig out this year. Can they both get electronic diaries so they can schedule to be at the same conferences at the same time?

Over at Alliance HQ their needs are simple.  There has been a serious downturn in the baubles available to Alliance members since Sinn Fein and the DUP fill up quango spaces with like-minded individuals. It is unjust that they who did so much for political toadying to the Establishment; to now be without any form of aggrandizement. Could n’t they get just a little ministry?

The UDA social climbers must have thought you were long gone when Margaret Ritchie intercepted their letters to the Northern Ireland Office –source of all ill -conceived largesse and bribery to paramilitaries. Then up sprang the Santa’s little helper at the Aras with a request for more taxpayers money to encourage the UDA to swap cudgels for caddy cars.  Santa you really need to put the UDA on the permanent bad kid’s blacklist- along with Ms Ruane whose education policies went up in smoke with parental hopes. Two bags of ashes, please.

Santa, do not forget some Bishops this year. They have had it tough.  Some of them are nearly as old as you are and still at work.  Along with an abbreviated version of the ‘Sermon on the Mount’, I recommend five copies of ‘101 Secrets of a Happy Retirement- Practical, Inspirational and Fun ideas to enjoy best years of your life’.

Finally Santa, please remember all the good people who last year just wanted peace and a properly functioning government. Was it too much to ask? If so, let’s settle for the peace.