Sounds suspiciously like there is a mad rush on by Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern to get things moving by March 3, the deadline for wheeling the Stormont Assembly out from its ice box. Cloak and dagger figures have been moving around in planes and limousines meeting other shadowy characters at secret locations.
Sinn Féin has revealed that there has been contact with the DUP at a lower level. Mr Fixer, Jonathan Powell, from 10 Downing Street was here and gone before the TV cameramen were told. Timing is everything in politics and it was judged this is the moment for our English and Scots masters at Stormont Castle to announce a £2 billion cash package for the north's run-down infrastructure. Hard on the heels of this largesse came the latest opinion poll revealing that the Good Friday Agreement is on the track, although battered and spat on by Trimble, Paisley and their no-men not to mention the dwindling dissident green and orange eejits aimlessly chucking their dirty rotten bombs and to hell with the peace everyone voted for.
In another move which may, or may not, fit in with the larger picture, the embarrassed UDA announced a cosy arrangement with the police to leave for disposal a selection of pipe bombs used in the feud with Adair's 'C company' on waste ground to be picked up, no questions asked. The brigadiers concerned were clearly anxious to whitewash their involvement in the murderous Shankill turf war, but significantly, stopped short of handing in their guns or halting their vicious pipe bombing of innocent Catholic homes near the loyalist ghettos.
No talk of decommissioning here or putting an end to their racketeering, extortion and drug peddling. So the uninvolved Shankill inhabitants must suffer on. Business as usual with no interference by 'Mad Dog' Adair or his fleeing cronies, now seeking hidey holes in Scotland, England or Spain.
Now about all that hoo-ha over the filthy lucre, two billion odd to come from the British treasury? The good news is that it is to update hospitals, schools, the rundown transport services and the crumbling Victorian sewage system, all of which were disgracefully neglected by the old unionist gunrunners – masquerading as a government – for 50 years from Craigavon to Brookeborough.
Like remittance men waiting for the monthly cheque, they had little interest in such matters. For years they were immersed in bordermania, big drums, flute bands orange marches to nowhere in particular, gazing all the while helplessly at the collapse of the linen and shipbuilding industries.
Looking back, they were completely out of their depth about modernising the infrastucture. Anyhow, the Stormont finance department always counselled caution about asking the British treasury for more, like Oliver Twist asking the beadle for more porridge. Brookeborough, in a mad moment, listening to the busmen, closed down half the railway system. He was saved from the supreme folly of ending the Belfast Dublin line at Portadown by the political uproar.
Now all these neglected transport systems, schools and hospitals are to be brought up to European standards at the cost of billions, whereas in the old days they could have been modernised for a few million. But the bad news is that this is not a gift from Gordon Brown the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, but a low interest loan which will have to be paid back in the form of higher rates and local taxation.
The squeeze will be painful for the poor, unfortunate electorate, abandoned by the in-and-out executive headed by its peripatetic first minister David Trimble. Little sympathy can be expected from the direct rulers, whose British constituents pay much higher rates than those collected from the depressed six counties.
Trimble – who is contemplating a trip to Bogota, so immersed is he on getting the low down on the IRA's alleged involvement with the opposition to the right-wing Colombian regime and its death squads – would be better engaged in more mundane affairs at home.
Finally, with an election due for Stormont on May 1, visiting media folk must be puzzled with all the various brands of unionists and republicans putting forward their stock in trade – UUP, DUP, PUP and other splinter groups. While on the republican side, explaining the difference between the OIRA, the PIRA, the RIRA and the CIRA, might prove an interesting diversion for visiting newshawks over a few drinks some night in the Europa – that's if anyone can make head or tail out of that puzzle. But the confusion is not ended there, as this vignette illustrates.
A tough looking character wearing dark spectacles calls at the headquarters of a well-known Belfast bank and demands to inspect 'Mad Dog' Johnny Adair's bank account, or accounts. After an argument with the staff the manager is sent for. The latter, annoyed at the intrusion snaps "who are you?". The tough guy reaches for his ID card and replies: "I am from the ARA" (collapse of bank manager). When he recovers and inspects the card he mumbles: "For heavens sake why didn't you say, assets recovery agency?"
It should be an interesting job travelling to the Isle of Man, Spain and the Cayman Islands to trace the millions hidden away in spurious accounts. The song says: "Money is the root of all evil. Take it away! Take it away!"
Seems they did just that.
