The big story next week overshadowing the last 11 days of our critical Northern Ireland Assembly election is the arrival in London of President Bush. Amidst talk of immense security measures to ensure his safety against the background of the controversial Iraq war, Scotland Yard and the president's huge armed protective shield are taking no chances.
Reports are saying that large areas of London will be closed off and roof tops manned.
The visit is untimely in many ways with Westminster agog over the House of Commons duel between the newly elected leader of the opposition Michael Howard (alias 'Count Dracula') Prime Minister Tony Blair and a section of Labour lefties openly hostile to Bush.
At the time of writing there has been no mention of whether President Bush will extend his visit to Ireland north or south in view of his public support of the peace agreement in which his predecessor President Bill Clinton, was heavily involved.
If Clinton was still president, there is little doubt that he would be telling all concerned here to end the five years fiddling and get on with the job of devolution.
The agreement involved the two sovereign British and Irish governments and time and again we have been told by their spokesmen that there is no question of renegotiating but here we have intruding opinion polls – taking their cue from the idiot no-men of unionism and the even dafter DUP – seriously raising the issue of renegotiating and coming up with what could be mischievous findings.
President Bush's well informed adviser, Dr Haass – who has played an important role in pursuance of peace – should now advise Bush to reinforce those assurances.
Renegotiation is a no-man's election red herring. It's just not on.
Can you imagine what it would entail considering the past record of the people advocating this attempt to drag the community back to the good-old-bad days when the Orange Grandmasters, inside and outside Stormont, ruled the roost... This election basically is for or against the Good Friday Agreement after five years of incessant scaremongering by Paisley and the unionist back sliders.
There is no alternative. None in sight, none propounded by any of the dissidents.
It is either for the agreement or the road back to the bogs, the road to nowhere.
The ageing ayatollah, the Free Presbyterians' pope, from the hill of the ravens, is pictured on television crouching over the script which his lieutenant Peter Robinson reads.
The boss, who seems to be on his way out but still hangs on, waits for every word.
Their manifesto reads like a loyalist nightmare of the future, including such titbits as the enormity of Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly becoming minister for policing.
It forecasts the awful future facing the loyalist community in a series of shock spoof headlines including one reading 'twelfth banned'.
You can imagine on polling day some poor old dear reading this catalogue of disaster – Gerry Kelly running the police service, the Orangemen under house arrest on the Twelfth – finally giving the DUP her number one. But she should be warned... she could be helping to set up another calamity.
How about Ian Paisley jnr using papa's influence to become policing minister?
That's all we need, this cheeky chappie telling the cops what to do at Drumcree or up at Ardoyne.
The DUP say unionism is a cold house for unionists and now is the time for some changes? How about a hot house?
Out in the real world away from such hot air it is certainly a cold world for the 300 textile workers in Derry told this week that their jobs – making jeans for the big high street retailers – have been transferred to Bangladesh.
They and a couple of thousand others in local factories have lost their jobs as the rapacious big boys of the industry exploit the cheap labour in the impoverished far east.
Within days of this little tragedy BBC TV revealed the appalling conditions in the sweat shops of Bangladesh where little children, scarcely of school going age, were shown working long hours from morning to night producing fashion goods for our high street retailers and multiple stores.
The programme presenter said that the workers' 'starvation' wages were sometimes not paid for a couple of weeks!
He also claimed that the representatives of the trade concerned were well aware of the cruel conditions under which their goods were produced.
Here we are in the 21st century thinking that slavery had been abolished long ago. And here we have rampant profiteering bringing misery to the shocked textile workers of Co Derry and to the poor kids of Bangladesh growing old before their time.
