Forget, if you can, all that blind man's bluff about an election to a Stormont mad house... the really important news of the week is that President Mary McAleese has been greeted in China with the biggest ever trade mission in Ireland's history.
The purpose of the visit, which is at the invitation of the Chinese president, is to strengthen the links between the two states as well as to promote trade and education initiatives. But here's the rub. although the Chinese accept this visit as representing the whole of Ireland, we have no part in it because we are the unfortunate inhabitants of a political looneyville.
A Tom Tiddlers land which can't make up its mind whether to embrace the offer of devolution or remain a coconut colony, despised by our masters at Westminster...
Five years ago there was worldwide goodwill after the dramatic announcement that the Good Friday Agreement had been signed, bringing to an end the 30 years nightmare in the killing fields of political Ulster. But in the intervening years most of that goodwill was dissipated as a result of the publicity given to the political back-sliding between unionism and Sinn Féin to the extent that a crazy election now looms which could threaten that agreement and its acceptance by huge majorities north and south.
The China mission of 130 business people and academic administrators has great potential for future prosperous links. Sadly, it is a great opportunity missed for the sagging Northern Ireland economy.
We could well have been part of that venture to the Far East especially if the north/south institutions envisaged had been in place. Observers from the north, if not actual representatives, could have participated in the important visits not only to Beijing but also to Hong Kong to Shanghai Shenzhem, the keynote address by the Irish President to Peking University and the official opening of a new commercial section of the Irish embassy.
Coincidentally as if to underline the crass stupidity and incompetence of the politicians who have wasted the years fighting the battles of long ago, a senior economic commentator Mr Mike Smyth, this week told a Northern Ireland Economic Conference in Belfast that the north should throw its lot in with the Republic and sell itself to foreign investors as an All-Ireland location.
Some of the politicians present must have wilted when the speaker added that there was little evidence that political parties in Northern Ireland were "business friendly" and that the consequences for the north's economy in five to seven years could be extremely serious.
So while the representatives of the Celtic Tiger were busily engaged building up economic links with the Far East what were the so-called hard-headed Ulster politicos doing for an economy preparing to commemorate a lost shipyard which once employed 30,000 workers by keeping in place the giant cranes Samson and Goliath as museum pieces.
They were over at Blackpool attending fringe meetings of the sadly depleted Tory Party.
The Trimble story to these bored gatherings was the forlorn one... waiting, ever waiting on that four word message from the republican movement's famous ghost writer P O'Neill:
"The war is over".
Meantime Secretary of State Paul Murphy hints that his team of Labour MPs running the show at Stormont must be getting restive.
Their constituents must wonder what they are doing over in this sectarian outpost.
He asks plaintively how long we can tolerate government for the people but not by the people but by people from the black country and the English shires?
They had hoped to be home for Christmas but now it's all up in the air and they are left wondering when can they get back to dear old blighty – far from Ulster's madding crowd?
