The new team?
After the tributes to Ian Paisley (including one through gritted teeth from the SDLP's Declan O'Loan) and the acceptance speeches from Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness (who acknowledged that the honeymoon is over) tomorrow it's off to Downing Street. I am really looking forward to my second 6:45 am flight of the week.
Tonight a well informed source told me the new DUP ministerial team will be:
Finance, Nigel Dodds
Enterprise, Arlene Foster
Culture, Gregory Campbell
Environment, Sammy Wilson
I am presuming Jeffrey Donaldson will remain as a junior minister. There is a suggestion that the new team may remain in place for a relatively short time before another reshuffle.
Another source told me earlier in the day that Edwin Poots has circulated a paper to his fellow ministers countering Peter Robinson's downbeat DFP appraisal of the Maze stadium. A last blast, perhaps, by an outgoing minister?
I'm 
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Will Sammy be aware that as the new Environment Minister he must keep his clothes on when he is in the countryside!!! Or will we see Gregory as the Culture Minister start doing either Irish Dancing or Irish Poetry...
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I would have thought Jim Wells would be the best choice for the environment, he's seems to be one of the very few people who ever speaks about it. I have no idea about Sammy's thoughts on green policies...
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As I was cycling home recently I waited at a set of traffic lights next to a petrol station were Sammy Wilson was refueling his gas-guzzling 4x4. It seemed to take an age for him to fill his tank. I was tempted to shout over to him "it's lucky your not Environment Minister Sammy."
Now I wish I had!
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Mark
WHAT ABOUT JUNIOR?
In agreeing to leave the stage early, surely Paisley secured a side deal to look after Junior Paisley who is at a loose end. Will Robinson create a new sinecure for him? What function would Junior be competent to deal with? Processing Planning Applications for major build projects, perhaps?
Susie
Carryduff
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Just an aside - if Sammy is confirmed as the new enviroment, is it safe to assume that the same conflict of interest that arose in relation to the Review of Public Administration that precipatated arlene fosters withdrawal from local government would have the same effect on sammys seat in Belfast.
For the last five years he has tried to straddle two horses, retaining his pottinger seat whiles representing east antrim in loftier forums.
Time for a change? Put some youthful talent to good effect? The dome of delight won't be the same again!
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We also should record an only slightly less memorable retirement - that of Denis Murray from the BBC. Fitting perhaps that it should come in the blog of one of his successors as BBC NI Political Editor and at a time when we are experiencing a sort of retro spasm of the old peace process to-ing and fro-ing, when Denis was in his element. His political judgment calls were excellent, as he steered his path deftly for decades through what was vital and what was merely posturing. He had the self confidence not to oversell and the lack of ego to tell us frankly he didn't yet know the outcome of some great crisis, when that was the point of the story. Above all, Denis will be remembered for the dignity with which he told our sad tale at the height of the Troubles to the often exasperated or bored British audience in particular. He kept it fresh. Whether it was tragedy or farce, or just something very complicated, Denis struck the right note unerringly and handled tone superbly. In TV News reporting this is much harder to do than it may seem. In a sense, he was a fine ambassador for Northern Ireland to the wider world, without for a moment pulling his punches. He was the first and the best correspondent who came from here to achieve full BBC network reporting status. The fact that he was indigenous made a tremendous difference; he was representing “ us “ to “them,” rather than an Englishmen peering into the mysteries of a strange divided tribe. "With people like Denis around, they can’t be all crazy", might well have been the response of the casual viewer. No mean achievement, in reports of three or four minutes at a time. He was my successor as BBC NI Political Editor. If my say so, I’m very proud of him. The NI public and the whole BBC audience worldwide should be too; he did us all good service.
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