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This is where you can come for my take on the big Stormont stories and the politicians making the news
17:31 UK time, Thursday, 24 May 2012
Mark added analysis to:
When Alliance agreed to take the sensitive justice department job, one of the party's conditions was that there should be progress on the Cohesion, Sharing and Integration strategy.
In response, the Stormont executive produced a new draft community relations policy.
13:29 UK time, Tuesday, 22 May 2012
I'm looking forward to Tuesday's Spotlight programme on the development of Girdwood barracks in north Belfast.
Monday's announcement of a breakthrough in the six years of deadlock over developing the site seemed like good news.
17:31 UK time, Wednesday, 16 May 2012
We are halfway through community relations week, but will the independent organisation that runs the event be around in its current form next year?
The future of the Community Relations Council has been up for debate between the Stormont parties as part of their much delayed Cohesion, Sharing and Integration talks.
13:57 UK time, Tuesday, 15 May 2012
So Jonathan Bell has apologised for his "sloppy use of language" in relation to golf club sectarianism.
The speed with which the junior minister performed his U-turn reflected the embarrassment of the DUP over remarks which picked out golf just weeks ahead of the prestigious Irish Open.
15:54 UK time, Friday, 11 May 2012
Anyone with the misfortune to have come across me in the flesh will know that any parallel I draw between myself and Harrison Ford is purely for comic effect.
But if Indiana Jones devoted a lucrative blockbuster to the trail of the lost Ark of the Biblical Covenant, then I now find myself, rather less spectacularly, on the hunt for the lost page of the Ulster Covenant.
10:36 UK time, Monday, 7 May 2012
The latest row between the DUP and Sinn Fein over a special adviser's salary - revealed by my colleague Kevin Sharkey on the Sunday Politics - is surprising on a number of levels.
The two biggest parties have tended to resolve their differences in private, and the replacement of Mary McArdle in March had appeared to take some of the sting out of the issue.
21:03 UK time, Friday, 27 April 2012
Having spent too much time camped outside various stately homes waiting to find out whether the quarrelsome Northern Ireland parties had been able to resolve their latest argument, there was a certain novelty in being able to stroll freely into the majestic Royal Kilmainham Hospital in Dublin to listen to our local luminaries tell others just how it was done.
Influential figures from past negotiations, such as Martin Mansergh and Séan OhUiginn, wandered by.
16:56 UK time, Tuesday, 24 April 2012
At First Minister's Question Time on Tuesday, Peter Robinson talked about Northern Ireland taking its place in the world, demonstrating a new confidence and expectation.
Mr Robinson was reflecting on his recent joint trip with Martin McGuinness to India and Dubai.
19:06 UK time, Thursday, 19 April 2012
The Attorney General John Larkin's contempt of court case against the former Secretary of State Peter Hain is due to be mentioned in the Belfast Royal Courts of Justice next Tuesday.
But even before m'learned friends don their wigs, Mr Larkin's decision to invoke a rare aspect of the contempt legislation has been earning him some enemies both at Westminster and Stormont.
16:49 UK time, Tuesday, 17 April 2012
Everyone knows it is unparliamentary for a legislator to call another a liar.
That convention has got various politicians thrown out of their chambers, and the development of clever circumlocutions such as referring to someone else's "terminological inexactitudes".
13:30 UK time, Thursday, 12 April 2012
BBC Northern Ireland Political Reporter Stephen Walker is standing in for Mark Devenport
Over the last 20 years, Northern Ireland has played host to presidents and prime ministers.
15:37 UK time, Tuesday, 10 April 2012
BBC Northern Ireland Political Reporter Stephen Walker is standing in for Mark Devenport
Traditionally Sinn Féin dominates the political headlines at Easter.
18:34 UK time, Tuesday, 3 April 2012
Stephen Walker is standing in for Mark Devenport.
Mike Nesbitt walked down the steps, past the statue of Lord Craigavon and into the Great Hall at Stormont to announce his first reshuffle as party leader.
17:54 UK time, Saturday, 31 March 2012
Mike Nesbitt has escaped the curse of a Devenport victory prediction and won by an even bigger margin than this humble scribe expected. My analysis of the challenge facing the new UUP leader appears elsewhere on the main website.
The Ulster Unionists knew they were buying a media personality, but did they know they were getting a trainee impressionist?
16:51 UK time, Friday, 30 March 2012
On Friday, with time pressing, the Good Morning Ulster team didn't push me to call Saturday's UUP leadership election.
No such luck, though, on Radio Foyle where I was cornered into giving a view that, whilst he's fought a strong campaign and proved beyond doubt what a safe pair of hands he has, John McCallister won't be able to overhaul Mike Nesbitt.
13:12 UK time, Friday, 30 March 2012
Earlier this week I explained on Stormont Today the recent growth in the number of all-party groups bringing together MLAs on matters of mutual interest.
Stormont still has nothing like as many as Westminster, but at the latest count there are 22 all-party groups.
16:51 UK time, Friday, 23 March 2012
Visit Bertie Ahern's official website and you are immediately confronted by pictures of the former Taoiseach as peacemaker.
There is Bertie with Tony Blair, Bertie clasping Ian Paisley's hand, Bertie alongside Kofi Annan, Gerry Adams and Jonathan Powell reading out a peace declaration intended to resolve the Basque conflict.
15:43 UK time, Tuesday, 20 March 2012
This lunch-time I am running /walking/hobbling the Stormont annual Sport Relief mile organised by my colleague Tara Mills, together with assorted hacks and MLAs.
In previous years, Justice Minister David Ford has been the undisputed champion of the event but he is absent.
14:38 UK time, Monday, 19 March 2012
Mike Nesbitt's suggestion that there should be a referendum on the creation of a Stormont opposition made for a good headline on this week's BBC Sunday Politics programme. But how practical is it?
It's true that nearly 14 years have passed since the Good Friday Agreement, and the subsequent changes made at St Andrews were never endorsed by a referendum.
12:11 UK time, Friday, 16 March 2012
So Danny Kennedy has now withdrawn from the UUP leadership contest.
It is quite a turn around from Monday when one of his aides briefed me that the minister was definitely in the running, and enjoyed the backing of the majority of his assembly party.
BBC journalist since 1980s. Reporter for Spotlight, Ireland Correspondent covering IRA ceasefire and Good Friday Agreement, United Nations Correspondent in New York, Stormont Political Editor since 2001.
Covered stories in Somalia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Israel.
Author of Flash Frames -12 Years Reporting Belfast and co -author of Man of War, Man of Peace: a biography of Gerry Adams
Once worked as a trainee reporter for Indian newspaper "The Hindu".
Educated in Oxford before going to university in Cambridge to study history
Liverpool and Oxford United supporter.
Mark has an inherited condition which means he can't eat sweets
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