The Belfast Telegraph tonight isn’t amazingly good reading for the DUP. We have a story (no link found) about the DUP postponing it’s conference, leaving at least a two year gap between gatherings (not that my own party has had one in a while, but then again, we meet every year to elect a leader). Jim Allister reckons it is due to a downturn in DUP membership, and the possible comparisons of the Leader’s speech to that given in 2006. Then the sorry tale of Ian Paisley changing his tune on FOI remarkably soon after the Telegraph published one of his letters in relation to Mr Sweeney’s plans for the Giants Causeway. On which matter David Gordon has a piece, in which he remarks on Paisley Jnr’s only knowing of Mr Sweeney: “quite a few people spluttered in disbelief on hearing that – among them this journalist.”Not published online is the following on page 10 of the Telegraph:
July 31 2007: First Minsiter Ian Paisley hails freedom of Information disclosures in Northern Ireland and declares that Stormont departments are “making considerable strides towards achieving our goal of more open government”
October 4 2007: The Belfast Telegraph, using the Freedom of Information Act, reveals that DUP leader Ian Paisley made highly questionable claims while lobbying for a Heritage Lottery grant for would-be Giant’s Causeway centre developer Seymour Sweeney.
October 8 2007: First Minister Ian Paisley threatens to curtail Freedom of Information provisions, while slamming use of the Act by “lazy journalists who will do not any work (sic)”
I used to write and get paid, now I read and don’t.
Former UUP staffer, currently living in London. @mjshilliday
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