Slugger O'Toole noticed last Friday that the Daily Ireland has laid off ¼ of it's staff! While the thought of people losing their jobs is sad, I can't help but be satisfied that this pro-IRA piece of trash is failing and my symptathy drains somewhat when you read the sort of stuff they publish (eg an article called Is it safe for the IRA to go away?).

Official records of sales seem to be a long time coming but Daily Ireland chief Marty "we have a market crying out for this product" Miller is sure sales figures due to be published soon will show his fish and chip wrapper beating 10,000. That said, industry insiders have speculated it may be closer to 7,000. Unfortunately the non-sectarian paper started 2 months later, called the Daily View, folded after just a single month as initial sales of 5,000 slumped to 2,000. To be honest, I don't think it was very good but at least it was just bad, as distinct from a bad and nakedly sectarian piece of crap attempting to excuse Sinn Fein/IRA murder of thousands of people by blaming everything on 'the Brits'.

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Murdered Bangor woman Lisa Dorrian's family have marked her 26th birthday today yesterday by releasing white balloons over the seafront in Bangor, but say they are no closer to finding out what happened. It's been 15 weeks since that fateful night and while loyalist paramilitaries still seem to be the guilty party, no body has been found to help shed some light on the investigation.

Lisa's sister Joanne made an appeal to her killers: "I just want to say to these people, they can see what we're going through so please just tell us where she is and put us out of our misery."

Three men have been questioned but were later released and currently the police are looking into the possible involvement of LVF members.

The family have offered a £10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of Lisa's body.

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This is my 5th post today, but I won't be posting much, if anything, over the weekend due to
a) not having internet access (or even a phone line until Monday)
b) its my birthday tomorrow

As well as any revelling I may (or may not) partake in this weekend, there might be another party going on too.

Happy birthday ma'am.

OK the Queen's real birthday is 21st April, but tomorrow she shares her "official" birthday in the UK with my own 'official' birthday in this glorious United Kingdom of ours

David Albert Taggart, described as a 'high risk' prisoner, is still on the loose. He was facing an attempted murder charge at Lisburn Magistrate's before escaping custody on Tuesday. The public are warned not to approach him should they spot him.

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As a huge Simpsons fan I was delighted to hear that, according to Digital Spy, there is going to be a Simpsons movie! Lets just hope they still have enough ideas left after umpteen seasons and about 15 years of shows to get some good writing into it. It's due out in 2007.

It looks like my good friend Tony has finally grown a pair. Following calls from France and other countries to scrap it, Tony Blair has pointed out that the UK annual rebate from the EU is fully justified.

French president Jacques Chirac is deeply unpopular in France and is still reeling from his people's rejection of his precious EU constitution through that inconvenient democracy thing. He's no fool though, and knows that an easy way to boost your popularity in France is to take a swing at Britain and appeal to that insular superior sentiment France is famous for.

So Chirac has asked Britain to make a "gesture of solidarity" in giving up it's rebate. Obviously this "solidarity" won't extend to reform of the hugely biased, unfair, costly and morally repugnant Common Agricultural Policy, which accounts for nearly half the EU budget! In return, Tony Blair pointed out that Britain's "solidarity" already extends to having contributed 2.5 times more to the EU than France or Italy over the last decade (even after taking account of the rebate)! It seems the UK is still the paymaster of Europe.

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Reg Empey launched his leadership bid for the Ulster Unionist Party last night, confirming that he would be one of the candidates standing when the Ulster Unionist Council meets on 24th June to elect its new leader.

He claimed that if he became leader the party would once again start listening to it's grassroots. One of the main criticisms of the UUP, even before the disastrous election results in May, was that the leadership was out of touch with the ordinary members.

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As reported on Newsline today, a report by the Office of the Oversight Commissioner on police reform has concluded that the Patten changes are working.

• There are twice as many Catholic recruits in the police service as there were in 1999 (now 18%)
• No plastic bullets have been fired since September 2002
• On average each officer takes less sick leave per year; down from an average of 23.5 days in 2001/2 to 17 days in 2004/5
• Of Patten's 175 recommendations, 114 recommendations have been completely implemented, leaving only 61 to be completed.
• The proposed changes to Special Branch have mostly been accomplished

Not mentioned in the report but also significant is that in 2001, the USA lifted a ban on the FBI training with the police in Northern Ireland.

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The BBC reports today that 17 Irish nationalist/republican Newry & Mourne councillors have been found guilty of discrimination by a court after a case raised by William Frazer, a campaigner for victims of paramilitary violence. The councillors could now be left with a £10,000 fine.

Frazer's victims group FAIR had asked the council for the use of a local council-owned community centre in Newtownhamilton (once a week as I understand). The councillors rejected the application on the grounds of 'local opposition' to the move. A court upheld a complaint from Frazer which alleged discrimination. As a result, the court ruled that the group should get the use of the centre and the council has now been landed with a large legal bill.

UUP councillor Danny Kennedy referred the issue to the local government auditor, who recommended (in a provisional report) that the councillors involved should foot the bill because they ignored legal advice that their decision was unlawful. Just right too - why should all the ratepayers foot the bill for the blind bigotry and prejudices of their elected representatives? Kennedy welcomed the recommendation but wants the councillors to also be barred from office too.

The Sinn Fein and SDLP councillors involved have denied any wilful misconduct and have until the end of the month to appeal.

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Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's government have been involved in a series of talks with Sinn Fein recently and apparently expects an IRA response to Gerry Adams's pre-election statement in the next few weeks. Bertie Ahern today said "there must be no fudge, no ambiguity" from the IRA.

According to the Irish Independent (free registration required), there will be no more meetings between Bertie Ahern and provisional leader Gerry Adams until the IRA answers Dublin's questions about it's future direction. In the mean time, Ahern is said to be planning a meeting with the DUP to guage how they might respond to any IRA statement effectively giving up weapons and criminality.

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