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So after a day of listening to briefings that everybody's ruffled feathers would be smoothed over when the Executive gathered inside Stormont Castle, it became clear when the ministers emerged that personal relations are as bad as ever. On her way out, Margaret Ritchie accused the DUP and Sinn Fein of trying to control other ministers. Martin McGuinness said the Social Development Minister was "losing the run of herself".

The vote taken by the Executive didn't tackle the minister's decision to axe loyalist funding directly. Instead it concerned the minutes of the last Executive discussion of the matter. Those minutes back Peter Robinson's version of events, namely that Ms Ritchie agreed to forward her legal advice to other ministers and consult them before she made her move. The SDLP Minister contested the minutes, knowing that if they become the accepted record of events she will be vulnerable to a charge that she has broken Executive rules. The two UUP ministers voted with her, the rest voted to accept the minutes.

Although at one stage it seemed that confining discussions to the technical matter of the minutes might have defused matters, Ms Ritchie's departing comments made clear that the rift with her colleagues has escalated. She followed through with an explosive interview for the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½'s "Hearts and Minds" which didn't go down at all well back inside Stormont Castle.

So Margaret Ritchie is fairly isolated in the Executive, although her policy on cutting the UDA linked funding is popular with large sections of the general public.

In any ordinary cabinet we would be well past the point of no return by now. But of course the Stormont mandatory coalition isn't an ordinary cabinet. How things develop from here isn't clear. Will the SDLP head towards opposition or will the party's minister stick it out, distrusting both the minutes and her Executive colleagues?

Almost as an aside the Executive tackled water charges. Conor Murphy wouldn't give details ahead of a statememt to the Assembly on Monday. But it's thought ministers may have approved deferring charges for another year, taking the cash for water from the rates. However it's believed many of the elements of the recent independent review of water have not been agreed as unionist ministers don't agree with the review's support for basing water rates on the capital value of homes, or its opposition to water metering.

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I am writing this up in the Assembly building, just before heading back down to Stormont Castle to catch up on today's Executive meeting. With water charges, the Irish language and Margaret Ritchie's decision to axe UDA linked funding on the table, the meeting promised to be hot and heavy. It began with disagreements over the minutes of what had been agreed previously by the Executive, and a short adjournment.

No doubt there'll be more later in the day, but my current understanding is that although things got a bit frosty between Ms Ritchie and Peter Robinson, there has not been the complete Executive meltdown which had seemed a distinct possibility. It looks like the Finance Minister is going go away and seek his own legal advice. Whilst some hacks are dubbing Ms Ritchie "the Terminator" because of her attitude to UDA linked funding, others have decided that the Finance Minister must be "Robbo Cop" because of his zealousness in policing the Executive protocol.

If ministers have been getting a bit crabby lately, maybe it's because we have been landing too many of the beasts on our shores. In my latest attempt to provide you with a fact you didn't know, I can divulge that over the past 12 months fishermen here caught just over 724 tonnes of brown crabs, worth more than £590,000. Thanks to the Agriculture Minister Michelle Gildernew and Sinn Fein's Willie Clarke for this interesting "snippet".

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