Is concern about the Victims Commission overshadowing everything else in the First and Deputy First Minister's Office? Making his presentation to a Stormont Committee this afternoon, the Junior Minister Gerry Kelly talked about the VIPs due to attend next month's US Investment Conference, among whom he listed the New York Mayor, "Michael Bloomfield".
The DUP's Jim Wells put him right. The Mayor of New York is Michael Bloomberg. The former Victims Commissioner is Sir Kenneth Bloomfield.
Also giving evidence, the other Junior Minister Jeffrey Donaldson spelled out the names of companies attending the conference. He joked about whether HP might be representing the world famous sauce - but it was evident that he knew he was talking about the multi national computer firm Hewlett Packard.
As reported on today's Talkback, the Greens have come out in favour of the idea of Belfast having a directly elected Mayor. Their Holywood representative John Barry says "many cities in the world already have a directly elected Mayor with real powers to improve the delivery of services. People living in New York , Barcelona and London have seen major improvements in the way their cities are run as a result of directly elected Mayors. I am looking forward to the day when citizens of Belfast get the opportunity to elect a Mayor who will be accountable for the delivery of the good quality public services that we deserve."
All of which raises the question, who could be our Ken, and does Belfast have a Boris?
The current stand off over the Victims Bill is focussed on the question of whether there should be a Chief Victims Commissioner and if the new Commission should decide contentious issues by majority voting. Speaking on this morning's Nolan Show the Commissioner Designate supported the idea of a rotating Chair.
In the background, however, there is still lurking the more ideological debate about the definition of victims. As reported here at the start of this month Who Is A Victim?, the Ulster Unionists ought to reopen this debate. However their amendment to the bill was ruled out of order as it represented too major a change to a measure which was meant to tidy up the workings of the Commission. Despite that a sense of the strength of unionist feeling on this score was that DUP MLAs tabled a very similar amendment, which was also ruled out of order
The First and Deputy First Minister's agreed compromise has been to leave it the proposed new Victims Forum to discuss the definition of a victim, although it's hard to see the Forum budging from the existing all inclusive definition, especially if a new one would disqualify some of those appointed to the Forum.
The Ulster Unionists have now come up with some amendments which have been accepted, whilst hinting at the same territory. These potential changes to the bill refer only to those who can be appointed to or employed by the new Victims Commission. But they would exclude "anyone convicted of a criminal offence arising out of a conflict-related incident". Do they have the potential to stir similar controversy to those amendments which were previously disallowed ?
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