Marty wants me to go with him to vote tomorrow morning. I must admit that I don’t find any of the candidates standing in my area very inspiring. But as I’m always very critical of the DUP tonight I thought I would read the election material they had posted through my door. I really wish I hadn’t. I’m going to quote the paragraph of text they have printed beside a large photograph of Sammy Wilson but I must admit if I hadn’t seen it I wouldn’t have believed that any party would really print this.

“For the first time in decades republicans are on the back foot.

It’s not that they are more evil now than before, but whereas UUP incompetence let them off the hook in past days, now – with the DUP as the lead unionist party – republicans are under the cosh and a new confident and dynamic unionism possesses the high moral ground.

The unionist community does not want to go back to the bad old days when the UUP was in charge and daily conceded to Sinn Fein/IRA”

No wonder I hate Northern Irish politics. I didn’t know what the phrase “under the cosh” meant and had to look it up. I will be going to vote tomorrow as I realise if I don’t vote then politicians like Sammy Wilson will continue to get elected. He is the bookies favourite so I’m not convinced that my vote will make a lot of difference but it has to be better than ignoring the election and staying at home. So election material does have its uses and the DUP have motivated me to go out vote – just not for them.

I’m always learning new things. Some people think that learning is only for the young but I don’t agree. So here are some of things I learnt last week.

* The word means one week.
* When Tony says to me “I know nothing” in a strange accent he is probably quoting Manuel from Fawlty Towers.
* According to 16th Century writers a witch was someone who had lost their soul through making a pact with the devil and was working to bring down God’s church.
* There were only 9 recorded witchcraft trials in Ireland compared to 3,500 held in Scotland.
* When practising the snow plough stop on ice skates I shouldn’t bend my ankles as I will end up going faster instead of slower.
* Men wear buttonholes at weddings on their left lapel whilst women wear these on their right.
* In order to get numbered bullet points on a kwiki a “0” should be added to the start of each line in the list.