It's been a bad tempered afternoon at Stormont. The Alliance's Naomi Long tore strips off the Ulster Unionist Roy Beggs over his alleged duplication of a motion on fuel poverty. The Enterprise Committee chairman Mark Durkan tried to tear the odd strip off the Enterprise Minister Nigel Dodds over the Giants' Causeway Visitor Centre but didn't really succeed.
But the blood boiled most obviously during a bad tempered debate on education. The DUP used the debate to accuse Caitriona Ruane of bias towards Irish language education in the criteria she has sued for keeping schools open. Both sides of the chamber accused each other of "witch hunts" and using children as "political footballs".
The most personal element of the debate came when the DUP MP Iris Robinson asked the Education Minister whether she was abusing the school admissions system by living in the south and sending her own children to a school in the north. Stung by this, Ms Ruane angrily told Mrs Robinson that she should not be bringing her children into the debate.
She confirmed that she was sending her children to a school in Northern Ireland, but unlike those parents recently accused of "grannying", or giving false addresses, she said she had always given her own address in North Louth. Ms Ruane pointed out that many people, like her, lived in the south but paid taxes in the north.
So like Tony Blair before her, Caitriona Ruane now finds her own children's schooling is a matter of political discourse.
Nothing to do with "grannying", but yesterday I bumped into the Education Minister clutching a conker. Was she going to make playing conkers compulsory on the enriched curriculum, I enquired. Sheepishly she admitted that conkers are now against all the current health and safety guidelines for schools. But perhaps she and Iris could settle their differences with a pair of old chestnuts. Although the IICD would have to verify that neither projectile had been baked or soaked in vinegar.
During his first ever question time on June 11th the First Minister made a bit of a mix up when answering questions from the SDLP's Thomas Burns and Patsy McGlone. Both asked about the role of junior ministers in general, but the First Minister had been pre-briefed to fend off questions about his son's controversial remarks on gays. So he twice delivered answers on that topic anyway, even though they were non-sequiters.
Ian Paisley was on his feet again this morning, answering questions about the summer meeting of the British Irish Council. As ever, Ian Jr. sat by his father's side shuffling the papers the First Minister relied on to answer questions. However once again Ian Snr. hit a glitch, when his party colleague Ian McCrea asked about the progress that had been made on the mutual recognition of driving disqualifications between the UK and the Irish Republic.
Somewhat surprisingly, the First Minister answered "all I can say to that is that is a matter for the individuals concerned, and I personally would like to see a good relationship between both parts of this island and without any potential claims of jurisdiction by either one of us. We are not claiming that the south of Ireland should be part of the UK and I think they shouldn't claim that we should be part of the Irish Republic and I think we have to keep this...this is not a place for arguing constitutional positions, it's a place for arguing the best things for the ordinary people that can benefit from them".
Just in case anyone is tempted to learn this paragraph by rote, so they can repeat it to a speed cop on the M1 somewhere near Balbriggan, it appears this is not the official position of the Stormont Executive in regard to southern penalty points. Subsequently the SDLP's Alex Attwood tacked a further enquiry about the points onto a question about the Irish Sea. With the proper paper work to hand, the First Minister replied that British and Irish officials were working to achieve mutual recognition of penalty points as soon as possible.
I am indebted to our Westminster correspondent, Ruth McDonald, for bringing my attention to a Westminster answer from the Secretary of State to the Conservative MP Mark Hoban, who enquired which periodicals the NIO subscribes to.
Click here
Few can have a problem with "Crime Reduction News". But "Homes and Gardens" and the "Ulster Tatler"?
But if anyone thinks the NIO is being spendthrift, they should scan up to an answer to the Liberal Democrat John Hemming who wants to know how many new ministerial red boxes the department has bought in the last five years. The NIO reveals that it has been recycling the same boxes for the past five years. And now we have devolution there's presumably nothing to put in the boxes, apart from back copies of "Homes and Gardens".
I'm 
