Making progress...

It's now about week since we lost touch with old Slugger. Since then we've had to rescue it from the clutches of a particularly nasty server. It's now with the new hosts, and mostly intelligible. He still has all his old memory. But some parts of the code have been mangled, and would mean asking people scroll down to get to the heart of the blog.

I'm still working on it (in a bumblingly, non techie sort of way), and I'm hopeful we'll have him back before long.

In the meantime, my heartfelt thanks to John, John, Joe, Samuel, Martina, Alan and David for their kind and generous support in Slugger’s hour of need. If you want to add your own support, then just hit the paypal button below. Believe me, it is much appreciated!

Rea: Sinn Fein's inaction creating a policing vacuum

Interesting that the media seems to be shifting onto Sinn Fein again over policing. Owen Bowcott in the Guardian interviews Des Rae, former chair of the Policing Board:

I have written to all the political parties to say we are available to brief them on the workings of the board.

"The policing problem is easy: it's important that every part of this community is policed and it's important we draw recruits from every part of this community," Sir Desmond said.

"Once trained they [must be able to] go back home and visit their parents without fear.

"To the extent that Sinn Féin is not on [the policing] board it leaves a vacuum in which [republican] dissidents can play their game and be a threat to police officers."