The UUP’s assembly members MPs and peers &ndash including the influential Lord Kilclooney former deputy leader of the UUP’s parliamentary party &ndash

The UUP’s assembly members, MPs and peers – including the influential Lord Kilclooney, former deputy leader of the UUP’s parliamentary party – meet in Belfast this morning. It is not too late for them to ask some questions rather than merely throw the package out, as the more moderate elements will surely realise.There are, of course, plenty of such questions. As for Sinn Fein some of them concern last week’s document itself. What in it will be enacted by the governments in any event, and what truly depends on decommissioning? Will the SDLP, the moderate nationalist party, now sign up to the new police force by allowing its representatives to join the Police Board? And so on But most of all they will concern decommissioning itself. What has convinced the general that the IRA are serious? How prolonged does he envisage the timetable? And will Mr Ahern’s hint result in a first decommissioning gesture perhaps before the real deadline for collapse, suspension, or new elections to, the assembly, 12 August?Even pro agreement Unionists were last night very doubtful that even in a relatively benign scenario the institutions could be put back on track by then. Not only would Mr Trimble need to persuade a majority of his assembly members today, but a larger majority still, including some dissidents, would probably be required to re-elect him as First Minister by that deadline.For their part British officials were still hoping to get to have Mr Trimble’s resignation rescinded without recourse to a suspension to buy more time or, more destabilising still, fresh elections.One hope for the agreement is that even the leading hawks may not be as monolithically in favour of rejection as some fear.

While David Burnside, for example, is firmly against last week’s package per se. Jeffrey Donaldson, by contrast, has made decommissioning the central objective These are straws in the wind, of course. Again not for the first time, it looks like a make or break week for the agreement. But also not for the first time, hope has been breathed back into the process at the 11th hour.d.macintyre independent.co.uk
More from Donald Macintyre. I was, I have to say, somewhat shocked by the furore over the Brass Eye special on paedophilia Not by the programme itself. Yes, I did see the programme and I thought it was not very good and not very bad, and I thought Chris Morris had made some tactical errors, especially if he thought that satire was ever going to change anything, but on the whole he got some shots on target about media hysteria, and if he wanted any corroboration it came from the media hysteria which greeted the programme.(Let us draw a veil over the ministerial shock that greeted the programme.

Let us not mention the name of the government member who went on radio and blasted the programme that she had not seen. Let us not mention that Beverley Hughes, for that was her name, said that, although she had not seen the programme, she had had it described to her and that she found the contents highly shocking. Let us not even think of mentioning Beverley Hughes again.)
Even if Brass Eye was shocking, it is not half as shocking as child abuse itself. And there were things that Chris Morris could have said that he didn’t say.

He was so anxious to present the paedophile pest as the media see him – ie as a hideous monster in scarcely human form – that he forgot to remind us that most child abuse is practised by members of the family, or intimates of the family. It is very convenient for us to imagine that child abuse is committed by sinister, solitary people wearing raincoats, but it isn’t – it’s mostly committed by people like us: parents, grandparents, uncles…I don’t think when I was young that I was even aware of the existence of child abuse. My mother once told me, in a moment of unusual candour, that she had had a very scary experience with a man in Central Park at the age of 12 (she grew up in New York), but she didn’t say what it was and never referred to it again, and it was only in retrospect that I realised vaguely what sort of thing she must have been talking about.In fact, the first time I heard it openly referred to was when I was grown up and working for Punch magazine. My best friend there was the deputy art editor, Geoffrey Dickinson, whom I sometimes used to question about the stability of a career of a cartoonist, and he used to say that, taking all the risks into account, it was better than his previous life as a teacher.”It can be a harrowing job, teaching,” he told me. “Some of the children in my classes had the most awful home lives.”"What – parental violence, that sort of thing?”"Worse.”I couldn’t imagine anything worse.”Well, incest, sexual abuse in the family, all that sort of thing.”It was beyond my experience I said I didn’t believe it.”Oh, it happened all right.

I’ve known girls come to school having been made pregnant by their fathers. You live in a sheltered world, Kington…”And so I did, I guess Why, I didn’t even know about child prostitution. Did you know about child prostitution? You may have thought that Brass Eye was shocking, but it wasn’t half as shocking as another announcement that came out the same weekend that the Brass Eye protests did: the revelation that child prostitution is on the increase here and that children as young as 10 are involved in the trade in Britain.That is the sort of thing that is mentioned in hushed tones about Victorian Britain, to show what an evil world existed alongside the imperial splendour of Victorian London. That it should be happening here and now, and be on the increase, is, I would say, a lot more shocking than Channel 4 allowing someone like Chris Morris to make a satirical programme about the coverage of child abuse.But was there tabloid hysteria about child prostitution?Was there a great uproar anywhere?Did the Daily Mail clear its front page to expose the racket?Did government ministers go on air to condemn the evil trade of child prostitution?Did the minister we never mention (Beverley Hughes) have anything to say about it?I do not think so.I am still waiting
More from Miles Kington. The organic food lobby launched a scathing attack on the Food Standards Agency on Monday for claiming that there is no scientific evidence to justify claims that organic produce is safer and healthier than conventional food. The organic food lobby launched a scathing attack on the Food Standards Agency on Monday for claiming that there is no scientific evidence to justify claims that organic produce is safer and healthier than conventional food.The Soil Association, which certifies organic food and farmers, says in a report on food and human health that the FSA was wrong to claim, as it did a year ago, that people are being fooled into believing that organic food is healthier.Research commissioned by the Soil Association into more than 400 studies published in scientific literature has demonstrated “significant differences” between organically grown food and non-organic food, Patrick Holden, the director of the association, said.He said: “There is indicative evidence suggesting nutritional differences between organic and non-organic food More research is needed …