What's The Line At Paddy Powers?

Did the bookie have to pay out when the Stormont deal faded? Were the odds long that the DUP would accept the official deadline of 26 March? Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, we have a brand new deadline and a second chance to gamble on devolution.

As long as both sides agreed an extension, then Peter Hain was amenable to presenting new legislation to Parliament to make a different absolutely not changeable deadline. In the snapshot seen round the world, Gerry Adams sat within strangling distance of the Big Man, and I'd swear I felt the earth tremble. Both sides of the political divide came to terms, we've been told, and the former date of Stormont's grand re-opening was pushed back, just like the DUP wanted.

The whole idea of sitting in government with the Shinners was so indescribably unbelievable that the Proties needed an extra six weeks to settle their stomachs and get the blood pressure down to manageable levels. And the strain on the heart, sweet Jesus, it was apoplexy on a massive scale without that six weeks to adjust. And after that, come May, well, absolutely it will be Stormont revisited.

So, what's the line over at Paddy Powers' famed institution? 20 to 1 that the DUP will find fault with Sinn Fein's commitment to policing and call the whole thing off? 10 to 1? Even money? After all, there's no benefit to the DUP to share power. They're perfectly happy with the United Kingdom and legislation from afar. They give no genuine inkling that they want things to change, to bring the Catholics in or do their own governing. If the folks in Northumberland are satisfied with Parliament, and they're English, then the loyal subjects of Northern Ireland should be just as English and just as happy, and Stormont isn't part of that joyful picture.

This back and forth, discuss and dither, has been going on for so long that it's hard to believe it will ever end. For now, the outrageously high water bills will not be mailed to each and every home in the six counties, as threatened if the DUP backed out of the original date. The DUP is said to be jawboning London in search of even more money if they go into government with Sinn Fein, a bribe in the billions of pounds sterling.

So now, they have six weeks to come up with a new excuse not to open Stormont. I'm going with the whole policing issue, that the Shinners aren't ready for the rule of law and they're not fit to govern. What are the odds?