Hussey surprises at the hustings.

When I was thinking over Christmas about where I wanted the blog to go this year, I must say that the approaching nightmare of this year's NI Assembly Elections and all the attendant intra-communal hot-air and inconsequential baiting and "slamming" (the only synonym apparently in the local politician lexicon for "criticise strongly") didn't exactly motivate me to bother continuing the thing full-stop.

As it stands at the minute, I'm mildly interested in the results. No longer being a member of a participating party at this present stage I couldn't give a fiddlers about the campaign.

Having said that, this early election press-release from the UUP's candidate for the West Tyrone Constituency, Ross Hussey, has surprised me in a positive way:

Councillor Ross Hussey, the Ulster Unionist candidate for the West Tyrone Constituency in the forthcoming Assembly elections, has questioned what Sinn Fein have to offer the people of West Tyrone in 2011.

OK, he is still "slamming" political opponents but (if you read the rest of the release) he's doing it in an attempt to pull in support from beyond the usual "community" boundaries:

"I do not see Sinn Fein delivering much for the people of West Tyrone, the hospital fiasco was started when Barbara de Brun was Health Minister, the Education fiasco we face has been brought about by Caitriona Ruane, the problems in the Water Service have been overseen by Conor Murphy and the problems in relation to overpayment of European grants in the agricultural area were overseen by Michelle Gildernew. Based on the performance of the Sinn Fein Ministers to date voting for Sinn Fein is like turkeys voting for Christmas."

And OK, voters of opposing parties generally don't respond positively to being referred to as "turkeys", but he is building up a case for not voting for Sinn Fein rather than sticking to the tried and trusted, "Vote us, not them, we'll "defend" the Union because we're more Unionist than them" ploy.

Probably won't get him that many more votes but full marks for trying the novel approach anyway.