Arlene, Man Flu and the questions that weren’t

I’m baffled. Confused. At a loss.

I’ve just done a word-count of Arlene Foster’s manifesto speech. It comes to a mite short of 3,000 words. In it she mentions a lot of things –  Gerry Adams twelve times – but she doesn’t mention the leader of the party which is the DUP’s main rival, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill.  The other matter conspicuously absent from her speech was any reference to the RHI/Glow-for-Dough  scheme.

Why these omissions? In the case of the Glow-for-Dough scheme, it’s likely that Mrs Foster kept it out of her mouth for the same reason that people don’t mention the mad old aunt they’ve got locked up in the attic. It’s embarrassing. You don’t look good. You look very bad. So zip the lip on that one.   Is binn béal ina thost – Silence is golden. Apart, of course, from twelve mentions of Gerry Adams and nearly 3,000 words.

Was Michelle O’Neill not mentioned for the same reason? That she’s embarrassing? Makes you look bad?  Mmm – well, in a way. She looks so damned pleasant and blonde and lip-sticky and, dammit, young  (yes, Virginia, I know she’s forty), how could comparisons be anything but odious?

As to the frequent mention of Gerry A, I tend to think Orson Welles. You’ll remember the great man had his first big hit with a radio documentary about the US being invaded by aliens (from another planet, not from Syria). So effective and convincing was the documentary, the radio station and emergency services were saturated with panic calls. Maybe that’s what Arlene is intent on doing – not mentioning Michelle and mentioning Gerry a lot, in the hope that a kind of mass hysteria may set in and last until after the election, during which unionist voters, in panic, will have thrown themselves once more into the arms of  their saviour from all things scary, the DUP. It’s just a hunch, mind.

Finally, what perplexed a lot of people was Mrs Foster’s refusal to take questions after her speech. She was, reporters were told, suffering from Man Flu. Two questions lep up and demand answer:

(i) Man-flu,  I’ve always understood, was the way men go  on when they catch a little cold – I’ve the flu, I’m dying, bring me hot whiskey,soothe my fevered brow.  Mrs Foster is a female. How could she have man flu? And if she has, isn’t that suggesting she’s pretending to be terrible terrible sick when there’s really damn all wrong with her?

(ii) What kind of ailment allows you to produce nearly 3,000 well-crafted words in a speech, yet be incapable of answering a single question?  Has it anything to do with the fact that, when you go to questions, you lose control of the discussion agenda? Or a fear that journalists are crocodiles in disguise: give them the green light for one question, and they’ll keep coming back for more, until you’re rocked back on your high heels and verbally bludgeoned, when all the time you should be at home in bed sipping whiskey with honey and cloves in it and being told there, there, loveums,  those bad media  people have gone away, you can rest and recover now. And good news:   Nigel says he’s more than happy to take charge.