Bad Art - Michael Stone

In the wake of Michael Stone's recent attack on Stormont, many of the news reports noted that Stone was an artist, although none mentioned how amateurish his artworks actually are.

The pictures I've seen display no understanding of technique, composition or ability.

Two of his dreadful paintings appeared on eBay in the last week. One, entitled ‘Kneeling Nude on a Red Background’ had a ‘buy-it-now’ price of £9,995. It wasn’t met and the item mysteriously vanished from eBay before the auction closed.

A second, untitled, nude came with a signed photo of Stone posing by its “sister painting” which is entitled ‘Coeruleum Sunrise’. The bidding started at £4,000 and the auction closed this afternoon without any interest.

These works are really bad. The reds and blacks which act as a background to the nudes, coupled with the clumsy graphic style, suggest a boy's bedroom from the 1980s. The female nudes look as if they've been badly copied from a pornographic magazine.

Bizarrely, the listings noted that a percentage of the sales would be donated to Relatives for Justice, a Northern Irish victims charity with offices on the Falls Road and an interest in uncovering British Army and RUC collusion in murder.

However, Stone's artistic nadir has to be a sculpture, currently on eBay with a starting price of £3,500. Behold the red hand, cast from a Glaswegian loyalist as it arises from a piece of bog oak, slate and a cog wheel.

I'm not quite sure what this piece is trying to convey. Perhaps, in his delusiory state, Stone thought that the presence of the bog oak provided him with some kind of artistic credibility. Alternatively, Stone may have recently become aware that his art was rubbish and decided to go back to the day job.

We all know what an exhibition that turned out to be.

Moron Moments - Hain, Bell and Stone

Local ventriloquist doll and Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Eileen Bell, has accomplished a feat that would have previously seemed impossible. She has ensured Ian Paisley's "No," actually means "Yes."

Although Dr Paisley noted on Friday that he was in no position to make a nomination to the Northern Ireland Assembly, due to Sinn Fein's inaction on policing, Mrs Bell announced otherwise.

The question must now be asked: why did we never sieze upon Mrs Bell's powers of double-speak long ago?

With Mrs Bell leading the vanguard, Paisley would have said, "Yes," to Sunningdale, the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Good Friday Agreement. "Never, never, never!" would have been transformed into "Always, always, always!" Think of the bloodshed that would have been averted.

But, Mrs Bell was merely mouthing the words of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain. It didn’t matter what was said in the Assembly chamber; Hain and the Northern Ireland Office ensured it was translated through their own political spin machines, for their own preferred ends.

And just when things couldn’t get any more ludicrous, enter stage right, former British agent, Michael Stone, equipped with an array of accessories including nail bombs, an axe, a garotte and a gun.

The attack that followed was darkly comic, particularly the scenes where Michael Stone's glasses were knocked off and the female security guard held his legs up while he lay on the ground, shouting like a mad thing.

Stone's reappearance was akin to the reactivation of a long dormant sleeper or resurgent comic-book villain. The fans didn't see that one coming. It was like the return of the Cybermen to 'Doctor Who' in 1982. How we fell off our seats in astonishment.

Either his actions were fuelled by mental illness, the desire for further celebrity or he was guided, like Mrs Bell, by some sinister intelligence.

Whatever the motivation behind Stone’s inept attack, it has acted as a successful distraction from the serious problems faced by Mr Hain.

The Secretary of State must recognise that his ambition for the role of Deputy Prime Minister is threatened by Mr Justice Girvan's call for an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the appointment of the Victims' Commissioner.

To date, there has been no serious examination of this affair by either Westminster or the London media, proving that no one over there really cares about what goes on over here.

Perhaps, now that the High Court has orderd an inquiry into the illegal actions of Mr Hain, the need for the Northern Ireland Office to produce a spectacular diversion is upon us.