Well folks, that’s it – canvas completed and election day only a few hours away.

Just wanted to capture my thoughts as we finish what seems to have been a long campaign.

First, there have been some very common themes on the doors across Upper Bann. A significant number of people who voted DUP in the past few years have said they are turning away because of broken promises. From Bleary to  Banbridge, this is most noticeable. I picked this up four week ago in Portadown and have got it every subsequent canvas.

Next, people think that the Assembly has done little, if anything, for them. It’s the jobs at Stormont that have been preserved at all costs even as economy has melted down. There is an anger at this which will manifest itself tomorrow.

Deep concerns about Health, about Education – about our schools, about tuition fees – these all worry the voters of Upper Bann and they seem unhappy with those who have sat at Stormont and done next to nothing about any of these real needs.

There is wealth and poverty in Upper Bann – in some places living next door to each other. There is a sense of abandonment in some areas. There are obvious areas of social need and a motivated and competent MLA can do much good work here.

People now must make their choice – TUV provides them with a clear difference and I hope that the next 48 hours will see a new dawn for Upper Bann.

Only 48 hours to go to polling day and the sun is still shining out there and the response from the canvas has been great. We are hopeful that come Friday, Upper Bann will once again have sent a shockwave through the political class and the lazy media. Betrayed and sold out by a DUP which has prostituted itself to the IRA, the people will have their say and TUV provides the chance for CHANGE.

Well now, the election enters its final week and the sun is still shining! I hope it will be shining on Friday after the votes are counted. Here in Upper Bann, it is very clear that a chunk of unionist voters feel badly let down by broken DUP promises. Those Dupes who stood for election four years ago suggesting they would NOT enter into government with the IRA before promptly doing do, now claim only they can win.

Win what? Win for Sinn Fein given Martin McGuinness’s warm endorsement of Peter Robinson? Win for the selfish party advantage of the DUP even though the Union itself is weakened and undermined? Win for those who have lost their jobs by the tens of thousands over the last four years? Win for the cancer victims denied a functioning unit at Altnagelvin whilst GAA gets £60m lavished on it?

We need CHANGE here in Upper Bann and that is what TUV STANDS for. We have been getting an excellent response on the doors in those areas that the DUP once claimed as heartlands – the response is the same. Betrayed and sold out four years ago, voters WILL be heard and when they are TUV has a great chance of getting into Stormont where it can at long last provide the opposition so badly needed.

Going around Upper Bann, the one thing that is obvious is that many of those people who voted for the DUP in 2007 feel very let down by them. In quite a few cases, the same people who had shifted from the Ulster Unionists to the DUP after Trimble’s years of quisling leadership have been betrayed in an equal, if not greater, fashion. The idea that they are now “returning home” to the Ulster Unionists is a fantasy; the suggestion that they will forget about the broken promises and “keep moving forward” is pure dupery. The fact is that all these people – and their numbers run high – have a choice at long last and it is TUV. Upper Bann needs unionist representatives that stick to their election pledges and who will confront the Republican agenda rather than embrace it. The Peter and Marty show may be deemed acceptable to the power at any price brigade but we stand up and speak for the people who say no more roll-over unionism.

“During the debate, the DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson used parliamentary privilege in the assembly to name alleged members of the IRA army council.

Mr Robinson said: “A document was recently sent to my home which I read in the House of Commons outlining the present army council membership of the IRA.

“It indicates that the chief of staff is Thomas Murphy, the assistant chief is Brian Keenan, the other members are Martin McGuinness, Gerard Adams, Martin Ferris, Patrick Doherty and Brian Gillan.”

That was 2001. Who are those guys sitting beside Peter in the picture above?

One of the GREAT inequities of DUP/Sinn Fein rule has been the way in which the victims of IRA terrorism have been cruelly neglected. As Jim Allister puts it;

“The fact that an innocent victim continues to be equated with the murdering scum who made him/her a victim epitomises not just the abject failure of this Stormont but the amoral ambit within which it operates. Devolution which cannot deliver justice on this basic issue, and instead sees preferential funding poured into republican prisoner groups, is devolution that has failed. A failure made all the more poignant by the deception of those who pretended they could deliver, knowing full well they would not.”

When TUV enter the Assembly, putting right the great wrong committed against the innocent victims of IRA terror will be a clear priority. It may be convenient for some DUPES to forget them – but TUV thinks very differently. Changing the current definition of what a victim is lies at the heart of providing real justice and this is long overdue.

DUP clown prince Sammy Wilson has gone on record claiming that “people are over-concerned about losing their jobs and are not spending. Fewer people will lose jobs than people think.”

As you may know, unemployment in Northern Ireland has soared to 59,000 and shows every impression of continuing to increase. Whilst Wilson has TWO political jobs, MANY people struggle to find just one. As Upper Bann loses job after job, who agrees with Sammy that we need to stop being so over-concerned?

“It would be a generation before DUP would sit in power with Sinn Fein/IRA” Peter Robinson to David Frost May 2005.

“I will never sit down with Gerry Adams . . . he’d sit with anyone. He’d sit down with the devil. In fact, Adams does sit down with the devil.” Ian Paisley Independent, February 13 1997.

Vote DUP…..

Yesterday, Martin McGuinness showed his true colours and glorified the IRA.

It seems SOME unionists are quite happy to go along with this and work with this terrorist godfather. Even as his victims are denied justice.

Just remember it was David Trimble’s Ulster Unionists who brought the IRA into government and it is Peter Robinson’s DUP who keeps them there.

Unionist voters now have a choice since TUV is clear that we believe McGuinness and his associates are unfit to hold any Ministerial office. For all the spin and hype, the central fact remains that the IRA are sitting in the heart of government, cutting away at every aspect of our Britishness. TUV says enough – no more. We do NOT want Bomber Kelly as Minister for Justice, we do NOT want Ruane wrecking education, we want to democracy return to Stormont.

Upper Bann has a choice. Does it settle for those who have enabled the Irish Republican agenda to advance day by day, to undermine our Britishness – to chisel us out from within …or does it choose Unionists who will stand up to McGuinness and his cronies, who will seek to repel the all-Ireland agenda, who put principle first and last?