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Normalisation Continues...


Didn't see the Spotlight expose on the Robinsons last night, or rather didn't hear it as it was on screen but muted in the background of the pub I was in for a weekly quiz in Mrs. Robinson's constituency... Certainly not much support for her there... Indeed most of the team names (including our own I must confess) showed a certain delight in her discomfiture...
I intend to watch the programme when it is repeated at 2.30pm this afternoon on the news channel... But am frustrated again that this story is shoving into second place in local news the injury and attempted murder of a Catholic police officer by a car-bomb probably planted by dissident Republicans.
My reading of the material this morning has not shifted my opinion from yesterday that the media, in this case BBCNI, knowing its audience, has used the sex scandal as a hook to hang this whole thing on. There are important issues in play here regarding the use and abuse of power and influence, but the thought of a 59 year old woman having an affair with a 19 year old boy is so much more saleable.

A lot of pressure has come on the First Minister as to why he didn't dob in his wife, under the ministerial code of conduct regulations, when he found out about the financial improprieties, but actually, my big question is why it was possible for an elected representative to secure funding from developers for a third party's business venture, and then to actively lobby for at least one project proposed by one of those developers. My suspicion is that there is probably a lot more of this sort of thing going on and the only reason that Mrs. Robinson got her fingers burned was because of the salacious nature of the affair and who her husband is.

Welcome to the banana republic of Northern Ireland...

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