THERE is a culture in Northern Ireland that is both oppressively secretive and obsessively built on gossip.Spend five minutes at any given political party’s annual conference and it all begins to resemble a Monty Python ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ sketch...
Not that we are implying that there is a tendency for badly dressed men to wander around conferences seeking sexual favours from glamorous wives of stout Ulsterfolk (and if you’ve ever been to any of the party conferences you’ll see that glamorous wives and stout Ulsterfolk are very much in the minority!)
Instead we are merely pointing out that politics – especially in Northern Ireland – is a trade shrouded in the hints and half-truths that can disembowel (figuratively of course) political opponents, and even those within one’s own party.
What we need is a wide-ranging exposé of the secret communiqués between political allies and foes alike. Except that is that too few of them actually have anything genuinely interesting to say.
Seriously when was the last time when a politician in Norn Iron said something truly new and exciting (okay, we won’t mention the Robinsons if you won’t!).
Look or listen to any given debate, news appearance, radio call show, phone-in debate and you will not be able to say with your hand on your heart that you could not predict the robotic diatribe that is about to come out of their mouths.
Therefore, for those that are genuinely interesting – of which given the laws of probability there must be two or three – we need a wikileaks exposé of what their inner most secrets are. Heck, we’d even settle for a few of the MLAs slagging each off in colourful language!
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