Shaun Woodward suddenly thinks that paramilitaries bear a large amount of the blame for the suicide crisis that is convulsing this city at the moment.
Funny, I listened to him speak on the subject at length on television a week ago and he didn't think that at the time because he didn't mention it once. What happened in the space of seven days?
Well, I don't think Woodward came up with this new take on the issue himself as he sat in his office at Stormont.
More likely it's down to the NIO suits sitting around him who saw it as another unmissable opportunity to bash republicans given recent hysterical press coverage of the fact that a young man who took his own life in Ballymurphy had been shot in the past by the IRA for his part in a vicious assault on a Turf Lodge priest.
"So when it comes to dealing with this problem remember that, with not a penny more, if we could end the paramilitary-style attacks on these young men, we'd start saving many of these lives tomorrow."
Of course, that's complete tosh.
The number of young people who have taken their own lives after having been the victim of a punishment beating or shooting is not "many", it's "small" (don't take my word for it – talk to the expert who appeared on the radio at lunchtime on Wednesday).
And the number of people from that small band who have taken their own lives because of having been beaten or shot is just not calculable because in this small number of cases, it seems just as likely to me that the victims have been driven to the edge by the sense of isolation from their own community brought about by their own actions.
For even those of us who have spoken out consistently and strongly against punishment beatings – and not just when it's politically convenient – recognise that the victims of shootings and beatings are responsible for some pretty heinous crimes themselves, the vast majority of them perpetrated on their own community.
The self-esteem, isolation and anxiety issues that manifest themselves in the wake of those crimes are key motivating factors too, but apparently that's not worthy of mention.
Mr Woodward could have mentioned drink, he could have mentioned drugs. He could even have mentioned the lack of infrastructure and the joblessness that to a large degree bring about the drink and drugs problems.
He could have mentioned the pathetically late and inadequate response by the statutory authorities to the suicide problem in West and North Belfast that means that while a stockbroker in South Belfast in danger of losing his BMW to the taxman has access to a 24-hour suicide hotline, our young people silently screaming for help in the dark, tortured hours before they finally act do not.
But he didn't mention this. And he didn't mention that during this crisis the Catholic community is suffering in huge disproportion because it is the Catholic community that suffers most from government neglect.
And if Mr Woodward thinks that institutionalised sectarianism is a thing of the past, then he's going to have to start paying attention because his own government's most recent statistics reveal that to this very day Catholics are twice as likely to be unemployed as Protestants.
Funny how that wasn't mentioned either. He didn't mention any of these things because all of these things – all of them – are the fault of the British government.
Mr Woodward waxes passionate and lyrical when it comes to the uncertain effect of paramilitary punishment on suicide statistics but, strangely, the fine words fail him when it comes to articulating the centrality of his own government's role in the continuing carnage.
So go ahead Mr Woodward, pay heed if you want to the super-unionists in suits who profess to speak for West Belfast but couldn't find Turf Lodge if you gave them two days and a Belfast street map; their only interest is in continuing the war on another front, even if the casualties are innocent young people.
Read their cynically crafted words out all you like because, listen – for years these same people have run rings round more experienced ministers than you.
