In the land of no where reality is taking a back seat, it's business as usual while the rest of the civilised world is looking apprehensively at the deadly poker game going on in Camp David and New York.
The local dramatis personae seem unworried
by the dire forecasts of disaster if it ends in a war which nobody wants.
Here they are still mumbling on about the Colombian trial that never happens and
the IRA spies under the bed.
As I write, John Snow of Channel Four
– usually a reliable communicator – is in Baghdad and foresees a calamity of half a million casualties and a million refugees there if the balloon goes up!
Economic forecasters have already predicted
a world crisis and slump with the price of oil going sky high.
Prime Minister Tony Blair is pictured
looking grave as he and his entourage jump into a car in the snow outside No10 en route for Spain to tell the Spanish premier about the situation, before flying on to talk with President Bush.
Before leaving, no doubt he was in touch with Paul Murphy the secretary of state at Hillborough.
One can imagine the terse message.
It probably went like this – "Hurry up and get those so-and-sos over there together. This is no time for fiddle faddle. There's work to do over here for our team. We can't go on forever trying to pick their stupid chestnuts out of the fire."
That's Tony Blair, UK prime minister realist, speaking with a load of worry on his shoulders. He lives in the real world... but not so over in Never-never-land where the mist is still on the political bog.
Trimble and his no men are not anxious to get back to work at Stormont so they are boycotting Paul Murphy's roundtable talks to get the show back on the road.
They have been joined by the other endangered species of loyalism.
After 50 years being spoon-fed by Westminster, none of them have shown much aptitude for ministerial office anyhow.
What have they to show for their sojourn in the executive for heaven's sake?
During their irresponsible exit from government, the great Belfast Shipyard – which once employed up to 35,000 people and, after Catholic workers were driven out, was dubbed a 'loyalist soup kitchen' – has slumped to a repair workshop employing a few hundred.
The once prosperous local textile trade is sinking too and an SDLP spokesman says the agriculture industry – without the expert input of local knowledge (such as displayed by the last minister Brid Rodgers) – is in total disarray.
With an election for Stormont due on May 1,
you would think that these vital topics would be top priority for the future, but not so.
All the sorely tried electorate get is the tiresome tale from Bogota and the funny peculiar Castlereagh raid, endlessly flogged up in anonymous letters to the unionist press.
With Paisley breathing down his neck,
Trimble cannot afford to be seen in negotiation with the enemy, so the election will follow the tried and true game plan – the updated version of bordermania or the menace of the IRA.
Reduced to scraping the bottom of the barrel, the entire unionist establishment no longer plug the line that, if the IRA violence ceases, the loyalist paramilitaries will come aboard as holy angels.
With the IRA on long time ceasefire this has not happened, in fact the loyalist paramilitaries appear to be running mad... turning loyalist communities in Shankill, Larne, Antrim and Ballymena into terrorist fiefdoms with nightly murders, feuding, stabbing, pipe bombs and stories of every form of villainy, extortion, drug dealing and even prostitution.
Paramilitary Lotto?
After this week's BBC exposure of the blatant thuggery and vendettas over territory featuring such weird characters as Johnny Adair,
'Cut-throat' White, Mo Courtney, the Egyptian and the self-styled local brigadiers, any normal community would expect immediate mass arrests.
Instead we had this murderous gang posing for the cameras at a sumptuous breakfast in what looked like a directors' boardroom.
Chicago in the 'roaring Twenties' and the mob,
Al Capone, 'Legs' Diamond, Dillinger and other FBI public enemies, paled into insignificance against this upper and lower Shankill Hells Kitchen... with spokesman White angrily shouting at a BBC man who wanted to know where men with no visible means of support could dig up £300,000 for a house.
There have been other stories about muscling in on territory where pubs, chip shops etc. are paying out hundreds in protection money to thugs driving around in Jags, holidaying on the Caribbean, or buying homes in Spain.
This week we read the report
of the Derry building firm which announced
that it was going out of business because
it could no longer afford the payment of £3,000
a week protection money.
Strangely, local politicians seemed more concerned about the council's decision to drop London from Londonderry than this reflection on the good name of the Maiden City.
Have we got our sense of values contorted?
