I certainly hope that NI can find peace and prosperity, after so many dacades of garbage.

However, with regard to mediots' reportage of same, I note this on Scotsman's web site:

"Adams and Paisley hold first meeting --
BELFAST (Reuters) - The leaders of Northern Ireland's feuding main parties, hardline Protestant cleric Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams, began their first ever face-to-face meeting on Monday."

<--Please advise howcum it's ok to use what most, these days, would regard as the pejorative description: 'hardline Protestant cleric Ian Paisley'

... but there's no similar (potentially pejorative) adjectival phrase concerning Adams -- as, for example:

Adams "(alleged? proven? well known?) present or former leader of the so-called terrorist IRA, an organization pretending both religious roman catholicism and marxism, while practising criminal gangsterism and profiting hugely from the proceeds of all the most abhorred aspects of crime (e.g., tax-evasion), and guilty of so many murders, Al Capone seems like a saint."

Congratulations NI!

AlexanderD, and your point is? Lasting peace and harmony has to be the goal. The people have backed Adams with votes just as they have backed Paisley. How many murderers do you think the mad foaming Paisley has influenced over the years?

Is Paisley ever going to die.

WHAT -"THEY NEVER SHOOK HANDS"

I thought Paisley died years ago. Is it him .... or a clone??

#1

It's refreshing that Paisley has not been written about in almost nostalgic terms. This mentally unbalanced bigot has been responsible for more deaths than Gerry Adams ever has.

I find it a pity that Paisley is not confined to the obscurity he deserves. If he were anywhere except 'Norn Iron' he would be the mad sad old man that the neighborhood children laughed at, instead he is the darling of the unionist and 'loyalist' electorate, something that speaks volumes about the political doctrine that they follow which is one of pathetic subservience.

Unionist politicians are in many ways like immature children. They want to be 'friends' with the big boys (British Govt.) but the big boys want nothing to do with them. They cry 'mother' when they don't get their way and then act like spoilt children when something happens they don't like (Anglo-Irish Agreement). Since unionism is built on blind prejudice and the assumed superiority of it's followers it was always going to have to change. It's a shame that it took an armed campaign to get rid of Stormont. Everything that followed was as predictable as it was preventable.

Unionist/'loyalist politicians, and their friends and fellow travellers in the revolting UVF/UDA/UFF etc, should hang their heads in shame at the mess they have inflicted upon Ireland.

Mr Adams is not (any more) the extremist. Mad ol' Ian is.

At last common sense prevalis. Well done to all parties and lets hope the thugs of all denominations are kept in check.