I have just re-read my own posting and I've realized why I seldom contribute to these debates. I tend to lose my air of light-heartedness. This may be pedantic but the word "continuous" means, as a rule, uninterrupted, without a break. To say that something was been continuous except when there was a break is like saying that something was absolutely and totally black except when it was white. What was continuous was the campaign waged by the Unionist Government against its own citizens. It was a very successful campaign. They controlled what one English journalist, in a rare look at what was happening here, called "a political slum". They even made sure that nothing that happened here could be discussed at Westminster. And the British Government . . . ah, to hell with it. I'm fed up with the sound of my own voice.

But, by the way, Ed Moloney's book - if it's a secret history, what's it doing in a book available in all bookshops? And who told Ed these secrets. And how did he know what to believe and what was spoof?