I had imagined that this thread would disappear soon but, given its title, I suppose it could last a very long time.

To return to the events that started this thread. I was in Berlin at the time of the raids on the Sinn Féin offices and when a friend told me what I had heard on the news I was completely mystified. A friend told me what was they were saying on the news – "an IRA spy ring at Stormont". It was incomprehensible.

It was only when I got home that I got some feeling of what was really going on. The raids on Sinn Féin offices at Stormont were the most outrageous publicity stunt. They had nothing to do with policing and the officers involved didn't even pretend to be there for any other reason. They looked for nothing because they knew there was nothing to be found.    They were there for the television cameras. And the willingness of the media to be used in this fashion is neither new nor surprising but still deplorable. What they found in one man's house would not have made headlines had it not been for the raids at Stormont.

Many Unionist politicians, especially but not only Ian Paisley, openly talk of information, which they have been given by police officers and civil servants from the Northern Ireland Office. Has there ever been a raid on their homes or offices? Of course not.

But it reminds me how difficult it can be for someone outside to understand what is going on here. As a man once said to me, "I don't know much about the Irish situation. I spend too much time reading British newspapers and watching British television."