Beginnings......

Well, i am starting on the journey of blogging about grown up things, as opposed to my erratic blogging on toy soldiers and mindless distractions.

A lot has happened since 1998, when Tony made his bizarre 'I feel the hand of history' statement - hence the name of the blog.

Many things have happened in the 11 years since that statement, i got married and had kids for one. But Northern Ireland has also changed more than i could have ever imagined, being one of the generation that was born during the height of the Troubles. Perhaps the boul' Tony was not that off the mark after all.

We now have our own Northern Ireland Assembly, and after being such a yo-yo institution has settled down a bit since May 2007 when images were beamed around the world that i never thought would happen. Ian 'the big Doc' Paisley sitting next to Martin 'the apprentice' McGuinness smiling and joking, along with numerous others from the DUP and Sinn Fein.

Paisley & Adams at the press call in May 2007

How we all had to pinch ourselves.

The stabilisation of the Assembly was just in time for the big economic crisis to hit our wee shores and provide us plebs with more than enough excuses to shout 'what are they actually doing for us'. Recently this has also moved into overdrive with the Telegraph reveling that our MPs have been having a great time claiming the likes of yogurt, chandeliers and moat cleaning on their expenes.

Has our politicians, MEPs, MPs, MLAs and even Councillors, behaviour affected our perception of politics as a whole? Is it an unfair perception or completely justfied?

I think much of it still stems from the Major years and the much criticised 'back to basics' campaign that was viewed as politicians telling the country that family values and morals are the way forward, no major disagreement from my own views, but became synonymous with sleaze and corruption as MP after MP became caught up in very un-family value and immoral scandels.
The people do not trust politicians to be the moral compasses they should be. Some are. But the perception is that the vast swathe of politicians are not. Sad, but there you go.

Perhaps someone out there can provide an answer?