I normally wouldn’t post twice on the same subject on consecutive days, but events have left yesterday’s post so far behind that I feel obliged, in the interests of accuracy, to add to what I said in the post about Mrs Robinson.
A BBC programme “Spotlight” has come up with more details about Iris Robinson and her husband Peter, and how between them they have broken the law and the code of conduct for councillors, MPs, MLAs and Ministers.
In short they have broken more or less every code that there is, and the law to boot.
Mrs Robinson’s lover, in some sort of grotesque re-enactment of her namesake in the film 'The Graduate', was a 19 year old boy. Just for once in the Robinson story there's nothing actually illegal about that, but it's pretty weird for a religious fanatic given to quoting selectively from the Bible on morality, to have a ‘boy’ friend 40 years her junior. The details of their business transactions et al can be read here on the BBC website. They are rather complex so I won't repeat them here, but, as I said seem to have broken every code in the book, including the legal one.
Apart from the revelation that this pensioner had a sexual relationship with a teenage lad young enough to be her grandson, and that she later asked the boy for £5,000 for herself (the sex wasn't enough apparently, she needed cash too), we learn from the programme that her husband, the First Minister of the Province of Northern Ireland, knowlingly concealed information about her illegal financial activities from the authorities. A silly thing for a First Minister to do.
His position is now totally untenable. He has brought his party and the Northern Ireland Assembly into disrepute. He must resign immediately. She has made such an almighty fool of herself that whatever dignity she might once have had has been swept away. She has become a comic figure.
She has brought shame on her party, on her council, on the Assembly, on Parliament, on her family, on the boy she used, and on her religion and her church. This evil, nasty, hypocritical little tart really is finished.
Update: Despite the fact that the Northern Irish Assembly and the UK Parliament are both in session, Mrs Robinson is reported by the Belfast Irish News newspaper this morning to be heading for a week’s holiday in the ski resort of Chamonix in the next few days. Last night Spotlight said that Mrs Robinson was too unwell to respond to its questions, according to her solicitor.
Nice work if you can get it.
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