The more things change...

THE more things change, the more they remain the same. If ever a cliché applied to politics, it aptly encapsulates the political scenario in Northern Ireland.

Looking across a time span of 30 years, it is remarkable how little things have changed on the political landscape as evidenced by revelations contained in State papers now coming to light for the first time.

This universal observation has particular relevance for the unchanging personality of Ian Paisley, the North’s most bigoted politician and a man the Irish and British governments are finding just as difficult to deal with today as they did in the early 1970s.