Nolan, or how Sinn Féin tried to shoot the messenger and missed…

Let me declare an interest here…

I like interviewers who ask hard questions and then repeat them until they get an answer.  Stephen Nolan is one such – as is Andrew Neil.

Allegedly Andrew Neil is somewhat to the political right of my good self but as long as he asks those difficult questions of those he interrogates and in a fair way, personally, I couldn’t give the proverbial fiddlers what his political views are.

As a Nationalist, the boul Stephen is therefore a Themmun. I understand he hails from the Loyalist heartlands of the Shankill Road.  Good on him. As long as he does, as the boul Andrew does, and grills people equally, the same proverbial fiddlers applies.

According to the BelTel “Sinn Fein has not appeared on the Nolan Show for several years, which is believed to be down to coverage of the Bobby Storey funeral during the Covid pandemic.”. It seems Stephen kept asking the same questions about the funeral – over and over – and getting the same ridiculous answers – and SF decided that rather than answering those questions they would boycott the show because of his perceived unfairness. Bless.

Many in Social media took up the baton in attacking Nolan. Some/many Nationalists, perhaps deciding the political winds were agin Nolan rowed in behind SF despite the obvious and blatant breach of the social distancing rules which lay at the heart of Nolan’s questioning. Disappointingly there seemed a reluctance by the wider media to stand behind Stephen’s editorial judgement as noted here when last I posted on this subject.

SF presumably calculated that dissing Nolan whilst keeping the Party line on the Storey funeral of ‘nothing to see here’ would do the trick – and in fairness they seemed to be about right until the rather inconvenient Covid Enquiry rode into town with an another excellent interrogator – Claire Dobbin(schooled on the Falls Road)-  who although dispatched by the perfidious occupiers of Ulster(6 of 9) – could not be rubbished as per Nolan.

…and so we had an apology from Michelle who was sent in to the Enquiry to defend the ridiculous party line – by saying the Party line had been a terrible mistake – and thereby vindicating the boul Stephen’s persistence in not accepting what had previously been offered up the Party.

Obviously another apology is now due to the All Ireland Speech Broadcaster of the Year  but I’m guessing that  is unlikely…

…and so we now should expect SF  to quietly slip back on to the Nolan show given that they themselves have removed the main reason for the boycott i.e. avoiding addressing the Storey funeral issue properly.

If only SF had answered those questions at the time – it would have done wonders for Michelle’s and the Party’s credibility.

Sin é.

Sammy Mc Nally is a Prod fictional character bestowed on us by James Young who accidentally kills his pal, who not suprisingly, given that it is Belfast, is also a Prod. The friend is sent to the after life place (Heaven/Hell) and finds it is an exact replica of Belfast – with one important difference – it is run entirely by Fenians and with the pope himself in residence in Stormo and it seems no sign of the Belgian quarefellah D’Hondt anywhere. To be continued…