text: can northern ireland ever have true peace and democracy? splinter republican groups hold punishment beatings, michael stone (a "protestant extremist" according to yahoo news) is arrested after claiming he had thrown a bomb into the stormont assembly building. is it only the real people of northern ireland that want peace and democracy and that the extremist groups in the province like creating a climate of fear and don't want to see it disappear?  i would like this question to be answered by residents of northern ireland only, or by experts in northern ireland politics. the reality is now that normalisation has been happening for 10 years. people are more concerned about increases in domestic taxation (massive increases in rates and water charges) than they are about michael stone. thing about stone is he's a self-publicist. he became a celebratory of sorts for loyalists after he attacked a funeral in milltown cemetery years ago and lived for years of this fame. giving interviews to sunday newspapers, slagging off his gangster mates (johnny adair, jim gray), becoming an artist(!), so it was another stunt. purely to benefit michael stone. ni assembly members have been paid £50 million in salaries since the assembly was shut down. for sitting on their ar$es and waiting for the next election. local (council) government here works just fine - no different than anywhere else. in january there are more elections were we vote for people to go to an assembly that doesn't exist. there'll be another round of whataboutery - and they'll fail miserably to agree on what they disagree about. like they have for the last ten years. no matter what happens here its just not a surprise anymore.