I was glad when Michael posted the news of Paisley's stepping down/being pushed from the positions of First Minister and leader of the DUP. OK, it was sidetracked more or less from the start into the history of Ulster Unionist leaders/NI Prime Ministers, but I really couldn't be arsed commenting.

I'd come home from work and turned on Newsline when I first heard. I then heard nothing else for the remainder of the show but different people's rehashing of the news, their speculation and their commentary. Within 15 minutes or so I was sick hearing about it. Was there nobody prepared to say "No comment"? IIRC there was no sports coverage at all that night either. Surely something else must have happened that day.

The worst of it all was listening to Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams make nice with pathetic platitudes. Today I came across a few more realistic assessments, apparently taken originally from the Irish Times.

Follow up:

David Trimble, who also rails against Paisley in today's Belfast Telegraph, was quoted as saying:

"One thing we can be sure of is that without Ian Paisley, there would have been a political settlement in Northern Ireland a generation earlier. And if Tony Blair had kept his promises to me at the time of the Good Friday Agreement, his (Paisley's) political demise would have come a decade ago."
David Trimble, Northern Ireland First Minister, 1998-2001

The SDLP's Seamus Mallon wasn't any less critical.

"Yes, he brought unionism into a powersharing arrangement with Sinn Féin, but to do that he had to destroy, as he had destroyed Terence O'Neill, as he destroyed Faulkner, as he destroyed Chichester Clarke - he had to destroy the unionist leader David Trimble. It tells you about the paradox of all this, that the creativity which he undoubtedly gave the political process in Northern Ireland in his later years was achieved as a result of the destructive element in his approach to politics and this type of political atavism which demanded absolute and total power."
Seamus Mallon, Deputy First Minister, 1998-2001

Even Rory O'Brady managed to string some rare thoughts into a couple of coherent questions - scarily similar to questions I've asked before.

"The great unanswered question before history is why did not Paisley, on the one hand, and the present Provo leadership, on the other, accept and work the Sunningdale agreement of 1973 which offered more and for which less was to be paid than the 1998 Belfast Agreement? Did we, as a people, have to endure 25 years more of sacrifice and suffering until both elements were poised to divide the major share of the spoils of office between them?"
Rory O'Brady, Former IRA chief of staff, president of Republican Sinn Fein

So yes, look back on Paisley with rose-tinted spectacles if you must. Some of us prefer a more comprehensive, honest and accurate reflection. I won't accept the claims of republicans, exaggerated to exonerate themselves of any blame, that Paisley is the sole cause of the violence here; it takes two to tango. I have no doubt, though, that his presence made the situation many times worse for people on both sides than they would have been without him fanning the flames.