Stormont: the Heath Robinson connection

All this talk of the flawed structures at Stormont in recent days may have made Martin McGuinness think of Disneyland and Peter Robinson's recent trip to Florida.

But it made me recall a conversation I had a few years ago with Bob McCartney, who argued that once the Good Friday Agreement altered the workings of democracy it created a machine as complicated as the devices drawn up by the cartoonist Heath Robinson. Whenever the contraption ran into difficulties, the former MLA contended, extra bits would be added on to overcome the obstacle, leading to yet more complications further down the line. He would no doubt see the latest Justice Bill, with its provision for the cross community election of a minister, as a case in point.

No doubt a nationalist would counter that the fundamental alteration with the workings of democracy came about with partition and the drawing of the border line.

But whichever side of that old argument you come down on, I hope that a glance at some of W. Heath Robinson's fantastical inventions gives you an idea of where Bob McCartney was coming from.

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