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Will Red Mick McGimpsey be the ruination of us all? Angry Iris seems to think so. So much so that she was temporarily turfed out of the Assembly by Willie Hay on Monday for having laid into Red Mick and then refusing to say sorry, because she wasn't.
Why, Mrs Robinson has been asking, can Red Mick not get with the Programme? Why does he continue to carp and criticise the proposals for privatising everything and keeping the workers in their place when all the other parties are singing the same tune and it isn't the Internationale?
The emergence of Michael McGimpsey as a dangerous leftie took many by surprise when they picked up their Belfast Telegraph on Tuesday of last week to find Angry Iris lashing out at the Health Minister's "natural left-leaning tendencies".
"The Minister must disprove that he is ideologically incapable of adapting to the change demanded. Otherwise, the health sector could find itself left behind in the new Northern Ireland. The province cannot afford a health minister constrained by outdated political dogma."
Those old fashioned left-wing ideas getting in the way of the 19th century laissez faire philosophy upon which the exciting new Northern Ireland is going to be constructed ...
I wonder what Mrs Robinson thinks of the Financial Times, (which, to be honest, I usually only buy for the sport). Probably reckons it's printed on pink paper to signal its ideological bent. From the point on the political spectrum where she takes her stance, the FT, like Michael McGimpsey, may well look like it's way out on the left.
"Nationalise the banks!!" used to be our sing-song chorus in the days when our fists were scarce unclenched from one week's end to the next. Folk who fancied themselves as sensible would tell us we were wacky. All that outdated political dogma ...
But the FT has come round at last. "Nationalise the bank!" is its constant cry these days. Admittedly, bank singular. But it's the principle which counts.
The bank in question is Northern Rock, the outfit which owes us taxpayers £24bn and rising, which we have as much chance of getting back as the 150,000 low-paid people who lost £40m of their Xmas savings in last year's Farepak fiasco have of getting the same generous treatment from the Treasury. Some of the hungriest vultures in the history of high finance are currently circling the carcase of the company while the government tosses them more titbits of taxpayers' dosh in hopes that they'll take the bait and then the cadaver off their hands.
It's in this context that the FT has taken to arguing that, since the Government has already advanced the company a multiple of what it's worth, the State (metaphor shift coming up) should take the wreck over and try to re-float it. Mrs Robinson might see this as deranged Bolshevism.
Again, the way things seem depends entirely on where you're positioned. Take that spat up the Falls last Friday.
Sinn Fein education spokesman Paul Butler claimed that classroom assistants who had carried posters on a strike demonstration likening Caitriona Ruane to Margaret Thatcher had insulted the memory of Bobby Sands. "Margaret Thatcher will be forever synonymous with her role in permitting 10 Republican hunger-strikers to die ... Comparing Thatcher with anyone within Sinn Fein is a highly offensive act and deeply provocative."
No, it is not.
Mr Butler will have known that the classroom assistants were making no point whatever about Bobby Sands and the hunger strike.
The comparison they obviously had in mind was between Ms Ruane's attitude to the Nipsa strikers and Mrs Thatcher's to trade unionists in general and to the 1984 miners' strike in particular. It is neither offensive nor provocative to liken the one to the other, as anyone will know who watched last Thursday as Ms Ruane spent almost the entirety of a Hearts and Minds interview attacking the strikers and demanding that the union hold another ballot in exactly the terms that Thatcher repeatedly used against the NUM all those years ago.
Like Mrs Thatcher, Ms Ruane didn't have a single criticism to make of the elements the strikers are in conflict with.
It may be that Paul Butler's agitation reflected unease at the position he felt he had to defend.
The ploy was a prime example of one of the best-known manoeuvres in the political repertoire. When doing something which deep down you have qualms about and which conflicts with the position you previously put forward, wrap the green flag round you. Or the Union flag, if that's the appropriate cloth. If you cannot confidently defend your party's performance, imply that your opponent is unpatriotic.
If anybody was misusing the legacy of Bobby Sands last week, I don't think it was the classroom assistants.
Michael McGimpsey a socialist? The FT a propagandist for public ownership? The classroom assistants out to belittle Bobby Sands? All depends on where you stand.
The problem for the consensualists of Stormont is that some of them don't know where they stand any more.
