Moral Barrel - Indie Scrapes Out The Bottom

He's a poet, a fisherman, a chess-player, a family man described as considerate and thoughtful, somebody who cares about nature and the environment, passionate yet even-tempered.

Well, yes. He certainly cared about the environment of Londonderry.

His units did a great deal of damage to the city with a campaign that made it look, in the words of one observer, as if it had been bombed from the air.

McGuinness was not always in the business of twinkling geniality, or of making friends and influencing people. He began as a trainee butcher, packing bacon in a Derry butcher's shop.

He'd soon moved on to professional butchery.

The British Army in particular had cause to regret his streetfighting skills: it lost more than two dozen soldiers, gunned down on Derry streets.

"Lost" them, did they ? How careless.

Let's just suppose that there were English Nationalists prepared to kill hundreds of innocents in pursuance of an independent England. What would the odds be of a sympathetic Indie portrait ?