Nationalists do indeed have a bottom line nowadays. Our bottom line is that commentators will no longer be taken seriously if they insist on talking to us in disrespectful terms, ignoring entirely the issues confronting nationalist communities today and labeling us in the same way the DUP does.

Eilis has made a great career in recent years writing ill of the community among whom she grew up. There's a fine tradition of this in Ireland. There's nothing the anti-republican press in Britain and Ireland like more than an Irishman or woman who will deride his or her own community. It's practically it's own genre of journalism now. But she (and the others) should reflect on whether doing this onslaught is only adding to a community stigmatised, brutalised and ghettoised for generations, and perpetuating the sense and reality of victimhood prevalent in that community.

"The public isn't always right."

And media are rarely right, especially when they're pumping out the same tired old template propaganda week-in week-out.

One of the better aspects of this election is that the public on the ground aren't fooled by what media and southern politicians have been up to. And it really annoys self-opinionated media folk when real people treat their out-pourings with the contempt they deserve.

So it's okay if they're fooled, as long as it's by the bigots in the DUP and Sinn Fein?

Democracy is great, unless of course they vote for the other guy !

Finally, someone who's willing to talk some sense. Well said Eilis - I couldn't agree more. Hopefully in five years time, when we're still in deadlock and our economy is crumbling even more than it is now, we'll remove the 16 crazies that we stupidly elected on Thursday (assuming that 1 UUP and 1 SDLP get through). Just think - the party that's nearly as liberal and tolerant as the BNP is about to become Northern Ireland's biggest and gun-toting, bank-robbing thugs are coming second. For shame...