Windbags and Wind-ups.

So, after all this time, it seems the “nutters” were innocent. It was the windbags’ fault all along.

Thank God for the First Minister’s clarification regarding the storm whipped up over the proposed Peace Centre at the Maze-Long Kesh site.

There was I thinking that it was a vocal section of the unionist community who were extremely unhappy with the planned centre, but I was wrong: it was the press who were “exercised” about it. And even then, it seems, their motives were far from genuine; the scoundrels were embellishing or inventing stories during “the silly season”.

It just goes to show: you can’t believe what you read.

I only wish Peter Robinson had been about more often during “the silly season”, when people were leathering into the police. We might not have had hundreds of PSNI officers injured, or millions of pounds wasted. How we missed Mr Robinson’s leadership.

Thank God he’s not the kind of man who bends to pressure, or who would do a u-turn. As he told us from New York: “The press aren’t going to set my agenda.”

Fortunately he managed to squeeze a few words of reassurance into the Belfast Telegraph yesterday, and into a number of broadcast interviews as well, ahead of his – and the Deputy First Minister’s – meeting with investors from the New York Stock Exchange.

These sharp-witted business types will see for themselves how warm the relationship between the two men really is (in contrast to how the press would depict it). And, in any case, the NYSE has representatives in Belfast, so they’ll know from their own experience that the fuss about the Maze-Long Kesh project is – to use Mr Robinson’s words – “a fairly minor issue”.

As the nights grow longer, and the chill winds of autumn grow colder, the silly season has begun fading in the memory. But with the summer’s passing, we have at least the consolation that Mr Robinson will be returning to these shores shortly, after his holiday in Florida, to keep us all right.

So please keep the faith. Don’t be swayed by the nay-sayers, windbags and sceptics in the press. Everything is coming up roses. It’s all hunky-dory. Don’t believe what you read.