Mrs Robinson! Mrs Robinson!

I don't know how often you think of Northern Ireland, or what your perception of it is. Perhaps you remember it as a place of violent sectarianism, as a relic of Empire, as the lost piece in the 32-county jigsaw, or as a place like any other.

It isn't. It's a deeply strange place, damaged by centuries of imperialism, conflict, religious antagonism and discrimination. Amongst its oddities is the dominance of fundamentalist Protestantism of a kind which died out in Britain after the civil war (1660) except in tiny pockets. Northern Ireland's Catholics are pretty reactionary, but its Protestants are authentic Old Testament hellfire-and-damnation types - and unionist politics is inextricably linked to these sects.

The current First Minister of Northern Ireland is Peter Robinson of the Democratic Unionist Party, founded by Ian Paisley, who also founded the Free Presbyterian church because the existing ones weren't hardline enough for him. Hardline unionism, loyalism and fundamentalist religious beliefs are bound up in Mr. Robinson, and his wife, Iris, who is simultaneously an MP in the British parliament, a member of the Northern Ireland assembly, and a local councillor. Lucratively, the couple earn over £500,000 from the state through managing to hold down all these full-time jobs, and by paying family members to assist them.

So far, so normal (they say they're British, so why shouldn't they behave like British politicians). But now Mr. Robinson has had to stand aside while an investigation is carried out. In a perfect political storm, it's emerged that Iris (the woman who described homosexuality as worse than child rape: '“There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing innocent children.”) had a 19 year-old lover, for whom she secretly procured loans from businessmen she helped through her day jobs, arranging a kickback of £5000 for herself. When her husband found out, she tried to kill herself. It's a wonderful story: sex, money, corruption in high places, drama…

I'm torn here. Normally, I'd revel in the misery of a bigoted loyalist politician, and they certainly deserve it. Clearly, criminal acts have been committed, by her and possibly by her husband, who didn't inform the authorities of what he'd found out. But - fundamentalism has a strict moral code in which forgiveness is alien. I feel genuinely sorry for someone driven to suicide, however awful they are. I've seen enough of the misery that exists behind the closed doors of a family home not to wish this kind of torment on anyone. I can understand the depths of pain reached when people break their self-imposed moral codes: it's worse because they're so rigid (me: I'm an ex-Catholic. I already feel guilty about everything, so one more sin isn't going to make any difference).

Damn. Having morals spoils all the fun.