Northern Ireland Bombing.

At around 00:20 this morning (12/4) a car bomb exploded outside the MI5's headquarters in County Down, Northern Ireland. The attack has been claimed by the Real IRA (RIRA) and everything is exactly as it seems. There are a group of Republican terrorists who call themselves the RIRA and occasionally they like to blow things up.

Rather then being an attempt to endanger life or damage property the purpose of this attack was purely symbolic and therefore in terrorism terms utterly pointless. As the explosion occurred almost to the moment that policing and justice powers were devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly it's purpose was to raise the question of why do MI5 have a huge headquarters in Northern Ireland now that the Northern Irish are meant to have control of their own security? Although they didn't realise it the attack also draws the Crown's attention to MI5's attitude towards the peace process. That is if the peace process works then MI5 are going to look like right idiots for building a new multi-million pound headquarters in completely the wrong place.

RIRA also didn't realise that the devolution of policing and justice powers was timed to kick in during the closing stages of the US Masters Golf tournament and just before the US hosted an important global summit on nuclear disarmament. Kind of makes you wish we could have the proper IRA back.