Sammy Wilson: The BBC suddenly loses interest in RHI when SF have questions to answer

It is a song which could be directed at the BBC.

For two months now it has led with attacks on Arlene Foster and the DUP over the RHI scheme. Every Tom, Dick and Harry and Sean, Mick and Barry has been given a platform to attack the DUP without having their outlandish accusations questioned or interrogated by tame BBC presenters.

However over the past week the tide has turned.

First of all the permanent secretary of the Department of the Economy exonerated Arlene Foster in his evidence to the PAC his story got hardly any coverage.

Then it was revealed that a Green Energy Group knew about the overpayments but felt it was “their place to raise the alarm” even though it could have saved millions, yet there was hardly a word said about it let alone a torrent of outrage from the BBC defenders of the public purse.

Now it has been revealed that the leader of Sinn Fein was probably personally responsible for the spike in applications before the loophole in the scheme was closed, organising numerous workshops to encourage people to apply before the rates of subsidy were reduced and that scores of these applications came from republican areas in her own constituency, yet there is not a cheep from the BBC.

There have been no call for an inquiry, or for Michelle O’Neill to stand aside or for explanations as to why these meetings were organised or whether there was a political or geographical bias in the locations or whether the people who benefitted were friends or family of the Sinn Fein leader or whether they had any connections with Sinn Fein.

The fact is it has all gone quiet over there in Broadcasting House.

No promises from Stephen Nolan that he will put a team on this investigation 24/7.

The fact is that the BBC aided and abetted the political enemies of the DUP to create a crisis out something which in the rest of the UK has hardly merited the inside page of the paper.

One power station alone in the north of England gets a subsidy of £450m per year to change from coal to pellets it has never even been noted as a scandal or waste of money. Across England millionaires are being subsidised to the tune of £30,000 per year to burn pellets to heat their swimming pools it hasn’t brought the government down.

It is clear that this manufactured crisis is nothing to do with pellets but all to do about power.

Sinn Fein wanted a rematch after losing out last May.

They hope to increase their seats and reduce the DUP seats preferably to below thirty so that their republican plans for NI cannot be blocked by the use of the petition of concern.

No doubt their media friends will do their best to help them however I am confident that once the issues of this election are clear that unionists will unite behind the DUP the ensure that the carefully worked sham crisis is not used to further Sinn Fein’s republican agenda.

Sammy Wilson, MP East Antrim