On any subject even remotely connected with local politics, there is not a section of northern opinion to be labelled "most people think".
Only the loopiest polls find a cross-community majority on difficult issues. The fact remains that Northern Ireland lacks consensus on government and the rule of law and has no unified sense of civil society. Until catastrophe struck in the Indian Ocean, the big Christmas talking point was the Belfast bank robbery that netted £22 million; but the conversations as always were very different in tone.
Some, probably many, were not remotely amused. If the IRA are the robbers, they must have planned ahead with one eye on political negotiations. So treat your negotiating partners with contempt, dump arms and gear up politics, make sure next year's centenary celebrations for Sinn Féin and the next elections are well-funded - is that the plan? Many others found the robbery a grand joke. The city's various Christmas pantos tacked it into their scripts: a west Belfast priest told his congregation at midnight Mass that he'd accept Northern Bank tenners for the collection.
Put aside, as many do, all consideration of criminality, and this had the makings of a television holiday film, down to that distinctive white van stuffed with money pulling away, twice, through crowds of Christmas shoppers from the fortress-style bank headquarters, concrete slabs and slitted windows no more deterrent than burglar alarms in an average home. But of course it was no jape, and not remotely funny for the pawns. Those taken hostage will suffer for a long time, like the hostages in a string of similar though smaller recent thefts. A new technique, says tabloid-speak. There is little new about it. The echo is of IRA ruthlessness throughout the Troubles, homes invaded and families held at gunpoint; terrified men set to drive primed explosive, Patsy Gillespie in Derry driving to his own death and that of others; snipers setting up in bedrooms and waiting through the night for soldiers to walk past and be picked off.
Yet big numbers smiled when news of the bank robbery broke. Few on any side expected authoritative announcements from the PSNI, who had a bad Christmas. First came the story that a traffic warden alerted police to van and men loitering in side street but officers arrived too late. Then there was the admission that police searching houses on Christmas Eve, under a hail of stones and bottles, had lost a gun and ammunition from one of their vehicles. One section of the populace chortled, others flinched. One group thought the homes of well-known republicans well worth a search, another jeered that the PSNI was camouflaging its own ineptness. A police press conference did not convince everyone that the searches were well-founded.
Attitudes among observers are now nearly as conflicted as in the wider population. The pace of the slow, flawed makeover from terror to politics has exhausted the unwilling sympathy among many journalists for the Adams-McGuinness leadership. The continuation of wholesale criminal activity and the hard-eyed eking out of decommissioning has become too much to stomach.
"If this is the Provos it humiliates us all," one says. "They're telling us no matter what we hoped for there'll always be a robbery wing." Yet viewed from another angle, it was Robin Hood stuff. However much it shocks opinion elsewhere, the instant assumption that the Provos were the perpetrators cued no automatic condemnation among many. Banks make unsympathetic victims in most societies, and IRA crime is judged differently in any case, absolved of selfish motivation. Few are disposed to take lectures on criminality from southern political parties; the evidence of corruption in Dublin is too recent and blatant for that. Claims that IRA and Sinn Féin leaders enjoy lavish lifestyles are scorned. There are few republican equivalents of the medallion-wearing, muscle-bound UDA gangster-type, little evidence of theft for personal gain.
Above all, diesel-laundering, smuggled cigarettes and drink and pirated DVDs draw none of the opprobrium of loyalist paramilitary drug-trafficking, prostitution, protection and loan-shark rackets. Republican supporters see oil companies and the Chancellor of the Exchequer as more than fair targets.
Last week's bank haul pointed up the republican worldview - and variations of opinion even there. Indignation from Gerry Adams about "securocrat" dirty tricks and Sinn Féin spokesmen decrying "black propaganda" sat awkwardly beside the laughter in the streets. The demand for humiliation of the IRA set up deep reverberations. Some think Adams and co have shown themselves too willing to arrange decommissioning for Ian Paisley. They will still vote Sinn Féin and defend them against criticism from the SDLP, the Dublin Government and, of course, unionists - whether the IRA have just walked off with £22 million or not.