November 2024
A Christmas cure
Some, but not all of us, will suffer a Christmas hangover at some point in coming weeks.
Worry not, a cure could be at hand. A pill to bring an end to the misery is in its latter stages of testing. The idea is you swallow the pill half an hour before your first drink and you’ll be as right as rain the next morning. No ill effects. No crushing headache. No feeling of nausea.
The pill will also protect the liver and other organs from the harmful effects of the demon drink. It converts alcohol into a harmless substance. According to scientists at the ETH University in Zurich, the pill performed well on lab mice. They had half the expected blood alcohol levels and were able to navigate a maze far faster than their teetotal counterparts.
Scientists are now preparing for human trials. I’ve already volunteered!
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Powering up
There are to be two new electricity interconnectors linking Great Britain and both jurisdictions on the island of Ireland.
North and south, we already have two 500 MW interconnectors linking up Scotland and Wales and these proposed new developments will provide up to 700 MW of capacity between electricity markets.
I’ve no desire to be a killjoy, but a word of caution is required. The Russians have been snooping on sub-sea communications cables in the Irish Sea. They deployed underwater drones to check what was on the sea bed. The ‘Yantar’ is described as a research vessel - oh you are a sceptical lot! Western intelligence services think your scepticism is well placed and believe the ‘Yantar’ is equipped to carry out surveillance work.
The ‘Yantar’ was one of three Russian ships doing goodness-knows-what in the Irish Sea whilst a second group of three was also kept under surveillance elsewhere in the Irish Sea and English Channel.
All this at a time when sub-sea fibre-optic cables in the Baltic Sea connecting Finland and Germany and Sweden and Lithuania were severed. Germany said the damage was an act of sabotage.
Add in a worsening situation in the east of Ukraine, and dire threats from Putin, and its little wonder why our essential sub-sea infrastructure should be of such interest to the Kremlin.
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Spies everywhere
Household gadgets are spying on us. According to Which? consumer magazine, air fryers, smartphones and home speakers are eavesdropping on what we say and forwarding the information to China.
Researchers at Which? found many everyday pieces of equipment are ‘stuffed with trackers’. They, in turn, are used to help target personalised advertisements to consumers.
Useful though they are, these handy devices do more than make life easier for us all.
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Its bananas!
A banana duct-taped to a wall has sold for $6.2 million in New York. Yep! You heard correctly, but its worth repeating. An actual banana, which is replaced when it rots, stuck to a wall fetched that crazy sum at Sotheby’s.
It fetched four times higher than pre-sale estimates. It was purchased by a Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur who said he would eat the banana as ‘part of this unique artistic experience’.
Now, that’s bananas!
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Story wasn’t leaked
You would think the west of Ireland got its fair share of rain. Enough to see it through a dry spell, at any rate.
Well, according to the ‘Connacht Tribune’, Uisce Éireann spent closer to €600,000 last summer bringing water supplies from the mainland to Inisheer, the smallest of the Aran Islands.
Galway County Council and Uisce Éireann delivered almost a quarter of a million litres every day to maintain supplies from May to October.
The paper reported that similar sums were paid in previous years.
The story was based on information contained in an FoI … and not a leak.
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Awkward but not impossible
Make no mistake about it, this was a political shellacking. It was crushing and emphatic. Former President Trump knocked Vice-President Harris out of the park to once again regain the keys to the Oval Office.
President-elect Trump will be sworn in on 20 January. Some politicos on this side of the pond are eating humble pie to make amends for previous criticism of Mr Trump – Foreign Secretary David Lammy comes to mind immediately for describing him as ‘a serial liar and a cheat’.
It got better. Lammy, albeit in 2019, went on to say the Republican Party victor was ‘deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic.’ That’s old news, insists the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs. Time to move on.
Dredging up words from five years ago has caused a bit of embarrassment for Mr Lammy’s boss, Prime Minister Starmer, as the new Labour Government tries to work out a gameplan for dealing with the new leader of the Free World.
Awkward, yes, but not impossible. Or let’s hope so.
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Captain Rostron
More than 700 people owed their lives to Captain Arthur Rostron. The good Captain of the steamship Carpathia changed course to respond to a distress call from the Titanic.
Captain Rostron was gifted an 18-carat Tiffany & Co pocket watch by the widows of three wealthy businessmen he helped rescue, hours after their husbands went down with the ship.
The gold watch sold at auction for a record-breaking £1.56m – the highest amount ever paid for Titanic memorabilia. The exquisite timepiece was sold to a private collector in the US.
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What’s in a name?
The new owners of the Londonderry Arms Hotel in Carnlough have decided to change its name to the Harbourview Hotel.
The 176-year-old hotel once owned by Sir Winston Churchill is getting a re-vamp and the re-brand is part of that. The name change hasn’t been without its critics.
However, according to the ‘Irish News’, some who offered an opinion on the name change said the hotel will always be known to locals as ‘The Derry’.
The new owners are creating a four-star Irish whiskey hotel venue. Doors will reopen in the Spring.
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Hit the buffers
Thoughts of a new Omagh to Enniskillen rail link have hit the buffers … at least for another ten years.
The connection would have cost £335m which is too high a price to pay. Ten years from now, that figure will have doubled, so it’s fair to say Enniskillen and Omagh will remain unconnected indefinitely.
The two western towns are left out on a limb and will not feature in the all-island rail review. It has infuriated several MLAs.
The car will remain king in the west. So much for addressing regional imbalances.
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A pale shadow
Spare a thought for Alex Burghart. Not that you’d know it, but he’s the Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the MP given a front bench role by the Conservative Party.
He has been in post since July and, up to the election of Kemi Badenoch as the new Conservative Party leader, he hasn’t managed to visit us. It’s all because of a lack of money to cover airfares, hotel accommodation and, presumably, the odd glass of red.
Worry not, dear readers. He has kept in touch by phone and talking to people at Westminster. He told BBC Radio Ulster that he was ‘very much engaged in this job.’ When I last looked, a return easyJet flight from Gatwick to Belfast came in at £61.98.
They must be seriously cash-strapped at Conservative HQ.
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Time to pause
For a place this size, we’re fortunate to have had so many talented people bringing us the news and making us smile.
I want to mention four in particular: Candy Devine and Trevor ‘Big ‘T’ Campbell from Downtown Radio and stalwart political journalists, Stephen Grimason and Ken Reid. They have left us but their legacy endures.
Stephen and Ken covered every major twist and turn in our political ‘rollercoaster’ over the last thirty or so years. They were there for the great highs and the terrible lows. Their unfailing sense of humour kept them going when the news was bleak or when they had to come to terms with their own challenges.
They will be missed.
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