Who needs to watch Rishi Sunak consigning himself to further doom or Keir Starmer droning on – and on – about nothing in particular? Here in Northern Ireland, we’ve got our own leadership debates, except that we’ve got a lot more leaders than they have. How lucky are we?
The BBC NI one takes place this evening, should you have nothing better to do, but the ITV version screened on Sunday evening, perfect for those who like to wind up their weekend in style.
Largely because we’ve got better things to do (like watching Netflix with a healthy glass of red wine), we didn’t catch it. But we’ve been monitoring the reaction from the pundits and commentators. Their verdict? That Colum Eastwood and Naomi Long were the winners by a nose.
Of course, it wasn’t a Premier League leadership debate. Sinn Fein allowed Michelle O’Neill to stay on the bench while John Finucane did the needful. But, despite his lawyer repartee, he apparently didn’t score many points. Might have been better with Michelle, lads.
Doug Beattie, meanwhile, sent out his Number 2 Robbie Butler but he struggled to get a word in edgeways, it seems. As for big Gavin Robinson, the verdict on him seemed to be that he had a slow start but got into his stride later on. He can be quite funny, can Gav, given the chance.
It’s all getting very interesting, or so it seems. Will this be another sign that Eastwood’s SDLP can hang on to its two Westminster seats against the odds? Or that the Alliance Party can go from one seat to three, with Long herself and Sorcha Eastwood joining Stephen Farry?
Dunno. But, unlike most of Rishi Sunak’s close colleagues, we’ll not be rushing down to Paddy Power to put a bet on. Maybe a fiver on Ian Paisley in North Antrim, but that’s it.
In any case, the debate to eclipse the lot of them takes place in the early hours of tomorrow morning when President Joe Biden and Donald Trump square up to each other in Atlanta, Georgia. A doddery 81-year old versus a 78-year old and they’re not allowed to sit down for 90 minutes or do bring along any notes.
What could possibly go wrong? Let’s hope neither of them has an accident of the toilet variety.
Selling A Dream
It’s probably fair to say that the Telegraph’s Sam McBride isn’t a big fan of the DUP. He didn’t spare their blushes during the RHI scandal, he was a real thorn in the flesh of Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and he isn’t about to take it any easier on Gavin Robinson.
But he’s on the money with his latest crack at the DUP just this week. McBride produced an excellent take on the party’s manifesto, which he started by describing as a 16,000-word ‘beast of a document’. Don’t think we’ve received our copy yet, but there’s no rush. Honestly.
In a nutshell, McBride points out that the DUP is promising to ‘continue to fight’ over the Irish Sea trade border, something that it claimed didn’t exist just a few weeks ago. “This attempt to brush over such a fundamental breach of trust with voters is humiliating,” says Sam.
“The front cover (of the manifesto) proclaims “working and winning for you” but anyone with even basic knowledge of recent history knows that the DUP has repeatedly failed to secure its central policy objective.”
Ouch, that’s gotta hurt.
Get Your Kit On, Rose
Meanwhile, in the parallel universe that is the British General Election, the whole gender thing has reared its ugly head….again. Actor David Tennant took a swipe at Tory Minister Kemi Badenoch, Rishi Sunak weighed in and it all got a bit tasty. Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer is repeatedly goaded about his views on whether women can have men’s bits or men can have girly things.
David Tennant might take one view, but fellow celeb JK Rowling is on a completely different page. While he was throwing luvvie insults at Ms. Badenoch, JK was taking a bit of a swipe at Sir Keir.
It’s not something for a respectable business journalist to get involved in, and nor we will.
But we couldn’t help but notice the Sunday newspaper story about the group of nurses in England who were trying to take legal action to get the NHS to bend its gender friendly policies over one of their number.
A chap who identified as a woman called Rose shared their changing facilities in the hospital, despite the fact that he admitted that he wasn’t taking any gender-altering treatments and was also trying to get his girlfriend pregnant. So his gender change was kind of notional. A fad, perhaps.
We can see the big issue here. Just like they could see his. Or her’s.
Blowing In The Wind
As the bonfires get bigger, you can always be sure that flags will hit the headlines at this stage of the summer. And they have. This week alone, we’ve had tales of flags being put up around a new housing development in County Antrim before any residents have even moved in. It’s one way of marking territory but a rather sinister one.
Then, on the other side of the fence, there were stories of loyalist marchers removing Irish flags as well as Palestinian ones from lamp posts as they wound their merry way along the highways and by-ways.
The Middle Eastern flags add a whole now cosmopolitan element to the flag scene this time around. And they do make a change from the predictable union jacks and tricolours.
But the whole palaver year after year can get very wearing if you let it get under your skin. Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to put up with any of the bloody things, whatever their colour?
Down at street level, some of our media outlets have been trying to stir the pot around contentious marches, another perennial on the local scene. This time around, though, no one seems to be getting too excited. If that’s how it stays, that’s real progress.
Working Nine To Five, What A Way To Make A Living
It’s a post-Covid thing, to some extent, as well as a broader change in how we work. But it’s definitely the case that serviced office complexes are doing a brisk trade around Belfast.
Glandore, based in Dublin and a big player across the island, this week opened a new serviced office centre – or shared workspace, as they call it – at Arthur Place in the city centre. Just last week, meanwhile, Newry-based Rathbane Holdings unveiled the newly refurbished Pearl Assurance building on one corner of Donegall Square.
On one of the other corners, of course, the old Scottish Provident building (operated by the VenYou Group) has been offering serviced accommodation for several years. And there are plenty of others.
Now we’re a bit biased as we spend some time there, but the daddy of them all – in our humble opinion – is the elegant Custom House, a place so good it would almost persuade us to abandon our long-term habit of home working to return to the city centre.
Almost.
Take A Pill And Get To Your Work
Our spells of listening to The Nolan Show on Radio Ulster are strictly limited to mercifully brief period in the car on weekday mornings whilst driving to Groomsport or Ballyholme to exercise the Business Eye border collie (and ourselves, of course).
That way, we can monitor what’s on Nolan’s radar but not get too angry while listening to short bursts of the man.
Yesterday, though, we had to flick over to Classic FM earlier than usual. The big man, you see, has a cold or flu or something that involves coughing. So the show became a cough-interruped moan fest. Nolan whinged and moaned about how ill he was and coughed repeatedly as far away from the microphone as he could manage. It was all a bit grim.
Not content with letting everyone know how sick he was, he also wheeled on Dr. Dreary, aka Alan Stout, East Belfast GP and a regular contributor to the show during the Covid days. Alan regaled us all with jolly stories about various fun respiratory conditions.
Then came the callers. Until the point we switched channels, there were a handful of weary willies and moaning minnies sharing their poor health with the unfortunate listeners. The last one we heard before we jabbed frantically at the channel controls wanted us all to have to wear masks once again because he’d had Covid eight times….or something like that.
We’re going to take a break from listening for our own good.