AND so NEI says farewell to 2023. It was not the most scintillating of years, with strikes, economic hardship and political paralysis. A dysfunctional state doing what it does best: being dysfunctional. Here’s a 12-month list of modest headlines.
4 January
The Irish Passport Office suspends posting Irish passports to NEI and GB because of the Royal Mail strike. An Irish Passport Office in Belfast/Derry would have meant less public inconvenience, but the powers that be in Dublin thought that’d be too much bother.
2 February
This was a red-letter day in the life of former British soldier David Holden. In 1988 he shot young Aidan McAnespie in the back, explaining that his finger had slipped on the trigger. Nearly forty years later he was punished for the killing: he got a suspended sentence.
13 March
President Joe Biden announces he’s going to come on a visit to Ireland next month, in April. This is to mark 25 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. All of Ireland gets very excited and Joe ticks the electoral box marked ‘Irish-American vote’.
25 April
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) announce that they have ‘withdrawn confidence’ in the management of BBCNI. This was totally unexpected, given that the BBCNI are a wonderful body of people who never cave in to pressure from unionist groups. Not hearsay: I speak from personal experience. Thanks again, guys.
14 May
Local elections are held and guess what? When they’ve finished counting the votes, Sinn Féin are clearly the largest political party in the stateen.
30 June
An inquest finds that Leo Norney, a teenager shot dead by a British soldier in 1975, was completely innocent and that the British army had concocted a story about having been fired on first to cover up the truth. They may well have followed the example of the British army in Derry in 1972 . When queried as to why his men had killed 14 people, Colonel Derek Wilford said his men had been fired on first. Isn’t it insanity when people do the same thing over and over and expect a different result?
11 July
Celebrating the Eleventh Night, some pyromaniacs place an effigy of First-Minister-in-waiting Michelle O’Neill atop a bonfire. The police said they were treating this as a hate crime. Very harsh, officer. Image-burning is a time-honoured tradition of the PUL community.
22 August
The aptly-named Thomas Hogg, a former DUP mayor of Antrim and Newtownabbey, has his MBE removed from his chest when it is revealed that he’d been convicted in 2021 of sexual assault on a teenage boy. Draconian or what?
28 September
Tesco becomes the first supermarket in NEI to display ‘Not for EU’ posters in its stores. Fingers are pointed at shadowy figures in the EU.
25 October
County Antrim is traumatised when it is announced that as many as eleven trees at the Dark Hedges, made famous by appearing in Game of Thrones, will have to be felled.
13 November
Just about everyone in the Province has a near-nervous-breakdown when it’s announced that six Dark Hedges trees must be cut down and that all of the remaining trees are seriously sick.
19 December
The year is rounded off nicely by the UK government offering £3.3 billion if the DUP will agree to return to Stormont and form an Executive. The DUP reaches for its favourite word: No.
Things can only get better. Bliain úr faoi mhaise daoibh – Happy New Year.