| It was grey and drizzling (as it has been and is set to continue to be) as I arrived at tiday's funeral of much-loved former German, French (and Spanish), John Knox. He lived his life in Belfast yet spent each summer in France with his French wife Andrée and their sons and Gary and John Jr.
What a combination: Northern Ireland as your home, but annual returns to sunshine. The service heard a tribute from Maura, who taught an Italian class John joined in his 60s and excelled in, charming everyone with his conversazione. Later I asked Maura how she found our often grim climate. I was pleased by her answer: she likes this time of year as the days get longer, and anyway overlooks bad NI weather because each summer she spends in Italy! Senator George Mitchell was suddenly cancelled by Queen's University for his links to Jeffrey Epstein. There was barely any criticism of how a man, until recently revered for his work in NI, was treated as if disgraced. But the ex speechwriter to David Trimble Eoghan Harris is among a growing number of voices who accuse QUB of cowardice. The academic Geoffrey Sloan has written a book that, he says, shows how the UK under Tony Blair and others including Jonathan Powell capitulated to Irish republicans as Lloyd George did in the 1920s. Mike Nesbitt signed off unpublicised back-dated pay rises for health chiefs, not based on performance. I write that Stormont's vow to keep public sector pay high both ignores generous public pensions, and means less money for services so that some will be quietly privatised (as in dentistry). Meanwhile, a Sinn Fein-run ministry has simply ignored criticism over its presentation of data from two distinguished economists. And in this column, I defend Gregory Campbell challenging President Connolly - if she is going to be partisan on the border, then she will get questions. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and your reading, Ben | 
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น