The most important word in Chinese is ‘tīngbudǒng.’  Used emphatically, it means, ‘I hear what you’re saying, but don’t understand a bloody thing.’  Out in the countryside; I arrived at a little village and met an old boy (who probably thought I deserved the same adjective), and said, ‘Nǐ hǎo,’ the Chinese hello.  He stopped, looked me up and down, and then replied, “Tīngbudǒng.”

Chinese is non-alphabetical, I was told at a night class in Queen’s.  And there are four tones, like mā, má, mǎ, mà, plus a neutral ma.  So Běijīng 北京means northern capital, but with different tones, as in bèijǐng, it means ‘background.’  And life can be tricky: ‘I love you mā’ 妈means ‘I love you mummy’; but ‘mǎ’ 马means ‘horse,’ while ‘ma’ 吗makes it, ‘I love you mum, or maybe I don’t.’  (Accordingly, in this article, I try to use tones.)

I started in the south-western province of Yúnnán, in February, 2025.  The mornings were sometimes quite cold, and in one little hamlet, a few folk were huddled round an open fire, so again, I bid welcome.  Alas, they just waved me away… and pretending such a wave was a western form of welcome didn’t help.  I was, I suppose, a very strange stranger, and maybe their first foreign visitor.

In the next larger settlement, a local granny was 70; umpteen folk were in the only shop, preparing for (or chatting about) her birthday-party lunch.  Now in many countries, the foreigner is first asked, “Where are you from?”  Not in China; not with me anyway; an old boy, speaks (well, some) Chinese; on a bicycle.  “How old are you?”  82.  “Have a cup o’ tea.”  Thanks.  “Have another.”

I was researching local politics.  China, of course, is a one-party state, but no matter what the regime, every community still has to make local decisions.  China’s Academy of Social Sciences was due to hold its fourth ‘International Forum for Democracy,’ and I’d already participated in its first Forum, in 2021, on-line.  For their March 2025 event, I decided to go to China in January, to see what the craic was in the rural areas, and then go to Beijing for the Forum.

So after another cup of tea, I cycled off to meet the village deputy chair, before then returning for granny’s birthday lunch!  Every village of a few thousand residents has a chair, a party member who is usually elected; the electoral system is sometimes approval voting, where you ‘tick’ just one or as many candidates as you like, and sometimes the ‘British’ first-past-the-post system, (invented in Rome in the year 105).

In Yúnnán, where the three mighty rivers, the Salween, Mekong and Yangste, run parallel to each other amidst mountains of up to 5,000 metres, cycling was hard work.  By chance, I met another cyclist, a younger feller; like my Chinese, his English was not very good, but we teamed up.  It was getting late; I could have pitched tent but we found what is most unusual in China: a lonely farmhouse.  Welcome.

She prepared a meal, rice of course, meat (almost of course) and lots of different veg., all fried in a great mix.  He produced the booze: báijiǔ, the local ‘vodka’ usually made from sorghum at about 50%.   And the three of us chatted: I would say something in my Chinese; my cyclist friend would translate this into proper Chinese; and, ‘Ah, I see,’ the farmer then understood.  Have another báijiǔ.

On the morrow, we returned to the road; my cyclist friend and I parted – he was soon lost from sight – and I carried on, rather more slowly.  Eventually, the road descended, and on a little Brompton with its tiny wheels, the cyclist has to be very careful!  I got down, paused… and fell asleep.  But not for long.  I paused again to ask for directions, and was given a meal.  On stopping in town, where I stayed in a B-and-no-B, I checked my emails, and the fourth Forum was still not called.  This was all rather enjoyable, so I just carried on.

After a train to Guǎngdōng and Guǎngxī, I took a bus to a small town in the countryside, dumped all my luggage in a hotel, and on each of the next three days, cycled out into the countryside to visit a few more villages.  Now there are lots of minorities in China.  Yúnnán, for example, has a large Tibetan community, and Guǎngxī is home to the largest, the Zhuàng, a minority of 19 million!  Some villages in China, especially in the eastern provinces, are nearly all Hàn – there are over a billion of those folks; some villages are mixed, and in one in Xīnjiāng, there were seven different ethnic groups; interestingly, they were using, well, a form of proportional representation PR, electing two of these, one of those… in all, a total of eleven, and the chair was a Huí, a Moslem minority.

Back in Guǎngxī, one village was entirely Zhuàng.  In many conversations, mobile phones gave instant translations.  We were talking about decision-making, and villages sometimes held open public meetings in a local hall.  So, I asked, how does a debate come to a definite conclusion?  He replied.  May I have a look at that, I asked.  So he gave me his mobile, and there it was: 少数 服从 多数, as they say, shǎoshù fúcóng duōshù, the minority obeys the majority.

Ha!  This was why I was in China.  Just like us, just like almost everybody on this planet, China also believes in majority rule.  But the world argues as if we are different.  Furthermore, China was using majority voting, over 2,000 years ago, albeit only in the Imperial Court.

Secondly – and for me, this is amazing – according to the Cambridge History of China, the Jīn Dynasty held a multi-option vote… in 1197!  It was in a debate on the then enemy, Mongolia, and there were three options: war:an-alternating-policy:peace; they voted 5:33:46; so peace it was… until Chinggis Khan came along, in 1206.

As winter changed into spring and then summer, there was still no word about the Forum in Běijīng – indeed, I now think it will not happen at all – so I went to Tiānjīn, visiting a professor I’d first met in 2013, a rest from the bicycle, to teach again in his university.  From there, I went to the first of three ‘sensitive areas’, Inner Mongolia.

As luck would have it – the kindness of strangers – a local took me out of town to a little settlement, where many Mongolians regard themselves as being different, with a different language and culture.  China thinks Mongolia is part of China; but the grandson of Chinggis Khan, conquered all of China, so maybe it’s the other way round.

Xīnjiāng is another ‘sensitive’ complexity, given that the native population, the Dzungars, were exterminated in the 1750s’ genocide; that Xīnjiāng is now home to quite a few minorities; and that about 1,300 years ago, the Uighurs, originally from somewhere in Mongolia, were fighting their western neighbours with the Chinese.

A foreigner visiting Tibet, the most sensitive of all, needs a travel agency to get a special permit and arrange the trains, hotels, and so on.  On going to the station in Beijing, I thought everything was in order.  Ten minutes before departure, all the passengers went down to the platform.  Ah, there’s my wagon.  Oh, the police.  Passport?  Yes, that was ok.  Permit.  They then said, “You are not to go to Tibet.”  “Wèishénme?  Why,” I shouted!  Five minutes to go.  I rang the travel agency.  Alright, you can go to Xīníng, the capital of Qīnghǎi, the next-door province, but not to Tibet.  I got onboard.

And so, July 2025, in Lhasa, where in the 14^th century, the Buddhist monk Longchenpa spoke of “the non-duality of right and wrong.”  I’m taken to the hotel, with my Brompton.  The Chinese manager said, “Come and have a beer.”  He had recently cycled from Kathmandu to Lhasa, a distance of some 1,400 kilometres.  “Shall we go cycling together in Tibet?”

Next week: Part II – Putin’s War. Peter crosses the Caucasus into Russia, lectures against the war in Moscow, and then goes on to wartime Mykolaiv and Kyiv. He also asks what Crimea and Bosnia might teach Northern Ireland about its border poll.

From the BBC:

Burnham told The Rest is Politics podcast, that upon arriving in Downing Street, he had asked if there had been Russian interference in the vote, adding: “I’ve had the clear answer that, yes, there was.”

In his podcast interview, Burnham said there was “certainly misinformation, disinformation that is emanating from Russia into German politics”.

He added: “I think we’ve been too much on the back foot on that actually and we haven’t informed people sufficiently about the extent to which people are seeking to disrupt the political process from overseas.”

Meanwhile this week, Ukraine has attacked a number of data centres in Russia and that seems to have led to a plummeting of bot activity on the internet. For those not that technical, a bot is a computer programme that pretends to be a real person on social media. There are reports that posting around certain political topics has declined dramatically on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc.

From Euronews:

Ukrainian strikes on Russian technology giant Yandex’s data centres have been followed by a dramatic decline in automated online activity, raising questions about whether the attacks may also have disrupted Moscow’s influence operations abroad.

The sudden drop fuelled speculation in Europe and the United States about just how much of the political debate on social media might have been driven by Russian bots.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy weighed in on Monday, saying social media platforms had become noticeably less hostile.

“When we started responding to Russia’s operation against our data centres and when our strikes reached Yandex data centres, it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms,” Zelenskyy said addressing the Warsaw Security Forum.

“A lot of people, a lot of people noticed it, and there was less hate, less division and fewer provocations because there were fewer bots.”

“And it’s pretty clear where those bots were coming from,” he added.

“If they disappeared when Yandex went offline, this proves again and again that Europe is not the source of the problems.”

“Europe is not the one making everything more difficult,” he said.

In Germany, claims of a sharp decline in online activity surrounding the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) circulated widely following the attacks, although no independently verified figures have emerged.

Czech MEP Tomáš Zdechovský questioned the apparent coincidence between the disruption and the reported decline in activity around the party.

“If confirmed, this is telling: Russian data centres get hit, and online activity around AfD suddenly plummets,” he wrote on X.

Similar claims emerged in Britain, where online activity associated with Reform UK was also reported to have declined following the attacks.

In the United States, social media users reported fewer apparently automated pro-conservative responses on X, the platform owned by Elon Musk.

While official platforms often claim that automated “bot” accounts make up less than 5% of their active user base, independent cybersecurity researchers and empirical studies consistently estimate that the real figure across major platforms ranges between 10% and 25%, with bot activity spiking significantly higher around hot-button political events.

On X official estimates historically cited around 5%, but third-party analyses (including studies published in Scientific Reports) consistently place the figure between 10% and 20%, with bot interactions climbing over 30% in political discussions or high-traffic referral links. Facebook officially estimates fake profiles at roughly 4–5% of monthly active users, though independent research suggests fake accounts make up 10–15% of active profiles, leading Meta to delete over 4 billion fake accounts annually to keep pace.

Instagram sees lower raw account automation, estimated around 5–10% of total accounts, but heavily suffers from automated comment and engagement bots designed to pad follower counts. TikTok regularly sweeps hundreds of millions of fake or automated accounts per year, with ad-traffic estimates indicating around 2–3% automated traffic on general links, though automated comment networks remain widespread. Crucially, while bots may only compromise a minority of total registered profiles, cybersecurity firms note they account for an outsized portion of total platform traffic and comments, creating a vastly amplified illusion of public consensus.

If there is a decline in bot activity, this may affect the American elections in the next few weeks as most of the Russian bots are pumping out pro-Trump and pro-Republican sentiment. Could this be the reason why Trump seems particularly angry with Zelenskyy this week?

This is a good overview of Bot activity in relation to Ireland.

Russian influence is reaching Ireland, particularly in stoking anti-immigrant sentiment. While Moscow did not create every local grievance, it is actively fanning the flames.

Social media has become an engine for cynicism. It breeds pessimism, degrades mental health, and robs people of their agency. If you wanted to break a country’s spirit, you couldn’t design a better tool.

I’ve said before that the real vulnerability is internal. A Russian soldier will likely never set foot in the UK or Ireland, The true vulnerability is already here – Big Tech companies that profit off addiction and division. Western governments pour money into defence budgets to fight proxy wars, while simultaneously offering tax breaks to tech giants and filling executive boards through a revolving door of former politicians.

Moscow doesn’t need soldiers or missiles to weaken the West. It can destabilise a country from behind a keyboard in St. Petersburg, using our own digital infrastructure against us.

I’m not even going to bother given you any quotes, you can read them all here at the BBC but they all amounted to the political equivalent of “Aye yer ma”.

The whole spectacle really is utterly pathetic.

It was reported over the weekend that Lockhart was being urged to challenge Robinson for the leadership of the DUP…

Unionist hardliners are urging Carla Lockhart to challenge Gavin Robinson for the leadership of the DUP…They are urging her to take on Mr Robinson, believing she has enough support within the party to topple the East Belfast MP…The split within the DUP was made clear over the weekend after Ms Lockhart and Mr Robinson took vastly different positions over a decision by Secretary of State Chris Bryant to ban Orangemen marching down the nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown.

On Sunday Politics with Mark Carruthers TUV leader Jim Allister said of rumours (played down by both Carla Lockhart and the TUV) that she was considering a jump to his party that

“She is someone of the calibre and strength and principle that, of course, I’d be proud to have in the TUV, but Carla will make her decisions… she’s been badly let down. That’s obvious”

In ‘The Belfast Telegraph‘ Allison Morris writes…

Since taking over the DUP leadership, Gavin Robinson has not had an easy run. The circumstances of his rise to the top job, following the arrest of the now convicted paedophile Jeffrey Donaldson, were far from ideal. But as the dust settles on an incredibly difficult few weeks, following Secretary of State Sir Chris Bryant’s intervention around the Garvaghy Road Orange Order parade, it is the DUP that could well be the biggest losers. Since August, when the High Court initially quashed a Parades Commission determination against the Portadown District, Carla Lockhart has appeared in public more times in the presence of TUV boss Jim Allister than her own party leader…

Ms Lockhart’s statements regarding the intervention of the Secretary of State and the Chief Constable Jon Boutcher around the parading dispute — calling for the police chief to resign and her party to pull Emma Little-Pengelly from the Deputy First Minister’s post, thus also toppling Michelle O’Neill — are again not in keeping with the leadership’s current position.

Professor Peter Shirlow believes what is going on reflects a major divide within the DUP. According to ‘The Irish News‘…

A leading academic has said he believes that “the days of the DUP are questionable” after the party’s leader and one of its best-known MPs appeared to diverge over whether to bring down Stormont…

“I always thought there was a split coming,” he said. He traced the tension to the way the modern DUP was built. The party, founded by Ian Paisley in 1971, was for decades was defined by his brand of hardline unionism. However, in in early 2000s it began to draw in politicians from the more centrist Ulster Unionist Party. “You’ve got to realise that the DUP in many ways became a party to which ambitious Ulster Unionists went,” Professor Shirlow said…

“There was always a tension anyway – that movement of your Ulster Unionist types had some effect in terms of squeezing out the Paisleyite-type tradition. He said the Drumcree row could now bring the DUP’s older tradition to the fore.

“I would assume you could have some tension now, among those who say this is the true nature of the party,” he said. “I would strongly predict that where you would find change within the party after May’s election next year, if Jon Burrows and the TUV do well. “I think the days of the DUP are questionable.”

Over the weekend, the BBC reported that Carla Lockhart MP said, in relation to Stormont, that it cannot be “business as usual” and that there need to be “profound consequences”.

This follows the decision of the Secretary of State, Sir Chris Bryant, to prohibit the Orange Order parade along the Garvaghy Road, despite the earlier determination by the Parades Commission permitting a restricted parade.

However, whilst DUP leader Gavin Robinson has been strongly critical of the Secretary of State’s decision, he has stopped short of calling for Stormont’s collapse. Jon Burrows, the UUP leader, has placed greater emphasis on restraint, dialogue and preventing the crisis from escalating.

These different approaches raise questions about whether divisions could emerge within the DUP leadership or across wider Unionism.

What we may be seeing is the continued divergence between constitutional Unionism and the more traditional cultural Unionism, which I described in my previous OP, Drumcree: Perhaps Cultural Unionism and Constitutional Unionism Have Parted Company.

I defined constitutional Unionism as those whose primary concern is that Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom, whilst cultural Unionism comprises those who feel strongly connected to British identity, Protestant history, remembrance traditions, Orange traditions and other aspects of Unionist cultural inheritance.

However, I believe that at the heart of this difference may also lie contrasting attitudes towards reconciliation here in Northern Ireland. That is not to suggest that cultural Unionists or constitutional Unionists do not believe in the principle of reconciliation.

But these two groups may have different understandings of what reconciliation requires. For some, it may mean their community’s right to express its culture and customs freely without obstruction, whilst for others, it may mean recognising that the expression of one community’s traditions can sometimes cause resentment or feelings of exclusion within another community.

It is important to state that reconciliation was embedded in the founding principles of the Good Friday Agreement. It was not simply an optional extra.

Paragraph 2 of the Declaration of Support in the Good Friday Agreement states:

“We firmly dedicate ourselves to the achievement of reconciliation, tolerance, and mutual trust.”

These words were meant to be a foundation stone of our peace agreement. To dedicate ourselves to any project requires hard work and effort. It also requires determination and resilience. Perhaps this is one aspect of the Good Friday Agreement that has been lost in translation.

However, I would argue that reconciliation is not just a social objective. It could also be a crucial part of a long-term constitutional strategy for both Unionism and Nationalism.

For Unionism, securing the Union in a future border poll may require persuading some people who identify as Irish or Northern Irish that their culture and traditions would be respected and protected within the United Kingdom.

For Nationalism, it would mean persuading some of those with traditional British identities that their interests, culture and traditions would be welcomed and respected in a united Ireland.

Therefore, coming back to the main dilemma, there may be occasions when a community’s actions need to be counterintuitive. So, what does that mean in practice?

It means that Unionism may sometimes need to restrain its cultural instincts to protect its constitutional ambitions. Likewise, Nationalism may sometimes need to accommodate Unionist cultural traditions to advance its own constitutional ambitions.

So, in practical terms, how does a community or political party go about encouraging people to vote for it when they are not necessarily part of its grassroots or core constituency?

One possible way to achieve this would be to build a positive coalition of different groups and interests into a unified and cohesive constituency that translates into support at the ballot box.

This can happen at critical moments when political parties are under pressure or have been forced to rebuild after a particularly disappointing election result. They may need to reassess who their core supporters are and who might be persuaded to join their coalition.

It may also require some difficult choices. For instance, it may require them to reduce the influence of one particular group and reflect that change through their core narratives and political messaging.

In Northern Ireland, the strategic direction of a party is complicated, as it is not just based on the left-right politics that we often see at Westminster. A strategy here might also need to take account of cultural and religious differences, social conservatism, liberal values, and traditional identities and heritage.

In terms of the Unionist parties, some of the people they may wish to attract might not come from the traditional Unionist community at all. They may describe themselves as Northern Irish, Irish, British, or have arrived in Northern Ireland from elsewhere.

Therefore, demonstrating a strong commitment to reconciliation and inclusiveness could be an important part of achieving their constitutional objective.

It is also important to recognise that whilst committing to reconciliation may, in some circumstances, help a political party achieve its own constitutional goals, it is also of great benefit to our whole community, whether Unionist, Nationalist or neither.

So, we can see that reconciliation is intertwined with the relationship between culture and constitution. This is another reason why I believe it is very much part of the Drumcree and Garvaghy Road disagreements.

The current crisis highlights many of the unresolved cultural and reconciliation issues that have existed just beneath the surface for nearly 30 years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed.

I believe there are three possible political consequences of the current crisis.

1. An internal realignment within the DUP, where different factions argue over whether defending cultural traditions should take precedence over retaining Stormont and its institutions.
2. A realignment among the existing Unionist parties, particularly if the UUP makes a greater effort to appeal to people who support the Union but are uncomfortable with more confrontational approaches to cultural issues and,
3. The emergence of a new political grouping comprising people who want Northern Ireland to remain within the UK but do not identify strongly with traditional Orange or Protestant Unionism.

In the final case, such a grouping would not necessarily have to begin as a new political party. It could emerge from within existing parties or among people who feel that traditional Unionist politics no longer reflects their priorities.

None of these developments is inevitable, but the present crisis raises questions about whether the existing Unionist parties can continue to accommodate these different political instincts within the same electoral coalitions.

In closing, it should be noted that the Drumcree crisis may or may not bring down Stormont and may not result in a formal split within Unionism. However, it has exposed some important questions about the future direction of Unionist politics.

The question is whether Unionism will primarily be concerned with defending the cultural traditions of its traditional supporters, or whether it can create a broader coalition of those who support Northern Ireland remaining within the UK but do not necessarily share those cultural traditions.

Sometimes these objectives are compatible. However, on other occasions, they may require some difficult political choices. Unionist parties may decide that building a broader coalition is essential to securing enough support to preserve the Union in the long term.

There is a similar challenge for Nationalism. Those advocating Irish unity must also consider how British identities and cultural traditions could be respected and accommodated in any future constitutional settlement.

Perhaps the most important lesson from Drumcree is that reconciliation involves building relationships and creating opportunities for people from different traditions to cooperate without being required to abandon their own identities.

The critical question for our political parties is whether they are prepared to make reconciliation a central part of their constitutional strategies rather than treating it as a separate issue.

Just two rules. Keep it civil and no man/woman playing.

Comments will close at 12 pm on Monday.

So discuss what you like here, but no politics.

Comments will close at 12 pm on Monday.

“A decade before Stormont used public money to encourage an explosion of factory farms, the then Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) knew that Northern Ireland already had too many farm animals, one of the documents uncovered by the Belfast Telegraph shows.

Yet in 2014, then Agriculture Minister Michelle O’Neill – with the backing of the entire Executive – would launch the ‘Going For Growth’ strategy to drastically increase agricultural production, leading to an increase in factory farms and an explosion of manure.

The Executive promised that restoring this vast water body would be a key priority. It hasn’t delivered. But the minister who has done more than most is Andrew Muir.

As minister in the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), Muir is responsible both for the main industry polluting the lough, and for environmental laws.

The North Down Alliance MLA is unlike any agriculture minister in the history of Northern Ireland. He has lost the confidence of the Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU), a powerful lobby group which Stormont insiders have long said has more influence than any other outfit. I sat down with Muir in his Stormont office on the basis that I wanted to talk to him about policy. Some Stormont ministers would run a mile from such scrutiny, but he immediately agreed to a long interview.

 I sat down with Muir in his Stormont office on the basis that I wanted to talk to him about policy. Some Stormont ministers would run a mile from such scrutiny, but he immediately agreed to a long interview.

 He says that about 62pc of the lough’s pollution comes from agriculture, 24pc from sewage works and 12pc from septic tanks. That doesn’t answer the question.

He highlights that last year, Sinn Féin, the DUP, UUP and TUV all opposed his Nutrients Action Programme (NAP) which sought to stem the agricultural pollution entering the lough, something Muir said involved “an abject failure of leadership

He says this can’t just be about agriculture, pointing to vast sewage pollution where “we are an outlier in the UK and Ireland for the lax regime we have” – and which is under Sinn Féin minister Liz Kimmins’ control.

I ask again: Has pollution reduced? He finally admits he doesn’t know, saying that “time will tell”. It’s fair to assume that if pollution was falling, he’d be trumpeting that as success. He is seeking to hike derisory pollution fines and end NI Water’s preferential treatment.

Yet the UK body which examines environmental policy, the Office for Environmental Protection, says Muir’s NAP is too weak and “will not be able to deliver important environmental outcomes, such as the legally binding target of good ecological status for lakes, rivers and coastal waters”.

Doesn’t it signal a poverty of ambition that this plan which might not even happen won’t fix the problem anyway, I ask.

Muir hints that he will be toughening the NAP, saying they need to “take heed of their recommendations…we’ve got to heed the advice of scientists”.

Six months ago, the Earl of Shaftesbury, who owns Lough Neagh’s bed but cannot control the pollution pouring into it, offered to give it away for free if convinced that Stormont could improve things.

Stormont can’t decide to take up the offer. Muir wanted to meet Kimmins – who has responsibility for NI Water, which is pouring sewage into the lough and taking drinking water from it.

He says she’s agreed to meet. But weeks later, they still haven’t met – despite working in the same building.

 .Most of this involves a small percentage of farms getting ever bigger. Muir says that about 7pc of farmers produce about 70pc of the phosphorous (mostly in manure) going onto fields.

There’s now 9.2 million cubic metres of slurry produced annually from livestock kept indoors – enough to fill The Great Pyramid of Giza almost four times.

In June, the Irish Farmers Journal noted a drastic change at the top of the list of farm subsidies, “with big landowners mainly in hill areas replaced by large beef-finishing operations”.

The outfits being encouraged are less like traditional farming and closer to US-style ‘feedlots’ where calves are bought and fed a high energy diet, often imported from South America, but are cooped up all day, never getting into a field – and producing far more slurry.

These large companies can outcompete traditional farmers to buy calves and have the economies of scale to buy feed and other commodities more cheaply.

 There’s an aspect of this scheme which is unnervingly like RHI: A supposedly environmental subsidy actually incentivises something damaging to the environment and in this case incentives the destruction of the traditional family farm.

  Muir is the unwilling accessory to avoiding the one measure that might reduce pollution – to change the subsidy rules to favour family farms over growing industrialisation –  and  reduce  production. No one dares.

Lough Neagh pollution  is being contained for now. Will it ever be reduced to genuinely sustainable levels?

Like no one else

It was as if the Fine Young Cannibals were singing this song just for me, from the piped music in the department store I was managing in 1989. The building was situated in a housing estate where unemployment was widespread. This resulted in the store experiencing an inordinate amount of shoplifting. I was promoted from a much smaller store in Newcastle, Co. Down, as the company wanted to stymie the haemorrhaging losses. Houdi, the Young Turk manager, needed to sort it out.

When I got there it was easy to see why they were losing money. The security man at the front door had the motivation of a tortoise with a hangover. This fella was stationary for so long I was going to buy him a Mass card. The staff called him KitKat as he was always going on a tea break. One day in disbelief I watched a couple push a trolley of unpaid groceries past him.

—Are you not going to challenge them?

—Oh, I thought they paid for them.

I went out after the thieves inviting them back into the store. On my way back in he said:

—Boss, do you know the tax disc has expired on your car?

He promised to be more vigilant. Soon after, he caught a young fella stealing a handful of chocolate bars, escorting him to my office. I tried interviewing the young lad but he just stared at the wall leaving me with no option but to call the RUC. Fifteen minutes later, two grey police Land Rovers, accompanied by what appeared to be a battalion of the British Army, landed in the car park. Complete overkill. They took the lad out. Not not via the back door, but the main entrance of the store, in full view of all the customers. After they left I was accosted by an angry group who demanded to know why I called ‘those RUC bastards’ to arrest a child. I was just about able to pacify them but it was a close shave. One irate individual, in particular wanted me lynched.

A strong cup of tea got my nerves settled. On my return to the shop floor I was approached by a Sinn Féin councillor. Although civil, he wanted to know why I called the RUC. I explained that we had a serious theft problem in the store. He sternly advised me:

—We don’t do that here.

—Where are you from anyway?

—Clones, Co. Monaghan—I’m just new here.

— Ah look, see those boys are not like the Guards down south.

—They’ll just try to turn that young fella into a tout.

—What am I supposed to do then?

—Find another way.

—We don’t want to see that trash anywhere near here.

He left me standing like a pupil outside the headmaster’s office waiting to be disciplined.

I was given the budget to hire an incognito store detective from a local agency. A week later, at the reception desk, I was introduced to a very slim woman, who was wearing a dress with shoulder pads you could have landed a helicopter on. A hairstyle from the TV series Dynasty kept in place with so much starch it would have kept water out of the Channel Tunnel. If you ran your fingers through it you’d have needed the fire brigade to cut your hand free. With a conspiratorial tone she told me:

—I’m Sharon, I’m with Shield Security.

—I’m your store detective and I’m inconspicuous.

—I’ve caught loads of ‘tiefs’ in the shopping centre up the town.

I wasn’t convinced about her inconspicuousness, but maybe if she stood sideways in the aisle, shoplifters might think she was an ornamental plant. Nevertheless, I was delighted to see her but advised that I didn’t want to get tarred and feathered in the car park. Her instructions were to prevent theft as best as possible, while avoiding all conflict. If potential shoplifters dumped the stock I would consider that a catch as that’s how store detectives’ productivity was measured. Soon, Twiggy, as the staff now called her, was firing on all cylinders, catching her tiefs left, right and centre.

However, word soon circulated around the estate about who she was, rendering her more than a bit paranoid about every customer, her confidence dropping faster than her actual catches. There wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t get me called to the front door to help with an arrest, only for me to observe the putative thief pay for the goods at the checkouts. Pretty soon, colloquial humour kicked in with the staff renaming her, False Alarm Twiggy.

Every single day she told me that someone suspicious was in the store.

—We’re going to get robbed.

—We need to erect iron grilles at the reception desk that contained the safe.

—Why do you not have steel doors en route to the cash office?

By now she had promoted herself from store detective to security consultant. I told my assistant manager Paddy that going forward he had to deal with her on a one-to-one basis, as she was frying my head. The next day, Paddy and I were in the centre of the store, when False Alarm Twiggy scurried down to us.

—There’s two men in the menswear department putting on gloves.

—Yis are going till get robbed.

—Yis are going till get robbed.

—Sharon, people have to try on gloves before they buy them.

I chased her out of the aisle. About two minutes later I felt something solid pressed against my left side. A soft but stern voice advised:

—Don’t do anything stupid sir.

I looked at Paddy, his face now candle wax. He was in a similar predicament standing tightly beside a smaller man. A latex-gloved hand issued me with a note written in a style that would have got a child in P5 put in detention:

—Diss is the Professional IRA. We wants all de money. Put in bag.

With nervous energy I joked to him:

—You didn’t spend too long in St Columb’s, did ye?

The comedy ceased when I felt the gun at my throat. Very subtly, they took both of us over to the reception desk. My new friend stayed with me, his gun deep in my left side whilst the other watched Paddy fill the bag with notes. Inexplicably Paddy said:

—Do you want the pound coins as well, boss?

—Yes, we want them.

—But they are heavy?

—Okay, you can carry them for us.

They took us over toward the exit door announcing that one of us was being taken hostage until the coast was clear. Just then, John Brennan, the textiles manager, passed us. Paddy, in a mercenary but clever move, said:

—See that fella there.

—He’s the big boss of the whole place.

—You’d be better employed taking him with you.

To my astonishment, they dropped both of us, taking him with them. Brennan was oblivious to what was happening. After about five minutes an unmarked police car landed in the car park. The officer asked us for descriptions of the robbers. In shock, we were not the most helpful. He wasn’t pleased:

—Right, both of you, jump in the back.

—We will drive around the estate to see if you recognise them.

—Now hold on, we have to work here.

—We can’t be seen to be collaborating with the RUC.

—Would you ever grow a pair and take some responsibility?

In we got into the car but the search was pointless. The robbers had evaporated into the ether. The cops drove us back to the shop with not a word spoken by either, their disappointment tangible. We never told them about Brennan being taken hostage.

Back in the shop we headed to the canteen for some refreshment. John Brennan was already there staring into space as if hypnotised, nursing a strong coffee. The poor man was in an awful state. They had just taken him to the chapel which was adjacent to our car park telling him to wait two hours, but he bolted as soon as they left.

—Why did they take me, boys?

—They must have thought you were the general manager, John.

On the radio the Fine Young Cannibals were reminding me that she drives me crazy, when the door opened. It was False Alarm Twiggy looking like she had won the Pools. She declared:

—I told yis.m

—I told yis.

—Yis was gonna get robbed.

—Yis wouldn’t listen, would yis?

—Oh Lord, why could they not just have taken her?

All events are free to attend. Most are open to everyone, while some are designed for particular audiences or age groups.

This year, more than 300 events will take place across the UK, organised by 41 universities. In Norther Ireland, Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University have once again come together to curate and create an entertaining and informative programme of 15 talks, workshops and exhibitions. This diverse programme highlights the breadth and quality of social science research conducted by academics and researchers across the many social science disciplines at both universities.

Running from 17 October to 7 November, the programme includes a mix of online, in-person and hybrid events, such as talks, performances, exhibitions, interactive activities and panel discussions.

For most events, you can book your place online in advance. Simply visit the event listing and follow the booking link to register. All events are free to attend.

With many people feeling the impact of rising costs, this year’s festival features a range of events focused on money, finance and the cost of living. Whether you’re looking for practical tips on managing your personal finances, advice on teaching kids about money, or guidance on starting your own business, there’s something for you. Young people interested in studying business or economics can also get a taste of what these subjects involve through hands-on activities and talks. You can also explore the bigger picture, learning more about how businesses work and how economies shape our everyday lives. Browse the in person events taking place in Northern Ireland or join online for events further afield.

Not interested in finance? That’s absolutely fine. The Festival of Social Science covers a huge variety of topics, so you’re sure to find something that sparks your curiosity.

Highlights of this year’s Festival include:

• Mind Over Marshmallows: Adventures in Decision-Making for Curious Kids and Their Grown-Ups
• Preventing Exploitation in a Cost-of-Living Crisis
• Crossing Over – An Evening of South Asian Films
• Mission Money – A LEGO Space Adventure

The festival is led and funded by the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which supports research and training in social science subjects.

You can view and book for all the free events here…

The Belfast Telegraph quotes him as saying

“In the interests of wider public interest and safety, I’ve come to the conclusion that the circumstances under which that decision was made have now changed considerably. As a result, the procession cannot go ahead as it was determined. I have not taken this decision lightly. As the courts affirmed, the Portadown District had a lawful determination from the Parades Commission allowing the procession.”

The Secretary of State explicitly cited the advice of the PSNI as the basis for his decision

“Earlier today the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland made an application to me under Section 9 of the Public Processions (Northern Ireland) Act. As required by law, I have now reviewed the initial determination made by the Parades Commission relating to the application made by the Portadown District for  27 September, 2026. I have consulted the Chief Constable and the Parades Commission.The Chief Constable has advised me that it would not be possible to enable the procession to happen without a major intervention which would carry an unacceptable risk of serious injury, disorder and a wider contagion effect across Northern Ireland.”

Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill and Mary-Lou McDonald have issued a joint statement

“Today belongs to the residents of the Garvaghy Road, who have shown remarkable strength and dignity in the face of provocation and intimidation. There will be an enormous sense of relief within the community this evening. For two weeks, local residents have endured fear and anxiety through no fault of their own. They never asked for this wound to be reopened, yet they faced these challenges with courage, determination and enormous resilience. They now need time and space to heal and recover.“Sinn Féin will continue to stand with the residents of the Garvaghy Road in the days, weeks and months ahead.”

“The decision of the Chief Constable to refer the matter to the Secretary of State and his conclusion that the parade cannot proceed is a direct result of republican agitation, mobilisation and the looming threats of potential violence. These decisions are a mistake, and send profound signals that the country should be run on force of numbers and who shouts the loudest. The framework for both parading and protests now lies in tatters and the rule of law has been fundamentally undermined. Michelle O’Neill has been perceived to act as a substitute to judges whilst appearing to demand that both the Chief Constable and the Secretary of State do as she demands.Unionists have watched with increasing anger as they witness the ‘do as I say not as I do approach’ of Sinn Féin.”

In our Infrastructure Minister’s case, it was the Court of Appeal’s monumental decision that cleared the way for the Department to progress the long-awaited A5 Western Transport Corridor – after losing a previous High Court battle in June 2025.

Minister Kimmins deserves considerable praise for having the guts to take the A5 case to appeal as, if her department had lost, the political downside would have been immense. Instead, the Minister and her department will rightly receive the plaudits.

As for Mr Bryson and the ongoing dispute over the Garvaghy Road, perhaps that is best left to another occasion. And just to be clear, I’m not poking fun at either community. It’s the political irony of these two very different court cases that I’m taking aim at here. I know this is a deeply serious and sensitive subject, and I sincerely hope a resolution can be found as soon as possible so that local people can get on with their everyday lives.

But back to the A5 and that consequential decision. The actual judgment summary is full of legal jargon, but I’ll try to break it down to make it easier to understand.

The fundamental error identified by the Court of Appeal was the High Court’s failure to consider how the A5 decision fitted within Northern Ireland’s overall climate targets. Importantly, this doesn’t mean that climate change legislation can be ignored.

In basic terms, there were three main points.

The first was that it was for the Department, not the court, to decide whether the road should proceed. The court’s role was to decide whether the Department had acted lawfully.

Secondly, the court shouldn’t substitute its own assessment for that of the technical experts without good reason.

And finally, it was ultimately a policy decision for the Minister and the Department to make, not the court, provided they acted within the law.

Whilst most of the press attention has understandably focused on what the judgment means for the A5 and other road and infrastructure schemes, I believe there could be a significant impact on infrastructure investment across Northern Ireland, particularly in relation to public and sustainable transport.

I was privileged to be invited onto the BBC Radio Talkback programme a few hours after the judgment was announced, and my first thoughts and comments related to the families who had sadly lost loved ones on the road and the relief that they would now be feeling.

After this, I was asked about what the consequences of the A5 decision might be for future infrastructure projects in Northern Ireland.

My initial thoughts were with regard to a decision to give the go-ahead for the A1 Junction Improvements Scheme, which will upgrade the road from Hillsborough to Loughbrickland. Along with former councillor colleagues, I had been involved in this road safety campaign, so I was particularly interested in whether this might get the green light too.

However, on reflection, I later started to think of the other impacts that this court decision could have on other road projects, or on school or health projects, and on the climate change legislation and targets themselves.

It occurred to me that, whilst the judgment may make it easier for departments to progress major infrastructure projects, it certainly doesn’t remove their obligations under Northern Ireland’s climate change legislation.

Indeed, this could place even greater pressure on the Executive and individual departments to demonstrate how they intend to meet our overall emissions reduction targets.

This may affect how the public estate is run and managed. It may affect government buildings and assets, heating and renewable energy policy, housing policy, and it could affect the programme for future road projects and the balance between road investment and sustainable and public transport projects.

Could the Department for Infrastructure face greater pressure to define how its investment in road projects aligns with its commitments to public transport, active travel, electric vehicles and charging stations, and reducing car dependency?

In other words, if a number of major road schemes are given the go-ahead, potentially increasing emissions, how will the transport sector deliver the reductions needed to comply with Northern Ireland’s Climate Change Act 2022 and meet our legally binding emissions targets for 2030, 2040 and ultimately net zero by 2050?

The carbon-budgeting part of the Climate Change Act 2022 also limits the amount of greenhouse gases Northern Ireland can emit over a five-year period, so careful planning will also be required to balance this against future road and sustainable infrastructure schemes.

This could become a substantial challenge for the Department for Infrastructure and indeed the wider Executive. It raises important questions about the balance of future investment between roads, public transport and active travel, and whether we have a sufficiently ambitious, properly funded strategy for making our entire transport system more sustainable.

This will require considerable work over the next few years, at a time when departmental budgets are already under enormous pressure. This presents another challenge. How do we find the investment for public and sustainable transport, deliver these major road projects and still meet these legally binding climate change commitments?

Of course, improving road safety and investing in public and sustainable transport shouldn’t be seen as one or the other. Both are needed, and therefore the real challenge is where the Executive will find the resources to deliver safer roads and invest in a more sustainable transport system that helps us meet our climate change commitments.

I started this article with a reference to two roads and one destination, and therefore I believe it fitting to end with a reference to one of my favourite Robert Frost poems, ‘The Road Not Taken’:

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less travelled by”

Perhaps the wider significance of the A5 judgment is that it challenges not just the Executive, but all of us, to think differently about the roads we build, the transport choices we make and the direction we want Northern Ireland to travel in the future.

According to the Belfast Telegraph‘s Sam McBride: “Sinn Féin rarely faces a rival like this, and is visibly in his wake. He sounds like a throwback to the 1990s.” He quoted Mac Cionnaith as openly referring to the Orangemen as “those fuckers,” repeatedly referring to “the Brits” and predicting that the parade would be forced through and “there will be a battle”.¹

In his memoir, Tony Blair remembered that “the Drumcree people were the unreasonable of the unreasonable of the unreasonable” (he didn’t specify which side, or both). “In the Premier League of unreasonableness, they left every other faction and every other dispute gasping in their wake,” he wrote.

And then he lighted on “this one guy, Breandán Mac Cionnaith”. He painted a picture: “He took unreasonableness to an art form. He conceded nothing, and I mean nothing. I’m not just talking about the substance of meetings, I mean where a meeting should be held. Who should be there. Who shouldn’t be there. When it began. When it ended. What its purpose was. Who spoke first. Who spoke last. Who spoke in between first and last.”²

Bryson told supporters last Wednesday (three days after the scheduled march was blocked by residents from going down the Garvaghy Road): “The Portadown district are not doing any deal – there is no document on the table. And Portadown district would not be doing any deal which doesn’t deliver on the fundamental legal principle and the fundamental legal principle is this – that the Portadown district will walk the Garvaghy Road.”

Last year, Mac Cionnaith did an interview with an Éirígí podcast, in which he likened the Orange Order to the Ku Klux Klan, saying he’d told this to ethnic minorities in England who saw the Drumcree situation as “a very overt form of racism, similar to what they were dealing with”. Rather than seeing unionism as a wholly legitimate political ideology, he suggested there was a media conspiracy to avoid scrutinising it: “They’ll all back away from the hard questions; you know, what is unionism? What does it represent? What did it represent? It represented a one-party state in the six counties, similar to the one you had in South Africa.” How this kind of extremely hard-line language and demonisation of unionists is going to help nationalists and unionists to come together in a mutually respectful united Ireland one day soon is highly questionable.

The resurrection of the dreadful corpse that was the Drumcree parade, banned for 28 years by the Parades Commission, was the result of sloppy procedures and a technical error by that body, and a series of last minute court hearings in Belfast which failed to find against its resulting legality. One is tempted to say this was an example of the law being “an ass.” One judge, later over-ruled in another midnight high court hearing, had urged the parties in the parade dispute to “step back from the abyss” and reach a compromise for the sake of everyone in Northern Ireland. Six hours after that middle-of-the-night hearing, the legally-permitted march was blocked by residents in Garvaghy Road.

The crying need for compromise was also the message from the Alliance leader and justice minister, Naomi Long. Speaking on RTE, she said the people of the North were experiencing “incredulity and a degree of despair” that this long-forgotten trauma had re-emerged. She said the Orange Order had now established in law that that they had the right to walk the Garvaghy Road. “They do not have to exercise that right”, she went on. “They can do the right thing by the community on the Garvaghy Road”, as well as the entire people of Northern Ireland, by not marching along that nationalist road. She pointed out that there was another undisputed route of exactly the same length which they could march home on from Drumcree church to Portadown Orange Hall.

“I appeal for people to be wise,” she continued. “Courts can’t rule for reconciliation. That requires people to show wisdom and courage and grace and generosity. And that’s what’s required at this point in time.” However she regretted that those who “have unpicked this wound and have gone about trying to drag us back to the past are not minded to make the compromise that is required.” Wisdom and courage and grace and generosity in Portadown? Pigs would fly to Pluto first.

[I only wish that that Northern voters could become mature and non-tribal enough to add enough of their votes to the already growing Alliance total, so that one day soon a wise and smart and even-handed woman like Naomi Long might become First Minister.]

Not much wisdom was shown by opposition politicians in the Republic either as senior members of Aontú, People Before Profit and the Social Democrats lined up with the northern nationalist tribe and queued for photo opportunities on the Garvaghy Road. There is no difficult situation in Northern Ireland that can’t be made worse by the noisy arrival of Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald and her entourage. ” If the march was permitted, “by God, there will be a reckoning”, she declared.

The Irish Times political editor, Pat Leahy, concluded that the message of their presence to middle of the road ‘persuadables’ in the North – many of them moderate unionists – is that “in a united Ireland, many southern politicians are full square behind northern nationalists. That can only make them wary of the promises that unionists will be entitled to full respect and protection in the ‘new Ireland’.”³

One of the gravest fears now is contagion; that what started in Portadown will envelop other parades, with old disputes resurrected by the Orange Order and new objections raised by nationalists. Sam McBride interviewed Noel Liggett, district master of the Ballynafeigh Orange lodge in Belfast’s Ormeau Road, another former flashpoint which has been peaceful for many years (constituency MP and SDLP leader Clare Hanna, who was at the Garvaghy Road protest, nominated Liggett for an MBE), says he still hopes the order can walk the length of that road again. He wants Southern voters to know that “they are nowhere near ready for taking on Northern Ireland – they haven’t even begun to think of the type of compromise that would have to be made…or the tensions and difficulties they would be taking on.”⁴

In a column last week McBride put the Drumcree imbroglio in the context of the near total breakdown of government at Stormont. Unionist and nationalist politicians there are “united in despondency” he wrote.⁵ And the unapologetic appearance of First Minister Michelle O’Neill (who took office promising she would be a ‘First Minister for all’) at an illegal protest on the Garvaghy Road did not help at all.

McBride wrote that power-sharing is “now characterised by not quite hatred, but is approaching that depth of intense dislike.” Sinn Fein and the DUP “might still believe in power-sharing — most, in fact, still accept that it is the only basis on which Northern Ireland can be governed — but I do not believe a single MLA genuinely thinks this Assembly or Executive is capable of doing what they have promised the public they will do. When devolution was restored two and a half years ago, Michelle O’Neill and DUP Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly both told their voters not to simply judge them on survival, but on delivery. Now it seems they might not even manage to clear the first of those bars. There’s not even a one per cent chance they’ll clear the second.”

He gave the example of last Tuesday’s Assembly sitting, which, even allowing for a considerable period for arguing about Drumcree, was suspended after 47 minutes because they couldn’t think of much else to do. He pointed out that that morning Sinn Fein’s Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins had tabled a piece of legislation to extend the period when there will be no domestic water charges — even for the wealthiest homeowners — for another five years. “That means that until at least 2032, the health, education, roads, housing and other budgets will have to be raided for NI Water. And even with that, there’s nowhere near enough money, meaning that raw sewage is being poured into Lough Neagh — and then the drinking water for 40% of Northern Ireland is being drawn from that same heavily polluted waterbody.

“This is a vast scandal for which Stormont is primarily to blame. It has implications most obviously for the environment, but also for agriculture, for house-building, for tourism, for the economy and for nearly every area of life. The Speaker told MLAs that there was no time limit on the debate. They could have spent days discussing this crucial policy. But, no, after Kimmins spoke, just two of the 90 MLAs made short perfunctory speeches before the policy was nodded through.”

The Republic has a different dilemma. Pat Leahy asked whether the South was ready to take on the near-insoluble problems of northern sectarianism like Drumcree. “Given the general disinterest in the North among many people in the South…a lot of people in the South might quietly conclude: this is not our problem. They’ll ask themselves: why should we import that sectarian mindset down here? Why would we want that security nightmare? That additional cost?

“Many people in the Republic will believe that the costs of a united Ireland – financial or otherwise – are worth it. But those who want to consider the price the South would have to pay – in social, political, constitutional, security, identity and financial terms – before they make up their mind, will have been given much to think about over the past week.

“The great unity nightmare has always been that in parallel referendums, the North says ‘yes’ and the South says ‘eh, no thanks.’ I fear that outcome has been made more likely by the events in Drumcree.”

¹ ‘Marching backwards: Drumcree stand-off hardens even moderate hearts as fear of contagion mounts’, Belfast Telegraph, 4 October

² Gerry Moriarty, ‘Breandán Mac Cionnaith profile: ‘The ex-IRA man who Tony Blair said ‘took unreasonableness to an art form’, Irish Times, 29 September

³ ‘Is the South ready to take on problems like Drumcree?’ Irish Times, 3 October

⁴ ‘Marching backwards: Drumcree stand-off hardens even moderate hearts as fear of contagion mounts.’

⁵ ‘There are no true believers in Stormont any more. It is a place of despondency where MLAs knock off early’, Belfast Telegraph, 3 October

Drumcree, on the other hand, must be a godsend to the extremists in Northern Ireland, making them relevant again having been side-lined for much of the post GFA era. But what relevance has it got to the lives of most people in Ireland?

That Garvaghy residents, many of them descendants of families intimidated out of house and home elsewhere in Northern Ireland, should not want the Orange Order parading triumphantly down their street is understandable enough. That unionism should want to resurrect this particular dispute is less so. Does unionism really want to make itself universally hated in Ireland, Britain and far beyond?

Extremism flourishes where parties are competing for votes primarily within their own tribe, and any vote gained from outside their tribe comes at the cost of at least two within it. (Ask the SDLP!) But it is hard to see how this particular dispute can broaden unionism’s appeal to anyone outside their tribe, and perhaps also result in their losing even more ground within their own natural northern protestant constituency. Who needs the hassle? Haven’t things been improving since the 1990’s? Why put all the progress made since at risk?

The Drumcree dispute can also only strengthen solidarity within the nationalist community – giving a lifeline to marginal groups like Éirígí, but also to a Sinn Féin party in deep trouble in Stormont. Sinn Féin simply can’t afford to be outflanked by Éirígí on an issue as emotive as this, given its delivery of almost nothing in Stormont. Indeed, what a welcome distraction from that non-delivery Drumcree must be for Sinn Féin.

But if Power Sharing fails again, it can only strengthen the argument of those who say that Northern Ireland simply cannot work as a political entity. And will Britain really be happy to pick up the tab again?

Much ink has been expended by a wide range of commentators on the fact that the south is not ready for re-unification. But is Britain, and more precisely, Westminster, ready for a return to Direct Rule?

There is no provision for Direct Rule in the Good Friday Agreement. Will the Irish government simply stand aside and accept the lack of parity of esteem Direct Rule gives to those of the nationalist tradition? Should parity of esteem not also mean joint rule from London and Dublin in that scenario?

The logical alternative to the Power Sharing enshrined in the GFA is Joint, not British rule. It baffles me that political unionism doesn’t realise its very survival depends on ensuring that Power Sharing is a success, encouraging increasing buy in from non-unionists. Casement Park may not be rebuilt for all sorts of reasons, but it is the Union itself that will be the loser if those problems are not resolved.

At some point the powers that be in Westminster must also start to question the value they are getting for their £15 Billion p.a. and rising investment in Northern Ireland. Are they simply enabling an entirely dysfunctional political entity to exist indefinitely? Are they just subsidising sectarianism?

But these are political questions for Westminster to answer. The people of Ireland have no direct say in the matter. Only the British government can decide the level of financial subsidy for Northern Ireland or call a border poll if they wish to wash their hands of the matter.

And so the political attention of the vast majority of those living in the south is elsewhere – rightly so in my view. Better to focus on problems actually within our power to fix. The notion that anything we can do in the south will persuade the Orange Order that parading down the Garvaghy Road isn’t actually a good idea is fanciful in my view. As is the notion that a single hard line unionist will ever support a United Ireland this side of a border poll regardless of whatever “concessions” a southern government is persuaded to make.

The persuadables in Northern Ireland will only despair at Northern Ireland marching back into the past again. It is not what they signed up for in the Good Friday Agreement. It only provides further evidence that Northern Ireland as a political entity isn’t working, and that it requires a financial and political outlay that is in nobody else’s interests to maintain or take on.

Britain will ignore Northern Ireland for as long as it can, until Northern Ireland itself makes that ignorance no longer sustainable. And right now, no one else is prepared to take that problem on. Why invest in something that simply can’t be fixed?

Meanwhile, tens of thousands are being killed or maimed each week in the Russia Ukraine war which threatens to metastasise into the rest of Europe. That is a problem we can’t ignore. Ironically, part of the rationale for the Drumcree march is to commemorate the Battle of the Somme. Wouldn’t we all be far better off making sure that something like the slaughter of the Somme doesn’t ever happen again?

The strategy lists minute-taking among the routine public-sector uses it has in mind. If an AI tool produces accurate meeting minutes more quickly, we can check the record against what was said, correct omissions, and compare the time taken with the previous process. A pupil who produces an answer more quickly has not necessarily learnt more. Sometimes the effort involved in reaching the answer is precisely what the lesson is intended to develop.

The strategy also envisages assistance with grading and with analysing pupil performance, and places these ambitions within principles covering human oversight, accountability, fairness and public benefit. Shorter administration, defensible assessments and improved pupil understanding each need their own test.[1]

A test from Belfast City Council

Belfast City Council’s (BCC) draft consultation response offers a useful test. It argues that success should be assessed through demonstrable improvements for citizens and communities. Its proposed measures include service quality, accessibility, inclusion, sustainability, and productivity. It also recognises the practical constraints: governance, data management and specialist capacity require resources.[2]

This is a stronger starting point than counting licences or completed pilots. Those figures tell us something about implementation. The public is entitled to ask what difference implementation makes.

Education is already part of the strategy’s ambition. Section 6 says the skills agenda must begin at school level. It calls for consistent regional guidelines for teachers and pupils covering responsible use, approved tools, e-safety and data use. Developing guidance for schools is one of its recommended actions. It also advocates extending initiatives such as the Trailblazing NI project.[1] The question is how that guidance will translate into school practice, and who will hold schools to it.

What the EA is offering

The EA’s published programme, announced by the Education Minister on 6 May 2026 with £10.7 million for licences, provides for Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini within managed school systems, accompanied by training and guidance.[8] Its stated aims include reducing teachers’ administrative workload and improving planning and preparation. The offer targets teachers, with phased access and support during the 2026/27 academic year.[3]

There is a reasonable case for helping teachers with routine work. Drafting a standard letter, preparing alternative versions of a worksheet or organising meeting notes can consume time that might be used more productively. Teachers should not have to preserve every laborious process simply because it predates the technology.

However, the resulting material still needs professional scrutiny. A worksheet must be accurate and appropriate to the pupils. A letter must reflect what the school actually intends to say. A summary must preserve the information on which a decision depends. The saving that matters is the time remaining after checking and correcting the output.

Improved staff wellbeing should not be treated merely as an intermediate step towards higher attainment. Reducing unnecessary pressure on teachers is a worthwhile outcome in itself. The case weakens when it combines every benefit into a general assertion that AI improves education, without specifying whose experience has improved or how.

From paperwork to grades

The strategy’s references to grading and performance analytics matter more than its references to paperwork. Organising assessment records, recommending a mark for a teacher to review, and determining a grade automatically involve different degrees of delegated judgement. The strategy’s wording does not say which of these it has in mind, and the guidance will need to. An unjustified grade or misleading assessment of a pupil’s progress could shape feedback, expectations and subsequent teaching. Checking such outputs requires subject knowledge, familiarity with the pupil and an understanding of what the assessment is intended to establish. A teacher’s approval is meaningful only if the teacher can examine the basis of the result and has time to challenge it.

The EA’s public programme describes administrative, planning and resource-preparation benefits and is silent on grading. That silence does not establish whether grading is permitted, prohibited or governed elsewhere, but it leaves readers of the programme without an account of how the strategy’s wider ambition would be implemented.[3]

The silence is partly filled elsewhere. The Department of Education (DE) issued Circular 2026/02 on generative AI on 11 May 2026, three months before the draft strategy. It is advisory, covers staff and pupil use, and tells schools to give learners explicit direction on when AI may be used in learning tasks and assessment, to embed the JCQ rules for examinations and to point pupils to the NI Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment’s (CCEA) advice on AI in assessments. It also tells schools to appoint a GenAI lead, name the person responsible for the risk of errors from undue reliance on AI output, and monitor and evaluate the impact of their own policies. It also recognises the risk this article raises, asking schools to ensure that undue reliance on GenAI does not limit learners’ cognitive development. What it does not do is say how any of these expectations will be tested. It sets no measure of pupil learning, and it specifies no external process for checking that schools have met them.[10]

What the pilot establishes

The evidence supporting expansion deserves equally close attention. Trailblazing NI was a proof-of-concept study of Microsoft Copilot involving 84 teachers and ten other education professionals. C2k approached Ulster University in partnership with Microsoft. Microsoft Ireland funded the study; the report states that the research was conducted independently and that Microsoft was not involved in data collection, analysis or interpretation.[4]

Funding alone does not establish bias. The concern is the weight placed on a small, supplier-funded study of that supplier’s product when making the case for expansion. The strategy names the project as something to extend, and the EA identifies the report as the culmination of its proof of concept. The study covered Copilot. The EA also ran a Gemini pilot with over 100 teachers; its newsletter does not report the methods or findings.[7] That makes further evaluation, independent of the supplier and directed at educational outcomes, necessary before this pilot is treated as sufficient evidence for wider educational claims.[1][3]

The findings are encouraging about participants’ experiences. In the post-pilot attainment question, 41.2 per cent reported that GenAI had already contributed to improvement. On a base of 68 respondents, that is 28 people. Another 38.2 per cent expected future benefit, while 14.7 per cent did not know.[4]

These are participants’ judgements about attainment. They are not measurements of it. They do not establish how much pupils learnt, whether improvement lasted or whether AI caused it. Fewer respondents said they did not know after the pilot (14.7 per cent, against 34.8 per cent before), but the two surveys had different response totals (92 and 68), and the aggregate figures do not establish that any individual’s view changed.

The report is useful evidence of perceived benefit and of greater confidence among post-pilot respondents. Its own description as a proof of concept is appropriate. Moving from that evidence to wider provision requires a clear account of what has been demonstrated and what still needs testing.

Pupils are a separate question

Direct use by pupils raises a further set of issues. It should be considered separately from the EA’s offer of tools to teachers. A teacher using AI to prepare a lesson and a pupil using it to complete the lesson’s task occupy different positions. One is exercising an established professional skill; the other may still be acquiring the underlying knowledge and judgement.

Consider a history exercise requiring pupils to read two sources and explain why their accounts differ. AI might help a pupil understand unfamiliar vocabulary, offer a question to guide attention or provide feedback on an attempted comparison. It might also produce the comparison before the pupil has read either source. The same polished paragraph could conceal very different amounts of learning.

Or consider a pupil struggling with a difficult text. A simplified version may make the subject accessible and allow meaningful participation. Used indiscriminately, simplification could remove opportunities to become a more confident reader. The educational judgement concerns the pupil, the purpose of the task and the support needed at that stage.

This makes the familiar advice to check AI’s answers more demanding than it sounds, because checking requires knowledge. Pupils must have some basis for recognising an implausible claim, a missing qualification or an invented reference. Asking them to verify information is useful only if we also teach them how to do so and provide sources they can assess.

Trailblazing records participants’ concerns about plagiarism, the undermining of independent thinking and the misreading of AI output; it does not demonstrate harm to pupils’ learning, because it did not study pupils.[4] The classroom examples show that the same output can sit on top of very different amounts of learning, and that is why a pupil’s own work should be treated differently from a teacher’s paperwork.

Studies elsewhere show what an answer would look like. In the Education Endowment Foundation’s 2024 trial of ChatGPT for lesson preparation, involving 259 science teachers across both arms, those allocated to ChatGPT spent 31 per cent less time on the specified planning tasks, with no apparent reduction in resource quality; the trial did not measure pupil learning. Where pupils have used the tools directly, a World Bank trial in Nigeria found gains in English after six weeks with Copilot, and a trial with nearly 1,000 Turkish maths pupils found large gains during practice and poorer unassisted performance afterwards in the group given an unguarded tool, a disadvantage largely avoided where the tool was designed to withhold answers.[9] The design of the assistance mattered. The Northern Ireland (NI) documents discussed here do not set out an equivalent evaluation of pupil learning.

What Wales asked for

The guidance will also need to meet the curriculum. The DE’s consultation on the NI Curriculum 2028, reviewed here in June, rests its promise of equity on clearer, sequenced content and offers schools a digital hub of free and adaptable materials. The EA’s programme gives teachers tools to adapt materials. Neither document explains how AI-adapted resources are to preserve the content and progression the new curriculum specifies, and the draft AI strategy’s references to curriculum concern further and higher education only. That is the question the school guidance must answer.[5]

Wales offers a relevant comparison. Estyn’s original report, A New Era, calls for national guidance supported by practical materials, professional learning and clear accountability for implementation. It also calls for monitoring focused on the effects on learners and the education system. Its evidence includes a self-selecting survey and visits to 21 schools chosen for their engagement with AI. It offers examples of developing practice, and it does not demonstrate improved attainment.[6]

Guidance, responsibility and evidence

The proposed regional guidance is where these questions get answered. It should distinguish staff preparation from grading and pupil use, identify permitted information and explain what must remain subject to a teacher’s independent judgement. Parents and governors need to understand the rules, while teachers need practical examples of how they apply to different subjects, ages and learning needs.

Responsibility also needs to be settled. How will the Executive Office, DE and EA divide policy, implementation and oversight? Principals and boards of governors need to know what they are expected to check, and inspection needs a view of what good practice looks like. The EA’s proposed school GenAI leads may support professional learning, but that role should not be confused with independent assurance. Guidance will have limited force if nobody knows who must respond when practice falls short.

The strategy’s own requirement of measurable benefit supplies the test. In schools, independent evaluation should test understanding, retention and application to unfamiliar problems, including what pupils can subsequently do without assistance. It should examine whether benefits and risks differ by age and by household disadvantage, assess continuing costs and control of information, and publish disappointing results as well as successes. This would connect the scrutiny of supplier-funded research to the decisions that follow from it.

The rule that follows is one of proportion. A teacher should not need an attainment trial before using AI to draft a letter or vary a worksheet, and the guidance should say so. The standard is not one this article invents; it is the strategy’s own requirement of measurable benefit, applied to the uses the strategy itself names. AI-assisted assessment, and any use that may substitute for a pupil’s own reasoning, should be permitted only where the guidance names it, a teacher can examine and overrule the output, and evidence about learning is being gathered in proportion to the consequences of the use. Carried into schools, BCC’s emphasis on demonstrable outcomes points to the same distinction. Faster paperwork can release time for teaching. The educational test is whether pupils become more knowledgeable and better able to think for themselves.

Sources:

1. The Executive Office, Northern Ireland’s Draft Artificial Intelligence Strategy: consultation, and Draft Northern Ireland Artificial Intelligence Strategy, August 2026, section 6, pp. 32–35, and section 7. The proposed school guidance and the reference to extending Trailblazing appear on pp. 32 and 35; the requirement for measurable benefit and the outcome metrics appear on p. 26; testing and evaluation before scaling appears on p. 31; and guidance on quantifiable measurement of success or failure appears on p. 37.

2. Belfast City Council, Draft response to consultation on the Northern Ireland Public Sector AI Strategy, appendix to the Strategic Policy and Resources Committee report dated 18 September 2026, responses on societal benefit, oversight and data governance. The report dated 18 September sought the committee’s approval.

3. Education Authority, GenAI for Teaching and Learning, accessed 26 September 2026: “Research and Feasibility” states that the proof of concept culminated in the report; “Next Steps” specifies a GenAI lead in each school.

4. Sammy Taggart and Stephen Roulston (2025), Trailblazing NI: GenAI in Education: A Proof-of-Concept Study in Schools in Northern Ireland with MS Copilot, Ulster University: project origins, p. 8; funding and independence statement, p. 9; attainment perceptions, tables 25–26, pp. 54–55; participants’ concerns about learners, executive summary, p. 2. The pre-pilot attainment counts total 92; the post-pilot counts (10, 1, 3, 26 and 28) continue at the top of p. 55 and total 68.

5. El Cavador, Excellence and equity deferred: reviewing the draft Northern Ireland Curriculum 2028, Slugger O’Toole, 19 June 2026; Department of Education, Consultation on the Northern Ireland Curriculum 2028, 16 June 2026.

6. Estyn, A New Era: How Artificial Intelligence (AI) is Supporting Teaching and Learning, October 2025, recommendations pp. 9–11, implementation paragraph p. 11, methods pp. 4 and 50–51.

7. Education Authority, EdIS Newsletter, June 2026, “Google for Education Research Partnership”: “Building on our recent Gemini pilot with over 100 teachers”. No method, findings or report are identified.

8. Department of Education, Givan announces roll out of AI tools and training for Northern Ireland teachers, 6 May 2026.

9. Education Endowment Foundation, ChatGPT in lesson preparation: a Teacher Choices trial, evaluated by NFER, report December 2024 (259 teachers, 68 schools, 31 per cent less planning time; pupil outcomes not measured). De Simone, M.E. et al. (2025), From Chalkboards to Chatbots: Evaluating the Impact of Generative AI on Learning Outcomes in Nigeria, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 11125 (six weeks, Microsoft Copilot, first-year senior secondary pupils; 0.23 standard deviations on English). Bastani, H. et al. (2025), Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: evidence from high school mathematics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(26), e2422633122 (unassisted scores 17 per cent lower for the unguarded arm).

10. Department of Education, DE Circular 2026/02: Guidance for education professionals on Generative AI, 11 May 2026. Status of contents: information and advice for teachers and schools.

People in the Republic will one day need to offer apologies to northern nationalists for forgetting about them “for a very long time” after partition, former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

Speaking in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, on Monday night, Varadkar said reconciliation was usually spoken about as if “it’s just about the two main communities of Northern Ireland becoming reconciled with each other”.

The South “went off and built our State and largely forgot about what happened up here for a very long time, certainly for decades. There’s a reconciliation process [needed], where we, to a certain extent, say sorry for the fact that that happened.”

During the Brexit years, he said, he had only truly understood the depth of feeling on the issue when he told “the nationalist people of Northern Ireland that they wouldn’t be left behind again.

“It was only after I said that and people contacted me that I really understood how deeply that’s felt by hundreds of thousands of people north of the Border, that they were pretty much left behind,” he said.

Northern nationalists are indeed hurt that they were abandoned to their fate to live in poverty and discrimination under repressive Stormont rule when they could have been living in poverty under the repressive regime of the catholic church and conservative insular protectionist nationalism in Ireland.

But seriously, partition was a tragedy for everyone in Ireland. I have been spending a lot of time in Donegal these past few months and it’s plain to see how it was affected economically and socially by being cut off from its natural hinterland of Derry and the rest of Northern Ireland.

I attended the Darcy McGee Summer School in Carlingford a few weeks ago and Wallace Thompson made the point that partition was also damaging to the Republic as they lost the most economically active and entrepreneurial part of Ireland.

When Ireland was partitioned in the early 1920s, the economic profiles of its two main cities presented a striking contrast. Belfast was a thriving industrial metropolis deeply integrated into the imperial British economy, whereas Dublin served primarily as an administrative, commercial, and distribution hub. Around eighty percent of all manufacturing production on the island was concentrated in the six northern counties centred on Belfast. This industrial dominance was reflected in the urban workforce, with over thirty five percent of Belfast workers employed in manufacturing compared to less than fifteen percent in Dublin.

Belfast earned a reputation as a global manufacturing giant, propelled by its world famous shipbuilding and textile industries. The massive Harland and Wolff shipyard alone employed over twenty thousand men, while the linen industry provided jobs for tens of thousands more across the city and surrounding areas. Belfast was also home to the world largest ropeworks and major engineering firms producing industrial machinery for export across the British Empire. Because its economic model relied on importing raw materials like coal and iron and exporting finished heavy goods, northern business leaders viewed free trade with Great Britain as essential to their survival.

By contrast, Dublin lacked heavy manufacturing and capital goods industries. Its industrial base rested on consumer goods and food processing, dominated by a few large firms such as the Guinness brewery at St James Gate, major whiskey distilleries, and Jacob Biscuits. The southern capital operated mainly as a port for the surrounding agricultural hinterland, handling cattle and dairy exports. Its economy depended heavily on transport, retail, and casual labour. The rapid rise of heavy industry had even allowed Belfast to temporarily surpass Dublin in population by the early twentieth century, highlighting the profound economic division that shaped the island at the moment of partition.

I fully understand the position of unionists but if you step back and look at it rationally, the Easter Rising, the Irish Civil War, and the subsequent partition were the worst thing that happened to us all (Catholic, Protestant, and dissenter). Reunification is the most sensible thing for us all but I fully appreciate not everyone is as pragmatic as me.

The tragedy of what could have been if we had had a peaceful transition to home rule?

It is an interesting thought experiment: how Ireland would look if we had independence and the country stayed as one. How would it have shaken out with the North having most of the economic activity or would it have balanced out over time? Or maybe Unionist economic fears would have come true and Dublin would have taxed Northern businesses into oblivion and prioritised investment into areas of the south instead. We shall never know.

There are echoes in all this today. Shall we work together for the mutual benefit of everyone in society? Feck that, lets be utter dicks to each other and beggar us all instead. When it comes to politics the heart always rules over the head.

But an article in the ‘Belfast Telegraph‘ that was published Thursday week ago citing research conducted by the Department for the Economy reveals that that widely held belief is actually a widely held misconception…

…the research shows the number of students migrating is not unusually high by UK standards. In fact, it says the greater challenge is attracting students from outside to study here.

The report by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) provides fresh insights into student and graduate mobility, and suggests local students are no more likely to leave than their counterparts in Britain.

The paper goes on to quote Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald as saying…

“This research gives us a more comprehensive understanding of student flows into and out of the north. It highlights the opportunities presented by the ‘brain gain’ and encourages us to focus more on attracting students here. We have internationally renowned universities and relatively lower living costs, so we have a strong pitch to students from outside this region. To attract more students we need to create more good jobs that offer well-paid careers here after graduation. We need the British Government to remove the new restrictions it has imposed on international students and we are asking the Irish Government to help fund the students we are welcoming from the south of Ireland. My department will now work with our universities, businesses, students and trade unions to create a brain gain.”

Dr.Anne Devlin, who led the research which was compiled into the report, was also quoted…

“While we recognise that young people do leave Northern Ireland to study, this is not uncommon within the UK.Student mobility decisions are shaped by a wide range of educational, social and personal factors. Focus instead should be on the sustainability of our universities, which are an important part of our local economy, the availability of graduate opportunities locally, and encouraging students from GB to come to study in Northern Ireland in light of its relatively lower cost of living.”

But before we dive into that, another quick reminder of the ground rules for these reviews.

We would urge those commenting on this post who have already binge watched Series Four, not to give away any spoilers about future episodes.

Focus instead on this episode and the one that preceded it, as we’re reviewing each instalment as it airs each week on BBC1.

And if you haven’t seen previous series of ‘Blue Lights,’ maybe watch them before reading this review as it will reference previous plot points.

(SPOILER ALERT!!!)

Last week’s opening episode of Series Four ended with Constable Grace Ellis pointing her gun at the front door of a Syrian refugee’s house in the loyalist Matchhill area, as a mob tried to force their way inside.

Outside on the street a petrol bomb was lit.

Shots rang out before the credits rolled but it wasn’t clear if Grace had fired them.

Episode Two began with Constables Shane Bradley and Tommy Foster driving to the sound of Johnny Cash‘s jaw dropping but sombre cover of Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Hurt’.

It was all a bit too downbeat for Shane who suggested Tommy could maybe lighten the mood with a more upbeat choice on their patrol car playlist.

Before he could do anything about it, the duo were called to the house of Syrian refugee Amira Saeed to provide back up to Grace and Constable Annie Conlon.

They arrived just as the mob tried to force their way into the house and the petrol bomb was being lit.

Director Angela Griffin cut to Grace inside yelling “Gun! Gun! Gun!” before the shots heard in Episode One rang out.

As her colleague Annie Conlon rushed inside, Grace confirmed it wasn’t her.

Cut to outside the house where Griffin revealed it was Tommy who discharged his weapon into the air, causing the mob to skedaddle.

Elsewhere, dissident republican turned drug trafficker Tina McIntyre was using a dating app to contact her new partner in crime, former soldier Lee Thompson.

Lee rounded up a squad of five men who had been drilled with military precision on their roles in a drug smuggling operation involving a tour bus and gear from Dublin.

In the aftermath of the attack on Amira’s home, Annie joined her in hospital and outlined the police’s plans to move the refugee to secure, shared accommodation.

While waiting on Annie, Grace spotted the vlogger from Episode One, Katie Close with her arm in a sling and decided to engage her in conversation.

Katie immediately reached for her phone to film the encounter and was about as receptive to a chat as a Millwall fan asked to sing ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’.

Back in Blackthorn, Tommy was preparing to face ‘Blue Lights’ resident Police Ombudsman investigator Geraldine Gilroy.

Luckily Tommy had a Police Federation rep to fight his corner in the shape of Sergeant Lawrence McCloskey.

However Lawrence’s efforts to shut down the interrogation were ignored by Tommy who managed to defuse any action against him by telling the investigator that if he hadn’t fired his gun in the air, he would have been facing questions from her about why he didn’t prevent a petrol bomb being chucked into Amira’s home.

When Geraldine Gilroy left agreeing his action was proportionate, Sergeant McCloskey proudly observed: “Well we showed her. Didn’t we?”

Tommy’s sullen demeanour concerned his former girlfriend, Constable Aisling Byrne who decided to have a word with Sergeant Sandra Cliff.

With Blackthorn facing the prospect of closure, Inspector Helen McNally used another meeting with her boss Chief Superintendent Nicola Robinson to again voice her opposition to it.

Chief Superintendent Robinson noted Helen had called “an all hands briefing” of her officers to outline a strategy to dramatically improve Blackthorn’s crime statistics.

“It’s not going to work, Helen,” she warned her.

“You will work them to the bone and they will hate you for it.”

Revealing she had made many personal sacrifices for the sake of her career, the Chief Superintendent observed both of them were “very different people”.

During the briefing Blackthorn’s officers were sceptical as Acting Sergeant Stevie Neil and Sergeant Sandra Cliff outlined Helen’s strategy.

From now on they would have to get the basics right – driving up the statistics on catching drunk drivers, drug possessions and dealing with assaults.

With Shane asking if Blackthorn’s officers would have to “look for bald tyres now,” Helen played her trump card, referencing Gerry Cliff‘s saying that “sharp eyes save lives”.

Minor drug busts, she observed, could help colleagues understand how drug gangs operate and help inform the strategy to disrupt their activities.

Tackling assaults and violent offenders would make Belfast’s streets safer.

Checkpoints to address bald tyres could uncover other criminal activity.

Even addressing a broken tail light on a tour bus, Shane would later discover, could yield surprising intelligence.

Episode Two continued the fine vein of form from last week’s opening episode, with director Angela Griffin and this week’s screenwriter Noel McCann doing a pretty solid job.

The travails of Tina McIntyre’s son Mo were more to the fore as he went on a bender instead of keeping a low profile at home, telling all and sundry his parents were touts.

At this stage, it’s looking like Mo will either come a cropper or he’ll drive a major wedge between Tina and her new partner in crime, Lee Thompson who made a welcome return to the show.

‘Blue Lights’ creators Declan Lawn and Adam Paterson have, along with this week’s writer Noel McCann, teed up the anti immigration storyline and the issue of thin police resources pretty well.

It will be fascinating to see how they develop the issue of social media rage baiting.

As for the performances, series regulars Nathan Braniff, Sian Brooke, Martin McCann, Katherine Devlin, Joanne McNally, Andi Osho, Andrea Irvine, Neil Keery and Dearbhaile McKinney were dependably good.

While Leem Lubany did not get to chew much scenery as Amira, Abigail McGibbon continued to impress as Tina McIntyre.

Michael Shea relished being a bit of a wild card as Tina’s disillusioned son Mo and had some pretty decent scenes including one in a republican drinking den where he ran into a former comrade of his father’s, Patrick McBrearty’s John O’Boyle who in Season Three suffered the tragic loss of his son in a road accident.

It was good to see Seamus O’Hara back as Lee but we have yet to see if Tabitha Smyth can really get under the skin of the vlogger Katie Close who at this stage feels a bit one dimensional.

Michael Smiley arguably stole the show with the biggest laugh of the episode when his surveillance cop Colly decided to examine Shane’s head for requesting an intelligence briefing on a stairwell.

Two episodes in, Series Four is certainly looking promising.

New themes and long standing storylines have been fused effectively.

Hopefully Lawn and Patterson can maintain the momentum.

(Series Four, Episode Two of ‘Blue Lights’ was broadcast on BBC1 on October 6, 2026 with all episodes available on the BBC iPlayer)