MARGARET Thatcher didn't quite say Northern Ireland was "as British as Finchley." She actually said it was part of the United Kingdom – as much as her own constituency was.
Nobody in Finchley nor most of the rest of Britain really believed it, although many pretended to. Unionists in Northern Ireland were perhaps the only true believers. Though by now, most of them must surely be doubtful.
They have never accepted that basic geography makes Northern Ireland a different place, and while they also hung on to their conservative social beliefs that were entirely distinct from their motherland, they continued to insist on the Finchley model.
After Brexit, all was changed, changed utterly. But only a terrible chaos was born.
The DUP were the only local party to champion that cause and it's clear they didn't think things through. The threat to pull the plug on devolution because they don't like the Northern Ireland protocol reminds me of that scene in Blazing Saddles, where the black sheriff puts a gun to his own head to escape a lynch mob.
As a strategy, it's about as sensible as their support for the Loony Tunes English nationalists in the European Reform Group during the Brexit campaign. They were suckered then and will be again.
Now they're desperately hoping Frost's "negotiations" with the EU will drag on long enough to offer a fig leaf to cover their likely climbdown, or postponement for a few more months, hopefully until the next assembly election comes along. By which time Sir Jeffrey will hope to find a vacant seat.
Their blushes may well be spared by MPs at Westminster passing the bill to strengthen the stability of the Executive in the face of the next inevitable crisis. Allowing more "cooling off" time in the event of a resignation is a wise move.
London should also pass the Irish Language legislation which will prevent unionists getting blamed for it when they start knocking on doors.
When I was growing up, talk of a united Ireland was pretty much pie in the sky and generations away from imagining as a reality. That's no longer the case, largely thanks to Brexit.
I don't think a referendum is round the corner, but it's not that far off. A lot of work needs to go on before it will seem like the best option for most people.
Unionists shouldn't be in such a hurry to ditch Stormont, as there'll be less of an impetus to build it back if there is another option to consider.
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AS PART of her free market crusade, Mrs Thatcher sold off the water industry in 1989. The private companies who cashed in then have paid out more than £2 billion a year on average to their shareholders, according to analysis by the Guardian.
The dividends between 1991 and 2019 amounted to £57 billion, while insufficient funding was being made to carry out significant national infrastructure works to prevent spillages.
The government was forced into a climbdown after voting down an amendment to the environment bill that would have placed a legal duty on water companies not to pollute. Shocked at the public backlash, the government launched a defensive social media campaign with a handful of Tories sending out identical posts arguing that the costs to the water companies would be prohibitive.
Maybe they could afford it if they cut out the divvies to the shareholders? Scottish Water, which is still publicly owned, has invested 35 per cent more in infrastructure since 2002 than privatised English companies. It charges users 14 per cent less and doesn't pay dividends.
Now, while Twitter can be an awful place for abuse, sometimes it makes you laugh out loud. So hats off to the genius who watched the appalling footage of raw sewage being spewed into rivers, and came up with #TurdReich.
Derry's Feargal Sharkey, the former Undertones singer and a leading anti-pollution campaigner, has also joined in.
"Currently trending at Number 3 in the UK is #Sewage," he wrote.
"Let's make it number one."
Number two, surely?
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I WONDER if the solution to the latest row about lighting up the City Hall might not be solved in the way we usually sort things out here: one for us, one for them.
If we can even have a Catholic 11 Plus and a Protestant one, and a Catholic route for the Glider versus a Protestant one, then surely we can adopt the same philosophy for illuminating our civic building?
Permanently light one half green and the other half orange, and maybe leave the bit in the middle white, for the "others".
Simples.
