PERHAPS the most encouraging news from the recent Irish News/University of Liverpool poll was that both nationalist and unionist voters prioritised bread and butter issues like health, the economy and Covid recovery well ahead of the NI protocol and constitutional issues.
Sir Jeffrey et al may still keep insisting that the protocol is the single biggest threat to the Union in a generation, but pesky matters like being able to heat your house and feed your kids tend to occupy the mind more.
But we're in election mode now, so fears have to be stoked: 'vote for us or we'll get a Sinn Fein First Minister and then the sky will fall in and we'll all be forced to speak Irish and the Twelfth will be banned', or something like that.
Wouldn't it be good if we were able to go to the polls just to vote left or right or for someone we really believed in instead of trying to make sure we keep somebody worse out?
If it's true that one in every five voters hasn't made up their minds who to support, then there may well be a sea-change here, and if the middle ground represented by the Alliance Party is also growing, then we may be looking at a way out of binary orange/green politics.
Why do I still feel I shouldn't hold my breath?
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I FULLY admit to being bad at financial matters and I know I was at fault because I rarely examine my monthly statements when they come in. A few months ago, a belated check revealed that small withdrawals were being taken from my account via an ATM at a nearby supermarket. Not big amounts – £30 or £40 a time – but for God knows how long.
I didn't think I'd made all the withdrawals so I contacted my bank where I was frankly, palmed off, and told I must have given my PIN to someone. I'd heard of cards being 'cloned' but was told this was "highly unlikely".
A month or two passed and this time I was positive I hadn't made the withdrawals. I contacted the police and a few days later a pleasant police officer called at the house. He told me it was a common "skimming" fraud where the thieves placed a tiny camera at the ATM, which would reveal my pin – and that of all the other people who used the machine.
They matched CCTV pictures at the supermarket with the times and dates of the withdrawals. They showed a man whose hoodie and face mask made him impossible to identify.
So why did I have so much trouble convincing the bank? If financial institutions were a bit more honest about how easy it is to defraud their customers, then we might be more careful too.
Just saying.
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I HAD to call in at The Irish News office earlier this week, so took time for a stroll down memory lane, aka Donegall Street, where I'd worked for more than a decade back in the 1980s.
The pub opposite was no longer called The Front Page, in a nod to its proximity to all the main papers in the city, including the Belfast Telegraph, the News Letter and Sunday News further down the street. It used to be the main watering hole for reporters covering the Crumlin Road courts, when not sampling the legendary welsh rarebits at McGlades.
The Telegraph is a sad, empty building now, far removed from its heyday, with the chatter of Tele Ad girls, ringing phones and the rumble of the presses underneath the newsroom, making the floor vibrate.
The closure of Debenhams has made CastleCourt a dismal space now too. It's hard to think the future redevelopment plans will do much to arrest the decline in this part of the city.
Looking up at some of the magnificent facades in Royal Avenue, I imagined what fantastic apartments they would make if only our planners did anything to make city centre living an attractive option, like in Paris or other European capitals.
Around 30 per cent of the population of Belfast has moved out to the suburbs, meaning more traffic and more pollution. If people could be persuaded to live in a revived city centre there'd be less strain on our roads and a healthier population who could walk to their nearest shop, office or cafe.
Instead we have crumbling eyesores as developers 'landbank' their properties to increase their value. Then they become too derelict to restore, so in comes the handy bulldozer.
