AND so NEI says farewell to 2023. It was not the most scintillating of years, with strikes, economic hardship and political paralysis. A dysfunctional state doing what it does best: being dysfunctional. Here’s a 12-month list of modest headlines.

 4 January

The Irish Passport Office suspends posting Irish passports to NEI and GB because of the Royal Mail strike.  An Irish Passport Office in Belfast/Derry would have meant less public inconvenience, but the powers that be in Dublin thought that’d be too much bother. 

2 February 

This was a red-letter day in the life of former British soldier David Holden. In 1988 he shot young Aidan McAnespie in the back, explaining that his finger had slipped on the trigger. Nearly forty years later he was punished for the killing: he got a suspended sentence.

13 March

President Joe Biden announces he’s going to come on a visit to Ireland next month, in April. This is to mark 25 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.  All of Ireland gets very excited and Joe ticks the electoral box marked ‘Irish-American vote’.

25 April

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) announce that they have ‘withdrawn confidence’ in the management of BBCNI. This was totally unexpected, given that the BBCNI are a wonderful body of people who never cave in to pressure from unionist groups. Not  hearsay: I speak from personal experience.  Thanks again, guys.

14 May 

Local elections are held and guess what? When they’ve finished counting  the votes, Sinn Féin are clearly the largest political party in the stateen.

30 June

An inquest finds that Leo Norney, a teenager shot dead  by a British soldier in 1975, was completely innocent and that the British army had concocted a story about having been fired on first to cover up the truth. They may well have followed the example of the  British army in Derry in 1972 . When  queried as to why his men had killed 14 people, Colonel Derek Wilford said his men had been fired on first. Isn’t it insanity when people do the same thing over and over and expect a different result?

11 July

Celebrating the Eleventh Night,  some pyromaniacs place an effigy of  First-Minister-in-waiting Michelle O’Neill atop a bonfire. The police said they were treating this as a hate crime. Very harsh, officer. Image-burning is a time-honoured tradition of the PUL community. 

22 August

The aptly-named Thomas Hogg, a former DUP mayor of Antrim and Newtownabbey, has his MBE removed  from his chest when it is revealed that he’d been convicted in 2021 of sexual assault on a teenage boy. Draconian or what?

28 September 

Tesco becomes the first supermarket in NEI to display ‘Not for EU’ posters in its stores. Fingers are pointed at shadowy figures in the EU. 

25 October

County Antrim is traumatised when it is announced that as many as eleven trees at the Dark Hedges, made famous by appearing in Game of Thrones, will have to be felled.

13 November 

Just about everyone in the Province has a near-nervous-breakdown when it’s announced that six Dark Hedges trees must be cut down and that all of the remaining trees are seriously sick. 

19 December

The year is rounded off nicely by the UK government offering £3.3 billion if the DUP  will agree to return to Stormont and  form an Executive. The DUP reaches for its favourite word: No. 

Things can only get better. Bliain úr faoi mhaise daoibh – Happy New Year.