Gail Walker

Nearly 40 years after Titanic was discovered more than two miles below the surface of the Atlantic, the great ship is more lost than ever. Once her debris field was the ocean floor. Now she’s scattered around the world, with thousands of items plundered from her stashed in a secret warehouse and other memorabilia flogged for huge sums to anonymous buyers.

It seems that for all of my lifetime it’s been a time for reviewing unionism but I’m still waiting for it to happen. Months after yet another election showing shrinking returns, there appears no movement anywhere.

Is it any wonder Tesco bosses across the water gave their new anti-theft robots a Northern Irish accent? As years of dodgy TV dramas and films have established, if you need viewers’ blood chilled, send for an actor who can do the Belfast bark. It’s a kind of shorthand that unpleasant things are about to happen very soon.

No-one I spoke to in Melrose Street, off Belfast’s Lisburn Road, knew Mary Ward. No-one had seen her getting into a taxi or walking home with a bag of groceries, the sort of ways that people consider getting to know neighbours these days.

The idea that riches, fame, good looks and charm come at a cost has always been a common one.

The drama of the US Presidential election — the ousting of Joe Biden, assassination attempts on Donald Trump, knife-edge swing states —make it compelling viewing, but so does the fact this is probably the first US election that is “access all areas” for a global audience. We in Northern Ireland are seeing how much more transparent politics and civic society are elsewhere.

Anyone who was paying attention to the US presidential elections over the last number of months won’t have been surprised by the dramatic return to power of former president Donald Trump.

Remembrance Sunday, with its solemn and mournful ceremonies — that smattering of scarlet under grey November skies — is almost upon us again, bringing with it sorrow and solemnity and, because we live in Northern Ireland, some fresh hurt or row or slight or tension.

The prime audience for any review of the debacle around the PSNI investigation into the death of Katie Simpson is her family — those who miss her most and who have received no justice whatsoever.

The festive period, like Easter and Bank Holidays, is when you expect to hear of catastrophic collisions either here in Northern Ireland or in the Republic and be reminded again of the perennial issue of how difficult it seems to be to keep road users safe.