Gail Walker

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.

BBC NI seized upon the headline-making revelation from the latest Ofcom report that a third of adults in Northern Ireland visit porn sites, running the story across its TV and radio bulletins and on its news website.

The impression that Northern Ireland is now in a holding pattern until ‘something happens’ to change things gets stronger with every passing week.

For decades, because of the Troubles, Belfast got a bye-ball as regards ambience, architecture and potential.

The Christmas star is an enduring symbol, a bright light shining purposefully at the darkest time. And this year, it seems to me to be illuminating one of the worst of Christmases.

Kat Parton. Patricia Aust. Sophie Watson. Montserrat Elias. Rachel Simpson. Mary Ward. Tavia Da Costa. Karen Cummings. Let there be no more in 2025. Grand rhetoric about “the murders of women and girls” here is pointless without strategies and the most basic of these should be that any violence against females is punished very harshly by the courts. That doesn’t mean suspended sentences — it means jail time for a very long time. That’s not the only answer but it’s one of the answers. Work your way back from that and change attitudes in the workplace, in education and in sports grounds. Make sure that every incident of violence against women is recorded and followed through so that the impact of actions to counteract violence can be measured. Here’s a rule of thumb for authorities to start off with — just assume when a woman turns up either unconscious or beaten black and blue or cut that she didn’t do it herself.

Ministers plan to drain crisis-hit Lough Neagh, and other predictions for year ahead

They say the truth will out, but it is almost half a century since 10 Protestant workmen were lined up by the side of their minibus and shot dead at Kingsmill and almost 28 years since Sean Brown was locking the gates of the GAA club in Bellaghy when he was abducted and shot dead and the State is showing no signs of telling all it knows any time soon.

Pope Francis’s recommendations for numerous movies are just one of the surprises in his autobiography, Hope, published this week.