Lindy Mcdowell

To paraphrase that catchy Monty Python song, I think the response of many potential unionist voters to the news this week that the UUP is once again ripping itself asunder will have been, “What has the UUP ever done for us?”

Apparently, in the run-up to the General Election, Sir Keir Starmer had what the beauty experts of TikTok would call a glow up.

Has there ever, in the history of bands reforming, been a comeback which has garnered as much media interest as the Gallagher brothers ending hostilities and announcing a tour?

Back during the run-up to the Agreement referendum in 1998, I remember well, as most people who lived through it will, the emotion-charged atmosphere of those days. Voters here were about to make the most momentous political choice of their generation.

Yet another of those daft viral videos filmed on a plane in the US took off like a Boeing 747 this week.

Is this the way the world ends — not with a bang but a Milton? As a hurricane with that name gouged its deadly way across his state this week, Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, summed up his climate change scepticism in meteorological terms: “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

Should assisted dying, aka euthanasia, be made legal?

Maybe this is how Game of Thrones fans felt just before the final episode of the series. In just a few days it’s all going to be over and what then will we have to entertain us?

Do we need an Elon Musk in Northern Ireland? Donald Trump’s imaginative pick to head up his new Department of Government Efficiency has already hit the ground bouncing.

To slightly misquote the old song: “They’re banning men and women from the wearing of the green.” Or to be more precise, they’ve been advising against the wearing of it in Belfast.