Ryanair chief has no good Christmas news for Ireland

Now I know there are loads people out there who’ll wonder what planet I live on.

These are the well organised ones who probably began their Christmas shopping at the opening of that big new store in Belfast’s Royal Avenue this week or who’ve already been at their favourite multi store which has Christmas trees dripping with decorations as you walk in the door.

Such people may even have ordered the turkey.

How I envy their organising skills. But then I come from a generation whose Christmas didn’t start `till the third week in December. When your mother began to go on mystery shopping trips about then you knew something was up especially as she never answered any questions about where she’d been or what was in the bags tied to the handlebars.

Such a long time ago, but I’ve never forgotten that mystery and excitement as she would inform her brood that it was now time to go and find a suitable Christmas tree.

That was the early fifties, when many people had altogether different things to worry about than the festive season. I might only have been a nipper then but even someone as young as me knew who the IRA were and the `B’ Specials. In some respects nothing much has changed. We’ve just moved on a bit.

It’s coming up to the Christmas season again with politics still at the forefront.

Currently Stormont isn’t sitting due to the Protocol row an issue former Labour MP and minister in the UK government Dame Kate Hoey, writing in the Newsletter this week says should be addressed by the new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

She went on: "What is necessary is that the application of EU law and accompanying jurisdiction of the European Court is ended and Northern Ireland returned to an equal footing with the rest of the United Kingdom”.

That’s a fairly straightforward `ask’ but then nothing is straightforward in our province.

Haven’t we always known that English politicians show little or no interest in what’s going on in Ireland north and south? I’m pretty sure some of them dropped their toast over breakfast this week at the threat from the famous very voiceful Irish businessman Michael O’Leary chief executive of the airline Ryanair who in the Daily Telegraph declared that Ryanair "would quit Ireland if Sinn Fein takes power and messes around with the country’s competitive corporate tax regime.’’

Sinn Fein, is leading in the polls in the South. This clearly worries the well-known airline chief who described SF in the paper as "economically illiterate”.

He added: "We are proud of being Irish but we wouldn’t have any difficulty leaving’”.

Ireland cannot afford to lose Ryanair I’m certain.

I suppose most of us regard the first week of November as the start of the Christmas season. The newspapers are full of stories with a Christmas theme. Some of those stories I could do without knowing about. Like the one where a farmer (in England) was photographed standing in the middle of the turkeys he had obviously raised for the Christmas market. He was bemoaning the fact that they could be at risk from a disease that has broken out. If his flock catch it that will be the end of his Christmas income.

Hens too are at risk. I’m not a vegetarian but the thought of those flocks being disposed of in some mass grave upsets me. We should regard it as a privilege to eat meat since animals sacrifice themselves for us – but who will give a thought to those unfortunate creatures who will have lived and died for nothing?

Maybe vegetarians from around the country will write into this newspaper and call me a coward.

But I always think of those animals and how much they give us. What I disrespect are those who kill animals for fun, among them the fox hunters, badger baiters and those who pay big money to fly off to exotic countries where large, exotic animals are reared for the hunters.