Ben Lowry: The good weather is a reminder that Northern Ireland is a fine place to live
This paper today has a lot of heavy news in it about political and cultural and legal disputes, at home and abroad.
In fact, I think that the world has been in upheaval since the financial crisis. There is a major realignment taking place, caused (I believe) by the fact that the planet has never been richer.
As people get richer, their expectations rise perhaps even faster than their circumstances do.
This is very apparent when you read early editions of this newspaper, the world’s oldest English language daily, from the 18th century. I have read a lot of them, and the oldest surviving papers of the 1730s (we were founded in 1737) reflect a society that is noticeably more primitive than the world of the 1780s. The latter is a far richer, more interesting, more prosperous Ulster than the former.
This reflected changes around the western world, and the emergence of a middle class. Yet what happened in those later 1700s? Revolution or attempted revolution on both sides of the Atlantic.
Yet sometimes it is important to reflect on the good things.
This week I took two days off work, due to the weather. Wednesday was fabulous but Thursday was not as good as forecast and was mostly grey. Still, it was a reminder that Northern Ireland is a pretty good place to live, for all its problems.
Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor