My biggest media appearances were the BBC election broadcasts for the three elections in Northern Ireland, with my long-term sparring partner Mark Devenport. Not much of it is online, but I am in 2:49-3:35 here:
Some viewers' responses were a little, er, unusual…
Kraftwerk, the Magherafelt years. pic.twitter.com/mBlGFilsbp
— MLAs And The Like (@MLAsAndTheLike) May 27, 2019
The most important piece that I wrote on Northern Ireland was for the Irish Times, published 10 July, setting out the three preconditions as I see them for a referendum on unifying Ireland to be successful.
(Click to embiggen)
Apart from that, on Northern Ireland I was quoted three times by Rory Carroll in the Guardian:
12 July: Belfast bonfire 'victory' masks tide turning against loyalist Twelfth
15 August: How the 'neithers' could decide Northern Ireland's political fate
20 December: How Northern Ireland vote was punishment for Stormont impasse
I also did a piece for the Newsletter on 10 January, being sceptical about the SDLP-Fianna Fáil link.
Finally, a Belgian journalism student interviewed me a couple of weeks ago for a piece explaining the connection between Northern Ireland and Brexit.
Apart from the BBC election coverage, I did two televised panel discussions with Tian Wei on CGTN's flagship programme World Insight. The first was on the Biarritz summit. My bits are are 14:40-18:30 and 23:25-24:50.
The second was on Brexit. I got a bit more time here, 6:45-8:15, 13:34-14:46, 16:45-19:10 and briefly 25:40-25:55. The exchanges between Tian Wei and Cui Hongjian are particularly interesting as an insight into how Chinese commentators view the functioning of democratic systems in general.
In print, I was interviewed by Bloomberg on speculation about the future of Margrethe Vestager on 13 March. (A memorable interview for me; I was at the airport in Prishtina, Kosovo, talking down the line on a connection which seemed just about robust enough…)
I got some decent coverage from a 9 May Foreign Policy piece on why some countries don't have populism, which led on to an interview with Euronews on the same topic – the English version of the story did not use the video, but the Spanish, Hungarian and Portuguese versions did. Here’s the Spanish version: I am in it at 1:19-1:54 and again at 2:18-2:44.
I did a more general preview of the elections for the Law Societies, and commented on the energy/environmental aspect here.
The Hugo Awards brought me a spot on Five Books, a site I have loved if not followed closely for ages, so I was thrilled about that – it had a lot of resonance. The awards themselves were covered in Irish Tech News, and Polygon quoted me on Archive Of Our Own qualifying for the final ballot.
Finally, I did a lot of speeches etc throughout the year, but two of my hosts put out press releases mentioning me, within a week of each other in March: the Cass Business School and the National Council of Insurance Legislators.
Further posts coming on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Livejournal.
I don’t believe the phenylephrine results and want to see the studies replicated, I carry a strip of it in my wallet and when my sinuses are playing up (at least a few days every month, frequently more), I take it. It reduces my problems significantly, and if I get a cold or flu it’s the only thing that makes me able to function, I can tell when it’s beginning to wear off and definitely know when a new tablet is needed.
Ergo, it might not work for everyone, but does for me and definitely isn’t a placebo effect as I’ve tried many many many things in different dosages over the years—Sudafed make a different type that I accidentally bought once, it sort of works but also put me straight to sleep, so that was no good at all, I could tell the difference even though I hadn’t noticed it was a different chemical.