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The managing director of Belleek Pottery last night said he felt the Prime Minister ended her visit to the factory with a better understanding of the concerns of border businesses as the Brexit deadline nears.
John Maguire accompanied Theresa May as she toured the pottery - a major export business - and met craftspeople working on the world-famous ceramics.
"She was really interested in the Belleek brand and our story," Mr Maguire said.
"Later, we talked about the challenges in relation to Brexit, what could happen, and the potential impact in could have on our business."
Mr Maguire, who has worked in the business for 30 years and is also High Sheriff of Co Fermanagh, said: "I think what she will bring back from her visit to the pottery here is that there is a lot of concern and uncertainty.
"The UK Government need to be super-sensitive to the border, and make sure that we do not go backwards."
The businessman added that Mrs May had been surprised by the volume of visitors to the pottery from over the border - almost 200,000 per year.
"That's a significant number, and is growing," he said.
"We can't afford any negatives in relation to travel between the south of Ireland and Northern Ireland for our visitors."
TJ Hughes, who runs a fuel business that straddles the frontier, which runs through Belleek, offered a more downbeat assessment of the Prime Minister's presence.
"I'm the second biggest employer in the town and I wasn't invited," he said.
"The front of our store is in the Republic, and at the back of it there's a separate business in Northern Ireland.
"But they wouldn't want to speak to a boy like me. I'd pose too many questions."
Mr Hughes employs 26 people in the village.
His message to Mrs May?
"Give us some guidance! We're a few months out from Brexit and we haven't a clue.
"I haven't a clue whether I'll have a business. I haven't a clue whether I'll be able to have my employees still working for me," he said.
"The majority of my employees live in Northern Ireland.
"I don't know if I'll be able to keep them in employment.
"Everybody says no border will go up.
"But, realistically, that won't be allowed by the EU if there's no deal. That's the plain and simple of it."
London, Dublin and Brussels have all said that there will be no reintroduction of the border checkpoints of the past.
But Mr Hughes was not reassured.
"Talk is cheap," he added.
"If you're up in Dublin you're looked after; if you're in London you're looked after.
"But out here? We're cannon fodder."
A woman with a baby in the back seat of her Chrysler sedan crashed into the LAPD’s Harbor Division station early Saturday, Feb. 9, 2019, as seen on video from the police department.
A driver somehow maneuvered past several barriers outside the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division station in San Pedro early Saturday morning and crashed into the lobby, but no one was seriously hurt, authorities said.
The incident was recorded on station surveillance video.
No one was inside the lobby when the woman’s Chrysler sedan plowed through a pair of glass doors at the police station on John S. Gibson Boulevard about 4:45 a.m., said Lt. T. Behrens. The driver tried to back out of the station, but struck the barriers and was apprehended. Paramedics took the woman and a baby in the b...
Police were investigating whether the crash was an accident or intentional. Behrens said investigators had no indication that drugs or alcohol were factors.
A temporary door was installed and the front desk remained operational, he said.
The 50,000-square-foot station next to the 110 Freeway serves residents of Wilmington, San Pedro, Harbor City and Harbor Gateway.
Bettina Stangneth argues that Hannah Arendt got it all wrong when she argued that Adolf Eichmann epitomized the ‘banality of evil.’ He knew exactly what he was doing.
Almost 75 years after Hitler’s suicide, the evil of the Third Reich is like the sun; if you stare straight at it, you’ll get burned. We avert our eyes through satire (Springtime for Hitler, the musical within the movie and musical The Producers) or prescriptive outrage (Samantha Power’s A Problem from Hell).
Now, for the first time, someone stares into Eichmann’s evil and presents starkly different results. In Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer, Bettina Stangneth presents an Eichmann from whom we cannot avert our eyes. She finds that his role in the attempted extermination of the Jewish popul...
The book dances with two hidden parallelisms, one between Stangneth and Arendt, and the other between Stangneth and Eichmann himself. Stangneth says at the beginning that her book is a “dialogue with Hannah Arendt,” and the entire structure of the book is a canny rebuttal to Arendt’s book. Stangneth quotes Eichmann boa...
The book is a hunt for the real Eichmann, and to accomplish that, Stangneth smartly sets up an “origins” story of the years before Eichmann stood trial in Jerusalem in 1962 and was then executed. The technique is familiar in books ranging from Sebastian Montefiore’s Young Stalin to Tom Stoppard’s Shakespeare in Love, a...
Her journey begins in Eichmann’s youth, his entry into the Nazi Party, his bravado-filled adoption of the crusade against the Jews, his escape after the war, first into Austria and then Argentina, and the months leading up to the famed trial that Arendt witnessed.
Through unprecedented granular detail, Stangneth unearths exactly what Arendt obscured with her “banality” thesis—that Eichmann was fully in possession of his faculties at every step of the way, not only in murdering so many people, but in hiding from that fact afterward.
Stangneth probes his affairs in Argentina, including with Ingrid von Ihne, “tall, blond, and slim, with a cold beauty.” But her interest is not prurient. She wants to puncture all of the caricatures that blunt the harsh reality of Eichmann. He was not a “Holocaust monster,” she argues, an “orgiast, who, having become i...
The real revelations in the book center around Stangneth’s plunge into new transcripts of the famous interviews of Eichmann performed by the sympathetic anti-Semitic Dutch émigré Willam Stassen in Buenos Aires, with about a dozen other men present. The full transcripts were only released in the late ’90s, which is one ...
One confession of Eichmann’s in particular devastates Arendt’s banality of evil thesis—a “little address” that did not appear in the most notorious version of the Stassen transcripts that Stassen sold in 1960. Stangneth spends three pages on the full excerpt, and it’s the heart of the book, the heart of what Arendt mis...
We come away from this fine, important book understanding that the old Anglo legal concept of mens rea—the mental intent that distinguishes murder from manslaughter—matters more than ever.
Stangneth has been faulted by some reviewers for not being a sufficiently dispassionate historian. But she trained as a philosopher, not as a historian, and she’s employing history not for its own sake, but for philosophy’s. Just as Arendt herself did in Rahel Varnhargen, a portrait of a pre-World War II Jewish Berlin ...
When we stare directly into the burning eye of evil, our retinas might be burned, she is saying, but as long as we can scream with outrage, we have at least responded in kind.
Are you a fan of banoffee pie, or does it make your teeth ache just to think of it? And where do you stand on the great biscuit v pastry base debate?
Sometimes, food falls out of context. There's the sticky toffee pudding, that perfectly British dessert, which, in all probability, migrated here from Canada. The scotch egg, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the Mughal nargisi kofta. And the banoffee pie, a wonderfully over-the-top American-style dessert crowned...
Creator Ian Dowding, one-time chef at the Hungry Monk near Eastbourne (sadly felled by the economic downturn last January), is probably heartily sick of talking about his stroke of culinary genius ("it's not as if I'd discovered the double helix, or cold fusion"). He explains it was his take on an American dessert by t...
"We thought it was incredibly silly," he says, "but without that we would not have been able to trace the rise in popularity of this concoction. It started with feedback from customers who rang to check it was still on the menu … within a couple of years I began to see it on a lot of menus of other restaurants … people...
That said, things have changed a lot since 1972. Dowding's pet hates are "biscuit crumb bases and that horrible cream in aerosols" – his base is made from shortcrust pastry, like the recipe in Lily Vanilli's Sweet Tooth, although she adds lemon zest and nutmeg to hers. Jamie Oliver goes for a ready-made pie case, but t...
Loth as I am to contradict the pie's creator, he does admit that "nobody ever invents dishes – they evolve", and I think the biscuit base has become popular for a reason. It's delicious and, unlike shortcrust, it doesn't go soggy at the bottom after a few hours, which is useful if you want that sneaky late-night second...
The next layer of the banoffee pie is the best, as far as I'm concerned: toffee. (Well, more accurately, caramel.) Dowding boils a tin of condensed milk until it's thick and sticky, but these days, in one of the great miracles of modern life, Nestlé has done the hard work for you: instant gratification in a tin, as rec...
Rimmer boils condensed milk with butter and sugar to make a caramel of almost toffee-like chewiness. I love the contrast with the softness of the whipped cream above, but I'm still chomping on it long after the other layers have been swallowed, which doesn't seem ideal.
Oliver, meanwhile, does something rather curious. I would have thought this a prime candidate for some ready-made caramel, but instead he makes a basic caramel by melting caster sugar, and then stirs it into the next layer of the pie.
In fact, Oliver's whole recipe is plain odd: he purees bananas and milk, and then stirs in the caramel to make a strange hybrid layer, which tastes far too intensely of bananas and not enough of caramel. I'll be keeping things separate, and slicing the bananas thinly, rather than laying them out in halves, as Dowding s...
Whipped cream is de rigueur here, preferably coffee-flavoured – I try Bell's strong coffee, and Vanilli's espresso powder, and even Oliver's Camp coffee extract, but it's the retro flavour of Dowding's instant coffee granules that grab me. Very 70s. He adds sugar as well, which, like the Camp coffee version, is delicio...
Dowding scatters his cream with instant coffee, which proves unpleasantly bitter, while Bell and Oliver go for chocolate shavings, which introduces another, unnecessary flavour. Given the nuts in the base, I'm going to go for Vanilli's caramelised pecans, baked with icing sugar until they're gorgeously crackly – a text...
Last word to Rimmer, who, in an act of heroic madness, makes a coconut milk and caramel sauce for his banoffee pie. This is one lily that needs no such gilding, I promise.
The perfect banoffee pie, topped with gorgeously crackly caramelised pecans.
Whizz the biscuits to crumbs in a food processor (or put them in a freezer bag and smash them to smithereens with a rolling pin), roughly chop the pecans and stir together with the melted butter. Press the mixture into a 23cm loose-bottomed tart tin to line the base and sides. Chill while you make the filling.
Melt the butter and sugar together in a pan, and stir to dissolve the sugar. Add the dulce de leche and the salt and bring to the boil, stirring constantly until smooth. Pour over the base, and chill for an hour.
Thinly slice the bananas and toss with the lemon juice. Arrange on top of the cooled caramel in concentric circles.
Whip the cream and the coffee granules into soft peaks and spread on top of the bananas. Arrange the candied pecans on top and serve.
Banoffee pie: are you a fan, or does it make your teeth ache just to think of it? And can anyone provide a review of the original Hungry Monk version?
Ambitious plans by the Royal Opera House to create a northern outpost in Manchester were dealt a blow today after the Lowry arts centre publicly declared the project a direct threat to its existence and called for it to be scrapped.
The Lowry, which opened at Salford Quays nine years ago at a cost to the public of £116m, is angry that the latest proposals would see it lose two regular visitors that it regards as "jewels": Opera North and Birmingham Royal Ballet.
Those in charge of the Lowry have, until now, largely kept their counsel on the proposals.
However, today the chairman of the Lowry trustees, Rod Aldridge, said the plan was "bad for Manchester, bad for the arts and bad for the taxpayer". He added: "In the interests of the whole region, it must now be abandoned."
He said the Lowry had commissioned its own research to look at the ROH proposals and what it would mean for them. Aldridge said it "provides clear evidence that the current proposal presents significant threats to the viability of the Lowry. It would destroy what we have achieved and would put the £116m of public money...
The Lowry says it is not against the Royal Opera House coming to Manchester and has proposed an alternative model whereby opera and music is concentrated at the ROH's planned home, the Palace theatre, and the Lowry becomes the centre for dance, hosting the Royal Ballet.
In the months of meetings that have gone on since the idea emerged last year, three alternatives were put to the Lowry on its possible future. These included concentrating on more musicals; producing its own original work; or reinventing itself as a Sadlers' Wells of the north by staging more non-classical dance. The L...
Ultimately the ROH's plans will rest on the support of the government, which will have to commit a significant amount of money to a project costing about £100m, even before annual running costs.
Andy Burnham, the former culture secretary and a north-west MP, was a supporter of the scheme, but it is not known how keen his replacement in the rec ent reshuffle, Ben Bradshaw, is.
The Lowry yesterday sent an open letter to Bradshaw, Arts Council England, Manchester city council and the ROH, calling for the scheme, in its current form, to be scrapped.
The Lowry's chief executive, Julia Fawcett, said the centre had always made clear that it was in favour of the ROH being in Manchester, but not at its expense. "At the moment there is no upside for us, just a huge risk," she said.
The Manchester plans, conceived and driven by the ROH – under its chief executive Tony Hall – and the city council, are undeniably ambitious. It would see the city's 117-year-old Palace theatre renovated and transformed into a new base for the ROH outside Covent Garden. As well as staging opera and ballet productions, ...
The plan is seen as a good thing for Manchester-based orchestras, including the Hallé, the Manchester Camerata and the BBC Philharmonic, which would provide the music for most of the Royal Opera performances. And the biennial Manchester International Festival would be expected to reap the benefits as well.
A statement from the ROH expressed disappointment at the Lowry stance. It said: "The Royal Opera House and Manchester city council believe that there is a very exciting and viable way forward for Royal Opera House Manchester and the arts in the north-west as a whole.
"Discussions are ongoing regarding how this might most effectively be achieved, and the more potential partners are brought into the discussions, the more exciting the proposals are becoming."
Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester city council, said he was disappointed with the position taken by the Lowry. "The prospect for jobs, skill development, the economic impact for tourism and the welcome addition to the cultural scene in the region will benefit all."
The Palestinian leader has more than Israeli tanks to worry about.
He may be brought to heel by, of all things, honest financial accounting.
Frozen out by the Bush Administration and hemmed in by the Israeli military, Yasir Arafat is now facing a new threat: the cutoff of funds from his very own Palestinian Authority. Financial reforms might succeed in hampering the flow of money to terrorists--might even end up toppling Arafat himself.
Money keeps Arafat in power. With a tight grip on much of the $5.5 billion in international aid that has flowed into the PA since 1994, he appears to have overseen virtually all disbursements, from $600 payments to alleged terrorists and $1,500 in "tuition" for security officers, to $10 million, reportedly paid by a co...
Take the money out of his hands, reform a corrupt financial system and you could reduce the violence. That's the thinking of U.S. and European officials who insisted on the appointment of a new finance minister for the PA. Salam Fayyad , 50, is the chain-smoking Palestinian technocrat armed with little more than a Ph.D...
"I am here to tell you it's not Arafat's money anymore," says Fayyad, sitting in his office in Ramallah, three miles from the Arafat base that Israeli tanks have all but destroyed. A portrait of the Palestinian leader looms above him. "I'm not going to accept anything but total transparency."
He is using standard accounting to take control of the PA's mysterious finances and open them up for all to see. Arafat's three main sources of cash: foreign aid, Israeli tax transfers and profits from PA-controlled companies. Fayyad's first move was to consolidate the PA's funds into a single treasury account under hi...
It amounts to a direct attack on Arafat's elaborate patronage system, which ensures the loyalty of the Palestinians' fractious factions. "He is always ready to pull money out of his pocket to buy people," says Said Aburish , an Arafat biographer. An Israeli intelligence report pegs Arafat's personal holdings at $1.3 bi...
"Until the last six months PA money was a power instrument for Arafat," says Eran Lerman , a retired colonel in Israel's military intelligence. "Calling what Fayyad is doing a threat to Arafat is an understatement." Fayyad, for his part, dismisses any such notion. Arafat, he says, "is the person who appointed me, and I...
In late December Fayyad took another step toward that goal. He submitted the first publicly disclosed PA budget, a $1.3 billion plan approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council. Auditing of the spending is being supervised by Ernst & Young, hired by the United Nations, and Deloitte & Touche, hired by the U.S. His l...
The businesses include a 23% stake in the Jericho casino (worth $28.5 million) and 20% of a Tunisian telecom company ($50 million), as well as a $55 million firm that controls most of the cement imported into the territories and 13 accounts holding an estimated $73 million. At Fayyad's behest S&P is now valuing the fun...
Israeli officials began releasing tax proceeds in July, beginning with a trickle of $14 million payments, rising to $58 million in February. The money, which is deposited into the central account Fayyad controls, includes excise taxes of up to $8 million a month collected by Israel on oil sold to Palestinian-controlled...
In the past that kind of latitude let Arafat create a public sector of 125,000 people consuming $660 million, half the annual budget. This includes $240 million for a security force of 53,000 agents, most of them members of Fatah, Arafat's political party, which often receives a 1.5% cut. Now Fayyad is trying to replac...
Despite Fayyad's reforms, however, Arafat will continue to hold some financial clout. His office is budgeted for $74 million this year, though Fayyad is quick to point out that the spending is now watched carefully by a finance ministry official and the hired auditors. And some signs indicate that Arafat has stashed ot...
Still, says Azmi Shuaibi , a Palestinian Legislative Council member: "We are afraid if something happens to Arafat, we will not know where all the money is."
Apple's new Mac Pro will be wearing red when it's auctioned off next month in New York City.
In photos, it looks a bit like the red pill from "The Matrix." But it's not. It's the new Mac Pro. In red.
The item will be up for auction on November 23 at Sotheby's in New York City, as part of an auction hosted by (Product)RED, the charity fronted by U2's Bono.
The machine is expected to go for $40,000 to $60,000 at auction. Apple showed off the Mac Pro, with its normal black design, at a live event this week in San Francisco. It will cost $2,999 and ship in December.

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