Take yer f**k**g airport and f**k**g shove it up yer f**k**g...etc etc

WELL no-one ever accused Michael O’Leary of subtlety, but his rant over the George Best City Airport runway extension – or rather lack of runway extension - was exceptional even by his standards.

Mr O’Leary denounced the lack of decision-making on the extension to the runway and announced that Ryanair was pulling out of Belfast on October 31st.

Thereafter followed a raft of MLAs and even ministers of the executive queuing up on the airwaves to denounce the decision... There were even a few who took a pop at Mr O’Leary’s low-cost airline.

Indeed, at a time when our economy is, in the words of Minister Attwood on meeting Iain Duncan Smith, lagging behind the rest of the country, it did seem a bit churlish to lambast Mr O’Leary.

We do wonder, however, whether those self-same MLAs and ministers are ever forced to use a low-cost airline to visit loved ones, to keep business costs low, to see-off children to college or university, or even simply take a break from the doom and gloom pronouncements of the NI Executive.

We suspect few have.

Say what you like about Ryanair and Mr O-Leary (there now follows a space to allow you to say what you like within existing libel laws..._____________________________ ) but he did make a decision.

Yes, a decision. That’s a strange concept in Northern Ireland. For those of you not sure what a decision is, it is when someone decides to do something, rather than debate endlessly, call in lawyers, appoint barristers, take a judicial review, mumble half-heartedly about the other side, ask Assembly questions and waffle on every possible broadcast outlet.