ONE of the frustrations of public service is that people only notice when things go wrong, so let us acknowledge a notable success.
Northern Ireland has just come through a month of freakishly wet and stormy weather without suffering any significant flood damage, power cuts or travel disruption, beyond the sort of immediate inconvenience that must be expected.
With apologies to those affected, relatively few people were affected, in contrast to the chaos that was traditional around Christmas and New Year as recently as a decade ago.
Even more impressively, the Department of Regional Development - which is responsible for most of our infrastructure - had barely three months to recover from the reign of UUP minister Danny Kennedy, who had suspended routine maintenance for over a year before to make a petty point about his budget.
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We may be witnessing the birth of a new Northern Ireland tradition - the graceless valedictory interview.
Begun by the late Ian Paisley with his attack on Nigel Dodds and Peter Robinson, it has now apparently been continued by SDLP grandee Seamus Mallon, who has told Radio Ulster that Sinn Féin played John Hume "like a 3lb trout".
Mallon's critique, which he extended to the British and Irish governments, centres on the Good Friday Agreement’s failure to require up-front decommissioning.
This allowed republicans to subsequently play David Trimble like a 3lb trout, until Sinn Féin and the DUP swallowed their smaller rivals whole.
However, Mallon was not so forthright about that, as Trimble was rather conspicuously left to dangle at the time by his Deputy First Minister - SDLP deputy leader Seamus Mallon.
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Without warning, the DUP has usurped the UUP's seats on the Good Friday Agreement's cross-border bodies.
The DUP is fully entitled to do this as the boards of these bodies are nominated by the executive, which the UUP has left, then appointed by the North South Ministerial Council, whose northern half is headed jointly by the DUP and Sinn Féin.
The SDLP has complained about the UUP's exclusion, calling it "a cause for deep concern" and asking how much Sinn Féin was complicit.
Yet in a way the DUP has paid the cross-border institutions an unprecedented compliment, by taking them at least seriously enough to regard expulsion as a unionist punishment - and presence as a unionist reward.
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There has always been a gulf between the enforcement of anti-terrorist legislation here and in Britain but it has reached a ridiculous extent in the case of the misnamed 'silent bomber'.
Mohammed Rehman detonated a home-made banger in his back yard, then discussed with his wife on Twitter whether to do the same in a shopping centre.
For this pathetic so-called "terror plot" the pair have been sentenced to life in prison, to serve a minimum of 27 and 25 years respectively.
A comparable loyalist or dissident republican first-time offender in Northern Ireland could realistically hope to avoid any custody at all, assuming they were unlucky enough to be successfully prosecuted.
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Fresh Start is proving a challenge for even the forensic mind of Jim Allister.
In his new year message, the TUV leader calls on voters in May's Stormont election to "sweep aside" the failed system of mandatory coalition and support "the imperative of having an opposition".
Quite apart from the problem of asking people to vote for opposition, Stormont already has an informal opposition and by May this should be official.
The positioning of the three largest unionist parties in that election - at least two whom are both for and against holding office - will require a degree in quantum physics to understand.
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The Giant’s Causeway has topped the National Trust's list of UK attractions, with 550,000 visitors last year - a figure reportedly boosted by Game of Thrones tourists and 150,000 more than the trust’s leading attractions in Britain.
This has to be considered a mixed blessing for Northern Ireland's wider tourist industry, as the system of parking and admission via the 'optional' visitor’s centre is known to often leave a bad impression.
It would be a pity if the causeway's popularity was interpreted as putting its current arrangements beyond criticism.
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It is not only the English who like claiming our athletes as their own.
Turkish Cypriot newspaper Kibris Gazetesi has published, apparently in all seriousness, a claim that George Best was the son of a Turkish Cypriot father from Lefka and a Greek Cypriot mother from Limassol, who was then given up for adoption due to their "illicit love affair".
The "well-informed source" behind this allegation added that Best visited Cyprus frequently in the 1960s and 70s to see his "biological father".
In a tragic testament to that bitterly divided island, the Greek Cypriot press has only picked this story up to laugh at it.
