WE HAVE ONLY a few days left to spend with our beloved Aertel.

No, RTÉ’s long-running teletext service wasn’t implicated in the scandals of this summer (though it would be interesting to learn that enormous secret sums of money had been spent keeping alive). The service is simply set to be scrapped on Thursday as part of the national broadcaster’s “need to prioritise the delivery of digital services to meet growing audience demand”. 

We can only hope then that the Aertel technology has not become sentient by the time some poor civil servant steps forward to pull the plug. The last thing we need is big blocky green texting pleading for its life, or worse still, going full Hal from Space Odyssey and doing its best to kill us, perhaps by withholding its extremely slow-loading cinema listings. 

The Aertel obituaries have already begun, proving that Irish people can mourn literally anything. These eulogies will likely open the eyes of younger readers to the potential of the kind of technology that, as of 2023, is barely considered technology anymore.

For example, apparently people used to be able to check the CAO points on Aertel? Apparently short stories were published on there?! Can we really say we’ve made the most of Aertel’s potential? We need to be pumping more money into this thing! Maybe Aertel is the correct venue for Toy Show: The Musical — conveyed entirely through the medium of text pages. It’s called avant-garde, look it up.

It seems that RTÉ could probably capitalise on the nostalgia factor and design a website that replicates the output of the old Aertel. If nothing else, that might appease the ghost in the machine so that it doesn’t go SkyNet on us and use its 1987-era coding to somehow activate the secret nuclear weapons that it (presumably) has access to.

My version of ‘how often do you think about the Roman Empire’ is ‘how often do you think about how every Aertel headline was exactly 33 characters long’.

The answer is ‘more often than I should be admitting in a forum such as this’. pic.twitter.com/R90voLfyMY

— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) October 2, 2023

But from one apocalypse to another.

Panic has arisen on the streets of Paris as an apparent infestation of bedbugs has swept the French capital. Viral social media footage shows the insects prancing about the carpeted seats of the Parisian Metro and clinging to the skin of unsuspecting American tourists. 

It would be easier to compartmentalise the horror of these images were it not the case that 60,000 Irish people will be travelling to and from this hive of hard-to-kill bloodsucking itch merchants for Ireland’s World Cup game with Scotland.

Remember last week when we were worried about the rugby fans singing Zombie? Wouldn’t it be nice to still be worried about that instead of having to lose the run of ourselves worrying that Ireland vs Scotland will be the Cheltenham 2020 superspreader event for bedbugs on these shores. 

The facts around the bedbug infestation have been somewhat hard to grasp, with local officials based in Paris using very different language to representatives of the French state government. 

French Minister for Transport Clément Beaune said there’d been “no resurgence of bedbugs” in Paris, and so there is no need for “psychosis” or “anxiety”. Deputy Mayor of Paris Emmanuel Gregoire, however, called on the state to eradicate the “scourge” of bedbugs on Paris. 

Who to believe? Co-founder of the Irish Pest Control Association Brendan Ryan told The Journal: “There is a degree of sensationalism going on with the reporting on bedbugs. In my experience it makes sense to be cautious anywhere you are travelling, without letting it ruin your trip.” 

Now typically, journalistic endeavours should not be guided by an irrational fear of bedbugs, but this is my column, and I happen to have an irrational fear of bedbugs. And I say: shut down the airports. Send in the army. Alert the Aertel defence system. 

Still, no matter how many bedbugs might end up making their way back to Ireland over the coming week, we must also be careful not to import a scourge even more virulent from our next door neighbours in the United Kingdom. 

Speaking in the wake of the Tory Party Conference this week, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said: “It does bother me to see the United Kingdom disengaging from the world – whether it’s reducing its budget for international aid, whether it’s leaving the European Union and now even talking about withdrawing from the European convention on human rights.”

Yes, the United Kingdom is disengaging from the rest of the world. Perhaps more frighteningly, it appears to be disengaging from reality itself. As the UK’s relationship with the truth grows ever more fractious, so too, naturally, does its relationship with the countries around it – countries which, for all their faults, make some fist of operating within the rather strict constraints of reality. 

In the last few weeks alone, there have been fabricated stories about councils that want people to use seven different recycling bins, a phantom meat tax, misplaced targeting of transgender people and extremely aggressive language about immigration. 

“That’s not the Britain I know,” Varadkar said this week, admitting “concern” at some of the language used during the Tory Party Conference, but of course, this is only the latest stop on a slippery slope Britain has been sliding down for years.

Sunak’s U-turn on the climate confirms that the UK is a country that is no longer taking its obligations to the global community seriously, and the divisive rhetoric that defined this week’s conference is only cause for more alarm.

Ireland must be increasingly wary of getting into bed with the United Kingdom. And not just because they’re connected to Paris by the Eurostar.

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