Canadian PM Mark Carney dropped by the old homestead in Westport on Sunday evening and was presented with a civil scroll by the chairman of Mayo County Council. The honour marks his career and his standing as an unofficial ambassador for the county. The man has run two central banks, and now a large Western economy - I was hoping he’d have something to say about how he could pull a few strings and get the Mayo curse lifted.

During the presentation, he did an impression of Donald Trump, who apparently gave him a present a year and a half back, in the form of a key to the White House. Carney asked The Don what the key did, and Trump told him it would either let him in or get him shot, and probably the latter. It’s fair to say the Mayo crowd were a little less threatening. Which is also maybe why they haven’t won an All Ireland in so long.

Musk’s worth sky rockets

While Carney worked the room in Mayo, the richest man who has ever drawn breath was up to other stuff. Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on Friday, when SpaceX floated on the stock market and his net worth sailed past a thousand billion, a number so large it stops meaning anything, about twenty-seven million dollars a day for a hundred years.

And there’s me thinking Simon Harris’ savings and investments scheme might be my ticket to the big leagues.

Musk is now worth more than the entire gross domestic product of Ireland and spent a good portion of the last few weeks stoking up hatred in Belfast, of all places, where disenfranchised youth in loyalist areas are ripe for the picking on social media. It’s dangerous and a bit depressing and with AI likely to concentrate even more wealth in even fewer hands, it feels like strong moral leadership has never been so badly needed.

Mark Carney would certainly give you hope that the reasonable, democratic world we used to know still has power and the guy was pretty much elected to be the anti-Trump. But in a world of quasi-fascist trillionaires, data centres that soak up twenty five percent of the energy supply and Dua Lipa and Callum Turner renting Denis O’Brien’s yacht for €490,000 a week so that could take a breather from their wedding celebrations in Sicily…

Well, sometimes it feels like a revolution is in order.

Swiss stop short of cap

Speaking of, the Swiss held a referendum on Sunday on whether to cap their population at ten million, an idea born on the right wing and likened to their version of Brexit. Everyone seems to have their own Brexit these days. My theory is that we got it out of our system during Saipan and we don’t have the energy for another national argument on that scale.

In the end the Swiss thought better of it, about fifty-five percent to forty-five percent, having taken a long look at what bolting the front door might do to an economy that rather depends on people coming through it. I was speaking to a friend at the weekend, who works in the health service, and he mentioned that there would hardly be a person left to take care of us if the immigrants who work in our hospitals up sticks left in the morning. Unfortunately, although it seems like an obvious thing to say, it’s something we need to repeat loudly and clearly to all our young people now and in the years ahead. Because there are some very nefarious forces at work to tear it all down. And they are not telling the truth.

Donegal deal brings hope

Which brings me, as these things tend to, to a relatively petty grievance. On Saturday Cork went up to Ballybofey and beat Donegal, last year’s All-Ireland finalists, by a single point, coming from seven down to do it, in what was arguably the shock of the season.

And I did not see a second of it, because it was not on RTÉ and it was not on GAA+, the service I pay good money for precisely so that I might build up dangerous quantities of hope while watching the footballers.

Myself and Facthna were putting it down to some sort of anti-Cork conspiracy, led perhaps by the Bilderberg Group, Dua Lipa’s hubby and the Kerry County Board.

But our attention was suddenly grabbed by what we heard taking place on the radio.

Just like in the Meath game, the footballers took flight in the latter quarter of the match, raining in two-pointers to beat the band, and before you knew it we were bound for the quarter finals in Croke Park, another scalp for a team that is growing in confidence.

At the start of the year, myself and Fachtna sat in a Dublin pub and agreed that a quarter final appearance would be Cork’s best achievement for the season ahead. Our expectations have gone beyond that now.

Hope is racing through our veins and we are dreaming again. God help us all.