Jean McConville: one of Belfast's stubborn ghosts All of which brings us to last week, and the decision by Boston College to co-operate with the Police Service of Northern Ireland's request to hand over archived tape-recordings. In these, Ed Moloney and colleagues had extensively interviewed former IRA members and loyalists with the promise that the information would not be made public until after their deaths. The PSNI wishes, however, to scrutinise the content in a review of the McConville murder, for which no one has ever been charged. And therein lies a grotesque dilemma shaped by the "peace process" itself. It was a central tenet of the "peace process" that justice, as dispensed by the courts, be comprehensively overturned. Republican and loyalist prisoners, guilty of appalling crimes, were released from prison. Sinn Fein was rendered respectable, and McGuinness and Adams were nudged towards the top political jobs as a way of tethering the peace. The British government knew all about Adams's background - they had long-standing informants at the very heart of the IRA - but the era of mass denial had begun. In such circumstances it has fallen to courageous journalists such as Mr Moloney to deliver their own form of justice, by uncovering uncomfortable facts and allegations and placing them firmly in the court of public opinion. The PSNI subpoena puts him and his colleague Dr Anthony McIntyre in an impossible, and potentially dangerous, position. Yet one can equally understand the fierce yearning of the McConville children for legal resolution. Two forms of justice are at odds. Could Adams be implicated in a criminal prosecution over the McConville case? There remains the great difficulty of getting witnesses and evidence into court, a process for which there will be scant enthusiasm on the part of the British and Irish political establishment. The affair is set to thicken unpredictably, with only one certainty: the questions stirred up by it will prove troublesome for Mr Adams. The ghosts of victims have long had a particular resonance in Irish history, and - as Sinn Fein knows only too well - you can't shoot a ghost. Handy hints for surviving the flight A furious row erupted last week on the flight from Dubai to Manchester, after a teenager reportedly reclined his seat while the gentleman behind him was eating his in-flight meal. It doesn't surprise me, really: the Badly-Timed Recline is a move high up on the list of airplane irritants. Add to it a passenger with a short fuse, and the results can be explosive. The golden age of air travel has disappeared, and with it the sense that every passenger had somehow joined a VIP club by mere dint of being airbound. Instead we are crammed together in economy class, sulky and harassed. Still, there are some simple rules that - if only passengers abided by them - could restore some hint of civility to proceedings. Do not permit your small child to pass the time by rhythmically kicking the seat in front. Conversely, do not turn around in your seat to glare pointedly at flustered people in charge of a wailing baby: believe me, it doesn't help. If you are a generously built individual, it might be more comfortable for all if you selected an aisle seat - allowing for "spillover" in the no man's land of the central walkway. Do not ask the stewardess, in a throatily conspiratorial voice, for a handful of extra miniature gin bottles shortly after take-off: you will quickly establish yourself as "one to watch." Finally, should others ignore these suggestions, do practise transcendental meditation. Silently. Learn the facts of life in Poundland Poundland has been in the news, due to the legal case brought by the young graduate Cait Reilly, who argues that being made to work for two weeks at the store as a condition of receiving jobseeker's allowance was an infringement of her human rights. But it reminded me none the less what a cheering thing a visit to Poundland is: in the current inflationary climate, in which salaries are effectively shrinking, its self-imposed price-cap is a great consolation to the worried shopper. There are reasons to shop at other stores, of course: a broader range of produce, convenience, or the offer of delivery for those of us without cars or time in which to lug home the week's shopping. Yet all such considerations momentarily fade as one merrily constructs a cut-price trolley-full in Poundland or its undercutting cousin, the 99p store. Indeed, I rather think that a fortnight in Poundland might be intellectually quite well spent, in consideration of the organisation of the economy, and the psychology of the British shopper. Sometimes knowing the price of everything - to amend Oscar Wilde's maxim - can teach you the value of something, too.