In three weeks’ time I’m heading off for a city break to Belfast, and I’m counting the days.

It’s the chance to catch up with family, friends and sleep.

On visits there I also make a point of reacquainting myself with the local news. Following it on websites is, for me, not the same as reading newspapers or watching TV bulletins.

But some news from Northern Ireland does make its way into the papers and bulletins on this side of the Irish Sea. At the moment it’s a row over abortion.

Next year abortions after six weeks are going to be banned in Georgia, in the United States. So two companies, Disney and Netflix, are considering pulling productions out of the state.

Now campaigners are asking why they aren’t pulling out of Northern Ireland too. The laws against abortion are far more restrictive there.

Around 28 women leave the province every week for an abortion. The police have raided houses and workplaces in search of abortion pills.

Northern Ireland is part of the UK, as every unionist will tell you. Its citizens pay into the same National Health Service as the rest of Britain. Yet they aren’t granted the same free health care. That’s why 75 per cent of people there want a change to the abortion law.

It ought to be a place where women’s rights should be a high priority. Women occupy a lot of high places in politics.

The leaders of three of its five main political parties are women. If the Stormont assembly was up and running again, the first minister would be Arlene Foster and her deputy would be Michelle O’Neill. The province’s three newly elected Euro MPs are all women.

Yet while the rest of the UK is making progress on issues like domestic violence, upskirting, period poverty and gender pay gaps, Northern Ireland isn’t.

Personally I doubt whether the state of Georgia or Northern Ireland will drop their abortion bans because of a boycott by Disney and Netflix.

But there’s something pleasing to find the abortion row at the top of the list. For close to 30 years it was dominated by violence.

What made the murder of 29-year-old reporter Lyra McKee all the more shocking was because it was the kind of news that was rarely heard about now. It brought back unhappy memories.

The dominant news stories now are contentious but usually non-violent.

We’ve had “cash for ash” for example, in which £500 million was wasted on a renewable energy scheme. Some people were heating empty buildings just to collect the payments.

Then there was a row over a law granting official status to the Irish language Sinn Féin want one and the DUP don’t.

The Northern Ireland Assembly has earned a place in the record books by being suspended for a total of 31 months.

And we have our comic characters that add to the gaiety of the small nation. Most people’s favourite was former MP Iris Robinson, who regularly raged against homosexuality, stating in an interview: “It is the Government’s responsibility to uphold God’s law.”

It soon emerged that she wasn’t taking as rigid a stance on another of God’s laws, the Seventh Commandment, which states: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” She was having an affair with a 19-year-old.

Or there was Ian Paisley Junior, MP for North Antrim like his father before him, who keeps forgetting to declare his interests.

He was suspended from the House of Commons for 30 days for not declaring two luxury holidays in Sri Lanka, paid for by the Sri Lankan government – a government accused of serious human rights violations.

Undeterred he went on holiday to the Maldives, another nation accused of human rights abuses. He insisted it wasn’t paid for by the authorities there, but partly by himself and partly by a friend. He didn’t say who the friend was.

In 2007, he lobbied for a builder called Seymour Sweeney to win the contract for a new visitors’ centre at the Giant’s Causeway. He denied any financial relationship with Sweeney, but did admit that he had taken him deep sea fishing.

This is the sort of news everyone would much rather have. As they say at home, it was great craic.

The last time I was home, a friend told me he was considering applying for planning permission to extend his house.

Take Paisley Junior deep sea fishing, I advised, and he’ll see what he can do.