Belfast Telegraph

Boris boobs again as border deadlock joke fails to impress young Dublin scientists

- BY ED CARTY

BORIS Johnson has poked fun at the Brexit impasse by asking if an atomic microscope could be used to split the deadlock on future cross-border trade.

On a visit to the Naughton Institute in Trinity College Dublin yesterday, the Foreign Secretary met scientists operating a scanning tunnelling microscope and said it looked like something from a Jules Verne novel.

“Do you think you could use this technology to have frictionle­ss trade?” he asked. “That’s what we need.”

The ground-breaking technology was not the only thing the Foreign Secretary had a gut feeling about as he also went on to sample a treatment for horses with stomach ulcers. During a whistle-stop tour of the neighbouri­ng Science Gallery, Mr Johnson dipped his finger in for a taste of the award-winning FenuSave, a natural equine remedy created by two Irish schoolgirl­s and sold in 14 countries worldwide. The Foreign Secretary asked entreprene­ur sisters Annie and Kate Madden: “Do horses like it? Is it good for human beings, because lots of human beings also suffer,” he said as he dipped in his forefinger.

“Yea, it’s hmmm. It has a bit of a kick on it.”

Mr Johnson added: “I don’t suffer from ulcers you know.”

The Madden sisters explained how their product was developed after they were prizewinne­rs in the BT Young Scientist competitio­n in Ireland in 2015, aged just 12 and 14.

Annie, now a transition year pupil at Loreto College in St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, said: “We would have tasted it just to see what it was like.

“It wasn’t that bad but I wouldn’t be eating it a lot.”

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Boris Johnson

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