Taking charge

The world’s biggest mobile phone makers have agreed to adopt a universal charger. That sounds handy. But it was something we reported on in 2009, when new phones were expected to benefit from interchangeable charger connectors from 2010. It’s now 2022 and still, unless you have the right charger, there is nothing you can do but watch your phone’s little display fade and die. Of course, no act is too simple and useful for the EU not to make it complicated and tiresome. So, from 2024, it wants to criminalise the sale of an iphone in Northern Ireland that is incompatible with other chargeable mobiles. That will make mobiles, along with the Irish language and Ulster Scots, bitterly contested. It’s like making it illegal to put jam first on a scone in Cornwall. And all we wanted was to be able to charge our phones.