Over here, you do not simply open a new pub because you have a good idea and a few thirsty customers.

First, another pub has to die, and then you buy its licence, like a boozy hermit crab moving into a second-hand shell.

This is the so-called “surrender principle”, which in this part of the world sounds less like business regulation and more like the official philosophy of public life.

Which is how we have arrived at a headline nobody should be able to read with a straight face: Lidl is opening a pub in Dundonald.

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A real pub, with stools, pints and the distinct possibility of someone ordering a round while their fish fingers soften gently in the boot.

The obvious line is that this says something about modern retail, but really it says something absurd about our licensing laws.

The system is so byzantine that a German discount supermarket has concluded that the easiest way to sell drink in Dundonald is to become a publican.

And yet, for all that, I am not entirely convinced the old rules are without merit.........

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