Vivaldi browser not opening some links on websites

I solved this myself so am posting for the benefit of others.

I found that with a particular news aggregator site, none of the main story external links would work. Mousing over them showed the URL but nothing happened when clicking.
Other internal links on the site worked fine.
hhhmmm...strange...
Firefox opened the site fine, so I spoofed FF, and Chrome and Edge, but to no avail.
I went through the source code but didn't spot anything.
I saved the site locally, opened it and the links all worked!
So I started going through settings and found the culprit - block ads on abusive sites.
Now, this isn't an abusive site but whatever...

also in privacy and security there is a place to put exceptions
you could put Windows 11 Forum URL in there and disable blocking for just this site
without disabling 'block ads on abusive sites'

best of luck, Steve ..