It took a while for our local form of rioting to die down once the English had sorted themselves out. We enjoy our rioting so much around these parts that we had to squeeze an extra couple of nights out of the whole immigration thing. But once loads of people turned up in the city centre on Saturday afternoon to put the other side of the story, the writing was on the wall.
Let’s hope, first and foremost, that it never comes back. We’ve got enough feckin’ problems in this part of the world without adding another cause to die for.
But, of course, it didn’t quite end there. The anti-immigration nonsense largely fizzled out on Friday and Saturday. Up in Derry, untouched by the immigation protests, things kicked off through the weekend. Not because of any colour or race issues, but because the boys were back in town. The Apprentice Boys, that is.
Cue unpleasant scenes and lashings of petrol bombs, some of them thrown by kids who looked far, far too young to be out doing that kind of thing. And that, sadly, is a common theme, whether the rioters are loyalists ‘concerned’ about immigration or nationalists who don’t like loyalist marchers very much.
The common denominator between the two sets of riots is that the PSNI had to wade in there and take a battering. Jon Boutcher must wish sometimes that he’d let Bobby Singleton win the race to be Chief Constable….and hurried off back to sleepy Bedfordshire. No budget and riots on a regular basis, it’s not an easy task.
The recent disorder has also caught a few of our esteemed commentators out. One of them, who shall remain nameless, suggested that parents in largely Protestant areas needed to step up their parenting skills to avoid kids going out and chucking stones at the cops. Within days, some of the parents of the Bogside proved that it wasn’t just the Prods by sending wains not long out of their Pampers out clutching wee Fanta-bottle size petrol bombs.
Maybe they even share a kind of perverse pride. Ah, would you look at wee Seamus/Billy (delete as appropriate), and he hit that Land Rover too……
We can all take some comfort in the fact that the Derry riots and the immigration ones were entirely localised. Most parts of the region weren’t affected at all.
Here in Bangor, a sorry-looking clutch of union jack wavers gathered outside a seafront hotel used to house asylum seekers, and were watched with passing interest by people enjoying a pint or two in the sunshine outside a neighbouring pub. As protestors go, this lot were about as useful as Anne Frank’s drum kit.
Bouncing Back To Trouble
Rishi Sunak may soon disappear off into relative obscurity, just another former British Prime Minister ekeing out a living on his memoirs and speaking engagements and borrowing a few quid every now and then from the wife.
But, if he has any kind of legacy, he’ll be remembered as Mr. Generous during the Covid pandemic.
Cast your mind back to the very early days of that pandemic when none of us in business knew what was going to happen to us, to our employees, to the businesses that we’d worked so hard to create and build up.
Until the aforementioned Mr. Sunak popped up on TV on a grim Friday evening to tell us about how he was going to provide lots of loans and pay our staff until the whole thing passed over which, if you remember, we all thought was going to be three weeks or so. A month at the outside.
But, now that it’s all in the dim and distant past, the chickens are coming home to roost. Apparently, the misuse of Bounce Back Loans during Covid has resulted in 155 ongoing director disqualification cases against company directors here in Northern Ireland. Fourteen people have already been banned from the boardroom and lots more are due to follow in their footsteps.
So all those stories about unscrupulous sorts snapping up the Bounce Back Loans and then using them to buy a wee cruise or a family trip to the Greek Islands were right then?
Ooh Ah, What A Palaver
That little ditty about the ‘Ra is back in the news once again and, as ever, the media look set to flog the story until it dies whimpering in the gutter.
It kicked off again down in Dublin when the Irish Olympic team arrived back in town. An odd time and place to start belting out Ooh Ah, Up The ‘Ra but there you have it. The poor BBC NI reporter had to be pulled off air pretty sharpish as the chorus rang out.
Following up on the story, and grasping at any available straw, the Belfast Telegraph then ran a piece about how the Wolfe Tones (whose political persuasion isn’t in much doubt, after all) were going to encourage the one and only Kylie Minogue to join in a wee rendition when they both appear at the big Electric Picnic music festival in deepest County Laois this weekend.
That would go down well in some circles but at least it’s down in Laois. The chances of Jim Allister being anywhere near the place are more than slim.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, the media also dug up a charming little video of a band playing ‘The Billy Boys’ at a club in Coleraine.
Some might think all of this is good craic. But, whatever way you cut it, they’re both hugely offensive songs to many people. Could we not just grow up?
Led By Donkeys
You’ve just got to love the Led By Donkeys group. They just don’t let the UK’s political classes get away with anything.
There was Liz Truss the other days, droning on about her new book to a paltry audience in Suffolk and pontificating about Donald Trump and the US Election, when the guys from Led By Donkeys unfurled a banner right behind her, featuring a lettuce and the words ‘I Crashed The Economy’.
Liz, perhaps not surprisingly, didn’t take it like a man….or whatever the woman equivalent of that is. She prompty stormed off stage and that was the end of that. The audience was probably relieved.
It’s the latest in a long line of excellent Led By Donkeys stunts. They’ve been around since being formed back in 2018 by a bunch of guys in a London pub and some of their poster campaigns in GB have been inspired.
Liz, not for the first time, had a sense of humour failure. She didn’t think it was funny. And she’s right. It was absolutely hilarious, made all the better by her reaction.
Scores On The Doors
It’s that time of year again. A (and AS) Level results will be dropping through the letterboxes this morning (Thursday). But wait, do they still post them or do the poor victims all have to troop off up to school to learn their fate? It’s been a while since we’ve had any skin in the game.
Still, it’s always much the same procedure. Education Ministers (our own included) will be out at schools to join in the fun. And TV and radio reporters will ask terrified youngsters to open their envelopes on air. Or at least pretend to do so. Just imagine opening the envelope in front of the camera to find that you’d got two E’s and flunked the last one?
It will also prompt stories about whether boys are better than girls. You’d think that, in these days of gender fluidity, that might not be PC. But apparently the boys are set to be on top of the girls this time around. If you see what we mean. Ooh, missus.
And finally, it will lead to the usual rash of bland social media posts from assorted celebs who didn’t do too well when they did their exams. Jeremy Clarkson has made an art form out of it over the years, but there are plenty of others who just love to point out that they were a bit thick back in the day….but still made it.
On a personal level, we didn’t cover ourselves in glory either. Nor did we make it to the big time. No lessons to be learnt here.
Goodbye Olympics….Bring On The Rugby
Whilst we enjoyed quite a bit of the Olympic Games, we weren’t among those who felt sad and displaced once it all ended on Sunday evening. In fact, we’d got more than a little fed up listening to Clare Balding, Gabby Logan and their guests celebrating exuberantly every time a plucky Brit came third.
Even that American sprinter chap who sounds exactly like Morgan Freeman managed to get enthused about plucky Brits.
All in all, we thought that the BBC’s coverage was pretty terrible. When big events were on, the producers took us elsewhere. Take the final round of the men’s golf. Just when we heard of Rory McIlroy’s climb up the leaderboard and were waiting for his ineviable implosion, we were stuck (with the rest of the BBC viewers) watching some large Asian ladies trying to rip each others’ big pyjamas off. Might have been judo, on reflection.
We all have our highlights. The big races on the track are always good value, and who could forget the French pole vaulter knocking the bar off with his, ahem, baguette?
For us, and a lot of you, it had to be Daniel Wiffen in the pool and Rhys McClenaghan winning gold on the pommel horse. We’d be doing well to get up on one of the bloody things, let alone do what he does.
Still, it’s all over now. Bring on the football and rugby.