10th April, 2011

This week has been, for me at least, a flurry of activity. Relocating to Belfast for a new job has caused my batter to be permanently switched to the “on” setting, except for Wednesday lunchtime, when everything came to a shuddering halt.

The crowds assembled at City Hall for the peace rally dedicated to Constable Ronan Kerr emitted silent condemnation with such intensity that it was genuinely quite powerful. The vision of mutual colleagues of the deceased, GAA players and PSNI officers, carrying his coffin in view of The DUP’s Peter Robinson at a requiem mass has consolidated the notion that Northern Ireland is not a place inclined to revert to old type.

Elsewhere in the world as the one nation finds unity in senseless violence, another takes senselessness of a very different kind to new levels. For the second time in 15 years (or third time if you count The West Wing, which of course I do) the US stared down the barrel of a government shutdown, as Republicans scramble to cut spending no matter what it costs and Democrats just scramble. Both the compromise and the cuts to the budget have been called “historic”, and as with most historical battles, the whole thing was prompted by something abjectly ridiculous. In this case defunding Planned Parenthood, a government organisation that does wildly irresponsible things like providing birth control and generally facilitating sexual health, was the sticking point that prevented the budget from being passed. Eventually Planned Parenthood was taken off the cutting block, but it’s further proof that Republicans are less concerned with being economically sensible than they are with being absolute dicks. After all paying for morning after pills or STD testing costs much less than, say, maternity leave, or day care, or getting treated for explosive gonorrhoea.

And speaking of unfortunate genitals, Wayne Rooney has got himself in a world of trouble for making the crucial mistake of expressing himself with any part of his body higher than his feet. As goal celebrations go, staring at the camera and shouting “Fucking what?” like he’s feigning menace at the policeman he’s throwing bottles at is pretty poor compared to Bebeto’s rock a bye baby, or even a hepped-up-on-goofballs Maradonna running to the camera like it a was a toreador’s cape. For lack of invention alone, he deserves a two match ban.

Invention was not on short supply down at United’s Premiership rivals Fulham’s homeground this week, it’s just a shame that everything else was. Chief among the things missing was taste, as their owner Mohammed Al-Fayed unveiled a statue of Michael Jackson that looks like it’s been made of paper mache. Better still, he told everyone who disliked the statue, that is to say everyone, that they could “go to hell”.

Though hilarious as that is, Al-Fayed couldn’t claim to be the top artistic story of the week, with that title going to one Joanne Salley. In a scenario that sounds like the plot outline of a Van Halen video, topless photos of the former Miss Northern Ireland and current art teacher at the all boys Harrow School were discovered by some students, and rapidly disseminated. In a mark of just how well brought up the good chaps at Harrow are, the Daily Mail reported that “pupils who forwarded these pictures to the Mail did so after censoring them with modesty boxes”. Of course, the more gentlemanly method of preserving their teacher’s modesty would be not sending the pictures to the Daily Mail.