SQUINTER loves a candle – who doesn’t? He especially loves a candle at Christmas – apple and cinnamon; ginger and pine needles; Bailey’s and Harp. (That last one not available until next year.)
And the best candles are Yankee Candles, right? At least, they should be at an average of £24 a pop, which is what they cost when Squinter took a dander around the Yankee Candles store in the Rushmere Shopping Centre in Craigavon at the weekend.
You can get them cheaper elsewhere, of course. Candles which are virtually identical in size and appearance can be had in the big supermarket chains for anything between a fiver and a tenner, but Squinter can’t get dismiss the feeling that with such a massive gulf in price there has to be an equally massive gulf in quality.
And so he put the question to his chums on Twitter and back came the usual broad range of replies – some on-message, most not. But what Squinter did learn is that Yankee Candles – just like their cheaper rivals – are made out of paraffin wax, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit manky and not great for your lungs – or the planet.
Crayons are made out of paraffin wax too, and when you think about it the two do look and feel very alike. But you wouldn’t set fire to a crayon – unless you’re Jamie Bryson and the News Letter stop printing your letters.
’Parntly soy wax is the way to go if you want a clean, green Christmas candle. Quite a bit more expensive, though. As if £24 wasn’t dear enough.
Bridging the policing gap
SQUINTER visited the Boyne Bridge on Monday morning. Not the one in County Meath/Louth, the one near Sandy Row.
Since the Trevors had clearly decided that a death threat to workers dismantling the bridge as part of the new Grand Central Station masterplan was too dangerous to remove, Squinter decided to give it a bash, without either gun or armoured vehicle.
And it was a doddle. In bright autumn sunshine (the video’s on Twitter if you haven’t seen it), Squinter sauntered across the junction where the big sign and accompanying union jacks are to be found and stood giving it a juke for a while.
It’s light (plywood, maybe?); it’s not nailed down; it doesn’t have barbed wire around it; it’s not booby-trapped (or if it was rigged to go off it didn’t when Squinter touched it); it’s not guarded by loyalist heavies. It would have been the simplest of tasks for Squinter to put it in his car and drive off.
By teatime the sign still hadn’t gone, despite Squinter taking his life in his hands to prove that it could be removed if the will was there. It wasn’t.
It would have been a better video if Squinter had removed it, but we all remember, don’t we, when a bloke in Moygashel tried to remove a lamppost tribute to the UVF gang which slaughtered the Miami Showband. He got scooped – the lamppost remained untouched.
So it’s as you were for the Boyne Bridge sign – and as you were for the RUC.
Naming the war names
WHILE the screams of the burning innocents from the latest Israeli bombing of a refugee tent down were filling the air, Hezbollah targeted an IDF base in a drone attack.
Four Israeli soldiers were killed and around 70 injured as the remotely controlled device slammed through the roof of the base’s dining area.
Sky News reacted quickly, just falling short of declaring a national day of mourning with the headline ‘Israel has named the four teenage victims of a Hezbollah strike on a military base’.
Included in the story were pictures of the four dead soldiers – sorry, teenage victims.
The second part of the headline read ‘At least 23 people were reportedly killed in an attack on a central Gaza school’. Not only were none of the names of the dead Palestinians included in that bit of the story, no pictures of the dead were used either.
Note also that dead people in Gaza are ‘reportedly killed’, which is English media-speak for saying ‘Be careful with this – it’s Muslims saying it.’
And then we move on to the little matter of Sky omitting to mention in the headline who blew up the school, reportedly or otherwise. Was it International Rescue what done it? The Moonies? The Salvation Army? Or was it the IDF? If we’re relying on Sky to tell us we’ll have a long wait.
“Israel is trying,” reports Sky, “to critically weaken Hezbollah so tens of thousands of its citizens under threat from rocket attacks can return to homes near the border.”
That bit might as well have been copied and pasted from an IDF press release because the vast majority of people on this planet don’t believe that’s what Israel is doing. And yet – surprise, surprise – Sky doesn’t say that this is what Israel is saying it’s trying to do; it’s saying it’s what it is trying to do.
Trying times indeed.
Kangaroo barristers
SOMEBODY made an allegation against a TD which Sinn Féin looked into but the allegation was such that Sinn Féin should have told the Garda or perhaps the TD should have told the Garda but he decided not to because something about something else and while we don’t know what the allegation is it’s definitely nothing to do with the fella it was made against who has now left the party and wants the party to look into why nobody told the Garda but especially Sinn Féin.
And breathe...
Squinter thinks he’s explained the Brian Stanley affair quite well here, although apologies if you don’t quite get it because he doesn’t quite get it either. Which, to be honest, isn’t great when you’re trying to explain something.
Oh, and there was a kangaroo court. Not one involving zip ties, bin liners and three Hucklebucks in balaclavas in a South Armagh barn, a kangaroo court which involved Mr Stanley being asked questions by a panel while flanked by his solicitor and his barrister. The woke mind virus is spreading rapidly, as we know, but seldom has there been such a flagrant illustration of the danger of wokery than the suggestion that a kangaroo court can involve HR and legal professionals.
The story might be hard to grasp, even – or especially – by the people writing it. But that’s kind of the point. Like the fortnight-long SF references story, it’s not what you’ve done to get you in the headlines that matters – it’s that you’re in the headlines.
Roll on the election.
Free Gear Keir has dropped whatever pretence he put on
FREE Gear Keir’s latest promise to the people is thrilling proof that it’s true what his supporters said pre-election.
What they said was that Keir (left) and his equally adenoidal sidekick drones were really only saying Tory things to win back the Red Wall voters who gave Boris Johnson his big majority in 2019. What they said was that once he get into power he’d keep the red flag flying high, the pretence would be dropped and the party of Labour would be back having the backs of the working people.
This week Keir announced that his next big plan is to get rid of regulation that is “needlessly holding back investment”.
He said this not long after the end of the Grenfell Inquiry and you don’t have to be a structural engineer or a fire chief to imagine what the next Grenfell will look like when profit-chasing investors are allowed to build big tall buildings whatever way they want.
Two-child benefit cap; winter fuel allowance scrubbed; the green light for Israel; ministers knocking each other out of the way to get at the freebie trough.
Keir Hardy Har Har.
