TO Windsor Park on Saturday, not for the crunch clash between Linfield and Cliftonville, but to prove a point.
League of Ireland champions Shamrock Rovers fans scandalised Our Wee Country on the previous Thursday night, not by giving the Irish League champions Larne a batterin’, but by soiling the hallowed air of the National Stadium (Ts&Cs apply) with base sectarian chanting and vile anti-royal family abuse.
The great and the good of local football queued up to express their disgust at the chants of ‘Up the Ra’ and ‘Lizzie’s in a box’. There were distressing scenes as hardened, veteran Pravince pros fretted that Windsor’s reputation as a haven for cross-community harmony and all-round good behaviour would be sullied by the reprehensible behaviour of the Dirty Dubs.
Sadly, the Linfield Ultras hadn’t got the memo and at the match Squinter sat and listened as a lusty rendition of ‘We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood’ was followed by an even more impassioned rendering of ‘F**k Bobby Sands – he’s deid’ (in a corporate Scottish accent, for some reason). Meanwhile, in solidarity with their Free State Chucky comrades, the Reds fans belted out ‘Ooh, ah, up the Ra,’ a favourite of the Wolfe Tones.
Oddly, next morning and into the early week those people so determined after Thursday night to rid Windsor of objectionable chanting had lost interest.
Halloween half-term holiday, no doubt.
Belfast could well be cruisin’ for a bruisin’
’PARNTLY Belfast is rapidly becoming one of the world’s go-to destinations for cruise ships. Or at least, that’s what BBC Ulster told Squinter on Monday’s teatime news.
With the panting enthusiasm of a toddler full of Coca-Cola and Smarties at a leisure centre birthday party, the Beeb informed us that more cruise ships than ever had dropped anchor in our port this cruise ship season (April to October). 145 of them, to be precise, or just under three a week.
FALLING OUT OF FASHION: Cities the world over are reassessing cruise ships – but not Belfast
This, we were invited to believe, is A Good Thing. The world, unfortunately, begs to differ because across the globe popular tourist destinations are starting to turn their back on the monsters of the seas, either banning them completely or imposing robust restrictions.
There are multiple reasons for this, but the top three will suffice.
1. Carbon Yeti print. An idling ship in a port pours out the equivalent emissions of a medium-size town in order to keep the lights on, the food hot and the drinks cold.
2. Crowd pollution. Large groups of cruise ship visitors moving around city and town centres like herds of wildebeest, choking streets and blocking access.
3. Locked wallets. Having already paid for food and drink on board, day visitors take up a lot of space but spend relatively little on hospitality.
And as cruise companies find their options closing with every passing year, other, less glamorous – and less choosy – destinations – are sought. Like Belfast.
On BBCNI News tomorrow: Oh, look, there’s an airplane!
Jimbo in the big league
TUV leader Jim Allister was always going to be a big loss to unionist politics when he left Stormont for Westminster after taking the North Antrim seat off Ian ‘Air Miles’ Paisley in July. But he was also always meant for greater things and while we’re told that the DUP, Sinn Féin, Alliance and the SDLP breathed a sigh of relief when Jim packed his union jack suitcase and headed off to the Big Smoke, someone else was always going to suffer the sting of his barbed opposition.
And that someone – something, actually – is the Irish Sea border, which Jim has always bitterly opposed. The trouble was that there was only so much that he could do in the political backwater of East Belfast. That restriction was vividly illustrated back in June when the best that Sunny Jim could offer to his EU-sceptic supporters was a promise to see what he could do to save Tayto smoky bacon crisps.
PROMOTION: Jim Allister has made the big step up
The EU banned five smoke flavouring chemicals over concerns about their ‘genotoxicity – ie their potential to alter or damage the structure of human cells. This meant that Co Armagh-based Tayto will no longer be making smoky bacon crisps because Tandragee is in the Single Market. British crisp manufacturers, on the other hand, will continue to make them because, being outside the EU, Britain gets to keep cancery smoke flavourings because it’s in the sunlit uplands.
No sign yet of how successful Jim has been in his battle to maintain our access to genotoxic pretend bacon, but not to worry. He has launched another ferocious assault on Brussels – this time with the considerable power of the Mother of Parliaments behind him. This week Jim vowed to oppose pet passports which he said are making life difficult for people in Loyal Ulster who want to bring their “furry friends” from GB to This Here Pravince.
Smoky bacon.
Furry friends.
Loyal Ulster is safe.
Arnold's big driver
DONALD Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Monday evening resembled an SS reunion more than a political event, with one far-right whackjob after another queuing up, one cracking racist jokes about Puerto Rico.
But Squinter – like most people, he suspects – isn’t that exercised by the fact that Trump and his acolytes are cosplaying as concentration camp guards as election day approaches. Because Trump isn’t a committed Nazi. He’s not a committed fascist. He’s a committed ego freak. If closing down his hotels and golf resorts and turning them into centres for gay socialist migrants got him where he wants to go he’d do it in a beat of his shrivelled heart.
FUNNY FASCIST: Tony Hinchcliffe cracked a racist joke about Puerto Rico at Trump's NY rally
What was most interesting to Squinter was his opening speech at a rally in Pennsylvania a few days earlier when the Tango Tyrant was fondly remember his old pal, golfing legend Arnold Palmer. And what was it about the late multiple major champion that Trump admired so much? His sporting prowess? Not really. His business acumen? More likely, but still no.
What Trump found most remarkable about Arnold was the prodigious size of his nine iron; the length of his club; what he had in his golf bag. And since Squinter’s editor has just looked over his shoulder and said he has no idea what this is about, here goes: Trump admired Arnold because he had a very big penis.
And so he told the crowd about it – and oh how they laughed. Especially the Christian evangelists.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner
IF you thought Donald Trump divides opinion in our little corner of Paradise, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.
A pal who works in a Chinese restaurant enjoys nothing more after a hard night’s work than to relaxi with his colleagues and enjoy a few chicken feet. Bit of a Chinese, delicacy, chicken feet, but they don’t appear on the list of Chinese dishes that Irish people like, which as far as Squinter can see goes something like this:
1.Salt chilli chicken.
2. Gravy chip.
3. Salt chilli chicken with gravy chip.
NAILED IT: Chicken feet are considered a delicacy in China – not so much here
It’s the look of them that puts people off, let’s be honest about it. Squinter’s pal says that scaly skin is absolutely delicious when cooked in a soy-sauce and spice liquor. And he rolled his eyes in ecstasy when pointing out that there’s so much gelatin in chicken feet that as the cooking liquor cools it turns to jelly – that’s the dark substance on which the chicken feet in the picture on the left are resting. And while there’s only a tiny amount of meat between the toes, he says it’s quite heavenly.
Squinter would have a dig at most things, but he must confess that the news that the toenails are clipped from the feet before they’re cooked put him off them for life.
Squinter put the picture up on Twitter and many were reminded of pigs’ feet in Belfast bars of old. Which begs the question: Were pigs back then very small, or are chickens these days really big?
