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5 August 2004 Edition

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The 5th Column

Next England boss to resign in love rat storm?

THE 5th Column is in England for hush-hush talks with senior figures in the British Establishment (shush, don't tell anyone) and there is no more important figure in the media spotlight this week than the England soccer supremo, Sven-Goran Erikkson.

The Swedish maestro has been ruled offside for having an affair with a secretary at the English Football Association's Soho Square headquarters. Both are single, consenting adults but disapproving eyebrows are being raised about Sven's strike rate in the locker room rather than his performance on the football field.

Having bedded fellow Swede and TV hostess, Ulrikka Jonsson while still with long-time lover Nancy Dell' Olio, Sven's moral suitability to be the public face of England is being questioned and there are calls for him to stand down. But Erikkson is the manager of England, not the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Not too strange to report, though, that there is no similar outrage over another high-profile love rat, Charles Windsor, the self-styled Prince of Wales, next in line to the British throne — and to be head of the Church of England and above the Archbishop of Canterbury.

During his marriage to the angelic Princess Diana, remember, Charles Windsor was having a regular royal rumble behind the Windsor Castle potting shed with British Army officer's wife, Camilla Parker Bowles.

If Sven's bedroom farce means that he is not fit to front England FC, should it not follow that Charles 'Love Rat' Windsor is not fit to front England plc?

What the butler can't say

CHARLES AND CAMILLA aren't having it all their own way, though. The rumpo royals are having trouble recruiting housekeeping staff for their summer break at their Highland retreat in Bonnie Scotland.

Job seekers aren't flocking to Birkhall to wait on His Royal Idleness. A second round of advertising in the Scottish press has had to be launched after "disappointing initial results".

The main bar to aspiring flunkeys mesmerised by slooshing out the royal jerry can is the insistence that staff must be "discreet".

So the well-tugged forelocks of Chris Hudson and Eoghan Harris need not apply.

UUP Friday night fever

MINUTES of a meeting found in Westminster last week revealed that the Ulster Unionist Party was having a KARAOKE PARTY last Friday.

Much mirth there, no doubt, with the Fun Boy Three (David Burnside, Jim Molyneaux and Martin Smyth) slamming out those Spice Girls and Gloria Gaynor hits.

The 5th Column's invite was undoubtedly lost in the post, so anyone with the inside story can let us have the gory details with a promise of anonymity.

Guns on the run

THE BRITISH ARMY has "lost" a heap of weapons but brass hats are sure that they are NOT "in the hands of terrorists" even though they don't know where they are.

According to media reports at the weekend, a Ministry of Defence hunt, codenamed Operation Harangue, "has already recovered more than 81 firearms, at least 12,000 rounds of ammunition, explosives and a training aid for a rocket" in a swoop on a Norfolk farmhouse. ALREADY? So how much gear is missing from army arsenals that should have a little more security than the sweet counter at Tesco's?

Operation Harangue is continuing for more weapons missing from the 1st Battalion, King's Regiment. An MoD mouthpiece announced: "These weapons in the wrong hands could be lethal."

Of course, so could British Army files from Castlereagh being pored over by the UDA.

Water Rats scupper Daleks

A DOCTOR WHO film crew was nearly exterminated while shooting footage on the River Thames near Britain's Houses of Parliament.

The TV hero, who has survived sci-fi fiends ranging from the Daleks to the Cyborgs, almost fell foul of another race of unthinking, unfeeling automatons — the Met's River Police.

The BBC crew was filming the £3 million series when they strayed just a little too close to the Westminster teahouse. They were suddenly in a real-life drama, surrounded by gun-toting Water Rats in high-speed patrol boats.

Tragedy was averted by the BBC team being white.

Sack clots, not sashes

THE BRITS' Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has warned British Bobbies that they face the sack if they are members of the British National Party.

ACPO's Chris Fox said he was "extremely pleased" by the move. "Under this policy, no member of the police service, whether police officer or police staff, may be a member of an organisation whose constitution, aims, objectives or pronouncements contradict the general duty to promote race equality."

Peelers in the PSNI can still be members of the Orange Order, though, and still don't even have to declare their membership of the supremacist body.

Republican Labour ban

BRITISH LABOUR PARTY MPs have been banned from the floor of the US Republican Party Convention for the first time ever when the Bush bash gets underway in New York next month.

British Labour MP Alan Williams is "far from pleased" at the restriction being imposed on Blairite members of a cross-parliamentary delegation.

What really irks the Labourites is that the ban is not on security grounds because of some 'terrorist threat'. It's because "they are not conservative enough".

Go tell it to the Iraqis.


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