In January, Oksana Sukanova had both legs amputated after suffering frostbite sleeping in shop doorways in Ballymoney, Co. Antrim, over Xmas/New Year.

One of the ambulance team said: “It was as if her feet had been dipped in acid.” Sacked from her meat factory job, Oksana lost her tied accommodation as a result, and immigration law stopped her seeking other work. The BBC reported that the 27-year-old Ukrainian “showed typical Russian stoicism”. Inquiries showed she’d been treated legally, no worse than immigrant workers generally. “There isn’t a scandal here,” concluded a spokesman for the local council, scandalously.
In February, Derry bishop Seamus Hegarty was rumbled by the BBC surreptitiously imposing a £200,000 levy on the laity to pay the diocesan sex abuse bill. The case behind the story concerned a priest who had paid a large sum to a man who claimed he’d been sexually abused during counselling for problems rooted in previous, childhood experience of sexual abuse.
The bishop, aware of the priest’s history, had sanctioned his appointment as a sex abuse counsellor. The mind still boggles. The bishop still hasn’t resigned.
Outrage emanated even from world bankers at Bush’s appointment to the World Bank presidency of Paul Wolfowitz – key architect of the Iraq war, and of the “reconstruction” strategy of handing the country over to US multinationals. Wolfowitz bid to soften his image by announcing he’d had a Patrick’s Day chin-wag with Bono. CNN quotes “a colleague” of the singer’s: “Bono thought it was important that he put forward the issues that are critical to the World Bank, like debt cancellation, aid effectiveness and a real focus on poverty reduction.” Long-time U2 admirer Derrick O’Keefe told Counterpunch that “egomania and naivety” had prompted Bono to believe he could coax a corporate gangster into humanitarianism. The excessively cynical reckoned that rich and powerful Bono just wanted to keep the world shaped to serve the interests of the rich and powerful.
Pyongyang football hooligans grieved Eoghan Harris on April 1st, when “mobs rampaged through the streets” of the North Korean capital, forcing police to “flee for safety,” following the red-carding of defender Nam Song-chol for giving Syrian referee Muhammad Kousa a dunt in the back during a World Cup qualifier against Iran.
Local fans reckoned Kousa might as well have been wearing an Iranian jersey. Eoghan has bravely refused to repudiate his Workers’ Party’s support for Fat Controller Kim Jong-il. Now he’s kept a dignified silence about the counter-revolutionary Trotskyite element attacking Kim’s peace-loving good-authority police. Inside, he’s ineffably sad.
None of Donegal’s six TDs showed up on June 10th for the only Dail debate there’s been on the Morris Inquiry into the biggest garda scandal in the history of the State. No national newspaper wondered why. Jim McDaid (Inisowen) issued a statement suggesting that Richie Barron – the road accident victim Frank McBrearty Jr. was framed for killing – may have been murdered after all. Justice Sean McBride was a Fianna Fail activist in Moville before being nominated to the bench.
The July 6th march on G8 leaders might have been angry and big enough to run the parasites out of Gleneagles, had G8’s musical wing Live 8 not organised a counter-demonstration which drew 40,000 to Murrayfield to see Annie Lennox squander two decades of accumulated credibility. The businessman Sir Bob Geldof announced, with a straight face, that President George Bush had done more for Africa than any other human being alive. Jon Snow of Channel 4 News declared that there was no need for balance in coverage, Live 8 being “above contention”.
The Bloody Sunday Inquiry confirmed on August 20th that Belfast-born Daily Mail Iraq war hero Tim Collins “has accepted…that it cannot be accurate”, as he’d written, that one of the rifles used in the 1972 Derry massacre had been recovered in 2001 by members of the battalion which had committed the massacre from the Sierra Leone rebel group, the West Side Boys (WSB).
As in Derry, the paras suffered no injuries. Not as in Derry, there’ll be no inquiry into the WSB deaths.
John Motson went to Northern Ireland training at Newforge “to work on player recognition”. Wasn’t entirely familiar with Craig Baird (Southampton Reserves). Drove Wayne Rooney to distraction, did Craig, at Windsor on September 6th. Motty reckoned Lawrie Sanchez’ team talk “magnificent…stirring…a marvellous feat of management”. I remember Lawrie at Sligo Rovers. Came up twice against Derry City. Given a pasting both times.
Ryanair developed a blind spot for people with disabilities, turfing six sightless and three partially-sighted passengers who had been en route to Italy for a long-planned holiday-of-a-lifetime off a plane at Stansted on October 10th. Trip organiser Katherine Hurst said they’d been told that, “We have too many disabled people on this flight.” In the same week, the heavily-subsidised carrier went to the Supreme Court to fight a ruling that it should negotiate pay with the pilots’ union. Like many bullies, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary is a coward, who still refuses to debate with me in public.
The December 1st 50th anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white man – sparking the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott which led to the Supreme Court outlawing segregation on buses, planes and boats and trains – was marked at Sandino’s by a Love Music, Hate Racism gig featuring Fighting with Wire, Civilian and Amaranth, a night for clenched fists and true remembrance. Rosa died at 92 on October 25th. Was awhirr in her grave at being mourned by mates of Bono until crooned to rest by Civilian: “We’ve been used again, but I’m holding on/Time for one more lie before they walk right by/Stepping out of line might get us noticed/Now we’re lost again, but we’re holding on.”
Hold on. New year coming.