A small light went out in my life when Becky left Coronation Street. But at least they gave her a happy ending, off on the arm of a man who loves and respects her, hand in hand with his five/six year-old son, the child she’d always craved but couldn’t have, for a new life in sunny Barbados.
 
Katherine Kelly had made of Becky – earrings, fags, peroxide hair and no sense at all when it came to men – a fierce, fragile, constrained free spirit, a dare-gale skylark scanting in a dull cage, weaving an uncertain way in tottering heels and the sexiest leggings ever pulled on through indomitable hope and repeated betrayal, always in trouble.
The role required an actor of rare sensitivity and range, capable of conveying within the conventions of soap opera complex emotions to flicker on the face. Ms. Kelly emerged as a formidable talent, the only actor I can think of whose respect in the profession was hugely enhanced by a longish stint in a soap.
She opened within a week of leaving the Street, on January 24, at the National Theatre in London, playing Kate in Goldsmith’s She Stoops To Conquer, to splendid reviews. From Corrie to the classics in one sassy skip.
Beautiful.
 
“Don’t travel home at 5pm. Go down the pub and travel at 6.30pm.”
Transport for London commissioner Peter Hendy’s strategy for easing Olympic congestion.
 
Remember that fellow from the North who made a stirring speech to his troops before they stomped into Iraq?
Never happened, of course. The only record of the alleged oration came from an embedded Daily Mail hack. But the story made the guy a hero to hero-worshippers of war. He was played by Kenneth Branagh on Channel 4.
Reputation as a charismatic commander established, Tim Collins bought himself out of the army and set up a “military consultancy”, New Century, which last year landed a $45 million Pentagon contract to train the Afghan army and police how to “find and cultivate informants among the Taliban.” Intelligence Online reports that, “Most of the instructors are not US but Northern Irish, former members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which for many years was in the front line of Britain’s combat with the IRA.”
New Century’s website doesn’t mention Collins’s desert heroics but boasts that he was “Operations Officer of 22 SAS and subsequently commander of the Royal Irish Regiment in East Tyrone (Northern Ireland)... worked closely with the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch.”
Collins hired former chief superintendant Norman Baxter, ex-liaison officer between the Special Branch and MI5, as director of doctrine, standards, audit and training. (Doctrine?)
Mark Cochrane came on board as consultant programme manager, training and compliance: “For over 20 years he was employed in counter-terrorism duties... was the officer in charge of covert police training within the PSNI.”
“Compliance. Now what could that be about?
Human resources manager, ex-commando Steve Smith, “served on eight operational tours in Northern Ireland in support of the RUC/PSNI in areas as diverse as South Armagh and West Belfast.”
New Century’s Training Coordinator in Afghanistan is Mike Wilkins, who from September 2006 to September 2010 was based in Belfast as senior investigating officer with the historical enquiries team.
What New Century offers the US/Afghan rulers in Kabul is, obviously, precious expertise gained in combating the IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries. Sharing their experience with equivalent outfits on the other side of the world.
Who says the age of global solidarity is gone?
Meanwhile, the DUP/Sinn Féin northern duopoly is pleased as punch that FBI agents are to train at the new £140 million emergency services academy at Cookstown, set to open in 2015.
“We have a real product to sell here,” says PSNI Deputy Chief Constable Judith Gillespie.
Who says the struggle wasn’t worthwhile?
The Northern troubles, the conflict that just keeps giving.
 
There may be some out there still who haven’t encountered Connor Kelly’s ‘Tell Me That We’re Human’.
You’ll find it on soundcloud: soundcloud.com/connorkellymusic/tell-me-that-were-human.
Or via connorkellymusic.tk.
Seriously. Listen. 
 
A teenage girl has been ordered to pay compensation to her high-school after losing a challenge to her sacking as a cheerleader for refusing to chant the name of a basketball player who, she says, had raped her.
The Supreme Court ruled that HS was representing the school – Silsbee High in south-east Texas – and not herself when cheerleading, and therefore had no right to refuse an order to applaud.
HS alleges that Rakheem Bolton raped her at a student party when she was 16. In court, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanour assault and was sentenced to two years probation. He returned to school and the basketball team.
Four months later, in January 2009, HS stood silently with her arms folded at the edge of the court as Bolton prepared to take a free throw. “I didn’t want to chant his name,” she explained. “I didn’t want to encourage anything he was doing.”
Told by school superintendant Richard Bain she must cheer all the players, including Bolton, she said she would not. Bain dismissed her as a cheerleader.
HS sued the school. The case reached the Supreme Court last month. She has now been ordered to pay $45,000 to compensate the principal and the school for what she’s put them through.
What a deeply wronged, admirable young woman. Further than that, no comment is called for.