Free Charlie Gilmour

All praise to Polly Samson, wife of Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour and mother of Charlie, jailed for 16 months and now locked up for 23 hours a day for “violent disorder” during last year’s student fees protests in London.

At no point did Charlie offer violence to anyone. He was singled out after being photographed hanging from a Union flag on the Cenotaph in Whitehall and leaping onto the bonnet of a car in a royal convoy.
Naturally, none of the mob of Metropolitan Police who rampaged in central London at the time, inflicting bodily harm on peaceful citizens, has been brought to book. Instead, members of this corrupt and violent organisation have been garlanded with congratulation for a job well done by British politicians and papers.
Ms. Samson has described her son’s treatment as “an absolute disgrace” and “a waste of time and our taxes” and said that she is “so proud” of him. A good mother and a splendid woman, obviously.
Let me tell you again. There is no possibility – none whatsoever – of the Catholic Church making a genuine apology for the savagery and slavery inflicted by its clergy on innocent children down through the years.

The Church regards itself as the embodiment of God on earth. Canon law is therefore the Law of God and cannot be subject to civil authority. For the pope and the bishops, that’s the be-all and end-all. No amount of passion from Enda Kenny or earnest pleading by media commentators will make any difference.
Church leaders will tack and trim and put their best face forward when addressing the scandal in public. One or two may break ranks and acknowledge guilt. But the Church itself remains utterly unmoved. Bishops have the bare-faced cheek to blithely continue to pronounce on matters of morality without the supposedly secular media and allegedly angry political class telling them bluntly that their opinions on such matters are worthless.
The capo di tutti capi of the organisation, the self-styled Benedict XVI, has begun the process of declaring his predecessor and fellow-conspirator to cover up child sex abuse a saint. But when the risible day of canonisation comes round, senior Irish politicians will travel to Rome to applaud the farce.

Former Duke University basketball player Jon Scheyer has emigrated to Israel to join Maccabi Tel Aviv. Entitled to Israeli citizenship on account of being Jewish, Scheyer is now eligible for the national squad.
Scheyer’s signing-on ceremony last month marked the first day he had ever set foot in Israel. Meanwhile, Palestinians whose families have lived in the region for a thousand years are denied entry, much less citizenship.
The Israeli basketball league recently imposed a limit of four foreigners per team. So the search for Jewish players from other countries has intensified. Maccabi Haifa is in talks with the New Jersey Nets in hopes of signing point guard Jordan Farmar, while Haifa boss Jeff Rosen is supervising Jews-only trials in Florida.
“We are not limited by basketball,” says Rosen. “We would like to be the conduit for Jewish professional athletes.”
Will world governing bodies accept open religious discrimination of this sort, in defiance of every regulation on fair play and equality? Precedent says yes, no-one being eager to face the inevitable accusations of anti-semitism.

Ballymoney folk live longer than anybody else in the North – male life expectancy 78.0 years, female 82.6. Vibes of contentment eddying in from the Glens. A natural habitat, so, for the Pigeon Field Festival.
Pigeon Field Music and Film Festival makes its debut on August 19-20, covering music, movies, barbeques, poetical adventures and a range of other idylls of artistic endeavour. Katie And The Carnival. The Blair Witch Project projected in the woods. Paddy Nash of the Enchilada ensemble. Martin McDonagh’s breath-snatchingly horrible, side-splittingly hilarious Oscar-winning short, Six Shooter. Dave Duggan’s deceptively subversive Dance, Lexie, Dance. The recently much-missed Monaghan madam of blues, Grainne Duffy. The freshest airs of any festival in the land.
There’s a Two Minute Max film competition. Rock them with your reels. Tell them at [email protected] to expect you along. Films screened in the Dutch Barn in the farmyard. Dander around, take a gander at the geese.
It’s different.
Tickets £30 from wegottickets.com, Surf Mountain Belfast, Lavery’s of Belfast or via pigeonfield.com.

The head honchos of the FAI feel no need to explain why it was necessary for three top officials to travel all-expenses-paid for five days in Rio attending the 2014 World Cup Draw. The 90-minute ceremony cost Fifa $21 million. The cost to the deep-in-debt FAI of the presence of Chief Executive John Delaney, President Paddy McCaul and Secretary Michael Cody has not been disclosed.
While the top-flight trio of subsidised apparatchiks strolled the Copacabana and gazed upon fabled Sugar Loaf Mountain in their time off from schmoozing, Paul Doolin’s U-19 squad was boosting Irish football’s international standing with a thrilling run to the semi-finals of the European Championship. Despite the 5,000-mile distance, the FAI statement hailing this magnificent achievement contained proud quotes from Delaney and McCaul – but not a dicky-bird from Doolin.
And, of course, the Airtricity XI for the “Dublin Super Cup” was allocated a dressing-room with no shower and offered €300 apiece for their exertions.
How long before Irish fans force this bunch of useless bamsticks out of office? Don’t we owe it to the Beautiful Game?