Welcome to January’s final Something for the Weekend, which comes this week from a kebab shop in Peckham. Fortunately it has wi-fi. And is hypothetical.
In the Something for the Weekend closet today: the smell of Barack Obama; the fetishes of a Labour MP; the women playing with balls; and more!
» Good Week
It’s been a good week for the Prince Muhammad bin Fahd University’s female football team. They won a rare inter-college women’s football match in Saudi Arabia on penalties in front of a large female-only crowd in the university’s stadium.
According to Alarabiya.net:
The match is the biggest such event hosted by Prince Muhammad bin Fahd University and the first ever to see the home team playing against another team from Riyadh. The University has introduced women football some 18 months ago.
Suggestions that 16 of those 18 months were spent explaining the off-side rule are not to be entertained.
» Bad Week
Before we pick this week’s poor soul, it’s only right we spare a thought for the man who graced this section just two weeks ago. Yes, Peter Hain has shuffled off to spend more time with his lawyers, and has been replaced as Secretary of State for Work and Pensioners by James Purnell, whom you may remember from such blogs as this one. (James Purnell’s reaction to his promotion? Speechless.)
Tempting thought it is to give Mr Hain a second starring role, I’m going to risk reprisals from her minder to declare Home Secretary Jacqui Smith this week’s unfortunate. When she isn’t sneaking off to Peckham with her bodyguard for a (donor?) kebab at teatime or labelling a large chunk of the population as not-we, she’s trying to justify bad laws by inventing new words:
It won’t be hypothetical if and when it occurs. We are not legislating now on the basis that we are bringing it in now for something that might happen in the future; we are bringing it in now for something that might happen in the future; we are bringing in a position for if it becomes unhypothetical.
Another one for the New Labour Doublespeak Dictionary.