THE young woman who got Arlene Foster to pose for a selfie before bursting into a chorus of ‘Ooh ah, up the Ra’ was undoubtedly rude and daft to post it on social media.
Sinead Murtagh from Crossmaglen has taken a leave of absence from her role as a volunteer counsellor at a Co Armagh school following the episode.
It’s hard not to feel, however, that the Dame is milking her "hurt and disappointment" for all its worth. It is truly rich to see the DUP jumping on the bandwagon, agreeing that such behaviour has become "normalised" because Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill said months ago that there was no alternative to killing people during the Troubles.
I doubt very much if the young woman in question needed any encouragement beyond seeing a chance to have a laugh at Arlene Foster's expense.
And at the risk of being accused of whataboutery, it ill behoves politicians who've shared stages with loyalist paramilitaries and consulted their leadership on political matters, to start clutching their pearls over juvenile stunts.
Still, it helped to take the heat off Sir Jeffrey's embarrassment at being caught out over his much repeated claims that the protocol impeded cardiac surgery in the Southern trust... Which turned out to be totally untrue, according to the trust, or "not entirely accurate", as Jeffrey said.
The response from the trust was unusually robust and much more direct than we're accustomed to getting from government departments.
Let's have more of this fact-checking from now on. We get too many half-truths from some quarters.
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THE World Cup seems now to have morphed from a sporting event to some sort of philosophical moral maze.
The BBC didn't show the opening ceremony and instead spent the first programme discussing Qatar's lack of human rights for gay people and its appalling treatment of migrant workers.
It just gets so confusing. There I was applauding a terrific win by the unfancied team from Saudi Arabia, beating one of the favourites, Argentina. Then I remembered that the Saudi regime suppresses women, executes opponents wholesale and one of its leaders allegedly ordering the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi not so long ago.
Then we had Roy Keane opining that the captains of England and Wales, Harry Kane and Gareth Bale, had "bottled it" by changing their mind over their initial plan to wear rainbow armbands in support of gay rights in a country where homosexuality is illegal.
Fifa showed its customary moral corruption by waiting until the last minute to issue an edict that such action by the players would result in them receiving a yellow card. Two of these would mean missing a match, so they decided against it.
It's perhaps unfair to compare the players unfavourably with the two black US athletes who famously raised their gloved hands in a black power salute at the Olympics back in 1968. They did make the gesture, after they had competed, not before.
The boul' Roy says the two captains should have gone ahead and taken the punishment for the first game since they had stated their intention was to wear the armband.
It would have been a great message, he said. Even better would be an "I am Spartacus" moment, with all players from every team wearing rainbow armbands. What would Fifa have done then?
The Iran team showed them what courage looks like, first refusing to sing their national anthem and then their captain told a press conference the squad supported the women protesting against the regime. It makes taking the knee look a bit feeble.
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NO-ONE with an ounce of sense would want the Conservatives to win the next general election. And so far, the polls are putting Labour in a very comfortable lead, some 20 points ahead.
So why was Sir Keir Starmer quite so afraid to upset Daily Mail readers in his speech to the CBI conference?
Admittedly, after Boris Johnson's nonsensical ramblings about Peppa Pig to the same audience last year, he didn't have a hard act to follow.
But his comments on immigration – 'let's only let in the highly qualified' – and worse, "Make Brexit work", could have as easily dropped from the lips of any of the Tory frontbench.
Labour has changed, he said. Indeed it has, but until it stops being afraid of saying Brexit is not workable, it won't have changed for the better.
And when your comments are applauded by Nigel Farage, it might be time to reconsider.
