Mark Andrews: Mini Holland, a mid-life crisis and how to stop football pitch invasions
Mark Andrews takes a wry look at the week that was.
Ugly scenes as Everton fans invaded the pitch after scoring a late goal which secured their place in the Premier League next season.
No doubt a few fans will be arrested, Everton will issue a few banning orders, and the Premier League will hold a toothless investigation followed by a paltry fine, which will be chicken feed to the club's mega-rich owners.
Well here's an idea: why doesn't the league introduce a new rule that any club failing to prevent its fans invading the pitch in such a manner will face a three-point deduction. Something tells me their celebrations might have been a little more restrained had that been the case.
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Congestion and pollution will be slashed under £20 million plans to turn Shrewsbury into "Mini Holland" where people will ditch their cars to travel around on bikes.
This is the kind of madcap idea you might expect to emanate from one of the smokehouses of Amsterdam. A bit like those plans that crop up from time to time when town planners say they are going to create a "European cafe culture" in West Bromwich.
Before committing too much public money to this scheme, maybe they should try riding a bike up Wyle Cop.
The reason everybody rides bikes in Amsterdam is not because millions of pounds of taxpayers' money has been spent on cycle lanes.
It is because Holland is flat.
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What is your idea of an idyllic Sunday morning? Tasty fry-up, followed by a nice gentle stroll in the sunshine, before settling down with the Sunday papers? Or, if you are Jeremy Webster it probably involves popping down to the convenience store for a box of free-range eggs, and then using them to pelt a statue of Margaret Thatcher. Getting your missus to film it on her mobile phone, obviously, and posting it on social media.
Talk about a mid-life crisis. I suppose it is better than gluing yourself to buses and blocking ambulances, but can you think of a more futile protest for a 59-year-old man than throwing eggs at a statue of a politician who has been dead for almost a decade, and retired from public life 30 years ago? Next stop Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald and Lord North.
It appears Jezza is "assistant director of Attenborough Arts Centre", part of Leicester University. Perhaps he was doing it as part of a performing arts course.
