Sunrise management wishes to apologise for the ridiculous amount of cheesecake on these pages over the last week. We will endeavour to get this under control, lest this blog turn into Carry On Comrade. (We can’t have Confessions of a Militant, as Tommy Sheridan owns the rights.) But we promise that this time the illustration is actually journalistically justified.
Long-time readers will recall Belfast Telegraph columnist Gail Walker’s crusade against saucy schoolgirls, in particular pupils of Methodist College who had a tendency to walk around town in short skirts. We can report that Gail has secured a victory. As related on yesterday’s Talk Back and carried in today’s Tele, the start of the new school term is seeing a major uniform crackdown by Methody management. The knee-length skirt, we were told, will be rigorously enforced. Sheer stockings will also be banned, although I’m not sure why, as Methody girls seem to prefer the bare-legs-and-spray-tan look. The school will even be providing the girls with a helpful diagram so they know exactly what is acceptable.
All well and good, but as this blog has pointed out, the trend goes well beyond Methody. It is rife in certain schools – mostly middle-class schools, oddly, and more specifically Protestant grammar schools. Catholic schools and working-class Protestant secondaries seem more able to keep a lid on things. St Louise’s may have a reputation as the St Trinian’s of Belfast, but that’s down to boisterous behaviour, not risqué dress.
So I fully expect Gail to broaden out her campaign. With Methody having buckled under, now would be the time to get stuck into Victoria, Bloomfield, Regent and the other schools where a large percentage of the girls insist on wearing skirts up to their arses. Norn Iron’s public morality deserves no less.
Lurker said,
September 2, 2007 at 10:06 pm
South Belfast will never be the same again. And another thing, why is it that our friends in sluggerotoole are so blithely dismissing a significant cultural transformation like this.
A said,
September 13, 2008 at 11:42 pm
They never actually enforced this rule. I know because I was there in my short skirt and sheer tights. Frankly I’m disappointed they even pretended to, it just gave the impression that that dreadful excuse for a journalist has any sort of influence on our (formidable) school. I was always so proud of my establishment being impervious to all bitter outside griping. The whole situation was a tad pathetic, but I suppose even haughty and aloof Methodist College Belfast has to tire at some point of the same tedious bullshit from jealous, undereducated “journalists” who probably graduated from the University of Ulster with a third class degree in “media studies”.
But still, at least nothing actually changed. Nothing could change Methody, ever. As seen in the case of Ms Galloway who came in all guns blazing, trying to break our charming little traditions and, alas, was swiftly despatched. Moral of that little tale: don’t change things that have been working smoothly for nearly two hundred years!
splinteredsunrise said,
September 14, 2008 at 2:33 pm
She is a dreadful case, isn’t she? You would think that a distinguished school would respond to this daft woman by just ignoring her, but no…