While perusing the interwebnet during my break, I discovered this story. And, at first, I thought it was a tad interesting, in an innocent sort of way. Someone paints a UFF mural on the side of a KFC on the Shankill Road, and financial pressure from the States causes KFC to remove it. Harmless enough, methinks; those murals are hardly what you’d call artistically meritorious, are they, and pressure on the head office is a handy way to achieve such ends.

But read deeper: it wasn’t local people pressuring the company; it was someone pressuring the New York City government, and then them pressuring KFC. Which is less to my liking; who things “Oh, we’ll sort something in Belfast by bitching to a local government official in the US”, and secondly, where does that local government official get off, acting like that?

And then it gets worse:

It said the KFC controversy “demonstrated the need for New York City to expand the scope of its enforcement of its statutory MacBride Principles mandates to include all companies with active franchise operations in Northern Ireland”.

It said this should be the case “even if they had no direct employees in the province”.

This annoys me on many, many levels. Like, for instance, is it not the case that foreign affairs have been delegated by the several states to the United States? Like, for another instance, is it not the case that what the Comptroller is talking about is actually bullying? Like, for a third instance, how stupid a word is Comptroller?

Not that things like this bother me, no sirree.