The saga of Heather Mills

I’m a bit of a closet Bon Jovi fan. It’s not cool or particularly impressive but I like a bit of a boogie to some late 80s rock music now and again.
Yesterday, while reading the absolute blanket coverage of the McCartney/ Mills divorce saga I couldn’t help but play one of Bon Jovi’s cheesier songs through my head. Heather Mills, you see, gives love a bad name. But worse than that, she gives womankind a bad name and for that she should be deeply ashamed.
For a long time I reserved my judgement about Ms Mills - mostly because I’m of the general belief that people with a lot of money have a lot of power and I’m sure that Paul McCartney has not survived some 40 odd years in the music business without a bit of spin-doctoring here and there. But on Monday, as La Mills (to coin a very Derry phrase) threw the head outside the courtroom I made up my mind pretty damn quick that she was a self-absorbed, money grabbing harridan with no grip whatsoever on reality.
To stand on the steps of a courtroom and show her obvious disdain for getting £24million in a divorce settlement was a step too far in my book. This is a country where people are stuggling to make ends meet - where we on the verge of a recession and here is some silly old woman ranting on about her daughter not having enough money to fly first class. Boo bloody hoo.
Her settlement gives that daughter £35,000 a year to live on - not inclusive of school fees or exceptional extras. I would hazard a guess that most people in Derry than not don’t have that as an annual income on which to raise entire families.
Never mind struggling to pay school fees - in the real world we struggle to pay for school uniforms.
Heather herself gets a lump sum of some £16 million. Now, since we all sat down a few weeks ago and figured out what yer man that won the Lottery in the Waterside would get a week in interest, we can hazard a fairly educated guess that Ms Mills will earn in the region of £100000 a week, in interest alone. At that rate she can buy her own plane and fly herself first class after a couple of months. But that was not what she wanted.
No, she wanted £125million.
And part of that was half a million pounds a year just so she could go on lavish holidays. Out of that she wanted £35,000 just to pay for helicopter transfers. Someone should really direct her to the Translink website. Or maybe she should spend a week in a carvan in Kerrykeel to discover that lavish holidays aren’t the be all and end all.
Greed is not an attractive quality in anyone and even less so in someone who seems only too happy to dish the dirt and make a complete eejit of herself in front of anyone with a camera. It is not dignified or admirable to think you have a right to a life of privilege just because you happen to marry well.
Her marriage did not leave her without means or the ability to do what the rest of us do and just get a job - in fact it left her substantially better off that she could have dreamed from such an ill-fated affair.
For all his faults, Sir Paul has acted with remarkable dignity throughout this whole episode.
He has refused to comment and instead fought his battle where it should have been kept - in the court room. (Admittedly with the best of lawyers at his side). He, it seems, has put the needs of their daughter first. She has been provided for - amply and he has tried to keep her out of the limelight as much as possible.
He also not spent his time publicly villainising her mother - but then she seems to do a good enough job of that herself.
She is a woman who claims the cash will help her carry on her philanthropic work to which she has devoted her life. She has argued throughout that this is not about the money for her - this is about providing for their daughter and donating amply to charity. Funny, I’ve not see any big charitable announcements made amid the ranting and throwing of glasses of water over opposing lawyers.
I don’t know why Heather Mills annoys me so much - but when I see her I just feel so very disappointed. I hate the term gold-digger and I hate how people (mostly men) like to bandy it about as if a woman who marries someone wealthy is only after a fat pay cheque at the end of the day. But in this case Heather Mills has proved herself to be just that. She exudes greed and a lack of empathy and understanding for anyone else. To top it all off, she thinks we should admire her because she has overcome a disability.
As far as I’m concerned, her biggest disability is the inability to keep her mouth firmly shut.