Holylands Warzone

This is not Evidence

2009-05-05T04:43:00.003-07:00

Click to enlarge:-

The police, and the Ombudsman's office, withheld these from the prosecution. They really like to protect their friends from Justice.

This is what happens when you stand up to a fake residents' group. When I walked down to Donegall Pass, leaving a trail of bloodspots on the way, the police sent the ambulance away. I was taken into a small room where a number of officers proceeded to bully me. I was told not to press charges and cautioned for the crime of criticising Katrina O'Neill. They falsely claimed that many public representatives have used the harassment legislation to silence their critics. It would be correct to say, however, that this law exists to stifle dissent. It has been used repeatedly by corporate interests to prosecute those who expose their evil deeds.

It is hard to deny that the police have endorsed the violence inflicted upon me. They refused to investigate for six months until I revealed the false name used by my assailant and his puppetmaster, Miss O'Neill. When the police finally went through the motions they cautioned me with the usual counterallegations and insisted the photographs were inadmissable.

For eighteen months a disk, and evidence statement, have languished in the care of the Ombudsman's office who insist they are for their own use and not to be passed over to the PPS. They have even tried to rewrite the Rules of Evidence, an affront to the intelligence of any criminal counsel.

The attack on me two years ago was attempted murder. Had it happened as planned, on a dark night rather than in broad daylight, I would be dead, Mr Catney would be walking free, as he is now after perjured evidence got him acquitted. And an act of instrumental violence would have made it clear that you do not criticise certain people. The various bogus allegations made by Miss O'Neill and her extended family would have posthumously smeared my name.

I am alive yet live forever in the shadow of death, waiting for a police informer to finish what he started. Every day I live is revenge.

One Day in June

2009-05-05T04:43:00.001-07:00

I see them across the street. My summer day's daze is shattered.

It begins.

“What the fuck are you lookin' at cunt!!”

“....I was just saying hello.....”

It's no use. He has the predator's stare. He's in terminal homing phase like a guided missile.

“Who the fuck are you to talk about my wife!!”

Say nothing. Match his stare.

“I'm gonna cut out your eyes and rip out your throat”

Show no fear.

“It's up to you”

We're nose to nose. I'm falling. He follows through and I know to kick up.

Kick up. Don't stay on the ground.

I'm on my feet. We're eye to eye. Katrina's screaming. He ignores her. Only his target exists.

“I'm gonna cut out your eyes and rip out your throat”

Now!

I head-butt him. He staggers. I try to punch him. He calmly steps aside and I go spinning. We carousel from one side of the street to the other, his feet hitting my eyes. I feel nothing; thuds, but no pain.

I'm on the ground. My head is hitting the pavement. And I feel no pain.

I'm on my back. I can't breathe. He has me in a neck-vice.

Pull his arms loose. Gulp air.

The vice closes.

No air.

Pull. Hit him with the back of your head.

“Can't....breathe....”

Above me Tony's watching. Through his thick lenses his piggy eyes are filled with jubilation.

No air.

Pull. Gulp air.

Roll.

I'm on my knees in a doorway.

“I'm gonna fuckin' kill you!!”

Pull. Gulp air.

“Everybody dies! Fuck you!!”

I know I'm dying.

No air.

Roll. Punch.

Katrina's screaming,

“Get my Daddy! Get my Daddy!”

No air.

Roll.

Mark is watching. He's waiting for me to die.

Roll.

Keep breaking the neck vice.

Breathe.

I see sky. His hands are round my throat and I'm punching impotently up at him. He's laughing.

Kick.

Roll.

I'm on my knees.

“I'll stop if you apologise.”

“Fuck you! I'm apologising for fuck-all!!”

It ends.

The world is spinning. I fall onto my backside.

Two girls are looking at me. They can't be more than eleven.

“Why did you not apologise when he said he would stop?”

“I don't think I have anything to apologise for.”

“I suppose you're right. It's not nice someone being a Tout”

My head's sticky. I pull my hand away and it's covered with blood. I murmur something.

“What the fuck did you say!!”

It's Bernard; her father; yesterday's Republican.

“I said my head's bleeding”

“I have no more fuckin' patience for you!!”

I stare at him.

“Stop Fuckin' Filmin' This!!”

He's storming across the street, screaming up at a window.

I see Tony. He's moved away.

“I hope you're proud of yourself Tony”

It's the least I can say.

I stagger to my feet, swaying, then collect my coat off the ground where it fell; over where it all began so long ago.

“Are you okay?”

It's a motorist. He's shocked. He's staring at me and I don't know why.

“I've had better days”

I stumble off down the entry.

Don't go to your own house. It's not safe.

Tell Suzanne.

I go to her house. Damien answers.

What does he see? He can't believe it.

“What the Fuck!! What happened??”

“Katrina's boyfriend”

“You look like someone tried to kill you”

“He did”

“You need to go to hospital”

“I need to speak to the cops”

“Get the station to call you an ambulance”

“Okay”

I turn to go and from across the street comes Karen. The colour has drained from her face.

We walk down Botanic Avenue and I pause at Clements. I have to go in. Everything stops and heads turn.

Where is Jane?

Open mouths and goggle eyes have no answer to my silent question.

She'll think I've stood her up.

Time to go.

The station has no cops. The girl behind the desk calls an ambulance. She gets water. My hands are staining the glass with blood. There's something on my tongue. I pull it off. It's a slice of tooth.

The ambulance comes.

“That's a nasty head wound. You need that X-Rayed and stapled. You've got concussion. You could have a closed head injury. You need to go to hospital.”

The cops arrive. There's a flood of them.

“We need to talk to him”

The paramedics leave.

We go into a small room. There are two seats. I take one while they stand.

Good Cop speaks,

“You got a couple of digs in”

“That's nice to know”

“You've been harassing Katrina O'Neill”

It's bad cop. She's short, English and very hostile.

“What?”

“We want to talk to you about these incidents”

“Incidents?”

“You intimidated her at a residents' meeting and then there's this latest incident on the Ormeau Road”

“What?”

“You stared at her”

“What?”

“Outside the Ormeau Bakery”

“We passed in a walkway”

“You stared at her”

“What about the meeting?”

“You intimidated her”

I look at Robin, the sergeant in the corner in the boiler suit.

“You were there. Did you see any intimidation?”

“It was a hell of a row”

“But did you see any intimidation?”

“We weren't there for all of it”

“But you were in the building”

“Yes”

“Was it reported to you then?”

“No”

The wall's cracking. The English one counter-attacks.

“We're going to caution you. She doesn't want you writing about her on the internet”

“She's a public figure”

“It doesn't matter. Politicians have prosecuted people for writing about them. It's harassment.”

Someone's coming and going.

How many are there? Five? Six?

I'm losing count. Another one speaks,

“Will I do it?”

“Yeah”

“Alan Murray, I'm cautioning you for the offence of harassment against Katrina O'Neill. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention .......................”

It's not a dream.

"Do you have anything you wish to say?"

"I think this is absurd"

“You are entitled to a legal representative. Do you wish one to be present now?”

“I have concussion. I need medical attention. I came here to report an assault”

“You don't want to do that. She has six witnesses who all say you started it. You attacked her boyfriend Declan Martin. And you threatened to burn her house down with her and the kids in it. "

"Is she pressing charges?"

"No"

"Why not? if someone threatened to burn your house down with you and your kids in it would you not want to press charges?"

No answer.

"I want him prosecuted."

"You'll lose. Then she can take civil action against you. I know it's not fair, but, there you go"

“I'll take legal advice. Can I go to hospital now?”

They take me to the City.

**********************

“What!!!???”

Even a doctor's shocked at the sight of me. He takes an inventory of my injuries then goes away while a nurse bathes my wounds with saline. I like her. She admires my freshly broken nose.

************************

He's back.

“There's no skull fracture. The X-Rays are clear, but we need to staple that head wound.”

By the end my teeth are gritting. Pain has returned to me.

He leaves me in the care of the nurse. She comes and goes as I wait out the necessary few hours of observation.

**********************

“Will you be okay to go home?”

“I don't know if the house will still be there”

I'm good to go.

***********************

“Jesus!!!!!”

Suzanne's shocked. We're on my doorstep.

“You look like a bare knuckle boxer beat you!!!”

Little did we know, he is.

*****************

Looking back it's like a dream. Time does that to you. You never forget. You constantly replay it in your head; Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. To fight for your life, knowing you're going to die is, they say, the most damaging of experiences. Yet I would change nothing. It would have been a good death. There is honour in such things.

The executioner will come again. I am ready to die.

Where is the Freedom of the Press?

2009-05-05T04:39:00.002-07:00

You should already be aware of this, this, and this.

Answer this question:-

"What is the role of a free press in a democratic society?"

I haven't heard that one in a long time. Perhaps someone should pose it to Hugh Orde, soon to be head of the Association of Chief Constables. Clearly he was the right choice to head our shiny new police force that looks increasingly like the old RUC. The fact that it was the RUC until it changed its name, but not its membership, should make this easy to understand.

I'm reliably informed that the members of this putrid old vintage in new, but only slightly different, bottles have all had human rights training. I wonder if they sat an exam at the end of the course.

"In six hundred words define the relationship between freedom of speech and public accountability. Illustrate with examples from Eastern Europe."

Interestingly enough, East Germany's "Volkspolizei" wore green tunics and white shirts remarkably like those of the RU.......errrr.....PSNI. They also had a habit of arresting and prosecuting those who criticised public figures or asked awkward questions. Such prosecutees had defense counsel and were able to argue their case in court. So no human rights issues there. After all the police are obliged to investigate, caution, arrest and prosecute those who make a nuisance of themselves, looking into wrongdoing in high (and low) places, questioning the integrity of those fine Party Members who work so hard for the public good. Comrades Brown, Smith, Harman etc would never line their pockets at public expense. Indeed, we will send the Stasi to raid the offices of a member of the People's Assembly in order to make the point that no-one whose loyalty we doubt can ever feel safe. Journalists must do their duty and reveal their sources so that these subversive elements can be rooted out and put on trial.

The UK looks increasingly like East Germany without public housing or free education. It's a vast panopticon where privacy is seen as a threat to the social order. Protest is criminalised. It's "harassment" to criticise corporate interests who even have lawyers on the payroll who specialise in the use of this law to stifle dissent. Police assault the public at will in the full knowledge that CCTV footage will become "unavailable". Dissent is driven underground and protest groupings riddled with informers and agent provocateurs. Special operations are launched, arresting hundreds (contrast the Holyland) who were "planning to attack the power supply". Bogey men are invented readily and appear everywhere, thereby justifying the end of privacy. Phones are tapped. Houses are bugged. Emails are monitored. The DNA profiles of millions are kept on file. And all of this to protect our freedom, just like in the German Democratic Republic.

Hugh Orde has shown his true colours. He has no interest in democracy or accountability or freedom of speech. He's the perfect choice to head the Association of Chief Constables. Interestingly enough, Ronnie Flanagan, another RUC Chief Constable, became Chief inspector of Constabulary for the UK. This is a man on whose watch police ran death squads, murdered solicitors and ran a network of informers so extensive that "every tree has its Special Branch". That network has not gone away. In fact it is constantly renewed with the usual suspects; drug dealers, thugs etc who have a license to do whatever they want. Communities live in fear and, bizarrely, are expected to look to the police to protect them from their own employees. Ronnie's swansong as a public servant was to oversee the murder of a Brazilian on a subway train by a police death squad. The jury at the inquest were not allowed to return a verdict of "Unlawful Killing".

Under the Terrorism Act police evidence is heard in closed court. Neither the defendant nor their counsel are allowed to know the nature of the case against them. They are therefore unable to mount a defense against it. This is more draconian than the Prevention of Terrorism Act. It makes a mockery of Justice and Accountability and Freedom of the Press. A journalist is not allowed to protect their sources. Whistleblowers are not protected. In the UK there is no right to silence. The arrest caution is deliberately worded to undermine the presumption of innocence. Suzanne Breen faces a potential five years in jail. So does any investigative journalist. Why? Because the definition of terrorism has been expanded to cover any activity that challenges institutional power.

The elevation of Hugh Orde and Ronnie Flanagan to high office reveals a chilling truth. Northern Ireland is a training ground for tyranny.

Welcome to the Panopticon

2009-05-05T04:39:00.001-07:00

Finally,
they're going to film the mayhem. The council will have "mobile CCTV" deployed in the Holyland.

What do they hope to achieve? The cops have regularly filmed what goes on on Halloween, or St Patrick's Day, and done nothing. They had loads of footage of the recent riot, and, we're told, they're trawling through it to get faces, addresses etc. I wish the media wouldn't buy into such patent horseshit. There will be no arrests or prosecutions based on the filming. As I've discussed previously, the universities will do fuck-all.

CCTV is a weapon used by one group of people who have power against those without. Ultimately that means the vast majority of the population. Big Brother is watching and "the innocent have nothing to fear". This is the first cry of the tyrant.

It is interesting that when police assaulted Ian Tomlinson, very probably causing his death, the footage from neighbouring cameras became unavailable. It was the public, using their mobile phones and camcorders who exposed the truth.

You would think that the cameras in police stations record. They probably do, but when it suits the cops they suddenly don't. I'm speaking from personal experience.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

You needn't look to the IPCC in England or the Ombudsman's office here for accountability. Once again I speak from experience.

In England there is a call for the panopticon to be pulled down. The death of Ian Tomlinson has exposed it's moral bankruptcy. It watches us, but not power or its servants.

The "mobile CCTV" will acheive nothing for residents. Their activities will probably be its primary focus. No more writing on walls will be permitted.

It will, however, provide endless amusement to "students". They will play cat and mouse with the camera vans using their mobiles. It's very kind of the Council to provide them with a new game to while away the night.

It's always someone else

2009-05-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

Like the ghost of a cultured past, the Gown haunts Queens. It's on it's last legs and trading on it's past. You have to be an "Ex-Gownie" to get a job in journalism. To get on the TV you have to have worked on Queens Radio. After all, degrees are commonplace. Two-ones and firsts are are a currency that is, well, debased. You have to maximise your Cultural Capital, and that's what Queens is all about.

It's all gone wrong. Degrees are meaningless. They're doled out to anyone who can pay. And in the Race to the Bottom a First, a Second, a Third means as little as the flood of A-level top grades that gets mediocrities into that place. It's like viewing the Flynn Effect through the Looking Glass; marks go up as students get dumb and dumber.

The Gown is desperately seeking funding, and, like a student with no money who gets no student finance, they hear from Queens a resounding

"No".

Gregson's promise to help the Gown and

"all students who need it"

turned out to be a lie.

What sealed the Gown's fate was it's last act of honest journalism. Exposing the Caterpillar Blood Money scam shined a light into dark places and now informed opinion knows that That Place is a corporate whorehouse devoid of morality like a a gated business park in a J.G. Ballard novel. Indeed, the rape of neighbouring communities looks like the "Ratissages" carried out by executives at the Eden-Olympia Complex.

This may be its last issue and it is with sadness that I find myself reviewing a swansong so filled with dishonest mediocrity. It has had its low points in the recent past; trashing the name of a Holyland resident who died tragically young being the worst. Now it signs off with apologia for the "Ratissages" that drove a community from their homes.

It's not "students", who, after all, work hard to become our future professionals. That half of them never go to class, yet still graduate, seems not to matter. It is not they who throw the bottles, shout the taunts, and for fifteen years have tormented people till they can take no more and leave. Who is it that gangs together and stops a woman on a dark night to tell her,

"Sell your house and get the fuck out of the Holyland. This is our area now."

Obviously it's not "students" who are too busy, well, studying. It must be someone else.

Who is it that deprives people of sleep 'till 4 or 5am. It's not "students". They're doing what residents cannot; sleeping. We're not told how they manage this. We're also not told how they can study in that environment. Those two-ones and firsts are looking more and more bogus. Is it any wonder that thinkers are leaving? What value can they place on a degree from that place?

Only one Queens student has been charged. This reminds me of that infamous St Patrick's Day some years ago when the police made a point of only arresting kids from the Lower Ormeau despite every street being filled with mayhem at the hands of those who are obviously "Not Students". It's their friends, their brothers, their sisters, Wee Cahal from the Country up in the Big City for the day.

It must have been "wee trampy spides" who rioted this year, just like every other year, and the cops have bought into that narrative with a vengeance. The kids from the Ormeau Road are "The Problem". All crime comes from them; Scapegoats; Untermenschen. There is, we are famously told, no such thing as student criminal behaviour. That is police policy.

The one "student" charged should be "hung out to dry". He is an exception. And being such, proves the rule.

It's not students. It's always someone else.

Tony Says No

2009-04-28T07:10:00.000-07:00

It's the best bit of news I've heard in a long time. Tony O'Reilly wants his name taken off the new building :-)

I wonder why.

Is it because he sees who they're doling out degrees to? Remember the one interviewed after the riot who could barely talk?

Is it because they expel people who can't, and shouldn't, pay fees or who have serious personal difficulties? How many lives has Denis "Sweeny" Todd from occupational health destroyed? First do no harm??? "Fuck that!!" says Denis.

Is it because they have destroyed the Holyland and are raping the rest of South Belfast?

Is it because they have introduced an "Off Campus" disciplinary code that is legally unenforceable and therefore a cynical PR exercise?

Is it because they have trashed their own academic base? Bye Bye Classics. Bye Bye Russian. Bye Bye Italian. Bye Bye the only geosciences department in Ireland. They had to back-track on that one, but only after they had sacked all the academics. While enrolling for my First Year I saw skips piled high with specimen trays.

Is it because they want to charge £10,000 a year? If you haven't got the money fuck off.

Is it because it's an intellectual sewer, and cognitive blight on South Belfast, and, for that matter the whole society? Free thinkers who can afford to leave will not go there and who can blame them? Queens, driven by greed, is fueling the intellectual meltdown of Northern Ireland.

Is it because the lecturers are queuing up to get the fuck out of Dodge?

What should we call this new piece of grotesque corporate architecture?

"The Aircraft Carrier"? It looks like one.

"The Death Star"? I can picture Darth Vader standing atop that tower, his cloak blowing in the wind. Overhead tie-fighters do a fly-by.

"The Blood Money Building"? After all it was financed by Caterpillar, supplier of armoured bulldozers to the Israeli Army. At least Queens are consistent; ethnic cleansing and house demolitions. It's "Regeneration" after all.

Apologies to the Palestinians. I do not seek to demean their plight by associating it with the Belfast Holyland. Apologies also to the family and friends of Rachel Corrie. I'm raising big issues, not cheap points when I discuss her murder by the IDF.

I'm open to suggestions, but I'm leaning toward "The Death Star".

Mister Can Do

2009-04-20T07:38:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge

Mister Can Do

It should be “Sir Can Do”. Soon it'll be “Lord Can Do” as Reg is headed for a peerage.

“We all felt empowered as soon as we walked in the room.”

It's easy to charm the pants off some people, although the thought of Ray Farley naked is scaring me. He's not the first to feel moist and important in the presence of “Lord This”, or “Baron That”.

Who is Ray Farley? He does not live in the Holyland. This perhaps makes it easier for him to call for more people to be imprisoned there. Only a handful of residents agree with him and we all know who they are. They're strangely absent from the public gaze these days. I dare say the media are sick of hearing from them. Recently the BBC had to edit Ray's gibberish because he seemed to be saying the universities had let their students down on St Patrick's Day. This is like David Farrell describing students as “victims” on the Nolan Show. After he subsequently announced Declan Boyle's address live on the air they quietly dropped him from their interviewee list.

What does “Sir Can Do” have to offer apart from “empowerment”? He cannot make the universities do anything, although he does want to set their fees sky-rocketing. This they welcome with the corporate equivalent of kicking your heels high in the air and your knickers flying. He's some charmer that guy. OK, not much to look at, but he “Can Do”.

Neither he nor Poor Wee Sammy can pass a law to stop adults drinking alcohol on private property. So that's the front garden thing fucked.

I'm not quite sure what a “verifiable term-time address for first-years” is supposed to achieve, but it sounds good and at least Ray can claim a victory as Chairman of somebody else's “Regeneration Association”. It's progress you see, like that thing with deckchairs on the Titanic.

Using vacant property in the city centre is actually a good idea. It's a little late for the Holyland, by at least a decade, but something has to be done to save all the other communities being targeted by landlords and universities. It is, however, impractical to vest then convert, demolish, rebuild, or whatever derelict shops, warehouses and offices. The hundreds of millions involved in such a project would be far better spent on housing for, you know, real people. Perhaps Mark Durkan can upend the sofa and see if he can shake another £400 million out of it to line the pockets of property developers. Reg would, perhaps, welcome that. He's all for the “Wealth Creators”. That such people create no wealth, but do soak up vast amounts of public money (see the antics of Brown and Obama) does not matter. “To him who hath” and all that.

Reg cannot oblige the universities to invest their ill gotten gains on city centre student housing. They'll politely tell him to fuck off and hurry up with the fees raise. He's unlikely to try it on.

So he wants to get all the “Stakeholders” together in a room to thrash out a solution. We've had this before and it's all horseshit. He cannot “de-HMO” South Belfast. Nor can any Stormont Minister. It is not within their gift to make any meaningful change to a housing policy invented elsewhere. Planning is seemingly out of control, but is servicing the interests of property developers, and this agenda comes from London. Blair, Brown, Thatcher; it's all the same; a bubble economy based on property and money speculation. All of them set out to obliterate Public Housing. And so the Housing Executive is not allowed to build. I see no one being allowed to change that policy. Instead, making families on the waiting list rent from private landlords is right up their street, and, for that matter, coming to a street near you. Our “Executive” are mere sock-puppets. This makes the whole “can do” thing an extremely cruel pantomime. Reg may have been shocked at the “war zone” and “intimidation” he witnessed on St Patrick's Day, but he can do nothing of any substance. He may have wondered why 25% of our undergraduates leave to study elsewhere. Now he has the answer, and no Ministerial trips to Scotland will entice them back.

Planning, doing their masters' bidding, are like a rooftop sniper picking off communities one by one; first the Holyland; then Stranmillis; then Lisburn Road; then Ballynafeigh; then Rosetta.

What????!!!!

There it is in the South Belfast News. Planning have rubber stamped the rape of Rosetta. And who can stop them? Sammy? Arlene? Reg?

“Studentification” has blighted cities across the UK. Nowhere has suffered like South Belfast, and the Holyland is a nightmare that shocks every visitor from a university town in England. They cannot believe the barbarity. In England an answer has been proposed. Don't get your hopes up because it comes from the sinister coalition of universities and landlords. The hidden agenda is to trash huge swathes of the urban landscape and turn it into Landlordville. And lo the policy comes to Belfast.

The “solution” comes in the form of secondary tumours. Spread the cancer around the city, especially certain target areas. The 30% HMO cap guarantees that target communities will be destabilised and spiral downward fast. This serves landlords and universities and, being a “cap” throws a bone to the Useful Idiots who hang around the master's table seeking “empowerment” while South Belfast dies.

Groundhog Day

2009-04-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

“We need to make this thing work!!”

He spoke with a passion born of desperation. The landlords don't want their properties trashed. The students want to study. The universities want to help. The cops will enforce the law. We have to pull together!!

It was sincerely felt horseshit. We've been here before, six years ago. We'll regenerate the Holyland. We'll redress the population balance. The wolf will lie down with the lamb. We'll all be friends. Let's have a group hug and Praise Jesus!!

There is no community left. The landlords and universities have won. They had already won six years ago, or ten. Everything since has been perception management. Who knew the horrors? The universities did. They spent six years silencing it. Now they have shit on their face. It doesn't matter. They have the Holyland. They have their campus and no-one can do a thing about it. Between them they can spend £545 million on corporate architecture. So a community had to die. So be it. More will go the same way. That's what this is really about.

The PACT meeting was a time-warp. The venue was different; no longer the smelly back room of a church, but the Lanyon Building of Queens University itself! My we have come a long way. And the politicians are there. It's all one big partnership!

The people from Stranmillis and Rugby Road and Lisburn Road are there talking about sanctions and expulsions and Partnership. There's that word. Queens are gonna have a committee meeting. Stormont are gonna have a committee meeting. I can recall people running round like blue arsed flies, going to meetings about meetings about a mural. Residents and students will paint a mural together and we'll put it on a wall and we'll all have lunch in City Church afterwards and we'll go on the TV and it'll be so good! And we'll have an art festival. And we'll get school kids from some Christian summer camp to come once a year and scrape the dead animals out of the entries and clean the landlords gardens for them and have a barbecue where residents and landlords can sit down together and .............................group hug!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Groundhog Day.

The objective is to make Stranmillis and Lisburn Road and Rugby Road and Ballynafeigh and Lower Malone partners in their own destruction. This is what “partnership” really means. The power agenda centres around universities and property developers. Give them whatever they want. For thirty years inner cities in the developed world have been reamed out. Think of London's Docklands. Twenty years ago I was living in a hostel and found myself watching a documentary. New York's homeless talk to Michelle Shocked. Their story is one of public housing projects demolished, their tenants dumped on the street to make way for big money. Affordable Housing?? Fuck That!!! This land is for the Rich. Every square foot represents maximum profit.

Before New Orleans had its Katrina Moment, its Mayor, Ray Nagin, was evicting his fellow blacks from public housing so he could sell it off to his property developer friends. A reign of terror was inflicted upon the tenants of HUD. Any and every excuse was found. Get them out; by any means necessary. Then the storm came and the levees broke and he cried his crocodile tears all the while knowing that he would be mayor of a Theme Park. The population would not be allowed back. Public housing was sealed up. Private landlords dumped tenant's possessions in flooded streets and waited for the Big Money to flow. On the higher ground Blacks owned their homes. Men with guns from Blackwater came and you would submit to ethnic cleansing or you would die. Don't take my word for it. Malik Rahim was there and his community resisted. They organised schools, they organised food, and they organised guns. They're still there.

The reason I digress is to show that the rape of South Belfast is neither new nor unique. Driving communities from their homes is the way power does business. It's not a conspiracy, it's coalitions of shared interests. Daniel Guerin described it well in “Fascism and Big Business”.

What about our local politicians? They'll help, won't they? Won't they?

Money, Money, Money

2009-04-12T07:06:00.000-07:00

Queen's have made £10, 000 from fines on their "students" for "anti-social behaviour", a euphemism for the kind of thing we saw on St Patrick's day.

This should tell us a number of things. In order to get fined you have to have got your wrist slapped for two "proven" previous incidents. Fines range from£20 t0 £200, an average, say of £50. £50 into £10,000 goes 200 times multiplied my three "proven" incidents makes 600 "proven incidents". This is surely the tip of the iceberg. How many residents take the hint and give up after the first or second complaint gets them targeted and no-one to protect them. The universities won't and the cops, well, it took them twelve years to finally do something, and that involved precious few arrests and fewer prosecutions resulting from St Patrick's Day.

We will never know the full extent of torture and intimidation doled out to residents. Suffice it to say a community no longer exists. This was not an accident. The Universities have got their campus which is growing. Queens University is a giant cancer devouring every residential area anywhere near it. It's landlords and "students" do the dirty work of social cleansing while it, and UU sit back rubbing their hands with glee and spending their hundreds and hundreds of millions on corporate architecture.

The universities' "Off Campus Disciplinary Code" is legally unenforceable. There will be no expulsions, and "students" only tolerate it's sanctions because they are so trivial. This being the case, why was it introduced? The explanation is truly diabolical. They can claim they are doing something. The £10,000 in fines sounds truly impressive until it's deconstructed. When it is it reveals the awful truth. The objective is to target residents. Encourage them to complain, get them tortured and threatened, teach them to shut up or leave or both. It is a vehicle for social cleansing and reveals the depth of evil among those who dreamed it up.

The £10,000 is merely icing on the cake. It will buy bubbly for the directors of these degree mills that manufacture ignorance and dispossession.

We're not rapin' this area!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-04-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

They have spoken.

"Look what a wonderful job we're doing"

They really are proud of themselves. Declan Boyle's properties do indeed meet building standards. It is perfectly legal to demolish a family house and cram sixteen students into the flats you build in it's place. One would expect no less given the enormous amount of taxpayers' money doled out to him in grants. They are, legally, not slums. They are dry. They are warm if you can afford the enormous gas consumption such inefficient housing requires. He's not like Dermott Laird, property manager to countless anonymous slumlords. Michael McMahon, who owns more properties than Declan, most of them Dunderin' Inns, was obviously too ugly to feature in this photograph. Declan's smug smile is wonderful. Sammy's thinking,

"Why am I here, and who is this cheesy cunt???"

The cheesy cunt in question boasts that,

"We're not trying to pull the Holyland apart."

This is like Thatcher's chilling,

"The NHS is safe in my hands."

or the truly sinister claim buy Blair that,

"I didn't get into politics to make the poor and vulnerable poorer"

They have raped the Holyland to death. In the latest edition of the South Belfast News Declan claims that,

"Families do not want to live in or move into a student area"

Therefore the cap on HMO's should be scrapped to enable people to sell up to a landlord and leave. This belies his claim the previous week that they want to work with residents. They have this in common with their allies, the universities. It's a bit like the rapist who says to the victim,

"We're in this together here. It's easier if you work with me."

Now they, and the universities, have more targets in mind. Stranmillis, Lisburn Road, Lower Malone and Ballynafeigh will all become part of their extended private campus. The HMO cap of 30% guarantees the destabilisation of these areas. Only 8 or 9% is sustainable. While these areas are demolished and 2 bed flats crammed onto the cleared sites we will hear the call ever louder that "Regeneration" requires the lifting of the HMO cap. Thus residential areas become "student areas", their populations driven out by noise, sleep deprivation and threats. These communities must not co-operate with those determined to destroy them, the universities and their landlords. Do not go the way of the Holylands. There can be no partnership with the oppressor.

Breaking news; Heaney toilets used as drug drops.

2009-04-08T06:32:00.000-07:00

While wiping my arse yesterday, I found a ziplock bag full of dope in the Heaney toilets. Naturally I hande it in, spoke to the cops etc.

Ever since it was revealed that the cubicles are used for cottaging they have had the tops and bottoms sawn off their doors.

What a wonderful den of depravity that place is; a veritable pillar of the community.

The King of the Pious Hypocrites

2009-04-01T05:06:00.000-07:00

As a sequel to the previous article I thought I would draw your attention to this:-

"Carpetbagger Landlord criticises Civil Service bonuses."

"Declan Boyle form the Landlord's Association said he hears a lot of complaints about the agency's performance. "They just seem to run at a very slow pace for whatever reason. There is a lot of room for improvement," he said"

Is this the same Declan Boyle who has been claiming £36,000 per property in conversion grants from the Housing Executive? Perhaps he could tell us how much taxpayers' money has been doled out to him from the Housing Budget. Is it more or less than £10 million? How many families have no home because the money that should have built them one lines the pockets of this parasite? How much of a kickback do he and his fellow landlords get from Belfast City Council now that they no longer have to pay rates on their properties? Does he collect rent in cash from his tenants? Did the envelopes I have seen changing hands contain birthday cards? He seems to have one every month. It would be interesting to know how much of his income he declares to the inland revenue; all of it? Some of it? We'll never know, but it's a worthwhile question.

I hear that he and his pals may be seeking compensation for the damage caused to their properties on St Patrick's Day. At a police meeting some years ago he wanted to know why residents objected to their "student" tormentors having "fun". Well they've been kind enough to film their antics and put it on YouTube, so now we know what they and he mean by "fun".

The Social Cannibals have raped the Holyland to death, and they're proud of it. Now Stranmillis and Ballynafeigh are in their sights. Let's hope these communities don't follow the example of the Belfast Holyland Regeneration Association and enter into "Partnership" with those, the universities and landlords, who are determined to destroy them.

James Connolly quote; No 1

2009-03-30T15:22:00.000-07:00

A commenter asked for some James Connolly discussion, so I just couldn't help myself. I feel a Kurt Vonnegut quote coming on, something about,

"Thumbing my nose at You Know Who"

Let us free Ireland! Never mind such base, carnal thoughts as concern work and wages, healthy homes, or lives unclouded by poverty.

Let us free Ireland! The rackrenting landlord; is he not also an Irishman, and wherefore should we hate him? Nay, let us not speak harshly of our brother – yea, even when he raises our rent.

Let us free Ireland! The profit-grinding capitalist, who robs us of three-fourths of the fruits of our labour, who sucks the very marrow of our bones when we are young, and then throws us out in the street, like a worn-out tool when we are grown prematurely old in his service, is he not an Irishman, and mayhap a patriot, and wherefore should we think harshly of him?

Let us free Ireland! “The land that bred and bore us.” And the landlord who makes us pay for permission to live upon it. Whoop it up for liberty!

“Let us free Ireland,” says the patriot who won’t touch Socialism. Let us all join together and cr-r-rush the br-r-rutal Saxon. Let us all join together, says he, all classes and creeds. And, says the town worker, after we have crushed the Saxon and freed Ireland, what will we do? Oh, then you can go back to your slums, same as before. Whoop it up for liberty!

And, says the agricultural workers, after we have freed Ireland, what then? Oh, then you can go scraping around for the landlord’s rent or the money-lenders’ interest same as before. Whoop it up for liberty!

After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won’t touch socialism, we will protect all classes, and if you won’t pay your rent you will be evicted same as now. But the evicting party, under command of the sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and the warrant turning you out on the roadside will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic. Now, isn’t that worth fighting for?

And when you cannot find employment, and, giving up the struggle of life in despair, enter the poorhouse, the band of the nearest regiment of the Irish army will escort you to the poorhouse door to the tune of St. Patrick's Day. Oh! It will be nice to live in those days!

“With the Green Flag floating o’er us” and an ever-increasing army of unemployed workers walking about under the Green Flag, wishing they had something to eat. Same as now! Whoop it up for liberty!

Now, my friend, I also am Irish, but I’m a bit more logical. The capitalist, I say, is a parasite on industry; as useless in the present stage of our industrial development as any other parasite in the animal or vegetable world is to the life of the animal or vegetable upon which it feeds.

The working class is the victim of this parasite – this human leech, and it is the duty and interest of the working class to use every means in its power to oust this parasite class from the position which enables it to thus prey upon the vitals of labour.

Therefore, I say, let us organise as a class to meet our masters and destroy their mastership; organise to drive them from their hold upon public life through their political power; organise to wrench from their robber clutch the land and workshops on and in which they enslave us; organise to cleanse our social life from the stain of social cannibalism, from the preying of man upon his fellow man.

Organise for a full, free and happy life FOR ALL OR FOR NONE.

I've got goosebumps.

The Protest

2009-03-26T12:45:00.000-07:00

There has been considerable concern around Queen's Student Union about This.

They had little to worry about. No-one showed. As one commenter put it,

"They wouldn't have the brass neck"

He was right. Despite copious posters and leaflets and texts, nobody came. The True Believers of the Socialist Workers' Party stood around in the rain hugging their wet placards and looking ever more stupid. I would have felt sorry for them, but I thought their protest was a cynical prank at the expense of the handful of residents imprisoned in the Holyland.

-No Riot Police in student areas.

An interesting demand. How are we to deal with public disorder? You will by now have seen the clips on YouTube. Should we offer such people a nice cup of tea and a bun if only they'll keep the noise down and stop wrecking cars? There are churches in the area that hand out free burgers and coffee and biscuits to this lot on their way to and from the pub. A representative of Fitzroy Presbyterian Church told a residents' meeting that they should do just that and it'll make things better. I suppose he thought we should pray too. The prayers of many have not prevented the death of the area, nor will they resurrect the corpse of a community that has clearly died.

-No Slum Student Housing

An admirable demand. One might ask where the untold millions in HMO grants have gone. At the recent PACT meeting it was pointed out that the landlords have demolished the area and built a slum. Declan Boyle took great offense at this.

"My properties are to the highest standard. They're passed by Building Control. They're passed by the Housing Executive. There's nothing wrong with them."

Such righteous indignation ignores the obvious question. What exactly are the authorities doing? They have doled out £240 million in HMO grants across the province, financing the rape of untold communities. This money came out of the housing budget, a fact that would explain the presence of 20,000 homeless. The Housing executive is not allowed to build. Instead it finances the private sector through grants and £140 million every year in housing benefit. In a sane and just society this money would be recycled to finance environmentally sustainable public housing. I digress. To demolish a family home and build flats to house 16 students in rooms smaller than a prison cell is slum housing, no matter what the authorities say.

- No expulsions for St Patricks Day.

I, and apparently the Union, had expected a large turn-out in support of this. No show. Why? Perhaps because no-one will be expelled and we all know it. At the PACT meeting Gerry McCormack belittled the concerns of residents to the point of obscene absurdity. As it happens Queens do expel people; if they can't pay fees for example, or their studies have suffered because of health concerns or adverse circumstances. Students call this the "Sweeny Todd" syndrome, but it's not just the head of Occupational Health, Denis Todd, that flushes people down the toilet. The School of Psychology does it too, and this 40 years after they expelled Bernadette Devlin just before her finals.

This brings me to the big point. Queens was once a hotbed of radical student activism. Today it's a cultural sewer. Why will they not fight against fees? Why will they not demand full grants? Why do they not demand decent housing for all? The destruction of the Health Service; anyone care? Apparently not. Water privatisation; anyone listening? Silence.

What has happened to the student body? The answer can be found on YouTube. Thinkers are packing their bags and going. We are in intellectual meltdown. We are also in moral meltdown. Whether it is privileged nihilists high on ethnic chauvinism, or a lost generation who drown their despair in drugs, our youth have no sense of purpose. I could argue that this shows the moral bankruptcy of Christian schooling, and I would not be wrong. I think the larger issue is structural. Thatcher and her heirs have quite literally destroyed society and in its place is that thing understood by Connolly; the morality of the pig trough.

Aftermath: Part Six: a Cry for Help

2009-03-25T15:03:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge.

Does Harry Hutchinson consider himself a socialist? He is, I assume, one of those who considers the bank manager to be a fellow worker who lives by selling his labour. I will not get into a deep discussion about structuralism and the "co-ordinator class". Instead I will refer you to Michael Albert's Parecon site.

In Northern Ireland we have "peculiar arrangements". A middle class has been engineered in Mid-Ulster. These people bear no resemblance to the description above which refers to the working class. Such despair is painfully apparent in the Lower Ormeau; thus the epidemic of drug crime.

What can be seen five nights a week in the Holyland is the rampage of those who are privileged, arrogant and bigoted. It was not the lost generation that rioted last Tuesday. It was a middle-class of nihilistic ethnic chauvinists.

Harry Hutchinson would do well to get his facts straight before firing off his words of wisdom to the Irish News.

Aftermath: Part Five; The Movie

2009-03-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

The cops and universities already have these videos, but they would never be admissible in court. Even I was shocked. Each description below is a link. Just click it, or open in a tab.

It's not just residents that wreck cars

"Someone needs to throw the first bottle"

"Waddya think ah the car? It's good crack like isn't it?

"We all live in the Holy-Holy-Land"

Dancin' in the streets

"Let's go fucking mental"

"Olay-olay-olay-olay"

This could be the beach bonfire in The Lord of the Flies

"That's fantastic, boy"

"Violence not seen for a long time in Northern Ireland"

The day after. At around 0.59 you can hear the voice of our future. He can barely talk. He has no remorse. What the fuck is this creature doing at a university?

"Tomorrow belongs to me." The beer garden scene from Cabaret. Watch carefully and see the resonance with the Holyland.

Aftermath; Part Four

2009-03-25T11:12:00.000-07:00

Suzanne Breen's article.

Click the link above.

Thus Spake Gerry

2009-03-25T09:20:00.000-07:00

I think of Gerry McCormack as a smug, fat, grey Nero who fiddles as the Holyland burns. He sat, addressing a meeting with his back to us, and fiddled with imaginary game consoles.

"We had 30 complaints from one individual about students next door playing computer games. Now I don't think that merits expulsion, or a fine, or a disciplinary. If we expel someone from university, we're giving them a life sentence."

This was at a meeting to discuss St Patrick's Day.

"How many students, have you disciplined?", asks a resident.

"This year we and UU have disciplined 218 of which 50 were fined. Our system is meant to be transparent, accountable...blah...blah...blah"

"We...at...U..U...take...discipline...very...seriously", says Una Calvert in that slow, ponderous voice that...fakes...sincerity...but...shows...she...doesn't...give...a...fuck.

I have much to say about the PACT meeting, and want to spread it over several articles to tease out the issues and savour the absurdity of the whole thing.

How many students, bar St Patricks Day, have you expelled for anti-social behaviour?"

"None"

Gerry's proud of this and incites the wrath of the articulate graduate from Queens,
"Since I graduated in 2001 I've noticed it gets worse every year. These people have no respect for anyone. We have to make it clear that if you're going to behave like an animal you will lose the opportunity to complete a third level education."

Until a week ago such views would have been considered extreme. I've been called that for voicing them. Now we've had our wake-up call.

"These people have filmed themselves and put it on YouTube", voices the chairman with passion,"I would like to think that people identified from these videos would be expelled"

Gerry's not listening. He's playing with his imaginary games console.

"We saw students coming out of court giving one fingered salutes".

It's the graduate. His shock and disgust pour out with admirable force.

"These...weren't...students..."

Una's right. She doesn't say it'll never be students, unless they're working class and therefore scapegoatable.

"Why were people taken into a prison van and then released?"

"We only have 15 cells in South and East Belfast."

Gordon the new, new, new inspector informs us. These people come and go so fast I can't keep track of them.

"We take their details and then let them go to come back and be processed later."

"There's an empty jail up the Crumlin Road you can use!!"

She may be a pensioner, but she's no dope.

The teachers in Botanic Primary School were so scared for the children they canceled the clubs meetings. They had despaired of calling the cops to deal with the mob of hostile "students" floating around outside. They called the parents to come and collect their terrified children. Thursday was an exception, not because of the menace that oozes from our "students" like sweat. What was different was the presence of four landrovers in the area; tactical support units. What's interesting is that their presence was felt necessary then, 2 days after the "cultural event", but not today, or tomorrow or any other day that these people own the streets and act out their dominance day and night under the noses of cops who drive on by, legitimising it with their deliberate inaction.

Jimmy Spratt pulls Gordon on resources. He can't get an answer other than that the Holyland has the largest single share of manpower in the sector; at least they did last week. Normal service will be resumed shortly. Jimmy's angry at Gordon's evasions, and is taking this to Orde at the next policing board. I hope Hugh has his figures ready. Jimmy's on a warpath, but as we'll see in later articles, he's easily fooled by the whole "partnership" number. I like Jimmy. I never thought I'd say that about a DUPer.

Aftermath: Part Three

2009-03-21T14:00:00.000-07:00

"Can I ask you a personal question?"
This is interesting.
"OK"
"Why do you stay here?"
Aaaaah
"I don't. I've left. But the others........they can't get rehoused."

It was the evening. The rioters had gone to the pub. We're talking as he waits for his taxi. It could take some time; the drivers have refused to come into the area. We've discussed the day's events and I've played ball as he pulls out the tiny minority argument despite having witnessed the mayhem on his doorstep. Then he lets it slip,
"Jordanstown had me up for anti-social behaviour. Well I said fuck them. I threatened them with Human Rights and all the rest. I threatened to sue the cunts"
He might have a case. The Holyland is "Off-Campus". However most punishments are so trivial that they are not contested. Why go to court over a hundred pound fine? And that will only happen after you've had your wrist slapped a couple of times for previous antics. However if someone chose to fight them they would probably win. There is no contract for off-campus behaviour, nor will there be. A "code" is not a contract. It's not like forty years ago when Bernadette Devlin was fucked out of Queens' School of Psychology just before her finals. They have other ways of fucking their students these days; other excuses for expulsion, money being one.

If you're a bogus student they don't give a fuck. You can do what you want and they'll still give you your degree. Just keep the money rolling in. It's a business. It's no longer academia.

His question was an honest one. Why would anyone want to live there? It's no longer a community. A handful of disparate and demoralised people is just that. They've turned on each other like the survivors on The Raft of the Medusa. It's such a shambles they need an outsider to speak for them. Why are those who want out ignored? How can the lie of "regeneration" be taken seriously? What Tuesday has made clear is that there is no longer, and can never again be, a community in the Holyland. How longer can people be kept imprisoned there? Who can justify such torture? People have served their time in hell. Give them new homes.

Aftermath; Part Two

2009-03-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

This is Henry McDonald's piece from the Guardian Website. He's kindly let me publish it here along with my detailed reply.

There is an inconvenient truth at the core of the controversy over student misbehaviour in one square kilometre of south Belfast and it is all to do with sectarianism.

On St Patrick's Day the issue of student drunkenness and hooliganism came into sharp focus once again. The battleground was of course Belfast's Holylands, a small area running from the edge of the university district down to the River Lagan where the streets are named after the cities and biblical place names of the Middle East.

Scenes of drunken students taunting police officers, setting fire to cars, throwing bottles and stones at PSNI riot lines and blocking off streets while they held al fresco parties have reignited the arguments about whether it is right to shoehorn so many third level students into a tightly packed area.

Amid all the outrage and anger, most of it from the few remaining indigenous residents of the Holylands, two facts about those causing the trouble are rarely amplified. The first is that judging from the Gaelic football and Glasgow Celtic shirts as well as the names of those the PSNI decided to arrest, it is clear the overwhelming majority of the raucous revellers come from Catholic/nationalist areas of rural Northern Ireland. This is the unspoken truth of the culchie-student "invasion".

The second is that the dominant presence of these students has transformed what was once the only non-sectarian working-class/lower middle-class district to survive the Troubles into an eight-months-a-year nationalist ghetto. The most important lesson to draw from the brazen behaviour of the rural lager louts on St Patrick's Day is how tribalism actually solidified and grew during the years of the peace process.

It would be inaccurate to say that an area such as the Holylands escaped the Troubles. There were a few incidents of bombings and shootings where people living in the area lost their lives. Nonetheless the numbers were far fewer than say across the River Lagan in north Belfast, where almost a quarter of all the deaths in the conflict took place.

Throughout nearly 30 years of civil strife, however, the Holylands remained an enclave for the lower-paid leftwing lecturer, the aspirant teacher, the radical fringe, the punks from both Northern Ireland and beyond (many, for some inexplicable reason, from Bristol in the 1980s) in their squats or those simply wanting to live in an area where territory was not marked out by flags or painted kerbstones.

Among those who grew up or spent decades living in the Holylands even in the darkest years of the Troubles there is a common perception today that the influx of a monoreligious, rural student population, many reared on an aggressive nationalist diet, has altered the nature of the area.

Conversely the main driving force behind the St Patrick's Day violence may have been nihilistic and drink-fuelled but in the background lurked a collective belief among the third level revellers that this is now somehow "their area", that this is now "their territory". Indeed, during a previous television documentary about the rural student influx, longer-term residents who remonstrated with them were dismissed and told this was now "our area".

Back in the 1980s it would have been shocking to witness the sight of, say, an Orange band playing loyalist party tunes marching around the streets of the Holylands. People who wanted to escape parades and paramilitary murals felt relatively safe there even if just south of the river, across the Ormeau Bridge for instance, the UDA was engaged in a campaign of sectarian assassination. Even by the beginning of the peace process it had still survived as a haven for the aspirant worker and the radical leftwinger.

At present the devolved government in Northern Ireland is officially committed to a "shared future" programme that is designed, on paper at least, to create more common space in areas such as housing, sport or education between the two communities. It faces major challenges such as what to do about the so-called "peace walls" that have become near-permanent symbols of division between Protestant and Catholic areas.

The blueprint for social integration also has to tackle a divided education sector in which the overwhelming majority of Catholic and Protestant schoolchildren are still educated apart. There are serious doubts about how much the programme can achieve in terms of creating non-sectarian environments – especially on the big issues of the physical walls or the separate schools.

Perhaps the first place to start would be the Holylands, where the power-sharing coalition could create financial enticements for families to move into the area and conversely to encourage landlords not to turn their houses into homes of multiple occupancy; to persuade the two universities to build more on-campus halls of residence and ensure they become socially, ethnically and religiously mixed; to launch an education campaign within education aimed at persuading second level students, particularly those from rural nationalist Ulster, about the benefits of not following their mates from primary school all the way to Queen's and the UU and instead to go out and meet new people, maybe even in a university outside Northern Ireland.

In short, restoring the Holylands as a unique area of integration, both in terms of religion and class, would be one small step in that "shared future".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/mar/20/holylands-students?commentpage=1&commentposted=1

This is my reply:-

Hi Henry,
I disagree with you fundamentally about what can be done with the Holylands. Six years ago the Extern organisation survey found 200 residents besieged by 5,000 students. Today there are between 50 and 80 residents left. Most want rehoused, but the authorities will not do that. The area is gone. The landlords have demolished most of the houses in Rugby Avenue and replaced them with flats. They're pulling the rest down as I speak. Theree is no community left there, and there never will be again. This is profoundly sad and unbearably true. No-one should be rehoused in that area, and no-one will willingly choose to live there.

We have to face up to the fact that the ethno-political conflict continues in a different form. It has metamorphosed into the destruction of neutral spaces like the Holyland, and now Stranmillis. The Universities are being homogenized and the brain drain is not just that of protestants. Anyone who thinks for themselves and can afford to is leaving to study elsewhere, whether below the border or across the water. It's not just the chill factor within the student body. The quality of tuition in Queens is atrocious and it is rightly viewed as an academic slum.

The new middle class from mid-ulster will not study elsewhere because this is where they want to be. They're also not that keen on studying. It's an excuse to party for three years and get a degree at the end of it. What value can anyone place on such a qualification? This is a frightening issue. If our brightest and best are leaving this ignorant bunch will be our future professionals. They will be the glue that holds society together and that should scare everyone shitless. Do you want them teaching your kids, treating you in hospital, representing you in court? A society in intellectual meltdown is doomed and we have to face this rather than hide from it.

Our political class are working together,sometimes I think for their benefit rather than ours. On the ground however, the two communities are pulling further apart. Look at mid-Ulster and South Armagh. The triumphalism of its demon offspring comes from the aggregation of brutal victories by its parents' generation. Every protestant farmer shot off the back of a tractor, every protestant family driven from their home becomes a "fact on the ground". And this mentality plays itself out in the Holyland. It's "their area" and residents, especially protestants, can get lost. A community was driven out, deliberately and systematically by landlords and their tenants. The journalist Suzanne Breen tells her own story. A gang stopped her on a dark night and told her to,
"Sell your house and get the fuck out of the Holylands. This is our area now"

It is.

Aftermath; Part One

2009-03-19T14:24:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge:-

Apologies for not pouncing on this immediately. I wanted the press to have their head before I turned around and said "I told you so". Apologies also to commenters, I wanted to get this published before I got round to you.

The chickens have come home to roost. The universities can't PR their way out of this one. No-one's listening to their fake residents' group, who will have run out of nice things to say about them. Having said that, there's no depths to which some people will not plumb (I expect colourful comments in reply to that ;-)

I want time to reflect on this because I have much to say. However, I do note that it was not students that were charged. None will be, unless they're working class. The new middle class in Mid-Ulster must not be alienated, no matter that they are sectarian ethnic chauvinists. It is wonderful to contrast the cosmopolitan parade in the city centre with the ugly truth that lies within. What did the wider world see? The manufactured image of the "New Northern Ireland" was drowned out by who we really are. Your future lawyers, teachers, doctors are waving pizza boxes and throwing (badly) bottles. They couldn't riot for shit; Designer Republican Arsewipes. They really are good for nothing. What a waste of public money.

How did she fail to get elected?

2009-03-14T14:35:00.000-07:00

When she grows up she wants to be Christine Bleakley. Hide the fake tan!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Feck Fees

2009-03-14T13:55:00.001-07:00

People have been complaining about these. I don't know why. We should be immune to the vulgarity and it's hard to disagree with the sentiment. What the fuck are people paying for? Why are genuine students (unlike our friend above) excluded from higher education because they can't afford £3,500 a year? Queens, Academic Slum Extraordinaire, are planning to up it to £10,000 a year. Who are these cunts fooling? Not our brightest and best who are queuing up to get the fuck out of Dodge. Good luck to them, I wish I could join them.

Shane Boylan was not elected, much to the relief of Queens. Let's have a look at his manifesto.

Click to enlarge. You might want to have a closer look at this:-

Click to enlarge.

You couldn't make him up. Note the "extremely small minority" myth, those who's misdeeds are used to "blacken the name of the student community". Residents are given a "disproportionate voice", perhaps because they actually do live there. How someone who has a "home address" and a "term time address" can claim to be a resident is beyond me. The distinction is obvious; the "home address" is not in the Holyland. Shane might well have wondered how it became a "student area", but that would address the fact that an entire community were driven from their homes, and we just can't go there can we?

It is "discriminatory and totally unfair" that those imprisoned in "student areas" should be heard. Six years ago the Extern organisation found 200 hundred residents beseiged by over 5,000 "students". Today there are about 50. If they're outnumbered 100 to 1 perhaps they should have one hundredth of a voice. Queens would love that.

He hasn't gone away you know

2009-03-06T14:46:00.000-08:00

Apologies for my absence. Some of us have lives (that's a hint to my pet Troll). I've also been having technical problems with Blogger. They have still not been sorted. What are "HTML errors"?
Computers drive me crazy.

Still, It's good to be back.

Alan

Student Culture

2009-03-06T14:27:00.000-08:00

Friday 13 February 2009

Is it any wonder no-one can live among them.

Friday 6 March 2009

STUDENT SENTENCED TO TWO YEARS’ DETENTION FOR MANSLAUGHTER

Summary of Judgment

Mr Justice Hart, sitting today in Belfast Crown Court, imposed a sentence of two years’ detention on Ciaran Laverty, aged 19, for the manslaughter of Aaron Montgomery outside the Skye nightclub in Belfast on 15 February 2008.

Aaron Montgomery (aged 23) was standing outside the nightclub with his brother and his friend. A large number of people were leaving the bar at this time and there was some congestion in and around the doorway. Ciaran Laverty was head-butted and was mistakenly told by his friend that it was Aaron Montgomery who had attacked him. Mr Laverty then punched Aaron Montgomery on the side of the head or neck and he fell to the ground. The court heard that such a blow can cause very rapid death.

Mr Laverty remained at the scene and was arrested by police. He expressed remorse and regret for has actions immediately and pleaded guilty at the first opportunity. Mr Laverty had no previous convictions. The court heard a number of testimonies about his previously excellent character - at the time of the attack he was a first year student at Queen’s University. He told the court that in the course of the evening he had drunk ten bottles of beer, two pints of beer and a cocktail.

Mr Justice Hart was provided with victim impact statements from Aaron Montgomery’s parents, brother and sister and other relatives. He said that they “eloquently and movingly expressed the acute loss and deprivation each has suffered as a result of Aaron’s sudden and unnecessary death”.

The judge accepted that Mr Laverty’s conduct that night was out of character. He said that Mr Laverty was “an able and intelligent young man of hitherto excellent character”:

“Sadly the reason for his behaviour is all too familiar with cheap alcohol readily available and large numbers of drunken young people spilling onto the streets when pubs and night clubs close. The events of this night were brought about by the combination of heavy drinking and a mistake on [Ciaran Laverty’s] part as to who had earlier assaulted him”.

Mr Justice Hart noted that a custodial sentence will clearly have a severe effect on Mr Laverty and his future but said that “it has to be remembered that his conduct brought about the death of a young man of blameless character who had done nothing whatever to provoke this unjustified attack which it appears was because of a case of mistaken identity”.

He sentenced Ciaran Laverty to two years’ detention.

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. The full judgment is available on the Court Service website (www.courtsni.gov.uk).

2. The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland in the case of R v Ryan Arthur Quinn [2006] NICA 27 held that the proper range of sentence in this type of case on a plea of guilty falls between 2 and 6 years’ imprisonment.

ENDS

Blood Money

2009-03-06T03:24:00.000-08:00

QUEENS TAKES

BLOOD MONEY

You may not have noticed this:-

Amnesty Urges Action on QUB Corporate Sponsor Caterpillar

Posted: 08 May 2007

Amnesty International is urging Queen's University and its students at to bring pressure on Caterpillar Inc for their role in the destruction of Palestinian homes.

As reported in The Gown, the Queens University student newspaper, The company - which has recently given $100,000 to the university towards the costs of its new library - is one of the biggest equipment suppliers to the Israeli army. Amnesty International has previously reported how Caterpillar bulldozers are being used to destroy thousands of homes of Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The company's bulldozers have also been used in the construction of the fence/wall built around and through the West Bank. In 2004 the International Court of Justice declared the fence/wall to be unlawful.

The company has donated $100,000 to the University towards the cost of its new £45 million library, due for completion in 2009. The library is due to have an area named after the company's charitable wing.

Amnesty International's Northern Ireland Programme Director Patrick Corrigan said:

'Caterpillar produces the bulldozers used by the Israeli army to destroy the homes of innocent Palestinians. This is clearly illegal - a serious violation of international law which deprives innocent people of the right to a home.

'Amnesty International has asked Caterpillar to adopt a code of conduct which complies with the United Nations Human Rights Norms for Business. To date, the company has refused to do so and to take steps to prevent their products being used to commit human rights abuses.

Peter McGovern, chairperson of the Amnesty Student Society at Queen's University said:

'Caterpillar's sponsorship of Queen's University provides the perfect opportunity for the university to ask some hard questions of the company. Meanwhile, the student body and faculty should bring pressure to bear on the company to abide by international human rights standards. Caterpillar may see this donation as a positive PR opportunity - let's see them prove their bona fides as good corporate citizens by ending their complicity in these abuses.'

Background

Excerpt from the Amnesty International report, Israel and the Occupied Territories - Under the rubble: House demolition and destruction of land and property, published in 2004.

"Tens of thousands of men, women and children have been made homeless or have lost their livelihood as a result of house destruction by the Israeli army. Thousands of other houses have been damaged, and tens of thousands of others are under threat of demolition, their occupants living in fear of homelessness. House demolitions are usually carried out without warning, often at night, and the occupants are forcibly evicted with no time to salvage their belongings. Often the only warning is the rumbling of the Israeli army's US-made Caterpillar bulldozers beginning to tear down the walls of their homes.

"The victims are often amongst the poorest and most disadvantaged. In most cases the justification given by the Israeli authorities for the destruction is "military/security needs", while in other cases it is the lack of building permits. The result is the same: families are left homeless and destitute, forced to rely on relatives, friends and humanitarian organizations for shelter and subsistence."

The link to this on the Gown blog is now dead; down the memory hole. Google it and see.

Rachel Corrie was murdered with a Caterpillar bulldozer.

Queens are naming a wing of their new building after Caterpillar. It is apt that having sponsored the destruction of the Holyland they take money from a corporation that has profited from far worse crimes.

Caterpillar Foundation's $100,000 donation to new Queen's Library

The Caterpillar Foundation, the philanthropic arm of global company Caterpillar Inc, which includes leading Northern Ireland firm FG Wilson, has made a $100,000 donation to Queen's University's landmark new library. In recognition of the gift, the Periodical Collection area on the Science and Engineering (3rd) Floor of the library will be named in honour of the Caterpillar Foundation.
Queen's Vice-Chancellor Professor Peter Gregson said: “We are very grateful to the Caterpillar Foundation for this very generous donation. This gift is an excellent example of how local companies can support the communities in which they operate. The University's new library will not only enhance the Queen's Experience for our staff and students, but in doing so, will also play a leading role in sustaining and expanding the local knowledge-based economy.

“This donation will further enhance the links between the University and FG Wilson. We have enjoyed a productive relationship for many years, with the company's sponsorship of a major schools outreach project, ‘ABC for Life’, under which medical students teach CPR skills to Year 7 primary school children in order to create a generation of young people with the skills to save lives.”

The Caterpillar Foundation was founded by CAT in the early 1950s and since then has invested over £125 million in a wide variety of projects around the world. In 2005 some £15 million was distributed, with more than £600,000 awarded to projects in the United Kingdom. Since 2003 the Foundation has been active in the UK, working in partnership with CAT's UK businesses, especially in the area of education.

The decision to support this education based project lies comfortably within FG Wilson's philosophy and approach to social responsibility. The Company is a major employer in Northern Ireland and aims to support projects which impact the whole community in a positive manner. To date providing support for education based projects has been a key focus of FG Wilson’s sponsorship activity.

“The Caterpillar Foundation is delighted to work in partnership with FG Wilson and Queen's University to assist in this most important project. As its first direct investment in Northern Ireland, the Foundation sees this as a flagship for its future endeavours in the Province, and in association with FG Wilson looks forward to identifying further projects with the University”, said Dick Elsden, Director for Government Affairs for Caterpillar Inc in the United Kingdom.

Building work has commenced on the £45 million library, which is due for completion in 2009. Designed by Boston-based architects Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbot (SBRA), the new building will accommodate 2000 reader places and house 1.5 million volumes.

For further information contact:

Anne Langford, Tel 028 9097 5310

ENDS

The blurb from the QUB website will probably follow the gownn article down the Memory Hole, so I have published it here.

Gregson and the Caterpillar people can be seen in the photograph above. A dying Rachel Corrie can be seen in the photograph below.

What have they Regenerated?

2008-12-07T14:46:00.000-08:00

Click to enlarge.

Five years after the University of Ulster invented a fake residents' group it's time to ask "What have they Regenerated?"

When called upon to help, the Extern Organisation could only find 204 residents. That was five years ago. Less than a hundred remain. The Universities have got their campus for free, courtesy of the taxpayer who forked out £24,000 for each property converted. That was generous of us don't you think? The Cancer of Landlordism has spread throughout South Belfast, raping community after community. Stranmillis is being pulled down house by house just like the Holyland. Now there's massive oversupply. Those crazy landlords just keep on going, driven by a compulsion called greed. Now they're invited back to the meetings from which they had previously been ejected. It's Grounghog Day, only there's fewer residents present. Soon landlords will outnumber residents at these things. How could anyone seriously beleive that that place would be turned around?

Denial's a dangerous thing. It enabled a handful of mediocrities to act as a PR front for the Universities and silence the cries of pain from the remnants of a community. What do they have to say for themselves now? Sorry? Mea Culpa? Don't hold your breath. They have no remorse. Instead they mourn the loss of their importance. There's nobody left for them to feed off. They're all that's left on The Raft of the Medusa.

Laugh Out Loud

2008-11-07T05:13:00.000-08:00

I laughed out loud when I saw this. Click to open:-

All that money and Declan Boyle has no life. I'm sure he prefers to be rich and miserable.

Declan Boyle, former head of the Landlords Association, sits munching his sandwiches in the squalor of his rusty white van. It captures his moral decrepitude. I wonder is he still cruising the Holyland at night in his black Merc or 4 wheel drive?

I bet he still listens to the Bay City Rollers. He probably wanks to their videos.

Licence to Kill

2008-10-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

I've had a week straight out of Franz Kafka.
"What is Mr Catney charged with?"
"AOABH, Threat to Kill, Interfering with an Officer in the course of an investigation"
"What, no GBH? No GBH with Intent?"
"No"
"What evidence has been submitted?"
"Police reports. Interview statements. Mr Catney is contesting the charges. He's made countercharges."
"No photographs have been admitted?"
"No"
"What about medical reports?"
"No"
"What???!!! No medical evidence and no photographs?"
"No"
"Well how am I supposed to get them in?"
"You have to give them to the police"
"The police are trying to keep them out!!"
"You have to give them to the police"
"So they're the gatekeepers"
"Ah, yeah"
"Can the Ombudsman not give the photos to the prosecutor?"
"You have to give them to the police"

I needed valium and an afternoon to recover from that.

Round Two.

"No Mr Murray. Those photographs are for our own use."
"But you have the Continuity of Evidence Statement?"
"It's not our job to conduct the investigation. We investigate the police. Your complaint is a disciplinary matter. This is misconduct, not criminality. We would only give the photographs to the prosecutor is we were pressing charges against the police"
"But they're withholding evidence. The prosecutor has tried and tried and tried to get medical evidence off them and they haven't given it. How could the prosecutor press charges for AOABH in the absence of medical evidence? They cannot get a conviction without it"
"Um, ah. I was going to discuss this with my line manager. The medical evidence is your best bet. The photographs might not be admissible."
The cops insisted they weren't. Stuart Cassells insisted they were inadmissible and was, interestingly enough joined in this by Inspector Jim Young and Sargeant Alan Bell who just, as it were, happened to be passing. That's why the Police Ombudsmans' office sent investigators out to get the photographs and a Continuity of Evidence Statement. I want you to give the photographs and the statement to the prosecutor"
"But they're for our own use. And anyway they were collected six months after the assault."
"They're digital photographs. Each image is a file containing the date and time it was taken and if it was modified."
"But they were collected six months after the asssault."
"That's because the police refused to investigate and only did so after it was revealed to them that my assailant and his six alleged witnesses were party to the giving of a false name. On the day of my assault I went to a neighbour's house and was told to go straight to the police. There were no officers in the station, but the auxiliaries called an ambulance.. The paramedics said I had a serious head injury and had to have it X-Rayed. The police came, the ambulance went away and six officers confronted me in a small room in a somewhat unpleasant manner and told me not to press charges. They said that Katrina O'Neil had six witnesses who heard me threaten to burn down the house with her and the kids in it and then attacked her boyfriend, but they didn't want to press charges. Now I had concussion, but still had the wit to say,
"Why does she not want to press charges. If someone threatened to burn your house down with you and your kids in it would you not want to press charges? Maybe they don't because I'm the one sitting here covered in blood."
Then they cautioned me for the crime of criticising this man's girlfriend, a public figure, for her failures in her public role. I note that you've closed the case on that"
"Oh? I don't think I'm dealing with that case. No, no, I'm not."
"You know that it went to trial and I was acquitted on all three charges and am sueing the cops for false arrest, malicious prosecution and Human Rights abuses. I would have thought the Ombudsman would have been interested in the Human Rights aspect"
"Um, Ah"
"There was another complaint that was closed. I was arrested for criticising another member of that committee. The Ombudsman's office took the police line that because I had been cautioned and placed on this thing called "The Harrassment Register" and had criticised this public figure on the internet again the cops had no case to answer. The Human Rights issue just didn't exist for them."
"Um, I'm afraid I wasn't dealing with that case, but I'll be speaking to my line manager today."
"Do you have the disk with the photos there?"
"Yeeees???"
"It'll only take you a minute. Just pop it in and have a look at it"
"Ummmm"
"I really think you should look at it"
"Um...I really should go.......my line manager....."
"What about the medical evidence?"
"You really need to argue that with the prosecutor. I'm afraid we can't help you"

I will deconstruct this for you, and the line of reasoning is perfectly logical and coherent, and thus very terriffying:-

The police are determined that Mr Catney not go to jail. That much is obvious.
The police are gatekeepers for the Prosecution Service and decide who gets charged with what. The prosecutors just shrug their shoulders and go along with it. They clearly have no interest in justice. Thus murder charges get reduced to affray and so on. They just don't care. They even press charges in the absence of medical evidence knowing that the case will fail. It's no skin off their nose. They get paid no matter how crap they are.
The cops have insisted that Mr Catney be charged with the minimum possible offense. He could have pled guilty and walked, but he's contesting it.
This will be an opportunity for Katrina O'Neill to throw one of her Performances. I can picture it now. Every lie under the sun will be thrown at me. I will have no opportunity to answer those allegations in court. Her performance will be suitably extreme. For her this is Apotheosis, pouring her efforts into an emotional incontinence of Hollywood proportions.
A scapegoat is needed for the debacle that has become the Holylands. Why not blame Alan Murray for everything from arson to intimidation to this, to that, to the other thing. The police surely have a file, but curiously, no evidence. I must be a Holyland Ninja, despite having no criminal history. Either that or they're incredibly stupid and incompetent. Or perhaps their "intelligence" is defective or false (hint hint).
The cops really, really, really don't like me. This is Northern Ireland (that's another hint). By making sure Mr Catney gets off because they have withheld evidence and got Katrina O'Neill to throw the performance of a lifetime, and thrown every smear in the book at me, they have given him a licence to come after me again. Even someone as incredibly stupid as him can work it out. He doesn't need to be given instructions. Thus there is no direct link to the cops. This is very convenient.
Mr Catney has no fear, no consequential thought and a history of extreme violence. His last assault on me was nearly fatal. The next attack will come without warning on a dark winter night. He likes to stab people.

The cops have given him a Licence to Kill.

This chain of reasoning is simple and terrifying and undeniable. The officer given the task of Perverting the Course of Justice and doling out death warrants is a mere willing pawn. He could certainly have chosen not to do this. He could have blown the lid on the whole thing. He made his choice, and if it all goes tits up, will take the fall for those who gave the orders. This is Northern Ireland. It's the same old cops, the same old courts. Murder is reduced to Affray. Informers are given a licence to kill. This is not Justice. This is Northern Ireland.

Rape

2008-10-10T07:17:00.000-07:00

You may be familiar with this:-

New Poll finds that almost half of Northern Ireland Students Believe that a Woman is Partially or Totally Responsible for Being Raped if She Flirts

Posted: 30 September 2008

New campaign to target student unions

A new poll shows that almost half (46%) of Northern Ireland university students believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she has behaved in a flirtatious manner, revealed Amnesty International today (29 September), as it published a report on attitudes to violence against women.

The poll, Violence against women: the perspective of students in Northern Ireland, commissioned by Amnesty International, surveyed the attitudes and experiences of over 700 students across University of Ulster campuses.

The research showed that a 'blame culture' toward women and sexual violence exists over drinking, perceived promiscuity, personal safety and whether a woman has clearly said 'no' to a man. The poll found, for example, that almost one third (30%) of students in Northern Ireland believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she is wearing 'sexy or revealing clothing'.

The figures are higher than those found in similar surveys carried out elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Amnesty is calling on university heads to do more to tackle the problem of violence against women on campus.

Amnesty International Northern Ireland programme director Patrick Corrigan said:

'This survey shows that there are some extremely disturbing attitudes swirling around our campuses.

'It's shocking that so many students lay the blame for being raped or assaulted at the feet of women themselves. If we are going to break a cycle of violence against women in Northern Ireland, we need to start by challenging attitudes amongst students and the population at large.

'As part of an integrated strategy to end all forms of violence against women, the Northern Ireland Executive should consider a comprehensive campaign aimed at preventing violence and challenging prejudicial attitudes.'

Katie Morgan, President of NUS/USI (National Union of Students / Union of Students in Ireland) said:

'Sadly, these results chime with what I have seen with my own eyes on campus. We've long been calling for better services for students who have suffered violence, and these results confirm not only that domestic abuse amongst students occurs far too often, but that students don't know where to turn when it happens. The universities and colleges need to think again about the welfare of their students and in tackling the suggestion that a woman can be responsible for being raped.'

Amnesty's poll also revealed that domestic violence against female students is apparently widespread in Northern Ireland. Forty per cent of students reported knowing a female student who had been assaulted by her boyfriend or partner. Meanwhile, one in 10 local students considers violence acceptable against a girlfriend who nags, flirts with other men or refuses to have sex.
Revealingly, the survey also showed that three-quarters of students did not know what advice to give a woman who had suffered domestic abuse: 77% felt they did not have enough information and support to tackle the problem and 82% were unaware of the availability of any support services on campus for student victims of domestic violence.
The results have prompted Amnesty International and local students unions to launch their own campaign on campus to challenge sexist attitudes. The poster, leaflet and drinks mat campaign will be rolled out in the University of Ulster and Queen's University Belfast student unions over the coming weeks.
Amnesty has also written to Northern Ireland college heads and the Northern Ireland Executive encouraging them to take more action to tackle violence against women students.

ENDS

Note to editors
The full survey report - Violence against women: the perspective of students in Northern Ireland - is available from Amnesty International.

The survey questioned 715 students at the four University of Ulster campuses across Northern Ireland. It was conducted by a group of university students working through the Science Shop.
The survey questions were similar to two comparable studies undertaken in the UK by ICM for Amnesty International and the End Violence Against Women campaign. This report also includes a description, where relevant, of the variance between the results obtained amongst students in Northern Ireland with the other surveyed cohort.

That "students" rape and beat their girlfriends and other female targets of opportunity is no surprise to anyone living in the Holyland. That the police cover it up is also no surprise. That no "student" has been or will be prosecuted is, you guessed it, no surprise. When this smug little shit says that "students" are not criminals he means that they are above the law. After all no-one was prosecuted for this. The attitude of the cops was that the victim brought it upon herself because of her mental health issues. I do not know how any woman can be a part of the RUC/PSNI. One would need to be utterly devoid of conscience, empathy, decency etc; in short, simply not human. From my own experience I would have to say that that appears to be the case.

I was at Queens freshers fair recently. NUS/USI had a stall. One of their slogans was,

"Thanks for having sex with me when I didn't want it. Duh!"

This says many things. First of all, rape is so common among the "student" body to have become banal. Why else describe it in terms that are not shocking, not voicing the outrage that comes with true violation. NUS/USI, headed by a woman no less, are treating this as a matter of "educating" male "students". Rape is reduced to some kind of childish misbehaviour that needs a lesson in good manners to sort it out. Secondly, the experience is reduced to an unpleasant inconvenience. What the Amnesty International poll makes clear is that rape is not only normal to "students", but something they beleive that young women should simply expect to happen. This is a culture of invalidation that is grotesque beyond my power of words. These people are simply devoid of human dignity and human decency. Where have they come from? They did not emerge from the womb fully formed degenerates. They have grown up in a family and school and peer environment that obliterates all humanity. What kind of parents send their daughters to "study" in Belfast knowing that they will be raped, will be beaten, will be invalidated by their peers? The kind of parents that have raised a generation of monsters and unleashed them on the residents of South Belfast, destroying community after community without remorse, but instead with brutal glee.

Now the truth about rape is out, at least until a PR campaign massages it away. Ater all, it's how the universities "perception managed" the Holyland out of existence.

Wishing for a High Wind

2008-09-24T05:33:00.001-07:00

Taken from this, picture 7:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7504139.stm

Click to open link.

Welcome to Partyland

2008-09-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

As you can see, they're here to study:-

http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=3551622943&ShowSims=Y

http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=2712799375&ShowSims=Y

http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=4843465196&ShowSims=Y

http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=4119990848&ShowSims=Y

Click to open links.

Spot the Difference

2008-09-12T12:16:00.000-07:00

What do

this

and this

and this

and this

and this

and this

have in common?

Almost the Worst Song Ever Written

2008-09-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

I fell off my seat when I heard this:-

Mickey Coleman:- Belfast Holylands

And people wonder why I'm ashamed to be Irish. There's more culture in a Dog Turd.

Lipstick on a Pig

2008-07-28T05:27:00.001-07:00

Click to enlarge.

Americans have a saying,
"You can paint lipstick on a pig, but it don't matter. It's still a fuckin' pig"
When I lived in the Holylands this article would have driven me crazy.
"Students aren't criminals and we don't treat them like criminals. It's student anti-social behaviour"
They're not criminals. It's all just "high jinks". It's good clean fun.
" The first thing a police officer will do when they come across behaviour such as shouting and yelling is give them advice and warning"
Well that's bollocks. The first thing they'll do is drive on by and systematically ignore this shit all night long.
Then,
" If they don't respond well we'll take a note of their name and address and pass it on to the universities"
In other words do fuck all. Wash your hands and let the universities do fuck all.
"If it's really bad we'll prosecute them ourselves"
How bad does it have to be? The student who invaded a woman's home and entered her child's bed has not been prosecuted. The cops bent over backwards to make sure he got away with it. To put it differently, residents are legitimate targets for students, and the cops will endorse whatever they do.
"The South Belfast police have been accused of this leniency because they don't want to alienate young middle-class catholics ........a claim the policeman rejects"

Why is it that there is an endless call by the Provos and the Belfast News Group for "Zero Tolerance" policing to be inflicted on working class kids guilty of "Anti-Community Activity"? Is it frustration because they can no longer blow the knees off children? Or is it the Debacle, a capitulation so complete that they collaborate with all the enthusiasm of Vichy France with the Nazis? It is interesting to note that no such call is made for "Zero Tolerance" to be inflicted on the perpetrators of this, and this, and this, and this, and this.

They tell me that Trevor is photogenic, some kind of 'pretty face". I can't comment on that, but have noticed the hair gel. In the photograph I see him trying to keep a straight face. Usually he wears a smug grin or cheesy smirk. Whether it's lipstick or hair gel it makes no difference. It's still a fuckin' pig.

Update: Validation

2008-07-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

I've got some press coverage. I thought I'd share it with you. I was in fact charged under the protection from harassment order 1998. This was ostensibly introduced to protect people from stalkers. Suffice it to say that wasn't gonna fly in this case. This legislation has been consistently used to protect institutional power from accountability. The Belfast Holyland Fake Residents Group may not in itself have power, but it acts as a proxy for the cops and universities; thus my prosecution. Click to enlarge.

Validation.

2008-07-04T14:39:00.002-07:00

Thank fuck for valium. It's a high-threat situation. Her father sits in the visitors seats glaring pure hate at me from an angry, violent face. She's giving her testimony, fear and terror with all of the usual hysteria that characterises her performances. I look from her to the furious street thug and know another beating is on the way. I can win here, but it doesn't end here. It ends out there where the cops new best friends have Free Reign and Official Sanction.

"Tell me, Constable Cassells, on the day you cautioned my client, had he voluntarily come down to Donegall Pass Police Station?"
"Yes"
"He had come to report an assault on himself by the complainant's boyfriend?"
"Yes"
"And this was a very severe assault indeed?"
"Yes"
He's squirming.

It passes like a dream. I'm giving testimony. I'm there, but I'm not there. The menace goes away, and in it's place; the challenge. We go through the witness statements. My disagreements with the prosecutor are balanced, measured, calm. My barrister talks me through the articles from my blog. We discuss the context and content; the death of the community; the need to rehouse most, give soundproofing to others and imprison no more people in that place.

I deconstruct Tony's article; the call to build no more public housing but make the homeless rent from Rachmans. Katrina could not have written it. The dense technical jargon is beyond her limited wit. Yet she sat in the witness box and claimed to have been it's author.

"The police instructed you to write no more about her on your blog." Counsel for the State has to make the point. "She is upset that you do so."
"You're aware of the cartoonist Steve Bell in the Guardian?"
"No"
I don't believe him, but the magistrate knows where I'm going. He nods to me.
I continue. " Should it matter to him how Tony Blair, Maggie Thatcher, Gordon Brown, and, this week, Boris Johnston feel about his wonderfully grotesque, funny and apt caricatures of them? Yet Steve Bell's not in the dock, nor is any other journalist. This is the first time in the United Kingdom that someone has been prosecuted for criticising a public figure. This is, in fact, a test case."
"'It may be", says the magistrate, "but I don't care."
I'm learning to like him.
"But", says the prosecutor, "she does not want you to do so."
"I consider it my obligation as a journalist, and bloggers consider themselves to be journalists, and indeed the obligation of every citizen to hold to account those who claim to speak and act on our behalf. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

In his summing up, the magistrate agrees with that. However, it has been a close call. My witnesses, credible, articulate and upstanding, demolish her account of the residents' meeting. Her performance, product of a lifetime of practice, is emotive. Without my witnesses she would have won. Only I can counter her claims about the "looking incident" at the Ormeau Bakery, but it fails to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Her performance has impressed the Judge, but it's not enough.

Justice prevailed and Free Speech won, but the perfidy of the cops and their plaything came dangerously close to succeeding. On the day of the day of the trial they tried to introduce three more alleged "incidents". What they are I don't know. They could have had the trial adjourned until September and then out of a total of six allegations they would have to win only two. Dirty tricks and thugs on the ground; the RUC haven't gone away you know.

Postscript.
The issue is discussed in these links:-

http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/power-of-arrest
-used-against-belfast-blogger/

http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/holylands-
blogger-cleared-of-harassment-charges/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/06/
northernireland.civilliberties

http://modoherty.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/save-the-blog/

That Suzanne Breen Article in Full

2008-06-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge.

Bargain Bucket Degrees

2008-05-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

A commenter wanted to debate correspondence courses as an alternative to attending university. I think they are an excellent idea. Now that education is a commodity rather than a public service it was inevitable that someone would seek to undercut the competition by, basically, mimicking the Open University. This institution opened the door to people who were excluded from mainstream higher education. Cultural Capital and the then existing numbers bottleneck made university primarily the prerogative of the comfortable few, grants and free tuition not withstanding. Now grants are gone and in the free market universities are chasing each other down the toilet in an endless Race To the Bottom. I entered higher education via the Institution Previously Known as BIFHE. Things have, I gather, got even worse since I moved on. However the new Belfast Metropolitan College is shilling Bargain Bucket Degrees in conjunction with Leeds University.

This means that one can get a degree without ever leaving home. No more need for student accommodation. No more need to move to Belfast. What justification do they have now? Those inbred yokels flood into the Holyland like a Tidal Wave of Excrement. Yet they don't go to class, so tuition fees are wasted. They regurgitate their notes onto the exam paper just like they were taught in grammar school. They are simply a grotesque waste of taxpayers money. This does not bother their parents who, after all, enjoy unearned wealth and privilege courtesy of the UK taxpayer. Oddly they claim to oppose the Union, much in the same way, I suppose, as a high class whore claims to oppose prostitution. A short anecdote describes perfectly their hypocrisy. I found myself chatting to the occupants of a expensive car; the father in a dark suit; mother conservatively dressed; both middle aged, middle class parents, their demeanour dignified and restrained. In the back sits their daughter, laughing through her fake tan,
"We're movin' in on Monday!!! Party!!!!!!!!!!"
Mum and dad are unmoved, unphased. For them there is nothing wrong. I slap my hand on my head and say,
"Thank fuck I'm leaving"

Correspondence study enables those who are repulsed at the well earned stigma of our local universities to get an education without leaving here. Lectures can be made available on line or on DVD. It's just like the Open University only dearer. Someone should have thought of it sooner.

Uni offers cut-price degrees in north

By Simon Doyle Education Correspondent
27/05/08

STUDENTS are being offered the chance to earn cut-price degrees from an English university without having to leave Northern Ireland.

Plans to develop a US-style state college network using the north’s further education (FE) institutions are being brought forward by Leeds Metropolitan University.

The scheme will allow FE students to work towards higher qualifications while saving thousands of pounds in accommodation, travel and fees.

Accredited degrees can be earned for around £1,000 a year less than it would cost to study at either of Northern Ireland’s two universities.

Leeds Met is offering its courses through Belfast Metropolitan College and is working to develop links with other colleges.

The university already has a strong association with the north – its Carnegie faculty of sport and education sponsors Irish League, women’s and schools’ cup soccer.

It said it now hopes to encourage more people in Northern Ireland to continue their studies by making degrees more accessible and affordable.

Leeds Met was the first university to announce it would charge less than the maximum ‘top-up’ tuition fees when the controversial new system was introduced.

Top-up fees – blamed for adding to record levels of student debt – are set to rise from £3,000 to £3,145 a year in line with inflation but courses at Leeds Met have a price tag of £2,000.

Its expanding partnership with the north’s FE colleges gives students, for the first time, the opportunity to avail of cheaper degrees without having to move to England.

With transport and other costs rising, this may be also attractive for many as it will mean saving on accommodation and travel.

Vice-chancellor Simon Lee, a former dean of the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast, said the relationship between Leeds Met and the north’s colleges was “evolving”.

“We should be like an American state university. We are not trying to be a research university. We are trying to be like the University of Texas, Wisconsin or California, where there are different campuses and different community colleges,” he said.

“The regional college network sees the value of the partnership and we like the idea of students who might have stopped at that stage of their education feeling confident and wanting to keep progressing.”

Students can study for foundation degrees – in subjects including marketing and media technology – in colleges for two years.

They can then either transfer to Leeds or stay at home for an extra year to earn a full degree.

Prof Lee said while the collaboration was still in its infancy he predicted that more students would earn their degrees without moving to Leeds.

“It is possible for students never to leave home,” he said.

University Leeds way in forging new links

By Simon Doyle Education Correspondent
27/05/08

Having already developed strong links with Northern Ireland through sport, a university in England is now seeking to expand the range of academic opportunities open to students. Education correspondent Simon Doyle reports

When Professor Simon Lee, a one-time dean of the law faculty at Queen’s University Belfast, was appointed head of Liverpool Hope University he sought to boost the number of Irish students on campus.

His Hope Across the Irish Sea campaign saw the undergraduate total from both north and south rise from a tiny proportion to the 1,000 that attend the university today.

Prof Lee said Liverpool was a natural place for young people from Ireland to study while Hope itself also offered a small town charm attractive to those from rural areas.

Now as vice-chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University, Prof Lee is again looking to his former home.

His university’s Carnegie brand is already well-established in sport in the north and he is seeking to expand the university’s role in further and higher education.

“It is obviously more of a difficult proposition than Liverpool because it hasn’t got the historical and romantic attachment. It hasn’t got the proximity and didn’t have the communications,” Prof Lee said.

“When I came I did not want to do what I did at Hope, so for the first year I don’t think we did very much at all about Northern Ireland.

“At the end of that first year, Bradford City football club got into difficulties and I suggested that we see if we can help.”

Leeds Met began delivering sport science support to Bradford City FC and then the following year while attending the British-Irish Association annual conference he learned that the Irish League was seeking a new

sponsor.

After discussions between the university and IFA chief executive Howard Wells, a former student at the Carnegie faculty of sport and education, it was agreed that the name of the faculty would be used to sponsor the league.

“From the beginning we were clear that we wanted to help but it would give us a profile in and across Northern Ireland,” Prof

Lee said.

“It’s not a commercial sponsorship and it is not like an average university somewhere in Scotland or England deciding randomly to try and recruit students from Northern Ireland.

“There is a real human relationship at all sorts of levels through the university.

“We have a real opportunity to develop relationships with schools, young people, their families and we are not just trying to recruit anybody and everybody.”

The university has also launch-ed a new partnership with Rugby League Ireland which will see players benefit from Carnegie’s sporting expertise in developing players, coaches and officials.

Prof Lee said Leeds Met had also forged strong cultural and academic partnerships and had developed links with about 20 different colleges across “the north of these islands” – including Hull, Grimsby, Belfast and Derry.

He said the relationship with Northern Ireland colleges was “evolving”.

“We should be like an American state university. We are not trying to be a research university. We are trying to be like the University of Texas, Wisconsin or California, where there are different campuses and different community colleges,” Prof Lee said.

“In America you might study two years at your local community college and then decide you want to go on to the big city in your state.

“In England the government introduced foundation degrees and that has now rippled out through the rest of these islands and the model is two years and one year for topping up.”

Prof Lee said the initial idea was for Further Education colleges to teach the two-year foundation degrees, with students then travelling to Leeds to top-up to a full degree in their third year.

However, he said that this had changed because the British government was giving colleges the power to award their own foundation degrees.

“In general the regional college network sees the value of the partnership and we like the idea of students who might have stopped at that stage of their education feeling confident and wanting to keep progressing,” Prof Lee said.

“It is a very gradual process. We are dealing with the north – the north of Ireland, the north of England and Scotland.”

A college that Leeds Met has strong links with in Dunfermline, formerly known as Lauder College, has changed its name to Carnegie College.

Prof Lee said he could see one of the north’s institutions making a similar name change.

Among the Leeds degree courses offered through Belfast Metropolitan University is the BA (Hons) in Marketing.

“In principle you can do the degree in anything,” Prof Lee said.

“What tends to happen is a college develops a course for its local economy. Probably what would happen would be students going for a more generic top-up year such as in enterprise.

“If you are going to widen

participation in the north of Ireland, you have often got to hook a youngster or a returning- to-learning person into something they feel very confident in. You take them through to foundation degree and then you branch out.”

Prof Lee said the relationship was still in its infancy and he believed that more students would choose the distance-learning option.

“It is possible for them never to leave home,” he said.

“The numbers are too small to say what the pattern will be, but I think it will mostly be staying at home.”

Suzie Gray, head of higher education at Belfast Metropolitan College, said the collaboration contributed to the continued professional development of college staff, which in turn benefited students.

“Our strategic partnership with Leeds Metropolitan University not only provides opportunities for curriculum development within the college, it provides our students with progression opportunities here in Northern Ireland, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will forge their career closer to home and make a longer-term contribution to the local economy,” she said.

Dancing on our Dead

2008-05-09T06:28:00.000-07:00

Click on these to enlarge:

Smears, slurs and innuendo. Where does it end?
"....his death would have come as a relief"
No, it's not enough to dance on his grave. He, and all other residents, are labeled as thugs, criminals and sex offenders. The editors of the Gown, in a desperate attempt to save face, have put a half-hearted and dishonest "Clarification" on their blog. See here. Queens' University, which must have sanctioned this demolition job on the remaining residents, has gone into lockdown mode. To pretend that "students", who do not live in the Holyland, but merely use it as a drinking den and flophouse, while abusing education, are in fact "residents" adds insult to insult to injury. Clearly the privileged scum, who have driven an entire community from their homes, are not the problem. The remaining residents, imprisoned in a lunatic asylum, are what's wrong. They should not be allowed to live there. The ethnic cleansing should be completed. How dare anyone hit back. People should know their place and stay in it and shut the fuck up. Arbuckle never admitted torching the cars. No-one who hits back ever admits anything. This drives the cops up the walls. It also costs them a fortune. The resources committed to containing the frustration of a handful of people are so huge that it would be cheaper to build them new houses.

A few years ago six hillbillies beat Arbuckle with iron bars. They nearly killed him. I bet the cops wish they had. To treat the collapse and death of a 25 year old as "Not Suspicious" shows that they don't care. Someone who stood up and fought back is dead and can be subjected to posthumous character assassination. That's all that matters. The horror, intimidation and violence inflicted on residents is whitewashed out. The narrative is inverted; "innocent" "Students" are tormented by "evil residents". Perhaps the editors of the Gown could tell me: where has the community gone? They were not abducted by aliens and they did not want to leave their homes. Life had become intolerable for them. Now I am one of the refugees. I have escaped from hell and enjoy the luxury of sleep at night in the peace of silence. I do not know how or if the man who swapped house with me will cope. It is not a redemptive ending. We don't do that here. Maybe we don't deserve it.
"No nation in this world are as morally debased as the People of Ireland"
Connolly knew what he was talking about. After all a party of the Criminal Hard Right names their Head Office after him.

Arbuckle was no angel, but he had many friends. His funeral and interment moved a lot of people to tears. He is remembered here

Tony's Fraudulent Article

2008-05-09T06:16:00.000-07:00

I was beaten almost to death for exposing this as a fraud.

Click on it to enlarge:-

For a description of the row resulting from it see here and here.

PACT: Pigs And Collaborators Together

2008-04-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

They're finally launching their new forum. The Community Police Liaison Committee collapsed because nobody went to it. Here comes it's replacement. You will remember I have previously described a proposal to pervert Restorative Justice and turn it into a vehicle for The universities, their Bogus Students, cops, landlords and the local Housing Association to isolate, intimidate and silence residents. We will be obliged to confront our tormentors face to face. We will become Targets. The number of complaints will fall through the floor. We will be told what a great success it has all been.

I expect heavy Provo involvement in this. After all their man, the Head of Restorative Justice in West Belfast, has been a tout for years if not decades. As I've said in the comments section, Downing Street has been not only writing Provo press statements, but appears to also be producing front page articles for the Andytown News. It's "Zero Tolerance" for working class people. Well we surely have that here. Such a policy will not apply to Rich Scum, who are above the law. What are Ogra Sinn Fein gonna say,
"Arrest and prosecute us and our mates"?
Some fucking chance.
There are others who are above the law: the "Partners in the Community" are allowed to do whatever they want, up to and including Homicidal Violence, and the cops will bend over backwards to make sure they get away with it. Lets face it, murders go unsolved round here.

This "New Initiative" is old piss in new bottles. PACT: Partners And Communities Together. Fuck that. Its PACT: Pigs And Collaborators Together.

"Who let da Dogs out?"

2008-03-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

"Woof woof woof, Woof woof!!!!!"
They're laughing at the cops. They know it's all for show; the dogs, the armoured vehicles, the riot squad. A meat wagon pulls up. A local is led away. The cops have roughed him up. He defended his brother and clobbered a "student". It's a no-no. Don't protect your own from drunken hillbillies. The Stasi zoom in on kids with baseball hats; Zero Tolerance for Residents. The Andytown News would be proud. For the rich scum it's different; its a big fucking pantomime. At least the cops have the decency to be angry at these cunts. Maybe it's frustration; they can't do to them what they did to us when they dragged us off the Ormeau Road. There'll be no plastic bullets in the face for rich cunts, no Billy-Clubs wrapped round the head, no being trailed through broken glass.
They're singing,
"We all live in the Holy-Holy Land, Holy-Holy Land, Holy-Holy land"
The cops are desperate. They can't afford to lose this showdown.
"We need you to step back, Mr Murray. We have a public order situation."
"Is there an O.C. here?"
"Ask the sergeants. They're dealing with this"
There's no commander on the ground. Jim Young, local Inspector, is nowhere.
An officer pretends to film the mob. She can't even operate the camcorder.
The cops are engaging them, taking their drink and pouring it away. Bottles fly. The cops are arguing with them, pushing them back.
"Throwing bottles is a criminal offence!!!"
I would have thought this was obvious. A previous Inspector thought different.
It takes a hundred cops, a company level unit, to deal with five houses. If St Patrick's Day had happened during Term Time they would have had no hope. In previous years we have had 6000 drunken yokels inflicting Mob Rule for 48 hours solid while the cops drive by and watch, doing nothing.
Slowly the "students" disperse. They have other places to be, a mini-riot in the Hatfield to enjoy.We had a homeopathic dose of culture this year. Only a handful of these people were up, the rest having no classes and no excuse for being here. Parental authority was presumably exercised. It is a suitably rare occurrence. No-one need claim that progress has been made. Token gestures don't fool the "students". Remember, it was one of us, not them that was hauled away.
In their enthusiasm to go the cops abandon a landrover. The "students" bleed the tyres, leaving it stranded like a ship on the rocks. It's an appropriate metaphor for the whole situation.

They've abolished the community and invented another one

2008-02-05T14:39:00.000-08:00

I'm being prosecuted for writing this, so I thought it was worthwhile to look at the success of our self-appointed representatives.

Queens have renamed the area. The word Holylands has obvious embarrassing connotations.

From now on the area previously known as the Holylands will be known as Queens' Quarter

The Belfast Holyland Regeneration Association has been so successful that the handwriting's on the wall.

I thought I'd give you a guided tour through the new Queens' Quarter.

As you can see, the "students" have got their priorities straight.

Because their tenants are "students", the landlords do not have to pay rates on their properties. This is one of a number of massive redistributions of wealth from you, the public, into the pockets of the super-rich. Let's look at the service provided by Belfast City Council with your money.

The landlords refuse to buy wheelie bins, so your rates are paying for these industrial Eurobins. At one point the council took them out, so you can imagine what things were like without them.

In the South Belfast News BHRA claimed that we don't have rats here. I kid you not.

You may have noticed that we are in the middle of a housing crisis. Over the last ten years homelessness has trebled from 7,000 to 20,000. Someone somewhere is proud of this achievement. The reasons behind it merit investigation. Ten years ago, in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement, a hidden agenda began to unfold. The Housing Executive was prohibited from building houses. The funds were redirected elsewhere. The official responsible for doling out conversion grants to landlords revealed at a residents' meeting that the average grant per property was £24,000 and could go up to £36,000. It appears that the entire housing budget, untold tens of millions of pounds, has been doled out to property developers and has financed the rape of communities all over South Belfast and the rest of the province. The application of simple mathematics suggests a truly shocking figure. 10,000 HMO's in Northern Ireland multiplied by £24,000 per property equals £240 million, of which £120 million would have been doled out in South Belfast alone. This is an enormous redistribution of wealth from the public to the Rentier Class. I feel a James Connolly quote coming on, but will refrain lest I offend those who desecrate his name by hanging it on the front door of their head office.

Let's see what the modern day Rachmans have got for your money.

Families used to live here

And here

and here

and here

Another one bites the dust......
OOPS!!!!!

As you're probably aware, the cops have a crisis of credibility when it comes to community relations.

That completes this tour of the new Queens' Quarter. Those of us who remember when the Holyland was a cultured, Bohemian, tolerant place where we were free to be ourselves and not some sectarian stereotype will forever mourn it's passing.

"Students are Victims". Thus spake Farrell

2008-02-04T05:25:00.000-08:00

It's hard to think of privileged thugs as victims, but our former spokesman thinks so. The narrative of victimhood is so perverse that the perpetrators of this and this and this and this can be called victims.
Next he says it's all the fault of planning. The landlords have not raped this community to death, it was planning's fault for allowing them. No matter how evil the act, do not hold the powerful and the privileged accountable for their actions and the resulting, intended, consequences.

Farrell wanted the landlords to attend meetings of his "Regeneration Association". No doubt they'll be invited back. After all, they're part of this "Restorative Justice" initiative that will compel residents who complain to face their tormentors and make targets of themselves. When the number of complaints falls through the floor we'll be told how successful it has been.

The Nolan Show has exposed the truth that we are not wanted here. Why, therefore, are we not rehoused? Why should anyone be obliged to live in this environment? Farrell owns his home. He chooses to stay and deprive his family of peace. If he wants, he can leave any time. Most of us have no option. We're renting from a housing association that treats us with utter disdain. They can't even be bothered to fix a leaking bath. You will not be surprised to hear that on their management committee sits a certain David Farrell. Suffice it to say, we did not elect him. He might at least have had a bath before having his photo taken for inclusion in their annual report. The image brings forth the smell of stale booze and body odour. That's our spokesman. Is it any wonder no one goes to his meetings?

Fake Residents group: Update

2008-01-25T14:57:00.000-08:00

I wrote this in the comments section in reply to someone who wanted to know how the Fake Residents Group are getting on. I think it merits publishing as a post.

On the evening of the last meeting I was in common grounds cafe. Anne Monaghan was coming and going looking smug. At one point she smiled at me. I smiled back. She didn't stay for long. The meeting appears to have folded after half an hour. I suspect they lacked a quorum, or, to put it differently, no-one bothered going.

I was at the latest Community Police Liaison Committee meeting. I was the only resident from anywhere in the University sector to attend. The Holylands self-appointed representatives no longer go as they can't bear to be in the same room as me. Some months ago Tony McGuinness threw a tantrum at a CPLC meeting because the cops would not remove me. It was quite funny to watch. Some months ago the cops tried to exclude me from any meeting attended by Katrina O'Neill. My barrister tore Stevie Kingsman to shreds. You can read about it here.

There is obviously a crisis of confidence in the cops. Go figure. The CPLC has been wound up. The cops are planning an alternative forum. I assume this is where they will pervert restorative justice and turn it into a vehicle for landlords, the cops, the universities and their "students" to terrorise isolate and silence residents. Naturally the local housing association under Dermot Curran are moist with enthusiasm at this. I think that the power of eviction gives some people more pleasure than sex. Social predators are always drawn to positions of power over the vulnerable. I've seen it in hostels and I've seen it in landlords, whether of the private or "Social" kind. Shit floats. Institutional power is always fundamentally psychopathic (Chomsky).

2:57 PM

Loathing is the Sincerest form of Flattery

2008-01-20T14:53:00.000-08:00

I'm truly honoured. This goes beyond plagiarism or even satire. It is magnificent. The author copies my style and turns it around, completely inverting it's meaning. The effort poured into every word is simply admirable. Only obsession could drive such a project. The compulsive striving to "get at" Alan Murray can only be driven by a profound loathing. It is remorseless. To have acquired an enemy with such a monomania fills me with pride. It is one thing to be hated, but such a skillfull and eloquent expression of hatred is a complement beyond words.

http://hollylands-wearzon.blogspot.com/

http://www.blogger.com/profile/09223055291748366556

A Matter of Numbers

2008-01-06T14:12:00.000-08:00

I posted this in the comments section. I think it's worth publishing as an article in it's own right.

For many years now there has been an argument about percentages. In a different life I was a student representative (the worst decision I ever made)and bought into the notion that it's a small minority causing mayhem, no more than ten percent. Way back then there was talk of introducing restorative justice in the Holylands. At the time, and we're talking eight years ago, this made intuitive sense. Involve the students in the community; make them feel accountable and responsible for their actions. I was such a deluded fool. Residents were selling up en masse. I remember attending the inaugural meeting of the original residents' group. The top room in city church was packed. There must have been 200 people there. That group folded and now we have the fake resident's group, sponsored by the University of Ulster and currently headed by their former community relations officer. The illegitimacy of this entity can be measured by attendance at it's meetings; always in single figures, many of them non-residents;- Anne Monaghan, Gerard Morgan, Denise from city church. About half of the committee are non-residents. The community is almost completely extinguished. There are less than a hundred residents left.

Over eight years my position has changed. If half of Queens undergraduates don't go to class, one can assume that half of them are bogus students, only up here to party. Because of its reputation, it's safe to say that a disproportionately high percentage of "students" in the Holyland are bogus. That means that the vast majority are party animals abusing education, and a small, but significant minority are genuine. This is the universities unofficial campus, and the academic progress of genuine students must suffer. My own experience is a rather extreme example, but must reflect to some degree the debilitation suffered by all who try to study here. A neighbour of mine is furious and outraged at the effect on her daughter's A-levels. Naturally the Universities' representatives have been suitably unhelpful in addressing her grievances. Anne Monaghan set a disgusting precedent when she represented the University of Ulster. Her footsteps are clear and easy for her successors to follow.

The wheel has, grotesquely, come full circle. Restorative Justice is again on the agenda. It has the support of Jim Young, our new Police inspector and Dermot Curran, chair of the dominant local housing association. I would love to know what planet these people are living on. They are either pious fools or sinister operators. Dermot Curran insists that people have no right to oppose this, after all "It's an attempt to resolve the situation". He doesn't live here and his attempts to compare this place to apparently successful efforts in Poleglass are absurd. Community Restorative Justice requires the existence of a stable community. Such a point is so obvious that only the deluded could fail to see it. There are 100 residents and 6000 "students". If you complain you make yourself a target. The police refuse to protect us, the universities use a variety of initiatives as "perception management", and the "students" make it clear that this is their area and we are not wanted. We should not be expected to make ourselves targets. The only thing that has had any effect is direct action. I will not endorse car burning, but it has made a lot of people and their parents think twice. If the truth be told, only large scale direct action could have saved this community, and the time for that was at least twelve years ago. Now a handful of us are left because we don't own our homes. Individuals may get moved out, but someone else is imprisoned in the same house. This must end. Get us out of here. Stop imprisoning people in this environment.

Update: share the love

2008-01-03T15:11:00.000-08:00

Remember This?

And This?

Well now our future professionals have decided to take up house-painting. Either that or they think that we shouldn't be here. I'll let you decide. For what it's worth, they're really bad decorators. They should stick to shovelling pigshit.

Because We Care

2008-01-03T12:18:00.000-08:00

Tick tick tick tick............I hear the van pull up beside me.
"What are you up to Alan?"
It's the short fat blonde ugly one.
"I'm getting wood out of this skip"
"Not while we're here. You see while it's in that skip it's the property of the landlord. And it remains his property until it's taken away by the skip people"
She's been reading a text book.
"What you're doing is a criminal offence. It's called "Theft by finding". If we see you doing it we'll arrest and prosecute you."
I'm staring at her in disbelief.
"Now, where are you headed to?"
She sounds like a schoolteacher.
"I guess I'll just go home"
"Good!! Off you go!!"
Hostility and smugness ooze out of her. She's not moving 'till I've gone. Her partner smiles inanely, trying to look the good cop. She knows she's won. I can't stand there all night. She'll arrest me. Clearly she has a need to humiliate.
They've timed it to perfection. It's midwinter. Snow is coming. As I write this, it's arrived. For seventeen years I've raided skips for firewood. I burn no coal, or oil, or gas. I recycle waste. My carbon footprint is minimal. In all of that time the cops have never had a problem. I was even told by them I wouldn't be prosecuted for raiding skips. What's changed? Could it be that their attempt to prosecute free speech has become a farce? If they can't get me one way, they'll get me another? Maybe it's the latest form of community relations. Maybe they'll apply the same "Theft by Finding" standard to every student or mob thereof with a traffic cone or a gate or a fence or a tree. Equality under the law?; Prosecute our future "Doctors, Lawyers, Teachers, Taxpayers"?
It's an act of exquisite cruelty. Zimbardo's experimental subjects would recognise it instantly.
I remember sitting in court behind three cops. Two were old hands. They were red-faced, having at least the decency to feel embarrassed at what they were doing. The other, a newbie, was ice cold, smug, ambitious. She'll go far.
I don't hate cops. I don't think they're all despicable...................

They Don't like it Up 'Em

2008-01-02T17:02:00.000-08:00

"You hit our friend!!"
"Fuck you!!"
A handful of Lower Ormeau's finest, looking like the junior cast of Shameless, are taking no shit from these four burly hicks.
A bottle flies. The hicks retreat inside and emerge, each armed with a hurley bat. The locals flee, but not for long. They return with their friends. A dozen scrawny kids, aged 10-16, armed with nothing but their rage, want revenge. Our four brave lads have no fight in them. They're scared of a bunch of children. They run for cover, bolting the front door and turning out the lights.
Double glazing defeats the young one's efforts. In their anger they use the first weapons to come to hand. Empty beer bottles bounce back at them. They kick the front door in frustration. The heat of the moment takes over. No-one thinks to get a brick and put it through the front window.
Our four Hillbilly Heroes call the cops. Two landrovers and three cars, two marked and one unmarked arrive like the seventh cavalry. The locals scatter. A landrover and parked car stay to protect our future lawyers, doctors professionals etc. The other vehicles disperse. They try and fail to hunt down the kids.
It's interesting that the same people who go to rebel night at the Hatfield are the first to call the cops. It's interesting that when they laid siege to residents after BBC's Spotlight the cops stood and watched. It's interesting that they can do whatever they want round here and the cops do nothing. A resident can't even take wood from a skip without risking prosecution. But, when they call the cops for help, armoured vehicles come to their defence. Every effort's made to keep the lower orders in their place, so the wealthy can have their endless party and stomp the little people into the ground.
I admire Lower Ormeau's finest. They know they have no future, like the rest of the Lost Generation. They hate the Provos and fair play to them for that. Some years ago the local Honchos stood guard at the luxury housing complex that backs onto McClure Street. The kids were throwing rocks through the windows and making the cosy tenants most uncomfortable. In the end direct action won. The property developer had stolen their playground. Now he had to put it back. Today kids play on the slide and climbing frame. They have a couple of goalposts on the patch of grass enclosed by a steel fence and private greed.
A class war is played out in the Holyland. Designer Republicans, property developers and Institutional Power against residents and local kids. It's the New Order in microcosm.

The Case of the Disappearing Wardens

2007-12-12T18:27:00.000-08:00

We never see them any more. I can't blame them if they sit kicking their heels in the office rather than venture out into this Hell-Hole. They've been assaulted repeatedly. What have the Universities done? Has anyone been expelled or even suspended for doing so? Maybe they got a hundred pound fine. I think we can be sure that the police have bent over backwards to avoid charging them.
Of course the cops set an example, driving by doing nothing. Why should the wardens put themselves at risk? They get paid a lot less than the cops who make a point of doing sweet fuck all.
As it happens at least two wardens have taken the logical step of joining the police. Their move from one to the other was very abrupt. They must have been police cadets by day, wardens by night.
The wardens have been no use to the community, but an excellent tool for perception management by the Universities.
"Look", they say," at the great job the wardens have done. Every thing's so much better now. It's all sorted"
Never mind that the wardens can't get them to take meaningful action against their customers, or rather "students".
As I write this the Yahoos are screaming in the street. There are no wardens to be seen. They must be tired after a long hard day at police college. Or maybe they just don't give a fuck any more. I wouldn't if I was them.

Behind Closed Doors

2007-12-08T18:56:00.000-08:00

It took place on a Thursday. Only a select few were invited. No-one was informed. The community was kept out of the loop. It had to be done quickly, before the scheduled meeting on November the Fifth. It was necessary to present a fait accompli and pretend it had been done constitutionally.
Details are sketchy. Anne Monaghan was the "Impartial Chairperson" who was then "elected" miraculously to the post. No AGM, no EGM, it was just a tiny clique and a handful of people they've bullied into attending.
The South Belfast News described her as "appointed". They weren't wrong.
The Vampire Queen Bitch, who fed off our pain to build her career, now claims to speak for us.
It's not a dream. It's the Theatre of the Absurd.

The Wheel in the Sky

2007-12-08T17:24:00.000-08:00

I love that song. I've always been a Journey fan. I have their early albums on vinyl. I'll have to get them on CD with extra features. The track's going round my head because of the latest story to have leaked about our Fake Residents' Group. (No, it's not how Anne Monaghan got "elected". I'll deal with that in a later post:)
Picture the scene. Katrina runs around demented.
"Eat up. Hurry up. The taxis are here. I work so hard. I'm up at seven every morning. I do so much for you people.........not a word of thanks..............."
Sandwiches are left half eaten. Pensioners are shoooed out of the room. Anne Monaghan barks orders like a Nazi.
They're off to the big wheel. It's good to know that our bogus representatives care. Whatever grant money the taxpayer has coughed up is not being wasted. What does it matter if you can't sleep at night? So what if your physical and mental health is destroyed? Go on the big wheel!! That'll make it better!! You're being intimidated? You're being told to,
"Sell your house and get the fuck out of the Holylands"?
Look how much we do for you. What, you're not grateful? You want to complain? You don't want to do that. Remember that guy that got his head bashed off the pavement? Don't bother calling the police. We're their Partners in the Community. We can do whatever we want and they'll protect us.
I can't get that song out of my head. So for all you Journey fans here it is

"Members only"

2007-11-26T15:53:00.000-08:00

I walk straight through the door. The sight shocks even me. At the head of the table sits Anne Monaghan, Queen of the Undead. Who is that shaven headed boy sitting there? It's Katrina's brother. He speaks,
"It's members only Alan"
Behind me Tony McGuinness is rising, his face flushed. One "man" and one boy who both stood and watched someone try to kill me then gave false witness statements are telling me I have no right to be there, in a supposedly representative body. Through the other door I see cops. Katrina's pulling her Drama Queen act. Denise is talking to them. I walk through.
"Lets go"
I lead the way, a cop on either side of me. Denise turns her back on me and fiddles with a door. I stop. She keeps fiddling. I walk on.
I return to the church cafe. Residents arrive. They're not members either. They haven't paid dues for years. They're confused. When the time comes they're directed to the front of the church. The cops and the boy are manning the door, them acting as muscle, him pretending. The others are allowed in. The boy snaps at me,
"You know the rules Alan"
I phone the station. Robin McKibbin, Desk Sergeant, thinks he's fucked me rightly.
"It's a residents' meeting, not a public meeting. It's not covered by your bail conditions."
"In court it specifically mentioned residents' meetings."
"It doesn't say that here"
His officers are growing tense. The embarassment's beginning to bite. They leave the church and shout at a few drunken students in a desperate attempt to save face. They get into their car. I approach them, pointing to the phone,
"Desk Sergeant"
They ignore me and get the Fuck out of Dodge.
Before going they tell a passing resident,
"It's a private meeting"
Inside membership forms are handed out and the line is spun,
"Alan's been sent a letter"
I have. You can see it here.
I was in court today. My bail conditions have been amended.
"He be allowed to attend residents' meetings and public meetings"
I'm openly inviting the cops to the next meeting. If anyone interferes with me in any way or tries to block my entrance or have me removed I'll press charges for assault.

Our Community has been Destroyed

2007-11-26T15:48:00.000-08:00

Another letter to the Irish News

The last letter got published. Wahayyyyyy. It took a while and it was dumbed down a bit. I wonder if this one will be published.

Our community has been destroyed

Where have all my neighbours gone? “Holylands Student” 12/11/07 claims there are 400-500 residents. Where are they? Four years ago the Extern Organisation could only find 200. Between then and now that number has surely halved.

There are many pensioners here who have lived here all their lives and refuse to go. I admire their tenacity. However, almost all of the residents I know want out. They simply can't take it any more. Neither they nor their children can sleep at night due to noise in the street and through the walls. By any reasonable definition the extreme noise and sleep deprivation we experience here must constitute torture. Yet we cannot get rehoused. Those of us who don't own our homes, but are renting from the Housing Executive or Associations are prisoners here.

We can get no redress. The wardens privately admit that they cannot get the Universities to take meaningful action against their students. The police drive around and do nothing. They will not arrest or charge students. They will not even charge someone who invades a woman's home and climbs into her child's bed! For all the tough talk from the Universities things get worse every year. Their efforts do nothing to alleviate our torment, but they act as excellent “Perception Management” tools when dealing with the media.

Their sponsorship of a “Community Regeneration Association” (A UU initiative calling on the support of Extern) has worked wonders for their image, creating the impression that things are improving. It should come as no surprise that a former “Community Relations Officer” from the University of Ulster is now their chairperson. Anne Monaghan is repeating the same mantra she used when she openly represented the Universities,

“Get more residents into the area”.

This cannot and should not happen. There are 100 residents and 6000-7000 “students”, a ratio of at least 60-1.This community has been finished for many years. It was raped by landlords using Public Money and now the Universities have got a privately owned and privately run campus which is non-stop partyland.

My neighbours are queueing up to get out. Rehouse us and imprison no more people in this lunatic asylum.

We will see.

The joys of Free Speech

2007-11-25T17:31:00.000-08:00

Thanks to "anonymous" for drawing my attention to this

holylandwarzone

http://holylandwarzone.blogspot.com/2007/10/blow-in.html

Thanks to the wonders of blogger I can cut and paste the text so here it is:

FOR THE BENEFIT OF THOSE WHO DONT KNOW WHO ALAN MURRAY IS ...... THE GUY IS JUST A BLOW IN TO THE HOLYLAND ... NOT A LONG TERM RESIDENT. IF YOU CHECK HIS CREDENTIALS HE ORIGINATES FROM WEST BELFAST ...SOME READERS OF HIS DIATRIBE MIGHT WELL WONDER WHY HE LEFT WEST BELFAST.

OBVIOUSLY BY HIS STYLE OF WRITING HE LACKS A COMMAND OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ... HENCE HIS USE OF PROFANITIES ON A REGULAR BASIS. MR MURRAY IS NOT EVEN AWARE OF THE FACT THAT THE NAME OF THE AREA IS "THE HOLYLAND" NOT "THE HOLYLANDS" A NAME USED ONLY BY PROPERTY DEVELOPERS AND ESTATE AGENTS.

THIS SITE WILL BE USED TO DISCUSS THE BACKGROUND TO THE PRESENT CONFLICT IN THE HOLYLAND AND WILL DISCLOSE SOME OF THE FAILED ATTEMPTS TO RESOLVE IT.

UNLIKE MR MURRAY, THE AUTHOR HAS WORK COMMITMENTS BUT WATCH THIS SITE AND LEARN, MORE WILL BE ADDED SHORTLY.

I must have really got to some people. It's quite a compliment when they plagiarise your site in order to trash you. Here's the reply I posted to his article:

I've been here for seventeen years, so I think I'm a bit more than a "blow in". As for the name of the place, I use both depending on which flows better. Unlike you, others seem to enjoy my "command of the English language". I love your pomposity, it complements your anger perfectly.
They say imitation is the best form of flattery, so thank you for plagiarising my site.
Judging by your anger, you appear to be one of "The committee" that pretends to represent us. I wonder if you are one of those who have had me arrested for criticising you on my own blog. Maybe you are one of those who watched someone try to kill me then made false witness statements to the police.
It would be very funny (and hypocritical) if I had you arrested for criticising me here. I'm afraid I couldn't do it. It's just not sporting.

I don't think the police would arrest them anyway. Do you?

The Computer is Mightier than the Sword

2007-11-04T11:35:00.000-08:00

You will recall that a year ago my computer was siezed along with my swords etc.
Four months ago the swords were returned to me. What about the computer?
"Your not getting your computer back" declares Detective Sergeant Sylvia Hamilton.
My contributions on this site seem to be a real threat, more so than lethal weapons.
They've surely tried to silence me. I've been cautioned, threatened, arrested and charged for my musings here.
In June someone tried to kill me for my criticisms of the Chairperson of a fake "Residents Group". I made my way down to Donegall Pass to report the incident. I remember sitting in a room in the station covered from head to toe with blood. Six officers surrounded me. They formally cautioned me with harrassment on this site against Katrina O'Neill, our self-appointed representative. They then told me not to press charges against my assailant.
"He has six witnesses who all say you started it and you ..........................................." I won't publish the allegation here. Suffice it to say they came up with a suitably extreme one as befits a perpetual drama queen like Katrina.
"Really?"
"They don't want to press charges."
"Why not? Would you not want to? Maybe it's because I'm the one sitting here dripping blood onto your floor"
"If you press charges you'll lose, and then she can sue you. We know it's not fair, but that's the way it is."
"Are you telling me not to press charges?"
"You'll lose"
"I'll take legal advice"

I went to internet cafes to post here. I doubt I'll be reimbursed. I then bought an old computer on ebay. They came and cautioned me again and again and again; for criticising David Farrell; then for Tony McGuinness; then for Katrina O'Neill. Then they arrested me. David Farrell would not tolerate criticism. Katrina sent them to arrest me. They seem to be providing a personal service to our Bogus Representatives. Things didn't go quite the way they planned.
"We're gonna question him and then charge him"
"You can't do that", says my solicitor. "You can't question him on the basis that you're gonna charge him anyway."
The presumption of innocence appears not to exist for these fools.
"Either question him or charge him"
She invites herself into the sergeants' office to watch her objections typed into the record.
Three sergeants have a confab.
"We're gonna charge him"
An adventure begins.

Postscript

My computer was returned after ten months. My swords were held for four. Draw your own conclusions.

Justice one, Stasi nil

2007-11-03T14:22:00.000-07:00

"We'll take a pause" says the Judge, "to see if the prosecution can get their case together."
I leave the dock and pass through the vestibule where my barrister, the cops and the prosecution service are talking. This is undoubtedly the worst prepared case the authorities have ever put forward.
A journalist has followed me out,
"What the fuck's going on? They're prosecuting you for the content of a website?"
I hand him a flier for this blog as my solicitor and barrister come out and join me. He leaves us to it.
"This is descending into farce " I say.
Their agreement is both eloquent and profane.

I return to the dock. Stevie Kingsman's in the witness box. He has some printouts from the site in front of him.
"Your worship", my barrister begins, "we would like to change my client's bail conditions. They're an infringement on his freedom of speech"
She looks at Kingsman,
"Well?"
"We're prosecuting him for the content of his blog"
She turns to my barrister,
"What do you say?"
"He should be allowed to write whatever he wants.If the complainant wants to take out an injunction, that's a civil matter"
"Constable Kingsman?"
"The complainant feels intimidated and harrassed about the content of this blog."
"Can you point to any specific statements?"
"I'm afraid the complainant would have to be here to discuss that herself"
"We're talking about criticism of a resident's group", my barrister cuts in, "What we have here is a very sinister, a very Orwellian situation where people are prosecuted for free speech."
"OK", she says, "he's not allowed to write anything insulting or intimidating about her."
"Insulting your Worship? If I want to write an article about a football manager and I say disparaging things about him should I be prosecuted?"
"OK", nothing intimidating"
"But that's illegal. He's not allowed to do that anyway."
"Nonetheless, we often stipulate illegal acts as bail conditions"
"OK, now this business about not having direct or indirect contact with her. Is he not allowed to attend Residents' meetings?"
"He can attend, but have no contact with her"
"What if she's on a panel your worship? And he wishes to attend Police Liason Committee meetings."
"OK, he can have no contact with her other than through the medium of public meetings."
"This business about Agincourt Street Your Worship; he should be allowed to walk anywhere he wants"
She looks at Stevie Kingsman, he's very uncomfortable.
"Well, ah, there was an incident in Agincourt Street Your Worship"
He means the attempt on my life. He's trying to incriminate me. She cuts him off.
"In terms of this case Constable?"
He fumbles, struggling for words.
"Your Worship", my barrister intercedes.
"OK. He's barred from her property"

City Church have been informed of the new bail conditions. They have big questions to ask themselves. Should they side with a fake residents' group against the community? What moral right do they have to impose their prejudices on other people's pain? Does someone have to die before they reset their moral compass? I, for one, live in fear for my life. It's decision time. They can't pretend to have acted impartially. If they beleive they have, this should help them think.
"To remain neutral in the face of injustice is to side with the oppressor."
The words of Archbishop and Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu

Where have all the hardworking students gone?

2007-11-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

I emailed this to the editor of the Irish News today. Do you think he'll print it?

Where have all the hardworking students gone?

They had no classes this week, but they were still up in the Holylands. What for? To study? If so they must be able to drink and study at the same time. Ah, the resilience of youth!! A simpler explanation is that they were not studying, but drinking non-stop. Ah, the resilience of youth!!

The Irish news recently published a letter by a “Holyland Resident” speaking up for the

“Poor students in their cramped hovels, struggling to work and study and make ends meet. No cosy Housing Executive or Housing Association homes for them!!”

The reply to that is a simple statistic; 50% of Queens undergraduates don't go to class. The streets are crammed out with new cars bought by wealthy parents for pampered offspring. What a waste of taxpayers' money! You, the public, are paying for these people to come up here and abuse education. Working class people are turned away from Queens. Their places are taken by these fools.

Over Halloween the streets were filled with drunks. The Police stood around, their eyes wide, their impotence made clear by feeble attempts to corral the “students” back into their comfy houses, refurbished by you, the taxpayer, to the tune of £24,000 to £36,000 per property.

One of us (Joanne) experienced the kindness and good character of our future "Doctors, politicians, accountants and taxpayers" in the form of projectiles through her front window and abusive grafitti daubed on her yard door. On one occasion a "student" pushed past her after entering her home and climbed into her child's bed. The police, predictably, are not pursuing charges.

We've had a week of mayhem culminating in an endless night of drunken chaos.

Where have all the hardworking students gone? They're not to be found in the Holylands.

Holyland Residents

"Sure it's only one day"

2007-11-03T13:48:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the Halloween Debacle the cops said to one resident,
"Sure it's only one day"
Well, no it's not. It's the entire duration of the Academic year. Yes , some days, or for that matter weeks are more unbearable than others, but we arecdeprived of peace the whole time that these people are here.
As if to make the point, the other night, only one day after Halloween, the middle of Carmel St was barricaded with furniture, bins and rubbish. About 50 "students" were in attendance with no fear, no cops, no wardens, just mob rule.
If you ask the cops could they live with this, they have no answer. We no longer expect them to protect us.After all, they treat us as if we're the problem.
"If only those whining residents would shut the fuck up, or at least stop fighting back. All our overwelming force and they still do damage. We can't get evidence. We can't construct a case except to prosecute that guy with the website, the one that calls us the keystone cops.

Football

2007-10-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

It's enough to make you paranoid. A football match at two in the morning, outside your front door. It was apparently a ten a side. I live in the next street and wondered what the noise was. The cops came and had a bit of a laugh, some "Good Craic". It's ripping the arse out of it.
The "students" are pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. They will not stop. The cops are legitimising their mayhem. They're even allowed to assault residents now. As for us, we're non-persons to them. Is it any wonder some people push back?

Comments

2007-10-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

I've finally found my feet. At the start the flood of vitriol was overwelming. It still comes, but not in the same volume. I publish almost every comment (Unfortunately I could not allow the "Viva la Resistance" one. I would have gone straight to jail.)
There is some interesting discussion in the comments section, especially for recent posts. I suggest you check it out.

"I'd like to Say a Word for the Students"

2007-10-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

The "Partners in the Community" have been busy. What with bogus residents meetings, articles in the South Belfast News, and now this wonderfully pompous piece in the Irish News. It reads like something written by one person and submitted in the name of another.
"....I understand the annoyance caused especially when loud music and voices deprive me and my family of sleep"
So far so good, but,
"I feel the annual villification of those who will be our future doctors, teachers, accountants, politicians and taxpayers is hysterical and misdirected."
Fuck me!! Does this person not see that part of the problem is that these fools will be our future professionals? Does he/she want them teaching their kids? If so this person must be a piss-poor parent. Do they want to be represented in court or a representative body by these fuckwits?
"They are too busy working part time to pay their rent and food bills and struggling to keep up with their studies"
Well it's an argument. How about they're too busy drinking themselves sensless and wreaking utter havoc in the street until 4am or later. They never go to class. They lie in bed boozing off their hangovers. Their parents got fat on farming subsidies. They didn't fucking earn those Mercs and 4 wheel drives. Of course "Mummy" and "Daddy" are "paying their rent". The student loans are spent on alcohol.
They don't care that their drinking dens are "squalid bed sits and cramped hovels". They're not victims. All they want is somewhere to party. Mr/Mrs/Ms Holy Land Resident needn't pretend that they're here to study. For what it's worth, the average HMO grant from the Housing Executive was £24,000 and could go up to £36,000. 10,000 HMO's in Northern Ireland at £24,000 equals £240 million. 5000 HMO's in South Belfast equals £120 million. All of this money came out of the Housing Budget. The Government has banned the construction of public housing for the last ten years. Now we know where the money went.
"Consider the reality of student life - no cozy Housing Executive or Housing Association accomodation for them to study in"
What?!! We have 20,000 homeless, the Housing Executive is not allowed to build houses, and the "Partners in the Community" want to make hundreds or even thousands of families rent from private landlords. Look at their contributions in the South Belfast News.
As well as wanting "Cathy Come Home" to be the new Housing Policy the author descends into Right Wing hysteria.
"Serious crimes, armed robberies, assaults on the elderly, sexual crimes, hundreds of millions in benefit fraud........."
He/she must read the Daily Mail, or the Sun. Either way this individual hates working class people; you know, the kind that don't get to go to university because they have no rich mummy and daddy to pay the rent, £3000 annual tuition fees and didn't go to some fancy grammer school where they were spoon fed through their A levels.
"I wasn't smart enough to go to university, but I'm wise enough to know it takes effort to earn that degree and a worthwile job."
Whoever wrote this must be laughing at the fool in whose name it has been submitted. It truly is a terrible thing to be a pawn.
Now to address the point made. These people are not smart. They do not earn their degrees and there will not be "worthwhile jobs" for even half of them. Still at least they can go back and shovel pigshit on Daddy's farm.

The Meeting that Never Was

2007-10-16T10:39:00.001-07:00

They were seen coming. They were seen going. On the way out they walked slap bang into a group from the Ormeau Road who were on their way to a real residents meeting.
I subsequently asked a representative from City Church if there were any meetings scheduled.
"There are, but you're not allowed in."
"When was the last one?"
"Um, ah...."
He knows that I know.
"Thursday"
It appears that the rest of the community are also unwelcome as they were neither informed nor invited. We were not supposed to know that it had happened. This is, I assume, what they mean when they describe themselves in the South Belfast News as "An Example to All". They are, they claim, "a formally constituted community group", with an "elected committee". Well, let's have a look at their constitution.
Click to enlarge it.

Note item 6.4 "An AGM shall be held". There has been no AGM for twenty-two months. The committee has expired, unless of course they keep reappointing themselves.

Lets look at their objectives.

"To regenerate and sustain a healthy community in the Holyland." There are less than a hundred of us left, and we're almost all on medication. That looks like a slight fucking failure to me.
"To enhance and improve the environment by ensuring the best possible provision of public services." We're drowning in garbage, rats, skips and drains blocked by the liberal dumping of cement by landlords. In the South Belfast News they deny the presence of rats. I guess the one that ended up in University Avenue as roadkill must have got lost.
"To work in partnership with statutory bodies, voluntary agencies and businesses for the benefit of the Holyland." Ah,....partnership, the prison trusty phenomenon. Work with the landlords, work with planning, work with the universities. Silence the cries of pain while the community's raped to death. As they put it in their recent article "We lobby relentlessly and effectively".
"To create an inclusive, caring and responsible community." Can't you just feel the love? I did while my head was being bashed off the pavement and my windpipe was being crushed. I remember the look of jubilation in the eyes of a prominent resident (Tony McGuinness) as he watched me struggle to breathe and fight for my life. I'll never forget it.
"To redress the balance between family occupied dwellings and Houses of Multiple Occupation." 6000 "students" / 100 residents. Rugby Avenue's being raped house by house, family homes demolished and turned into flats. What a victory for partnership.
"To create a safe environment where children can play and all residents can live in peace." How many convicted sex offenders have been housed in the Holyland/Botanic area? Perhaps the committee can tell us. They appear to have inside knowledge. As one landlord allegedly put it "There's good money in them paedos"
"To promote good relations between long and short term residents." What a victory. Since when do people who have a home address and a term time address become "residents"? They don't live here, it's their partyland.
"To promote a safer community. To reduce crime and anti-social behaviour." It would help if those who criticise them were not subjected to homicidal violence.
"To be as transparent and publicly accountable, as possible, within our means at all times." I look forward to seeing them in court.

Are they a residents' group or a regeneration association? As I've discussed previously, they can't be both. A resident's group is supposed to be of the community for the community (stop laughing). A regeneration association collaborates with power and fuck the community. Which do you think they are?
Who qualifies to be a member?
"Full membership is open to residents of the Holyland who are over 18 and are committed to the objectives, values and ground rules of the association."
I guess the thirty-three people who signed a petition demanding to be rehoused don't qualify. I guess that anybody who beleives that the area is finished and that the remaining population should be rehoused in new public accomodation if they want it doesn't qualify. I suppose that's why the community aren't informed of or invited to their meetings.
This is one of those Brechtian moments. They should abolish the community and appoint another one.

Police cover up alert: suspected sexual assault in Hatfield St

2007-10-10T18:10:00.000-07:00

The reports are hazy and confused. People are openly calling it a cover up. Was she merely beaten? Was she sexually assaulted? There's a police lockdown on the whole thing. This is nothing new. See here.
I will update as and when information becomes available.

The Scam

2007-09-28T17:19:00.000-07:00

I've spoken to many students recently. A huge number of them are repeating first year. The second time round they might drink less (or not) and manage to scrape 40% in six modules. This is interesting because, as has been reported elswere, Universities do not allow markers to fail people. It's bad for business. You can't charge £3000 annual tuition fees and leave the customer with nothing at the end of his three year party. What would the parents say? What if the customer sues you? What if you fall down the League Tables?
In order to pretend that they're selling real degrees the Universities are trying to make "students" attend classes. Good luck. Apart from compulsory lab classes and tutorials, my course has a 50% undergraduate non attendance rate. This is in one of the best departments in the UK.
Why fail them in first year and not the others? First year marks do not count towards a degree, so you're not compromising their final mark, but why fail them? They, and you the taxpayer, have to pay for another year's tuition. Remember the Universities are businesses, not a public service. They are obliged to maximise their income by any means neccessary.
It's a brilliant scam. It does however expose these institutions as cynical operators selling a product whose academic value has been debased beyond satire. Well, almost. It's often said that Queens should hang a sign on the door saying,
"If you can read this you're admitted"
Jordanstown already do.

Ireland's Finest want You

2007-09-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

You may recall that David Farrell was assaulted by a student and his friend some months ago. They appear to have been charged and the "student" has turned up in a very interesting place. He was seen manning a stall at Queens' Freshers Fair. He was trying to recruit members. Go on, take a guess. What organisation was it? Greenpeace? The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender society?
No. What about the rowing club? No. The Officer Training Corps?
It was............................................................................................................................................................
Ogra Sinn Fein.
What were the Grown Ups thinking? A thug who assaults residents is their public face enlisting gullible young hillbillies into what? A Drinking Club for Designer Republicans? The grouping that was widely beleived to be behind the protest/riot that followed BBC's Spotlight three years ago?
What would James Connolly say? his "Whoop it up for Ireland" piece comes to mind.
And what about Queens? Did they know or care that the front man for a University funded society is up on a charge for assaulting on of their "Partners in the Community"?

Share the Love

2007-09-28T16:45:00.000-07:00

This was daubbed on a family's yard wall. Another victory for Community Relations.

It's come to this

2007-09-28T15:19:00.000-07:00

How long can you torture people? How long can you destroy their lives? At what point do you think that people are going to snap? I cannot condone this, but it was inevitable. Going round my head are the words of Ward Churchill's essay, ""Some people push back" "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens",

"You've got to learn, " the line went, "that when you push people around, some people push back."

This incident's full of ironies. I was awakened the morning after by a phone call.
"Hello"
"So it's not you that was lifted"
"What?"
"Look out your window"
I do so to discover that cars have been burnt up and down the street. I was so full of medication that I slept clean through it. People in Stranmillis and the Ormeau Road heard the explosions. So I can get a nights sleep after all. Just pump yourself full of drugs. They make it all go away. Of course you might sleep through your alarm or the cops sledgehammering their way into your house. They had done just that to someone down the street. The front door was reinforced and resisted their efforts, so they went clean through the front window. It's what they call community policing and a measure of the loathing they have for us. It is increasingly reciprocated. Confront them at three in the morning 48 hours after the "events" and they make it clear that they will come down on us like a ton of bricks. The streets are full of mayhem. They watch it and even film it and make a point of doing nothing.
The papers insist that the wardens have reduced anti-social behaviour by 40%. People have stopped reporting it. They know it's a futile and frustrating exercise. What matters is that the Universities can spin Despair as a Great Victory. It's what they call "Community Relations".
The above pictures show that this is not a happy pleasant place where we all just "get along".
It's not Shangrila. It's a Warzone.

"You're gonna need a locksmith"

2007-09-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

Many looked befuddled, constantly repeating the same action over and over again as if it would make a difference. It didn't. The lock was glued shut. All over the Holyland landlords and locksmiths were called out. A house alarm would go off during the repairs and not stop, adding to the frustration. Across the street from me two students tried to burn their way in using a can of deodorant and a cigarette lighter. All they got was a flash in the pan. It only works in the movies. I shouted over,
"You're gonna need a locksmith."
"Nah, we'll burn it out"
They kept trying.
"Just call Declan. He'll come out and drill it for you."
"He won't answer his phone"
He must have been getting calls all day.
"Your best bet's a locksmith."
One has a bright idea.
"I'll go round the back"
"You can't get in the fuckin' back"
His friend's losing patience. He runs out of deodorant.
I leave them to it and go visit a neighbour. An hour later I return. There's a locksmith's van parked outside their house.
"I told you. You're gonna need a locksmith"

Police cover up alert; suspected stabbing in Fitzroy Avenue

2007-09-24T15:38:00.002-07:00

I don't know the details because they have not been made public (go figure), but the word on the street is that someone was stabbed in Fitzroy Avenue last week. The area was cordoned off the next day. Police cover ups are nothing new to the Holylands. See here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. Last semester I stopped sargeant Alan Bell in the street and asked him about the guy who got stabbed in the neck opposite the University Avenue Spar.
"What? I've heard nothing about it."
He has a skilled deadpan. His partner twiddles with his earpeace.
"We've got to go."
Recently this Queens University student had his own close brush with death and has the photos to prove it. I'm still here. Or, as a friend said to me recently,
"You Refuse to Die."
Do you think I'll let them cover up my experience?

Katrina wakes up and smells the coffee...............................................?

2007-09-19T11:11:00.000-07:00

The penny's dropped!! Or has it??
Katrina feels "betrayed" by the planning service. Fuck me!! What did she expect??!!
After all the meetings she had with "the Head of the Planning Office" and "Lord Rooker", and,
"Just you wait and see. It's all gonna change here. They've promised me".
Was the big surprise the HMO "cap" that David Farrell publicly welcomed as a "Great victory"?
Now the "chairwoman 0f the Holyland Regeneration Project" feels "betrayed by the planners".
Of 89 planning applications only 2 have been refused. If you're wondering about the 41 that are still under consideration, the landlords have a simple solution, demolish the house. Look at 16 Rugby avenue. It no longer exists. Only the front remains while Michael McMahon waits for his approval.
There are other options. Burn your own property. No-one can pretend that this is not professional arson. Two adjacent houses in Fitzroy Avenue went up simultaneously. They were sealed with steel shutters. The Fire Brigade could not gain access. Someone had to enter the buildings, plant multiple timed incendiaries, exit and seal the shutters up again. This is a pro who knows what they're doing. In another house in the same street all three stories went up simultaneously, hardly an amateur job. A lesser class of arsonist exists. A house in Rugby Avenue was recently purchased and promptly torched. Damage was minimal. The Fire Brigade suppressed it with ease. Still, it can now be declared a derilict and get a whopping great grant from the Housing Executive.
Rugby Avenue is being raped house by house. The huge back gardens are being built up right to the entry. The precedent has been set by Declan Boyle and Kerry O'Donnell. Every house in a 200 yard long terrace, bar the three or four owned by the Housing Executive, will go the same way.
It's time again to ask who are these "representatives" who have failed so miserably. First of all they can't decide what they are or what to call themselves. Is it the "Holyland Regeneration Association"? or the "Holyland Residents' Group"? or the " Belfast Holyland Residents' Association"? or the "Holyland Regeneration Project"? The South Belfast News seems unable to decide and so calls them all of the above depending on the article.
This is of course highly disingenuous. A "residents' group" is ostensibly run by the community for the community. We all know that in Northern Ireland nothing's that simple, but the pretence exists. A "regeneration project" runs on the "parnership" principle which, when I studied the subject, was called the "collaborative approach to community action". Such groups are funded by state and powerful private bodies and service a corporate agenda. With the passing of the troubles many have become "New Deal" training centres aggressively promoting benefit slavery. By their nature they are anti-democratic and act as enforcers or the equivalent of the American prison "trusty". Such is the case with most "residents' groups", but that's for another essay.
So, I conclude with some simple questions. What is the name of this group? When was it formed? Who elected the committee and when? Who are the committee? Who are the members of this entity? Are they the usual suspects; Gerard Morgan, a non-resident; Katrina O'Neill; David Farrell; and Tony McGuinness? Who do they represent? It's surely not this community, the handfull that remain. What have they acheived? Their own cry of "betrayal" exposes their failure. One could argue that they have in fact succeeded. The area has been raped to death by landlords, and that, in it's own way, is regeneration. They have acted as the perfect PR front for the Universities, their "partners in the community". The general public beleives the Holylands has been sorted. They're right, it has, just not in the way they think.

Sign of the Times

2007-08-27T15:38:00.000-07:00

You have to admire these people. They must have carried this sign over a mile, and that was after ripping it off a metal frame. How they got past QUB security I'll never know. As for stealing it and carrying it all that way under the noses of the cops, it's just a miracle. It's a measure of the quality of undergraduates these days. Look at the respect they have for an academic institution.
If Queens want their sign back, it's in the entry behind my house.

Tony Comes Out of the Closet

2007-08-26T17:10:00.001-07:00

He's done it! He's outed himself!
The figure previously known as "Mr T" has gone public. Tony McGuinness is on the BBC. Take a look here.

"Tony McGuinness from the local residents' association........"

Is this the same Tony McGuinness who was never elected to anything, whose position in the Housing Executive was "so sensitive" that he could not go on the committee? The same Tony McGuinness who attended every committee meeting? Who made him a spokesman? What is this "residents' group" that he represents? None formally exists. Perhaps a new one has been formed consisting of Tony, Gerard Morgan, who doesn't even live here, David Farrell and Katrina.
Is this the same Tony Mc Guinness who wrote an article in the South Belfast News under Katrina's name calling for 300 families to be forced to rent from landlords in the Holyland?
Clearly he wants to add to the £140 million that the landlords already receive in Housing Benefit.

"I think there is the beleif that that the Holylands is the place to party and that residents shouldn't be here"

Well hallefuckingluliah! How long did it take him to work that one out? Where does he think his neighbours have gone? They weren't abducted by aliens, they fled. They couldn't take it any more.

"There's a lot of empty houses here. A lot of the students have moved up to Stranmillis because they don't approve of the behaviour"

Next he'll be saying there are 300 empty properties in the Holyland. Does he think they won't be tenanted by the start of October? Why are landlords still raping the area? He was supposed to have got that stopped. Does he think they're stupid? Does he think they're wasting their money? They know the market - partyland for bogus students; 6000 of them, 100 of us. Of course they think we shouldn't be here. Most of us agree with them. We want the fuck out, but we're stuck. We're prisoners, and he feeds off our pain.

Shock and Awe

2007-08-26T17:09:00.001-07:00

He rings the doorbell. No answer.
He gets out his phone.
"Open the fuckin' door!!"
There's a pause.
"I'm outside!! Open the fuckin door!!"
It opens. He goes in.
I can barely hear the shouting from number two. It's drowned out by the noise in the street.
I sit on my doorstep in the baking sun and watch as drunken students pour out of houses and flood the streets and entries. They're drinking illegally. They don't care.
The girls next door come out the front. They're smoking and chatting. One of them notices me.
"Shit!!"
She lets it slip. They pretend to ignore me. Their fellas come out and join them, drinking beers and smashing bottles in the street.
A neighbour walks by. He stops.
My kids have to play in this street! Clean that glass up!"
A hostile silence then a girl says,
"Clean it up. I don't want his kids getting hurt."
He kicks the fragments of glass into the road.
They can't avoid it any longer.
"We're your new neighbours"
I nod to them.
One of the guys starts playing loud music and passing the speakers through the open windows.
They're avoiding my gaze as I stare at them. One of the girls breaks.
"Do you want us to turn that down?"
"That would be a good idea"
She shouts through the window. The din lessens.
I go for a piss and am caught in mid stream by a friend calling from the front door.
I rush down to her. She's been phoning non stop. I haven't heard it ringing. As we go for a walk through the warzone she says to the girls,
"It's good to see you're considerate to your neighbours."
It doesn't seem to touch them.
The avenues are crowded with drunks, the pavements so full that we have to walk on the road.
The police drive by. They wave to us. All that's going on seems not to exist for them. By the evening they've made their point. They're nowhere to be seen as a long night of shouting, screaming, house alarms and broken glass goes on and on till morning.
The two days of the festival make it clear that the long peace of summer has ended. The tone has been set for the coming academic year.
You might consider these events an invasion. You'd be wrong. This was a raid. The invasion comes in October.
Fuck help us all.

Replies to Comments

2007-08-13T13:52:00.000-07:00

Well, some people have kept the abuse coming. Good for you. To "anonymous" who thinks I should book myself into Knockbracken I say that a holiday up in the "Big House" sounds very tempting. My friends are amazed that after the events of the last years I have not had a nervous breakdown. I'm obviously stronger than I thought. Horrific experiences can cause permanent and catastrophic damage. Certainly the person I was several years ago has died. However, when one overcomes adversity a transformation takes place. Until recently I could not comprehend the saying,
"Damaged People are Dangerous. They know how to survive".
Well I get the picture now. I know how to survive, even when a madman's crushing my windpipe. I never thought I had it in me. I never thought I could face death with equanimity and say to the madman,
"Everbody dies!! Fuck you!!"
It is one of my proudest moments.
I wish I could post the comment from the resident who calls for resistance and direct action. The police would love it if I did that. I'm the moderator of this blog and would be instantly prosecuted for incitement. As I've said before, I am not the resistance. They operate on a strictly "Don't ask, Don't tell" basis. My private sympathies are well known, but I cannot be publicly seen to support the resistance, nor can any resident. So we have what is technically known as "Leaderless Resistance". There is no command structure for special branch to infiltrate. Instead there is endless autonomous action. Eliminating a single nexus does not undermine the whole. It merely creates martyrs. Cells are not lined up like dominoes waiting to fall when a senior commander breaks. In many ways the Holyland Resistance is the most democratic movement of all. Yet while it is of the people, for the people, I cannot publicly endorse it, but I sure as fuck won't condemn it.

Enjoy Your Studies

2007-08-04T11:23:00.000-07:00

I see them from the bedroom window. They're parked outside my house. Brash male voices talk in country accents.
Time to make an impression.
"Do I have new neighbours?" I'm striding out the front door.
"Well, ah, yeah. Over there number11"
I know who owns that house. Declan Boyle the Ethnic Cleanser.
"What are you? First? Second? Third?"
"Second"
"You're less likely to party then?"
"Well, ah",
He's fumbling,
"Less than last year. Anyway we've a strict landlord"
"There's a lot of families in this street."
"Um"
They're starting to squirm.
"You've heard the rumors?"
No answer.
"Enjoy your studies."

You have to laugh. If you don't, you'll start to cry, and the tears will drown you.

Openess and Accountability

2007-07-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

I note that the Commitee took themselves off to the Holiday Inn for their meeting. City church had notes up telling us that the meeting had been cancelled. This is odd, as I was told that afternoon that BHRA had booked a room for the evening. I guess the prospect of pickets carrying A3 photos spooked a few people. When the police dropped me off at the church there were notes up saying the resident's meeting had been cancelled. Some people really want me out of the picture, as the following letter, presumably drafted in the Holiday Inn, makes clear.

Now a number of things need to be addressed in this letter. First, they have changed the name. They're calling it a Residents Association rather than a Regeneration Association. They can't do that without a vote at an EGM or AGM. What they have done is unconstitutional and therefore invalid. Secondly, they have given their address as 12-24 University Avenue. This is the address of City Church. We deserve clarification about whether or not they are based in City Church and how they are linked with this church. Is a non-resident member of it still on their committee?
Thirdly, while I may have been disruptive at one meeting, this can hardly be said of others held this year, unless, of course, they find criticism and awkward questions to be disruptive.
Fourthly, I have not resigned from anything. At the last meeting I commented that a large number of people were so disgusted with the Committee that they would never come back. My membership may have lapsed, but then again so has that of most or all members. I'll come back to this later.
Fifthly, the constitution contains no means for excluding residents. Attempts to do so are then invalid. I'll comment further in a moment.
Sixthly, G.Morgan, the secretary, is not a resident. It's wonderfully absurd to see a non-resident excluding a resident from a so-called representative body.
According to the constitution of BHRA, committee members are elected for twelve months, and membership fees cover a twelve month period. It is almost twenty months since the last AGM. I remember boycotting it. According to their own constitution the committee is invalid and the association has, in all likelyhood, no members. It is dead. It is finished. It no longer exists. I feel the Monty Python parrot sketch coming on. No, it's not sleeping! It's dead! It's an ex-Parrot/Association, whatever!

comments and feedback

2007-07-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

My, I've got some angry feedback from "students". All of it's too obscene to publish here, much of it's threatening. I will, however address some of the issues they have raised.
First of all, I am not the resistance. I will neither condemn nor endorse them, but paint strippering cars and putting rocks through windows is their prerogative. The authorities have yet to convict any resident for resistance activity despite spending tens of thousands of pounds per month on a massive operation involving undercover, helicopters, unmarked cars,TSU's etc. I for one am watched 24/7. On one level this is very flattering. the police seem to think I am a one man resistance movement, appearing out of nowhere, striking and disappearing like a ninja. I wish it were true, I really do. Think of all the women I could have, the reward due to a hero.
Unfortunately it's not true, and to answer someone elses point, yes I am on medication. So are most of my neighbours. Living with depression and anxiety is hard work. There's a lot to be said for anti-depressants and, in moderation, valium is a wonderful drug. I don't advise people to take it like smarties. It is highly addictive and it's use must be monitored.
To another poster I reply of course I'm a grown man, so are the young bucks that run rampant through the Holyland. In other countries they would be expected to do military service and any of their juvenile self-centered shit would be answered with a drill sargeant's boot up their arse. Adults should be expected to behave like adults, not twelve year olds from The Lord Of The Flies. Priveleged arsewipes need need to learn that other people have rights and will hit back if you deprive them of the Human Right to Peace in their Own Home and to not be Tortured with Extreme Noise.
Finally, someone's complained about me telling them to shut up in the Heaney Library. Get it straight, it's a library, not your living room. I'm sick and tired of telling dickheads to keep the noise down and the looks of angry indignation I get from these fools when they're expected to behave like aduts rather than spoilt, pampered, priveleged fuckwads.
I feel better after that. Keep the abuse coming.

The Failure of "Regeneration"

2007-06-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

David Farrell finally got his skip moved. Naturally they left a mountain of rubbish for the council to clean up, or not.
Farrell, never one to miss a photo-op, was complaining about the state of the place and the presence of "over 100" skips in the area. He really should learn to count. That would mean an average of 15-20 skips in each street and, while we are living in an endless building site, things aren't quite that bad.
However, he does raise, unintentionally, a useful point. He speaks for the "Belfast Holyland Regeneration Association", but what is regeneration? Is it demolishing family houses and replacing them with HMO flats? This is the argument the landlords use when they promote their "University Quarter Regeneration Association".
On the night that the landlords were finally ejected from the residents meetings I saw Michael McMahon screaming into the face of Denise from the church,
"We're landlords!! We're regenerating this area!!"
"You're a fuckin' vampire!!" I shouted.
Denise came between us, slowly backing me away. I remember the look of terror in Declan Boyle's eyes as he cowered behind his two year old son in a manner that looked for al the world like he was holding a human shield in the middle of an angry face off between landlords and residents.
If we use the landlords definition, Farrells clique have succeeded in regeneration. The area has been raped and raped until there is almost no community left. Officially there are "less than 200 residents" and 6000 students left, a ratio of 30 to 1. In reality, there are less than 100 residents, a ratio of 60 to 1.
In their constitutuon, the Farrell clique claim they want to "redress the balance" between students and residents. In this they have surely failed. Now a number of half assed schemed have been proposed ranging from forcing families to rent from private landlords to government confiscation of vacant dwellings.
For the record, the landlords may be evil, but they are not stupid. If they put "students" into their properties they get more rent plus a humongous pay off courtesy of the ratepayer. They don't have to pay rates on their properties.Landlords surely want families to be forced to rent from them, but only after they have extracted the maximum profit from "students" and the ratepayer.
I notice some families, many immigrants , are being moved into the slums in Wolsey street. Flat Rentals have an entire block that are nearly all empty because they are Unfit for Human Habitation. The government can sieze them if it wants, but the cost of fixing them is approaching that of a new build. In fact, it's probably more than the cost of system built housing. As well as that, imprisoning families in an area that is completely out of control is an act of extreme moral depravity.
Investigations on the deleterious effect of "studentification" show that once the student population reaches 10% a residential area becomes unsustainable and inevitably dies, becomindg "Studentland". A government cap of 30% on HMO's, a ratio of 30% "students", will destroy every community the landlords invade. Of course, the government was lying. Planning have rubber stamped a free for all on the rape of communities all over South Belfast.
So now we come back to were we started; Farrell, skips and "Regeneration". If Residents outnumber "students" 9 to1 their community is destabilised and finished. If "Students" outnumber residents 60 to 1 It's been over for a very long time. People want out and skips are the least of their worries.

Exonerated

2007-06-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

For the background to this see Raided

The Stasi Wear Kid Gloves These Days

2007-06-20T08:45:00.000-07:00

"Yes officer, what can I do for you now?"
This one was a detective. He was Amused. I guess they'd told him hammering the front door half off it's hinges wasn't going to phase me.
"We've had a complaint about harrassment. David Farrell want's you to stop writing about him on your website and take everything you have written about him on it off"
"Well officer, David Farrell's free to complain about my criticisms of him and you're free to arrest me"
"Hopefully not for harrassment"
They really don't like me. They apparently consider me a very serious criminal. Time to put them in their place.
"The harrassment laws have been introduced to silence dissent. The journalist George Monbiot has written about an electricity company in England that, because it is a person in the eyes of the law has taken harrassment proceedings against local protesters who don't want toxic ash dumped in their lake. If they come within so many feet of an employee they go to jail. If an employee approaches them, they have to step back, whether it's into the path of of an oncoming bus seems not to matter"
He almost laughed at that one.
Now it's time for the meat.
"Someone tried to kill me recently for exercising freedom of speech. Do you really think I'm afraid of going to jail for it?"
This is news to him. The lid's been clamped on tight. They take their cover ups seriously.
"When did Farrell call you about this?"
"This evening"
"And you came out right away?"
"It's a serious offence"
"Free speech?"
No answer.
He gives me his card. He and three uniforms depart.

Comments

2007-06-20T08:33:00.000-07:00

I've finally done it. It took a lot of persuasion, but I've agreed to allow comments on this blog. Because I do not have home internet access trolls may feel free to run rampant, but beware, I'll be watching and you will be deleted. So bring it on, the good, the bad, the ugly. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Well, maybe that's not the best quote. Mao used his "Democracy Wall" to flush out the dissidents so he could crush them, and I know how it feels to be on the business end of that treatment. So do your worst trolls. After all, vitriolic abuse is not the same thing as having your head bashed off the pavement.

The Latest Outrage

2007-05-27T08:23:00.000-07:00

First they threw bottles through her window, leaving her baby to crawl through broken glass.
Then they stole her garden bench.
Then they stole her pram from outside her front door.
Now the latest outrage.
A student walked into her house, forcing his way past her. He walked up the stairs and climbed into her childs bed.
She screamed at him.
He ignored her.
She dialled 999 then hammered on the window until a neighbour came.
He ignored both of them.
The police arrived.
He calmly walked down the stairs.
"Apologise to her!!" The police weren't taking the piss.
He smirked at them.
He wasn't drunk, he wasn't off his head. He knew what he was doing. He had not gone into that house by mistake. He gave the cops a false address.
When they drove him home to tuck him into bed they discovered 11 Palestine St was bricked up.He got out of the four wheel drive and ran. Now they had to arrest him.
Of course they'll make the whole affair go away. They have made no arrangements to take her written statement, essential if charges are going to be pressed. When she phoned them their response was,
"Nine times out of ten this thing won't happen again"
They're brushing it under the carpet.
Her nerves are shattered. She wants out, but knows a hostel will be worse. She's applied for emergency accommodation, but may not get it. What's happening to us is not classified as intimidation, so we've no hope of getting housing priority. We're lucky if we get any housing points at all.

The "speak truth to power" moment

2007-05-27T07:54:00.000-07:00

"I'm tired of hearing this nonsense that police treat residents different to students"
"It's not nonsense, it's my experience."
"It's nonsense"
Lewis Brown thought he could bitch-slap me.
A voice pipes up,
"Who here agrees with Alan?"
Half the hands in the room go up.
"There you are, Lewis. We must all be talking nonsense. Don't ever patronise me again!!"
Now he gets bitch slapped
Inspector lewis Brown and some of his pals from Donegall Pass PSNI had come to a residents' meeting. The community had turned out in force. The anger in the room was palpable. Every speaker bar one voiced furious contempt for the police.
I was having a field day,
"Ever since Robert Peel, who at least was explicit about it, you people have existed to protect property privelege and power, and to keep the little people in their place. Well you're certainly good at keeping the little people in their place and making sure students can do whatever they want. They're above the law. Eveyone in this room knows that nobody will be prosecuted for the sexual assauly that took place in Palestine street. Your people refused to arrest the ones that assaulted David Farrell. You have declared every one of us to be fair game for students. They know that they can do whatever they want to us and you'll make sure nothing happens to them"
The hammering went on for an hour and a half. Almost everyone in the room gave them hell.
Gordon Douglas, the man from Queens, made some noise about student's exams being delayed as punishment. I wasn't having it,
"Gordon, I have had exams delayed. I have had academic year after year written off because I have to live among your students. This year has been written off because I suffered intimidation at the hands of a builder, something that your officers, Lewis, refused to investigate properly!!"
I was eyeballing Lewis. We were three feet apart. He was terrified.
Thus it came to pass, the speak truth to power moment. The bottom line, as Chomsky says, Is that power already knows the truth. It just doesn't care.

Public Accountability

2007-05-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

"So what if I didn't write the article?!!"
Katrina was shouting. She'd wanted a row all night and now, finally, I was fool enough to give her it.
"If you've got anything to say about me come to my front door. Don't put it on the internet!!"
"OK, I'll say it now Katrina. Did you write the article in the South Belfast News?"
"You should be ashamed of yourself!!"
"Did you write the article?"
"So what if I didn't write it?!!"
And so it went on.It was an ignominious end to a resdents' meeting that had seen the community tear the cops to pieces (metaphorically), with one dissenting voice. Katrina, the esteemed chairperson of the Belfast Holylands Regeneration Association, thanked the police for the wonderful service they had provided for her. I commented that she was very priveleged indeed, a fact that was not unrelated to her position.
Katrina, it appears, wants all of the benefits of being a public figure: her face in the papers and on the TV, meetings with Lord This and Baron That (like they care) and the privelege of being the only resident in the Holyland the police actually protect. Well, being a public figure means that you are publically accountable. anyone can write about you on the internet and in the press, or talk about you on the TV or radio. That's the price you pay. That's why Mr. T. hides behind a woman, putting her name and not his on the disgusting article he wrote in the South Belfast News.
It's not acceptable to claim that you represent a community and yet tell them to their faces that you don't care if they boycott your meetings. You have declared your refusal to be accountable and, in the process, lost all legitimacy.
Naturally I'll be saying this to your face at the next residents' meeting.

"We don't want to arrest him"

2007-05-10T07:25:00.000-07:00

The girls in 12 Carmel St certainly know how to cause trouble. So much so, in fact, that the words,
"Sluts. Whores live here"
were painted on their wall some months ago.
Now I don't care what they get up to in the privacy of their own bedrooms, but when they take it into the street it's a different matter.
Paddy was going out with one of the girls. Evidently they had fallen out because he wasn't invited to the birthday party in no 12.
Being an aggressive sort of hillbilly, he tries to kick the front door in. When that fails he tries to drag his (presumably ex) girlfriend out the front window. In the tug of war that ensues, the girls manage to pull her back in. He slams the window on her hands. I can see why she dumped him. They call the police.
One by one four cop cars arrive. They try to reason with Paddy who is too busy screaming at the house.
"I know he's in there. I know you're screwin' him. He's the one with the big hard cock!!"
Paddy appears to have some issues wih his sexuality.
By now a row has developed in the street between the girls in No12, their friends from down the street, Paddy's friends and Paddy. This continues for an hour, from 1.30 to 2.30. Four carloads of police do nothing to quiet it down.
The girls are handing out cups of tea to the cops. Evidently the same bimbos that regularly play cheesy republican music for the retarded are unfamiliar with the phrase,
"No More Tea"
Ciaran, the enormous cop with the shaven head, is most popular with them.
"Ciaran, you must play GAA do you? You'd make a great player."
Paddy wants the police to give him a lift home to the wilds of county Antrim. He seems to think they're a taxi service.
Now his mother's on the phone.He hands it to the cops.
"He's causing bother, but we dson't want to arrest him."
They reassure his dear old mother that they'll do their very best for him then walk him to the bottom of the street.
Five minutes later he's back. The cops return. Finally they arrest him.
The landlord of the property, Steven Magill, has shown no apparent interest in his tenants or the mayhem they've caused over the last year.

A Short Note on the Banality of Evil

2007-05-10T06:53:00.000-07:00

I read Katrina's article in the South Belfast News recently. I call It Katrina's article, but it's obvious she didn't write it.
"We are pleased that the draft HMO subject plan now rejects PPS1, acknowledges the importance of HMO issues as material planning considerations, and affirms that the subject plan complies with equality legislation"
She certainly didn't write that. It reads like a Housing Executive discussion document.
The true author of it is, I beleive, a shadowy figure who shuns accountabiity like a vampire hiding from the sun. For the sake of brevity and to protect his identity I'll call him "Mr T" and he is in his own way a truly banal individual who does truly evil things. Of course I'm not comparing hin to Hannah Arendt's description of Adolf Eichmann, the dull bureaucrat who sent millions to their deaths in Auschwicz. Well, OK, I am, but only in the sense that Eichmann represents a ubiquitous type. Such people are driven by their own need for importance and delusions of relevance. Ultimately their compulsion becomes a self- fulfilling prophecy.They become relevant and significant as a result of the harm they do unto others.
Let's examine what "Mr. T" has to say for himself.
"In the Holyland around 300 properties, capable of housing families, are lying empty. This number is sufficient to house 40 percent of the social housing waiting list in south Belfast........ if community audits are carried out in other areas they will find that there is sufficient vacant stock in South Belfast to resolve waiting lists without the need to build new houses at enormous cost to the public purse."
Well, that's some bucket of words, none of them Katrina's. So let me decipher it for you. "Mr.T", clearly a man on the inside track, has jumped on the policy bandwagon that says,
"Privatise all Public Housing. Force people to rent from private landlords."
Across the UK Council housing is being liquidated by any means neccessary. The new housing policy is "Cathy Come Home": slum housing, enormous rents (not fully covered by housing benefit), no rights, no security of tenure, eviction on a whim, homelessness.
Never let it be said that banal people don't do evil things.
There is, however, more. He wants to imprison 300 families in the Holylands. He wants to make them live in this lunatic asylum. Now, for the record, there are no 300 empty properties in the Holylands. Almost every landlord property is tenanted with students despite market saturation of HMOs.
Sartre was right. In the end we can only be judged by our actions. And,
"Evil exists"

"Things have changed"

2007-05-10T06:30:00.000-07:00

"What do you want now?!!"
"What.....??"
He was taken aback
"We have a report from a local landlord that you walked out and stood in front of his van"
"I don't know what you're talking about"
"Your behaviour is bordering on harrasment. If we have to come back we'll arrest you."
"You're gonna arrest me are you? But you refused to arrest the ones who beat up David Farrell?!!"
A student and his "friend" had beaten up David Farrell, a defensless drunken fool, and prominent resident.I watched the cops caution those that did it and let them go without arresting them.
"When I stood up to your people and objected they were gonna arrest me"
I wish they had arrested me, but a friend and witness to the assault talked me down from the confrontation. The cops refused to question either of two witnesses, both of whom had to approach them and offer to give a statement. It was a week before they got back to one of them.
"We also have a report that you approached the estate agent and prospective buyer of a house in Palestine Street"
"What am I supposed to have said?"
"You told them a girl was raped in that house"
"A girl was raped in that house"
"It's not your place to approach them"
"It's not my place to tell the truth?! If I'm gonna buy a house I want to know if someone was raped in it. If you're gonna buy a house do you not want to know if someone was raped in it?"
He has no answer. Now I know it was Declan Boyle who complained.
"And when it comes to arresting people, I spoke to a former member of the RUC and he told me that he has never heard of two people assaulting someone and not being arrested."
"Things have changed"
"Yeah, these people can do whatever they want to us an we're nothing but scum to you."
They're getting into their van.
"If you don't like it you can always complain"
"We all know it'll make no difference"

"Sell your home and get the fuck out of the Holylands"

2007-04-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

There were four of them, waiting in the entry, what for we'll never know. She didn't see them. It was pitch black.
"What the fuck are you doing out here at this time?!!"
They surprised her. She felt threatened, but would take no shit.
"I'll dump my rubbish any time I want!!"
"You're one of them fuckin' residents aren't you?"
"Yeah. So what?"
"This is our area now. Sell your house and get the fuck out of the Holylands!!"

If you're wondering who these people are, they're your future doctors, lawyers, teachers. Do you really want them teaching your kids?

"Indecent Exposure"

2007-04-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

Picture the scene. You call the cops.
"There's a naked student running down the street."
"I'm sorry, we can't make out what you're saying."
You hang up. Phone again. Different cop.
"What does he look like?"
"Naked"
Eventually two of them come out. The exhibitionist is long gone. It's not hard to work out why they took their time.

It is of course absurd that public nudity is treated as indecent exposure and can get you a lifetime on the sex offenders' register. However, if a working class person ran naked through the street, the cops would destroy their life. If the law is an ass, it's burden should fall equally on the rich and the poor. Well, that's what they say anyway.

Another Family Flees

2007-04-12T13:09:00.000-07:00

They told no-one. One day the removal van just came. They couldn't take any more. Nobody knows where they have gone. People do that here, just disappear. Maybe they're renting from some scumbag private landlord. Maybe they're renting from one of those who have raped this community. Thus the landlords create greater demand for their own disgusting trade.
A friend of mine remembers when Declan Boyle's brother ( and business partner) put her and her children out of their home so he could cram students in. Welcolme to homelessness. Say hello to the world of " Cathy Come Home", our government's housing policy. Say goodbye to public housing. It's going going gone. The new Rachmans have taken over. This area was redlined at least 15 years ago and tens of millions taken from the housing budget (It's gone now. No more executive new builds.) and poured into landlords' pockets. Kiss your community goodbye. It's a UK phenomenon, but in the Holylands we get our faces rubbed in it.

"Criminal Damage"

2007-04-12T12:48:00.000-07:00

"People are learning to hate you cunts all over again.!!"
I was screaming. It felt good. I could tell they wanted to arrest me. Itchy fingers were reaching for the CS spray.
"You treat us like dogshit, while you let these cunts do whatever they want!"
My friend calmly tells then that it's true. She politely disagrees with their rehearsed answers about dealing with the situation as they find it. If a resident calls for assistance they may never come out, but if a student complains about a resident six police cars arrive and his door's nearly kicked in.
The reason? "Criminal Damage". Tell the cops that a resident's committed criminal damage and they'll swoop like something out of a Hollywood movie. One marked and five unmarked cars were floating round the Holyland watching the community, waiting to pounce on my neighbours.
They've declared war on us. They're an army of occupation. They drive on by while "students" commit untold criminal damage, including plenty of arson, and inflict catastrophic noise, then turn to me and tell me to,
"Keep the noise down"
Is it any wonder I exploded?
If you're wondering why they didn't arrest me, it's because I had a witness. Without her I'd have got the CS spray in the face and a baton over the head. You can be sure no "Student" will ever have that experience.

The keystone cops have got machine guns now

2007-04-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

Why were they there? Five landrovers, a twenty man Tactical Support Unit of riot squad, every police car and van from Donegall Pass station flooded the Holylands. Another resident and I followed them as they chased a teenager into the Lower Ormeau and cornered him with machine guns. Was he a Republican Dissident? Not likely, not at his age. Was he an armed robber? he looked too terrified to be a hardened criminal.
The Tactical Support Units roamed through the Holylands with their machine guns searching gardens and entries. It was like the troubles, but without the danger. These fools weren't even wearing body armour. The search lasted from midnight till 1.30 am. A police car pulled up and told a TSU,
" We got one of them"
At the police meeting we were told that two deeply anti-social individuals were scooped and a great service had been done to the public. I commented that I would love to see a twenty man TSU in the Holylands five nights a week.
"Of course", I said,"it would help if they enforced the law.
Sargeant Bell's tired of hearing this.
"You've raised this before and Lewis Brown's told you..." Blah blah blah blah blah.
Later I discovered the truth. A fifteen year old girl had broken bail conditions and run away from the local home with her boyfriend.
A sledge hammer is used to crack a nut when it's working class people. If you've got property or privelege or power you can do whatever you want. You're above the law.

Open letter to Inspector Lewis Brown, commander Donegall Pass Police Station

2007-03-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Inspector Brown,
by the time you read this you should have received a copy of the receipts from the internet cafe I have been using to post on this blog. It is my belief that the Police are holding my computer to silence me. As you can see, that has failed. Your people siezed my computer four months ago. They cannot pretend they are still holding it as part of an investigation. Indeed, the attitude of Detective Sargeant Sylvia Hamilton was to state bluntly,
"No. You're not getting your computer back."
Well, Inspector Brown, if I'm not getting my computer back, I expect to be reimbursed for my internet cafe expenses.
It is possible to copy the contents of my hard drive if a permanent record is needed.
For what it's worth, I have nothing to hide or apologise for.
I expect to hear from you sooner rather than later.

Yours faithfully,
Alan Murray.

Police target residents

2007-03-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

You will recall, way back when, before the police siezed my computer, I said we are a lesser class of person to them. Everybody sees the looks of suspicion and loathing they give us as they drive around like an army of occupation. Residents are stopped in the street,
"Who are you? Where are you going?"
Me, at least, they know by name. It's odd that they don't stop students willy-nilly. Well, OK, it's not odd, it's policy. Criminalise the community. What they don't realise is that this is a tacit admission of failure. The entire community is in revolt, apart from a few collaborators. Now their energy's directed at containing our rage while the "Students" can do what they want. That, beleive me, is policy.
If students vandalise a resident's car, the resident is threatened with prosecution. If a resident is relating to police how he was attacked by three students, the police pull his son and, when he objects, is threatened by an enraged officer brandishing CS spray and a baton. Naturally nothing will be done about the "student" attackers, other than going through the motions.
For the record, we are all free to walk down any street or up any entry and we don't have to explain ourselves to anyone.

Charlatan claims to represent community

2007-03-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

David Farrell's at it again. He's telling the press that he's the "Chairman" of the, "Belfast Holylands Regeneration Association". At least he's not calling it a resident's group.
He's written to the Police, wardens and universities to tell them what a good job they did making st Patricks day quiet. Does he expect us to beleive that they are responsible for it falling on a weekend, coinciding with mothers day and being washed out by a three day Atlantic storm?
There was a large police presence, but, as I'll explain in a later post, it focused almost entirely on residents, barring the collaborators of course.
An end must be put to this fake residents/regeneration/collaboration group.It's boycotted by residents who are almost universally disgusted with it.

Raided

2007-03-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

They came at 7.45am. I'd had little sleep. It was timed for maximum disorientation.
"Mister Murray Hurry Up"
I'm rushing to the door.
"We have a warrant to search the place.You can stay, but if you interfere you'll be removed. Do you understand?"
"OK"
The uniforms go about their work and the first plain clothes introduces herself.
"I'm Sylvia"
She sounds like a social worker.
Her partner, Alan, chimes in.
"This situation's got out of control. It's got to stop."
I'm feeling patronised.
"We'll look after you" Says Sylvia, "We're your guardian angels."
Alarm bells are going off in my head.
I look around to see my computer being taken out the front door.
I go into the kitchen. Every tin of yellow paint is being opened.
"What are you looking for?"
A uniform shows me the warrant.
" Orange/yellow paint, brake fluid boots."
I'm not thinking straight because they're siezing a lot more than that.
"We're taking your swords", says Alan,"until this is all over.
They're taking my antique swords. Even the wooden training swords I made myself are going.
"Leave me the baseball bat"
"No, it's going too."
"How am I supposed to defend myself?"
"If your house is attacked just call us
"You won't get here in time"
"Yes we will"
They're taking the piss. I'd be dead before I got through to the station.
Alan's prattling again.
"If this doesn't stop someone's going to get killed here"
They don't know the half of it
"You know why we're here. These bin fires have got to stop."
"You think I'm in the frame"
"The dogs in the street know you did it. You're out of control. people are afraid of you."
He's pouring it on like hot butter.
Sylvia approaches me.
"We're arresting you on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do not say, but reveal later can be held against you in a court of law."
"Can I take my medication?"
"We'll take it with us Our Doctor can administer it."
I put my tablets into a bag.
We're about to go. I need to get dressed.
"Where are my boots?"
"They've been siezed"
I put on my trainers.
"We have to put cuffs on you"
" Front or back?"
"Back"
They're uncomfortable. They make it difficult to squeeze into the Police car, and I have to sit forward in the seat as we drive to the station.

The Holding cell has piss on the floor.I shake with cold and fear while I munch on a mars bar.
After a while they take me for processing. They take my wallet, my gloves , my hat, my belt. They let me keep the bounty bar.
As the sargeant's taking my details my bowels are about to burst.
"I can't hold it sarge!!"
"OK just run"
I make it barely in time and squat above a stainless bowl pulling my cheeks apart while the world falls ouy of my backside. It's the first of many visits to the "customers" toilet.
I sit in a cell with my shoes outside.
"In case you hang yourself with the laces"
Well whatever.
I wait. And wait. And wait.
The door opens.
"Your solicitor's on the phone"
My solicitor, Julie has known me for seventeen years. She tells me to eat something. Lunch is on its way soon and she'll be there not long after.
In between lunch and frequent visits to the toilet I try to relax.Hours have passed. I was raided before 8am. It's now 2pm.
My solicitor arrives. Alan, or Detective Sargeant Piper to his friends, takes her aside for a chat about my mental health. I think he's trying to convince her I'm crazy. She's no dozer. He'll make fools of neither of us.
I tell Julie I know nothing about the fires in No2 Jerusalem St, and, with me being innocent the Police have no forensic evidence.
At 3pm the interviews begin. We will not finish till 8pm.
"What did you do that day?"
"I got up, I can't remember when. It was late. Afternoon sometime. I went into town. I got food. I came home.I said hello to the workmen at the front door of No2. I went inside. I went out the back and saw them dumping a huge pile of rubbish in the entry. I made my tea later on. I went for a walk late. I noticed that the windows of No2 were broken. I came back. I watched more TV. I had a bath and played music I went to bed."
"Did you hear any noise?"
"Its the Holyland there's always noise."
" Did you hear the fire brigade?"
"I was in the bath . I heard diesel engines. I thought it was the fire brigade coming to put out a eurobin."
"A what?", says Alan, feigning stupidity.
"Those big steel bins. They get burnt all the time."
"You didn't hear anything else?"
"I was playing loud music."
It's time to go over the evidence collected.
"What's this large tube of glue for?"
"It's general purpose, but it's perfect for round the bath. You've seen the sealant. It needs replaced."
"You haven't used it to seal up locks?"
"No"
"What about this superglue?"
"I have a house full of model kits. It's ideal for them. It's better than polystyrene cement. You've seen the large model tank stored in a biscuit tin I've been working on."
Neil, the evidence guy nods.
Now it's the yellow paint.
"That cream colour's for the living room floor. The others I found in skips or the entry. That large empty tub, turn it upside down.You see the coloured paint? I mount figures on it while I'm painting them."
"You haven't used these to paint X's on people's windows?"
"No"
"We'll be doing forensics on these. Will they match?"
"Well, paints can be very generic, but it's most unlikely."
" Can you tell us what this large stencil says?"Neill's feeling pompous.
"RICH SCUM GO HOME"
"What does that mean?"
" Well, let's see. I'm surrounded by people who've come up here for a three year long party, all the while abusing education. Look at my course. It's one of the best in the UK. It has a 50% non-attendance rate. These people come up here, go apeshit and you people do nothing about it. You just drive on by and legitimise their behaviour."
"What would you have us do?"
"I've spent all day in a cell called a "Drunk cell". There's an offence called "Drunk and Disorderly". Park a meat wagon in the Holylands, fill it up and process these people at the end of the night. They come up here, torment working class people and drive around in brand new cars that mummy and daddy bought them. And no, I didn't paintstripper their cars!!!"
Julie cuts in.
"I think we should take a break here. You're getting Quite upset."
"Thank's Julie. You're right. I just don't think I have anything to apologise for."
We take a break. Dinner arrives.It's suitably tasteless. The ordinary officers in the station are, I have to say, very decent to me.It must be refreshing for them to have a polite customer. Events in the interview room are of course most unpleasant. The whole business of being raided, arrested and grilled is increadibly threatening. The sense of ontological terror is overwelming.
While I eat chips my solicitor tells me the cops are on a fishing expedition. They have nothing. I know they're trying to pin all the resistance activity on me, as if a whole community isn't in revolt.
We have many breaks during the interviews. They're going on for hours. The cops are trying to trip me up or break me. I'm an innocent man. But they have to try don't they. My innocence or guilt is irrelevant. They need to make an example of someone.
More interviews. They've siezed the handbills I've been circulating with the address and phone number of Douglas Bailie, the landlord of No2 Jerusalen St on them. Later they'll caution me with harrassment for circulating his details and instruct me to take them off this website. They don't want me putting a list of his other properties in the area on here either or, for that matter, Declan Boyle's details. They seek to protect power from accountability.
"What can you tell us about these boots?"
"They're boots. they keep my feet dry in the rain and warm in the winter."
"We won't find any evidence on them?"
"I walked through the glass outside that house. I,ve done that with these trainers as well."
"Well, we'll have to confiscate them too"
They give me a pair of oversize plimsoles. Neill, feeling clever, says I look like Krusty the Clown. Beleive it or not, that wee boy has a psychology degree.
I'm finally released. Julie gives me a lift home. It's just as well. I'd have had to trudge through the rain in Krusty the Clown Plimsoles on a wet November night.
The next day I see the article in the South Belfast News. The fake residents group have been stitching up their neighbours. Go figure.

Postscript.
This happened in November. It's now the end of march and the cops still have my computer. They needn't pretend they're holding it as part of an investigation. They're trying to
silence me.

I went back twice to be reinterviewed. They had nothing to put to me. The second time Neill, the Krusty the Clown guy, told me they'd be holding my computer. I said why don't you copy the hard drive and return it to me. He answers with some words of wisdom.
"You can buy a new hard drive for a couple of hundred quid."
"A...couple ..of hundred..quid..?"
The couple next to me are sniggering
"Well, Neill why don't you lend me a couple of hundred quid?"
"No" His smile's slipping away.
"I didn't think so."
"Well I'm not burning down houses in the Holyland"
Calmly I say " Neither am I"
His smile's gone now.
"Am I free to go?"
"Yes you're free to go"
We part company. Now I'm Smiling.

Creepy Critters prowl the Entries

2007-03-22T06:44:00.000-07:00

I was in the yard getting firewood.It was 10.45pm. When I heard their voices I went into silent mode. They were checking my perspex roof and commenting on the "second house down", mine.As they were walking away I opened the yard door and said,
"What may I do for you gentlemen?"
"How may you...Oh!...My friend here owns the house next door(meaning no2) and he was showing me how he did his extention."
This sounds like bullshit. I'll make sure the police are informed. If people are casing my house I want it noted. Two men in their forties aren't going to be burglars. Something sinister is afoot. I don't expect the police to protect me. But I do expect something very nasty to happen. Perhaps Arson With Intent To Endanger Life?