Lipstick on a Pig

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

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.

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/