"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.
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10 comments:
The student asked a good question. No one whats to live in the Holylands any more. Residents are sick fo the disturbance and students are sick of being targeted by thugs, druggies and rapists.
Cops don't care about either side. A resident calls the cops about noise and vandalism, they do nothing. A student calls the cops about there house being broke into or car damaged they just say we'll look into it.
PSNI in South Belfast are a joke. Holiday camp for cops.
Landlords are to blame. Sticking so many students in to one area.
An interesting argument. Landlords do not act in isolation. The Housing Executive has doled out £24,000 per property to them; £240 million in the province as a whole and a whopping great 120 million in South Belfast alone.
Planning has allowed this to happen. It provides a campus for the universities. Stranmillis is becoming the new Holyland in order to service The UUJ move to the city centre. UUJ halls will remain, but are populated by foreign students who bring in big bucks.
The attitude of students on Tuesday and afterward shows that they feel that it is their area and they can do whatever they want. There is no remorse, merely pride at their antics and notoriety. The population density argument was wheeled out by the universities as an excuse for the events. Gerry McCormack stood with a smug grin on his face talking this shit to the BBC. He clearly doesn't give a fuck. He never did.
"Students" choose to rent there. Their objective is not study. It is impossible to do that. This I know from personal experience.
The Amnesty survey made it clear that rape is endemic and normal within the student body.
At the weekend the area is overwhelmed by drug related theft. It shares this in common with Lower Ormeau. The cops know who the dealers are, but, strangely, will not act against them. People draw their own conclusions.
Jordanstown expelled a student who let off a fire extinguisher in the Halls of Residence but the guy who attacked a member of the bar staff in a Newtownabbey pub was removed from his Newtownabbey abode to be given a place in the Halls of Residence.
Attacking inanimate objects on campus Bad
Attacking animate beings off campus OK.
This is your lecture from Jordanstown finished.
Totally agree about the cops. they are clean useless. were where the riot cops when a resident burned out 3 cars on carmel street last year? ? ? not to be seen
Actually, Don't keep up the blog. It's biased to the point of being propaganda. Your not achieving anything of substance, just a catalogue of equally vitriolic material. It takes an idiot such as yourself to tar some 7,000 people with the same brush. We're all murderers (I found it particularly funny that so much emphasis was placed on that particular crime as if it could ONLY be perputrated by a student)thieves and riot merchants. I can practically imagine you froth at the mouth when you heard about the UUJ fire extinguisher incident previously mentioned. Face it, this isn't about the holylands. It's about your dogmatic tirades against the corrupt and disgusting students (feel the sarcasm?) that is neither helpful or useful. It's quite pathetic that you spend such a large amount of time maintaining a blog based largely on blind hate that hasn't, and NEVER will, achieve anything other than dividing people even more.
you are a bumboy
i like apples
protest am i
grapes
grapes
blogs are stupid
anyone reading this needs better things to do in life
this video shows the typical bollocks that holylands residents spout from their arses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nchc05Hv2c
OK. I've discussed this elsewhere, so I'll cut and paste my reply from there.
I'm with that resident in the video. This was before we got caught in the middle of the riot. I'm the tall guy (and no it's not a celtic top, it's Primark). Five minutes after this we were in the middle and had to filter through police lines to safety where she was interviewed by the BBC and Irish News. We then took the long way back to her house then ended up caught in the middle again as the riot spread. Bottles were crashing around us and I saw the guy get hit with one on his own doorstep. The students were waving pizza boxes and shouting "We Deliver". She's a pensioner and has been repeatedly threatened by students since Tuesday.
I lived in the Holyland for 18 years. It's worse than you think.
I hope this satisfies you (rolls eyes)
you just cant say away from the holylands can you alan.
It's journalistic pay dirt. There are so many issues packed into one wee area.
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