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.
38 comments:
I'm just telling it like it is. Some years ago the police made 17 arrests on St Patricks day. All were from the Lower Ormeau, despite the rampant criminality in the streets for 48 hours by your precious innocent, unbigoted killer hillbillies. The cops know how to target working class kids, who are, after all, easily stigmatized.
Like I say, "students" will not be prosecuted, unless they are working class. It will not do to alienate that new, contrived, unproductive catholic middle class in mid-ulster.
Deal with it. If you can't handle it feel free to bury your head in a bowl of smack.
alan, still awaiting a reply re my question that you are unemployed??!!
Spankertankon sort of ruins his own point by starting his comment by "fuck you".
Im a student, was there on st patricks in the holylands, also live there. It was a good day until the drink took over and people on carmel street tried to burn out a car, for what end I dont know.
There was however a contingent of lower ormeau scumbags floating around all day, clearly looking for either a ruck or something to steal and sell, thats fact.
The police turned up in riot gear, which is in my opinion looking for trouble, although I completely condone everything they did.
The police decided to shut the place down and stormed onto Agincourt and halted and paused and let the scumbags throw bottles at them and then a few idiot students jumped on the bandwagon.
Theres no way to defend the day, the minority ruined it for the majority. Queens and UUJ will have to get their act together.
I agree that what happened paddies day was wrong and that any student involved should be expelled and let the courts hand out punishment to them as well. Time to set an example and get the place back to some normality.
The Holylands was very quiet this year in comparsion to years before. I only arrived at my house in the Holylands when the riot squad turned up. I noticed a good number of Belfast teens throwing bottles at the police but these people were never mentioned on the news. Why not?
I'm not defending any actions by students involved, I'm just saying why did the reporters not add that in their stories.
More police presence is needed in the Holyland during the hours when the trouble happys, not just during the day to show their faces.
The eldery living there need reassurance. Students need to wise up.
Also read some early articles of yours. I lived beside protestants for two years in the holyland. Got on the best with them. I hate the "Designer Republics" living in the area. Good term for the twats that live in the hatfield.
Enjoyed your blog.
ah i see
Alan has studied marxism
so he reduces everything to class issues and ignores everything else
alan uses his knowledge of this one thing to be an 'intellectual.'
Never mind who actually did anything, or the fact that many working class people go to university that is actually quite insulting there including alan himself
how bout you go read another book, your second, then reduce everything to those terms.
darwin maybe or freud
yer a one trick pony
To the first poster, I would point out that the backgrounds of the people who were arrested, or the small number of them, are irrelevant. This is not a 'small minority' of people, at least half of the population at QUB are part of the same bigoted and backwards group; raised on a diet of Sinn Fein fueled monocultural sectarianism that's a lot more subtle and insidious than anything that occurs along the interfaces.
Whilst I don't agree with Alan's emphasising of the plight of protestants in the area (I know plenty of less dogmatic Catholics, including myself, who find this culture repulsive), or the idea that it is something of a conspiracy theory, I can hardly blame the guy for getting fucked off.
Alan is right to point out that this is being kept very quiet though; these realities need to be exposed and stopped, ASAP.
As an English Catholic who came here to actually do some studying, I have regularly been appalled at the level of slavish dogmatism to their own 'community' that these people espouse - blind to the idea that anything could ever be their own fault, and that's before I even get on to the rampant Anglophobia that has led such people to make it clear in no uncertain terms that I do not belong here.
I'm quite certain in saying that, had I known the culture that exists around QUB, I would certainly not have come here. It's not just the underlying sectarianism, it's the total lack of interest in anything outside of 'Irish' culture, and a lack of willingness to engage with anyone different or anything new.
Whilst the majority of those within this monoculture are not violent and did not get arrested, they are at best a sad example of what happens kids grow up in a closed community, and the bigotry and suspicion that rises from young children being made to swallow (what is effectively) propaganda wholesale.
there is a rumour going around that the landlords Mc Mahon boyle and co are putting in claims to the NI Office for damage to their properties on Paddys day.
Perhaps the inconvenient truth is that the PSNI are happy enough to call activities that take place in the holylands on St Patrick's Day "rioting", whereas more reprehensible activities during the 12th of July are rarely if ever censured.
Some socialist you are anyway, to go on postulating about student activities when there is a plethora of other contemporary issues that could be addressed that are a lot more important in the grand scheme of things. Your response to Henry McDonald indicates that you think that the holylands are basically now too far gone to be saved--if so, then why continue your rants? Surely you should be directing your complaints to your MP and MLAs rather than to an unkown internet audience?
I'd also like you to explain exactly how passing comment on a student election candidate's looks is meant to fit in with your socialist aspirations?
The Holylands is gone. Rehouse people. If there is an area that can be saved it's Stranmillis. This is the new front line. It is due to become part of the Extended Campus now that UUJ are moving to the city centre.
Many people wondered what the landlords were playing at doing more and more HMO's. There is apparent oversupply. Now we know that they are about to have thousands of new customers courtesy of the UUJ move. For Planning to rubber stamp the destruction of the Holyland and now Stranmillis (Ballynafeigh is going the same way) may feel like a conspiracy especially when the Housing Executive doles out conversion grants for these properties averaging £24,000. However it is merely a power agenda. Men in grey suits make these decisions all the time.
See this:-
http://holylandswarzone.blogspot.com/2008/02/theyve-abolished-community-and-invented.html
Given the provocation they faced (pizza boxes, "We Deliver"), the police were incredibly restrained. If it was the Gardai heads would have been cracked no matter that these were "respectable" middle class people. In France it would have been CS gas and water cannon. One reason for the death of the Holyland is a failure of policing; a naked refusal to enforce the law for a decade and a half. Their recent actions are far too little far too late.
It is interesting to contrast their non-policing of "students" with the brutality used to clear sit-down protests on the Ormeau Road so they could ram-rod parades down it. It is also interesting to note that despite the presence of thousands of students in the Holyland in the 1990's they were nowhere to be seen when the Ormeau Road needed them. Two or three Ogra would stand around filming it, but that was all.
I'm not commenting on a candidate's looks, but her superficiality. How can you not rip the piss out of a slogan like;-
"Queens is good. So lets make it great!!!"
You insinuate though that she wears fake tan and isn't good looking. You need to be careful with your choice of words and how you convey your thoughts and already you have been caught out a good few times!
Fundamentally disagree that the Holylands is a lost cause: we simply need to get more families in and put more students out.
The Housing Executive needs to take a lead on this by acquiring properties in the area for social housing.
"The Holylands is gone. Rehouse people. If there is an area that can be saved it's Stranmillis. This is the new front line. It is due to become part of the Extended Campus now that UUJ are moving to the city centre."
Stranmillis? Save Stranmillis? That bourgeois, anti-socialist haven? You're sounding very hypocritical here. A significant number of UUJ students already live in Stranmillis so I'm not sure what that would achieve.
"Many people wondered what the landlords were playing at doing more and more HMO's. There is apparent oversupply. Now we know that they are about to have thousands of new customers courtesy of the UUJ move. For Planning to rubber stamp the destruction of the Holyland and now Stranmillis (Ballynafeigh is going the same way) may feel like a conspiracy especially when the Housing Executive doles out conversion grants for these properties averaging £24,000. However it is merely a power agenda. Men in grey suits make these decisions all the time."
Again, how many people do you think live in Jordanstown? The halls aren't moving and because of that unilink service a lot of people from UUJ already life in Stranmillis or the Holylands, or Dunluce, or off the Malone Road...
"See this:-
http://holylandswarzone.blogspot.com/2008/02/theyve-abolished-community-and-invented.html
Given the provocation they faced (pizza boxes, "We Deliver"), the police were incredibly restrained. If it was the Gardai heads would have been cracked no matter that these were "respectable" middle class people. In France it would have been CS gas and water cannon. One reason for the death of the Holyland is a failure of policing; a naked refusal to enforce the law for a decade and a half. Their recent actions are far too little far too late."
Speculating on the operations of other police forces is idiotic. Please do not attempt to pass yourself off as a world policing expert.
For what it's worth, however, the Garda wouldn't have even responded to the fucking call from the residents--halls of residence in certain places down South are known shanty towns for students to do whatever they want with, and even in places like Dublin there are residential areas taken over by students for the most part.
"It is interesting to contrast their non-policing of "students" with the brutality used to clear sit-down protests on the Ormeau Road so they could ram-rod parades down it. It is also interesting to note that despite the presence of thousands of students in the Holyland in the 1990's they were nowhere to be seen when the Ormeau Road needed them. Two or three Ogra would stand around filming it, but that was all."
I think that the comparison doesn't work on a number of levels--not least because of the political situation. The context of sectarian tension, with the serious threat of death, is a lot different to a couple of drunk hoodlums smashing in cars. 1996 was a lot more of an unstable time than 2009, don't you know?
P.S. Their usual marching season isn't in term time, right? So why would students be in their flats anyway?
"I'm not commenting on a candidate's looks, but her superficiality. How can you not rip the piss out of a slogan like;-
"Queens is good. So lets make it great!!!" "
Well, you did comment on her looks. I think "ripping the piss" out of student elections makes you look a bit stupid anyway--it's not as if anyone takes them particularly seriously.
Finally, comparing the holylands to a Warzone denigrates the suffering of people who actually live in warzones. I'm not exactly unsympathetic to the residents who live in the Holylands--God help those who have to put up with assholes like those setting cars on fire on Tuesday. However, and again, comparing their plight to people suffering in genuine Warzones like that of the Gaza strip is a fucking joke.
For a socialist you've a very parochial, narrow-minded perspective. Perhaps you think that by using the terms "Mid-Ulster Catholicism" and "Middle-class" you can get away with that bollocks. I don't quite think it sticks though.
BRAVO WHOEVER POSTED THAT COMMENT!!
"Fundamentally disagree that the Holylands is a lost cause: we simply need to get more families in and put more students out."
We've been through this before. It is obscene to expect people, especially families, to live in that environment. 50-80 residents; 5,000 -7,000 "students". how the fuck can you redress the balance? There is no community there now and there never will be again. What kind of evil fuck wants to imprison more families in that hell-hole. For the record, it may not be Gaza, but it is a warzone. Landlords and their "student" tenants have been targeting people and driving them out for 15 years. Suzanne Breen put it well,
"If paramilitaries had done this there would be uproar."
"The Housing Executive needs to take a lead on this by acquiring properties in the area for social housing."
Not only do you want to imprison families in a hell-hole where they are not wanted, you want to waste taxpayers' money doing so. The Housing Executive should be allowed to build again and the new properties should be environmentally sustainable, something that housing in the Holyland can never be. Other countries(Germany, the South) have sustainable new-build standards. So should we. And the first people who should get new houses should be those that want the fuck out of the Holyland.
You can't even get someone who lives there to chair your fake fucking residents' group. 'Nuff said.
Gotcha!!!!!!!!!!
Mite as well let us mid ulster twats run a muck round the Holy Land. Fuck it there is nothing that can be done, the students own it now. Also for an educated man you should the correct name for the area is the Holy Land. No one really cares about the people of Belfast because they never try and get on with people from outside their "communities" so why should we. Jealous that we are trying to do something with our life's and enjoy it at the same times. Also you dumb fuck you don't need to be rich to go to uni. Its called the student loan company. Look it up dickhead. Finally as for all the new cars in the Holy Land is because must students have part-time and summer jobs. We are not on the dole like the rest of Belfast.
Your just another unless bastard living in the dump of the city.
Fees and debt lock people out of university. If you don't have the money you can fuck off.
Let's not pretend that these brand new cars aren't bought by parents. We all know they are.
People living there (the handful that remain) call it the Holyland or Holylands. That's how I knew it in my 18 years there.
The "students" don't own the Holyland the landlords do. However their tenants have free reign and until Tuesday the cops did fuck-all about it. You're right to say you've driven a community from their homes. I see you're proud of the fact. You're not alone. Your fellow "students" are too. They also see their riot as great fun. They were boasting about it the next day.
People only have themselves to blame for debt. Don't be envious on me because I didn't get into debt.
The fact is anyone who owned their own house in the Holy Land sold it in return for a nice profit. They weren't running from anyone. If they didn't sell up in the first place maybe you'd have your paradise of a community.
I'm flattered that you're glued to my blog.
The Holyland was a very desirable location and a very lovely area. It really was bohemian and neutral. People were free to disaffiliate from our two tribes. They did not leave willingly. And they were targeted by landlords and their "student" tenants.
The death of the Holyland is a tragedy for culture and learning and thinking. It is symbolic of the intellectual meltdown of our society.
Tomorrow belongs to you. Would the last person to leave turn out the lights.
You entertain me while I study. How exactly did the landlords push the first people out? How did it all start? I wasn't around when it first started to happen so please educate me. I was too busy running round the countryside with my rich family.
I'll prepare a post on the matter.
Hi, can I address a few of the posts on this recent blog. You lived in the Holy Land for 18 years, I lived there for over 50 years. Both the Holy Land and "Lower" (a term conjured up by the media) Ormeau Road were virtually 95% protestant. I recall the 12th demonstration lining up at Ballynafiegh Orange Hall in the 50's and 60's and stretching past the chapel at the top of the Ormeau Road. As it passed down the road dozens of feeder parades joined it from the Holy Land and the streets on the opposite side of the Ormeau Road as it continued to the rear of the City Hall.
In the 1960's Belvoir Estate, Killynure Estate and Carryduff were developed by the then Housing Trust, now the NIHE. There was no points system in those days so only protestants got rehomed there. Apart from being protestant one other thing was in their favour. The houses in the side streets of the Holy Land and Hatfield Farnham etc HAD NO BATHROOMS ONLY OUTSIDE TOILETS. They were fucking slums. (Check out 88 Agincourt Avenue) The tenants were sitting tenants and on fixed rents so the landlords e.g. H & J Martin did absolutely no repairs. Many of these residents were war widows (WW2) and impoverished. I was raised as a protestant but I will say this catholics were treated as 2nd class citizens and the scum of the earth during those days under the old Stormont rule.
As these protestants moved out of these areas, catholics who lived in even worse slums i.e. the markets moved in.
In the 50's and 60's a local butcher based in Bradbury Place bought up houses in Fitzroy , Uni Avenue and put families of two parents and 2,3,4 children into individual rooms (25-30 souls per house). There were no conversions in those days just the existing bathroom and an outside toilet. The "Avenues" as they were called did have bathrooms in the majority of houses.Resisents put pressure on the city council to stop this practice and if any one cares to check, a by-law was passed, which the last time I checked, said, that these individual houses could not be used for any other purpose other than as family accomodation.
As protestants left the Holy land and Ormeau area and cathlocis moved in and an organisation was formed called the Botanic Housing Association (I can name names if you permit me) whose unofficial constitution was to "keep catholics out of the area", it didnt succeed. This was due to the disbandment of the Stormont regime and the introduction of the NIHE etc. With Direct Rule (1974) and the new NIHE, grants were given to bring these homes to civilised standards.
The Holy Land always had a transient population. In my time I witnessed the class distinction amongst protestants, artisans and labourers who lived in the "streets" were looked down on by their protestant superiors who lived in the "Avenues". In turn these protestants were looked down on by those who lived on the "Roads" Parades" etc. That is how it was.
I remember a time when students and residents got on fan fucking tastically with each other.We used to meet our new neighbours late Sept and if they went home I had their keys and looked after their house and vice versa. Sure, the place went to hell, so what?? Let the students have the place. As you stated even taxis often refuse to go into it. The place is IMPLODING, I agree get the remaining residents out, and fuck the new generation of doctors, lawyers etc. In the past students rioted for a cause, this bunch of serial masturbaters wouldnt recognise a cause if they fell over one.
I stated I was a protestant, if I could become unbaptised I would go for it but in the absence of such a facility can I simply declare myself as a Panthiest? Therefore I would concur with the theory of evolution although I can more or less go with creationism if it is read figuratively.
The point I wish to make is thus: WHEN I WATCHED THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE RIOTS ON St PATRICK'S DAY, I CAME TO THE CONCLUSION, THAT MANKIND'S EVOLUTION HAS REACHED ITS ZENITH, WE ARE GOING BACK TO THE TREES.
??????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I totally agree with you that; 'A community was driven out, deliberately and systematically by landlords and their tenants.'
I think that ten years ago a load of aspiring landlords came round all the primary and secondary schools to formulate a plan with any pupil wishing to study third level education in Belfast. The plan was to drive all the current residents out of the Holylands area.
Are you for real?
None of this is really about bigotry or anything like that, its really just a load of young people who have four odd years left before they go into the working world. Indeed they do go over the top (quite a lot of the time). But in the end its nothing more than that.
This blog is completely pointless, I really do think you enjoy annoying/antagonising people, trying to get a reaction. You should look into that being a student of psychology yourself.
And at the end of the day, arguing on the internet is like running in the, Special Olympics even if you win, you're still retarded.
It doesn't work that way. I'll prepare a post on this soon, but the landlords put scumbag in next door to pensioners and families then made them an offer. After a few years people gave in, or died. Either way the landlord would end up with the house.
15 years later there is no community left. "Students" have made a point of tormenting residents. It's some kind of sport for them. In their own way they're re-enacting the slow, steady expulsion of protestants from mid-ulster. So now what was once a residential area is a "student area". How did that happen? It must have been magic.
"It's some kind of sport for them. In their own way they're re-enacting the slow, steady expulsion of protestants from mid-ulster."
Have you been to Mid-Ulster the Protestant community is as healthy as every. Being a Protestant from South Fermanagh myself I can safely say that is a lie. Also I'm a protestant that lived in the Holylands. Sure they were the few bar stool republicans who sang rebel songs at night and stuff like that but I was never upset by it. The reason I decided to live in the Holylands was because it was a hell of a lot cheaper than other places such as Stranmillis or the Lisburn Rd at the time.
I suppose if you have off seen me walking through the holylands some night you would have thought I was a Catholic up to no good. There is plenty of protestants living in the holylands these days and always will be. Sure the catholics out number then but it doesn't worry us. The fact is most protestants from Fermanagh & Tyrone go to England to study, not because they are afraid off Belfast but to go somewhere different. Protestants always had a better chance at education in Ireland before everything changed, only in the last 15 years has a large number of Catholics gone on for third level education.
I admire you for trying to make it a better place but I think you've got so bogged down in this image of students as a whole you won't let go and are afraid to back out.
"students"??
Are we not students? Cause i literally am a student so there is no need for quotation marks you silly man.
"Students" have made a point of tormenting residents.
Is this all students you are refering to? Again, i am a student, i live beside a resident and i dont torment them.
Ever think about gettin yourself a wee girlfriend Alan? Maybe even a wee job?
Seems to me like you have an awful shit life, if it were me then i would take a long hard look at myself and ask myself "what could i do to make my life less shit?". I could stop bitching about something that i cannot change, i could go try speed dating, maybe even go to the jobcentre and give in a CV, im sure i could get a great job, afterall i did set up a hugely successful blog on the internet that a few people look at.
Maybe you enjoy this crappy life, who am i to judge? But im a full time student, i work part-time and i have a girlfriend, im going to finish this posting now and go to her house and have intercourse with her, its great, you should try it, really takes a load off!
xox
"There is plenty of protestants living in the holylands these days and always will be."
??????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I lived there for 18 years. I know what the "student" demographic is, so I can safely say you're talking through your ass.
"There is"???????
You're writing in your vernacular and this tells me that you are:-
-Not a product of a protestant grammar school. I went to none. I know how these people talk.
-Poorly educated; you know, like the products of catholic grammar schools in mid-ulster who can barely talk.
-One of my Trolls.
Protestants and catholics who think are leaving to study elsewhere if they can possibly afford it. Think of those who can't, who have to live at home and study among inbred sectarian yokels at fourth-rate universities. They deserve better.
By the way congratulations for having intercourse with your girlfriend. I'm happy for you. She has my sympathies.
Out of curiosity, where has the post relating to the unprovoked attempted assault on me by a resident last year go alan? Censorship at its best.
Put it up again without the weird shit.
Define "weird shit"?
The part that showed how working class people up here to better themselves and do no harm are considered to be just as valid targets as those minority of yobs wrecking the place?
Feel free not to post it, it's your perogative, but no more self-pitying whining anymore from you about being silenced, as that's just hypocritical.
You yourself said in a previous blog that it was the "Holyland" not the "Holylands". Make up your mind.
Ex resident for 12 years, now a student
The name of this blog is "Holylands Warzone". Pay attention.
I use either depending on which flows best.
Oh I pay great attention.
Did I mention I also came from a working-class background? Whose family then built themselves up to be middle class but never forgot their roots?
It's important to remember your roots. If I have a future I won't forget mine.
I like to think I'll have a future.
dear god. You are one twisted, blinkered, outstandingly negative man. I'm not being a smartass but I really think you are suffering from depression and you have a serious amount of anger and bitterness in you. You never offer any solutions, just negativity ALL THE TIME, so you are't contributing anything at all. It's hard to take your arguments seriously when you are so one-sided and filled with hate.
I went to a mid-Ulster Catholic grammar school which is among the best in Northern Ireland in it's results so your criticism of them is invalid.
I'm happy for you.
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