This is not Evidence

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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

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?

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

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

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

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

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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

“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

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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.

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.