Below is a story from the Daily Mail on how Brown and his Totalitarian government treat our Brave young Men and Woman.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=542731&in_page_id=1770
A Royal Marine who lost both legs and his right arm after stepping on a Taliban landmine in Afghanistan has been told he is not entitled to a full compensation package.
Mark Ormrod, 24, was blown up on patrol in Helmand province on Christmas Eve. He has spent the last three months in intensive care and rehabilitation.
He was offered £214,000 in compensation by the Ministry of Defence rather than the maximum £285,000.
I hope all those greedy politico swine at Westminster from whatever party can sleep easy tonight and every night, knowing that this brave young man faces a life of hardship. This is thanks to the pittance of a compensation payout awarded to him from the Nu-labour controlled MOD and this disgusting Nu-Labour government.
This young man and all his injured colleagues should be getting 4 or 5 times the compensation they have been offered by this Nu-Labour government!
This disgusting Nu-Labour government sent these brave men and women there. However as long as it’s not this Nu-Labour governments sons or daughters, what do they care, and what do they care if these brave men and women come back dead or seriously disabled.
The greedy politico swine at Westminster can clam thousands a year in expenses without a receipt and the most dangerous thing they will do is chose what colour they want their shredder for shredding their John Lewis receipts.
I hope Nu-Labour Labour never gets into power again! Every time they have had power in this country they have contrived to make the poor poorer and destroy our Armed Services. Gordon Brown I will pay your one way ticket to Moscow, because you and your Nu-Labour politicos have done more to destroy our Armed Services than the Russians ever did!
The cry form the Armed Services is go Gordon go and take your numpty dippy Des with you.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
We are watching you DUP & UUP
I have been reading the Belfast Telegraph today 16th February and there is another story on the blaring of the lines between Seymour Sweeney and Ian Paisley junior, over the ownership of a constituency office in Ballymena and the issue of rent being paid or not as the case maybe and to who?
Not only can MLA's clam thousands in expenses but they also get subsidised meals up at Stormont!
The Honourable Members at Stormont can enjoy meals in the Members Dining Room. Sumptuous three-course meals are available for under £20 per head to MLA’s according to the Telegraph. These meals are subsidized by the hard pressed Northern Ireland Tax payer to the tune of £850 per day or £211,241 form May to December 07.
I would expect the nose in the trough old Unionists et al to be happy about this subsidy. It's now time the DUP and UUP have a root and branch review of the perks and expenses of the assembly.
I don’t get a free or subsidized meal from the government and I work for them. I pay for my own Christmas lunch the government don’t pay a single penny or provide a single mince pie to my Christmas meal, so why should I subsidise meals and drinks for people who earn a lot more than I do!
I also use my own car to do my job. I receive motor mileage however, that figure was set 4 years ago by the Inland Revenue, this was to cover the cost of fuel, depreciation. Since then there has been a 25% increase in fuel, I also have to put business use on my insurance, I then have the buy new tyres and service my car more often. So all in all the government are getting a dam good deal out of my car, and I take all the risk. Here is another issue the government have a budget every year and as sure as night follows day they put the fuel duty up, then there is the barrel price going up at a horrendous rate and then in this years buget 2008 the swine in 11 Downing Street put the cost of road TAX up again however, the only thing that doesn’t go up are my expenses to run my car to do the work of government.
Some of these bottom feeders in Stormont who are members of parliament get more in expenses £40k, for a second home that they allegedly need in London. They use this house/flat to stay in when they are going to parliament. £40k, is more than I get in salary a year!!!
When it comes to selling these houses they can usurp the rules to avoid paying capital gains tax so another nice little earner. In Northern Ireland these same bottom feeders pay rent on a portacabin on their own land to their wives so in these days of equality I want the same perks that these berks get?
The politicos also pay rent to their wife for a constituency office that their wife allegedly owns, not only that the wife works there and gets paid form the Tax payer as a constituency office worker!
As every week goes by we are being more and more disillusioned by the perks, expenses and the goings on up with the folks on the hill.
From the age of eighteen when I was eligible to vote, I have voted Unionist at every election. I seen it as my duty as a Unionist, and when the DUP have been on the ticket I have voted for them. However the day is fast approaching when I will be abstaining form voting. I am starting to get very disillusioned with Unionism and with the DUP and the UUP, as are my family and friends. We feel we have been used by the Unionist parties as a meal ticket
To be a good Unionist I was taught that one must look after and maintain the Union. However it does not permit the elected Unionist representatives to forgo the working class Unionists, and to line their own pockets at the Unionist Tax payer’s expense.
In light of the By-election defeat at Banbridge, here are a few thoughts form family, friends and myself to the DUP.
We are increasingly unhappy with the way the DUP are holding the hand of Sinn Fein/IRA.
We are also increasingly disturbed with the machinations of both Paisley 's. Both Paisley ’s are now being seen as a major hurdle to the future success of the DUP by family, friends and me. I personally can’t stand that pompous off spring Ian junior. I have never met this man but his manor is both condescending and arrogant. What does this man know about what its like to be brought up in a poverty filled low education attaining housing estate, were the people live from hand to mouth; on a day to day basis were mental and physical sickness, despair and an early grave are your daily companions!
The Seymour Sweeney debacle and the way young Paisley is strutting around denying a close business relationship with Seymour his arrogance knows no bounds and is alienating us as voters.
We are not happy with the way Jeffrey Donaldson seems to be trotted out by the DUP like some sort of Chawawa Rottweiler type spin doctor.
Poots, and the National stadium or not as the case maybe, and the raft of other decisions that seem to be put on the long finger, however quick decisions on traffic/parking attendants are seen as indicative of an administration that can't take controversial decisions yet can bring in traffic/parking attendants who are seen as issuing another stealth tax on hard pressed motorists.
We see the money generated by double and triple hated MP's, MLA's and Councillors as avarice at its most vile. The sums of money in salaries and expenses are 5 or 6 times my government wage. This is feeding the impression of, typical old Unionist party. The view is that the MP's, MLA's and Councillors are not in it for the Unionist people but lining their own pockets.
Peter and Iris Robinson are not setting a great example with their 40k expenses for their London home, that’s more than I earn a year!
Nine of your team at Stormont are double hated earning huge sums of money and then there is the question of relatives and friends working for MP’s, MLA’s. The sums of money being bandied about most of your working class electorate can only dream about, or is only attainable through a lottery win; this is feeding the impression of avarice and nepotism.
The other factor is how can one person do two full time jobs and give of their best to the Unionist electorate?
We don’t care for the PSNI they don’t care about the Unionist population and they are not the ‘B’ Specials, we don’t care for the 11+ it is seen as a middle class attempt to keep working class Unionist people in their place, we don’t care for money for the UDA, they are drug dealers and killers of Unionists within the Unionist community.
What we do care about is proper policing, better education for working class Unionist areas, well paid jobs, no more stealth taxes, the NHS and proper housing for Unionist low income earners.
We read the news and blogger sites on the Internet, the quality London papers, local press and listen to the local phone-in radio shows.
Turning into the old Unionist party of the past will not be tolerated and trying to hide from the Unionist electorate will not be as easy as it used to be in the bad old days of the old Unionist party. In the bad old days the only time you seen a Unionist politician was when they were banging the big drum, looking to get elected and after being elected they did nothing for the poor and the working class Unionist population!
The DUP appear to be moving away from the working class Unionist population who put the party were it is today.
What is being discussed is not voting at all at the next election. This is not based on a few conversations but almost all of the people I have spoken too.
So be warned, if the DUP are not seen as whiter than white and don't get their act together you may find that the working class electorate will vote with their feet and stay at home!
Not only can MLA's clam thousands in expenses but they also get subsidised meals up at Stormont!
The Honourable Members at Stormont can enjoy meals in the Members Dining Room. Sumptuous three-course meals are available for under £20 per head to MLA’s according to the Telegraph. These meals are subsidized by the hard pressed Northern Ireland Tax payer to the tune of £850 per day or £211,241 form May to December 07.
I would expect the nose in the trough old Unionists et al to be happy about this subsidy. It's now time the DUP and UUP have a root and branch review of the perks and expenses of the assembly.
I don’t get a free or subsidized meal from the government and I work for them. I pay for my own Christmas lunch the government don’t pay a single penny or provide a single mince pie to my Christmas meal, so why should I subsidise meals and drinks for people who earn a lot more than I do!
I also use my own car to do my job. I receive motor mileage however, that figure was set 4 years ago by the Inland Revenue, this was to cover the cost of fuel, depreciation. Since then there has been a 25% increase in fuel, I also have to put business use on my insurance, I then have the buy new tyres and service my car more often. So all in all the government are getting a dam good deal out of my car, and I take all the risk. Here is another issue the government have a budget every year and as sure as night follows day they put the fuel duty up, then there is the barrel price going up at a horrendous rate and then in this years buget 2008 the swine in 11 Downing Street put the cost of road TAX up again however, the only thing that doesn’t go up are my expenses to run my car to do the work of government.
Some of these bottom feeders in Stormont who are members of parliament get more in expenses £40k, for a second home that they allegedly need in London. They use this house/flat to stay in when they are going to parliament. £40k, is more than I get in salary a year!!!
When it comes to selling these houses they can usurp the rules to avoid paying capital gains tax so another nice little earner. In Northern Ireland these same bottom feeders pay rent on a portacabin on their own land to their wives so in these days of equality I want the same perks that these berks get?
The politicos also pay rent to their wife for a constituency office that their wife allegedly owns, not only that the wife works there and gets paid form the Tax payer as a constituency office worker!
As every week goes by we are being more and more disillusioned by the perks, expenses and the goings on up with the folks on the hill.
From the age of eighteen when I was eligible to vote, I have voted Unionist at every election. I seen it as my duty as a Unionist, and when the DUP have been on the ticket I have voted for them. However the day is fast approaching when I will be abstaining form voting. I am starting to get very disillusioned with Unionism and with the DUP and the UUP, as are my family and friends. We feel we have been used by the Unionist parties as a meal ticket
To be a good Unionist I was taught that one must look after and maintain the Union. However it does not permit the elected Unionist representatives to forgo the working class Unionists, and to line their own pockets at the Unionist Tax payer’s expense.
In light of the By-election defeat at Banbridge, here are a few thoughts form family, friends and myself to the DUP.
We are increasingly unhappy with the way the DUP are holding the hand of Sinn Fein/IRA.
We are also increasingly disturbed with the machinations of both Paisley 's. Both Paisley ’s are now being seen as a major hurdle to the future success of the DUP by family, friends and me. I personally can’t stand that pompous off spring Ian junior. I have never met this man but his manor is both condescending and arrogant. What does this man know about what its like to be brought up in a poverty filled low education attaining housing estate, were the people live from hand to mouth; on a day to day basis were mental and physical sickness, despair and an early grave are your daily companions!
The Seymour Sweeney debacle and the way young Paisley is strutting around denying a close business relationship with Seymour his arrogance knows no bounds and is alienating us as voters.
We are not happy with the way Jeffrey Donaldson seems to be trotted out by the DUP like some sort of Chawawa Rottweiler type spin doctor.
Poots, and the National stadium or not as the case maybe, and the raft of other decisions that seem to be put on the long finger, however quick decisions on traffic/parking attendants are seen as indicative of an administration that can't take controversial decisions yet can bring in traffic/parking attendants who are seen as issuing another stealth tax on hard pressed motorists.
We see the money generated by double and triple hated MP's, MLA's and Councillors as avarice at its most vile. The sums of money in salaries and expenses are 5 or 6 times my government wage. This is feeding the impression of, typical old Unionist party. The view is that the MP's, MLA's and Councillors are not in it for the Unionist people but lining their own pockets.
Peter and Iris Robinson are not setting a great example with their 40k expenses for their London home, that’s more than I earn a year!
Nine of your team at Stormont are double hated earning huge sums of money and then there is the question of relatives and friends working for MP’s, MLA’s. The sums of money being bandied about most of your working class electorate can only dream about, or is only attainable through a lottery win; this is feeding the impression of avarice and nepotism.
The other factor is how can one person do two full time jobs and give of their best to the Unionist electorate?
We don’t care for the PSNI they don’t care about the Unionist population and they are not the ‘B’ Specials, we don’t care for the 11+ it is seen as a middle class attempt to keep working class Unionist people in their place, we don’t care for money for the UDA, they are drug dealers and killers of Unionists within the Unionist community.
What we do care about is proper policing, better education for working class Unionist areas, well paid jobs, no more stealth taxes, the NHS and proper housing for Unionist low income earners.
We read the news and blogger sites on the Internet, the quality London papers, local press and listen to the local phone-in radio shows.
Turning into the old Unionist party of the past will not be tolerated and trying to hide from the Unionist electorate will not be as easy as it used to be in the bad old days of the old Unionist party. In the bad old days the only time you seen a Unionist politician was when they were banging the big drum, looking to get elected and after being elected they did nothing for the poor and the working class Unionist population!
The DUP appear to be moving away from the working class Unionist population who put the party were it is today.
What is being discussed is not voting at all at the next election. This is not based on a few conversations but almost all of the people I have spoken too.
So be warned, if the DUP are not seen as whiter than white and don't get their act together you may find that the working class electorate will vote with their feet and stay at home!
Sinn Fein/IRA and the worst story ever told
Sinn Fein/IRA are turning into a pseudo religion.
You have God, Adams, himself.
Jesus is the wee star form the North West Wee Martin.
The virgin Mary is Ms Ruane, She who give birth to eco terrorists.
Joseph would be Pat Doherty. Because he always looks as if he is sleeping
Trouble now I need to find the 3 wise men? Sean O'Callaghan, Martin McGartland and Freddie Scappaticci, all 3 had the sense to leave the republican movement.
Herod the Great would be Gerry form the Old Bailey.
Mary Magdalene has to be our Bairbre de Brún, she always looks at Wee Martin like she would like to have his children.
John the Baptist is I will wash you of your non-crime away Mitchel McLaughlin
The Twelve Apostles
Judas Iscariot: has to be Denis Donaldson
Simon also known as Peter: Francis Molloy as he denounced a policy 3 times
Simon the Zealot: Alex Maskey
Doubting Thomas: Martin Ferris I doubt I was on the Army Council
James the Younger: Conner Murphy just as he is young
Thaddaeus
Andrew
James
John.
Philip
Bartholomew
Matthew
I will let the rest of you fill in your favourite in the spaces.
Now we come to the last supper held at casement Park GAA ground
Only 10 turned up so there was plenty to go around and they all got plates with their faces on. The meal was a chicken supper supplied by 10 8 nothing
Telephone 80 808080
Some of their miracles:
Making people believe they had decommissioned
Fooling their electorate into thinking, they will get a united Ireland.
Hugging everything green and trying to cast out the Orange for Ireland.
Making people believe they are not in it for themselves.
Their greatest Miracle: Turning terrorist into peace loving para-politicians.
You have God, Adams, himself.
Jesus is the wee star form the North West Wee Martin.
The virgin Mary is Ms Ruane, She who give birth to eco terrorists.
Joseph would be Pat Doherty. Because he always looks as if he is sleeping
Trouble now I need to find the 3 wise men? Sean O'Callaghan, Martin McGartland and Freddie Scappaticci, all 3 had the sense to leave the republican movement.
Herod the Great would be Gerry form the Old Bailey.
Mary Magdalene has to be our Bairbre de Brún, she always looks at Wee Martin like she would like to have his children.
John the Baptist is I will wash you of your non-crime away Mitchel McLaughlin
The Twelve Apostles
Judas Iscariot: has to be Denis Donaldson
Simon also known as Peter: Francis Molloy as he denounced a policy 3 times
Simon the Zealot: Alex Maskey
Doubting Thomas: Martin Ferris I doubt I was on the Army Council
James the Younger: Conner Murphy just as he is young
Thaddaeus
Andrew
James
John.
Philip
Bartholomew
Matthew
I will let the rest of you fill in your favourite in the spaces.
Now we come to the last supper held at casement Park GAA ground
Only 10 turned up so there was plenty to go around and they all got plates with their faces on. The meal was a chicken supper supplied by 10 8 nothing
Telephone 80 808080
Some of their miracles:
Making people believe they had decommissioned
Fooling their electorate into thinking, they will get a united Ireland.
Hugging everything green and trying to cast out the Orange for Ireland.
Making people believe they are not in it for themselves.
Their greatest Miracle: Turning terrorist into peace loving para-politicians.
Questions for the Next Election?
I would like to tell the politicos that have power over us:
That we are not best pleased with so called Eco Taxes (Tax on Fuel, be that fuel for vehicles or the home and a possible Congestion Charge for Belfast).
I feel they are punitive taxes on the poor and middle income earners and will stifle inward investment. The government and Belfast City Council is cynically using the environment as an excuse to raise taxes.
We are being forced to endure these Eco Taxes before we have a global agreement on environmental issues, the UK alone will not save the planet. I as a UK car user knows that the car user in America, China and India are not paying Eco stealth taxes on their fuel. These Taxes confirm to us the voter that this is a cynical stealth tax. This applies to all Eco stealth taxes.
Do the peoples in the countries named above have to use by decree of government, Eco light bulbs?
The nanny state has arrived in your living room and is going in to overdrive in London. How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb?
Politicians don’t need light bulbs as they can light up a room with the sun shine emanating from their backsides!
Or
We don’t know because we have never seen a politician do anything useful!
Other Stealth Taxes (Tax on Insurance and flights) again are a punitive tax on the poor and middle income earners and again stifle investment. The Irish Republic is a shinning example of a low Tax economy and look how the standard of living and investment has boomed in the Irish Republic in recent years with high paying quality jobs.
We need our politicos to reform the Tax take and make it more equitable. The burden of tax should not be on the middle income earners or the elderly who have saved all their working lives for their retirement. The tax burden needs to be more equitability spread over the full range of incomes.
On the Belfast Congestion Charge, we have a multi million-pound new shopping centre in Belfast nearing completion and several new multi million pound developments at the Holywood Exchange site and in the Titanic Quarter Shipyard site and another multi million pound proposed development at the old Sarrco Works site. What eejit in the City Hall suggested that we should have the congestion charge for Belfast City Centre? It will obviously affect the business of the new multi million pound shopping centres, if shoppers have to pay to get to the shopping centre and then pay again to park, people will vote with their shopping basket and go to Lisburn or the Abbey Centre. The mindset of City Hall takes some thinking through. This will be a classic example of how not to get investment into the centre of Belfast. Well done City Hall.
The average wage in Northern Ireland is below the national average and just like corporation Tax on business any Eco or Stealth tax will discourage inward investment. Let’s not forget we in Northern Ireland pay more for every day products and services so Eco and Stealth Taxes have an even greater and disproportionately larger impact on our pockets.
I would like to ask the political parties here, will they vote against any more or any increases in existing Eco or Stealth Taxes. This goes for the Water Charges and Rates.
I would like to bring up the taxing question of ID cards. What an unnecessary burden on the UK Tax payer.
The introduction of ID cards to the UK is another covert attempt by the Labour government to invade our lives at a level never experienced in the history of the UK.
Firstly my main concern is over the anticipated cost of this ID card debacle.
Can we trust the government with the amount of information that will be stored on these cards and the security of the information contained on the cards? I thank not!
The government say that no Medical, Tax, Ethnic or Religious details will be contained on the cards. Personally I don’t believe them, and the temptation to add this information and misuse this information will be too overwhelming for the government.
I can see the forward planning and future strategy of the National Health Service being dependent on the personnel information held on these cards.
Interestingly the government did not mention that the ID cards will not hold DNA information. In not mentioning DNA information, it can therfore be used as a backdoor for the government to abuse the system and ask for DNA information in the guise of National Security.
I would like to remind everyone that Police forces across the UK have DNA data bases and would like to expand this to cover everyone, add this to the governments desire to have a UK DNA data base and it only takes the stroke of a pen form a minister of state to make DNA part of the ID cards.
I also have a degree of discomfort that the government wish to have my fingerprint details and the fingerprint details of my children on any card. We are sleepwalking into a mix of an Orwellian society and Huxley’s A Brave New World!
The UK governments record on honesty to the UK people has always been questionable therefore the opportunity and the temptation for the government to sell the information contained on the ID cards to foreign governments and banking and insurance interests will be insatiable. The personnel information about our DNA and health details could result in a refusal of NHS treatment or insurance maybe not today but tomorrow.
The control of emigrants and terrorists is being used as an excuse for the introduction of ID cards by the government. This will necessitate a huge government bureaucracy to administrate.
Instead of government getting smaller and the Tax burden getting smaller Labour are getting government into areas that government has never been before, and that invades the pocket as well.
The UK has huge numbers of transient workers from inside and outside the EU some who stay for short periods and others who stay for longer periods, add to this the numbers of UK residents who change address, the potential for system meltdown is inevitable. Any well financed terrorist organisation that wish to bomb the UK will not take long to have better fake ID cards than the cards the government can issue.
One just has to look at the existing NHS, Tax Credit and Child Support Agency computer systems are evidence that the government’s record on computer systems is not premiere league and the ID card computer system will inevitability be the same. The system just won’t work effectively.
One must ask the question if all the information that the card is going to contain is name, address, DoB, place of birth, immigration status, finger print details, iris pattern and photo. What is the point of the ID card, the criminals won’t care a jot for ID cards, they will make a fortune making fake ID cards and selling them on the black market. So I suppose it’s good to see the government encourage the economy, even if it’s the black economy.
International Forgers will have better ID cards than the government will produce within days of the first card being produced.
The cost of this ID scheme would be better spent in Schools, the NHS on Pensioners or on care for the elderly.
Can any politician tell me how an ID card is going to stop a bomb?
If Nu-Labour spent the money on police officers on the beat and not on CCTV and ID cards it would be money well spent.
CCTVand ID cards if they do catch a terrorist then it will be after the act, not like an officer on the beat who can intervene during the act. More police on the streets and less government intrusions in our lives would be a better idea.
The whole issue around ID cards is like a bad comb over on a semi bald man, it’s a stupid idea and it doesn’t work!
The government are trying to socially manipulate us into bottle water drinking; five fruit and vegetable portions a day super fit ID card carrying clones. However, and this may come as a surprise to the government we are all unique.
The elderly who have the need for treatment should not be denied that treatment, just because they have worked all their adult lives and now they don’t fit into some government targeted age range.
Then there is the lady who is denied cancer drug treatment because the government say it’s too expensive. However the government can pay themselves huge expenses on second homes, pensions and pay rises without the electorate having a say.
Then there is the gentleman who is denied treatments because he comes from an era were smoking was socially acceptable and he has paid tax to the government for the pleasure to smoke and is denied treatment.
The government need to be reminded that this is not their money to make these decisions with it is our money.
Gordon Brown and his predecessor Tony B,liar have spent billons of our pounds on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that will have no satisfactory conclusion. Gordon Brown is continuing to spend millions of our pounds a day on these failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I suggest these acts are the acts of a perversely corrupt government.
A government that will fund wars yet the same government won’t properly compensate or fund proper treatment for our returning service personnel or fund treatment for the rest of the populace that they say they represent, is a sick government.
A government that can send men and women to war but can’t treat them when they come home injured because of NHS cutbacks is a perverse and corrupt government!
Our Assembly need to focus on:
Education: The 11+, funding for third level education, and pay and conditions for education workers.
The Health Service: The provision of drugs and treatment for everyone. The cost and issue of Hospital Cleaning and Infections (MRSA).
Provision for the Elderly at home and in Hospital.
Planning, Social Housing, Water Charging and Rates (why are landlords exempt rates)
Crime and the causes of crime and the sentencing of the convicted (end 50% remission).
The mundane: Quangos, and Non Elected and Non Accountable Boards, The National Stadium, Tourism, Transport, Investment.
There is a dragging off collective political feet, with review after review on mundane issues delays in implementing important day to day decisions on issues in Northern Ireland that are stifling our economy.
Years of indecision must stop and a collective political finger must be pulled out. The politicos in the big house make positive decisions to move Northern Ireland into the 21st Century!
We need more action and less jaw jaw.
That we are not best pleased with so called Eco Taxes (Tax on Fuel, be that fuel for vehicles or the home and a possible Congestion Charge for Belfast).
I feel they are punitive taxes on the poor and middle income earners and will stifle inward investment. The government and Belfast City Council is cynically using the environment as an excuse to raise taxes.
We are being forced to endure these Eco Taxes before we have a global agreement on environmental issues, the UK alone will not save the planet. I as a UK car user knows that the car user in America, China and India are not paying Eco stealth taxes on their fuel. These Taxes confirm to us the voter that this is a cynical stealth tax. This applies to all Eco stealth taxes.
Do the peoples in the countries named above have to use by decree of government, Eco light bulbs?
The nanny state has arrived in your living room and is going in to overdrive in London. How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb?
Politicians don’t need light bulbs as they can light up a room with the sun shine emanating from their backsides!
Or
We don’t know because we have never seen a politician do anything useful!
Other Stealth Taxes (Tax on Insurance and flights) again are a punitive tax on the poor and middle income earners and again stifle investment. The Irish Republic is a shinning example of a low Tax economy and look how the standard of living and investment has boomed in the Irish Republic in recent years with high paying quality jobs.
We need our politicos to reform the Tax take and make it more equitable. The burden of tax should not be on the middle income earners or the elderly who have saved all their working lives for their retirement. The tax burden needs to be more equitability spread over the full range of incomes.
On the Belfast Congestion Charge, we have a multi million-pound new shopping centre in Belfast nearing completion and several new multi million pound developments at the Holywood Exchange site and in the Titanic Quarter Shipyard site and another multi million pound proposed development at the old Sarrco Works site. What eejit in the City Hall suggested that we should have the congestion charge for Belfast City Centre? It will obviously affect the business of the new multi million pound shopping centres, if shoppers have to pay to get to the shopping centre and then pay again to park, people will vote with their shopping basket and go to Lisburn or the Abbey Centre. The mindset of City Hall takes some thinking through. This will be a classic example of how not to get investment into the centre of Belfast. Well done City Hall.
The average wage in Northern Ireland is below the national average and just like corporation Tax on business any Eco or Stealth tax will discourage inward investment. Let’s not forget we in Northern Ireland pay more for every day products and services so Eco and Stealth Taxes have an even greater and disproportionately larger impact on our pockets.
I would like to ask the political parties here, will they vote against any more or any increases in existing Eco or Stealth Taxes. This goes for the Water Charges and Rates.
I would like to bring up the taxing question of ID cards. What an unnecessary burden on the UK Tax payer.
The introduction of ID cards to the UK is another covert attempt by the Labour government to invade our lives at a level never experienced in the history of the UK.
Firstly my main concern is over the anticipated cost of this ID card debacle.
Can we trust the government with the amount of information that will be stored on these cards and the security of the information contained on the cards? I thank not!
The government say that no Medical, Tax, Ethnic or Religious details will be contained on the cards. Personally I don’t believe them, and the temptation to add this information and misuse this information will be too overwhelming for the government.
I can see the forward planning and future strategy of the National Health Service being dependent on the personnel information held on these cards.
Interestingly the government did not mention that the ID cards will not hold DNA information. In not mentioning DNA information, it can therfore be used as a backdoor for the government to abuse the system and ask for DNA information in the guise of National Security.
I would like to remind everyone that Police forces across the UK have DNA data bases and would like to expand this to cover everyone, add this to the governments desire to have a UK DNA data base and it only takes the stroke of a pen form a minister of state to make DNA part of the ID cards.
I also have a degree of discomfort that the government wish to have my fingerprint details and the fingerprint details of my children on any card. We are sleepwalking into a mix of an Orwellian society and Huxley’s A Brave New World!
The UK governments record on honesty to the UK people has always been questionable therefore the opportunity and the temptation for the government to sell the information contained on the ID cards to foreign governments and banking and insurance interests will be insatiable. The personnel information about our DNA and health details could result in a refusal of NHS treatment or insurance maybe not today but tomorrow.
The control of emigrants and terrorists is being used as an excuse for the introduction of ID cards by the government. This will necessitate a huge government bureaucracy to administrate.
Instead of government getting smaller and the Tax burden getting smaller Labour are getting government into areas that government has never been before, and that invades the pocket as well.
The UK has huge numbers of transient workers from inside and outside the EU some who stay for short periods and others who stay for longer periods, add to this the numbers of UK residents who change address, the potential for system meltdown is inevitable. Any well financed terrorist organisation that wish to bomb the UK will not take long to have better fake ID cards than the cards the government can issue.
One just has to look at the existing NHS, Tax Credit and Child Support Agency computer systems are evidence that the government’s record on computer systems is not premiere league and the ID card computer system will inevitability be the same. The system just won’t work effectively.
One must ask the question if all the information that the card is going to contain is name, address, DoB, place of birth, immigration status, finger print details, iris pattern and photo. What is the point of the ID card, the criminals won’t care a jot for ID cards, they will make a fortune making fake ID cards and selling them on the black market. So I suppose it’s good to see the government encourage the economy, even if it’s the black economy.
International Forgers will have better ID cards than the government will produce within days of the first card being produced.
The cost of this ID scheme would be better spent in Schools, the NHS on Pensioners or on care for the elderly.
Can any politician tell me how an ID card is going to stop a bomb?
If Nu-Labour spent the money on police officers on the beat and not on CCTV and ID cards it would be money well spent.
CCTVand ID cards if they do catch a terrorist then it will be after the act, not like an officer on the beat who can intervene during the act. More police on the streets and less government intrusions in our lives would be a better idea.
The whole issue around ID cards is like a bad comb over on a semi bald man, it’s a stupid idea and it doesn’t work!
The government are trying to socially manipulate us into bottle water drinking; five fruit and vegetable portions a day super fit ID card carrying clones. However, and this may come as a surprise to the government we are all unique.
The elderly who have the need for treatment should not be denied that treatment, just because they have worked all their adult lives and now they don’t fit into some government targeted age range.
Then there is the lady who is denied cancer drug treatment because the government say it’s too expensive. However the government can pay themselves huge expenses on second homes, pensions and pay rises without the electorate having a say.
Then there is the gentleman who is denied treatments because he comes from an era were smoking was socially acceptable and he has paid tax to the government for the pleasure to smoke and is denied treatment.
The government need to be reminded that this is not their money to make these decisions with it is our money.
Gordon Brown and his predecessor Tony B,liar have spent billons of our pounds on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that will have no satisfactory conclusion. Gordon Brown is continuing to spend millions of our pounds a day on these failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I suggest these acts are the acts of a perversely corrupt government.
A government that will fund wars yet the same government won’t properly compensate or fund proper treatment for our returning service personnel or fund treatment for the rest of the populace that they say they represent, is a sick government.
A government that can send men and women to war but can’t treat them when they come home injured because of NHS cutbacks is a perverse and corrupt government!
Our Assembly need to focus on:
Education: The 11+, funding for third level education, and pay and conditions for education workers.
The Health Service: The provision of drugs and treatment for everyone. The cost and issue of Hospital Cleaning and Infections (MRSA).
Provision for the Elderly at home and in Hospital.
Planning, Social Housing, Water Charging and Rates (why are landlords exempt rates)
Crime and the causes of crime and the sentencing of the convicted (end 50% remission).
The mundane: Quangos, and Non Elected and Non Accountable Boards, The National Stadium, Tourism, Transport, Investment.
There is a dragging off collective political feet, with review after review on mundane issues delays in implementing important day to day decisions on issues in Northern Ireland that are stifling our economy.
Years of indecision must stop and a collective political finger must be pulled out. The politicos in the big house make positive decisions to move Northern Ireland into the 21st Century!
We need more action and less jaw jaw.
Inept PSNI
The general view is that the PSNI are so badly managed and the morale of the officer on the beat is so poor it seems as if the PSNI are making it up as they drive along. The PSNI are at best amateur or at worse totally inept.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the PSNI’s clear up rate for domestic burglaries
Is a pathetic 10%
I feel that the PSNI are a totally inept police service if it can be described as a service.
I would also like to ask why in this era of peace and a new police beginning, PSNI officers can drive around without seatbelts, drive around with driver or passenger doors ajar, park illegally, visit vehicle insurance companies to arrange their personal insurance, hide behind walls and street furniture, or hide in gardens or just into an area that has a reduced speed to conduct speed traps.
Why does it takes two officers to visit chip shops, sandwich bars, coffee shops and other types of take-a-way establishments when all we hear is that the PSNI are busy and need to prioritize their response to emergency calls?
Call for them to attend an incident and it takes hours if not days. I suppose it depends on the queue in the take-a-way as to the PSNI response?
Why when we have crimes taking place under the PSNI’s noses, crimes like drug dealing, burglary, car crime, crime against property, general anti social behavior, fighting on the streets, drinking in the streets, and the most insidious crime of violence against the elderly, resulting in the elderly being beaten in their homes or murdered protecting their property, this inevitability results in the elderly feel like prisoners in their own homes. Why do we have PSNI officers at midnight on a Friday, operating a speed trap on the Lisburn Road Belfast. It seems the PSNI are putting the gathering of a Tax before protecting the elderly the public, property and before proper road safety! Have these officers nothing better to do.
We all know of the need for speeders to be fined however, how relevant is it to catch a driver doing 4 or 5 miles over the speed limit at midnight on an all most deserted road, is there not a better time and place for this activity. It comes as no surprise that we see the PSNI conducting a speed trap at this time of the night. It can only be seen as an easy option and confirms our view that the PSNI would rather take the easy option rather than protect the vulnerable and terrified in the own homes.
Can I draw this comparison; we have areas of Belfast and Northern Ireland that are well known race tracks for the car thieves and we can all see the tyre marks on the road to prove it and we have well known roads that are race tracts. Yet we find the PSNI on one of Belfast’s most popular thoroughfares conducting a covert speed trap.
This speed trap would not help reduce the speed of the passing traffic. The speed trap was conducted covertly therefore this exposes the PSNI’s propaganda on reducing speeding as a lie. It seems the PSNI are more interested in a Tax Revenue gathering exercise than being actively visible and reducing speeding motorists.
This particular speed trap on the Lisburn Road was conducted by two officers sitting in their marked patrol car facing city bound out side a well known restaurant that sells finger lick-n-chicken. The officer in the driver’s seat was holding the speed camera out the window of the patrol car at traffic travelling city bound. So he was trying to take the speed of vehicles travelling toward him form behind. How can this officer gain prior opinion that a vehicle is exceeding the speed limit and get a proper fix on the vehicle with the camera to obtain a correct speed reading.
I quote form the Chief Police Officers Approved Codes of Practice for hand held speed cameras “Hand-held radar guns should only be operated by an officer on foot“.
I would like to refer you to the Chief Police Officers Approved Codes of Practice
http://www.acpo.police.uk/asp/policies/Data/RPET%20Manual%20version%202-3.pdf
The PSNI should be catching speeding motorists however conducting speed traps at this time in this manor and at this time only leads to the perception that the PSNI are only interested on the easy option and that they are Tax Revenue collectors for the government and making irrelevant quotas.
It seems the correct interpretation of how the PSNI operate is crime is an inconvenience to the police officers duty however, motor crime a nice little earner.
The PSNI would be better concentrating on putting real criminals behind bars or setting up speed traps in country roads catching the speeders, rather racking up fines from drives doing 34 in a 30 zone at midnight!
Questions for the PSNI:
Who is on the Speed Camera Scheme-Partnership and when and where do they meet.
Was there any public consultation on the makeup or operation of this Scheme-partnership?
Can members of the public join this Scheme-partnership?
How much revenue do the speed cameras accumulate, and how much and were does the money go?
Does the money get reinvested in reengineering roads to make them safer?
Does the money get invested into programs for the young on educating them about the dangers of speeding?
Is the money divided between the members of the speed camera scheme-partnership and what are the amounts?
Does the money go directly too central government?
We have a police force that seem to have only one function, that of covertly catching speeding motorists doing a few miles over the speed limit.
Not only that, the PSNI and the Courts bring the whole weight of the police and the judicial system to bear on the motorist for doing 35 in a 30 zone at midnight.
The perception people have of the PSNI is that they don’t want to catch the scum that murder, rape, shoot, stab, rob, steal and destroy the lives of ordinary decent folk.
The PSNI’s double standards, selective sight and inaction is infecting all aspects of PSNI life!
The Crime Statistics in the Chief Constables report is a litany of failure.
The general view is that the PSNI are so badly managed and the morale of the officer on the beat is so poor it seems at times as if the PSNI are making it up as they drive along. The PSNI are at best amateur or at worst totally inept.
Why does it take two officers to visit chip shops, sandwich bars, coffee shops and other types of take-a-way establishments when all we hear is that the PSNI are busy. However make a call for them to attend an incident and it takes hours if not days. I suppose it depends on the queue in the take-a-way as to the PSNI response?
The PSNI need to get out of the Chippies and catch criminals rather than catching Battered Cods!
If they were serious about vehicle crime why don’t the have a purge against people who put everyone at danger in untaxed and uninsured cars and the locally named run-arounds.
However this type of operation would require effort and thought, both of which seem to be lacking in the PSNI.
The PSNI’s clear up rate for crime is akin to that of a third world country. This is not what we expect from an allegedly highly trained highly skilled police force. Its time the PSNI had a good hard look at themselves from the highest ranking officer to the officer on the beat and assess were the priorities are and why the public has no confidence on the PSNI.
At this point I would like to refer you to the PSNI’s Chief Constables Annual Report. It makes some shocking reading!
http://www.psni.police.uk/psni_cc_report_06-07.pdf
PSNI have significantly changed the way they detect speeding motorists. The PSNI have gone from Overt speed traps to Covert speed traps so the motorist can only draw the conclusion that the PSNI are acting as Tax Collectors and are acting in contravention of their own handbook?
The covert speed trap is in contravention of Health and Safety Guidelines and the PSNI’s own Safety Camera Scheme Handbook and the ACPO Code of practice for the operational Use of Road Policing Enforcement Technology.
http://www.acpo.police.uk/asp/policies/Data/RPET%20Manual%20version%202-3.pdf
http://www.psni.police.uk/index/safetycameras/pg_scheme_handbook.htm
Here are several quotes from the handbook the first is from the forward, the second is from section 4 and section 4rule 2 of the PSNI’s Safety Camera Scheme:
Northern Ireland Safety Camera Scheme.3/10/07
#As part of a programme to deliver The Northern Ireland Road Safety Strategy 2002 – 2012, a Safety Camera Scheme is being operated in Northern Ireland. Its underlying principles are that:
Safety cameras (which include speed and red light cameras) are used only on those roads where there is a history of road traffic collisions that result in death or serious injury. This means that safety camera resources are targeted where they are most likely to have an impact.
The cameras, both fixed and mobile, are clearly visible, and their locations are signed and put on the Police Service of Northern Ireland web site. The intention of the Scheme is to change driver behaviour at camera locations by reducing speed and thereby reducing the number and severity of collisions.
In order to finance the Scheme, monies collected by way of Conditional Offer Fixed Penalty Notice fines are credited back into the Scheme by Government funding. This provides coverage of running costs, thus making the Scheme self-funding.
Section 4:
Scheme Rules
In the 1998 Public Expenditure Survey, HM Treasury identified certain conditions that would allow fines and penalties to be ‘netted off’ Departmental Expenditure Limits, namely where:
Performance against policy objectives is likely to be improved
Arrangements are in place to ensure that the activity will not lead to the abuse of fines and penalty collection as a method of revenue raising, and that operational priorities remain undistorted
Revenues will always be sufficient to meet future costs, with any excess revenues over costs being surrendered
Costs of enforcement will be readily identified and apportioned without undue bureaucracy, and with interdepartmental and inter-agency agreement, where necessary
Savings can be achieved through change and there are adequate efficiency regimes in place to control costs, including regular efficiency reviews.
This chapter sets out seven rules that govern the operation of the Northern Ireland Safety Camera Scheme to ensure that the above HMT criteria are met (and thus to allow cost recovery). These rules and guidelines do not constitute a legal requirement. Therefore compliance with these rules and guidelines bears no significance on the detection and enforcement of offences so detected by safety camera operations. To this end, non-compliance does not provide for any mitigation in defence for an offence committed by a driver in breach of current legislation.
4.2 Rule 2: Visibility and conspicuity
The aim of the scheme is to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on the roads through:
Targeting speed enforcement at those locations where there is a proven injury collision history and evidence of speeding
Telling drivers where speed enforcement will take place, for example through the media, road signs and painting fixed cameras bright yellow.
This will give motorists the opportunity to slow down and observe the speed limits at these locations. If they do not, then they could be caught speeding and prosecuted. Thus the message to motorists is “we don’t want to catch you speeding, we want to stop you speeding”. Specific requirements on visibility of camera sites and camera conspicuity are as follows:
All fixed site camera housings must be backed by high visibility yellow paint or self-adhesive retro-reflective material
All fixed site camera housings should be visible to road users and not hidden behind bridges, signs, trees, bushes or any other type of obstacle that would reduce the site’s visibility. The minimum visibility distance should be 60 metres where the speed limit is 40 mph or less and 100 metres for all other limits
For mobile enforcement, camera operatives must abide by all Health and Safety requirements and wear fluorescent clothing except where the local security situation makes this inappropriate
For mobile enforcement, safety camera vehicles should be clearly marked, identifying them as safety camera enforcement vehicles, except where the local security situation makes this inappropriate. Vehicles should not be hidden behind obstructions. The minimum visibility distance should be 60 metres where the speed limit is 40 mph or less and 100 metres for all other limits
Camera warning signs must be placed in advance of fixed, mobile or digital speed enforcement taking place
For fixed sites, signs must be placed between 500m and 1km in advance of camera housings. Signs cannot be placed over 1km away from a fixed site camera
For mobile and digital enforcement sites, fixed signs must be placed at the beginning of a targeted route. As guidance, repeater signs are also encouraged along these routes, particularly close to stated enforcement sites
For red-light camera sites, signs should be placed between 500m and 1km away from the camera
Signs must only be placed in areas where camera housings are present or along routes where mobile enforcement will be targeted
Signs must comply with those specified in the relevant Road Traffic Regulation (Northern Ireland) Order 1997. Further information on signing can be found in the Director Of Engineering Memorandum - 56/03, as listed in Appendix C.
Where, because of the local security situation, safety cameras are not conspicuous a record must be made of this. Further, each site should be reviewed on a six-monthly basis to ensure that conditions on conspicuity, visibility, marking and signing have not changed or do not require alteration or maintenance. It may be necessary to increase the number of site visits in conjunction with the time of year e.g. during spring and summer when foliage growth is prolific.
It can only be seen as an easy option and confirms our view that the PSNI would rather take the easy option rather than protect the vulnerable terrified in the own homes.
We need the PSNI to do more Kojak and less Kodak!
The perception rightly or wrongly (I think rightly) is that the PSNI are more interested in a Tax Revenue gathering exercise than being visibly and actively reducing the killer speeding motorists on the road.
I would like to refer you to the Chief Police Officers Approved Codes of Practice and the PSNI’s safety cameras scheme handbook.
I would like to know if the Chief Constable or the Head of the Traffic Branch could inform the Northern Ireland motorist if their officers conform to the Chief Police Officers Approved Codes of Practice and the PSNI’s safety cameras scheme handbook for conducting speed traps.
In addition, what measures are taken by the PSNI to ensure the Chief Police Officers Approved Codes of Practice and the PSNI’s safety cameras scheme handbook are followed!
So how about this as a novel idea, government and police of the people for the people by the people! There again too much to ask for I know.
Killer roads: Government campaign highlights hidden dangers of speeding on rural roads You are three times more likely to be killed on a rural road than an urban one while in a car warns a Government educational campaign launched today. The Department for Transport's THINK! Rural Speed Campaign, warning drivers not to go faster than the conditions allow, can be heard on radio stations around the country this month. Rural areas can tempt motorists into driving too fast for the conditions they are facing. Long straights and demanding bends, as well as less traffic and fewer pedestrians can make drivers believe it is 'safe' to go faster than they normally would. But the stark reality is actually the opposite - the risk of fatally injuring yourself or your passengers increases three-fold on a rural road. This is backed by the evidence that there is often only one car involved in rural accidents, making it likely that drivers have been tempted to push themselves or their car beyond their limits. Road Safety Minister Jim Fitzpatrick said: "Driving on rural roads can be deceiving. It is important that motorists drive with as much care on a rural road as they would in a more built-up area. The 'national' 60mph speed limit is a maximum, not an expectation, and drivers must match their speed to the road characteristics and weather conditions they are experiencing as well as factoring in unpredictable hazards - like sharp bends, limited visibility or even animals - which can require a quick reaction." Figures for 2006 show that nationally 325 car users were killed on rural roads when speeding or driving too fast for the conditions. All too often it is the Fire and Rescue Services who have to attend these incidents and deal with the consequences of speed related rural accidents. The campaign also has the backing of Fire and Rescue Services. Claire Tovey, head of prevention at Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service said: "As with fires, we would always rather help to prevent road traffic incidents than attend the aftermath. All too often we have to try and free people from horrific wreckages. Myself and colleagues at the community safety teams work closely with road safety experts to try and educate drivers that rural roads have to be driven at a speed appropriate to the road characteristics and weather conditions." ---- There's still a bit of "speeding" spin but the message seems to be much more sensible than what we've heard in the past...
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the PSNI’s clear up rate for domestic burglaries
Is a pathetic 10%
I feel that the PSNI are a totally inept police service if it can be described as a service.
I would also like to ask why in this era of peace and a new police beginning, PSNI officers can drive around without seatbelts, drive around with driver or passenger doors ajar, park illegally, visit vehicle insurance companies to arrange their personal insurance, hide behind walls and street furniture, or hide in gardens or just into an area that has a reduced speed to conduct speed traps.
Why does it takes two officers to visit chip shops, sandwich bars, coffee shops and other types of take-a-way establishments when all we hear is that the PSNI are busy and need to prioritize their response to emergency calls?
Call for them to attend an incident and it takes hours if not days. I suppose it depends on the queue in the take-a-way as to the PSNI response?
Why when we have crimes taking place under the PSNI’s noses, crimes like drug dealing, burglary, car crime, crime against property, general anti social behavior, fighting on the streets, drinking in the streets, and the most insidious crime of violence against the elderly, resulting in the elderly being beaten in their homes or murdered protecting their property, this inevitability results in the elderly feel like prisoners in their own homes. Why do we have PSNI officers at midnight on a Friday, operating a speed trap on the Lisburn Road Belfast. It seems the PSNI are putting the gathering of a Tax before protecting the elderly the public, property and before proper road safety! Have these officers nothing better to do.
We all know of the need for speeders to be fined however, how relevant is it to catch a driver doing 4 or 5 miles over the speed limit at midnight on an all most deserted road, is there not a better time and place for this activity. It comes as no surprise that we see the PSNI conducting a speed trap at this time of the night. It can only be seen as an easy option and confirms our view that the PSNI would rather take the easy option rather than protect the vulnerable and terrified in the own homes.
Can I draw this comparison; we have areas of Belfast and Northern Ireland that are well known race tracks for the car thieves and we can all see the tyre marks on the road to prove it and we have well known roads that are race tracts. Yet we find the PSNI on one of Belfast’s most popular thoroughfares conducting a covert speed trap.
This speed trap would not help reduce the speed of the passing traffic. The speed trap was conducted covertly therefore this exposes the PSNI’s propaganda on reducing speeding as a lie. It seems the PSNI are more interested in a Tax Revenue gathering exercise than being actively visible and reducing speeding motorists.
This particular speed trap on the Lisburn Road was conducted by two officers sitting in their marked patrol car facing city bound out side a well known restaurant that sells finger lick-n-chicken. The officer in the driver’s seat was holding the speed camera out the window of the patrol car at traffic travelling city bound. So he was trying to take the speed of vehicles travelling toward him form behind. How can this officer gain prior opinion that a vehicle is exceeding the speed limit and get a proper fix on the vehicle with the camera to obtain a correct speed reading.
I quote form the Chief Police Officers Approved Codes of Practice for hand held speed cameras “Hand-held radar guns should only be operated by an officer on foot“.
I would like to refer you to the Chief Police Officers Approved Codes of Practice
http://www.acpo.police.uk/asp/policies/Data/RPET%20Manual%20version%202-3.pdf
The PSNI should be catching speeding motorists however conducting speed traps at this time in this manor and at this time only leads to the perception that the PSNI are only interested on the easy option and that they are Tax Revenue collectors for the government and making irrelevant quotas.
It seems the correct interpretation of how the PSNI operate is crime is an inconvenience to the police officers duty however, motor crime a nice little earner.
The PSNI would be better concentrating on putting real criminals behind bars or setting up speed traps in country roads catching the speeders, rather racking up fines from drives doing 34 in a 30 zone at midnight!
Questions for the PSNI:
Who is on the Speed Camera Scheme-Partnership and when and where do they meet.
Was there any public consultation on the makeup or operation of this Scheme-partnership?
Can members of the public join this Scheme-partnership?
How much revenue do the speed cameras accumulate, and how much and were does the money go?
Does the money get reinvested in reengineering roads to make them safer?
Does the money get invested into programs for the young on educating them about the dangers of speeding?
Is the money divided between the members of the speed camera scheme-partnership and what are the amounts?
Does the money go directly too central government?
We have a police force that seem to have only one function, that of covertly catching speeding motorists doing a few miles over the speed limit.
Not only that, the PSNI and the Courts bring the whole weight of the police and the judicial system to bear on the motorist for doing 35 in a 30 zone at midnight.
The perception people have of the PSNI is that they don’t want to catch the scum that murder, rape, shoot, stab, rob, steal and destroy the lives of ordinary decent folk.
The PSNI’s double standards, selective sight and inaction is infecting all aspects of PSNI life!
The Crime Statistics in the Chief Constables report is a litany of failure.
The general view is that the PSNI are so badly managed and the morale of the officer on the beat is so poor it seems at times as if the PSNI are making it up as they drive along. The PSNI are at best amateur or at worst totally inept.
Why does it take two officers to visit chip shops, sandwich bars, coffee shops and other types of take-a-way establishments when all we hear is that the PSNI are busy. However make a call for them to attend an incident and it takes hours if not days. I suppose it depends on the queue in the take-a-way as to the PSNI response?
The PSNI need to get out of the Chippies and catch criminals rather than catching Battered Cods!
If they were serious about vehicle crime why don’t the have a purge against people who put everyone at danger in untaxed and uninsured cars and the locally named run-arounds.
However this type of operation would require effort and thought, both of which seem to be lacking in the PSNI.
The PSNI’s clear up rate for crime is akin to that of a third world country. This is not what we expect from an allegedly highly trained highly skilled police force. Its time the PSNI had a good hard look at themselves from the highest ranking officer to the officer on the beat and assess were the priorities are and why the public has no confidence on the PSNI.
At this point I would like to refer you to the PSNI’s Chief Constables Annual Report. It makes some shocking reading!
http://www.psni.police.uk/psni_cc_report_06-07.pdf
PSNI have significantly changed the way they detect speeding motorists. The PSNI have gone from Overt speed traps to Covert speed traps so the motorist can only draw the conclusion that the PSNI are acting as Tax Collectors and are acting in contravention of their own handbook?
The covert speed trap is in contravention of Health and Safety Guidelines and the PSNI’s own Safety Camera Scheme Handbook and the ACPO Code of practice for the operational Use of Road Policing Enforcement Technology.
http://www.acpo.police.uk/asp/policies/Data/RPET%20Manual%20version%202-3.pdf
http://www.psni.police.uk/index/safetycameras/pg_scheme_handbook.htm
Here are several quotes from the handbook the first is from the forward, the second is from section 4 and section 4rule 2 of the PSNI’s Safety Camera Scheme:
Northern Ireland Safety Camera Scheme.3/10/07
#As part of a programme to deliver The Northern Ireland Road Safety Strategy 2002 – 2012, a Safety Camera Scheme is being operated in Northern Ireland. Its underlying principles are that:
Safety cameras (which include speed and red light cameras) are used only on those roads where there is a history of road traffic collisions that result in death or serious injury. This means that safety camera resources are targeted where they are most likely to have an impact.
The cameras, both fixed and mobile, are clearly visible, and their locations are signed and put on the Police Service of Northern Ireland web site. The intention of the Scheme is to change driver behaviour at camera locations by reducing speed and thereby reducing the number and severity of collisions.
In order to finance the Scheme, monies collected by way of Conditional Offer Fixed Penalty Notice fines are credited back into the Scheme by Government funding. This provides coverage of running costs, thus making the Scheme self-funding.
Section 4:
Scheme Rules
In the 1998 Public Expenditure Survey, HM Treasury identified certain conditions that would allow fines and penalties to be ‘netted off’ Departmental Expenditure Limits, namely where:
Performance against policy objectives is likely to be improved
Arrangements are in place to ensure that the activity will not lead to the abuse of fines and penalty collection as a method of revenue raising, and that operational priorities remain undistorted
Revenues will always be sufficient to meet future costs, with any excess revenues over costs being surrendered
Costs of enforcement will be readily identified and apportioned without undue bureaucracy, and with interdepartmental and inter-agency agreement, where necessary
Savings can be achieved through change and there are adequate efficiency regimes in place to control costs, including regular efficiency reviews.
This chapter sets out seven rules that govern the operation of the Northern Ireland Safety Camera Scheme to ensure that the above HMT criteria are met (and thus to allow cost recovery). These rules and guidelines do not constitute a legal requirement. Therefore compliance with these rules and guidelines bears no significance on the detection and enforcement of offences so detected by safety camera operations. To this end, non-compliance does not provide for any mitigation in defence for an offence committed by a driver in breach of current legislation.
4.2 Rule 2: Visibility and conspicuity
The aim of the scheme is to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on the roads through:
Targeting speed enforcement at those locations where there is a proven injury collision history and evidence of speeding
Telling drivers where speed enforcement will take place, for example through the media, road signs and painting fixed cameras bright yellow.
This will give motorists the opportunity to slow down and observe the speed limits at these locations. If they do not, then they could be caught speeding and prosecuted. Thus the message to motorists is “we don’t want to catch you speeding, we want to stop you speeding”. Specific requirements on visibility of camera sites and camera conspicuity are as follows:
All fixed site camera housings must be backed by high visibility yellow paint or self-adhesive retro-reflective material
All fixed site camera housings should be visible to road users and not hidden behind bridges, signs, trees, bushes or any other type of obstacle that would reduce the site’s visibility. The minimum visibility distance should be 60 metres where the speed limit is 40 mph or less and 100 metres for all other limits
For mobile enforcement, camera operatives must abide by all Health and Safety requirements and wear fluorescent clothing except where the local security situation makes this inappropriate
For mobile enforcement, safety camera vehicles should be clearly marked, identifying them as safety camera enforcement vehicles, except where the local security situation makes this inappropriate. Vehicles should not be hidden behind obstructions. The minimum visibility distance should be 60 metres where the speed limit is 40 mph or less and 100 metres for all other limits
Camera warning signs must be placed in advance of fixed, mobile or digital speed enforcement taking place
For fixed sites, signs must be placed between 500m and 1km in advance of camera housings. Signs cannot be placed over 1km away from a fixed site camera
For mobile and digital enforcement sites, fixed signs must be placed at the beginning of a targeted route. As guidance, repeater signs are also encouraged along these routes, particularly close to stated enforcement sites
For red-light camera sites, signs should be placed between 500m and 1km away from the camera
Signs must only be placed in areas where camera housings are present or along routes where mobile enforcement will be targeted
Signs must comply with those specified in the relevant Road Traffic Regulation (Northern Ireland) Order 1997. Further information on signing can be found in the Director Of Engineering Memorandum - 56/03, as listed in Appendix C.
Where, because of the local security situation, safety cameras are not conspicuous a record must be made of this. Further, each site should be reviewed on a six-monthly basis to ensure that conditions on conspicuity, visibility, marking and signing have not changed or do not require alteration or maintenance. It may be necessary to increase the number of site visits in conjunction with the time of year e.g. during spring and summer when foliage growth is prolific.
It can only be seen as an easy option and confirms our view that the PSNI would rather take the easy option rather than protect the vulnerable terrified in the own homes.
We need the PSNI to do more Kojak and less Kodak!
The perception rightly or wrongly (I think rightly) is that the PSNI are more interested in a Tax Revenue gathering exercise than being visibly and actively reducing the killer speeding motorists on the road.
I would like to refer you to the Chief Police Officers Approved Codes of Practice and the PSNI’s safety cameras scheme handbook.
I would like to know if the Chief Constable or the Head of the Traffic Branch could inform the Northern Ireland motorist if their officers conform to the Chief Police Officers Approved Codes of Practice and the PSNI’s safety cameras scheme handbook for conducting speed traps.
In addition, what measures are taken by the PSNI to ensure the Chief Police Officers Approved Codes of Practice and the PSNI’s safety cameras scheme handbook are followed!
So how about this as a novel idea, government and police of the people for the people by the people! There again too much to ask for I know.
Killer roads: Government campaign highlights hidden dangers of speeding on rural roads You are three times more likely to be killed on a rural road than an urban one while in a car warns a Government educational campaign launched today. The Department for Transport's THINK! Rural Speed Campaign, warning drivers not to go faster than the conditions allow, can be heard on radio stations around the country this month. Rural areas can tempt motorists into driving too fast for the conditions they are facing. Long straights and demanding bends, as well as less traffic and fewer pedestrians can make drivers believe it is 'safe' to go faster than they normally would. But the stark reality is actually the opposite - the risk of fatally injuring yourself or your passengers increases three-fold on a rural road. This is backed by the evidence that there is often only one car involved in rural accidents, making it likely that drivers have been tempted to push themselves or their car beyond their limits. Road Safety Minister Jim Fitzpatrick said: "Driving on rural roads can be deceiving. It is important that motorists drive with as much care on a rural road as they would in a more built-up area. The 'national' 60mph speed limit is a maximum, not an expectation, and drivers must match their speed to the road characteristics and weather conditions they are experiencing as well as factoring in unpredictable hazards - like sharp bends, limited visibility or even animals - which can require a quick reaction." Figures for 2006 show that nationally 325 car users were killed on rural roads when speeding or driving too fast for the conditions. All too often it is the Fire and Rescue Services who have to attend these incidents and deal with the consequences of speed related rural accidents. The campaign also has the backing of Fire and Rescue Services. Claire Tovey, head of prevention at Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service said: "As with fires, we would always rather help to prevent road traffic incidents than attend the aftermath. All too often we have to try and free people from horrific wreckages. Myself and colleagues at the community safety teams work closely with road safety experts to try and educate drivers that rural roads have to be driven at a speed appropriate to the road characteristics and weather conditions." ---- There's still a bit of "speeding" spin but the message seems to be much more sensible than what we've heard in the past...
Dear Shankill Voter
Dear Shankill People,
If like me you have been reading or listening to local media, you will have not been surprised to read or hear that the current defenders of the Union and the Unionist working class are doing what the old Unionist politicos used to do best?
That is to line their own pockets at the expense of the Unionist working class and the less fortunate Unionist electorate.
Now let’s be clear here, strictly speaking they have done nothing illegal or wrong! However, it is a bit on the questionable side and a tad immoral, and lets not forget most of these Unionist politicos are alleged God fearing men and women?
The bad smell of nepotism and avarice is rife at Stormont and the Commons.
Let me set out again what our Unionist colleagues have been up to.
1. Employ your wife, son, daughter or in-law.
2. Rent an office from your wife or in-law.
3. Get two full time jobs and if you’re lucky you could also pick up a third, a ministerial or junior ministerial job too.
4. If you have a second house in London you can claim tens of thousands of pounds in expenses.
Now let’s set out some of the sums we are talking about.
MP’s pay £60,000 plus
MLA’s pay £43,000 and if you’re a minister or junior minister add on up to another £30,000
MP’s office expenses no set sum however each MP can claim over £100,000 add to this travel and the generous rent expenses and you can claim another £50,000 or £60,000+.
MLA’s office expenses no set sum however each MLA can claim over £60,000 add to this travel and the generous rent expenses and you can claim another £50,000 or £60,000+.
Wages for wives, sons, daughters, girl friends or boy friends or in-laws up to £20,000+
And let’s not forget about that nice pension and special pension.
Then there is a resettlement grant on leaving office.
At this point if any of our elected Unionist politicians wish to dispute the sums mentioned above and they wish to do it in this forum. I’m sure we would all be grateful to be put straight on this matter!
However you look at these figures they are mouth watering sums, some of these amounts we can only dream about or get if the six numbers come up on a lottery ticket.
But these are the sums our elected representatives get and they make us feel grateful that they are representing us up there with the rest of the folks (berks) on the hill.
There is also the Members Dining Room where sumptuous three-course meals are available for under £20 per head to MLA’s. Again these are subsidized by the hard pressed Northern Ireland Tax payer to the tune of £850 per day or £211,241 form May to December 2007.
I hope they enjoy every mouthful of their subsidized smoked salmon and wheaten bread starters followed by a thick rump steak with potatoes and vegetables, followed by black forest gateau and tea or coffee.
I will remind them that while they tuck into their subsidized meals, some families and pensioners on the Shankill have little more than £20 a week to feed their families and themselves after they pay out everything that they owe from their pension, minimum wage pay packet or from their social security benefits.
By the way I work for the government and I don’t get a free or subsidized meal from the government. I have to pay for my own Christmas lunch the government don’t pay a single penny or provide a single mince pie to my Christmas meal or any meal for that matter, so why should I subsidise meals and drinks for people who earn more than I do!
These bottom feeders at Stormont and Parliament get more in expenses than I earn a year. Some claim £40,000 for a second home in a posh part of London.
In Northern Ireland some of these same bottom feeders claim for rent on a portacabin on their own land that allegedly belongs to their wife. Or pay rent for an office that their wife owns, as well as paying her a wage to work in the same office, another few nice little earners, nice if you can get it.
So in these days of equality I want the same perks that these berks on the hill get?
As every week goes by I am becoming more and more disillusioned by the perks, expenses and the goings on with the berks on the hill.
From the age of eighteen, when I was eligible to vote, I have voted Unionist at every election. I seen it as my duty as a Unionist, and when the DUP have been on the ticket I have voted for them. However the day is fast approaching when I will be abstaining form voting. I am starting to get very disillusioned with the DUP and the UUP as are my family and friends.
To be a good Unionist one must look after and maintain the Union. However it does not permit the elected Unionist representatives to forgo the working class Unionists, and to line their own pockets at the Unionist Tax payer’s expense.
I am also increasingly despondent with the way the DUP and UUP are holding the hand of Sinn Fein/IRA, and their phoney war in Stormont and in the committee rooms.
I would like to question what these Unionist politicos know about what its like to be brought up in a poverty filled low education attaining housing estate. Were the people live from hand to mouth on a day to day basis? Were mental and physical sickness, despair and an early grave are your daily companions!
We see the money generated by double and triple hated MP's and MLA's as avarice at its most contemptible. The sums of money in salaries and expenses are 5 or 6 times my government wage. This is feeding my impression of, typical old Unionist party. The view is that the MP's and MLA's are not in it for the Unionist working class people or the Union but lining their own pockets.
If Northern Ireland were to succumb and be absorbed into a United Ireland, then all this money our Unionist politicos are generating will make a nice nest egg for them to set up home across in the Home Counties. I can just see them scrambling to the air and sea ports just as the balloon goes up leaving the working class Unionist, up the road without an 11/1.
The DUP’s Peter and Iris Robinson are a classic example with their 40k expenses for their London home, that’s more than I earn a year! They supposedly need this London home to stay in when they go to parliament. And when it comes to selling this house they can usurp the rules to avoid paying capital gains tax. This is another nice little earner. By not paying capital gains tax they are getting the tax payer to subsidize payments on this second house and as it increases in value, then when they come to sell this second house they pocket all the profit from the sale all at the tax payer’s expense!
An extremely nice way to do business?
Let’s not forget 9 of the current DUP team at Stormont are double hated earning huge sums of money and then there are the 19 DUP MLA’s employing 27 relatives and in-laws and the UUP have 11 relatives and in-laws employed by MLA’s.
I can only draw the impression of nepotism and avarice from our MP’s and MLA’s.
How can one person do two or three full time jobs and give of their best to the Unionist electorate?
What the Unionist politicos need to remember is that, we listen and read the news and log on to blogger sites on the Internet and listen and participate on local phone-in radio shows.
So here is the warning to our Unionist politicos, turning into the old Unionist party of the past will not be tolerated. Trying to hide from the Unionist electorate is not as easy as it used to be in the bad old days of the old Unionist party. Remember in the bad old days when the only time you seen a Unionist politician was when they were banging the big drum looking to get elected. Then after getting elected they did nothing for the poor and the working class Unionist population. Well those days are long gone and we are watching you and if you appear to be moving away from the working class Unionist population the same Unionist population who put the Unionist parties were they are today we will not vote for you.
What is being discussed is not voting at all at any elections. This is not based on a few conversations but everyone I have spoken too.
So again be warned if you the Unionist politicians are not seen as whiter than white and don’t get you’re act together and fight the good fight for the working class Unionist population you may find that the working class electorate will vote with their feet and stay at home (I know this was a mixed metaphor but it suits the state of the Unionist parties)!
Yours
Ranger
Disgruntled Unionist Voter Shankill Road
Belfast.
If like me you have been reading or listening to local media, you will have not been surprised to read or hear that the current defenders of the Union and the Unionist working class are doing what the old Unionist politicos used to do best?
That is to line their own pockets at the expense of the Unionist working class and the less fortunate Unionist electorate.
Now let’s be clear here, strictly speaking they have done nothing illegal or wrong! However, it is a bit on the questionable side and a tad immoral, and lets not forget most of these Unionist politicos are alleged God fearing men and women?
The bad smell of nepotism and avarice is rife at Stormont and the Commons.
Let me set out again what our Unionist colleagues have been up to.
1. Employ your wife, son, daughter or in-law.
2. Rent an office from your wife or in-law.
3. Get two full time jobs and if you’re lucky you could also pick up a third, a ministerial or junior ministerial job too.
4. If you have a second house in London you can claim tens of thousands of pounds in expenses.
Now let’s set out some of the sums we are talking about.
MP’s pay £60,000 plus
MLA’s pay £43,000 and if you’re a minister or junior minister add on up to another £30,000
MP’s office expenses no set sum however each MP can claim over £100,000 add to this travel and the generous rent expenses and you can claim another £50,000 or £60,000+.
MLA’s office expenses no set sum however each MLA can claim over £60,000 add to this travel and the generous rent expenses and you can claim another £50,000 or £60,000+.
Wages for wives, sons, daughters, girl friends or boy friends or in-laws up to £20,000+
And let’s not forget about that nice pension and special pension.
Then there is a resettlement grant on leaving office.
At this point if any of our elected Unionist politicians wish to dispute the sums mentioned above and they wish to do it in this forum. I’m sure we would all be grateful to be put straight on this matter!
However you look at these figures they are mouth watering sums, some of these amounts we can only dream about or get if the six numbers come up on a lottery ticket.
But these are the sums our elected representatives get and they make us feel grateful that they are representing us up there with the rest of the folks (berks) on the hill.
There is also the Members Dining Room where sumptuous three-course meals are available for under £20 per head to MLA’s. Again these are subsidized by the hard pressed Northern Ireland Tax payer to the tune of £850 per day or £211,241 form May to December 2007.
I hope they enjoy every mouthful of their subsidized smoked salmon and wheaten bread starters followed by a thick rump steak with potatoes and vegetables, followed by black forest gateau and tea or coffee.
I will remind them that while they tuck into their subsidized meals, some families and pensioners on the Shankill have little more than £20 a week to feed their families and themselves after they pay out everything that they owe from their pension, minimum wage pay packet or from their social security benefits.
By the way I work for the government and I don’t get a free or subsidized meal from the government. I have to pay for my own Christmas lunch the government don’t pay a single penny or provide a single mince pie to my Christmas meal or any meal for that matter, so why should I subsidise meals and drinks for people who earn more than I do!
These bottom feeders at Stormont and Parliament get more in expenses than I earn a year. Some claim £40,000 for a second home in a posh part of London.
In Northern Ireland some of these same bottom feeders claim for rent on a portacabin on their own land that allegedly belongs to their wife. Or pay rent for an office that their wife owns, as well as paying her a wage to work in the same office, another few nice little earners, nice if you can get it.
So in these days of equality I want the same perks that these berks on the hill get?
As every week goes by I am becoming more and more disillusioned by the perks, expenses and the goings on with the berks on the hill.
From the age of eighteen, when I was eligible to vote, I have voted Unionist at every election. I seen it as my duty as a Unionist, and when the DUP have been on the ticket I have voted for them. However the day is fast approaching when I will be abstaining form voting. I am starting to get very disillusioned with the DUP and the UUP as are my family and friends.
To be a good Unionist one must look after and maintain the Union. However it does not permit the elected Unionist representatives to forgo the working class Unionists, and to line their own pockets at the Unionist Tax payer’s expense.
I am also increasingly despondent with the way the DUP and UUP are holding the hand of Sinn Fein/IRA, and their phoney war in Stormont and in the committee rooms.
I would like to question what these Unionist politicos know about what its like to be brought up in a poverty filled low education attaining housing estate. Were the people live from hand to mouth on a day to day basis? Were mental and physical sickness, despair and an early grave are your daily companions!
We see the money generated by double and triple hated MP's and MLA's as avarice at its most contemptible. The sums of money in salaries and expenses are 5 or 6 times my government wage. This is feeding my impression of, typical old Unionist party. The view is that the MP's and MLA's are not in it for the Unionist working class people or the Union but lining their own pockets.
If Northern Ireland were to succumb and be absorbed into a United Ireland, then all this money our Unionist politicos are generating will make a nice nest egg for them to set up home across in the Home Counties. I can just see them scrambling to the air and sea ports just as the balloon goes up leaving the working class Unionist, up the road without an 11/1.
The DUP’s Peter and Iris Robinson are a classic example with their 40k expenses for their London home, that’s more than I earn a year! They supposedly need this London home to stay in when they go to parliament. And when it comes to selling this house they can usurp the rules to avoid paying capital gains tax. This is another nice little earner. By not paying capital gains tax they are getting the tax payer to subsidize payments on this second house and as it increases in value, then when they come to sell this second house they pocket all the profit from the sale all at the tax payer’s expense!
An extremely nice way to do business?
Let’s not forget 9 of the current DUP team at Stormont are double hated earning huge sums of money and then there are the 19 DUP MLA’s employing 27 relatives and in-laws and the UUP have 11 relatives and in-laws employed by MLA’s.
I can only draw the impression of nepotism and avarice from our MP’s and MLA’s.
How can one person do two or three full time jobs and give of their best to the Unionist electorate?
What the Unionist politicos need to remember is that, we listen and read the news and log on to blogger sites on the Internet and listen and participate on local phone-in radio shows.
So here is the warning to our Unionist politicos, turning into the old Unionist party of the past will not be tolerated. Trying to hide from the Unionist electorate is not as easy as it used to be in the bad old days of the old Unionist party. Remember in the bad old days when the only time you seen a Unionist politician was when they were banging the big drum looking to get elected. Then after getting elected they did nothing for the poor and the working class Unionist population. Well those days are long gone and we are watching you and if you appear to be moving away from the working class Unionist population the same Unionist population who put the Unionist parties were they are today we will not vote for you.
What is being discussed is not voting at all at any elections. This is not based on a few conversations but everyone I have spoken too.
So again be warned if you the Unionist politicians are not seen as whiter than white and don’t get you’re act together and fight the good fight for the working class Unionist population you may find that the working class electorate will vote with their feet and stay at home (I know this was a mixed metaphor but it suits the state of the Unionist parties)!
Yours
Ranger
Disgruntled Unionist Voter Shankill Road
Belfast.
More Action and Less Talk for The people of The Shankill
Now that we are going to have a new man at the helm of the good ship DUP, what will it take for the Unionist Politicians of the DUP and the UUP to rekindle support from the People of the Shankill Road?
What I think they need to focus on:
Jobs:
Not just any job! But well paying permanent jobs. Not short contract jobs in some other part of Belfast or Northern Ireland but well paying permanent jobs here in North and Unionist West Belfast so the people of the Shankill can easily make there way to work and not have to pay a fortune out in transport costs.
The Health Service:
The need for proper provision of health care and drugs treatment for everyone but greater emphases on the elderly health care at home and in hospital, also the issue of Hospital Cleaning and Infections (MRSA) Clostridium Difficile (C-Difficile) need to be addressed.
Education:
Funding of third level education for low income homes and the pay and conditions for education workers and there support staff.
On the question of the 11+, for me it’s surly not to get rid of the grammar schools, but to properly invest in and improve our secondary and primary schools.
We know that grammar schools have far better facilities than secondary schools.
We need to have this anomaly of lack of facilities in secondary schools address. What is needed is proper investment in secondary schools and primary schools and leave the grammar schools to get on with what they do best.
There also needs to be proper investment in vocational opportunities. Not all children want to go down the academic route, however McGuinness and Ruane have gone down the road of one size education fits all. We know that is not the best case for the children, all we need to do is look across the water to England and look at the comprehensive education system in melt down they have there.
Why not get children to continue with the 11+ and at the age of 14 any who are achieving at school and in an academic atmosphere let them continue to grow and flourish. Those who show little academic flair can then go into a vocational school, where from the age of 14 they can learn to become hairdressers, plumbers, beauticians, electricians, IT engineers, mechanical engineers and builders etc.
To get entry into these schools they must spend a minimum of 3 hours a day on the core subjects of English and math’s. The rest of the day can be spent learning their vocational skills. They don’t need to get involved with other subjects just the core of English and math’s and gain a recognized qualification in their vocation and in the 2 core subjects.My understanding is that this model of education has been used in Germany since WWII and their economy and society seems to be in a better state than ours.
We also need to break the cycle of no or little interest in their children’s education from poor income families. This change in attitude to education from low income homes; would go a long way to improve the education outlook of their children. This change should include an improvement in helping the parents of poor income homes to go back to education to improve their life chances and helping their children’s, and a destigmatization of the low education attainment of low income homes.
This improvement in children’s and their parent’s education could be incentivized through the tax credits and benefits system.
At the moment you get your tax credits and benefits as a matter of course. However, why not give more to those who improve their education and their children’s education?
This would have a secondary benefit as it would filter down into the hole of society by making the country better educated and therefore more likely to be wealthier, reduce benefit claimants, reduce crime and reduce the pressure on the Health system?
I know this sounds and smacks of that dreaded social engineering. However, if we do nothing we could be condemning millions of children form poorer families to a poorer adulthood with the likely outcome of going back to the bad old days of larger and larger families relying on the benefits system.
Planning, Social Housing, Water Charging and Rates:
We want suitable affordable housing in well planed out streets and proper housing infrastructure, we require a guarantee that low income homes do not subsidise the well off in Water Charging and Rates.
The Rape of the Shankill has been by and largely halted however, a new breed of leeches has descended on the Shankill and again the planers and developers are playing with peoples lives on the Shankill. And again the planers, developers and the politicos have not taken into account of the needs of the Shankill people? The healing will be slow from the wounds inflected by bulldozers, planers, (there is a contradiction in terms) politicos who fained interest and form government departments who treat the Shankill as some type of irrelevant back water.
The question again has to be asked why did the planers and the council permit the developers to build a block of flats (I refuse to call them the non entity of apartments) with shops. We need more flats like the MLS’s need more expenses.
We need proper 2, 3 and 4 bedroom well laid out social housing with properly planed and laid out streets.
Crime:
We want the causes of crime to be addressed (No Jobs and education under achievement) and the sentencing of the convicted to reflect the crime. An immediate end to 50% remission, and drug dealers need to be removed from circulation for a very long time.
The National Stadium debate! Tourism, Transport and Investment.
We have two events in 2012 that if the political will was there could give us a great National Stadium along side two excellent tourist attractions in museums to both the Titanic and Shipbuilding and our Great Sporting Personalities.
All this on the shores of Belfast Lough and located in North Belfast at the old Belfast land fill site at Dargan Road, the now named Giant’s Park Belfast. One complex along with Lough side bars and restaurants and a landscaped Eco park, incorporating old Shipyard Cobbled Roads with Tramlines, Gas Lighting (taken from the land fill site) and wind turbines, with the added advantage of Belfast city centre restaurants, bars and shops all within walking distance.
I would like you to imagine visitors to our city sailing up Belfast Lough or flying into George Best Belfast City Airport. One of the visitor’s first views of Belfast would be our new innovative and impressive sports stadium and landscaped Titanic and shipyard themed Eco Park with museums.The events we need to be setting our sites on are the centenary of the sinking of the Belfast made RMS Titanic, and the UK/London Olympics.
The Government has stated that all the regions of the UK will not miss out on the befits of the Olympic experience, and only Belfast can claim to be the birth place and original home for the largest man made moving object in the world at the time, RMS Titanic. Here is my out of the box thinking that may not be obvious to the politicians of this land.
With the suggestion of central Government money being made available for new regional Olympic venues, add to this Belfast City Councils money for a rival National Stadium, and the redevelopment of Giant’s Park by Belfast City Council and any national lottery money being made available for the Titanic commemorations put all this money together and make a facility that we all can be proud of and what will be a national and international tourist attraction.
A National Stadium with museums to the Titanic and shipbuilding and our Great Sports Personalities, all at the one location in an Eco Giant’s Park on the shores of Belfast Lough.
The advantages are a National Stadium and Museums near to Belfast City centre. With improved bus links and a possible new rail stop at Fort William, the tourist’s form the increasing number of cruse ships can easily see our new Stadium, as they sail up Belfast Lough and the visitor flying into George Best Airport can view the Stadium as they fly into Belfast, and all the visitors to our country can easily make their way to the Stadium and Museums, as there is a good road infrastructure already in place. We could incorporate the use of the last remaining link to the Titanic, the Nomadic as a visitor attraction. Samson and Goliath the two existing landmark cranes of the Shipyard can be used as a backdrop to the Stadium and Museums.
The Museum to the Titanic and Shipbuilding could feature all the great things from the shipyard that were involved in the building of the Titanic. We could inform the visitor that the Titanic was built in the largest shipyard in the world at that time. Belfast had the world’s largest rope works to service the world’s largest ships. We can incorporate the last of the steam derricks that helped build the Titanic and many of the other great ships from the yard, the dry-docks the tramlines the cobbled roads the gaslights and most importantly of all the thousands of statistics on the building of the Titanic and the stories and yarns form the men and women who help to build the Titanic and the other great ships. Everything Belfast needs to a museum of shipbuilding all in the right place.
We could also show the visitor the innovation of the people of Northern Ireland by using Wind Turbines and the Methane Gas from the landfill site to heat and light the Giant’s Park making it an Eco Friendly Facility.The museum to our Sporting greats could feature the late greats, of our one and only George Best, our Golf Open Champion Fred Daly, our Greatest Biker the one and only Joey Dunlop, our World Class Rally Driver Bertie Fisher, our Boxing greats and World Champions of Rinty Monaghan and Barry McGuigan, Rugby Heroes of Willy John McBride and Mike Gibson, Olympian Gold Medallist Mary Peters, and our golden booted footballer Northern Ireland’s David Healy and all the other sporting greats that we have past and present, too many to mention. The proposal I have made would mean that when the stadium was not in use by any of the sporting codes, the museums could pull in the revenue from home grown and foreign tourists to the museums.
In my view the issue of building a stadium at the Maze located 4 miles from the nearest city, Lisburn and 22 miles from Belfast. The transport and roads infrastructure costs associated with that stadium it would be better invested in a package that would be more sustainable over a longer period, and the facility would be more efficiently used as a combined Stadium and Museum than just a sport Stadium and with Belfast’s shop’s bars and restraints with in walking distance.
To me it makes the business case for the stadium in Belfast and not the Maze?
The Giant’s park site is owned by Belfast City Council so costs for the land are nil. We therefore need to only find the building costs, add to this the Eco aspect in an industrial area within walking distance of Belfast City Centre and you seem to cover all the bases? A Sports Stadium, Museum’s, Re-use of a Landfill Site with Eco potential and a national and International Tourist attraction promoting Northern Ireland and Northern Irelands sporting personalities and historic landmarks?
The Mundane:
Stop Quangos, and Non Elected and Non Accountable Boards.
There is a dragging off collective political feet, with review after review on the major issues and the mundane issues. Delays in implementing important day to day decisions on issues here in Northern Ireland that are stifling our economy and the growth of our children,
year’s of indecision must stop and a collective political finger must be pulled out. The politicos in the big house make positive decisions to move Northern Ireland into the 21st Century!
We need more involvement of the Shankill people and more action and less talk.
What I think they need to focus on:
Jobs:
Not just any job! But well paying permanent jobs. Not short contract jobs in some other part of Belfast or Northern Ireland but well paying permanent jobs here in North and Unionist West Belfast so the people of the Shankill can easily make there way to work and not have to pay a fortune out in transport costs.
The Health Service:
The need for proper provision of health care and drugs treatment for everyone but greater emphases on the elderly health care at home and in hospital, also the issue of Hospital Cleaning and Infections (MRSA) Clostridium Difficile (C-Difficile) need to be addressed.
Education:
Funding of third level education for low income homes and the pay and conditions for education workers and there support staff.
On the question of the 11+, for me it’s surly not to get rid of the grammar schools, but to properly invest in and improve our secondary and primary schools.
We know that grammar schools have far better facilities than secondary schools.
We need to have this anomaly of lack of facilities in secondary schools address. What is needed is proper investment in secondary schools and primary schools and leave the grammar schools to get on with what they do best.
There also needs to be proper investment in vocational opportunities. Not all children want to go down the academic route, however McGuinness and Ruane have gone down the road of one size education fits all. We know that is not the best case for the children, all we need to do is look across the water to England and look at the comprehensive education system in melt down they have there.
Why not get children to continue with the 11+ and at the age of 14 any who are achieving at school and in an academic atmosphere let them continue to grow and flourish. Those who show little academic flair can then go into a vocational school, where from the age of 14 they can learn to become hairdressers, plumbers, beauticians, electricians, IT engineers, mechanical engineers and builders etc.
To get entry into these schools they must spend a minimum of 3 hours a day on the core subjects of English and math’s. The rest of the day can be spent learning their vocational skills. They don’t need to get involved with other subjects just the core of English and math’s and gain a recognized qualification in their vocation and in the 2 core subjects.My understanding is that this model of education has been used in Germany since WWII and their economy and society seems to be in a better state than ours.
We also need to break the cycle of no or little interest in their children’s education from poor income families. This change in attitude to education from low income homes; would go a long way to improve the education outlook of their children. This change should include an improvement in helping the parents of poor income homes to go back to education to improve their life chances and helping their children’s, and a destigmatization of the low education attainment of low income homes.
This improvement in children’s and their parent’s education could be incentivized through the tax credits and benefits system.
At the moment you get your tax credits and benefits as a matter of course. However, why not give more to those who improve their education and their children’s education?
This would have a secondary benefit as it would filter down into the hole of society by making the country better educated and therefore more likely to be wealthier, reduce benefit claimants, reduce crime and reduce the pressure on the Health system?
I know this sounds and smacks of that dreaded social engineering. However, if we do nothing we could be condemning millions of children form poorer families to a poorer adulthood with the likely outcome of going back to the bad old days of larger and larger families relying on the benefits system.
Planning, Social Housing, Water Charging and Rates:
We want suitable affordable housing in well planed out streets and proper housing infrastructure, we require a guarantee that low income homes do not subsidise the well off in Water Charging and Rates.
The Rape of the Shankill has been by and largely halted however, a new breed of leeches has descended on the Shankill and again the planers and developers are playing with peoples lives on the Shankill. And again the planers, developers and the politicos have not taken into account of the needs of the Shankill people? The healing will be slow from the wounds inflected by bulldozers, planers, (there is a contradiction in terms) politicos who fained interest and form government departments who treat the Shankill as some type of irrelevant back water.
The question again has to be asked why did the planers and the council permit the developers to build a block of flats (I refuse to call them the non entity of apartments) with shops. We need more flats like the MLS’s need more expenses.
We need proper 2, 3 and 4 bedroom well laid out social housing with properly planed and laid out streets.
Crime:
We want the causes of crime to be addressed (No Jobs and education under achievement) and the sentencing of the convicted to reflect the crime. An immediate end to 50% remission, and drug dealers need to be removed from circulation for a very long time.
The National Stadium debate! Tourism, Transport and Investment.
We have two events in 2012 that if the political will was there could give us a great National Stadium along side two excellent tourist attractions in museums to both the Titanic and Shipbuilding and our Great Sporting Personalities.
All this on the shores of Belfast Lough and located in North Belfast at the old Belfast land fill site at Dargan Road, the now named Giant’s Park Belfast. One complex along with Lough side bars and restaurants and a landscaped Eco park, incorporating old Shipyard Cobbled Roads with Tramlines, Gas Lighting (taken from the land fill site) and wind turbines, with the added advantage of Belfast city centre restaurants, bars and shops all within walking distance.
I would like you to imagine visitors to our city sailing up Belfast Lough or flying into George Best Belfast City Airport. One of the visitor’s first views of Belfast would be our new innovative and impressive sports stadium and landscaped Titanic and shipyard themed Eco Park with museums.The events we need to be setting our sites on are the centenary of the sinking of the Belfast made RMS Titanic, and the UK/London Olympics.
The Government has stated that all the regions of the UK will not miss out on the befits of the Olympic experience, and only Belfast can claim to be the birth place and original home for the largest man made moving object in the world at the time, RMS Titanic. Here is my out of the box thinking that may not be obvious to the politicians of this land.
With the suggestion of central Government money being made available for new regional Olympic venues, add to this Belfast City Councils money for a rival National Stadium, and the redevelopment of Giant’s Park by Belfast City Council and any national lottery money being made available for the Titanic commemorations put all this money together and make a facility that we all can be proud of and what will be a national and international tourist attraction.
A National Stadium with museums to the Titanic and shipbuilding and our Great Sports Personalities, all at the one location in an Eco Giant’s Park on the shores of Belfast Lough.
The advantages are a National Stadium and Museums near to Belfast City centre. With improved bus links and a possible new rail stop at Fort William, the tourist’s form the increasing number of cruse ships can easily see our new Stadium, as they sail up Belfast Lough and the visitor flying into George Best Airport can view the Stadium as they fly into Belfast, and all the visitors to our country can easily make their way to the Stadium and Museums, as there is a good road infrastructure already in place. We could incorporate the use of the last remaining link to the Titanic, the Nomadic as a visitor attraction. Samson and Goliath the two existing landmark cranes of the Shipyard can be used as a backdrop to the Stadium and Museums.
The Museum to the Titanic and Shipbuilding could feature all the great things from the shipyard that were involved in the building of the Titanic. We could inform the visitor that the Titanic was built in the largest shipyard in the world at that time. Belfast had the world’s largest rope works to service the world’s largest ships. We can incorporate the last of the steam derricks that helped build the Titanic and many of the other great ships from the yard, the dry-docks the tramlines the cobbled roads the gaslights and most importantly of all the thousands of statistics on the building of the Titanic and the stories and yarns form the men and women who help to build the Titanic and the other great ships. Everything Belfast needs to a museum of shipbuilding all in the right place.
We could also show the visitor the innovation of the people of Northern Ireland by using Wind Turbines and the Methane Gas from the landfill site to heat and light the Giant’s Park making it an Eco Friendly Facility.The museum to our Sporting greats could feature the late greats, of our one and only George Best, our Golf Open Champion Fred Daly, our Greatest Biker the one and only Joey Dunlop, our World Class Rally Driver Bertie Fisher, our Boxing greats and World Champions of Rinty Monaghan and Barry McGuigan, Rugby Heroes of Willy John McBride and Mike Gibson, Olympian Gold Medallist Mary Peters, and our golden booted footballer Northern Ireland’s David Healy and all the other sporting greats that we have past and present, too many to mention. The proposal I have made would mean that when the stadium was not in use by any of the sporting codes, the museums could pull in the revenue from home grown and foreign tourists to the museums.
In my view the issue of building a stadium at the Maze located 4 miles from the nearest city, Lisburn and 22 miles from Belfast. The transport and roads infrastructure costs associated with that stadium it would be better invested in a package that would be more sustainable over a longer period, and the facility would be more efficiently used as a combined Stadium and Museum than just a sport Stadium and with Belfast’s shop’s bars and restraints with in walking distance.
To me it makes the business case for the stadium in Belfast and not the Maze?
The Giant’s park site is owned by Belfast City Council so costs for the land are nil. We therefore need to only find the building costs, add to this the Eco aspect in an industrial area within walking distance of Belfast City Centre and you seem to cover all the bases? A Sports Stadium, Museum’s, Re-use of a Landfill Site with Eco potential and a national and International Tourist attraction promoting Northern Ireland and Northern Irelands sporting personalities and historic landmarks?
The Mundane:
Stop Quangos, and Non Elected and Non Accountable Boards.
There is a dragging off collective political feet, with review after review on the major issues and the mundane issues. Delays in implementing important day to day decisions on issues here in Northern Ireland that are stifling our economy and the growth of our children,
year’s of indecision must stop and a collective political finger must be pulled out. The politicos in the big house make positive decisions to move Northern Ireland into the 21st Century!
We need more involvement of the Shankill people and more action and less talk.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Sinn Fein/IRA Voter Beware
Paul Quinn lourd and
Beaten to death by an IRA gang
with iron bars.
Robert Mccartney
Beaten and Murdered by an IRA gang
inside and outside a Belfast Bar.
After the beating the IRA gang took him
outside and disembowelled Robert McCartney
I wonder how all this will play out in the Irish republic.
Sinn Fein went into reverse after the parties dear leader Adams was found to have little or no grasp of even basic economics when it came to debates in the run up to the general election in the Irish republic. He refused to take questions on the IRA £25 Million withdrawal form the Northern Bank. I feel sorry for the good people of the republic, but our good fortune is their misfortune. I'm sure they are like the Protestant Unionist Loyalist population of Northern Ireland we don’t want these murdering Fascists of Paul Quinn and Robert McCartney any where near power not here and not in the Irish republic.
If Sinn Fein gain now when in the republic then when they move out of recession as they surely will the shinners will be abandoned like a pair of smelly socks.
I don't think the Irish republics electorate are going to troop to the ballot box with the tune of “the bohys behind the wire” ringing in their ears, for the shinners for other than a protest vote.
If the Irish electorate what to know the caliber of the shinners all they have to do is see how they have treated the McCartney sisters and the Quinn family, the families of the disappeared and to the rest of their community. They are fascists.
I don't think the Irish republics electorate are going to troop to the ballot box with the tune of “the bohys behind the wire” ringing in their ears, for the shinners for other than a protest vote.
If the Irish electorate what to know the caliber of the shinners all they have to do is see how they have treated the McCartney sisters and the Quinn family, the families of the disappeared and to the rest of their community. They are fascists.
They exult the lives of dead bombers and assassins and have given well paid community jobs to the bohys who have information that could help in the Robert McCartney murder. And insist in calling Paul Quinn a criminal in an attempt to blacken his name even when they know who the IRA personnel who murdered him and they still have not given up the locations of all the disappeared!
On International Woman’s Day why did Sinn Fein not give praise to the McCartney sisters, the mother of Paul Quinn and the mothers, daughters and sisters of the disappeared for their continuing brave fight in trying to expose a bunch of murdering terrorist Fascists, in their fight for justice? I’m surprise Sinn Fein have not jumped on this band wagon, after all the McCartney’s and the Quinn’s are fighting to get justice for their loved ones?
All Sinn Fein voters be under no illusion if it happened to the McCartney’s and the Quinn’s then it could happen to a family member close to you! I have mentioned on this forum before, the only people the Sinners are interested in are the Sinners and their mates who Gerry has stated “haven’t gone away ya know”!
All Sinn Fein voters be under no illusion if it happened to the McCartney’s and the Quinn’s then it could happen to a family member close to you! I have mentioned on this forum before, the only people the Sinners are interested in are the Sinners and their mates who Gerry has stated “haven’t gone away ya know”!
When are the Sinn Fein electorate going to see through these people for what they are? Sinn Fein are a collection of non entities, who if it was not for a terrorist campaign waged against all the people of Ireland, would not have well paid jobs messing with people’s lives.
It's disturbing to know the influence they have over our day to day lives.
The Sinners have swish holiday homes and foreign holidays when most of their electorate can’t afford to pay the next bill.
It's disturbing to know the influence they have over our day to day lives.
The Sinners have swish holiday homes and foreign holidays when most of their electorate can’t afford to pay the next bill.
Sinn Fein/IRA voters need to be aware, as you get what you vote for?
Here is an example from the Robert McCartney murder.
"Sinn Fein has been quietly reinstating figures who were in the bar that night and who it claimed to have expelled.
Several now hold well-paid 'community' jobs in organisations controlled by Sinn Fein in working-class Catholic areas of Belfast". The key suspect recently given a 'development' job in the community sector is barely literate and has no qualifications, despite the fact, Catherine said, that the job requires development analysis and report writing skills.
"Sinn Fein has been quietly reinstating figures who were in the bar that night and who it claimed to have expelled.
Several now hold well-paid 'community' jobs in organisations controlled by Sinn Fein in working-class Catholic areas of Belfast". The key suspect recently given a 'development' job in the community sector is barely literate and has no qualifications, despite the fact, Catherine said, that the job requires development analysis and report writing skills.
The appointment has also angered local people whose children have gone through university and are unable to get such jobs. Despite the fact that the IRA-man has no qualifications and left school early with limited reading and writing skills, he is now earning a higher public salary than a school teacher. The man, who served a prison sentence for IRA firearms offences, was "officer commanding" of the IRA in the Markets area where the McCartney's lived.
According to witnesses he had a dispute with Robert McCartney's friend Brendan Devine and as he walked away he signalled to other IRA-men in the bar that the two were to be taken out and stabbed".
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/international/europe/07ireland.html
The Murder of Robert McCartney.
In the Roman Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast, the Irish Republican Army has long served as judge, jury and, in some cases, executioner, meting out its own brand of vigilante justice. Catholics who defy the I.R.A.'s dictates end up with broken kneecaps. Those who betray the I.R.A. wind up dead.But now five sisters are turning that tradition upside down, spurred by the extraordinarily brutal killing on Jan. 30 2005 of their brother, Robert McCartney, and what is widely seen as a subsequent I.R.A. cover-up.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/international/europe/07ireland.html
The Murder of Robert McCartney.
In the Roman Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast, the Irish Republican Army has long served as judge, jury and, in some cases, executioner, meting out its own brand of vigilante justice. Catholics who defy the I.R.A.'s dictates end up with broken kneecaps. Those who betray the I.R.A. wind up dead.But now five sisters are turning that tradition upside down, spurred by the extraordinarily brutal killing on Jan. 30 2005 of their brother, Robert McCartney, and what is widely seen as a subsequent I.R.A. cover-up.
Mr. McCartney was attacked in a crowded Belfast bar, then taken outside and beaten with iron bars. His throat was slit and his torso was slashed open with a knife. The attackers left him to bleed while they went back to the bar, scrubbed it of evidence and warned customers that the fight had been an internal I.R.A. matter.So far, the witnesses have heeded the warning from the I.R.A. men, and none have come forward.The McCartney sisters, working on instinct and grief, are demanding that the I.R.A. stop protecting the attackers - as many as 15 men, whose identities are widely known - and allow witnesses to tell the police their stories so that justice can be done.
The sisters' boldness has galvanized the community. For perhaps the first time, the I.R.A. is facing broad and vocal dissent among its own supporters.The killing and the sisters' response are creating a crisis for Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political party, as well as for the I.R.A.'s rank and file and its leadership, coming as it does just weeks after the group was weakened by accusations that it was behind a Belfast bank robbery that netted $50 million.
The events have added to a disillusionment with the I.R.A. that has slowly built since the 1998 peace accords. Its members, once considered heroes in Catholic neighbourhoods for their role in the struggle against British rule, are increasingly seen as turning to Mafia-like crime and common thuggery and preying on the very community that formed the group's core of support.
The I.R.A., long nicknamed Ra, is now sometimes called the Rafia.
The firestorm over Mr. McCartney's killing has forced the I.R.A. and Sinn Fein into a corner, people in Belfast say. And pressure is building from long-time backers in Ireland and the United States. To some, the furore threatens to strip away the old veneer of "constructive ambiguity" that allowed the I.R.A and Sinn Fein to claim that their leaders had no true ties.
On Thursday, one day before the start of Sinn Fein's annual political conference, Gerry Adams, the party leader, announced that he had suspended seven party members over accusations that they were involved in the killing. A week earlier, the I.R.A. announced that it had expelled three men it believed were involved.Startlingly, Mr. Adams also said he had given the names of the seven men to a police ombudsman.
The I.R.A. and Sinn Fein had always refused relations with the police service, out of deep suspicion from the time of the Troubles, as the civil strife is known.And on Saturday, at a party conference in Dublin, Mr. Adams, appearing with the McCartney sisters, ratcheted up the pressure and urged the men to come forward. "Those responsible for the brutal killing of Robert McCartney should admit to what they did in a court of law," Mr. Adams said. "I am not letting this issue go until those who have sullied the name of the republican cause are made to account for their actions."The Irish government of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, which had strongly supported Mr. Adams through the peace effort, has now publicly challenged Mr. Adams to admit that he is a member of the I.R.A. leadership and has said that the top leadership of Sinn Fein must have known about the Belfast robbery and probably approved it.
Sinn Fein has also lost whatever good will it had mustered with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, a sponsor of the peace effort, as well as some of its backing from Irish in the United States. Mr. Adams has cancelled fund-raising efforts in the United States, and his deputy, Martin McGuinness, will not travel to the United States this month as expected.
For its part, the White House cancelled St. Patrick's Day invitations to the leaders of Northern Ireland's political parties to avoid the embarrassment of having Sinn Fein represented. Instead, the McCartney sisters are planning a trip to the United States for St. Patrick's Day, possibly to New York and Washington.
The sisters have bluntly pressed for justice. "All of Ireland knows who the men are," Catherine McCartney, 36, a teacher, said of the attackers in an interview last week inside her sister Paula's home in Belfast. "But people know what the I.R.A. are capable of.
They butchered a man and slit his throat. I would be afraid, too.""Republicanism is not what happened to Robert," she said. "They can't call themselves republican if they did that. Certainly not murdering innocent people."Many Catholics in the McCartney’s' neighbourhood, a battle-scarred area called the Short Strand, have responded with surprising solidarity.
On the day of the funeral for Mr. McCartney, a popular 33-year-old fork lift operator with two young sons, a thousand people turned up. Graffiti denouncing the I.R.A. popped up on walls, a first in a republican neighbourhood; the markings were quickly erased, but quickly reappeared.
Small photocopied posters with Mr. McCartney's photograph appeared on shop windows. "No More Lies," one said. "Shame on Them," said another.
Last Sunday, the women held a rally in the neighbourhood. Hundreds showed up, including politicians, and several speakers expressed outrage. The sisters held placards that read, "Murdered - Who's Next?""If these men walk free from this, then everyone in Ireland should fear the consequences," Paula McCartney, 40, a Queen's University student, told the crowd, according to news reports. "Justice must be done."The police said Friday that 10 people had been arrested so far but had refused to cooperate and were released. "We need witnesses, and those witnesses need to be able to return to their own communities," said the Northern Ireland police detective superintendent, George Hamilton.The plea was indicative of the more troubled relationship that has developed between the I.R.A. and Catholics in Belfast's nationalist area since the Troubles wound down after the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.
Many people interviewed here say they feel indebted to the I.R.A., a private army, for fighting for Catholic rights and protecting them from Protestant loyalists, like the Shankill Butchers, who tortured and killed Catholics with butchers' knives.They acknowledge being increasingly disturbed by the I.R.A.'s criminal undertakings, acts of intimidation and extortion, and punishment beatings.
Once mostly excused as necessary tools of war during the Troubles, such acts are now far harder to accept."There is a cynicism within the community," said Anthony McIntyre, who served 18 years in prison for I.R.A. activity and is now a dissident. "One reason the I.R.A. existed was to protect people from the Shankill Butchers. Now I.R.A. members are ploughing their violence in their own community."Everyone knows what happened on Jan. 30.
Witnesses have talked on the street, and people have told these stories to the sisters.Mr.
McCartney stopped for a drink with a friend at Magennis's bar in the Markets section of Belfast on that Sunday night. An I.R.A. man thought he saw Mr. McCartney make a rude gesture toward a woman in his own group in the crowded bar.
A brawl broke out, then spilled into the streets.A short while later, Mr. McCartney lay dying. His friend's throat was sliced, as well, but he survived.The attackers walked a couple of blocks back to the bar, locked it and warned the 70 people inside to keep quiet, the sisters added. "This is I.R.A. business," the sisters were told the men said. The men wiped down the bar, washing away fingerprints and blood.The next day some of them were seen in the neighbourhood, chatting with friends on street corners, as if Jan. 30 had been no different from Jan. 29, the sisters said.The message was plain. "They can murder you, clean it up, cover it up and walk away," Catherine McCartney said.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brutal-murder-revives-paramilitary-fears-in-border-bandit-country-395433.html
Brutal paramilitary murder Of Paul Quinn.A savage murder at a remote Irish border farm last week shook Northern Ireland's fledgling administration.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brutal-murder-revives-paramilitary-fears-in-border-bandit-country-395433.html
Brutal paramilitary murder Of Paul Quinn.A savage murder at a remote Irish border farm last week shook Northern Ireland's fledgling administration.
The family of 21-year-old Paul Quinn, battered to death, pointed the finger at the IRA, saying he had fallen foul of members of the organization after having clashes with two republicans.
Security sources say the brutal but carefully planned killing, involving at least nine men, was the work of former IRA members acting without the organization's sanction.The family's allegation of IRA responsibility was daring. After decades of IRA domination of the south Armagh-Monaghan border, most in conflict with the IRA there keep prudently silent.The accusation from the Quinn family endangered the very existence of the Stormont administration jointly headed by the Rev Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein.
Mr Paisley and his Democratic Unionist Party went into government with republicans on the strict understanding that the IRA had ended all activities. He has since publicly placed much trust in Sinn Fein.When the news of the killing broke, Mr Paisley made contact with London, Dublin and Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde. The Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, also moved rapidly since the incident took place in his jurisdiction on the southern side of the border.
Both police forces were quick to say that they had no evidence that the killing had been sanctioned by the IRA. But police in the Irish Republic, in particular, made no secret of their intelligence that formerly prominent IRA personnel had killed Paul Quinn.Mr McGuinness and Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein issued strong statements condemning the killing and calling on anyone with information to help police on both sides of the border.
Their statements seemed to carry political force despite the widespread belief that in the past republicans have not told the truth about IRA violence.According to locals and security sources, Quinn had two recent brushes with republicans around the Cullyhanna area where he lived, and had been ordered to leave the district. A local teacher described him as "a bit of a wide boy, a hard man". Another described him as "a hard man, very headstrong", though his family is regarded as moderate and very respectable.Neighbours and others, however, believe that Paul Quinn was involved in illegality as a member of a gang smuggling diesel fuel across the border.
The belief is that former IRA figures in this hardline area set out last weekend to demonstrate that, while the IRA may be inactive as an organization, republicans will not tolerate "disrespect".A week last Saturday, Quinn was lured to a farm shed by a telephone call.
When he arrived he was seized by a large group of men who methodically used iron bars to beat him to a pulp. The conclusion of the post-mortem examination was that he died of "blunt force trauma", suffering a broken arm and leg with internal injuries to his brain and lungs.The gang did not kill him at the scene, and when police arrived he was both conscious and lucid. The south Armagh tradition of "omerta" is so strong that he refused to tell police who had assaulted him.
He died later that evening in hospital. While opinions vary locally on whether the gang intended to kill him or not, the scale of his multiple injuries suggests they did not particularly care whether he lived or died.Mr Adams said: "The people involved are criminals. They need to be brought to justice and it is fairly obvious to me that this is linked to fuel smuggling and to criminal activity. There's no republican involvement whatsoever in this man's murder.
"The killing is a disturbing development when paramilitary activities had fast been declining in south Armagh, an area that a British minister once christened "bandit country". Recent violent events demonstrate that the bandits have not gone away.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-execution-how-an-ira-man-turned-british-spy-met-his-brutal-end-472848.html
The Execution:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-execution-how-an-ira-man-turned-british-spy-met-his-brutal-end-472848.html
The Execution:
How an IRA man turned British spy met his brutal end
The long arm of republican vengeance reached inside a remote Irish mountain cottage yesterday and took the life of Denis Donaldson, the former IRA and Sinn Fein member who was recently unmasked as a police agent.
One or more assassins cornered the 56-year-old republican, gunning him down in the primitive ramshackle cottage where he had hidden himself away from the world. There were unconfirmed reports last night that his body had been mutilated.The cottage is in the Blue Stack Mountains near the Donegal village of Glenties, a rugged and sparsely populated area.
It seemed he felt safe there, even though last month his presence was publicised. But the republican tradition of carrying out what are called "executions" of known informers has evidently not faded with the general rundown of the IRA campaign.
There is no mystery about why he was killed, since the IRA makes no secret of its hatred and contempt for informers and agents in its ranks. Republican organisations have killed many over the centuries, including scores in recent decades. But the question is exactly who killed him and
whether his assassination was sanctioned by the IRA leadership.
The answer will determine the immediate political future of Northern Ireland.The killing sent major tremors coursing through the Irish peace process, since if the IRA is judged to have been responsible this phase of the process will come to a halt. The IRA declared last night that it had "no involvement whatsoever" in the killing, an assertion which will now be thoroughly tested by police on both sides of the border.Tony Blair and the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, are due in Armagh in Northern Ireland tomorrow to launch a new initiative aimed at restoring the Northern Ireland Assembly and eventually putting together a coalition to include Sinn Fein and Unionists.
But, if the IRA is shown to be responsible, the ambition of the British and Irish governments to put together a new cross-community government will be in ruins, as Unionists will refuse to share power with Sinn Fein.Certainly the Rev Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionists, will be making no conciliatory move until the question of the Donaldson killing has been answered. He expressed scepticism at the IRA denial and said the killing could hinder progress.
"This has put a dark cloud over those talks," he said. "If this man has been murdered because of his connection with IRA/Sinn Fein and because of the past happenings, then it strikes a blow at what the two governments are trying to do - to say that the IRA has forsaken these ways and they are seeking peace."Donaldson, who was 56, was found by Irish police who broke down the door and found his body at about 5pm yesterday.
He had gone into hiding in December after being exposed as a security force agent, admitting he had worked for Special Branch for 20 years. He was interrogated by Sinn Fein activists and then apparently told he was free to go. The Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, who said at the time that Donaldson had not been under threat from the republican movement, condemned the killing.Last month Donaldson was tracked down by the Sunday World to a Donegal cottage.
The cottage, which was described as being barely habitable, with no electricity or running water, was pictured in its issue of 19 March. Donaldson, who looked thin and dishevelled, told the paper in an interview: "How did you find this place? You don't see much of anyone here, not even the gardai. They've been up and down past there but they never came in.
I'm not hiding, I just want to be left alone. I don't go anywhere. I don't want to be in touch with anyone. As you can see, I'm in the middle of nowhere."As months have gone by since his unmasking, the assumption has grown that the IRA had decided not to move against him.
Many in its ranks harboured feelings of betrayal and hatred but everyone knew that his assassination would set back, probably for years, Sinn Fein's hopes of getting back into government.The possibilities also exist that he was killed by individual members or ex-members of the IRA, or by a breakaway republican dissident group.In recent years Donaldson had been an important apparatchik within Sinn Fein, but he was previously a senior member of the IRA in Belfast for many years.
Some of those he served with in the IRA may hold him personally responsible for the jailing of IRA members or even for the deaths of people at the hands of the security forces.The journalist Hugh Jordan, who found Donaldson in Donegal, said last night that he did not think the informer believed his life was in danger.
He said: "He looked like a hunted animal. He was extremely depressed. The nerves in his eyes were trembling. He seemed like a man who didn't think he would come to any harm. He did not see his life to be in any danger, but felt the only future he had was where he was, living in that dreadfully squalid situation. It's desperate that something like this happened. He was alone and threatened no one. He was no harm to anybody.
"Three years ago another security forces agent, Freddie Scappaticci, was unmasked within the IRA in Belfast but he was allowed to go free. He is thought to have moved to Italy.Donaldson appears to have felt that he too could escape death at the hands of the IRA or individual republicans. Certainly he stayed on at his cottage even after its location became public knowledge, a sign that he judged himself safe.
But it was a misjudgement, and one that cost him his life.A dangerous life4 October 2002 Ex-IRA volunteer Denis Donaldson, Sinn Fein's head of administration at Stormont, and two others arrested and accused of spying for Sinn Fein.
Unionists threaten to withdraw from executive, forcing British to suspend devolution.8 December 2005 Charges of spying against the three dropped "in the public interest".16 December 2005 Donaldson expelled from Sinn Fein after admitting he has been a paid British agent for two decades, though he denies spying at Stormont.
He flees Belfast. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams denies he is under threat from republicans.19 March 2006 Donaldson tracked down by Sunday World journalist Hugh Jordan to a rundown cottage near Glenties, Co Donegal. He says he was sacrificed in a failed attempt by the security services to preserve the career of the Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble.4 April 2006 Donaldson found shot dead at his cottage, with police sources saying his hand has been severed. IRA denies involvement, but political furore erupts.
The Cost of a United Ireland or Not!
I would like to run a few observations past the readers of this board that may strike a debate on the possibility and likely viability of a united Ireland?
Firstly I would like to make an observation. If a united Ireland was the panacea that nationalists and republicans, here in Northern Ireland make it out to be why has the Irish state and southern Irish people never fought harder for Irish unification since 1922 or from 1969?
Why have the Irish political elite and every Irish government always kept the unification of Ireland as an aspiration, never more than an aspiration, why have they never made it a demand?
The Irish government know it’s a simple question of who is going too, or how is, the unification of Ireland going to be paid for? It’s quite a simple equation, how much will it cost? In the old days it was punts over unification now it’s Euros over unification! The reason for keeping it an aspiration rather than make it a demand, is the Irish state now or ever could never take on the burden of 1.6 million extra in population. Never mind the political implications it’s a simple question of economics. To take on 1.6 million people would wreck the now tottering Irish economy, as it would the British economy if they had to take on an extra 1.6 million population.
That is why all but a few British passport holders in the old colonies in Africa and the Far East were granted access to the UK after independence from their domicile countries.What would be the perceived or practical advantage for the Irish republic’s population to having a united Ireland? None!
In fact it would lead to an increase in taxes for every Irish tax payer and cuts in the Irish benefits system. The burden to the Irish exchequer would be devastating. For a start both the health service and education system would require massive amounts of money just to keep going. This would obviously lead to personal taxes and indirect taxes needing to increase. No doubt massive payments would be required to pay back the British exchequer for the infrastructure in buildings and equipment within both sectors, and then there are the wages for the personnel working in both sectors they would obviously need to be met by the Irish exchequer.
Now we can move on to the roads, water, agriculture, environment, housing and rates who is going to pay for these, and who is going to pay back money to the British exchequer for the investment they have made over the years in these areas.
Pension rights and social security would need to be addressed. How you square that one, it would probably take the mind of Stephen Hawking to sort out?
The obvious way for all this to be paid would be for the Irish wealthy to pay more, the Irish
middle income worker to pay more, and the poorest in Irish society would need to pay more. The Irish poor could pay by cutting their social security handouts, thus burdening even more the poorest in Irish society for the misguided utopian vision of a united Ireland.And this would not be a short term hit on personal income or higher taxes it would need to be paid for, for at lest two, if not three or more generations. The question of compensation for business and investors would need to be addressed and complex tax issues would need to be resolved. All the financial institutions with there vast sums invested in Northern Ireland these financial institutions are not going to walk away from their investments? Complex tax issues, income tax, VAT, and thousands of mortgages (do we not need to pay our mortgages if we are dragged in to a united Ireland?). All these issues will put more pressure on the Irish exchequer.
There may be limited help from the British exchequer, and the EU and America. However, with the growing pressures on the British exchequer and the ever expanding EU and Americas growing pressures with a possible recession and an open ended cheque book for two unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan they have little in the way of spare cash. So money to help the unification of Ireland will be small in the big scheme of things and over a very limited period.
On the political front here are some issues I feel need to be addressed if the Irish unification question is to be addressed fully?
Will any Irish government of any persuasion wish to be burdened with Sinn Fein/IRA (whose ideology is Marxist) in there government. The Irish government know full well that Sinn Fein/IRA will demand power in any united Ireland government remember the Irish civil war. Sinn Fein/IRA will determine that they have fought the British for over 80 years and they will therefore demand a disproportionate amount of power in any united Irish government and the threat of another Irish civil war will be the likely outcome.
No self-promoting career politician in southern Ireland will want to share power with people they are at this moment trying to distance themselves form in Irish politics?
So who should be most concerned about a united Ireland should it be the Irish political elite, the Irish wealthy, the Irish middle classed or the Irish poor, all sections of Irish society should be concerned that’s who?
Another question, will the political will be there in Ireland to send the Garda and the Irish army on to the streets of Belfast, and Londonderry, or any other city or town to patrol a hostile population. Not only of disaffected Unionists, but a hostile republican population. Republicans who for over 30 years of conflict have become conditioned against, and hostile to any form of rule of law?
There would need to be guarantees that the Unionist minority had a voice in any unified Irish parliament and guarantees that on vital issues there was a Unionist veto or at lest cross community support. I wonder how that would sit with the armed republican parties of the north.
If a referendum were to be held on a united Ireland, in the north only or north and south I think you would find that a large majority would keep the status quo as it stands!
So all in all the aspiration of a united Ireland will always remain just that an aspiration for the Irish government and the people of the Irish republic!
Only the fantasists of the armed republican movement in the north think unification is ether practicable or inevitable.
So my final thought is that we will now and forever be British; No Surrender!
Firstly I would like to make an observation. If a united Ireland was the panacea that nationalists and republicans, here in Northern Ireland make it out to be why has the Irish state and southern Irish people never fought harder for Irish unification since 1922 or from 1969?
Why have the Irish political elite and every Irish government always kept the unification of Ireland as an aspiration, never more than an aspiration, why have they never made it a demand?
The Irish government know it’s a simple question of who is going too, or how is, the unification of Ireland going to be paid for? It’s quite a simple equation, how much will it cost? In the old days it was punts over unification now it’s Euros over unification! The reason for keeping it an aspiration rather than make it a demand, is the Irish state now or ever could never take on the burden of 1.6 million extra in population. Never mind the political implications it’s a simple question of economics. To take on 1.6 million people would wreck the now tottering Irish economy, as it would the British economy if they had to take on an extra 1.6 million population.
That is why all but a few British passport holders in the old colonies in Africa and the Far East were granted access to the UK after independence from their domicile countries.What would be the perceived or practical advantage for the Irish republic’s population to having a united Ireland? None!
In fact it would lead to an increase in taxes for every Irish tax payer and cuts in the Irish benefits system. The burden to the Irish exchequer would be devastating. For a start both the health service and education system would require massive amounts of money just to keep going. This would obviously lead to personal taxes and indirect taxes needing to increase. No doubt massive payments would be required to pay back the British exchequer for the infrastructure in buildings and equipment within both sectors, and then there are the wages for the personnel working in both sectors they would obviously need to be met by the Irish exchequer.
Now we can move on to the roads, water, agriculture, environment, housing and rates who is going to pay for these, and who is going to pay back money to the British exchequer for the investment they have made over the years in these areas.
Pension rights and social security would need to be addressed. How you square that one, it would probably take the mind of Stephen Hawking to sort out?
The obvious way for all this to be paid would be for the Irish wealthy to pay more, the Irish
middle income worker to pay more, and the poorest in Irish society would need to pay more. The Irish poor could pay by cutting their social security handouts, thus burdening even more the poorest in Irish society for the misguided utopian vision of a united Ireland.And this would not be a short term hit on personal income or higher taxes it would need to be paid for, for at lest two, if not three or more generations. The question of compensation for business and investors would need to be addressed and complex tax issues would need to be resolved. All the financial institutions with there vast sums invested in Northern Ireland these financial institutions are not going to walk away from their investments? Complex tax issues, income tax, VAT, and thousands of mortgages (do we not need to pay our mortgages if we are dragged in to a united Ireland?). All these issues will put more pressure on the Irish exchequer.
There may be limited help from the British exchequer, and the EU and America. However, with the growing pressures on the British exchequer and the ever expanding EU and Americas growing pressures with a possible recession and an open ended cheque book for two unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan they have little in the way of spare cash. So money to help the unification of Ireland will be small in the big scheme of things and over a very limited period.
On the political front here are some issues I feel need to be addressed if the Irish unification question is to be addressed fully?
Will any Irish government of any persuasion wish to be burdened with Sinn Fein/IRA (whose ideology is Marxist) in there government. The Irish government know full well that Sinn Fein/IRA will demand power in any united Ireland government remember the Irish civil war. Sinn Fein/IRA will determine that they have fought the British for over 80 years and they will therefore demand a disproportionate amount of power in any united Irish government and the threat of another Irish civil war will be the likely outcome.
No self-promoting career politician in southern Ireland will want to share power with people they are at this moment trying to distance themselves form in Irish politics?
So who should be most concerned about a united Ireland should it be the Irish political elite, the Irish wealthy, the Irish middle classed or the Irish poor, all sections of Irish society should be concerned that’s who?
Another question, will the political will be there in Ireland to send the Garda and the Irish army on to the streets of Belfast, and Londonderry, or any other city or town to patrol a hostile population. Not only of disaffected Unionists, but a hostile republican population. Republicans who for over 30 years of conflict have become conditioned against, and hostile to any form of rule of law?
There would need to be guarantees that the Unionist minority had a voice in any unified Irish parliament and guarantees that on vital issues there was a Unionist veto or at lest cross community support. I wonder how that would sit with the armed republican parties of the north.
If a referendum were to be held on a united Ireland, in the north only or north and south I think you would find that a large majority would keep the status quo as it stands!
So all in all the aspiration of a united Ireland will always remain just that an aspiration for the Irish government and the people of the Irish republic!
Only the fantasists of the armed republican movement in the north think unification is ether practicable or inevitable.
So my final thought is that we will now and forever be British; No Surrender!
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