Andersonstown News 10/30/97 Pt.2 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source:Beananti@aol.com Part 2 of 2 -- MARY GETS OUR VOTE! -- Sunday tabloid smear disgusts West Belfast women -- End of an Era -- STRAIGHT TALKING ************************************************ Andersonstown News - Thursday, 30 October 1997 ************************************************ MARY GETS OUR VOTE! BELFAST BALLOT BOXES WILL OPEN AFTER ALL AS RACE FOR ARAS REACHES CLIMAX Let's hope she doesn't need them, but Belfast voters are being given the chance after all to vote for the city's most famous daughter in today's Presidential election. Members of the Just Us theatre group - who earlier this year staged the smash hit play Bin Lids during the West Belfast Festival - will this morning join forces with a wide range of community and residents' groups to offer people the chance to vote in the election outside the City Hall. "It's a light-hearted piece of theatre, but it's making a deadly serious point," said organiser Ciaran Kearney. "We are highlighting the fact that Irish people living in the North of Ireland are being denied their fundamental national and democratic rights." Votes will be accepted at the Belfast ballot box from 11am this morning and Ciaran's urging people to turn up and enjoy the craic - while at the same time sending out a message to the Dublin Government. "A President is being elected who will be charged with the task of safeguarding the Irish Constitution, yet Irish people in the North who see the Constitution as enshrining their rights to Irish citizenship are denied the right to exercise the most fundamental right of their citizenship - the right to vote." But who will Ciaran be voting for when the box opens this morning? "That would be telling," he laughs. "The only clue I'll give you is that she comes from Ardoyne." Belfast is awaiting the result of today's poll with baited breath. Mary significantly extended her lead in the most recent opinion poll - she stands at 37 per cent, while her nearest rival, Mary Banotti, dropped a disastrous five percentage points to 24 per cent. ________________________________________________________ Sunday tabloid smear disgusts West Belfast women Furious friends of Mairead unite to urge paper boycott A group of West Belfast women have united to call for a boycott of the News of the World after the tacky Sunday tabloid covered its front page with outrageous claims about Mairead Farrell's private life. The News of the World has been publishing excerpts from a book written by an ex-SAS officer who served in Belfast and claimed to have know Mairead, who was one of three unarmed IRA members shot dead in Gibraltar in March 1988. The St James' group claims the "slanderous and untrue" stories told by the paper were nothing but malicious smear tactics to destroy the dead woman's reputation. "We are organising in defence of Mairead's memory because we knew her and respected her very deeply," says resident Sheila McVeigh. "All of this is in this man's sordid imagination and is a typically revolting attempt by this gutter rag to sell more papers. "There is no way people will believe him. Just the same, we want people who come from the same community in which Mairead was held in such high regard to stop buying this paper, as a form of protest, and out of respect for this woman and her family, who must have been terribly hurt by this disgusting story." The women have printed leaflets which they are distributing door-to-door in their home district - they are also targeting newsagents in an attempt to convince them not to stock the newspaper. "While the shops all accepted the letter, some of them are not owners, and cannot remove the papers themselves," said Sheila. "But three of them said they will, and in the meantime we are asking people just not to buy while this series is running." The group have also faxed or delivered the leaflet to community groups all over West Belfast asking them to join the boycott. "Everyone who knew this woman knows she needs no defence," says Sheila. "But as women we don't think people should be subjected to this. Her elderly parents have suffered enough and shouldn't have to read this rubbish and women should not have to be confronted with this every time they enter their local newsagents. We are taking care of our own area and we very much hope that concerned people everywhere will do what they can." ________________________________________________________ End of an Era One hundred and twenty years of West Belfast history quite literally bit the dust last week as the once glorious Trench House was levelled, writes Robert McMillen. Despite eleventh-hour efforts by community groups and greens to save the West's most famous listed building, the demolition was given the green-light last month. Church heads say the decision to bulldoze was only taken after restoration of the architectural masterpiece became impossible. But that's a view contested strongly by critics of the move, including the DoE's own Environmental Heritage Council. Last night, veteran historian Fred Heatley laid the blame for the loss of a unique West Belfast landmark on "mindless vandals". "I'm very sad to see it go," he said, "but we can't blame anyone but the vandals of the area who were responsible for the horrendous damage to this fine building. "It would have cost a phenomenal amount of money to put the place to rights and the money just isn't there. Trench House was probably the biggest building to be levelled in the name of progress but don't forget that over recent years a lot of lesser-known fine buildings have also been demolished." ________________________________________________________ STRAIGHT TALKING by Mairtin O Mullineor STINGING BRICKIE'S AWARD FOR LORD DUBSA My contacts at Stormont have given me, and, via my good offices, the wood-hewers and water-carriers who read this fine organ, for-your-eyes-only sight of ten peace dividend bonuses set to be introduced by Lord Dubs of Trench House in order to solidify the ceasefire and bring fresh hope to the Troubles- ravaged areas of Belfast. A senior trauma medic at the Royal had previously confirmed that years of false dawns and broken promises have given me skin as thick as an Algerian aardvark and an emotional response system so damaged that only a kango hammer applied at medium power to the left ear lobe would ever again elicit tears of joy. How wrong you were, doc! For on reading Lord Dubs' Talks' treatise, Let There Be Light in their Little Mud Cabins, my central nervous system rocketed through the whole gamut of emotions from joy to bliss and back again until only the need to change my socks and shoes which had become soaked in tears forced me back to terra firma. Though shaken and stirred by my out-of-body experience, my first thought was to immediately pay the debt of gratitude which I, nay we, owe Lord Dubs of Trench House for his endeavours. Holding in mind the thoughtful and considerate advice of Minister Worthington that we remember Trench House through pictures and mementoes, I have dispatched (on your behalf) a brick from Trench House to Lord Teledubbie. I bring you then, in reverse order, those confidence building measures of Lord Dubs of Trench House which will ensure that his name will be forever sacred in the winding cobbled streets of nationalist Belfast: 10. Heated underground Olympic-size swimming pool to be built in old Andersonstown Road subways. Heat to be provided by burning books in Andersonstown, Falls and Ardoyne libraries (though readers will be allowed to keep pictures of the books to remind them of the way we were). British Navy gunboat to be moved from Carlingford Lough to new pool to ensure ceasefire holds - but sailors will wear Captain Pugwash hats. 9. Relocate Grand Canyon from Arizona to Black Mountain by digging all the ugly and offensive grey granite from the mountain - which is preventing the people of West Belfast having a clear view of the mainland anyway - and using it to create new roads in Britain. (They've already done this one - Ed.) The hole resulting from this labour of love will be a testament to the ceasefire rule of thumb first conceived by John Major but subsequently adopted by Tony Blair, if you're in a hole, keep digging. 8. In line with the far-sighted environmental policy evidenced in the Saving of the Memory of Trench House (Copyright Dubs, Worthington and assorted men in black suits and dog collars), this Eighth Wonder of the World shall have within it an Orange Arch, as a gesture of reconciliation and in order to draw down a #500m grant from the Community Relations Council. It will be subsequently known as Lord Dubs' Arch-Hole - though readers are advised not to speak on this topic after a tipple. 7. To complement the Olympic-size swimming pool on the Andersonstown Road, Casement Park shall be converted into an open-air tabernacle-cum-polo pitch where young folk can ride their horses after Saturday morning gymkhana and sing Dropkick Me Jesus through the Goalposts of Life. 6. The good news for fans of Antrim's hurling and football teams is that GAA games will be banned from 7am-10pm each day except on the Feast of St Swithin when former stars of the Gaelic code will dress up in traditional garb - i.e. Celtic away strip and Adidas rainjackets - to re-enact the Bloody Sunday outrage when thousands of illiterate GAA fans in Dublin threw match programmes and unspeakable insults at long-suffering Black and Tans who were defenceless save for a Crossley Tender and a Browning sub-machine gun. 5. Century-old cottages of invaluable environmental worth on the Glen Road and Shaws Road will be replaced with high-density Housing Executive housing which can't be afforded by anyone not on benefits. (Been there - Ed.) 4. Erect Europe's largest police station in Ballymurphy even if it does run a million or two over budget. (Done that - Ed.) 3. Locate Europe's biggest oil refinery in the Half Moon Lake after employing a taxidermist to stuff some prime examples of the local wildlife so that their memory etc. 2. Oil from the Shell Half Moon Lake Refinery will be used to fuel the new nuclear reactor in Colin Glen Forest Park. Any threat to residents of West Belfast from radiation leaks will be combatted by covering the reactor under three million tons of concrete stretching from Glengoland to the Rumbling Hole. A small window box exhibiting local flora will be issued to anyone whose eyes water when they read the Dzlra column. 1. In a pioneering link-up with Stormont buddy and Economy Minister, 'Orange' Ingram, Deltaprint will be moved out of West Belfast into jobs-starved North Down and its plant used to enable Union Carbide to relocate from Bhopal to Andersonstown. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FRANK LETTER The McCourt saga rumbles on but things are looking up for this columnist who had raised some heckles in his search for information about the last days of Malachy McCourt. Recently, we published the moving story of how Maire Bean Um Niill helped Malachy, made famous posthumously in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, in his final days. Now Frank has replied to a note I sent him (see below). Next week, we'll have a full report on the recent visit toLenadoon by Conor McCourt, Frank's film-making nephew. In the meantime, congratulations go to Frank for receiving an honorary degree from Limerick University on Tuesday. Dear Mairtmn, Thanks for the note and the clips. Sorry to hear you've been attacked by all sorts of McCourts. I don't understand the fuss. My father, Malachy, did live a quiet life in his last fifteen years, smoked his pipe, ate practically nothing. (That's why I said he waved away the "delicacies".) He was taken care of by some lovely neighbours especially Robert and Kathleen McLaughlin - and my hat is off to them. Sincerely Frank McCourt ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-10.31.97-21:29:44-28191