It's Marching Season (corrected)

Sorry.
That last post was made before I read the news.

Buses were on fire, bonfires were the size of skyscrapers so big that Dwayne Johnson couldn't deal with them and Bogside is like Kosovo in the 90s.

Business as usual folks, congrats! We did it!

Northern Ireland once again lives up to expectations by making us all look like cunts to the rest of the world ♥

It's Marching Season!

It's Marching Season and everything has gone off without a hitch.

East Belfast, Newtownards and Derry have been the most peaceful they've been in years.

Well done everyone!

Are we back? Maybe!

So I sort of unofficially retired this blog in 2014 because, well, life got in the way and I was happy. And I can't write stupid angry rants when im happy.

As of 2018 I am still happy but Northern Irish Politics has got so bad that I am fucking furious about the world again so I think we're back for a bit.

When I knocked this on the head, there were a decent number of readers still, from surprisingly all over the world, and I know most of you probably don't check Blogger any more and that's ok. I just need somewhere to shout, even if it is just me screaming into the void.

If you do happen to get the little ding in your inbox that I've posted again, welcome back.

Black Friday comes to the UK - People lose their shit.

Black Friday sales hit the UK this year in a big way and already (time of writing - 10am) people are losing their shit.  Police have been called to several Tesco and Asda stores as customers get out of hand trying to get cheap TVs.

In The United States, Black Friday is a holiday that follows Thanksgiving Thursday where retail stores heavily discount outgoing stock to sell to the public.  It has slowly been gaining traction online in the UK for the last year or two but this is the first time that brick and mortar stores have gone out of their way to contribute to the madness.

Many large stores have been open since midnight and selling a lot of items at up to 80% off.  It's set to out do boxing day as the UKs biggest shopping day for the first time since people kept track of this sort of useless statistic.

Even online retailers such a Currys/PC world had to implement a queuing system on their websites from as early as 10pm the night before to prevent their site from crashing under the expectations of eager shoppers.

There have been no reports yet of any serious problems in Norn Iron but if there's one thing we do better than the rest of the UK it's get a bit rioty over nothing so watch this space.

News Roundup Part One - Budget Cuts, Ebola, Sport and Abortions

Google Image Search For The Word 'News' Gave This Result

News Roundup.  Because we forgot to write anything for three weeks.

First up - Sport!

No men hitting balls with a stick this time around but rather men hitting balls with their feet.  After beating the mighty Estonia and Greece in the Euro Qualifiers, Northern Ireland have risen to 43rd place in the Fifa World Rankings table.  Ahead of ROI and just behind Scotland and Wales.

HOLY SHIT WE MISSED EBOLA IN NORTHERN IRELAND...wait, no. It's ok.

A patient, believed to be a woman, returned from Africa and tested positive for malaria.  Having been to an ebola infected region, they also put her into isolation and the national media flipped their shit, reporting on the lack of news every day until the ebola tests came back negative.    A random woman in Derry also tested negative after going to the hospital feeling "generally unwell" and worrying she had contracted Ebola, despite not being out of the country.  

Stormont Agrees Budget At Last

The NI Assembly agreed a budget at last this October, securing a 100 million loan from the Treasury.  Only the shinners & the DUP voted for the budget with the SDLP voting against and Alliance abstaining (uncontroversial position by the Alliance party? Shocker).  Oh and the UUP abstained too but no one really cares what they think.

Long story short, they need to find savings of nearly £900,000,000 (900 million, yes) so most departments, with the exception of health, will be gouged for cash.  Health will in fact get an increase to its budget of 200 million but somehow they're still cutting services and closing hospitals.

Nice work, Stormont.

Amnesty International Poll Suggests Public In Favour Of Abortion (In Certain Circumstances).

Long and short of this is that the government, being alarmingly rooted in the church, won't even think about it so it's not really news.  Nice try though Amnesty, at least someone is trying to do something.

Paying For Sex Made Illegal In Northern Ireland, Men Everywhere Disappointed To Find Out It Wasn't Before.

The Northern Ireland Assembly has finally passed a law making it illegal for people to pay for sex in Northern Ireland.  Up until this week it was perfectly legal to pay for sex by either picking up a prostitute on the road side or going to one of the many brothels dotted throughout the country.  Arguments against the proposal have centred around how the law will force prostitution underground as it was so mainstream and public before.  

We took to the streets of Belfast and asked the question; "What do you think about the law just passed that will make paying for sex illegal?" and we got the following responses.

"It's legal now???"

So, you have a short window before this becomes law to get yourself as many prostitutes as you want without fear of legal repercussions. Go to town, they hang out around Alfred Street and near the cinema.

Bumper October Update! In Summary: We Have No Money!

The Norn Iron News would like to apologise for the lack of posting. We've not been well.

So here's what we've missed so far in October:

Stormont On The Verge Of Going Into The Red - 02/10/2014

The Northern Ireland Executive is due to go into the red this year as they still haven't resolved the dead lock over welfare reform that's cost Stormont over £90m in fines to date.

It's the shinners arguing against the reforms which admittedly will cause hardship for those on benefits in Northern Ireland.  The destruction of the public services for everyone has less impact according to Sinn Fein MLA Dairmaid O'Fictional. Will this crisis be solved? Ministers will be meeting shortly to discuss it but if Stormonts track record is anything to go by, the answer will be a resounding no.

Tourism? Where we're going, we don't need tourism. 04/10/2014

An aerial view of Belfast in 20 years time if the cuts continue as they are

As yet more budgets are slashed, the Tourism Events Fund which, exactly as the name suggests, funds things that provide boosts to tourism, pulls funding for several key events in Northern Ireland. The following events are in danger of not going ahead after funding was cut:

-Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival

-Culture Night Belfast

-North West 200

- Ulster Grand Prix

- The Mill Cup

- The Festival Of Fools

- The Ulster Rally

- The International Airshow

There are many many other events that we haven't listed because it's all getting a bit depressing.  The overall amount of funding given out is approximately £2.4 million per year.  The simple fact that these events combined bring significantly more to the economy doesn't seem to be relevant.  Anything that was a fun day out for the family in NI is now more or less gone. Belfast will be a ghost town and the only exciting things to happen will be our yearly 'Orange Fest' which usually results in the city being on fire.

I'm sure you'll all be delighted to know that several high profile golf tournaments will go ahead as planned. Thank god for that. Maybe we won't all be bored afterall.

Hurricane Fintan hits Northern Ireland 05/10/2014

The weather got really bad. It was super rainy and windy and some people had power cuts. It was awful so it was.

Northern Ireland Library Service To Be Gutted

Chief Executive of N.I Libraries, Irene Knox, announced yesterday that a number of temporary staff were to be cut from N.I Libraries front line staff in an effort to meet budget cuts imposted on the Department of Culture, Art and Leisure. 

This all seems eerily reminiscent of the process that in 2010, resulted in the closure of 10 libraries in the Greater Belfast area, again due to budget cuts.  On that occasion however, they actually had a public consultation (that resulted in four libraries being saved) instead of making the announcement the same day they notified staff.

There is no doubt that the cutting of these agency staff will result in library closures.  Although nothing was mentioned in yesterdays press release, it is very clear that given the service is in a constant budget crisis, they wouldn't be employing these agency staff just out of concern for Northern Ireland's high unemployment rate.  These staff are obviously covering shortfalls in the service and if you remove them, clearly gaps will be left.

There seems to be little public outcry that has been seen so far.  Could this be because they announced the story at lunch time on a friday and by mid evening it had dropped down to the second page of news on the Belfast Telegraph website?

We cannot allow the cuts to go unnoticed.  As we've mentioned before, certain parties in Stormont *cough* Sinn Fein *cough* are refusing to allow the UK governments welfare reforms to go through.  Which is good for the people on benefits.  However everyone else who relies on the NHS, Libraries NI, Education and basically every other department within ggovernmentis suffering as we are having to make massive budget cuts to keep up with the financial penalties that the refusal to even look at the UK Govt proposals is causing.

So who will really care about the Library service closing some branches? Not you, you're on your phone or laptop, reading a site that either makes jokes about serious news or just flat out makes it up.  So it doesn't matter about the Library Service when you have a kindle, a laptop or a smart phone.

It probably matters to the people who don't have these devices and use the library computers.  It matters to the parents of the children who have taken an interest in reading because of the enthusiastic agency workers they've just fired.  It matters to the elderly who go in for help in getting to grips with the technology that i mentioned before.  It matters to a lot of people who use the service.  I use it, i like actual books.  I enjoy graphic novels but hate reading them on screens and can't afford to buy all the ones i want to read.  It matters to the people that work there.

One final question i have though is:

Irene Knox - if they fired you, or maybe one of your deputies...how many frontline staff would that keep?  Former libraries NI employees have said, particularly during the 2010 round of cuts, that the service is manager heavy.  Since then the people who don't work in the actual libraries and no-one is sure what they actually do have gotten their pay rises and protected their jobs. Four years have passed and the people who actually do the work get punished again.

So instead of cutting the front line workers, maybe someone needs to look at the people who don't actually work in the libraries, figure out what it is they actually do and then realise that they could probably get rid of a whole lot of them and run Libraries NI with greater efficiency and service. 

Northern Ireland Still The Happiest Place To Live In The UK. Somehow.

According to the Office Of National Statistics, Northern Ireland has been named the Happiest Place in the United Kingdom again.

They asked a representative sample of 165,000 (out of the 60 odd million people who live in the UK) the following questions:

1 - Overall, how satisfied are you with life nowadays?

2 - Overall, to what extend do feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?

3 - Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?

4 - Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

Co-author of the study, Dawn Snape, described the Northern Irish people as a 'conundrum' as they scored so highly despite having a higher rate of unemployment than the rest of the UK.  Somehow someone who works for the Office Of National Statistics cannot see a direct correlation between not working and feeling happy with life.

The top five of the UK wide survey of happiest places were:

1 - Antrim. Home of the worlds most bombed Hotel

2 - Fermanagh - Mainly livestock.

3 - Omagh - Mainly farmers who are naturally happy as they get to drive tractors and no-one has ever seen someone look sad in a tractor.

4 - Dungannon - Mainly chickens.

5 - Somewhere in England somewhere.

So there it is. Northern Ireland is the happiest place in the United Kingdom despite seasonal violence, a government that's 20 years behind most of the modern world and its populace suffering from an identity crisis.

Come on, come all. Just not in July. Please.

Happy August! Stormont Rings In The New Month With £78M Budget Cuts

Stormont Announces Budget Cuts

Education & Learning, Social Development and Justice are to be the hardest hit in the newest round of budget cuts that are in place because the DUP and the Shinners can't agree on welfare reforms in place across the water.  

Health & Education are unaffected by the budget but here are the effects the cuts will have:

Education and Learning:

Decrease in the availability of courses to acquire skills for further advancement in employment

Decreased funding for R&D throughout the province

Employment rights to be cut - Doing away with the whole 'racial discrimination' thing and just employing your brother.

Social Development:

No further social housing to be built - fuck people, let them just live on the streets. If they can't find a job, it's not our problem...and with the cuts to Education and Learning, finding a job will be even harder now.

Pensions - With the lack of housing, a lot of people will probably die a lot younger anyway so the shortfall in pensions will even itself out.

No more parks - we might continue renaming our old parks after terrorists but other than that...eh, kids can play on the roads.

Justice:

Cuts to legal aid - if people can't afford to represent themselves, that's not our problem. They should get a better job (see Education & Learning)

Thankfully though, they've found £1,000,000 to save the aquarium so it's not all bad news. 

Bad Parenting Causes Social Media Outrage

In a stunning display of stupidity, a picture of a young girl with the acronym K.A.T. written in facepaint on her forehead.

The unnamed five year old girl (and lets hope it stays that way as future googlers could find it interesting) was photographed at an 11th night bonfire with a Union flag on her cheek and K.A.T. on her head.  If you are unaware K.A.T. stands for 'Kill All Taigs' and is seen daubed on the walls of East Belfast by the literary whiz kids in the area.

Her mother, who has not been named for obvious reasons, claimed that she was unaware that it had happened as she was not in attendance.  She said that other children had written these words on her beloved daughter and when asked, her daughter said she thought it stood for "kiss and tell". How sweet. 

If it was other kids who did this, we should be ashamed of how the children of Norn Iron are raised. Bigotry is clearly learned in this country.

Alliance leader Naomi Long has condemned everything, as that's what our politicians do. She may have said words like "i condemn this and everything that happens that the larger percentage of our population happen to disagree with". 

Garth Brooks Concerts Cancelled - A Country In Mourning

Country and Western singer Garth Brooks threw his toys out of the pram today when Dublin City Council refused to allow 2 of his 5 scheduled gigs to go ahead. In a statement, Brooks said "it's all or none" in an attempt to get his money salvage the shows. 

The problem has occurred due to an agreement that the local residents have with Croke Park stating that only 3 non sporting events a year can be held in Croke (which was put in place to placate locals when major redevelopment works began that caused significant disruption).

After One Direction played 3 nights earlier this year, the original 3 night run of Brooks' tour doubled the allowed events but no complaints were made.

Once the fourth and fifth nights were added, local residents threatened legal action (on the 14th of February) so this sudden and entirely unexpected turn of events have ruined the lives of 400,000 'music fans' who won't get to see the shows.

There's still a small chance the shows will go ahead, but in the mean time Bono is flying home from his private island in some tax haven somewhere to bring peace and calm to the Irish people.

Peace Be With You

Trouble at Short Strand

Trouble at Short Strand
There was an outbreak of violence at the Short Strand in Belfast last night.

Those with eyes far apart and those with eyes too close together clashed over a rally held by local republican party Sinn Fein to celebrate the closure of a local police station.

The Shinners apparently organised the event and did not think that there would be any problems at what is a huge flashpoint for sectarian violence in the city. Their representative said “The event and the trouble afterwards were not connected” despite the fact that the violence took place in the same place as ‘event’.

On the prod side of things the DUP weighed in calling it “reckless” for an event like this to be organised.

Police, trying to deal with the violence, used plastic bullets to help disperse the crowd – a move that Sinn Fein have called “unjustified”. Most of the public in Northern Ireland think the use of plastic bullets is unjustified, especially when real bullets are readily available.

PSNI representatives have said “The police were caught between two opposing groups determined to attack each other” – Both Sinn Fein and the DUP agreed with each other for the first time in several years in saying “Is this not their job?”

Have Your Say on the Story

“Ah, we’re fucking glad that station is closing and i’ll throw as many bricks at the huns as i fucking want” – Paddy O’Taig

“Those shinners are a disgrace – this was always going to end in violence – I sat outside all day to make sure of it – I’ll throw as many bottles at those fenians as i fucking want” – Billy Paisley

“The police don’t deserve this – our job is to stop traffic for going too fast or not having tax discs on display – not stopping sectarian violence” – Police Constable J Smith

“I honestly don’t give a shit, let them kill each other - it'll be better for it” – The rest of the country

URGENT BREAKING NEWS - URGENT BREAKING NEWS

Urgent News -
Citizens of all of Northern Ireland have been advised of a high alert as a citizen of Derry has escaped the cities walls.
PSNI have said "we police those walls constantly and this is the first time in 27 years that a local has got out".
The public are advised to be on high alert and not to approach anyone that looks remotely scumbaggish (although this may be a problem in many areas of Belfast)

News Update!

Bono recalls the ‘terrifying’ day he was shot at.

In a new book, released by money grabbing bastard Bono, he has recounted of the time when in Jamaica he was shot at with over 100 rounds of bullets after being mistaken for a drug smuggler.
Jamaican police, obviously taking a leaf out of the Hollywood book of weapons training, managed to miss Bono with every single round as he disembarked from his private aircraft when landing for a family holiday in Jamaica on a sunny Monday morning in 1996.
He said “imagine just how starving the kids in Africa would be if i’d have died that fateful day. Who would have taken up the reigns of preaching for worthwhile causes if i’d gone? Certainly not Bob “give us yer fuckin money” Geldof, thats for sure – he had one hit single and somehow he’s still famous – although now-adays its more for his whore of a daughter”
While delighted no harm came to his family, i’m fucking furious at the Jamaicans.






PSNI officers sent to Afghanistan to train the ANP (afghan national police)
Police Service of Northern Ireland officers have been sent to Afghanistan to help train the Afghan National Police. The officers sent have served for the PSNI for several years and so are well versed in the required training modules of discrimination and taking bribes.
The course has the following modules:
· Are his eyes too close together? Best to shoot first
· How to wind up peaceful suspects to the point the retaliate and you can shoot them
· How to ensure you get plenty of ‘danger pay’ even though its a risk of the job.
· How to drive ‘different’ people out of the service
· How to minimise the effect of the above so you don’t get rebranded with a stupid name.
So far the training has been a huge success with the ANP’s total kill total of ‘people who have stolen this country from us/invaded our country unfairly*' has risen dramatically.
*delete depending on your side of the tracks

News Round Up

Local news for Friday 14/08/09

60 Pigeons Killed In Fire (this ones real, check it out)

60 Pigeons have been cruelly murdered during a blaze in on the outskirts of Belfast.

A spokesperson for the PSNI said "This incident is being treated as arson - it is believed that the perpetrators thought that the 'pigeon fanciers club' was somewhere where untoward deviant acts were performed on the birds". Local PETA members have been called in for questioning.

On a lighter note, the clean up bill for the council has been significantly reduced as by the time fire-fighters arrived on scene, the local Chinese restaurant had removed all charred pigeon corpses for "disposal".

U2 to Break Wembley Attendance Record

Stupidly named Irish rock band, U2 are set to break yet another record.

The current record for "most morons in the same place" is held by Madonna and her fans at a concert in Wembley in 2008 where nearly 75,000 idiots paid to see her 'perform'.

U2 are expected to pull in around 100,000 idiotic simpletons.

Assuming £50/ticket U2 can expect to make around £5million from the concert - not a penny of which will be sent to the starving children of Africa that lead singer, and general bastardly hypocrite, Bono is constantly harping on about.

In summary - U2 haven't written a good song for over ten years and anyone who helps to line their stupid gold lined pockets is a moron.

Weather update - Just to be smug, since the met office has millions of pounds and cool equipment and i am a man behind a computer in his living room - They said today would be overcast, i said it would piss from the heavens.

I was right.

Hoo-rah

Welcome

Welcome to Northern Ireland's Local News blog - Its a small country, all news is local.
Over the coming weeks/months/years you will find all the exciting news to come out of Northern Ireland that you just can't afford to miss (honest).