Added (2010-09-03, 7:57 PM)
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A Roman Catholic journalist spoke a lot of sense, really got up the nose of the interviewing journalist who just wanted to portray loyalist bands as anti-Roman Catholic bigots. Don't agree with everything Darach McDonald said but he done the Castlederg Young Loyalists justice

But I had never caught the link between the Isle of Innisfree and Don't Bury Me In Eireann Fenian Valleys. Maybe they are right when they say we haven't the genes to have our own tunes. Anyway,I'll keep plugging away with the Ulster Scots songs.

It does speak volumes when so many can change so quickly to how we are today. I was a bit taken aback when I seen so many switch almost overnight. I think that element has always been there and were just waitin in the wings for their opportunity. I have said before that the true believers will be pushed to the margins and ridiculed as 'living in the past'by those that have an agenda of eventual Irish unification.

The only positive thing through is there is still a lot a new blood coming through, many young men in their early 20s are staunchly loyal to the cause especially down around east Tyrone-South Londonderry and they are replacing dead wood in that particular area but throughout the whole country things within are community are in a terrible state but alas there is some positives. Big loyalist areas like Rathcoole etc, going from only haveing one band in the local area namely Cloughfern to having two bands formed within the last few years and both big bands namely Rathcoole Kai and Rathcoole Protestant Boys etc but in the grand scheme a things we're in a bad shape as this nation is losing its identity as Britishness dies.

I don't know if I mentioned before,but on visiting the City Hospital one of the Donegall Rd gates closed at 7pm and you had to use the other one. I just approached the gate as they were locking it. I asked them the reason for this as it seemed pointless to me. They replied that young lads were coming in and damaging the cars parked in the hospital. I thought young lads can come in here and do this and yet in Sandy Row the cars can sit unmolested. I can only come to one conclousion......that somebody is gettin backhanders to make sure these cars in Sandy Row are not touched. If on the other hand the opposite approach had been taken we might well have seen the cityside of Sandy Row with most of its housing back up instead of just one street.

I seen on the net a while ago that they are going to build a few houses in Albion St where the Lily Bar was. That'll only be 3 or 4 houses I'm guessing. They also mentioned LATS....LIVING ABOVE THE SHOPS. I think too they should be kickin up and getting housse built on the other empty spaces which are still there on the cityside of Sandy Row. I was gonna call in to McGimpsey's Advice Centre in the Row,but I know they first thing he's gonna hit me with...''sure you don't live here''. A fella outa of the lodge is from there and I left him over the wee book I did drawing attention to the Sandy Row situation a couple of weeks ago. If I could get him to go to McGimpsey with me I would give it a go.

Anyway we'll see what happens.

As you say the only way to get anything is to spread are message, plenty a people out there feel passionately about what's happening, just lack leadership.

The wee book I have done contrasts how vibrant the Row once was and the empty spaces of today. OK the housing was rightly pulled down,but it wasn't replaced. That my point. But its also to show how it once was....the arches and the people. Lets hope somebody will take it on board abnd at least try and do something. There is a lot of space still on the cityside. Here is a page from the book....

The cityside of Sandy Row as it is today (2010) after government gerrymandering under the guise of re-development. There were 16 streets on this side of Sandy Row. Only one was rebuilt. The Sunday News had an article which said that the government wanted to change the face of South and North Belfast inorder to have more Nationalists on Belfast City Council. This is the result of that policy. 'The Row You Know'(published 1997) said 10,000 people had to leave the Sandy Row area. This was due to promised housing not being built. NORWOOD STREET TODAY and Glenalpin St

Corner of Albion St the only street on the cityside to be built up again,but only partly as you can see.
The Short Strand and other Nationalist areas never suffered the same. In fact their areas were built up more strongly than they had been before. In Short Strand there had been a cinema (Picturedrome),Richardsons Fertlizer factory,Ritchie Hart Elevators Works,Sicrocco East Works beside Mountpottinger police station. Houses were built where there once were factories,and a cinema. Now sinn fein have called for Mountpottinger Police Station when it is demolished that the site be used for social housing. Contrast this with Sandy Row..
However,there is still vacant ground on the cityside in Sandy Row. Perhaps its time to make a stand and demand that this space is used for social housing. To built up a strong community once again like Sandy Row once was. Time to demand action! Housing not car parks!

I believe they decided on this path for a number of reasons: as you said to increase irish republican numbers and influence in City Hall. It took us till 1997 before we had a papist as Lord Mayor and also because it would be easy to do away with the prods as the surrounding areas of Belfast were at that time nearly all Protestant territory.

It’s no coincidence that the two biggest housing estates in Northern Ireland are both loyalist strongholds, namely Ballybeen and Rathcoole, I believe at the time of them being built they were some of the biggest in Western Europe. Yes there was a few Roman Catholics in these estates but mainly all Protestant and they both might be viewed as being in Belfast are technically Greater Belfast but crucially they are in different council areas namely Castlereagh and Newtownabbey.

Then you have your other big loyalist housing estates like Monkstown, Seymour Hill, Tullycarnet etc with a new town in easy distance for the prods in all four parts a Belfast, it’s like a garden path. The Prods from Sandy Row and South Belfast in general tended to go towards Finaghy- Lisburn direction, most the prod families intimidated out a West Belfast especially down around Upper Dunmurry and Lenadoon headed for Lisburn. The Prods in and around inner city east Belfast the likes a Mersey street/dee street etc, all those houses knocked down and replaced with a fraction of the number all the prods shifted out to Tullycarnet, Dundonald and a lot moved further a field to the likes a Killcooley in Bangor or to Newtownards, Conlig Comber etc. Prods in North and west Belfast down around the Shankill all shifted out to Carrickfergus, Rathcoole, Glengormerly and as far as Antrim etc..

Even Ballymena I mind hearing about a lot a prods moving outta Belfast to work in the factories up there in the 70s and 80s.

I remember a boy I knew from Tigers Bay telling me years ago he was heading up to Carrick for the weekend, for the simple reason that so many a the Bay ones had moved up there. And Craigavon when it was built they use to offer 50 pounds to move up to it, just how many prods accepted that I don’t know as its now a fenian hole but it never use to be that way.

Yeah I see what your saying re all the estates and there a natural movement out from the inner city area along the road to the outskirts. I remember drinking in a bar in Dock St (York St) which was Prod, Regent you called it. The bar was later blew up. Some of the guys I knew did move out to Rathcoole as their houses were flattened in so called redevelopement. I remember too there use to be controversy about the Bovea band wanting to walk in Dungiven. This was in the 1950/60s. It struck me then that the same could happen in Belfast,though talking like that in those days people would have thought you were 'wired-up'. Apparently Dungiven(like a lot of places) was Protestant at one time but lost its Protestant population so the offended ones didn't want them there anymore. I thought the same could happen here. There was to much of 'we are the people' in those days. You'd have been thought of a nutcase or worse....a traitor.

Another thing about Prods they don't like facing up to facts and the way the trend is going. The seem to not want to hoping it will go away perhaps or we can't do nothing about it so better to bury the head... a defeatist attitude. Another thing I found they will always say something like ''Oh they don't breed like they use to''. I think that gives them comfort to think and say that. However, I have seen different things in the newspapers and TV over the years which if they are not breeding as they once did they are certainly doing so more than the Prods.

An elderly couple named Quigley from Londonderry were killed in a car crash they had a big family (can't remember how many) and it said they presided over a family circle of 120. A girl from up the Antrim coast had her ill child lifted by helicopter to Scotland (think it was) it said she was 28 and had 7 other children. Likewise in that nationalist estate in Antrim some woman had been getting hassle. She had been in sinn fein but had a fall out with them and blamed this on her home being attacked. She was 29 with 8 of a family. Then there was the guy who played in goals for Burton Albion when they played Man Utd. Name was Deery I think,and he was from Londonderry. It said he was one of a family of 10 brothers and sisters. A couple of more similar news items. Just last week in the BT it told of a woman who was a mother of 19 children, It said she had been married at 17 and had a child nearly every year until she was 42. The only thing was they lived in Moville.

Apparently British Ulster is now in the same situation (population) as the nine county Ulster was when the Unionists decided they wouldn't have the numbers to hold it for to long,and so opted for a six county Ulster. Yet there are those who refuse to see how things are. Think with that sort of attitude we'll get nowhere.

That’s a quote from an article in The Independent dated 11 February 2002.

They are out-breeding us rapidly, people can talk all they like about them not breeding the way they use too, may be true to a certain extent but over all they have a higher birth rate than the Protestant community and more of them are/will be of child bearing age. Plus added into the bonus the amount a mixed relationships now happening throughout Ulster. In my work I know of 5 prods who have children and live with their Roman Catholic partners and that’s only the ones I know about. And out of the 4 Roman Catholics who work on the shop floor, three a them live with their Protestant partners and all know what side their breads buttered on.

Up around the North Coast, taig mixing is a serious issue. In and around the town a Coleraine, there’s at least 2 dozen people involved in so-called militant organisations going with/living with roman Catholics.

Members of our community are slowly but surely letting the future of our country being absorbed into the big green bog, and their that stupid they don’t even realise it.

To mention anything remotely negatively about the future of this Country, your just a bigot, living in the past, a dinosaur, someone who can ‘t see the bigger picture, someone that’s scared of change, a relic of the past.

What ever way people want to ridicule those who love this nation, that is up to them. On a purely personal level I just can’t be arsed with the dickheads who have their heads stuck so far up their own arses it’s unreal, just give them a bloody flute and a street to march up and down on, twice a week for a few months of the year and they will proclaim that Ulster will always be British soil, and it doesn’t matter about the changing demographics of our Country or the cultural greening of our nation.

Re the mixed relationships thing. I think it would be alright if the Protestant was strong enough in their belief and culture and their partner went that way too. Though I'm always inclined to think we are weaker in that respect. I remember a fella asking me years ago to join the ABOD. He told me it was good crack. I declined saying I didn't know enough about it and if I did join would have to believe in it have a feeling for it and what it was about. He came back at me saying about the crack and the beer. I learned later he had met up with a girl a mick and took off to England with her. So I'm guessing there are still those like that in bands etc. But maybe I'm wrong and there are still those strong in their belief and rc's are not as strong and will go the Prod way. Back years ago I did know of a couple of cases where this did happen and the children were brought up Protestants and even where I now live I have hear of the same with the kids being brought up Prods. With all these paedo priests maybe it will become easier for micks to walk away from that 'church' if they are in a relationship with a Prod. Lets hope so. After all Luther did it.

Just a thought about Sandy Row again. I'm sure Gilpins will be getting demolished I'm wondering what will be happening there?

Yeah that the usual thing a bigot living in the past. Its an easy way of getting off a sticky wicket and not facing the facts. The other one which was repeated ad nauseum was ' moving on' 'we have to move on'. Aye right but where to..the edge of a cliff. When I hear them talk like that it come across as an admission that they can do nothing about it,or they are not prepared to fight it. I seen Lord Laird in his contribution to the Union series in the NL say that it is not about fighting for turf but about culture. Seems to me its code for it doesnt matter about Ulster if our culture is recognized within a united Ireland. There seems to be a lot of preparing us for that eventuality. A National Stadium...scrubbed. A National Park scrubbed. Ulster as a nation is not to be encouraged it seems.

It's the same within British nationalism, you get people who become involved in political parties because they are just narrow minded and hate all the immigrants, it's not about love of their people and nation etc. Usually these types of people like some of the super-bigots within loyalism die away completely when they wise up or change their views of a period of time.

That's the major problem within our community and throughout the whole of the U.K. is education on who we are and why we are like we are!