Sinn Finn MLA Francie Brolley critical of Tri Colour on town light polls

[Evil Genius]

Sinn Fein are launching a campaign next week for people to phone the DHSS if anyone knows of DLA cars being used inappropriately as apparently a lot of taxis are actually DLA cars.

Christ Almighty on a (DLA) Bike...

First you burn the buses, then you kneecap the locals, who are forced to use the taxis which you own, which are driven by your old comrades, who get the Government to pay for the vehicles on account of "Disability"...

http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/where-dole-kings-own-city-streets-122008.html?service=Print

Where Dole Kings own city streets
By Jim Cusack
Sunday February 11 2007

IF YOU visit Belfast on public transport and then decide to travel into the Catholic areas in the west of the city, the most commonly used system is the black hackneycab service of the West Belfast Taxi Association. It hasan underground depot in Castle Street, just off thecity centre, in which queues of dozens of taxis are filled and sent off to suburbs like Twinbrook, Ballymu
IF YOU visit Belfast on public transport and then decide to travel into the Catholic areas in the west of the city, the most commonly used system is the black hackneycab service of the West Belfast Taxi Association. It hasan underground depot in Castle Street, just off thecity centre, in which queues of dozens of taxis are filled and sent off to suburbs like Twinbrook, Ballymurphy and Andersonstown.

While the Association is an independent body, it is linked in many people's minds to republicanism. Many of its drivers are ex-prisoners. Its vehicles figured prominently in republican demonstrations over the years.

The black taxi service is a unique transport system which evolved during the campaign of burning public service buses in riots. The regular disruption of public transport meant that the black hacks, as they are called, effectively replaced the public bus service - which now, with the advent of the peace process and the end of the rioting - runs alongside the shuttle service operated by the taxis.

It is the first manifestation of how an organisation with republican links has, gradually and almost totally, taken control of a public service.

Sinn Fein, and its supporters according to people who live here, have established a grip on West Belfast - and some other parts of the North including the west bank of Derry city - in a way that some suggest is verging on a control culture.

The area has a weekly newspaper, The Andersonstown News, set up in the Seventies as a small community news sheet before it was taken over by former a local Sinn Fein councillor, Mairtin O Muilleor, and is evidently pro-Sinn Fein. It was behind the even more obviously Sinn Fein-supporting Daily Ireland which collapsed last September, after about 18 months of publication.

The Andersonstown News also publishes a small circulation daily Irish newspaper La which is subsidised by Foras na Gaeilge, the cross-Border body set up to promote the Irish language. A considerable number of ex-IRA prisoners and Sinn Fein members fill the publicly-funded positions in language bodies in West Belfast.

Like the promotion of Gaelic, other forms of cultural life are also associated with, if not controlled by, Sinn Fein. The annual West Belfast Feile is a Sinn Fein creation, established in the late Nineties by Catriona Ruane, the party's candidate in South Down and by Siobhan O'Hanlon, Gerry Adams's secretary, who died last April.

The week-long Feile has been the centre of controversy in the North mainly because of public funding for an event that is seen as being controlled by a political party.

Sinn Fein is also closely associated with the foundation of Belfast's St Patrick's Day parade which formerly only took place along the Falls Road but, since the establishment of the ceasefire, has moved into the city centre. The first parade saw marchers, many carrying tricolours, led by a phalanx of black taxis.

Private taxi firms abound in Republican areas throughout the city, several associated with republicans. Among the services some independent outfits provide are also cheap, smuggled cigarettes and alcohol. Belfast may be the only place in Europe where you can buy a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka in a taxi depot. The illicit cigarettes and tobacco are evidence of a flourishing black market which has thrived in an area where normal policing has been absent - due to the IRA's campaign - for over three decades. The market is controlled, according to local people, by former IRA men who have established little fiefdoms in the area, several also running their own pubs.A large proportion of the private cab drivers are double jobbing, claiming social welfare benefit and, commonly, long-term disability illness. West Belfast has the highest level of long-term disability claims in the UK.Getting declared as having a long-term disability entitles UK citizens to what is, effectively, a free car under the British government-funded Motability Scheme.

A number of the republican private taxi firms actually are locally known as 'DLA taxis' after the Disability Living Allowance that has provided the drivers with their cars. The issue was highlighted three years ago by BBC Northern Ireland in a programme which featured footage of the then West Belfast Sinn Fein Assembly member and obviously able-bodied Alex Maskey arriving at Stormont in a Motability car.

Sinn Fein ran a campaign of "helping" people with disability and welfare claims, operating from their several "advice centres". As a result, local figures - who will speak only on grounds of anonymity about these issues - say West Belfast has developed a dependency culture. Those who maximise their benefits and enjoy very comfortable lifestyles are known locally as Dole Kings or Queens.

ABUSE of the Motability Scheme was one of the most common dole frauds identified by government agencies and the PSNI in 2001 in a report on paramilitary racketeering issued by the House of Commons. According to Motability itself, a very high percentage of Motability cars damaged or destroyed in the UK, are in West Belfast. It has long been suspected that when owners use the cars as taxis - clocking up mileage way above the permitted levels - they simply hand them over to teenage joyriders who race them around parts of the city before wrecking them and setting them on fire. They then claim a new car. Although the area has high unemployment, there are an unusually high number of new medium-priced cars on the roads.

Joyriding is another aspect of life in West Belfast. Most of the fatal pedestrian accidents there are caused by stolen cars driven by teenagers. Roads like the Monagh Bypass that runs westwards up towards the Black Mountain are often avoided by local people at night because it is a favourite spot for the joyriders. According to the PSNI, a quarter of all cars stolen in Northern Ireland end up in West Belfast.

West Belfast has a very youthful population which is immediately visible, as an estimated 60 per cent of school leavers in the area are unemployed and spend their days hanging around in groups. It is also common to see young men in wheelchairs or walking with crutches as hundreds have been kneecapped by the IRA - a practice which has almost, but not quite, ended as some dissident republican groups have now taken up that habit.

The lack of opportunities and facilities for young people is a contributory factor in West Belfast's high level of teenage suicide. Suicide rates in West Belfast are the highest in Northern Ireland, with 19 per 100,000 of population compared a regional average of 13 per 100,000.

Although many of those who have killed themselves over the past decade had suffered punishment beatings or shootings at the hands of the IRA, Sinn Fein has jumped on the issue and Gerry Adams has called on the British Government to introduce studies and strategies to deal withthe issue.

Despite the North's thriving economy, there are relatively few job prospects for young people in West Belfast. One local businessman told the Sunday Independent that despite the IRA's claim to be inactive, it is still extorting money from businesses which it does not control. At least one building firm, from outside the area, was forced to pull out of a development in West Belfast in recent months because of extortion claims from men who were clearly identified as IRA. He also said that it was also increasingly noticeable that many figures associated with Sinn Fein and the IRA had become wealthy in recent years - many owning holiday homes. Referring to an area of private houses on the outskirts of West Belfast where many Sinn Fein families had moved, he said: "There is a flood out of there every summer. They usually come back for the Feile week though," he added.

One sector that has boomed in Gerry Adams's constituency is the publicly-funded "voluntary sector". As one non-Sinn Fein figure involved in the sector put it: "The word 'community' is synonymous with Sinn Fein here. They may not be the front people but, make no mistake about it, they control nearly every voluntary group in this area. It's jobs for the boys."

- Jim Cusack

[magickingdom]

I agree with him too. I have no respect for the flag but if I did I would not like to see it like this.

why zapa?

[carribbear]

Francie Brolly is bang out of order on this matter. Just because he thinks he is right doesnt mean he actually has the will of the people he represents. He'll get a very rude awakening in the next election if he keeps up this pandering to unionist agendas.

Say it quietly but you'll be seeing a lot of SDLP transfers around Dungiven if SF are not careful. The Kevin Lynch memorial is the republican celebration in the town and I don't think youre going to see a dillution of that viewpoint any time soon no matter what the SF top brass think.

[Son_of_Sam]

I drove from Sligo to Belfast and then Belfast to Dublin last Sunday and came across at least fifty Union Jacks flying from Council poles and lamp posts. More so, there were loads of church's flying the flag.   I couldn't believe that  Local Authorities allow their property to be used in this manner. I was astounded that Churches bought into this carry on. Maybe I'm being naive as it was my first trip up at this time of year?

Typical Sligo