Christmas Single Charity Announcement

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It has been a while since we announced the official charity partner for our Christmas single. Unfortunately circumstances beyond our control mean that we will no longer be raising funds for the Northern Ireland’s Children To Lapland Trust.

We have withheld making this announcement until we were able to secure a new charity partner. We are delighted to be able to announce a charity that we feel incredibly passionate about - SOS Bus NI



SOS Bus NI is a volunteer centred charity that is making a real difference to children, young people and adults on the streets of Belfast. It offers a unique mobile mini bus service that can be located wherever it is needed.  Trained volunteers and medical staff operate from specially designed and equipped vehicles deploying satellite foot and mobile patrols to extended areas of need.  This ensures that professional caring services are delivered to the vulnerable in times of crisis when required.  SOS Bus NI believes in partnerships and works with other voluntary organisations, the emergency services and statutory bodies to create a safer place for everyone.  It is committed to growing and delivering this help wherever it is needed.

SOS Bus NI provide an invaluable service to the homeless, victims of crime, suicidal people, people who have over indulged in alcohol and/or drugs as well as acting as first responders to injured persons.

Having witnessed the incredible work they do first-hand, LAD are delighted introduce SOS Bus NI as our official charity partner and look forward to raising as much money as possible to assist with their fantastic work.


You can find out more about the amazing work SOS Bus NI do on a daily basis at the following links:
http://www.sosbusni.com
https://www.facebook.com/SOSBUSNI
https://twitter.com/sosbusNI
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New to LAD? Where have you been?

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Sunday Life - December 1st 2013

If you have just discovered LAD via the Sunday Life we thought we'd give an update on where we are now and all the places you can keep up to date with LAD:


FACEBOOK


Despite multiple attempts to get rid of us we are back and bigger than ever on Facebook with over 10,000 likes and a 'reach' of over a quarter of a million people. We're like a bad cold that won't go away. Our current page has been active for just over 6 weeks now.

https://www.facebook.com/BELFASTLAD


TUMBLR


We've recently signed up to Tumblr and you can get your LAD fix there too.

http://ladbelfast.tumblr.com/



TWITTER


The LAD Twitter is going from strength to strength with nearly 7,000 followers. We even got tweet of the week on The View!

https://twitter.com/LADFLEG





YOUTUBE


We've just passed the 1,000 subscriber mark on Youtube. If you're not already subscribed make sure you do as we've big things planned!


http://www.youtube.com/SuperLADtube

Coming Soon: The LAD Christmas Song

Our charity Christmas single will be released on Sunday 8th December and will be available for purchase on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and We7. The song is a cover of Wham's Last Christmas and is full of fleggy goodness.
LAD Christmas Single: Last December by Paramilitary Wives - released Sunday 8th December 2013
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What will happen on November 30th?

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Irish News November 26th 2013
Back in August a group known as Loyal Peaceful Protesters submitted an application to the Parades Commission for a parade on September 21st 2013 from Belfast City Hall to Woodvale, setting off at 2.00 p.m.

September 21st 2013 Application
The Parades Commission permitted the parade but stipulated that it should leave Belfast City Hall no later than 12.30 p.m. and be clear of Royal Avenue by 1.00 p.m.

Parades Commission determination on September 21st 2013 parade
In the event the organisers decided to ignore the Parades Commission determination and actually left the City Hall at approx 1.30 p.m. and made it's way down North Street shortly before 2.00 p.m. 

UTV News report on September 21st 2013 Parade

In the lead up to the parade rumours began circulating on Facebook that a deal had been done with the PSNI to facilitate the original parade time that had been applied for.

We did not believe these rumours and the PSNI were very visible on the day itself in telling those involved that the parade was 'unlawful'.

September 21st 2013 PSNI Warnings

We published a blog to this effect on September 23rd 2013.

TURNS OUT WE WERE WRONG - kind of

We contacted the PSNI regarding the allegations of  'secret deals' and received this reply:

PSNI reply to LAD query on late start time of September 21st 2013 parade

So while the late start time was indeed unlawful, the PSNI had informed the organisers they would not attempt to prevent a later start time, intent on minimising the likelihood of "harm, injury and disorder."

Which is fair enough.

This weekend the same organisers have applied for another "civil rights" parade in Belfast City Centre on Saturday November 30th - one of the busiest pre-Christmas shopping days and incredibly important for local traders.

November 30th 2013 application

Yet again the Parades Commission have placed certain restrictions on the parade, stating that it must leave Belfast City Hall by 12 noon and be clear of Royal Avenue by 12.30 p.m.

Parades Commission determination on November 30th 2013 parade
However, once again it seems that the organisers are sticking by their original plans and encouraging people to attend as originally planned. 

Ignoring the Parades Commission
In addition to Facebook posts, flyers have also been distributed in parts of Belfast today - again emphasising the original start time.


All of this begs a few important questions:
  1. If the PSNI can overturn Parades Commission decisions for 'operational' reasons - what exactly is the function of the Parades Commission?
  2. Has another deal been struck to facilitate a later start time this coming Saturday November 30th?
  3. What the fuck is going on?
Happy Christmas Belfast 

Update:

Looks like Wee Jamie is plugging the unlawful start time as well.

Wee Jamie Bryson plugging unlawful start time on his Facebook page









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Guest post: An Anus Horeebliss

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GUEST POST

This post was originally published here and used with kind permission


December 3rd 2013 signals the first anniversary of the restrictions placed on the flying of the Union flag at Belfast City Hall, a decision so incredibly benign that the overblown reaction to it could only spring from a place as barking mad as Northern Ireland.

Anti-Alliance leaflets distributed by UUP/DUP - the spark that lit the flame?

It was all the fault of the Alliance Party - apparently
In the time since that day, it is hard to imagine ‘Ulster’ loyalism damaging itself any more than it already has. Over the course of 12 months, a community already bereft of leadership and direction has been reduced to the role of noisy toddler; red-faced, incomprehensibly angry and completely unrepentant. A tantrum of epic proportions, played out all year, has served to leave loyalists, once again, on the outside looking in. Winter in that caravan will be cold. Very cold.

Unable to articulate an argument about why the ‘fleg’ restrictions were so heinous, loyalists simply ignored all the obvious points in their column. That Sinn Féin had been defeated in its mission to remove this symbol of British influence on the island was irrelevant apparently. So too was the fact that Belfast was now on a par with cities as solidly British as Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield. Even Buckingham Palace manages to survive without the flag rippling from its roof every day, a fact conveniently ignored by those throwing their toys from the pram.

No, instead rank and file loyalists went off half-cocked, as they often do. Fuelled by misinformation and manipulated by nefarious elements within their own communities, they placed faith not in reason, nor mastery of the facts, but in gut instinct and predictable levels of fevered paranoia. 

In the eyes of many, these new flag provisions represented a further step forward, not to Irish unification - something most loyalists never tire of dismissing - but towards the shared future most of us truly desire.

It is a future which those hurling rocks at the police certainly do not wish to be part of.

Castlereagh Road, Belfast
It didn’t matter that Sinn Féin’s true goal had been thwarted. They still scored political points from the subsequent loyalist meltdown, brought on by the horrifying suspicion that the taigs had got one over on them. To see any restriction on this totem of dominance in the country’s largest city was simply too much to bear.

By July, loyalism’s perpetual cycle of protesting and not surrendering was slowing, as it always does. In refusing the Orange Order (along with its paramilitary bands and swaggering followers) permission to return to Ligoniel via the Crumlin Road and the lower Ardoyne, the Parades Commission gave Loyalism 2013 a new self-pitying drum to beat.

The resulting mob violence (‘peaceful protesting’ if one wishes to be euphemistic) and predictably petulant reaction to a situation which was, at its very core, a compromise, couldn’t have have dealt more of a blow to the loyalist cause. Loyalism frequently gives off about the republican advantage in the image war and while Sinn Féin does possess skill in this regard, it is aided in no small part by its opponents being so monumentally bad at the game.

July 12th, Belfast "peaceful" protest
The farce of the Twaddell ‘civil rights’ camp is too silly to fully address but needless to say it has failed to strike a chord with anyone beyond the usual narrow collection of sympathisers. As to the cornucopia of wider, mostly imagined, loyalist political grievances the silence from the broader unionist community has been deafening. Support from those across the Irish sea - government, monarch, the man in the street - has been just as conspicuous by its absence.

Twaddell "Civil Rights" Camp
On a more human level, yet another generation of disaffected working-class Protestant youths now exists. Unemployable thanks to criminal records earned in the heat of yet another nothing-else-to-do ‘peaceful protest’, they believe more than ever that the whole system is rigged against them and in favour of the other side. It is these people who will swell the ranks of the paramilitaries orchestrating the disorder.

A cynic might suggest that this was the point all along…

Unionism does possess reasonable voices but as a whole they have been outflanked and suffocated by the ravenous extremism of those who have gained prominence since December 2012. In this vacuum, a veritable circus now holds court, if not sway. Willie Frazer has always been a pathetic figure more than anything else, a cartoon character never fully in step with the joke. He has, nevertheless, gained a second wind during the period in question, though the none of us, Willie included, have any idea of his endgame.

Wee Willie Frazer - he's not well you know
Fellow traveller Jamie Bryson - Ulster’s very own Walter Mitty - possesses far more sinister motivations, summed up best by Brian Spencer. Given Bryson’s almost comical regard for the UVF (a designated terrorist group in the UK) one shudders to think of his ideal alternative to the institutions he wishes, naively, to do away with. Those in the relative mainstream of local politics continue to cede ground to Northern Ireland’s idiot fringe and Spencer’s assertion that feeding the fanatics is far from conducive to progress is a sound one.

Jamie Bryson - The 'saviour' of Ulster?
For all the noise emanating from the Bryson end of the loyalist maw, it remains to be seen just how influential, or wide-reaching, this kind of rhetoric really is. While the established sectarianism of our electoral process is maddening on the one hand, it also equates to a shrunken voting base for each side of the toxic divide. The unionist electorate has rejected the various iterations of far-right loyalism before, tacking closer to the middle than anything else. To most in the unionist-Protestant community self-promoting whingers like Frazer, Bryson et al are an embarrassment, plain and simple, and people to whom they will be ever unresponsive.

In all honesty, it is not the wider unionist community with which loyalism need be concerned. A fissure has always existed between the two sections of the broadly Protestant populace and there is little common ground to excite either. As is clear to anyone willing to see it, moderate, middle-class unionism continues to prosper as much as it can in the current economic climate. If anything, it is the corrosive, flailing influence of madcap extremism that unionism must be wary of going forward. That said, when has this ever not been the case?

Bad puns aside, it is up to the loyalist community to arrest their slide into irrelevance if they are not at that point already. There may well come a time when they no longer count and when nobody else cares.

While usurping her law and order, and the democratic processes she has always promoted, grassroots loyalists remain blindly devoted to the Queen - or at least some sepia-tinged version of her. It is perhaps apt then to describe the past year as an ‘annus horribilis' for loyalism. Discounting the chaos that engulfed Northern Ireland for 30 years, it is difficult to see how things could have been worse.

(Originally published here and used with kind permission)
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LAD's Christmas Charity Song

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***** UPDATE ******

 Thanks to everyone who got in touch, we've had an overwhelming response. We're not looking for any extra contributors, but if you think you can make something REALLY special for the video and do it REALLY quickly then send a PM to our Facebook page.

 ********************

WANT TO BE PART OF SOMETHING BIG?

LAD exists because of you. You are LAD and you have helped it grow into something that we never dreamt possible. We’re soon to celebrate our first birthday and with your continued support have massive things planned for our second year.

As you may know we’re releasing a charity single soon and LAD want you to be a part of it. We already have the track recorded but we need some footage for use in the video. If you want to be a part of LAD’s bid for the UK charts then here’s a rough idea of what we’re after:

  • We need people aged 18+ only
  • You need to have the facility to record HD footage (can be mobile phone, webcam, video camera or whatever, so long as footage is at least 720p HD quality)
  • You have to be able to send the footage to us digitally (by email, Dropbox, Yousendit, or by whatever means you can)
  • You don’t need to be able to sing, we’ll not be using the audio from submitted videos
  • We will only require a few seconds of footage from you

Please share this post to help LAD out!

We Are The People Now
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