https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16215957/Jeffrey-Donaldson-confident-conned-jury-believed-walk-free-reveal-new-life-planned-wife-Eleanor-Africa.html

Paywall-free: https://archive.ph/srw1R

JILLY BEATTIE

Published: 22:38 BST, 16 October 2026

Nineteen kilometres from Jeffrey Donaldson’s prison cell, down a quiet hedge-lined road, a For Sale sign stands outside a tidy country house.

It was home to Jeffrey and Eleanor Donaldson for 22 years. It was his haven, the place he could retreat from his lies, where he welcomed guests and friends from the church, politics and business under the well-worn cloak of respectability. The place where his 40-year con could carry on unquestioned.

The house is now on the market, possibly to help pay legal bills. But just months after he was charged with child sex abuse crimes including rape, Donaldson had already decided to sell up as soon as the case was over. He would leave Northern Ireland for good, and he intended to take Eleanor with him.

The predator politician believed he could con a jury the way he had conned friends, the church, parties and constituencies, and the country.

So with the help of trusting friends, he created a way out: a fresh start in North Africa, amongst contacts he had made through his political career.

One said: ‘I just couldn’t believe he was guilty. I’d trusted him in business and in friendship and during the two years before he went to trial I met him at his house regularly. I believed every word and I helped him, supported him and prayed with him. He convinced me that he would be found not guilty but that life in Northern Ireland would be over for him. He needed to start afresh and he was excited about it. I helped him secure a very lucrative job and he was in discussion about the possibility of others in North Africa. Friends there offered him a hand of friendship and support.

‘The plan was to leave Newry court, enjoy a holiday, get the house ready for market, sell up and head overseas to his new CEO job. I never doubted him for a moment. I felt sorry for him. And I, like others, offered him help where I could. He had a choice of luxury apartments waiting and he was planning a life in the sun when the ordeal was over, far away from the accusations and the doubt they would tarnish him with.’

He never got there.

Unknown to Donaldson and his small entourage, his downfall was already under way, and it had begun with a baby: tiny, helpless, with no sense of the world, but nonetheless the power to change it.

Her arrival became a reckoning, a moment that set something unseen in motion: a question in her mother’s heart, a devastating realisation that what she had thought was attention, had in fact been abuse, and a box prised open that could never be closed. What followed in time, and with great courage, was eventually and cautiously a meeting with police. Then a report and backing from the North’s Public Prosecution Service. Then a trial. A verdict and sentencing. A maelstrom that would sweep away Donaldson’s knighthood, his party, his reputation and, finally, his freedom.

And all of it followed from the first cry of that little baby.

Her mother had been abused by Jeffrey Donaldson when she was a little girl. Decades later she would become known in court as Complainant A, and now, after his conviction, as Victim A. Her personal statement, released to the media on October 15, revealed the horrors she had hidden from for many years.

She revealed that as she looked at her child, she had felt something rise in her that would not be put back down: a fierce, overwhelming need to keep this little one safe. She said: ‘I remember thinking how much I wanted to protect her and how I just felt this overwhelming sense that I had to keep her safe.’

And then came the question that would, in the end, bring down Jeffrey Donaldson. ‘Why was I not kept safe?’

Once she had asked it, she could not stop asking the questions. ‘I couldn’t box them away any more. I couldn’t ignore them.’

This baby gave her mother the strength to do what a knighthood, a seat at Westminster, the Privy Council and the leadership of a political party had kept buried for decades. She gave her the strength to tell the truth.

Over decades, Jeffrey Donaldson had preyed on little girls.

Decades later, it was another little girl who unwittingly set his victims free to put him behind bars. At Donaldson’s sentencing hearing at Newry Crown Court on Thursday, October 15, he sat in the dock motionless. Appearing in court for the third time since he was convicted, he wore a blue suit, white shirt and €250 pink and blue Hermes tie. His face remained passive.

To his left sat his victims, in court in person as they had been for the hearing on September 25, flanked by the police and members of the PPS who had supported and driven the case to a unanimous verdict on all 18 charges of child sex abuse.

The women remained unnamed, protected in law by anonymity and by the letters applied to them in court: Complainant A and Complainant B, now Victim A and Victim B. During the trial, they had been two faces on a screen above a judge, two voices carried into court on a video link. Two women whose names the law forbids anyone to print.

On Thursday, after their abuser was jailed for 15 years, they refused to be letters any longer. ‘I’m not just Complainant A or Complainant B,’ one of them said. ‘I’m a person.’

‘We’ve been known as A and B,’ said the other, ‘but we’re real people with real lives.’

In personal statements released after the sentencing hearing, they revealed their strength and vulnerability, their determination, and their wish to keep Donaldson as far away from them as possible now that the truth has been exposed.

What they said, in stark, unflinching and at times almost unbearable detail, had never been heard before. Those who followed the court reports and broadcasts may have thought they understood what he had done to them. They did not come close. Now the women have explained.

Victim B was seven or eight when it began and in secondary school when it finally ended. She explained how she has spent the rest of her life living with what was done to her. ‘It’s affected every relationship, every possible relationship, every situation,’ she said. She walks into rooms and reads them for danger. Could somebody move towards her? Could a situation turn? Even nights out, even boyfriends. All of it has been filtered through the question of what might go wrong.

‘So then you just block yourself up from life,’ she said. ‘It’s like you’re living your life looking through a window, because you can never fully get involved or connect to it.’ In June she told the court that as a damaged little girl who played with a yellow toy truck, she had told an imaginary friend what was happening, because there was no one real to tell and she did not have the words.

Now, as a grown woman, she has explained exactly what that silence felt like.

I didn’t read newspapers when I was seven or eight years old to know what was happening. You’re going from colouring in to that, and there’s no context. You don’t even know the word context back then. You just know that there’s something horribly wrong that makes you want to just be sick every day.’

She knew it was wrong ‘on so many levels’. But given her abuser’s prestige in the community, she did not know who to go to.

And so today her message, more than anything, is for the children it is happening to right now. She wants them given the words she never had: a way to tell, perhaps even a code word, something that will trigger action, protection.

‘We have rallies across the world about so many things. When have we ever had a rally to say that this was wrong?’

Victim A was also seven or eight when Donaldson turned his attention to her. The abuse went on until she was 13 or 14, again from primary school into secondary school.

She said: ‘You’re very easily controlled and manipulated and I think that was a thing that’s played out for most of my life.’

As a child, she said, she wanted to trust the adults she came into contact with, to believe that the decisions they made for her were right and that she was safe. But when Donaldson was in the same vicinity, she was not safe. And she has spent her adult life struggling to trust anyone.

When at one point she found the courage to confide in someone, she was left devastated. ‘I felt I wasn’t believed and if I was believed, I was made to feel that it wasn’t worth taking action over.’

She internalised that.

‘I wasn’t worth protecting. I wasn’t worth caring about. And that’s something I have struggled with for a really long time, feeling that I’m not worth protecting.’

Into adulthood she carried it with her. ‘At times I felt very low self-worth, believing that I’m not worthy of love, that my voice is not important.’

For so long, she said, she was told she would never be believed ‘because of who he was.’ So she survived the only way she knew. She remained quiet. She put everything into a box in her mind, closed it, and put on a brave front. She threw herself into work, family, friendships. For almost 20 years that box stayed shut. She doubted herself so much that she wondered if she had imagined it, or dreamt it.

Then she found love: a man to talk to, a confidante and friend, her champion, support and a faithful protector. And she started opening up.

But in the end it was their baby girl, and the question she could not stop asking as she held her, that prised that box right open and let the truth out.

The other thing that drove her, she said, was her faith. She believed she had a responsibility to shine a light on the darkness, to expose the secrets, ‘to finally shine a light into that dark corner’.

Hers was the kind of faith that demanded the truth be told. Donaldson’s was a badge, a trinket on his lapel, a passport to power and politics, a hollow promise.

Telling the police, she said, was like opening that box and suddenly feeling everything she had hidden for two decades. It was agonising. But it brought a profound relief: the truth was no longer hers alone to carry.

Then came the onslaught that neither woman could have prepared for. The arrest of a former DUP leader was the biggest story in the country. Everyone had a theory, an opinion, and the two women at the centre of it had to sit and listen.

Victim A revealed she had been in a hairdresser’s when everyone around her was talking about the case. She had been in a coffee shop with her husband and children when the people at the next table began discussing it.

Victim B had heard it at work. Every time something came on the radio or another article appeared, she heard strangers talking about the details as if they had lived through every moment of pain and distress, as if they knew the people involved.

‘That is my life that you’re talking about,’ she said. ‘People know more about me than the closest people in my life.’

And neither woman could say a word.

‘You never know who’s listening,’ said Victim A. ‘Friends, neighbours, colleagues at work. There are victims everywhere.’

Victim B said she sought anonymity for one reason above all: ‘I never wanted my name to be associated with him for the rest of my life.’

Despite Donaldson’s repeated denials, the jury heard the truth, and Judge Paul Ramsey was clear about where the blame for the victims’ trauma in court lies. The hurtful allegations they faced in court, that they were lying or mistaken, were, he said, entirely the doing of the defendant.

In sentencing Donaldson this week, Judge Ramsey was efficient, direct, clear and without hesitation. He said Donaldson had been brought to justice only through the courage, resourcefulness and determination of two young women.

And he described a breach of trust ‘of the gravest kind,’ and a prolonged campaign of sexual abuse against young children across two sustained periods. He found that the rape of Victim B, when she was nine or ten and Donaldson was 25 or 26, was not a spontaneous act but involved a degree of preparation. He said the abuse of Victim A had been committed in a brazen fashion.

Culpability, he said, was high. Harm was high. Risk of reoffending was medium. Donaldson’s lawyers had argued that his lack of previous relevant convictions should count in his favour. The judge rejected that outright. A clean record, he said, is a neutral factor, not mitigation.

Then he turned to the denial.

Donaldson had denied the offences to police. He denied them in the witness box. He denied them to the probation officer who prepared his pre-sentence report, and told her he intends to appeal.

Judge Ramsey said: ‘He has doubled down in his denials. There has not been and doubtless will not be one word of regret, apology or shame from this man to at least provide his victims with some crumb of comfort.’

Inside the courtroom, the atmosphere felt like a vacuum, the air being sucked out, emotions in turmoil in the public gallery, journalists making notes, trying not to look at the victims, the barristers staring straight at the judge and then

Donaldson on his feet, hands clasped, motionless. Judge Ramsey addressed him directly: ‘Jeffrey Mark Donaldson, you are now 63 years of age, it is well known that you in the course of your political career have reached the very heights of public office and this is on any view a catastrophic descent into disgrace. You have persistently denied these offences and continue to do so but you have been found guilty by a jury and it is now my duty to sentence you for these crimes.’

For the offences against Victim B, one count of rape and nine of indecent assault, he imposed 11 years. For the offences against Victim A, four of indecent assault and four of gross indecency, he imposed four years, to run consecutively.

‘The important factor is to arrive at a global figure that properly reflects your offending.’

Fifteen years in total.

Judge Ramsey continued:’I believe that this sentence reflects the culpability of the accused and the harm that he has caused and is commensurate with the gravity of the case as a whole.’

Fifteen years sounds like a long time. But it is not what he will serve.

Including the 116 days he has already spent on remand, the former DUP leader will serve seven and a half years before his release, which is automatic. Because all of his crimes were committed before April 2009, previous rules apply, and under them, prisoners receive automatic 50 per cent remission.

Unless he loses remission for breaking prison rules, Jeffrey Donaldson could walk out of HMP Maghaberry days before Christmas 2033.

He will be 71.

No parole board will decide whether he is safe to release. No panel will ask him to accept what he did. Maintaining his innocence is not a breach of prison rules, so it cannot cost him a single day.

His continued denial has not gone entirely unanswered. Judge Ramsey refused to impose a custody probation order, citing his medium risk of reoffending and his continued denial. When he is released he will be on licence, liable to recall. He will be on the Sex Offenders Register for life. A Sexual Offences Prevention Order will follow him for ten years after his release. But the one thing both women hoped for, they feel he will never give them.

‘There was always some hope in this process that that would change,’ said Victim A. ‘And I never gave up hope. But I have accepted that he continues to deny what he has done. That’s not stopping me. It’s not stopping my voice.’

Victim B had a direct message for Donaldson: ‘You have to just accept that what you did was wrong.’

But in the end, for Victim A at least, this week was about something bigger than Jeffrey Donaldson and his predatory lies and abuse. It was about liberty, it was and life and living.

‘Today with this sentencing, I feel hope that there is a life ahead for my family and I outside of this,’ she said. ‘That this will not dictate our lives any more. There’s a freedom with that.’

So happy with how this turned out! Especially after I seen it printed, for anyone who is into Celtic mythology you may recognize her

As noticed in this post the other day, there were covered signs on the section of motorway out of Belfast between M3/York Street and J1 Fortwilliam.

These have since been uncovered to reveal a new 50mph speed limit.

With the Stormont Executive effectively insolvent, this week Finance Minister John O’Dowd addressed a room full of public sector finance professionals.

The Sinn Féin minister’s speech to the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy gave the sense that the Executive’s financial woes are the fault of miserly British Governments not giving it even more cash.

I was then asked to speak about Stormont’s finances and what follows is a condensed version of what I said.

I am not an economist. But you don’t need to have any training in economics to see what’s going on with Stormont’s finances. It’s blindingly obvious.

Stormont is very lucky that more people in senior positions in London aren’t paying close attention to its behaviour.

We’re now more than halfway through the financial year and there is no budget, yet there’s not the slightest sense of panic: All is calm, all is well; we’ve been here before and we’ll be here again.

Stormont has become the land of no consequences for those who preside over debacle after debacle.

This is not a government in the sense that a political scientist would understand. To be a government is to govern. It’s to take decisions. 

The most basic of those decisions is to decide how much money should be raised, and how much should be spent. This Executive is refusing to make that most basic choice.

Sinn Féin then has the audacity to criticise Westminster for considering doing the job Stormont has refused to do.

As Stormont’s biggest party, and having chosen the two key economic portfolios, its stance here is more significant than that of any other party.

Last week, Mr O’Dowd said it “would be a huge misstep by the British Government” to set the budget and would involve “huge interference in devolved institutions of the Good Friday Agreement”.

If we’d had a bit more “huge interference” that might mean a government which could do the basics of governing.

There is a particular absurdity to criticising Westminster for potentially setting a budget that would contain hundreds of millions of pounds more than in the budget proposed by Mr O’Dowd at the start of this year. How could it be fine for him to suggest that budget, but outrageous for Westminster to pass a far more generous one?

Mr O’Dowd might say: If we’d taken your advice and not held out for more money, we’d be £1.5bn short of where we are now.  This is true, and it exemplifies how the Treasury talks tough while acting weak.

However, while that is a criticism of the Treasury, it doesn’t vindicate Stormont. This is about trading a short-term win — yet more cash — for credible government.

The Executive already has vast sums. The best government in the world isn’t the richest; it’s the one that uses its resources most effectively.

The fact that health gets more money here than in England, but is performing far worse, exposes the simplistic idea that lots of spending equates to better outcomes. How public servants work and what they deliver is far more important.

When Rafael Bengoa delivered his seminal report on health reform a decade ago this month, 226,000 people were waiting for outpatient treatment; that figure has more than doubled to 527,000. Back then, about 100,000 people were waiting for diagnostic tests; that figure has also more than doubled.

Shamefully, many of these people are waiting in agony. When referred for urgent cancer treatment, 95pc of patients should begin treatment within two months. A decade ago, 67pc did so; now just 28pc do.

The refusal to reform health has contributed to the financial crisis as more and more cash squeezed out of London is used to prop up a system which everyone from Michelle O’Neill to Arlene Foster accepted 10 years ago was unsustainable. Perversely, the extra Treasury money is prolonging a system that is hurting people.

Take another area: In the civil service, there are 1,627 more staff than in 2019; agency workers have more than doubled to almost 5,000. There have been huge pay hikes for civil service boss Jayne Brady without any appraisal of whether her performance merited more money — and just 32 civil servants were last year told their work was unsatisfactory.

It ought to be an embarrassment to our Executive that it has failed so spectacularly in managing its finances. But the Finance Minister doesn’t seem awkward when he talks about this.

Let me say that John O’Dowd is by far the most capable Sinn Féin minister. He’s a highly skilled politician. He’s exceptionally experienced. He takes his role seriously.

He’s also one of a diminishing band of MLAs who can stand up and articulately argue his case for hours without notes. We need more politicians who can think for themselves.

This is a problem which is systemic. It doesn’t begin or end with the current Finance Minister. He is merely the incumbent who happens to be holding the unfortunate parcel when the music has stopped. Others have been there before him, and others will likely be here again. He is implementing what is essentially agreed Executive policy.

But it’s clear that this policy is absurd. The emperor has no clothes. The Stormont Executive is strutting around buck naked and far too many people who not only ought to know this — but who do know this — are massaging ministers’ egos rather than starkly stating the obvious.

Where are the ministerial directions over the financial crisis? Where are the senior civil servants saying: “Sorry, minister, I will not do this unless you order me to do so, and take the consequences”? It’s October and there hasn’t been a single ministerial direction this year.

Yet despite Stormont’s desperate attempts to buy the love of voters, the public holds it in contempt. 

That’s a constant vulnerability — not just politically, as we’re seeing now around Drumcree — but in having any certainty as to the money available for each public service.

When I criticise Stormont’s fiscal approach, the Executive parties respond with two arguments.

The first is simple: The Brits won’t send us enough cash. In Stormont’s world, there is almost no problem that cannot be blamed on London — and that involves unionists as well as nationalists.

Last year, Stormont got through £32bn — which is more in real terms than at any point in history other than amid the Covid pandemic. 

The Department for Infrastructure, which Sinn Féin says is a victim of “British austerity”, has seen its budget soar from £791m to £1.4bn in this period.

Independent analysis shows we are funded by Westminster to our level of need. And if we want to raise more money, we can do so.

But that would conflict with the second argument advanced by ministers: We will not tax hard-pressed families.

Fine. Don’t tax hard-pressed families. How about millionaires? How about people who live in multi-million-pound houses and drive flash cars? Or how about cutting wasteful spending?

Stormont had barely returned when it ruled out serious revenue-raising. Mr O’Dowd said family budgets were at “breaking point”.

Many people are demonstrably nowhere near “breaking point”. Does no one in Stormont ever go to the Merchant Hotel? Or to golf courses? Or look at the expensive wine lists? Or see the luxury holidays being bought? Or look at the cars around them on the roads?

There is a perfectly reasonable right-wing argument to say the rich or the middle classes shouldn’t pay more tax. I’m not advocating that they should pay more. But there is no argument whatsoever to claim that these people don’t exist. It is a political choice taken in Stormont not to raise more money from these people — that’s not the fault of anyone in London.

The Executive has consciously chosen to retain the indefensible system whereby the poorest homeowners subsidise the rates bills of the wealthiest. A supposedly left-wing finance minister has decided it is right that those struggling to heat their homes should help pay the rates bills of those literally living in castles.

That’s a legitimate policy choice, but it’s not forced on us by anyone in London.

At the heart of this is a moral hazard which is getting worse: In simple terms, breaking the rules seems to work for Stormont.

From the perspective of the Executive, why should they set a budget next year when, rather than be punished, they would likely be rewarded? Why should they do so the following year, or the year after that?

The key culprit in this regard is the Treasury. In February, it gave Stormont £400m from the national reserve after the Executive overspent on last year’s budget. 

According to Treasury doctrine, the reserve is only for “genuinely unforeseen, unaffordable and unavoidable pressures”. No one believes Stormont’s situation was in any way either unforeseen or unavoidable.

When devolution was restored in 2024, the Treasury agreed a £3.3bn “financial package”, effectively rewarding failure.

We know that some of those now defending the Executive’s financial choices once said something very different.

WhatsApp messages published by the Covid Inquiry show that, in Jan 2020, Emma Little-Pengelly said sarcastically of Sinn Féin’s stance: “Well, why not — let English taxpayers subsidise our free prescriptions, lower rates, no water charges, lower tuition fees and free prescriptions… but hey, how dare you guys starve us of funding?”

I believe the reason the Executive parties haven’t pushed for new taxes — which could be raised through the rates system or water charges or through new laws to tax almost anything other than income — is not only because that would be unpopular, but because they know it would invite scrutiny of how much money Stormont is getting, and how little is being delivered for that huge investment.

The state of our sewage infrastructure is now critical. It is far worse than most people realise. There is a moment of real collapse on its way and ministers know this, but they are refusing to either introduce water charges for those who could pay, or find the money from some other source.

You are not politicians. As officials, you might wonder about the relevance of this to you. You can’t decide on many of these questions. But many of you have a role in what ultimately becomes advice to ministers — poring over the numbers, finding areas where they don’t add up, and giving early warning of what you can see coming towards us.

Rather than starting from scratch each year to decide whether its spending is necessary, most of our public sector operates on the basis that if something was in the budget this year, then it’s automatically marked down to be spent next year. This leads to perverse outcomes where once certain spending is in the system it is assumed to be essential.

A responsible Executive would be undertaking a drastic review of public spending which could involve zero-based budgeting where they start with a blank sheet and every significant expenditure has to be justified.

If it can’t be justified, it isn’t spent and the money goes somewhere where it can do more public good. Doing so periodically would help weed out wastefulness, yet there’s no appetite for this.

We need a societal shift in how we think about Stormont spending. Indefensible financial behaviour has become accepted and acceptable.

Politics is too important to simply be left to the politicians. If we believe that we all have a role in society, then each of us in our different positions has a responsibility to recognise that this isn’t working; it’s not making the lives of the public better.

Lough Neagh is a sickening scandal. People are needlessly dying because our health system cannot treat them as it should. Our universities are laying off staff. Our roads are as cratered as the surface of the moon.

We are already facing the early consequences of Stormont’s fiscal chaos. At some point, however far off, those consequences will become gargantuan and will harm ever more people. That’s why this matters.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/london-shouldnt-give-stormont-any-more-money-extra-cash-has-been-perversely-making-things-worse/a/163148024.html

A Stormont assembly member has said “peaceful protest is a fundamental right” after being interviewed by police investigating alleged criminal offences relating to the Drumcree parading dispute in Portadown.

People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll said he was exercising his “right to free expression and peaceful assembly” by joining protests on the Garvaghy Road earlier this month and denies any criminal offending.

First Minister Michelle O’Neill and a number of Sinn Féin MLAs have received letters from the police regarding their attendance at the same protest.

The nearly two-week stand-off came after a Parades Commission decision to allow an Orange Order parade to complete its traditional route from Drumcree Church down the Garvaghy Road for the first time in almost 30 years.

The parade was ultimately unable to take place because of significant numbers of protesters on the Garvaghy Road, leading Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Chris Bryant to overturn the commission’s decision.

Chief Constable Jon Boutcher previously made it clear there would be “consequences” for those found to have broken the law.

Speaking outside Musgrave police station after an interview lasting more than 90 minutes, Mr Carroll told reporters: “I was obviously on the Garvaghy Road openly as an elected representative, with residents, standing with them.

“A notice of their protest was given and referenced in open court, and the legal position changed repeatedly overnight.

“Everyone on the road acted peacefully and there was no evidence of violence. I was exercising my right to free expression and peaceful assembly.

“For nearly three decades the Garvaghy Road residents have said no to a sectarian march being forced past their homes, 4,000 residents signed a petition against it.

“And when a community asks for support, that’s exactly what when an elected representative should turn up.

“Peaceful protest is a fundamental right. Every gain working class people have made, from the the suffragettes to civil rights to the right to strike, was done by people willing to defy unjust laws.

“Millions of pounds have been wasted on policing Drumcree, hours were wasted here today, and now more goes on pursuing peaceful protesters.”

He added: “I make no apology for standing with the Garvaghy Road residents, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

“Twenty-one people died in the violence around this parade, I’m proud to stand with a community that refuses to go back to these days.”

Mr Carroll’s solicitor, Jack Murphy of Phoenix Law, said the west Belfast MLA had attended the interview voluntarily and he denies any criminal offending.

“He’s proudly standing with the people of the Garvaghy Road and he continues to do so, and in our contention, that proposition that standing with those people is a criminal offence is quite simply absurd,” he said.

Mr Carroll said they had presented a “robust and strong case” and any charges would be reviewed by the Public Prosecution Service.

Mr Murphy added: “The PSNI said their investigation is ongoing.

“We asked them to give us clarity in relation to what’s going to happen next – they don’t know.

“It’s quite clear that the PSNI are still confused in relation to this, their own investigation.”

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/stormont-mla-gerry-carroll-interviewed-by-police-over-garvaghy-road-protest/a/163199294.html

I like motorbikes, machines, engineering (im a CNC machinist for work lol), i like folk, metal, rock and emo music.
Just finding life a bit lonely atm, not a cry for help just want a genuine conversation with people with similar interests or just wants to talk, seems really difficult to find new people to talk to in conventional ways, I don’t go to pubs or the likes so doesn’t leave me with much in ways to talk to people, I'll talk to anyone 18+, if you wanna DM me or comment or anything it would be appreciated.
I don’t care what age or gender you are just be 18+ lol

Man arrested over Belfast arson attacks | Belfast Telegraph

A man has been arrested following a number of arson attacks in Belfast.

Police received a report at 4.55am on Saturday of a male lighting fires behind commercial premises in the Woodstock Road area.

A spokesperson said: “Officers attended the scene, along with colleagues from the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service, who extinguished the fire.

“Thankfully, there were no injuries reported.

“A 33-year-old man – who has been linked to a number of similar arsons in the area in recent days – was subsequently arrested on suspicion of arson endangering life with intent.

“He remains in police custody at this time.”

The PSNI has asked anyone with information to contact them.

The new electric double decker buses used on Metro services have two doors but I rarely see alighting passengers use them. When are they supposed to be used?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm87z3x1evn3o

A Northern Ireland university spent £800,000 on a planned indoor sports dome in Londonderry before the project was scrapped.

Plans for Ulster University's (UU) multimillion pound dome, which was to house multiple sports, including rugby, football and Gaelic games, were first announced in 2024.

But in August UU axed the project saying it was no longer financially viable.

The university, which earlier this year announced it needed to make savings of about £25m and would be making up to 450 staff redundant, has revealed it spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on the dome project before it was axed.

UU said, in response to a Freedom of Information request from BBC Radio Foyle's Mark Patterson Show, that approximately £700,000 had been spent "on project-related activities".

Project management and governance arrangements cost the university a further £100,000, UU said.

Sinead McLaughlin is wearing a red jacket and white top. She has long cbrown hair, and is pictured standing iin a field , with a cityscape behind her.

Image caption,

Sinéad McLaughlin says it is 'regrettable' it too so long to determine the dome was not viable financially

SDLP assembly member Sinéad McLaughlin told BBC Radio Foyle the dome had been announced to "much fanfare" but it had become clear the dome was an "unaffordable project".

"But my problem is that there is legitimate questions about how we reach the position after spending £800,000," she said.

McLaughlin added: "It does seem a lot of money to be spent before they came to the conclusion that it was unviable and financially unsustainable."

The Foyle MLA said it was unfortunate "it took so long to get to that point."

'Dome upkeep unsustainable'

According to the UU figures given to BBC Radio Foyle, the overall costs to build the dome had spiralled from an initial £16.8m to £20.1m at the time the project was scrapped

It further said that as a commercial entity the dome would have cost in excess of £1m in running costs annually.

McLaughlin said with the higher education sector in Northern Ireland in financial crisis there was "is no way that Ulster University could have sustained the upkeep of that dome."

When plans for the indoor sports arena were first announced, the 15,000 square metres (3.7 acres) dome, was described as "game-changing" for Derry.

UU said as well as hosting sport, the dome would also host community and musical events, adding it was "a first-of-its-scale facility for Northern Ireland".

It was being part funded by the international PeacePlus programme - jointly supported by the European Union, the UK government, the Irish government and Stormont - which was to provide €10.86m (£9.16m).

In their Freedom of Information response, UU said its proposed contribution to the dome was to be £8.3m.

At the time the university announced the dome would not go ahead, UU said the decision not to proceed with the project was "an inevitable consequence" of the "lack of a sustainable funding model for higher education" in Northern Ireland.

The Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) told BBC News NI that no PeacePlus funding had been paid.

It said it was working on options on how the funding will be reallocated "and remain committed to delivering impactful projects for communities across the area and throughout Northern Ireland and the border counties of Ireland".

It added it could not give a commitment that any reallocation will be in the north-west.

He banged on for years about Bobby Storys funeral. He's been banging on about Michelle O'Neill for weeks now every single day on his show, yet he refuses to talk about a much bigger story in Jeffrey Donaldson. For months his line was 'No no no we can't talk about that as there's a live case ongoing' - fair enough but since his conviction he refuses to let the public call in and give their opinion. He has grilled absolutly NOBODY in the DUP about who knew what in terms of his hidden life in London, drinking, gay saunas.

His complete and obvious avoidance of the Jeffrey subject really is just plain weird to me. I can help but think he has a hidden life himself.

Hi

Where do you get your dog Xmas jumpers for large dogs?

UTV Life is the biggest waste of time and i'm betting most of yous turn this shit over every time it comes on. Seems to only be there to keep this lady in a job and i'm sure some under 40s might have a better perspective on culture, local events, arts and entertainment in the North. At the very least, should this job not be given to some aspiring journalists?

anyway rant aside, is there any other examples of local programmes that shouldn't be there or at the very least shouldnt be presented or led by who they are currently. Nolan doesn't count.

Right people, my kids and I are looking opinions on where in the belfast / greater belfast area makes excellent waffles.

My youngest wants me to make it clear we do not mean potato waffles.

Were we eating?!

Hi, I'm looking for things to do in the portadown/lurgan area. Been having issues with mates and was thinking of picking up a hobby or doing something to meet new people. Is there any social groups about the area or even things to go and do by myself?

Daughter (R Driver) reckons she has just been caught speeding, 39mph in 30mph. Anyone know if there would be an option to take the course in this situation or if it will automatically be 3 penalty points?

Thanks folks - appreciate the responses, just wasn’t sure if they differentiated based on her R Driver status.

Heard an oil tanker caught fire, hope everyone is ok.

Thoughts?