Yeah, I have heard of this night wear thing. None of this of course excuses what happened but for a 19 year old to be out at 5.30am seems odd to me. Then again, I live in the country and all I am likely to see at that time is a cow or sheep.

Paul

Yeah, but relaxing at 5.30am? I dunno.

The fact is this city has huge problems. I'd like to spring to defence and say, well so have outlying towns, arent old age pensioners just as vulnerable in outlying towns and since I live in Belfast and DV doesn't does that give him no rights and me every right to criticise?

I read a blog post about a NY cab, where a cab driver had someone undo his zipper and put his private parts in his cab window simply due to a traffic jam. A different form of road rage? Since its on the internet, can not everyone comment on it, or only N. Yorkers?

Your defence of wb, 'well Icome from that part of the city' - is supposed to make you an authority on crime in the city? I don't mean that to read rude, but no one has a monopoly on that, everybody has a say, if not why go on the internet.

I read a post by eamonn mallie when he went to visit a death house of a police officer. He introduced himself as Eamonn and got called seamus, and when he corrected the guy the reply was, 'same difference'. those attitudes need challenging. We ALL need to challenge them, I know I'm the biggest offender of them at times, but I read nothing in DV's original post to suggest that this was a dig at WB, or republicans or anybody in that part of the city. I think we can all take it as a given, that this occours on all sides and in all areas. Even in S Belfast, we had two polish brothers dead, chinese woman murdered not so long back, and attacks on romanians, are there only certain people who can comment on these or can we all comment?

I read the same report and assumed that the poor kid lived locally, was relaxing at home and nipped down to the local all night garage or shop for cigs etc.

Regarding my highlighting of this post, I think that my concerns were adequately outlined in my 5.38.

"Global Warming is by no means evidence of Man Made Global Warming"

True, sort of (actually the existence of warming is evidence for the theory that predicts it most strongly) - but then nobody said it was the only evidence.

Besides many of the 'skeptics' deny even that.

Maybe it wasn't yours Paul, but I saw some pretty nasty comments on that thread that were simply man playing. (At least four were removed.) One comment said 'someone introduce vance to sex', and another about mind melding, I couldn't figure it out, but it was certainly sick. The fact is, anyone should be able to comment on any sort of behaviour be it rape, or burning stuff without the person being told they are a bigot.

I think your poking of DV on this issue is wrong. Why can't he comment on West Belfast if he choses, or Dublin gangs, or anything else without the whataboutery, its because whataboutery is so much a part of us, anything someone from the other camp says has to be an attack, not a comment but an attack. Ergo in comes the defence.

Its time to grow up guys.

It wasn't my intention to portray you as a bigot, if that was how it came across I apologise. I merely wanted to demonstrate that this behavior is not restricted to that part of the city.

Now, on the issue of disrespect of people and property: Rape in East Belfast, car jacking in West Belfast and serious assault in Derry last night. How are these behaviors combatted?

That's not how it works. You have to prove that your source is correct, not prove a source is wrong. I could say Thomas Jefferson said "Ban all guns!" and would it be an acceptable source until you prove that he never, in his entire life, said it?

The source wasn't from Thomas Jefferson, but from the Thomas Jefferson Papers! A collection of papers written by and to Thomas Jefferson. It is unknown as to whether or not Jefferson wrote any of the statements you actually said. Some lunatic could have just sent him a letter. There are over 80,000 papers in the collection and Jefferson didn't even write the majority of them.