Shankill Road 2014? What our children is living amongst. Strolling down the Shankill I decided to have a look at the new houses in Larnark Way etc. Whilst doing this it dawned on me how different both sides of the road are. On the left, looking towards the Springfield Road are lovely, if not long awaited for, houses. On the right a waist ground that has lay like this for years. Having the S.A.S.H camera with me I decided to take a few photos of both sides of the coin, so to speak, & to say I was shocked, is really an understatement. This understatement then lead me to have a look at other places as I made my way down home, & although I will go in to these at another time, I think it only right to draw attention to the site I first seen. On entering this site, where local children can get in through any number of entrances, you first see the piles of rubble, next is the solid patch of what looks like oil or some other chemical spill, then the remnants of fires, broken bottles & rubbish, the odd settee, lumps & bags of fibre class & what looks to be Asbestos Tiles, which as everyone knows, can lead to Asbestosis, a life taking lung decease, that can sometimes not be detected for decades. By which case you probably will not know from were it came. This sight is a mess, it has been here since the greedy building boom, when people bought up as much property as they could to sell on, & then got caught out when the bottom fell out of the trade. Thus our children left to play in a hazardous sight with the potential to kill, all because those greedy enough to buy it at the start cannot accept the price now offered because it is less than they paid. Those that own sights like these should be made to fence them off completely, accept the going rate, or have them taken from them after a certain amount of time. How will they be held account for an illness that will only come to light many years ahead? These sites should be, if the finances are not there, be grassed over & made into sitting areas for the community, by those that own them. Not left as death sites for our children. Then there is the tourism, what tourism you rightly ask, where buses drive by, drive by being the buzz words here, as the tourists do not leave the buses anywhere on the Shankill Road, & who, in my opinion, through no fault of their own, are ignorant to the surroundings, yet wave to you as you photograph the filth our children are left to play in, as if we should be impressed or happy to see them, rather than being happy to see these dumps cleared up, & then have them stop & actually learn about St Patrick, the oldest Church in Belfast, & the history around our graveyard & the Shankill Road itself. However more about Tourism & Other Dump Sites at a later date, the main concern in this article is the state of this Larnark Way site, The Meadow. So lets hope this little article, & photographs, being talked about or even shared about Facebook & beyond, can embarrass some of those within Politics to help clear this, & other sites, that carry potential life threatening materials, or can lead to serious injuries, to us & our children. To be told that we are in the middle of a credit crunch & therefore are all suffering, just isnt good enough any more & the people within the Shankill Area should not accept it as an excuse, & deserve better. Shankill Area Social History. S.A.S.H
Posted on: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 15:57:50 +0000
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