This week the Ulster News was investigating the hardship which has engulfed our society. As a whole, job losses, financial insecurity, the collapse of the housing market and the government stealth tax, quantitative easing has had a dramatic effect on the average household. Beside all of the above, a time bomb is waiting to go off. It relates to Self-Assessed Mortgages. The mortgages were put into place by banks for those who were self-employed and whose income fluctuated. But in the early 2000s those offering mortgages began to encourage people to use this form of mortgage to buy property. This would be ok if you could continue to make the payment scheme. But it allowed people to buy property vastly exceeding their natural income. Those selling the mortgage told buyers not to worry, property was on the up, up and up. There would be no losers. What many did not know was that by taking out these payment plans they were committing fraud – undetectable until financial difficulty came. Like the PPI fraud no banker or financial adviser will face a court over this, just the poor sod whose dream has already became a nightmare. This is the real tragedy that no media outlet will put under scrutiny – why? Although an aspect of this was to be covered in a very cynical way by the Irish News.
This week we had Allison Morris, called Piggy in Belfast’s journalistic circles, due to her uncanny resemblance to the strappy, stroppy Muppet celebrity, Miss Piggy, show her true colours once more. Miss Hypocrisy did her weekly banging of the orange drum; although rumour has it she’d bang anything for a story, so those at Twaddle shouldn’t feel that bad. Piggy had been exposed as a hypocritical bigot who uses her position to expose rioters and online bullies – but not the behaviour of her love interest, who seems to revel in such. Her love interest is quite infamous: for his impersonation of Jack Nicholson in the Shining. And also as someone who threatens people over the internet ad nauseum, without any consequences. But his most nauseating personality trait is his online commentary about children – something that goes on while he is still employed as a so-called cross community worker, focusing on youth.
Piggy moved on to a good auld grunt about someone who had been caught beefing up his mortgage, you know the sort of thing that one hundred thousand people may be guilty of in Northern Ireland. But Piggy and her OC ‘Borin’ Doran’ thought this was headline news and deserved a full page spread. The true nature of the individual’s crime, in Piggy’s eyes, was laid out in the headline “Leading Loyalist Lied About Income to Obtain Mortgage”. The story was purely sectarian in its nature and any real news worthiness was nominal. It most certainly did not deserve full page coverage. The total news value should be placed on how the judge presiding over the case dealt with the matter. He saw it as that serious the defendant was given the punitive sentence of two weeks community service. To understand Piggy’s gripe, put that next to the amount of people who received a similar sentence this week. I am sure there were hundreds. But there was no full page for them, no, maybe a line at most.
The fact that someone lost their home and found themselves in debt should be looked upon with empathy; no one would want to lose their home. As for Piggy, I thought she would have sympathy with someone in those circumstances. It was not that long ago she took to the web to convey the fact that she found herself in penurious times. But her protestation of the hard life as a single mum was soon exposed as a shameful sham. The same week saw her living it up and she had only used the claim while avoiding attending an NUJ appeal, which let’s just say, didn’t go Piggy’s way. At the same time Piggy Morris was finding it so hard to survive on the wage she receives from the Irish News she was enjoying a class hotel and, it seems, the time of her life. In fact, she couldn’t wait to share the fact with her adoring fans, who were by this time somewhat perplexed by the desultory and contradictory ravings coming from Bacon Bake.
All of this brings us to the present and to some findings that Ulster News came across while investigating the currents trends in the debt crisis. It has come to our attention that an individual with the name Allison Morris is currently listed in the current issue of the debtor’s mag, Stubbs Gazette. It states:
Morris Alison, (redacted) Crumlin. County Antrim.
Plaintiff, R. Stanley Laird &Sons Estate Agents
…… ……… £755.00. 2nd , August 2013.
Ulster News tried on a number of occasions to contact Miss Morris concerning the fact that someone with the same name had appeared in the Stubbs Gazette, and had county court judgements against them. Despite contacting her work email address and telephoning the Irish News, Miss Morris was not available and did not respond to our emails. We will leave the reader to draw their own conclusions to this echoing Sound of Silence.
Piggy ended the week by donning her mantle as chief security correspondent. What an entrance she made. Her insight and ground-breaking work sent western intelligence services into a tizzy. Even with the constant monitoring that MI6, MI5, Mossad and the CIA have in place, well it was no match for Piggy’s cohorts. They knew what was really going on. Strafor and Janes were ready to ship out reporters, how could they have over looked the scope of the century: “Hezbollah in South Armagh.”
Almost panic ensued, teapots, coffeepots and telephones clinkered. The housewives dreaded what might be next. Would they be forced to wear the burka at Crossmaglen Market on a Friday? Had Hezbollah forsaken the Bekaa Valley for the hawthorn-lined lanes of South Armagh, Surely not? But it must be true, it was in the Irish News. Locals looked at strangers with suspicion and the thoughts, what would he look like in a turban? There were frantic searches for lorry laden rocket systems, which Piggy promise could take out a helicopter. Northern Ireland had not seen such panic since it found out Jeffrey Donaldson went on weekend retreats to a Disney fan club.
Piggy Morris’s story would have made Stephen Glass blush. Middle Eastern rockets aimed at police helicopters. It was like a bad take on a cheap novel. It was that bad Twitter was awash with those challenging Piggy’s account. One person telling her to “go and look up Wikipedia”. She reacted by saying, “Wikipedia was an unreliable source”. All I can say is on this issue it is a lot more reliable than her or the Irish News. The Irish Independent gave a different account of the said incident and anyone wanting to know the truth should read it. One ATO told the Ulster News Piggy’s claims were ludicrous. These were nothing more than “PIRA mark 12 mortars and the only way that they would have had contact with a helicopter is if the pilot inadvertently landed on it.”
At one time I would have read the Irish News; it covered a lot more than the NIO news sheets that offer the other sources of daily news in Belfast. I did not agree with the editorial content but it offered comprehensive news coverage. This is no longer the case. It has, with the input of Morris and her ilk, become a laughing stock. When a paper ceases to inform, challenge and enlighten its readership it is no longer worth the paper it is written on. This is the case with the Irish News and its further descent in to the surreal world of Piggy Morris and fantasy storytelling. When I read her work I feel like a Smash alien robot. This is a testament to the true state on journalism in Belfast
I would say don’t give up the day job Piggy, but maybe that’s not the best advice. ‘For Mash choose Smash‘.
ULSTER NEWS 