Christy returns to Belfast to salute H-Block heroes:

THE first time Christy Moore sang ‘Ninety Miles from Dublin’ in West Belfast – his song about the obscenity of the H-Blocks – was in the old Ballymurphy Tenants Association building on the Whiterock Road in the summer of 1980. Tom Cahill had asked Christy to come to the city and play a set. Still not sure of the words, Christy had a piece of paper on which the words were written taped to the microphone.

WHO WILL SPEAK UP FOR LEFT-BEHIND LOYALISTS?

• IN the 2011 census figures and then in the statistics drawn from the 2017 Multiple Deprivation Measure (MDM) areas of Belfast are identified as either Protestant or Catholic depending on the relative size of the respective population in each. As much as this column dislikes identifying people by religious labels, that’s the way it is done in these projects. There are 174 so-called Super Output Areas (SOAs) in the city each with a population on average of just under 2,000 people.