THE Belfast Telegraph on Monday brought us the shocking news that the Craigyhill bonfire is controlled by a UDA loan shark who’s made a fortune from cleaning windows.

Indeed, so lucrative is the business, according to the Tele, that the senior loyalist turns up to monitor the progress of the boney in a £150,000 McLaren supercar. ’Parntly the lean, mean, Windowlene machine has a personalised number plate which reads ‘N0 5EA 80RDER’. And in a further revelation, it turns out that the near-10,000 pallets that made up the Larne structure were bought with UDA funds. It falls to Squinter to point out that the pallets that were allegedly bought were the cheap, single-use unpainted ones; the heavy blue ones that do the donkey work on the boney are expensive reusable pallets that are not for sale. (Does that mean stolen? Ed?) This year’s pallet purchase was just 20k shy of the cost of the McLaren supercar. Which seems such a waste.

The UDA guy, reports the Tele, likes to describe his boney as a “community event” and a “fun day for all”, but in an outbreak of bonfire clarity, the paper reports that the walls adjacent to the bonfire are “filled with UDA and UFF murals”. Which is to say that while Catholics aren’t specifically banned from joining the bonfire family fun in the same way they’re banned from joining the Orange Order, if any bead-rattlers do turn up to watch the spectacle it’s likely that they’ll be going home in a wheelie bin.

So kudos to the Tele for getting to the truth of the Craigyhill boney. And kudos to management at the paper  for the comprehensive clarification they’ll be printing later this week, a copy of which has been leaked to Squinter...

IT has been brought to our attention that some of our readers may have mistaken some of our coverage in the past month as suggesting that we think the UDA-run Craigyhill bonfire is A Good Thing.

In particular, it is alleged that we have expressed support for the bonfire in a series of articles, including:

• ‘Bouncy castle joy as tots frolic in shadow of Craigyhill bonfire’.
• ‘Ice-cream and jelly on the menu as Craigyhill bonfire climbs to the sky’.
• ‘Craigyhill bonfire wood smoke cured my sick son, says Larne mum’.
• ‘Who needs the Guinness Book of Records experts? Craigyhill bonfire is biggest and best, says pallet pro and supercar chauffeur Stewarty.
• ‘Craigyhill skydiver donates sponsorship money to guide dogs for a blind kids’ orphanage’.

While we did point out that children were indeed playing on a bouncy castle in the shadow of the bonfire and that face-painters were being kept busy doing union jacks on toddlers’ faces, we had not at that time been fully apprised as to the source of the funtime funding.

Now that it has been brought to our attention that the man behind the bonfire is a senior figure in a murderous, sectarian drug-dealing cartel, we will no longer be running reports on leisure activities adjacent to the Craigyhill bonfire. Mostly because the bonfire’s been burnt, but also because it’s the right thing to do.

As for next year, we will take an editorial decision on coverage of the Craigyhill bonfire based on consultations with stakeholders, including the police, Fire Service, Ambulance Service and the Chest, Asthma and Lung UK charity.

Further, it has been suggested that we in some way encouraged Craigyhill bonfire builders to build the bonfire higher than the Fire Service suggested in its statement headlined: ‘Jesus Christ, lads, who’s in charge of that death trap?’ In retrospect, our use of the words, ‘super soaraway’, ‘heavenly heights’, ‘sky’s the limit’ and ‘cloudbuster loyal’ may well have been seen as somehow approving of the bonfire, when in fact we had put tough questions about health, safety and legality to the bonfire builders which, for reasons of space and clicks, we were unable to publish.

We were careful to publish the warning issued by the Public Health Authority on the day the bonfire was lit as part of our commitment to responsibility in relation to towering piles of combustible material and we’re happy to do so again as it tallies exactly with our thoughts on the protection of life and property. “We would appeal to Craigyhill revellers standing underneath the 200-foot, 1,000-ton pile of unsecured, unregulated and unlicensed wood, foam and tyres to drink responsibly.”