SATURDAY lunchtime at the Kennedy Way/Andersonstown Road junction provided a snapshot of a bustling West Belfast. 

Yougsters, supervised by adults, were collecting donations from drivers parked at the (interminable) traffic lights at Kennedy Way to aid a local youth club project. 

Staff were arriving to open Goodfellas Pizzeria, a staple of the local restaurant scene for four decades.

Cars with Southern number plates were parked outside a bed-and-breakfast in a converted corner house, evidence of the tourism surge which draws busloads to the West. 

Queued at the traffic lights was a 40-footer emblazoned with the branding of the £3.5bn global packaging behemoth Huhtamaki based just seconds away off Kennedy Way. 

Early-rising scarf-sporting fans of Man United headed to the local hostelry for their perennial afternoon disappointment.

In short, a functioning, free and vibrant community trying its best to do good while doing well.

In fact, if you were one of the many American or European visitors who have put Belfast on their tour map, you might even think of stopping a while when you reach the Kennedy Way junction to try out the nearby Temple restaurant or to chill over a pint at the Glenowen. 

Or if you were an executive travelling from the Andor Technologies plant on the Springfield Road towards the M1, or a director of Oxford Economics, patrons of the Innovation Factory at the former Mackie's Site, you just might just think to yourself - "This would be a great place to make an investment."

Better still, you could be someone from the Eastside taking your first trip via the Glider into West Belfast and soaking up the atmosphere of a city at peace.

For all of these visitors, everything witnessed would signal a warm welcome.

Until, that is, they come to a government billboard which, in the stern but authoritative tone once beloved of Northern Ireland Office propagandists, spells out a warning in ominous capital letters set against a dark, foreboding background:

PARAMILITARY GANGS CONTROL OUR COMMUNITIES WITH VIOLENCE, INTIMIDATION AND DRUG DEALING

In best Orwellian style, the statement is made as if coming from the proud community of West Belfast – using "our" to imply this is not the view of the Justice Department, which deploys these pejorative posters, but the view of Seán and Sinéad waiting at that Kennedy Way crossing to take their child to school.

Older readers will find echoes in that billboard boast of the odious comment of former British Secretary of State Douglas Hurd who once branded the people of West Belfast "a terrorist community".

So let's be as firm in our rejection of this government calumny today as we were in facing down Mr Hurd: No matter how often the Justice Department plasters West Belfast with posters saying otherwise, paramilitary gangs do not control our communities.

Paramilitary gangs exist, of course. Indeed, there are criminals in every community in these islands. 

There are also criminals in BT9 making a lot more illegal money, if dressed in a rather different way.

Yet, while BT11 (Andersonstown), BT5 (Short Strand) and BT14 (Ardoyne) all have the dubious pleasure of being insulted in their own backyard by these advertising hoardings, these massive, portentous billboards – surprise, surprise – don't go up on the Malone Road. 

But then, surely you didn't think the people behind this campaign to demonise our community would treat their own neighbours with similar contempt.

So, let me spell it out in capital letters and I’ll put it on a billboard if you like: TAKE THIS ODIOUS POSTER DOWN.