Rat of the Year

DON'T BOTHER TO SEND US YOUR NOMINATIONS FOR LURGAN'S KING RAT. WE'VE FOUND HIM OURSELVES. FARMER, LANDLORD AND RENT-COLLECT: OR CHARLIE HAYES, BALLYMACATEER, LURGAN, SCION OF THE HORSEY-PLAYBOY HAYES CORNER SET. THE PLOUGHBOY-PLAYBOYS. STAND UP AND TAKE A BOW, CHARLIE, RAT OF THE YEAR.

Mrs. Elizabeth Carville (85-years | old) is an old age pensioner. She has lived in the same house at 31. | Wesley Place, Lurgan, for the past 55 years. She has looked after a middle-aged relative invalid since birth, and is now old and sick herself.

But that didn't protect her landlord ! Charlie Hayes serving an eviction threat on her on October 1st 1970.

Why? For non-payment of rent over the past nine weeks. She counts out £3 per month into the sweaty grasping hands of Charlie Hayes for a pokey little Ed\,ardian terrace house that town planning should have legislated out of existence years ago.

Early in August Mrs. Carville decided she'd had enough. The water supply to her house stopped completely. No water for anything, not for drinking, for cooking or for washing. She told her landlord Charlie Hayes. Nothing happened. She reported the stoppage to the Sanitary Authorities in Lurgan.

Twice! Nothing happened. So without redress, without attention, without water she desperately gestured for help. She quit paying her rent.

Mrs. Carville is perfectly willing to pay Christian Charlie his £3 per month. Even the rent for the past nine waterless weeks. She's prepared to forget the incovenience caused by having to carry home buckets of water supplied by friendly neighbours during that time. She just wants a normal existence. She wants the water supply restored.

And when that happens Charlie is welcome to his blood money. When he fixes it up, she will pay up.

Landlord Charlie, however, doesn't care about Mrs. Carville.

Or the fact that he is threatening her and her invalid dependent with the wet streets of winter. At Eighty-five years of age! Landlord t Charlie doesn't care that Mrs. Car| ville has paid enough rent for the ; house during her past 55 years to | buy it ten times over. Landlord } Charlie wants more and more and : more and more and more and more.

And he doesn't give a damn about the sick old woman who is Mrs.

Carville. Landlord Charlie may not care. But we do. As Charlie ; would do well to remember on evict' ion day.

information Two weeks ago we were the only paper to print the inside story that recently Sir Ian Freeland and Sir Arthur Young had actually come to blows in the G.O.C.'s office in Lisburn. Two days after hearing this we learnt that they both had resigned much earlier than had originally been intended. Their row, regular readers will recall, had been over whether or not 5,000 troops should be withdrawn and the R.U.C. rearmed. Freeland favoured and advocated the idea, Young was dead against it. On the night we publish ed this little item a special courier was sent from Lisburn to Belfast to get a copy of the Free Citizen. The army's copy doesn't normally arrive until Friday morning. Subsequently investigators are now frantically investigating the 'leak' in their security. Heads, we hear, may roll. We would like to help the investigators by revealing our source, but this, of course, would be against all journalistic ethics. Besides they wouldn't believe us if we told them. Ceasar's wife is above suspicion! Still it's nice to know that top people read the Citizen,