Am Ghobsmacht Campaign

MOTION TO DO AWAY WITH GRAMMAR!

Since the 12^th Century when the English language was brutally and selfishly imposed on an unsuspecting Irish and Norse-Gaelic population by a small band of French speaking gangsters and their Flemish speaking colonial lackeys, the Irish people have had to suffer the indignity of basic grammar.

Am Ghobsmacht and her sister republican fortnightly publications have decided to take a stand against this instrument of British subjugation and disregard the rules of grammar altogether. 

Leading this charge of freedom will be none other than the literary martyrs that are the editors of those publications.

In a commendable two-fingered salute to the system, the editor of An Phobhlacht opened with a thinly veiled broadside whilst discussing the new IRA & MI5 movie ‘Shadow Dancer’:

“ANY FILM financed by BBC Films and the British Film Council (with a few bob from the Irish Film Board) is unlikely to be a box office production that portrays the IRA of recent decades fairly, particularly up against Britain’s own Security Service, MI5.”

Nice one.

The reader, while naively following the rules of grammar and punctuation expects to follow the paragraph for at least another sentence due to the opening word of the sentence ‘any’ as opposed to ‘A’.  This tool of British control is quite rightly ignored and suddenly the sentence ends and catches the reader.

Off guard.

A Shin Pain spokesman congratulated such a defiant manoeuvre from the journalist add added “...this is a just and rightful step in the direction of disengagement from the suffocating use of English grammar, abbreviation, diction and worst of all – punctuation...”

The spokesperson refused to comment on the discovery of a corpse of an exclamation mark in a Co Louth bog or the brutal beating of a pair of inverted commas in a West Belfast alleyway at the weekend, saying that it would not be ‘helpful’ at this stage.

ORANGEMAN THINKS RESIDENTS “MAY HAVE A POINT”

The peaceful passing-off of Saturday’s Ulster Covenant Centenary parade was almost over shadowed when a young member of a County Tyrone Orange Lodge was overheard saying that maybe nationalists and Catholics ‘have a point’ by not wanting thousands of Protestants and Loyalists marching past Catholic churches.

The young Orangeman at the centre of the controversy, Mr Tommy McVeigh, later told Am Ghobsmacht “...well, you see, in my local FE college, I always get wile annoyed when there’s cubs running around wearing them GAA tops cos they know Protestants don’t play GAA cos it’s on a Sunday and I’m always thinking ‘they’re doin that out of pure badness so they are’.

That got me thinking, that if they’re runnin around bein all offensive and it’s not nice, then, what with what they tell ye at Sunday School about being a good neighbour and all that then maybe we should’n be doin the same orwise we’ll be just as bad as them lot.

I’m pretty sure they don’t like the Ulster Flag ye see cos the UVF kilt so many of them and then paraded around wi an Ulster flag and I saw a documentary on the telly about Coca Cola and advertising and how they use a Pavlova response to associate their product with feeling good and refreshed and I was saying to our Richard that maybe there is some sort a similar thing goin on with the Ulster flag and shooting Catholics, a wee bit like every time I see a tri-colour I think of Provos murdering and bombing all over the place so maybe we should tick it easy when we go past a chapel or something as they really might not like it after all”.

The young man was ushered away by family and friends before word of the outburst spread.

His Aunt, Fiona Cuthbert, later excused the young man’s statement: “Ach, he’s a young impressionable cub and he’s been reading all the wrong lefty stuff at that FE college so he has.       

    I mind when cubs went there just to learn to be a joiner or a mechanic or a brickie and now you have all sorts of madness in the library, plus he’s been wile busy with the harvest so I imagine the cub is tired is all...”

A leading organiser of the event expressed his delight that such leftfield notions had by and large been ignored by the crowd as they celebrated the historical event which is seen by many as a watermark victory in the battle against common sense, fairness and compromise.

Loyalists: Offensive? 

ARITHMETIC STILL A PROBLEM FOR ORANGEMEN

Am Ghobsmacht has observed in the letters section of the Belfawst Newsletter ('Spare a thought for loyalists from ‘lost’ counties') that basic counting, arithmetic and maths is beyond the grasp of many everyday loyalists and unionists.

The letter in question laments the fact that so many Protestants were left behind in the border counties of Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan.

Mr Crowe seems to hint that it was wrong to exclude these counties from the newly formed Northern state amazingly oblivious to the fact that for every Protestant in these counties there were around 9 Catholics.

Am Ghobsmacht ironically agrees with Mr Crowe that these counties should have joined the Northern Statelet as Nationalists would now be in the clear majority and would use their democratic right to vote Northern Ireland out of the union.

Rory McIlroy Poll

What way should McIlroy Swing?