Twitter is a useful safety valve. I’ve been enjoying some reactions to a bizarre performance last night on Channel 4 News by a beefy chap in a balaclava – whose identity was protected by a weird voice-over, more Scottish than Irish. He claimed to speak for the New IRA, the few hundred supporting the most recent manifestation of those criminals of the violent-republican persuasion who fight for what they call Irish freedom. They do so by the traditional methods perfected by the Provisional IRA: murdering, mutilating, torturing, intimidating, administering community discipline by kneecapping and beating – all of which they blame on the Brits.
I mention the beefiness, because one response to Alex Thomson’s interview last night on Channel 4 News with this stoutish citizen claiming to speak for an “army…committed to armed struggle for political and social change in Ireland,” was a post by an ex-member of the SAS of a photo of a New IRA parade led by fat blokes in berets and sunglasses which he unkindly described as:
“Elite Active Service Unit of PIE IRA, have conducted many missions to thwart other people getting pies and pasties and sausage rolls from Greggs.”
This spawned happy tasteless tweets about the need of these “moobilisers” for a hunger strike.
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