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IRA : BACK IN ACTION
Former IRA men hoping to get back in action following the republicans' withdrawal from the peace process last week are angrily lobbying the two governments to put pressure on the IMCD to tell them where their weapons were buried. "My armalite was warranted, I oiled it regularly," cried an anguished Mitsubishi McGee, co-founder of Find Our Guns (FOG) in an interview with Pure Derry. "Now, I'm left with nothing to defend myself with in my own home."
"Not to mention I've no way of attacking others which was also a big bonus."
It is understood that members of the IRA leadership, together with the International Monitoring Commission for Decommissioning (IMCD) filled in all of their stock-piled weapons bunkers with cement at the start of December 2004. Many were given no answer as to where their weapons had been buried, just a chilling assurance that the deed had been done. "I just want closure," said McGee, clutching his rifle-cosy, still warm and all oily.
Much of the burials were carried out during some of the worst ravages of the peace process when little or no care was given to any weapons in Northern Ireland, explained Sparkplug Devenney, FOG Chairman. "For a while it was tit-for-tat. One group would call ceasefire, then everyone followed suit, then one group would give up some weapons then others would too. We all watched with horror as things escalated in a terrifying spiral of wellbeing and good will. Do we honestly want to go back to that?"
According to Chief Superintendent Wesley Simpson of the PSNI all that “good will” appeared to have come to an end when, "some members of the IRA, having committed themselves to peace without violence considered it no longer as attractive as peace with violence, or war as it is also known".
The IRA appeared to confirm such doubts by issuing 46 inflammatory statements in 8 hours last weekend. The 32nd statement, a children's 60 piece jigsaw of Padraig Pearse declared, "We're getting our weapons back, even if we have to hire in to do it". Former MI5 spy and IRA expert Kevin Fulton said, “I can categorically state that this is a major setback for the Republican movement. Having filled in the holes with cement, they will now have to sub-contract the job of digging up the weapons to crews of Dungiven men and this will considerably eat into their coffers. Many will remember when the IRA hired 400 men to build one conservatory in Martin McGuinness' back garden. That was 20 years ago and they've still not finished the glass panelling”. Added Fulton, however, "They have installed plants and a sprinkler system just this week, but the bill for the job has risen to £4 million from an original quote of £850".
Spellcheck Hegarty, auditor of FOG, confirmed that Dungiven contractors “bog the arm in”. He said, “When it comes to digging up beaches where the IRA have left stuff before these contractors have a tendency to dig everywhere but the right place. That said, it doesn’t help when they don’t know where they are supposed to be looking. It will be interesting to see if the IRA can remember where they buried their weapons. After all they told us that they were terribly forgetful and that it wasn't always easy to remember where they had buried things. Maybe it will be different when they come to look for their guns”...
In other news…
The Coast Guard in Donegal, last night intercepted an illegal haul of pneumatic drills, JCB diggers, pick axes and shovels at the mouth of Killybegs harbor. The haul, estimated to be valued at around £26 million, is thought to have been on its way to Northern Ireland. No one was arrested however, and so Garda officers remain mystified as to who orchestrated the operation.
COURT REPORTS
A round up of court appearances in the Derry area from our our crime journalist, Eavesdrop Harkin.
A 19 year old man from Derry was convicted on Thursday of repeated loitering in Cool Discs over a period of 6 months. The offender was described as routinely entering the store pretending to browse - occasionally picking cds/records up, humming approvingly and scratching chin - but never intending to buy. His counsel said that he was merely trying to appear cool while waiting for lifts outside the Bus depot. He is up in court again next week for allegedly making frequent trips into the Central Library merely for the toilets.
Further loitering charges were lodged against a rag tag bunch of self proclaimed 'misfits' witnessed several times over the past year outside Iceland, typically in skater gear. All were found guilty and in summing up the judge sentenced the pretentious teens to 5 years of mandatory 'wising up' effective immediately. Should the defendants be adjudged to be suitably wise after 6 months they will receive a slighter 2 year sentence of 'catching themselves on'.
To great excitement the IRA was arrested last week after foolishly signing his name on a wall in Waterloo Place. The IRA was revealed to be John McLaughlin, 15 of Culmore, who pleaded guilty to the grafitti charges but denied that he was in fact the renowned illegal terrorist organisation. The judge did not accept his claims and duly sentenced him to more than 200,000 years in prison for a plethora of deaths, bombings, beatings and robberies over the last 40 years. Sinn Fein have declined to make a statement on the matter.
THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS
Commons Speaker Martin Michael has invoked the Parliament Act meaning foxes will be legally allowed to carry guns and plead 'self-defence' by January 2005.
Mr Michael told MPs: "I am satisfied that this move is entirely legal. It seems only fair that if the foxes can be hunted by a load of chinless, inbred yahoos with roughly the same IQ as them, they should be allowed to fight back."
As well as foxes, deers and hares will now be legally entitled to defend themselves in England and Wales.
Earlier Conservative shadow environment minister Graham James condemned the proposals as a "rank bad bill", which would be impossible to police. 'A lot of these foxes are just bad apples - they'll be using these guns to take out even MORE of my pheasants in the run up to Shooting season. It's just bally not cricket!'
Michael Alun, the rural affairs minister was quoted as saying that ministers had 'Acted like turkey's voting for Christmas. Some of these foxes are crack shots!'
Using the Parliament Act in such circumstances was "unprecedented", he argued.
Mr James said passing the law with no delay would send a hidden message to the countryside: "a message which reads 'Cry havoc and let loose the foxes of war'. "
But RSPCA director of animal welfare, Roland Johnson, said the bill was a "watershed in the development of a more equable society for people and animals. A cull of these upper class twits has been needed for years.".
The Tory leader in the Upper House, Lord Aberystwyth, said the law threatened the "lives of thousands" and "drew a knife across centuries of tradition in our countryside but will not lead to a single animal being spared a violent death." He then donned a bandanna 'Rocky' style, blacked up his face and crawled off through the undergrowth with a bowie knife between his false teeth.
EDUCATIONAL ANNOUCEMENT
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