Newspaper article Helpl

[Boolerhead Mel]

I have just been on the Newshound website and read a rather odd article by Jim Cusack. In it he describes people as "Scobes" I have not heard this before. From reading his article I assume that this term would be used to describe someone who is not to bright. Would this be the case and where did it come from??     

[Ping Pong Santa]

A 'scobe' is a word used very often around the Newry area and means someone who is not only tight but always sponging off other people.

Not sure if it is used anywhere else.

Edit: Someone who is a really bad sponger may be reffered to as a 'scobe the globe'.

[muppet]

Are you talking about a scobie? (sometimes spelled scobee)

Wiki

A scobie is a slang word frequently found in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is usually used to describe a beggar, miscreant or undesirable and is often associated with someone who seeks money from others. In Ireland it is common practise to elect scobies to positions of power such as Government while many scobies can be found in Boardrooms throughout Ireland. In June 2009 tens of thousands of scobies will me mobilised nationally engaging in a tradition called canvassing. These scobies will call to most of the residencies in the country. The residents reluctantly engage with the scobies promising a vote or whatever it takes to send the scobies on their way. After the election the scobies usually retreat from public view until the next vote.   

[Minus15]

"Gime one of your icepops"

"Get one yourself you scobe"

[Ping Pong Santa]

"Gime one of your icepops"

"Get one yourself you scobe"

Excellent example of an everyday conversation in Newry with the use of the word scobe.

[Donagh]

I have just been on the Newshound website and read a rather odd article by Jim Cusack. In it he describes people as "Scobes" I have not heard this before. From reading his article I assume that this term would be used to describe someone who is not to bright. Would this be the case and where did it come from??     

It's been used by Ross O'Carroll Kelly for at least the decade. Never heard anyone else use it before then or actually anyone else ever use it but then again I don't mix in D4 rugby circles. Would be quite appropriate that a w**ker with an irony bypass like Jim Cusack would be the one to appropriate it.

Formerly of the Tribune, the RO'CK he can now be found in the Irish Times every Sat:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_O%27Carroll-Kelly

[corn02]

"That scobe stole my pint when I went to the toilet."

"Scobey cnut."

[The Real Laoislad]

f**k ya big scobey Dub

[ONeill]

The last republican

By Jim Cusack
Independent.ie
Sunday April 26 2009

The picture speaks of mid-20th-century rural Ireland: the old-fashioned stove and the turf box beside it; the re-upholstered Cavan chair; even the co-op calendar on the roughcast wall. All's missing is the votive light below the picture of Our Lady. The sitter has put on his good suit to have his picture taken.

Except that the photograph was taken by Dublin freelance photographer Kim Haughton on March 13, 2009.

The subject is Ruairi O Bradaigh, 77, President of Republican Sinn Fein. The picture captures his air of inscrutability. He is a true believer, a holder of the faith, the carrier of the bloody baton of the rebel cause that must be passed from generation to generation so long as the British crown has a foothold on this island. His biographer, Assistant Professor Bob White from Indiana University, in Indianapolis, describes him as the "last Republican".

O Bradaigh has never swerved in his beliefs; younger readers may need Google for the next part of this article. Ruairi believes that the "traitors" — a word used by the Sinn Fein Deputy Chief Minister Martin McGuinness to describe the men who murdered the two soldiers and policeman in the North in March — are all those who have accepted the partition of Ireland since the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. The subsequent Dail, which signed the Treaty, was an illegitimate body, as has been every Dail since, and as is the Stormont Assembly.

In his address to last year's Republican Sinn Fein Ard Fheis, O Bradaigh outlined his position thus: "The present situation in Ireland is essentially the same as that forced on us by the Treaty of Surrender in 1922 and '23: a country divided and weak and under England's influence. We will not accept that Treaty and its Boundary Agreement of 1925, which ceded or handed over the Six Counties to the British Government. Neither will we accept the Stormont Agreement of 1998, which copper-fastened Partition and English rule here, nor the St Andrews Agreement of two years ago.

"Republican Sinn Fein, standing in direct lineal succession to the United Irishmen of 1798, the Young Irelanders of 1848, the Fenians of 1867, the 1916 Rising and the First [All-Ireland] Dail, will not 'just put up with' English rule here. The 1916 Proclamation states: 'In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty'. This generation will not be an exception to that rule . . . We will not 'put up with it'. On the contrary we will assert that right."

Again, that exact same statement was being made in Fifties' and Sixties' Ireland.

O Bradaigh joined the IRA, along with many idealistic young men, in time for its 1956-1962 campaign. He was part of an IRA squad that attacked the RUC barracks at Derrylin, Co Fermanagh, killing Constable John Scally. By coincidence, there were only about 300 IRA members in the North at the time — about the same number of dissident republicans cited by PSNI Chief Constable Orde after the March murders.

The campaign was highly unpopular at the time of the Derrylin murder, but a subsequent event, on New Year's Day 1957, changed that and revived the fortunes of the IRA. It involved a botched raid on the police barracks at Brookeborough, also in Fermanagh. After the Derrylin attack in which the lightly manned station had been overrun, the RUC sent instructors to Fermanagh to train the constabulary in the use of weapons. When the IRA struck Brookeborough station, one of the instructors was asleep in an upstairs bedroom. He had brought a Bren light machine-gun, a fearsome infantry weapon, from Belfast. He had also fought in the Second World War and was a dab hand with the Bren gun. About 30 IRA men were milling about shooting up the station and shops and houses in the little Protestant village. The sergeant had had a couple of drinks earlier but, woken suddenly from his sleep, he moved quickly. He took up position and opened fire on the IRA team, killing Sean South from Limerick and Fergal O'Hanlon from Monaghan. Both were immediate popular republican martyrs, immortalised by ballads and ugly memorial stones. Dominic Behan wrote the beautiful and bittersweet Patriot Game in O'Hanlon's memory and Sean South is commemorated by the ballad, Sean South of Garryowen, to the tune of Roddy McCorley, made popular by the Wolfe Tones.

More than 50,000 people attended their funerals. Many, many boys born in the following years, particularly in Munster, are called Fergal Sean, or Sean Fergal. Indeed, well known broadcaster Fergal Keane of RTE is named in memory of the great fallen heroes. For the IRA, this was the high point of the campaign. It went completely pear shaped after that. Some blew themselves up making bombs. Internment was introduced on both sides of the Border and the campaign fizzled out after the murders of six RUC men and the deaths of eight IRA men, six by their own hand.

Shortly after the Troubles erupted in the North in 1969, O Bradaigh and some others led a split, ostensibly over the issue of 'abstentionism'. In 1970, the IRA was led by left-wingers who were fed up with the old irredentist republicanism, and who wanted to engage in constitutional politics and run Sinn Fein candidates in Dail elections. After the split, the left-wingers moved away from physical force and began the journey from Sinn Fein the Workers' Party to Democratic Left and then into Labour.

O Bradaigh and fellow objector Daithi O Conaill made the journey to Castlebar, Co Mayo. There, they called to the home of General Tom Maguire, a veteran of the War of Independence and, as a member of the Second Dail, regarded by true believers as the sole inheritor of the only legitimate Dail Eireann. There was, actually, one more survivor of Dail II, Gearoid O'Sullivan in Kilkenny, but he would have no truck with the likes of O Bradaigh or O Conaill. General Tom, as he was affectionately known, sanctioned the split and gave the new IRA the title 'Provisional'. The Provos were born. Recruitment began in earnest on both sides of the Border. Unfortunately, since much of the recruitment was done in working-class areas of Belfast and Derry and in south Armagh, many of the new recruits were, basically, scobies, ignorant and sectarian, who launched into a murderous campaign involving killing civilians as well as soldiers and police. It got so bad up North that, in 1975, O Bradaigh and other old-guard IRA leaders in the South called a ceasefire. This was unacceptable to the scobie brigade in the North, headed by young hotheads such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. They broke the ceasefire and the murdering went on. They also, effectively, took over. From that point on, O Bradaigh was marginalised.

After a couple of thousand deaths, Adams, supported by McGuinness, eventually saw that mere violence was not enough and, by the mid-Eighties, began to see that the 'war' must progress on two battlefields, political as well as military. The Provos spokesman at the time, Danny Morrison, now a minor literary figure, coined the great phrase about the Armalite in one hand and the ballot box in the other. The former scobies secured a majority at the 1986 Ard Fheis in Dublin to contest forthcoming Dail elections, breaking the sacrosanct Dail abstentionist rule. O Bradaigh walked out in high dudgeon with a small group of followers.

One of his first tasks after setting up Republican Sinn Fein, followed by the establishment of a military wing, was to revisit the now 94-year-old Tom Maguire in Mayo — Maguire died in 1993, aged 101. Maguire christened the new 'military' organisation the Continuity IRA, the name indicating that it inherited the true continuance of the First Dail.

This is the theory. The practice is less pure in its prosecution. As seen before, to establish a proper military organisation you have to gain a foothold in the traditional Catholic working-class areas of Belfast and Derry. These areas have seen a major sociological transformation in the past two decades, not for the better. Like poor areas of every other Irish city over the same period, they have become riddled with drugs and populated by feckless, aggressive young men. The recruits to O Bradaigh's pure vision of the Continuity are, like the Provos before them, an absolutely frightful bunch of scobies. The CIRA boss in west Belfast, for instance, is a former joyrider and petty thief. His second in command was arrested last year with a gun and a bag of ecstasy tablets.

In Dublin, CIRA people are basically drug dealers. It's the same story with the other dissident groups, the two or three 'Real' IRA groups and the INLA. A large amount of their income comes either directly or indirectly from the drugs trade. If you want a picture of the current generation of foot soldiers of the great republican tradition, think of the rioters in O'Connell Street at the 'Love Ulster' rally in Dublin. There were actually loads of them there, along with the non-political looters and purse snatchers from the north inner city.

However, like the Provos before them, these people evolve. Some aren't scobies. Some are middle-class idealists drawn to the notion of blood sacrifice. And, unfortunately, there are some highly skilled ex-Provos who have just moved over. The recent murders of the two soldiers and policeman show signs of joined-up thinking. Its timing was, from the dissident perspective, perfect, ruining Martin McGuinness's St Patrick's Day trip to the White House. Ireland was in the headlines again for the wrong reasons.

Acquiring almost full marks, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness moved the Provos away from violence towards constitutional politics, though it took a decade. And it was a mistake made by the British and Irish governments during this process that has led to the rebirth of terrorism in the North.

Both Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair bent over backwards to get Gerry and Martin on side. The prime ministers assented to their demand to get rid of the old RUC whose Special Branch, aided and abetted very ably by the Garda Special Detective Unit, had broken the IRA. The RUC was 'reformed' into the PSNI and the old Special Branch disbanded. That shouldn't have happened. Left to its own devices, the Branch would have crushed the dissidents. Instead, its members were offered lucrative redundancy packages, packed their bags and retired to England or, in several cases, the South of France.

In the vacuum left by Sinn Fein's move to constitutional politics, the nutters have taken over the asylum. Like everything, it has been helped by the internet. There is a tremendous amount of blogging, much of it crude and ill-informed but some of it quite well argued. This is the first generation of online republicans.

A new generation of republican theorisers has emerged in the group, calling itself Eirigi. It began with another small break from Sinn Fein in late 2006 when it became clear that Sinn Fein was heading towards supporting the PSNI in order to get into government in the North. Some Eirigi people were key electoral workers in the South, and their departure undoubtedly had an impact on Sinn Fein's desperate election performance, when it came within a hair's breadth of losing two of its five seats.

The Eirigi mob is, generally speaking, university educated and articulate. The term 'republican socialist' has more of a buzz to it than going to Socialist Workers Party meetings and listening to interminable middle-class lefties going on and on about rights for the working class. It is also more hip than the Ruairi O Bradaighs sitting there in their ould kitchens spouting about the First Dail.

Eirigi says it is non-violent, but it is against supporting policing in the North and the 'British' presence. Since it broke away from Sinn Fein, it has been throwing traditional hardline postures but, apart from the odd peaceful protest, it exists mainly online. This has inherent dangers. Its members say they believe that people have the right to "use whatever means" to overthrow occupiers, but they go on to say that they are not "aligned" with any armed group and do not think now is the time for "armed resistance". This is dangerous. They are saying things that the Nordie scobes love to hear. Eirigi moved up North last year, and being socialist as well as republican, it could not but accept into its ranks the 'alienated' youth of West Belfast and scobieville central, Craigavon.

None of the Dublin theorisers in Eirigi has ever heard a shot fired in anger, never mind learned how to make and throw a pipe bomb. Ask any kid on the Drumbeg estate and he'll show you in a second.

The killings in the North clearly shocked the republican socialist toffs in the South. They accused journalists of "demonising" republicans. And, of course, the journalists were "being manipulated by shadowy figures from within police and intelligence agencies in both the Six Counties and 26 Counties". Eirigi and the bloggers fantasising about armed struggle are too young and inexperienced to realise what was inevitably going to happen. Maybe when they went up North they didn't notice the "RIRA", "INL" and "CIRA" graffiti around run-down housing estates.

The teenagers who daubed the graffiti, maybe even the gunman who fired the shots at Constable Carroll, have almost certainly no idea of the political philosophy behind the Continuity IRA and, because there are no computers in their houses, they're not part of the online republican socialist community. They couldn't be arsed with all that stuff. They love action, they need action.

Here's the next thing: two of the scobies — sorry, heroes — will get killed, murdered by British Forces, as they fight to free us from the yoke of colonial oppression. They will have big funerals and loads of other scobies will get stuck in, killing an off-duty policeman and a member of his family, maybe a child. The Protestant scobies will then get stuck in and start murdering innocent Catholics. Welcome to 1971.