Black Flag News
2002/December
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ROMILEY NEWS
Romiley Xmas Tree
Romiley's Xmas Tree with visitors

Romiley Buzzed By Xmas UFOs

What could top the Great Romiley Earthquakes? What about a bunch of UFOs, which buzzed the town centre on the first sunny day of the month! The entire town came to a standstill to watch the antics of the group of strange aerial objects, three of which were captured in this shot of Romiley's Xmas tree.
   A flight of Eurofighters was scrambled from the testing ground at RAF Tangshutt, Romiley's local RAF station, while the UFOs were still over the town. Fighters and UFOs soon disappeared over the horizon at high speed.
   The Ministry of Defence is being very tight-lipped about the incident but tapes leaked from the Manchester Air Traffic Control Centre show that five 'targets', pursued by the Eurofighters, dispersed over Manchester and vanished from the ATC radar screens "within seconds".
   An expert said that the way the 'targets' disappeared is characteristic of an aircraft flying vertically upwards at high speed. No known aircraft can perform in this way. There is some evidence, however, that the 'UFOs' were top-secret US infiltration aircraft on a training mission for the coming war with Iraq.
   Commentators are taking the strength of the denial from Downing Street as reasonable proof that the Americans are testing new aircraft and holding military exercises in the Romiley area. This information puts a new perspective on the lead story of the July 2002 issue of The Black Flag, which described how a flight of mystery black jet aircraft 'buzzed' the Romiley area.

The (Not So) Admirable Crichton Does It Again

Finding original titles for his books doesn't seem to be Michael Crichton's strong suit. He did it before by latching on to The Lost World, which well-read people will always associate with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
   He's done it again by taking a fancy to Prey, the title of Romiley Literary Circle author Jon A. Gored's last book, which appeared in 2001.
   Fair do's Mike. Let's see you come up with something new for the title of your next one.

Flood Status

The River Rom is "unlikely to break its banks" over the new year period. Althought, the vast puddles which accumulate after every shower of rain may make us look like a flood zone until the Trivial Democrats running the council do something about repairing Romiley's roads and pavements.


HOME NEWS
Thanks to RLC for the pic
Romiley's Xmas Tree

Would I Lie To You?

The late Alan Clarke called it "being economical with the actualité". In Cherie Blair's case, we suffered a "lack of candour" in her accounts of her dealings with Australian conman Peter Foster. Well, you can't accuse a future High Court judge of lying to the meeja, can you? Still, it makes you wonder how good Madame Blair's person fortune teller is if she didn't see this pie-in-the-mush on the way to its target.
   And the questions roll on. If Madame Blair is in her right mind, why did she go in for having 'toxins' scrubbed out of her in a shower by a former (female) soft-porn model? Or 'channelling' by communication with the alleged spirit world? Or having her family's 'genetic DNA' read by a pendulum-swinging geezer? Or consult a 'witchcraft specialist'? Or get involved with Australian conman Peter Foster in a property deal and then tell porkie after porkie about it? Or let some 'style guru' decide what she and her family should wear?
   All that stuff is the traditional province of women with too much money and too much time on their hands and no idea what to do with either. And yet, Madame Blair is supposed to have a successful legal practice, she works part-time as a judge and she's the mother of four kids, several grown up, one just a baby. So how does she find the time for her dottiness? [Answers on a postcard to the usual address, Ed.]
Cherie Blair visited a Co-op supermarket for some mutual publicity and the store's management removed all the cans of Foster's lager before she arrived. And when the customers asked where it had gone, the manager told them the store had run out due to 'a simple stock problem'. Looks like lying can be contagious

Customs & Practice

The Customs and Excise Department has powers which the average citizen wouldn't believe -- until he finds himself on the wrong end of a totally arbitrary ruling with no legal basis, which he can't challenge. The Customs Department routinely confiscates vast amounts of goods from booze cruisers and serious criminals, and cash from criminals. Customs officers have been doing this job so successfully that they managed to fill up their warehouses and they had to lease additional ones. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly until the auditors turned up.
   Nobody had been keeping proper records of what had been confiscated or stolen by intimidation from punters. Nobody had thought to put confiscated cash in the bank or even count it. Nobody knew exactly what was supposed to be in the overflow warehouses. Even worse, the Customs Department didn't bother to arrange proper security at the overflow warehouses and their contents could have been leaking out into the hands of criminals. And nobody knows if some of the 'confiscated' goods ever reached the overflow warehouses -- they could, just as easily, have been flogged off to spivs by men and women high on an invulnerability trip.
   The National Audit Office is now asking a lot of awkward questions in addition to those being asked about the collapse of a number of court cases at vast expense to the taxpayer. The best that the Customs & Excise Department could come up with in response was: "We must recognize that not everything is perfect and more remains to be done."
   p.s. - if it's Her Majesty's Customs & Excise Department, is some idiot going to get up on his/her hind legs and say the Queen's to blame?


MUGGING NEWS
Brown by name but not by teeth

A Mugger Haiku
 

I taxed.
   I taxed and spent.
      I taxed, spent and borrowed.
         Let's all blame Tony.

Prudence Found Buried Under Chancellor's Patio

The Chancellor, unaffectionately known to our readers as The Mugger, has been convicted of dodgy accounting by the National Audit Office. His latest devious trick came to light when the body of poor old Prudence was dug up and a bill for £21billion was found in her pocket.
   The Tories were drawing parallels with collapsed US energy firm Enron when they went to town on the Mugger's failure to declare this £21billion loan guarantee to Network Rail. Apparently, we're starting to glimpse only the tip of an iceberg comprising a further £100billion of debt hidden off the books as Public Private Initiatives.

More Dirty Deeds By Stealth

If you have a bank account with First Direct, the Woolwich, the Bank of Scotland, Marks & Spencer, Abbey National, the Halifax or the Alliance & Leicester -- watch out. These banks and building societies have been copying The Mugger and doing evil deeds by stealth. In their case, that involves cutting their interest rates in December 2002 or January 2003, even though the bank rate has remained stable at 4% for a year or so. So the Black Flag is issuing a Thieving Bastards Warning and inviting everyone to boycott the bastards.


WAR NEWS
Kaboom!

FBU Boss Goes For Regime Change In UK!

Fire Brigade Union boss Andy Gilchrist wants to lead us into a Socialist paradise. The route for his long march travels via replacing New Labour with Real Labour. Looks like he's been reading the saga of the Millennium Dome Bomber by the Romiley Literary Circle Authors or L. Gordon Range's The Empty Sky -- both sources of the Real Labour concept.
   This looks like a good time for the Vice-Prez to don his blonde wig and start swinging his handbag before someone confiscates that particular Weapon of Mass Destruction. Otherwise, he might find himself living in exile in a discounted flat in Bristol.
A spokesman for the White House has denied that Prez Bush has been holding secret talks with representatives of World's Favourite Dictator Saddam Insane. "It is totally not true that regime change in the UK was the number one topic on the agenda," the spokesman, a Mr. Enrique Kissenger, said last night. "Vice-Prez Blair remains one of our staunchest allies and it is also totally not true that we are now looking on him as a total liability."

It's On For Sure

As Vice-Prez Blair broadcasts an Xmas message to the troops [does he think he's the Queen, or something? Ed.] telling them to prepare for war with Iraq, New Labour's customers are left asking themselves if they really want a campaign led by Prez Bush, a guy who probably doesn't even know where Iraq is, and his little doggy, Vice-Prez Blair. More particularly, the customers are asking if they want British forces to be sent into action by the man who gave us:

  • the cock up of the Millennium Dome;
  • the botched handling of the Foot & Mouth epidemic;
  • a National Health Service and an education system in crisis;
  • the Railtrack disaster;
  • a Chancellor who's wrecked the pensions industry with his Stealth Taxes;
  • sleaze by the bucketful;
  • lies by the bucketful from New Labour's spin doctors;
  • Peter Mandelson;

to name but a few. New Labour -- 'Giving you more of things you don't want'.

A Third Front Opens

The Germans opened a Second Front against the Blair-Bush axis when they announded that there is no way that they are going to contribute to the cost of a war with Iraq. The Germans want to do business with Saddam, not bomb the hell out of him. Now, the Church of England has opened a Third Front against the war.
   The Archbish of Canterbury used his Xmas broadcast to the nation to have a go at Vice-Prez Blair's plan to bomb the hell out of 'innocent people' in his eagerness to be part of Prez Bush's regime change agenda. Dr. Williams seems to have gone on at great length when the two words 'co-lateral damage' would have made the same point. But is the Vice-Prez fazed? Is he hell as like. He's going to have his war no matter what the cost to other people.


FOOD NEWS
Choc Is Good For Coughs

Good News For Chocoholics

Doctors at the National Heart & Lung Institute at Imperial College have discovered that chocolate sooths a cough away better than cough drops. The secret is the theobromine in the chocolate, which works better than the codeine in conventional cough cures. Theobromine, like caffeine, is a xanthine alkaloid found in cocoa. Theobromine is a whole lot less active than caffeine.


TRAVEL NEWS
Secret Saddam Railway

Regime Change Tours presents:
SADDAM'S SECRET RAILWAY

The secret underground railway was once used to transport Weapons of Mass Destruction invisibly between presidential palaces -- the way the United States of America used to move its MX missiles around on its own underground railway system to prevent the Soviet Union from knowing where they were. This was how the World's Favourite Dictator gave the UN's weapons inspectors the run-around for so many years.
   Now, the once top-secret railway is Iraq's number one, must-see tourist attraction.
   The 3-day tour offered by R.C. Tours offers a morning or an afternoon at each of six presidential palaces and an evening/overnight stay at the two most magnificent. See the secret bunkers where Saddam stored his nasties [both of them]. See the vastly more extensive secret bunkers where he stored his smuggled-in luxury goods.
   NOT TO BE MISSED!!!

More For All!!!

THE GOOD NEWS : The Government is going to give us more!!!
THE BAD NEWS : What we're getting more of is traffic congestion.

The official government line is to blame the increasing traffic congestion on a large increase in the number of women drivers. In fact, a great deal of the traffic jamming is caused by the government itself. The number of official cars per minister is now a record 6.4, the vehicles are bigger and their assistants make full use of the spares. In addition, everyone from aides and spin-doctors to tea boys/girls is being given their own wheels by a New Labour administration with taxpayers' dosh to blow.
   John Prescott is believed to have made a statement of justification of New Labour's 'Personal Transport' policy and why road congestion is predicted to increase dramatically over the next 10 years, but no one has been able to translate it into English. Mr. Albert Hussein of Downing Street's Public Enlightenment Executive offered another official explanation based on security grounds.
   "The government is trying to make life tough for terrorists," he said. "A policy of never sending someone out in the same vehicle on successive journeys makes assassinations by terrorists, or even angry members of the public, that much more difficult to arrange." Mr. Hussein had no comment to make on the suggestion that the government's next step will be to introduce the Mugabe Convoy System [see Political News, 2002/Nov], under which the streets are cleared and members of the government machine are transported in a randomly chosen member of a convoy of up to 40 official vehicles.

New Labour -- 'Giving you more of things you don't want'.

Vice-Prez Delivers Xmas Raspberry To The Customers

New Labour's customers using the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh got an Xmas 2-fingers from the Vice-Prez when he arrived for yet another of his holidays. The airport was closed while the Blair tribe struggled through it, leaving the customers stuck aboard their airliners for an extra hour or so. And then there was a total shambles when the queue of airliners was allowed to unload because the system just couldn't cope with the gangs of people going one way, trying to get the hell out of the airport, and the mobs going the other way, trying to get the hell out of the country.


POLITICAL NEWS

"My Administration Will Be Whiter Than White"
[If I can get that by the Race Police!]

Great, isn't it, when you can tell your 'blind' trust that you've bought a couple of flats in Bristol without consulting the trustees and you want to bung them into the trust -- and the 'blind' trustees go along with it.
   Great, isn't it, when you're the Prime Monster and you have the final say on what the rules are for a politician's 'blind' trust and you can review your own conduct.
   Great, isn't it, when you can do your review and then say, with your hand on your black heart, "I did no wrong."


LEGAL NEWS

Lord Chief Justice Woolf's Xmas Wind-Up Flops

Some people will do anything to get noticed. In the lord chief justice's case, that involved telling magistrates, 'don't lock up burglars, give them care in the community instead'. Three days later, when he realized that people were actually taking him seriously, he had to send out an email -- of the sort composed with the brain and grammar checker switched off -- saying, pretty much, 'Disregard my last message.'
   New Labour -- new scope for creating a shambles in new areas.


This Month's GarbageThe Garbage

According to a survey published in Week 1, the average Briton has 14 close friends.

The government of Nigeria, home of the serial commercial fraudster, has called in Richard Branston to make the trains run on time. [Well, shave all my hair off and call me Mussolini! -Ed.]

Cilla Black was the Madonna of the 60s. [In her dreams! Ed.]

Misread Headline:
"Saddam risks war over dosser" -- Observer, Su.08.De.2002.

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell thinks the government can run the National Lottery!!!

We're seriously expected to believe that Cherie Blair didn't tell her old man when she took a couple of million quid out of their 'blind' trust for her property speculation in Bristol!

Another Blair 'instant fix' has joined the Millennium Dome in Tony's Dustbin of Costly Failures. There will be no more night courts as they cost too much, there aren't enough cells available and the crooks could be processed "as easily and more cheaply" during the day. So that's another £5.4million down the drain, Mr. Blair.

The Palestineans whom Syria is sheltering aren't suicide bombers -- they're self-detonating press officers.

 
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 back to topCreated for Romiley Anarchists' League by workers in revolt against oppression.
Sole © RAL, December 2002.