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p.s. We'll wish Mr. Schwarzenberger all the best in his new role as leader of the Tories just as soon as he gets his ass out of California and over here, where he's needed. B. The postal strike what was that all about? Time off for the shirkers to do their Xmas shopping with their credit cards then 2 weeks' overtime to clear the backlog of mail and the credit card bill. Magic!
Stockport, Romiley's near neighbour, is the 'most average' place in the UK, according to the Office of National Statistics. The conclusion came out of a study of the 2001 Census returns (what there was of them). Of course, the leader of the council responded with some rent-a-quote garbage about Stockport being an exceptional place. But no one expects a politician to be able to deal with simple facts.
Liverpool city council is under siege by people who say they suffered injury after tripping over the city's uneven pavements. Most of the claims, however, prove to be bogus on investigation. Claims have come in from people who were in gaol on the day when they said they were assaulted by a Liverpool pavement. Others file an annual claim in nice time for a Christmas pay-out if they're successful. Whole familes lodge mass claims for gang trips at the same stretch of pavement. But hey, that's Scousers for you.
London seems to need a high-level entertainment. So outraged father David Chick took over from David Blaine when he completed his exercise in starving himself for 44 days in a plastic box. Unwilling to provide a target for egg-hurlers, Mr. Chick chose to protest about fathers' lack of access to their children by perching 150 feet up on a crane in Central London for a week dressed as Spiderman. Which gave the police a chance to bugger the capital's motorists around by closing all the roads near the crane. Why? Because they felt that there was a risk of Mr. Chick falling off the crane and causing damage to a passing vehicle. Pur-lease!
The government intends to scrap the countryside qangos because they've been giving it too much grief. English Nature, in particular, has embarrassed Vice-Prez Bliar and his cohorts over genetically monstered crops as well as their plans for new roads, ports, airport extensions and reservoirs. So they're for the chop as soon as possible.
Caretaker Tory leader Michael Howard has called agitator and plotter Michael Portaloo's bluff by offering him a job. The man who believes that he is entitled to be the party leader, but who failed to convince anyone else of his fitness, chose not to prove that he's a lemon by taking the job. Even better, he will not be standing at the next general election. Mike is finding that pretending to be an MP clashes with serious career commitments in advertising, television and public speaking.
Get a water meter fitted and reduce your bill. The government has applied price caps to the water industry to stop bills going through the roof. Do you feel safer with those twin protections in place? Well, you shouldn't.
A recent undercover integrity check on the Advertising Standards Authority has turned up an interesting point of view. Posing as a member of the public, a researcher sent in a protest against an advert in a national daily newspaper. The substance of the ASA's verdict was that it's okay to use a picture which exaggerates the size and/or quality of goods on offer.
BlackFlag News offers its greetings to Prez Bush on the occasion of his state visit to our small country. We are pleased to welcome someone who is doing so much to spread anarchy and confusion around the world. And we bet he's quite pleased at having to spend just a couple of hours with Vice-Prez Bliar during the 3-day trip.
Even though the death penalty still applies to commoners who lark about in a royal palace, Mirror employee Ryan Parry probably won't face the hangman for blagging his way into Buck House with a dodgy CV. But he does face severe chastisement for 'gaining a pecuniary advantage through deception' and his gross breach of a confidentiality commitment. In fact, Parry could spend 10 years in gaol if he receives maximum sentences consecutively.
The yob who went to gaol for decapitating Mrs. Thatcher's statue has lost an appeal against his conviction for causing criminal damage. 'Comedy terrorist' Aaron Barschak has received similar short shrift from the courts. He thought that he could create a Turner Prize entry out of chucking red paint over artist Jake Chapman, some of his work and the gallery housing both of them. A judge at Oxford decided that Mr. Barschak is just a yob and a vandal, and gave him 28 days inside.
The last Concorde off the production line made the last ever flight of the mark to return to Filton, near Bristol, on the 26th of this month. The aircraft will go on show there next spring. Other members of the BA fleet are to be found in Manchester, New York, Seattle and the Grantley Adams airport on Barbados.
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The Home Secretary is offering 'essential entrant' status to illegals with jobs. The philosophy behind this radical policy rethink is that anyone who is prepared to work once they've crept into the country is welcome. Anyone who isn't inclined to work will be evicted to make room for the workers and that includes idle native Brits. You have been warned, you back-sliders!
The legal profession is up in arms over this decision, which will cost them a large amount of 'champagne money'. Accordingly, they are threatening a massive demonstration to bring the heart of London to a standstill. They are confident that the British public will rally to their side in the face of this threat to their sumptuous lifestyle.
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500 people from each EU country were asked to pick the worst offender from a list of 15 troublesome nations. According to leaks from the unpublished report on the poll, around 60% of the respondents went for Israel. The conclusion can be interpreted as a natural reation to Israel's attempts to have anti-semitism redefined to include protests against atrocities perpetrated by, or on behalf of, the state of Israel.
The EU statistical agency, Eurostat, has been chucking its weight around again. It sent out forms to Scotland's kiltmakers and demanded that they fill in details of how many kilts they had sold in the box provided for details of sales of women's skirts. Patrick McGroarty, director of Caledonian Highland Dress Manufacturers in Perthshire, reported that the Eurojobsworths had the timerity to threaten him with a massive fine if he ignored their form.
The European Commission has issued a stern warning to Vice-Prez Bliar over the tactics waged by his Customs & Excise Department against booze-cruisers. Confiscation of drink, tobacco and even vehicles if the victim oversteps the Revenue Department's purely arbitary limits, which have no legal status, is over the top. If the petty tyrants fail to shape up, the British government faces being hauled in front of the Euro-court on a charge of breaching the EU's rules on free movement of goods and cross-border shopping.
The European Union's auditors have refused to accept the 9th straight set of dodgy annual accounts. The Prodi regime has failed to stop the fraudsters and 'sleazebuster' Neil Kinnock is still sitting on his hands, which must be getting quite flat by now.
The EU's finance ministers have agreed not to impose financial penalties on France and Germany for ignoring the eurozone Stability Pact. The European Commission is threatening a legal challenge to the decision, but will this toothless pussycat really do anything? Probably not. |
Following the rescue of 24 Bengal tigers from a back garden 'private zoo' in New Jersey and their transfer to a sanctuary in Texas, the official tiger population of the Lone Star State has climbed above India's. The animals were rescued from filthy, cramped conditions imposed by owner Joan Byron-Masarek, who did a runner when the authorities in Jacksonville, NJ, decided to close her down. It is estimated that up to 10,000 tigers remain captive in American back yards and basements, which is twice the wild population.
The soon to vanish regime in the DDR allowed free passage through its Berlin Wall on this day in 1989, and the demolition job on the wall began the following day. A 14th anniversary survey has estimated that if all the souvenir bits of the Berlin Wall were recycled into a new wall of the same height and thickness as the original, then it would circle the entire city 2¼ times.
The state of Israel astounded its neighbours in the first week of this month with a full and frank disclosure of its Weapons of Mass Destruction and the nation's plans for their use. For 2 days, a weapons testing facility broadcast clear, unencoded TV pictures via satellite to the whole Middle East. The military details shared with Israel's neighbours included a live account of a missile test, details of launch codes and discussions of what Israel has in the way of WoMD and which neighbour will be the recipient of which weapon.
The first, and only, flight of the Soviet space shuttle Buran ("Snowstorm" in Russian) took place on this day in 1988. Unmanned, as the life support system had not been installed, Buran was launched at 3:00 GMT from Baikonur cosmodrome on the Energiya booster. The flight ended at 6:25 GMT, after two orbits of the Earth, and the vehicle landed successfully at Tyuratum, a first-class aerodrome 12 km from the launch pad. Then the useless bunch of Commies running the USSR cut the programme's budget to nothing and cancelled it in 1993.
The Cincinnati Bengals have grotted all over the Kansas City Chiefs' hopes of a perfect season. The former 'Bungles' went 5-5 after their 19-24 home victory over KC in week 11 of the American Crunch season; and they might just be heading for the playoffs as unaccustomed champions of their division!
Santa Barbara, CA, District Attorney Tommy Sned is hoping to grab a ton of election-steering publicity out of charging Michael Jackson with molesting a 12-year-old boy. Mr. Jackson's legal representative can see another attempt at extortion timed to co-incide with an album release. Mr. Jackson is known to have had a row with the boy's mother and experts have pointed out the possibility of False Memory Syndrome at work, or even Implanted Memory Syndrome. |
That plan has been booted into touch by the Brits. But the police have let the Yanks know that if they feel like stomping on any of the Froggie and other Euro-agitators, who are expected to come over here to try to hijack the inevitable protest demos, then the Yard will turn a couple of blind eyes. Just a thought, but maybe the Secret Service will put someone in a Saddam Hussein mask on a crane in the centre of London. That will guarantee that the capital's jobsworth senior police officers will close every road for miles around!
Stinky, giant American bullfrogs are here and murdering British wildlife. Their import was banned by the European Commission in 1987 but rogue traders have continued to sneak them into the country. They grow to five times the size of native frogs and people keep dumping their exotic pets in the wild when their smell becomes too much to endure. The bullfrogs eat other frogs, birds, fish and snakes, and they wreak havoc if allowed to roam free.
Seed potatoes infected with ring rot (the potato version of foot & mouth disease) have been supplied to a Welsh farm by a Dutch firm. The Welsh enterprise, which supplies seed potatoes internationally, is not entitled to compensation under EU rules for the loss of business and the cost of a removal and sterilization operation. War clouds are hovering over Europe again as the British government considers its response to this act of biological terrorism.
The British government is to spend £152,000 of taxpayer's money on sending two 'gender experts' to Iraq for 6 months. Vice-Prez Bliar has been assured by his ministers that a lot of the trouble in Iraq is caused by people not knowing which sex they are. Hence the decision to send in the British experts to tell them.
No fisticuffs yet at the EU foreign ministers' summit on the constitution, but it was a close-run thing. The French and the Germans are in trouble for riding roughshod over the stability pact; Spain and Poland don't want their voting strength cut; and Jack Straw is reserving the right to veto the whole thing. Which is probably not a bad idea because France and Germany are sure to rewrite the constitution for their own benefit after Vice-Prez Bliar has signed us up to it.
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The real reason for the recent explosion in obesity was dragged into the light of day this month. Fatties have a reduced life expectancy and the government is encouraging couch potatoism so that its fat customers will croak before they can demand a pension.
A pint of Guinness a day is good for the heart as it gives the blood anti-clotting properties.
Scots are ballooning so much that they are getting too huge for NHS equipment. Cancer patients weighing more than 20-25 stones are too big to fit into MRI and ultrasound scanners, which makes diagnosing their condition a serious problem.
Stay out in the sun and you get skin cancer. Stay out of the sun and you get cancer through vitamin D shortage. What's the answer? Shoot ourselves? Shoot the 'experts'? Well, we could always stay indoors watching telly and eat lots of margarine for the vitamin D.
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