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Romiley was closed on New Year's Day every shop shuttered, no newsagents open, not even the petrol station. Anyone wanting a newspaper, or a bottle of aspirins, was faced with a hike of a mile or so in the rain up School Brow to the Co-Op in Bredbury. The long heralded snow finally reached Romiley four days before the end of the month. But was the Triv-Dem led council organized enough to make Romiley's pavements safe for the customers? Anyone who guessed 'yes', please go and stand in a corner. For people who are paying one of the highest rates of Council Tax in the country in charge versus benefits terms, the sanding/salting effort was purely cosmetic rather than a serious attempt to make the pavements safe. So what are they spending the Council Tax on? Nothing that really matters, apparently. |
In his Xmas message to the troops in Iraq, the Blessed Leader said there was 'massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories' and the Iraq Survey Group had found compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein and his allies had tried to conceal weapons. Blessed Leader not in the business of teasing colleagues The Blessed Leader's New Year announcement that 'the job is only half done' is not to be taken too literally. He is not offering to step down in 2010, when Chancellor Big Gordy Broon is too old for the top job. On the contrary, his faith in the British people is such that he is confident of receiving a 4th term in office if he feels that there is more to accomplish. Responding to 16-point personal credo posted by the leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, the Blessed Leader will shortly issue his own 32-point credo to prove that he is twice as committed to customer care. No danger of toxic waste chaos The Blessed Leader has assured us that no stockpiles of toxic waste of 'fridge mountain' proportions will be created as a result of revised EU regulations, which were agreed in 1999. At present, there are 218 sites across the entire UK licensed to dispose of toxic waste. The number will be reduced 10 sites, mainly in north-eastern England, when the new regulations come into force in July this year. Even so, the government remains confident that the waste disposal industry can cope with the coming problems of transporting toxic waste hundreds of miles to one of the remaining disposal sites. There is no truth in the story that the Blessed Leader's visit to the British troops in Basra was a cheap political gesture and an attempt to rewrite history and get his alibis in place pre-Hutton Report. Neither is there truth in the allegation that the trip to Iraq was a tax dodge to let the Blessed Leader claim his holiday in Egypt as an essential component of a business trip. Rat dragged from hole in ground It can now be revealed that the Blessed Leader, at great personal risk, led an armed expedition deep into hostile Iraqi territory during the second week of December, 2003. Acting on information gleaned by the Blessed Leader's personal intelligence service, his picked band of troops cornered Saddam Hussein near his home town of Tikrit. Still straight as a die Be assured that the Blessed Leader remains a 'pretty straight sort of guy' and that he has direct personal experience of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Following his heroic capture of Saddam Hussein, and tough interrogation of the prisoner, the Blessed Leader has visited no less than 8 sites where WoMD were once stored. The street prices of common drugs have fallen during the Blessed Leader Years. Ecstasy is now one-half of the 1997 price, cannabis and cocaine cost one-third less and heroin has fallen to 80% of the 1997 price. Further, distribution has improved to such an extent that there is now 'no difficulty in obtaining any drug anywhere in the UK', according to a recent Home Office survey. It is untrue that the Blessed Leader packed his foreign secretary off to toady to the French because he feels rejected by the Americans. The Transatlantic Alliance remain strong; in fact, it is stronger than it ever was under a Tory government; and the Blessed Leader's influence over our major European ally remains paramount. The number of violent attacks on customers didn't really rise by 17% last year. The Blessed Leader's Home Office gives a solemn assurance that it's all down to the police using a new method of recording crimes. The Blessed Leader notes the statement by David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, that no WoMD were produced in Iraq during the 1990s and none were stockpiled before the recent conflict. French President Jacques Chiraq is not to be trusted, neither is he to be believed. Chiraq has been trying to undermine the Blessed Leader ever since he challenged the European Union's corrupt, thoroughly discredited and tainted Common Agricultural Policy, from which the French have always derived an unfair advantage. Corrections to transcriptions of the Blessed Leader's speeches
The Blessed Leader has commanded me to point out that if the UK went to war on the basis of faulty intelligence information, then that is a matter for the intelligence gathering community rather than the Blessed Leader. Diary entry NOT FOR PUBLICATION I confess, I did not believe Charlie, Pete and Ally when they assured the B.L. that they knew of a judge who would cut the government enough slack to junk all charges and bite the BBC's ankles at the slightest excuse. Nor did I believe that this miracle of a judge would just ignore all evidence against the government case. |
New Year Bonus BlackFlag News would like to offer its readers a chance to read this monumental work by one of Romiley's premiere authors. Read the Book on Jenson Farrago's website Read about the Book on the Romiley Literary Circle website Buy the Book at the Lulu.com website This outstanding novel was voted Book of the 20th Century |
Bought some drugs but you're not sure what to do next? Don't worry. All you have to do is log on to a Home Office website*, which will offer you all the training information that you could ever need. The site will tell you how to get the most out of the popular drugs of the day by giving advice on much to use and the best methods for taking your drug of choice. New Labour steals Tory kite Doing a spot of political kite-flying, the Tories announced that they would change the rules for speed cameras. The revisions included abolishing penalty points on the speeding motorist's driving licence; except in extreme cases. The next day, Vice-Prez Bliar & Co. hijacked the idea which hasn't happened to the Tories in living memory. Hide under your bed, the Eurocops are coming! UK civil rights organizations are getting antsy about European arrest warrants, a scheme which began with the new year. Apparently, foreign police forces are now entitled to turn up in the UK with a piece of paper, and stroll off with British citizens with the blessing of a British court. And all this without having to produce any evidence of wrong-doing. Vice-Prez Bliar has put on hold his plan to pack the House of Lords with cronies. Sheer embarrassment is the reported reason for the delay. Also, he needs to carry out some further screening of his stooges. Most of the current batch of New Labour crony lords are too idle to turn up at the House and the Vice-Prez is looking for stooges who will take his sweeties and keep their side of the bargain by being there to vote on command. What do you do if, like Vice-Prez Bliar, you don't have a reverse gear? The UK truancy rate has risen by 40% since New Labour took office in 1997. Spending on programmes to change the behaviour of truants has gone up by over 800% in the same period to £84.5million per annum. Which tends to suggest that the Bliar regime is great at spending taxpayers' money but not very good at spending it on anything useful. The government wants to make letting off loud fireworks after 11 p.m. illegal? So how does it propose tracking down the yobs who let off one loud bang at 1 a.m.? All the fine ambitions in the world are somewhat useless without a spot of practical enforcement. Ankle-Grabber of the Month Labour MP Stephen Pound, who promised to sponsor a 10 Minute Rule Bill (knowing it had no chance of lasting longer than 11 minutes in the House of Commons) for whatever a poll of Radio 4 listeners threw out; and then chickened out when the customers wanted the right to defend themselves in their own homes against burglars. Is Vice-Prez Bliar lying when he says he'd quit if he lied? Well, he's done it and he didn't quit, so he must be. It has never been easier to cheat the taxman official! The Commons public accounts committee has found that the chance of a bogus declaration being picked up by the tax authorities is minimal. The Mugger is costing the nation £2-3billion in tax revenue through his minions' failure to pursue cheats. 30 million tax returns are filed every year while only 400 serious fraud investigations and just 60 prosecutions are carried out per year. Jerry Knight, a prison governor who sacked a prison officer for telling a joke about Osama bin Laden, has had his bum chewed by an employment tribunal for pretending to do it in the name of racial awareness and trying to collect brownie points. The sack for gross incompetence should be Mr. Knight's next reward. Network Rail is planning to add 5 minutes to all train journey times 'to make timetables look more realistic'. How very New Labour! Vice-Prez Bliar is handing taxpayers' cash to a PR firm run by a buddy of Peter Mandelson's to sell his university top-up fees scheme. MPs are calling the deal an abuse of public money; and that's an opinion from experts in the field. Wouldn't you just know it! Water UK reckons that we've been getting nothing but 'the wrong sort of rain' this month and none of it is getting into reservoirs and underground aquifers. So, presumably, the water companies will be obliged to put their charges up by 50% in the late spring to stop poor people wasting it during the summer. |
What a surprise! The now thoroughly discredited Hutton report was leaked a day early to a tabloid which currently supports the Bliar regime. Why? For three terrific reasons:
The leak also clarified the purpose of the Hutton investigation. In declaring everyone associated with the Bliar regime spotless and everyone else as guilty as hell, Hutton provided Bliar with a club with which to beat the BBC and political opponents. Dead Man Walking So what has Hutton achieved? The important objective of leaving Vice-Prez Bliar twisting in the wind, exposed as shifty and untrustworthy and with nowhere to hide. Hutton: what next? Lord Hutton confirmed his lack of contact with the real world and a wilful reluctance to accept that Vice-Prez Bliar and his minions are rogues. So it's no wonder that the hacks assembled to listen to him greeted his explanation first with disbelief and later with open derision. Hutton also confirmed that the Establishment will let a dodgy character like Vice-Prez Bliar get away with more or less anything. A combined 'poll of polls' shows that 67% of the British population believe that the Hutton Report was a whitewash job.
The Hutton Report on the leaking of the Hutton Report Principal conclusion : there was no leak and therefore no one is to blame. |
Stealth Tax #67 : another assault on the motorist. The present government will be making a concerted effort to drive poor motorists off the roads (and raise even more stealthy taxes) in its final year of office. This is why traffic wardens have been given powers to impose fines for 121 different offences in the hope that fewer, mainly rich people will brave the roads in future. The offences will include parking more than 19 inches from the kerb (for which the fine will be £100) and dithering by people who are lost over whether to make a turn or keep straight on. Stealth Tax #68 : The Victims Fund. What is it? A surcharge fine on everyone who passes through the courts. This is seen as amounting to a further assault on the motorist as fewer than 50% of career criminals pay fines. The surcharges will range from an extra £5 for speeding to £30 for murder. Stealth Tax #69 : Abolition of Legal Aid for the middle classes. The initial plan is to deprive motorists of the right to free legal representation. In time, the roll-back will include people charged with more serious crimes, such as murder and assaults on jobsworth officials. The ultimate object of the 'reform' is to ensure that legal aid cash is passed only to members of the legal profession who labour to keep illegal and undesirable immigrants in the UK. |
One million species (10% of all species on the planet) will be extinct in 50 years' time and half of the rest will be dust by the end of the century. All this is due to climate change, say the 'experts'. Well, that's the way the universe crumbles and we'll just have to adapt to any changes in the climate because we can't do anything effective to change them. Which means that anyone who says they can put the world to rights given vast enough amounts of taxpayers' money is a crook, a liar, a lying crook or a control freak on a power trip. Pong or die! If you smoke, you'll get cancer. If you drink, you'll get cancer. If you eat salt, you'll get cancer. If you eat salmon, you'll get cancer. Now, the latest scare story is that using anti-perspirants gives you cancer. Looks like we're all doomed whatever we do (or don't do). Congrats to Naked Rambler Stephen Gough, who spent 5 months in various gaols along the way, and transfused £50,000 of taxpayers' dosh to the legal profession, but finally made it from Land's End to John O'Groats.
Bad guys out for a laugh are using simple methods to tie the Yanks, and their pals, in knots. They have found that all they need to do is book a seat on an airliner in a slightly dodgy name, e.g. Osama bin Adams or Gerry Hussein, and bad things happen to the mugs travelling on that flight. Either the plane never takes off or everyone aboard is harassed and delayed for hours by smug security types. Airports in crisis The 'security' situation in the United States is reported to have the UK government severely worried. Delays to flights (and their cancellation), and further delays at US airports are making passengers revise their travel intentions. The Yanks are now insisting on wholesale photographing and fingerprinting of everyone who applies for a visa and everyone who arrives at one of their points of entry. Virtual Sky Marshals Spring Into Action In response to nervous noises from across the Atlantic, the UK government rushed out an announcement that all passenger aircraft flying to the United States would carry armed Sky Marshals for the customers' protection. And then someone realized that firing a gun on a pressurized aircraft is a bonehead manoeuvre at the best of times. That's when the concept of Virtual Sky Marshals was born. The Great Wall of China isn't so great any more! The Chinese government has performed a survey of its greatest tourist attraction and found that almost 70% of The Great Wall isn't there any more. Tourists, developers, the government's failure to prevent natural erosion and predatory locals are all blamed for the disappearing act. Bits of the Wall are regularly recycled as building materials for structures as diverse as pig sties and coal mines. |
The Mugger may have murdered Prudence but Vice-Prez Bliar is still clinging to Ambiguity. The recent Iraq war was a strategic error of the first order; fiscally, politically and militarily unsustainable. What, exactly, is the Bliar regime up to over broadband Internet connections? The plan, apparently, is to get 'the majority' of customers on-line by 2010. But what does this mean in practice? The ambition has to be either to make the service available to the majority, or to oblige them to be connected. If the Commissioner of the Met himself is going to question Prince Charles about Princess Di's road-traffic accident, then we can all relax. It's only going to take the head copper away from policy meetings on things like ignoring drug dealers and burglars, and concentrating on raising revenue from soft targets like motorists. So only Prince Chazzer's time will be wasted. Just think how different things would be if Lord Hutton had been the judge at Harold Shipman's trial. What will be the consequences for Vice-Prez Bliar of using up his entire quota of 'benefit of the doubt' on the Hutton Report? It would have been Prudent to save some for the inquiry into the beginnings of the latest Iraq war. But his rival for the top job, Sourpuss Gordy Broon, has murdered Prudence. Can that be just a coincidence?
The government's chief medical advisor has revealed that she sees no future for anyone currently living in the UK if they carry on as they are. "The British are idle guzzlers, and they'll all be dead of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, a stroke, or a combination of the above, within a generation," she told Vice-Prez Bliar in her New Year report on the health of the nation. Scottish farmed salmon is lethal say American toxicologist A shock-horror study of farmed salmon has found that they are rich in dangerous carcinogens and radioactive residues, and recommends that farmed salmon should be consumed at no more than one meal every 4 months. Wild salmon is okay and North American ranched salmon is safe, the Yanks say. Most authorities believe that the report has been published to distract attention from the threat to humans of BSE in US cattle because there are few checks on the health of cattle delivered to slaughterhouses. The beef industry in the United States is just too big and too rich to be subjected to effective regulation. |
New Labour has no idea what to do with the railways next, which is why they trotted out Transport Secretary Alistair 'Eyebrows' Darling to waffle for a while and not say anything. The main problem is that his predecessor, 'Liar' Byers, screwed things up so badly that anything Mr. Eyebrows does can only make a bad situation worse. And Vice-Prez Bliar is not yet suicidal enough to let Johnny 'Two Jags' Prescott have another go at an integrated transport policy. So Rail Transport is now off the political agenda until after New Labour has lost the next election.
An Israeli soldier has been arrested after admitting the attempted murder of British peace activist Tom Hurndall in the Gaza strip. The sniper shot his victim in the head 8 months ago, leaving him in a coma with no signs of brain activity. Job-creating German police are setting up a Cannibal Division. They have convinced their government that it is necessary after bolting a world-wide conspiracy onto the trial of self-confessed German cannibal Armin Meiwes [see last month's BlackFlag News]. The trial was supposed to be over before Xmas but it seems to be dragging on. [The latest estimate of the finishing date is now in February. Ed.] Warning: Center Parcs rip-off in operation If you are British and you book a holiday at a Center Parcs site on the Continent, YOU WILL BE RIPPED OFF. The Consumers' Association had found that anyone booking a holiday in English, using either a call centre or a website, will be charged 20% more than someone booking in French or Dutch. The hunt for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq has been called off but don't tell anyone because the government wants to keep it quiet. From October, 2004, the US government is intent on charging $100 for a visa. Every potential traveller (children included) will also incur the expense of a trip to the US embassy in London for fingerprinting and an interview. The European Commission has suddenly realized that it was illegal for EU governments to let France and Germany off for breaching the Stability Pact. Now, the EC is threatening legal action. Like that's going to happen! Three journalists have geen gaoled in Zimbabwe for reporting that Prez Mug is on an extended holiday in Asia at public expense while his customers are starving. Shave or go to gaol! As well as banning religious garments in schools, such as Islamic veils, the French government is now thinking of requiring those wearing a beard with a 'religious connotation' to shave it off. The idea is to prevent schoolkid religious fanatics from getting around the law by resorting to alternative religious symbols. Unashamed war criminal about to become an unrepenant ordinary criminal? It seems somehow fitting that Prime Minister Sharon of Israel should be undermined by charges of taking bribes in connection with a planning applications. It rounds out his character and makes him seem more human. It turns him from a brutal associate of mass murder into just another greedy politician with his hand out. Exploding whale causes gridlock in Tainan. The 56-foot beached whale was being taken to the university for a post-mortem when decomposition gases erupted, showering motorists and pedestrians with blood, guts and rotting blubber. Part of the city remained at a complete stand-still for hours during the clean-up operation. It is understood that the Taiwanese Tourist Board is now planning to add Street Sushi to the island's list of attractions.
Mars is getting quite crowded, these days. The Open University's Beagle 2, delivered by the European Space Agency's Mars Express, is there but possibly in bits if no one can contact it. The much larger NASA rover Spirit was sending back pictures of Gusev Crater within hours of landing there. Congratulations to everyone involved in both missions. And we hope Spirit's twin Opportunity makes a similar soft landing on the other side of the planet on the 25th. There's an account of an intemperate article by Jeffrey F. Bell, Adjunct Professor of Planetology at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, on the spacedaily.com website [title: Beagle 2: A Fortunate Failure, posted January 13, 2004]. Bell has a good rant at Dr. Colin Pillinger and everyone who dared to spend one-quarter of the NASA budget for the 1997 Mars Pathfinder rover (the little one before Spirit and Opportunity). Bell gloats over the failure to contact Beagle 2 on the surface of Mars. So perhaps it's the turn of Dr. Pillinger to have a small gloat at NASA's sudden failure to be able to talk to Spirit after things seemed to be going so well for the mission. Opportunity landed safely and began returning pictures right away. And NASA engineers think they've found out what went wrong with Spirit but it will take 3 weeks to fix. Good job they didn't give it Windows XP as its operating system, or they'd still be scratching their heads long after the Mars rover's 90-day working life ran out. |
Locking up a British student for a month to wait for her trial after she did a bomb joke at a baggage check is ridiculously heavy-handed. Threatening her with 15 years in gaol for making a false bomb report is nothing short of contemptible. If the US is genuinely under threat from what Prez Bush calls 'Islamic Tourists', then it should take SENSIBLE protective precautions.
Most of the disbelievers felt that his demise had been engineered by the top-secret department of the British security services which was responsible for the assassinations of Rudolph Hess and Princess Diana. The reaction in Hyde, Cheshire, where Dr. Shipman practised medicine and murder, was mainly satisfaction that he is no longer a drain on the public purse. The conclusions of the official inquiry will be that the death was a genuine suicide, not murder by a secret government department; that no one in either the prison service or the government was negligent; and, therefore, that no one is too blame. As the Bliar Effect will still be in operation, no one will believe anything in the report, not even its authors! Despite Mr. Shipman's death, the appeal against his convictions for murder will continue and his legal team are confident that he will be pardoned in about 2042. The inquiry into the credentials of his alleged legal representative is expected to open in the 3rd quarter of the century. Anyone wishing to read the email sent out by "Benson Tito", who claims he can unlock millions left in Spain by one of Dr. Shipman's victims, is invited to visit the Crooks In Action section of Jenson Farrago's website. |
Head of FIFA Sepp Blatter thinks that female footballers should play in tighter shorts to give them a more interesting image which will attract commercial sponsors. Who's going to get the 2012 Olympics? BFN : Which city will get it, New York, London or Paris? Wolves 1, Man. Utd. 0 Anyone who paid Sky six quid to watch this match on the 17th got to see the bottom team in the premiership defeat the top team. Who says miracles don't happen any more?
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Created for Romiley Anarchists' League by workers in revolt against oppression. Sole © RAL, January 2004. |