2004/November    FINALE

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT on behalf of Al Qaida Vote for our pal Tony and New Labour or Terrorists will Crash A Plane on your House.

ROMILEY NEWS Whizz-Bangs on all fronts! The government may have made it illegal to let off fireworks after 11 p.m. (except on Bonfire Night and New Year's Eve) but no one seems to mentioned it to Romiley's criminals and insurgents. Some of the bangs in the night as October became November were reminiscent of WW II thousand-pounder bombs and the village's sleepless residents were left wondering what is the point of a law which can't be enforced? Except as another example of New Labour's consistent failure to think things through, of course. Maybe they will get the job done this month after all. It's the Sunday after Bonfire Night, and most of the clutter has been cleared away from the site of the sewer repair. But the striped bollards and the traffic lights look liable to remain until the machine which applies the top layer of tarmac turns up and/or it stops raining. Blame the council, not the compensation culture Stockport Council is bragging about how it plans to waste £500 million of the ratepayers' money on yet another pointless remake of Stockport town centre. But the residents would prefer the council to spend the money on something more useful, like smoothing out the roads and pavements, many of which bear the scars of a decade or more of excavations by utility companies.       More puddles than pavement Anyone who has walked Romiley's broken pavements (especially after heavy rain) or 'enjoyed' a bumpy bus ride to Stockport will not be surprised to learn that their council has paid out £14 million in compensation over the last 5 years to people who were injured by falls on potholed roads and crazy pavements. But it's probably expecting too much for the ruling Triv-Dems to spend taxpayers' money on something of real benefit to their customers.    As a comparison, Manchester paid out £12 million and Newcastle on Tyne paid £5 million to injured customers over the same time period. So while it's difficult to imagine anywhere having even worse pavements than Manchester's, Stockport Council has evidently achieved that unhappy state. If it's not one bloody thing, it's another! The traffic lights disappeared briefly once the sewer crew had cleared up their bits and replaced the hijacked half of the pedestrian crossing lights on the north pavement of Compstall Road.    Next thing you know, bloody Transco had some traffic lights in operation as they dug up a bit of the main road that's well away from where the sewer repairs were being made.    Don't you just wish there could be some co-ordination occasionally?    And talking about co-ordination – one of the new lamps on Compstall Road; No. 86; has been a temporary bus stop during the sewer repair as the stop at the NatWest bank was too close to the scene of the action. So guess when the lamp post was outfitted with a sign at eye level to announce its temporary bus stop status? Four months after the job started and just couple of days after the sewer gang upped barriers and split! And everyone is expecting the 'bogus' bus stop to continue to confuse strangers until the sign rots away. Friday, 19th November Life doesn't seem the same without the road up. And it's a damn sight harder to get across it with traffic flowing freely in both directions!    As a further nod in the direction of restoring normal service, the bottom part of fancy lamp No. 6 has been returned to the north pavement, next to the pedestrian crossing light. ADVERTISEMENT Small Pile o' Brix + 2 support bands Appearing Fridays 'n' Satdays at the Romiley Astoria in November. Tickets £5, £7 and £10 plus NO VAT because we don't believe in it. Full details from The Astoria Ticket Unit, 44b, Riverside Drive. B there or B somewhere else!

HEALTH NEWS Do what you like as long as you do what you're told Health Sec. John Reid's civil servants have come up with a novel-length script for the proles in New Labour's perfect world. It is peppered with rules, guidelines, advice and codes of conduct covering all aspects of life, including smoking, eating, drinking, exercise, lifestyle management and sexual health.    All customers will be entitled to consult an NHS lifestyle guru. Nutrition experts will be on duty at all supermarkets to ensure that shoppers are balancing 'Code Red' bad-for-them foods against 'Code Green' healthy items. And breast feeding will be made compulsory by law and the use of infant formula milk will be banned.    Smoke wardens will be posted in strategic locations and charged with the duty of screaming abuse at anyone who lights up in a forbidden zone. All children over the age of 7 will have to be certified four times per year by the school pox doctor in an attempt to control the transmission of STDs. Further, chastity belts will be fitted to all 'at risk' children of both sexes to reduce unauthorized breeding.    The obese will have to pay an NHS supplementary charge to cover the extra costs which the NHS will incur in treating them for heart disease, diabetes, etc. Problem drinkers will be sobered up and then locked in a small room with 14 violent boozers until they get the message.    Junk food advertising will be banned unless the manufacturer bungs New Labour enough to gain a certificate of exemption. And finally, NHS Advice will be expanded greatly – the government is planning to open 4 new call centres in India and 2 more in the Philippines, and to create dedicated website and 2 interactive channels on digital TV. The Home Sec. has announced that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board will cut all future awards in half to help fund the £1 billion cost of the new health programme. Attention short-sighted computer users : If you spend too much time gazing at a monitor screen, you will get glaucoma and your eyeballs will explode! The government advises all heavy computer users to have a cloth handy for a mopping up job. Having a bad back causes your brain to shrink! Medical research has found that processing the pain signals leads to overuse of the brain and a reduction in the amount of grey matter in the skull of up to 11% for people with severe back pain. NOTE : Medical opinion is divided on the issue of whether brain shrinkage will make room for expanding eyeballs and make them less likely to explode. The government's advice to heavy computer users stands.

CELEBRATIONS   Welcome! to ITV 3, a new, mainly repeats channel which has opened on digital TV. Cop shows are featured, including Rebus, Inspector Frost and Maigret, plus repeats of current episodes of The Bill as well as old ones, in addition to the usual boring dross. Congrats to Bert Troutmann, who this month took delivery of an OBE for being tough enough to play the last 15 minutes of the 1956 Cup Final with a broken neck. Congrats to the Pittsburgh Steelers for ending the New England Patriots' NFL record winning streak at 21 matches. Congrats to the Pats for getting that far! More Congrats to the Steelers for hammering the previously unbeaten (this season) Philadelphia Eagles a week later. Congrats to Barclays Bank for winning an award from small businesses. It was voted the Worst Bank in the Universe for providing business services. Congrats to Stephen Maguire for winning the UK Snooker Championship for the first time.

TO BLAME NEWS Nobody is to blame for ... Letting 6 Royal Military Police officers swan about in hostile territory with insufficient ammunition to defend themselves, a radio that stopped working when they were 10 feet from their base and no regular contact schedule with their base; letting them go out on patrol without an Iridium satellite phone (the only semi-reliable means of communication in the area); and letting them walk into a situation which got the whole lot of them killed. The Child Support Agency's backlog of 270,000 cases, its computer system that doesn't work, it's failure to pay out to customers the £720 million in its coffers, its unworkable assessment system and the decision to write of £1 billion as 'uncollectible'. The failure of the Qualifications & Curriculum Authority to send out test papers to 14-year-olds on time in May, the failure to get the English scripts marked, handing out guesswork provisional scores and not distributing the actual scores until the end of September, 6 weeks late. The government's failure to get the fox-hunting ban postponed until over a year after the date of the next general election, and the admission from the Rural Affairs Dept. that the ban is about class warfare and 'socking it to the toffs' rather than the welfare of foxes. The complete collapse of the computer system at the Department of Work & Pensions. PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT MPs' Expenses 2003/2004 The Garbagegate website is offering a list of MPs' expenses sorted by constituency along with some analysis of the figures CLICK HERE to get to the website's front page Note : if you are looking at this BlackFlag News page a long time after November 2004, the item has probably been moved to one of the Garbagegate archives.

HOME NEWS Govt. to turn surplus post offices into casinos The outfit running the nation's post offices is making such a bog of things that it is losing money hand over fist. Its only solution to the problem is to close down a lot of main post offices. As a result, a lot of desirable real estate will become available in towns and cities. So, ever the opportunist, the government has decided to flog redundant post offices to the gambling industry.    "If the Post Office can't make any money on these sites, we sure can," a government spokeswoman said, tucking a hefty bribe from the American casino industry into her handbag. The government has been forced to offer a deal to its back-benchers to get the Gambling Bill through the Commons. They have been promised that there will be no more than 1 major casino on any given high street. The best that can be said about the US election result is that a win for Prez Bush damages Vice-Prez Bliar. The North-East gives a resounding NO! to New Labour's regional assembly Ordered by Vice-Prez Bliar to promote the EU's plan to reduce England to a set of Regions, Deputy Vice-Prez Johnny 'Two Jags' Prescott took the news of rejection rather badly. He had to be restrained forcibly when he attempted to re-educate members of the stubborn majority.    80% of those who participated in the postal ballot turned down the notion of an expensive talking shop in their region. The campaign to secure a 'Yes' vote was marked by the reluctance of the local Labour MPs to get involved and the complete absence of the opportunistic Trivial Democrats, who are normally big on devolution.    The government has not given up on an England of regions, however. This is evident from the way it has left in place regional quangos stuffed with New Labour place-men and -women, whose job it is to approve old Two Jags' plans to turn the south-east of England into a single, vast housing estate and plans for casinos from those who bunged the right amount during the government's consultation junkets. It comes as no surprise to hear that a director of an Internet bookmaking firm bunged New Labour £50K four months before the government started selling super casinos for all and its Gambling Bill. But the bunger should be aware that £50K doesn't buy all that much from New Labour these days. They're way greedier than they used to be. The Mugger still wants to be the boss Chancellor Gordie Broon is making another attempt to position himself as the logical successor to Vice-Prez Bliar, ignoring the strength of the Anyone But Him movement in New Labour's ruling circles. He sees himself as a man with a mission to alert people to opportunities and make the UK a great place for business, workers and pensioners alike. All of which conveniently ignores his record as a ditherer and a meddler, who has sunk the savings and pensions industries with his Stealth Taxes, and who is currently presiding over the shambles which he has created in the departments that collect taxes and pay out benefits. Compensation Culture – who's to blame? Lord Charlie, Lord Chancellor by virtue of having been Vice-Prez Bliar's flatmate, is making himself unpopular by having a go at the compensation culture. Cowboy claims firms, insurance companies, media scares, hospitals letting ambulance-chasers advertise on their premises and hospitals writing to customers suggesting they make a compensation claim and pointing them at a favoured ambulance-chaser are all to blame for it, he reckons. But Mrs. B. Liar must have screamed in his ear because Charlie is saying lawyers, particularly lawyers of the human rights variety, are entirely blameless.    The good news for the ambulance-chasers is that Charlie will be letting them regulate themselves for a few more years. Why? Because when the complaints that self-regulation isn't working become loud enough to require government regulation, he will be safely out of office and out of the firing line. Scottish parliament makes a grand gesture Scotland Bans Smoking is the headline, but not for a couple of years, if at all, is the reality. In the meantime, posturing MSPs are threatening to fine persistent smokers billions of pounds and boasting that everyone north of the border will live to at least 100 once the smoking ban is in place. Closer to real life, pub landlords are worried that no one will bother going out for a drink if they can't have a smoke, too. England's Health Sec., Scottish John Reid, plans to exclude working men's clubs and selected parts of pubs from his smoking ban. Apparently, it's okay for the Labour-supporting 'working class' to smoke themselves to death. And while one can only applaud New Labour for killing off its core supporters, it would appear to be another example of this government failing to think things through. Attention M. Howard : It does you no good to get on your high horse over things nobody cares about, e.g. the shagtastic adventures of blond bimbo Boris. p.s. Boris didn't lie to you, he merely followed the official 10 Downing Street guidelines on accuracy and veracity. p.p.s. You're supposed to lie about shagging away from home, Michael! Recycle, Recycle, Recycle It is widely believed that Vice-Prez Bliar has borrowed the boss's election-winning script for his next turn with the Great British Public. Like Prez Bush, insiders expect, the sidekick will talk up the threat to everyone in the country from mad Islamic suicide bombers, assisted by Home Sec. Blunk who is telling us that there is nothing to worry about while being unconvincing to the max.    Like George Dubya, Smug Bugger will present himself as the only person able to keep the cowering British people safe. So will it work? It all depends whether 52% of the people who bother to vote are as gullible as the Yanks. Well, who'd have thunk it? It has come as a huge surprise to a lot of people to discover that Boris Johnson is the most popular person in the country. He was sacked from his job in the Tory shadow cabinet for a touch of the extra maritals and curiously, all sorts of apparently sensible people are saying getting rid of Boris was a huge mistake, which could cost Michael Howard his his job.    Apparently, Boris is not a confused air-head, he's a serious asset to the Tory party, really quite clever and someone who should be returned to the front line, Mandelson-like, as soon as possible. Contemporary Political Concept: The Idiot Vote as in "Will it win the idiot vote?" The concept is based on the fact that there are a lot of idiots about – see the results of the US Prezidential election! Jonathan Stanesby of Fathers4Justice is in line for a bravery award after daring to handcuff himself to Margaret Hodge, the Minister for Covering Up Child Abuse. Another member of F4J, who spent 2 hours on top of a gate pillar at Buck House, is under investigation for benefit fraud. He is currently on invalidity benefit for a bad back, which didn't prevent him from climbing 20 feet to his protest perch. The Membership Sec. of F4J is now standing by for an application from Home Sec. Blunk, who is currently making a fool of himself by claiming paternity of the children of a woman who had a fling with him then dumped him in favour of her husband. There are reports that Blunk has acquired a Batman outfit even though there are no invitations to fancy dress parties in his diary.

IT COMES AS NO SURPRISE TO HEAR THAT :-   Jacques Barrot, the new French member of the European Commission, is a convicted embezzler and Nigel Farage, the UKIP MEP who outed him, was threatened with legal action for doing so. Vice-Prez Bliar promised to end illegal opium production in Afghanistan and the country is now producing record amounts of the stuff. The French defence contractor Thales, which bunged New Labour and received a half-share in a £2.8 billion contract to build two aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy, is also paying £60K per year to Mrs. and Vice-Prez Bliar, less commission to the middle-men, for renting their 2 flats in Bristol, where Thales employees are working with the MoD on yet another multi-billion-pound defence contract. The Socialist group of MEPs thinks it was okay for convicted embezzler Jacques Barrot to keep quiet about his shady past to get the job of European Transport Commissioner. Blunk's Bobbies, the new auxiliary police force, are to be issued with body armour and personal firearms 'purely for their protection', the Home Office has announced. Resentment among the official police force as well as the public is expected to so high when Blunk's Bobbies hit the streets that they may be supported with armoured vehicles. They will have the same stop & search powers as the official police (but they will be excused form-filling) and a special licence to commit their own brand of police brutality.    A spokesman for the lobby group Citizens For Safer Streets commented: "We are heading into the world of violence and rampant civil disobedience created by Romiley Literary Circle author Philip Turner in his 1975 book Night Flowers. Nothing good can come of this." Judges are threatening to quit unless they can have a bigger pension pot than the rules allow. The Black Watch is to be disbanded by New Labour's military geniuses, junking 265 years of British history and tradition. Margaret Hodge, the Minister for Covering Up Child Abuse, thinks the State has every right to be an intrusive nanny, issue directives to parents, and back them up with the full force of the law. The government's insurance claim to the EU for £950 million compensation for the 2001 foot & mouth outbreak has been knocked back to £350 million as a 'fine' for New Labour's shambolic handling of the outbreak. [So why didn't they fine New Labour the £600 million instead of the British taxpayer? Ed.]

GADGET NEWS Third Generation phones go live If you can't get a signal on your new G3 mobile phone – don't worry, lots of others are in the same boat. You'll be okay in the South-East and the major cities but in the rest of the country – forget it! The masts to connect you have not yet been deployed. And having paid out godzillions to the Treasury for the frequencies, the operators have to kill their customers with charges just to recover their investment before they can think of extending the system.    Note: It has been discovered that G3 mobiles are extra good at giving the user headaches and nausea. So if you see someone looking miserable and poor as they yak into their mobile, it's a G3! The Court of Appeal is quite happy to let mobile phone companies build masts anywhere and ignore the Stewart Report's recommendation that they should not be sited next to schools if the school objects. In fact, there is a growing suspicion that the fix went in a long time ago and the government staged a mock appeal, knowing it would lose but cynically planning to tell the customers that it did it's little best.    But maybe the compliant judges can be persuaded to order the phone masts to be erected next door to the burglars, whom the judges have declined to lock up.

WORLD NEWS Iraq calls off January 2005 elections After watching the antics in the United States in the run-up to this month's prezidential election, the Prez Elect of Iraq called a halt to the proceedings in his country. "If this is democracy, you can keep it," he told the BlackFlag News correspondent in Mosul. Attention football referees : Keep your eyes open if you ever work in Moldova. The chairman of Roso Floreni was fined £1,100 for driving on to the pitch and trying to run the ref over after a dodgy penalty decision. The Definitive Fallujah Story One sniper, dodging between buildings, held up 150 US Marines for more or less a whole day in the rebel city. The Yanks called down 2 air strikes and they fired off 35 artillery shells, 10 tank rounds and 30,000 rounds of rifle ammo, destroying 2 three-storey apartment buildings at a total munitions cost of $90,000 (whether they're going to pay for the buildings has not been disclosed). And at the end of it, the bloke was spotted just riding away unharmed on a bike. Israel's war criminal leader Sharon described Palestinian Prez Arafat's death as a historic turning point in the Middle East. Maybe if he could be got into that French clinic, his ticket could also be punched to create a truly historic opportunity for an armistice. And if we could only get Prez Bush, Vice-Prez Bliar and the leaders of the European Union there, too, to do something about their historic compulsion to meddle in the affairs of other countries ... "Arafat had all the power, all the popularity and, most important of all, all the money!" Three British military police officers and their Kuwaiti interpreter plan to sue the US army for $2.3 million. They all suffered serious injuries when they were shunted off the road in Iraq in May of last year. Their vehicle was assaulted by the Yank driver of a tank transporter, who wasn't watching where he was going. Looks like a Yank at the steering wheel is as dangerous to their allies as their blind pilots. If you're going to Bhutan, take your own ciggies because selling all tobacco products with be banned from December 7th. Tourists can carry on smoking but if they sell smoking materials on to the locals, they will be busted for smuggling. Warning to Customers : the world's next flashpoint is the Ukraine, where the Russians think they have a divine right to rule by proxy, and where they helped a pro-Russian stooge to 'win' this month's election for Mr. Prez. The stooge enjoyed success on a truly Soviet scale in places, which had 96% turn-outs and everyone voting for the stooge.    Spoilsport election observers have dared to report vote-rigging on a scale that reminded them of what goes on in Republican party or New Labour rotten boroughs. One dirty trick which the Yanks and the Brits have yet to try was to poison the leader of the opposition party with a dioxin which causes an extreme form of acne and then give him the wrong treatment in a state hospital.    As a result, he has lost his smooth, 'boyish' looks, his face is now swollen and pock-marked, and the Russians and their stooges are hoping uglified means unelectable. The 'winner' of the rigged election, one Viktor Yanukovich, is a convicted criminal and a bogus professor. He is confident of receiving French support within the EU.    Vice-Prez Bliar had ordered his Minister for Getting New Labour Re-elected at the Taxpayer's Expense to take an immediate winter break in Kiev to find out if the Ukrainians have any good ideas which he can steal for the next general election in the UK.

EUROPEAN UNION NEWS Andreasen tries to swing SFO into action The New EU Flag - the Triple Cross Former European Commission senior accountant Martha Andreasen has challenged the UK's Serious Fraud Office to investigate corruption at the European Union's administrative heart. She has delivered a truckload of evidence of dodgy dealings to the SFO, which is waiting for Vice-Prez Bliar to give a go/no-go signal.    Insiders believe that no matter how convincing the evidence, a British investigation is unlikely in view of the potential for embarrassment to outgoing UK Commissioner Neil Kinnock.    Appointed to fight corruption in the EU in 1999, Kinnock did absolutely nothing other than suspending Martha Andreasen in 2002 when she refused to certify the EU's accounts. Kinnock ignored her warnings that non-existent financial controls leave the EU wide open to fraud and spent the rest of his term trying to sweep the embarrassment under his office carpet.    Ms Andreasen was eventually sacked last month for disloyalty and refusing to keep quiet about EU corruption. Kinnock is to receive a peerage when he is evicted from office as a reward for ... well, no one knows, really. A European Stealth Tax : The Socialists (what New Labour used to be) in the Euro Parliament want to impose a new tax to fund the running costs of the EU. The initial plan – to slap the tax on salaries as an additional income tax – has been junked in favour of a universal tax along the lines of VAT. The idea is that everyone has to pay it, they will feel more involved in the European Experience. 'Old Europe' to stand up to Fundamentalist USA The Franco-German-Spanish Axis is resolved to confront the growing US influence around the world. If necessary, the political and economic power of the Greater European superstate will be marshalled to thwart US ambitions of achieving global domination.    It is believed that the UK is a prime target for remedial treatment as the present regime is widely seen as a puppet client of George Dubya Bush. PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT A London Olympics? No, thanks!

FOCUS ON AMERICA Bin Laden endorsement for Bush A message of endorsement from his client and ally Osama bin Laden swung the fundamentalist vote firmly behind Prez Dubya Bush in this month's prezidential election.    Apparently, his God 'n' Guns customers in Middle America feel a lot safer with a devil they know than Desperate Dan-chinned unknown John Kerry.    Independent analysts have found the bin Laden video rant as full of lies and spin as any communique from Bliar's 10 Downing Street or the Dubya Bush White House.    Both establishments deny providing the services of discredited spin doctors to Mr. Laden free of charge. PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT on behalf of The Rest of the World No More Years! Packers do their bit for democracy in the US There is a curious connection between the Washington Redskins NFL team and prezidential elections. According to the Redskins' Rule, if the Skins win their last home match before the election, then the incumbent Mr. Prez keeps his job. This year, the Green Bay Packers, appropriately from swing state Wisconsin, wrought Halloween havoc on the Redskins and thrashed them 28-14 in their own backyard. So, if the trend is maintained, we should see George Dubya on his bike and turfed out of office. But that underestimates the power of the Republican machine in Florida and elsewhere to lie, cheat and steal its way back into power. Bush Claims 'Pet Goat' Vote The above is probably the most curious of the many eccentric election headlines, which sought to cloak the true awfulness of America's choice in relentless humour. But the fact remains that George Dubya Bush has managed to provoke hatred of the United States of America, its people and everything that the country stands for to an unprecedented degree world-wide. Such an achievement would normally be worthy of an award. We would suggest 'The Grand Order of the Choking Pretzel' as appropriate for old Dubya.    That said, no one was particularly keen to see Mr. Kerry and his personal version of Fat Government succeed, except as the marginally lesser of two evils. Even so, most people around the world were resigned to seeing the headline: America prefers dishonest idiot to someone who might know what he's doing once this year's swindle had been played out. If you throw enough hundreds of millions of dollars at the problem, you can buy enough smoke and mirrors to bamboozle 52% of the people who bother to vote in a country the size of the USA. The Bush re-election machine spent millions of dollars on pre-paid mobiles for a dirty-tricks phone campaign. The tactics involved calling suspected floating voters, pretending to be a Democratic party worker and telling the victim, with suitable enthusiasm, that John Kerry would make sexual deviation and abortion compulsory and burn down all churches.    [Are there no Lee Harvey Oswalds left in America? Ed.] "A major disaster for the free world and an even bigger disaster for the oppressed world." As Vice-Prez Bliar heads for the US for a consultation with his boss, Prez Dubya Bush, he should remain mindful of the good old American saying: 'It is but a short step from dogsbody to horse's ass'. Most of the people who voted for George Dubya Bush did so because they though he's honest. Prez Bush continued to claim that Saddam Hussein has WoMD long after it had been proven that he had none. Conclusion: Most people who voted for George Dubya are idiots. Clarification required : Are reporters 'in bed with' US troops in Iraq or 'embedded' with them? Or is there no real difference? The US Military is developing a hypersonic cruise missile. It will be able to hit a target within its range of 9,000 miles within 2 hours.    The idea behind it is to discourage the likes of Osama bin Laden from having a long lunch at his favourite café. The Pentagon wants to keep bad guys permanently on the move when they're not hiding in the hope that they will get tired and make a fatal mistake.

SPACE NEWS Slow and steady in space, boy racer on Earth SMART-1, the European Space Agency's experimental ion-drive spacecraft, is officially in orbit around the Moon 2 months early after a trip time of 13 months. The probe will begin a mapping mission when it reaches a near-polar orbit, e.g. looking for water and carbon dioxide ice in permanently shadowed craters.    Meanwhile, over the Pacific, NASA's X-43A "scramjet" flew under its own power for about 10 seconds after separating from a Pegasus booster rocket at 110,000 feet. After reaching a speed of 11,500 km/hr. [compared to SMART's average speed of 42 km/hr.], the X-43a plunged into the sea, never to be seen again.

CRIME NEWS SO 19 Officers Down Guns The withdrawal of labour has been made in response to the suspension of 2 police officers who gunned down a Scotsman armed with a table leg in 1999. Having followed the prevailing rules of engagement, the police officers and their colleagues feel that they have done nothing wrong.    "The world is a safer place today," a spokesman for the lobby group Citizens For Safer Streets told BlackFlag News as she headed for the Home Office to find out who was responsible for drawing up the rules of engagement for armed police officers. "You shouldn't be able to shoot a member of the public and behave like nothing happened." The police are to be allowed to operate hundreds of hidden, mobile speed cameras to raise Stealth Taxes for the Treasury rather than to buy more speedcams. High Street Robbery The Big Banks are stealing a total of £1 billion per year via illegal handling fees on credit card transactions, the Office of Fair Trading reckons. The charging process and the commissions charged are both illegal under Article 81 of the EC Treaty and also the 1998 Competition Act in the UK. So the OFT is talking about cutting the fees in half. [If they're illegal, why aren't they being abolished? Ed.] This should open the door to damages claims by retailers, who currently pass on the cost of this rip-off to their customers. Quite how the ripped-off customers will get any compensation has not been disclosed. The Big Banks get flak from the Treasury when they make noises about charging for the use of their ATMs. So they are selling off their cash machines to companies which impose charges, and then buying up these companies. Sneaky, or what!    Time for another huge windfall tax on banks, Mr. Mugger! Why the lie? 13 years after the event, the truth about the war to evict Iraq from Kuwait is coming out. Destruction of Iraqi chemical weapons released the nerve gas sarin, which was blown by the wind onto the coalition's troops. And this own-goal nerve gas attack is the cause of Gulf War Syndrome.    Chemical alarms went off when the detected the nerve gas but the Ministry of Defence said they were malfunctioning and giving false alarms. And the MoD has stuck with this lie ever since – and if Gulf War Syndrome was caused by an 'own goal', the reason for sticking with the lie becomes clear. The European Commission has denied charges that bids from British companies are being excluded unfairly from tendering processes in other European countries. So it must be true.    France, Germany, Spain and Italy regularly leave British firms out in the cold. [Did someone mention the war, or something? Ed.] A favourite trick is to split large contracts into units too small to be the concern of EU competition laws. New Labour's election-winning strategy for 2005 (as predicted in the earlier item in the Home News section above) is a Bill to make terrorism illegal – one which won't become law before the election in May. In the meantime, Vice-Prez Bliar will send a stooge, probably the Minister for Sexual Deviants or Digging up Cricket Pitches (we can't remember which job he has and we can't be bothered checking), on the road to lie to the customers about current terrorist threats.    And come the election, New Labour's Minister for Re-election (whose salary is being paid by the taxpayer at no benefit to the taxpayer) will publish a list of all the buildings and national monuments which weren't destroyed under New Labour with a guarantee that they will be destroyed if the Tories get in.

DEPARTURES Fred Dibnah MBE The joiner turned steeplejack, engineer and TV documentary star has died at 66. Fred Dibnah began his 25-year career as a national known figure in a film called "Fred Dibnah - Steeplejack". A string of films charting the ups and downs of his life and career followed. He became famous for demolishing chimneys by a replacing brickwork with wooden props and using a fire to topple the structure.    Fascinated by steam and its lost age, he presented TV series such as "Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age", "The Age of Steam" and "The Building of Britain". His final series will be broadcast in the spring of next year.    Fred Dibnah was awarded an MBE in the 2004 New Year honours for services to heritage and broadcasting. He is one of the few people to have a living obituary on the nation's digital TV channels, which continue to show the Fred Dibnah documentaries as staple items. DEPARTURES Eddie Charlton The man who represented Australia on the TV snooker scene from the 1970s to the 1990s has died at 75. Eddie Charlton was an all-round sportsman and one of the torch-bearers at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. 'Steady Eddie' was known for his physical fitness and he could grind down opponents with the best of them. But he was destined always to be thereabouts but never to win the top prize at snooker or billiards. He was awarded the Australian Order of Merit and the Australian Sports Medal for his services to sport. He took up 9-ball pool in his latter years and he was in New Zealand for an exhibition match when overtaken by his final illness. DEPARTURES Emlyn Hughes The former captain of Liverpool FC and England has died at 57. Nicknamed Crazy Horse by the fans for his enthusiastic style of play, he was a member of Liverpool teams which won the League Championship 4 times, the FA Cup, and the European and UEFA Cups twice each. Liverpool never won the League Cup while he was there but he added that winner's medal to his collection with Wolverhampton Wanderers. After his playing career, he turned to broadcasting, becoming a popular team captain on the BBC's A Question of Sport, after-dinner speaking and race horse ownership. He was awarded an OBE for services to sport in 1980. DEPARTURES Yasser Arafat Flown from his shattered oubliette to Paris for hospital treatment last month, the Palestinian president lapsed into a coma and died with curious speed aged 75. Mr. Arafat took a traditional path in the Middle East, metamorphosing from terrorist to political leader, and sharing the 1994 Nobel Peace prize with 2 reformed Israeli terrorists. He leaves behind a battle for both the succession and control of his assets, which are estimated at anywhere between $1 billion and $6+ billion. He will be buried in Ramallah with the expectation that his body will be moved to Jerusalem when the fundamentalist occupation regime has been ousted. DEPARTURES Fred Hale A man whose life encompassed the entire 20th Century has died at the good old age of 113. Born in New Sharon, Maine, USA on December 1st 1890, Fred Hale worked as a railway postal clerk, raised a family and retired in 1957. He then enjoyed 47 years' retirement and died 2 weeks short of his 114th birthday. He was the world's oldest man for a year and he remained an active motorist until the age of 107.

DEPARTURES? Lord Woolf? Widely castigated as the "burglars' friend" over his reluctance to lock up criminals of any sort, the Lord Chief Justice has decided to retire 4 years early at 71. He has had enough of constant ass-kicking matches with Home Sec. Blunk and, trailing accusations of bullying and megaphone politics, he plans to fold his tent a few months from now and depart.    His decision to go was welcomed by a spokesman for the Victims of Crime Trust, who feels that the country needs a Lord Chief Justice who will get tough with criminals. His Lordship is reported to be having second thoughts about early retirement, mainly because so many real people think that his speedy departure would be a good thing. DEPARTURES? Vice-Prez Bliar? Our smug leader is making noises about holding a "cut & run" snap general election in February to whip his curs back into line. His back-benchers have been growing increasingly uppity of late and the Vice-Prez feels that they need a short, sharp shock to bring them back into touch with reality.    His message to them is: "Back me now or be chucked off the gravy train while you're still recovering from your Xmas/New Year hols." DEPARTURES? The VCR? The country's largest retailer of electrical gadgets (the one notorious for high-pressure sales of dodgy service contracts) has decided to stop selling video cassette recorders and turn the space over to DVD players. So people with a huge collection of stuff on video cassette will be left in the same hole as those with a large collection of audio cassettes.    Will people transfer their collection to the new medium? Probably not on time and cost grounds. Especially as the nation's floggers of gadgets will be pushing a successor to the DVD player in a few years' time when most people have bought one. In the meantime, Curry's and Lewis's will continue to make VCRs available to their customers, so all is not lost.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT Phishers In Action "Phishing" is the repellent practice of stealing information from other people with the intention of emptying their bank accounts and sticking bogus charges on their credit cards. One way of doing this is to send potential victims an email got up to look like a communication from their bank in an attempt to obtain account, pin number and password information. As a public service, Jenson Farrago is offering access to examples of phishing emails. CLICK HERE to find out what they look like. LATERAL THINKING NEWS Coke brings death to bugs Enterprising farmers in India have discovered that Coca-Cola is the ultimate bug-slayer. Spraying fields with Coke wipes them out more ruthlessly than the most powerful conventional pesticide. There is also a huge cost benefit: 270 rupees per acre for Coke compared to 10,000 rupees (£130) per acre for a pesticide concentrate.    Even better, Coke does not need dilution equipment and it is safe to handle (unless taken internally). The theory behind its success is that the vast amount of sugar in Coke [Something like 9 tablespoons of sugar per can. Ed.] attracts red ants to the sprayed fields and they polish off crop-munching bugs in short order.  The taxpayer paying for Alan Milburn to dream up Vice-Prez Bliar's strategy for the next general election – it's symptomatic of the endemic corruption in New Labour's rotten heart.  The notion that you can tell if a composer is a sexual deviant from his/her music.  Two Jags Prescott's warning that, as for Scottish & Welsh devolution, the government will keep holding regional assembly referenda until the customers make the right decision.  Judge Sloss refusing to talk to Fathers4Justice because she thinks they're being silly. Pompous, or what!  Vice-Prez Bliar's decision that it would be 'inconvenient' to celebrate the 60th anniversaries of VE-Day and VJ-Day on the proper dates.  Prez Bush saying he wants to return democracy to Iraq, a country which has never known democracy.  The government's lie that moving the Black Watch into Iraq's 'Triangle of Death' was a military decision, not a political one taken by Bliar and Hoon.  Boris Johnson – or Gordon Broon – as prime minister.  A 2012 London Olympics could make a profit of more than £100 million.  Terrorists would be less likely to attack the UK with a Labour government in power!  The England cricket team will rush home in a panic if Prez Mug of Zimbabwe tries to shake hands with any of them. This edition of BlackFlag News was compiled in accordance with official 10 Downing Street guidelines on accuracy and veracity.

Created for Romiley Anarchists' League by workers in revolt against oppression. Sole © RAL, November 2004.