2003/September

DEPARTURES Kent Walton The voice of the exceedingly popular wrestling section on ITV's World of Sport has died at 86 (last month, in fact but it has taken a while to get hold of the details.)    Kent Walton's descriptions of the antics of wrestlers Les Kellett, Mick McManus, Jackie Pallo, Big Daddy, the incomparable George Kidd, Johnny Saint, Steve Logan, Giant Haystacks and all the rest; and the referee Lou Marco; were an essential part of any Saturday afternoon. Sadly, that miserable waste of space Greg Dyke decided that the show was too popular and he brought the fun to an end in 1988.    Born in Cairo and educated at Charterhouse, Kenneth Walton Beckett went into acting after leaving school. Then the RAF made him a wireless operator/air gunner with a mainly Canadian squadron – the source of his distinctive accent. He worked as a DJ for Radio Luxemburg before joining the fledgling ITV company Associated Rediffusion as a sports commentator. His spell beside wrestling rings spanned 33 years. He also fronted the pop show Cool For Cats and did voice overs for TV ads, and dipped a toe into film production. DEPARTURES Leni Riefenstahl The extraordinary Leni Riefenstahl has died at 101. She was always a woman with a mission to prove, "I can do that." And she could – better than anyone previously, a lot of the time.    Her pictorial autobiography, published in 2000, had the title Five Lives to reflect a series of radical changes. Her long career included periods as a dancer, an actress and a director in films, a maker of documentary films before and after World War Two, a photographic chronicler of the vanished way of life of the Sudanese Nuba tribe and finally, from her seventies to her nineties, as a scuba diver and photographer of life in the oceans.    She turned the film camera from a static object to a moving chronicler of a spectacle at a time when women weren't directing films. Every technique seen in contemporary sports documentaries is present in her films from the 1930s. She invented the concept of the politician as a charismatic hero in promotional films [c.f. President 'Dubya' Bush on his aircraft carrier after the Iraq war]. Unfortunately, Leni Riefenstahl was perceived as a 'Hitler Babe' [c.f. the 'Blair Babes' of 1997] and even though the de-nazifiers found nothing to do in her case, her genius languished in the wilderness after the war.    In the Sixties, she retired to a remote part of north-east Africa to document the life of the Nuba people. In the early Seventies, she knocked 20 years off her age, learned to scuba-dive and assembled an impressive collection of photographs and films of marine life and its environment over the next quarter-century. Her final film, Impressions Under Water, was compiled from footage shot on 2,000+ dives made over 25 years. The film was released a few days before her 100th birthday, which was reported by BlackFlag News for 2002/August. DEPARTURES Edward Teller Edward Teller, 'Father of the H-Bomb', has died aged 95. Born in Budapest, he earning a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Leipzig and bugged out to the United States in 1935. Teller helped to develop the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and became a physics professor at Chicago University in 1946.    When the Soviet Union showed off its own atomic bomb in 1949, Teller produced a dodgy design for a 'superbomb' and sold it to President Truman. Although other physicists had their doubts, Teller eventually got the design right and he returned to Los Alamos until the first successful megaton-scale H-bomb test in the Pacific in 1952. After leaving Los Alamos, Teller worked at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, which he helped to found, until his retirement in 1975. He continued to lecture and perform research work into his 90s.    The atom spy Klaus Fuchs stole the dodgy H-bomb design for his Soviet masters, which did no favours for the Soviet physicists who had the alternative of making it work or ending up in one of Stalin's concentration camps.    Teller sold another dodgy project to President Reagan – the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly called "Star Wars." and he gave his approval to Prez Dubya Bush's decision to junk the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia to work on a missile defence shield, the "Son of Star Wars".    Edward Teller is said to have been the model for the mad scientist played by Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick's film Dr Strangelove. DEPARTURES Johnny Cash Probably the most successful country music star of all time, the 'Man in Black' has died at 71. Johnny Cash grew up on the shores of the Mississippi exposed to music all day long. He learned to play the guitar while serving in the US air force in Germany and he started to earn serious money in the Sixties. He made prison concerts his personal territory and he ended up behind bars himself 7 times when he mixed booze with speed and smuggled amphetamines into the US from Mexico. But he cleaned up his act eventually.    As well as playing music, Cash appeared as an actor in TV shows, e.g. TV Western movies, Columbo and Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman. His dumping by the Columbia label (in 1986) after 28 years is seen as the world's most boneheaded move by a recording company. His recording career continued to thrive on other labels and he was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

HOME NEWS Joke of the Month What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?         I don't know and I don't care. Hooray for the Silly Season? Some ex-Scotland Yard detective writes a book 'proving' that Lord Lucan ended his days as a Scouse/Irish hippie called Barry Halpin, who died in Goa in 1996. Some idiot puts the book on a fact shelf instead of a fiction shelf. Next thing you know, newspapers – so-called serious ones as well as tabloids – are plugging the book like crazy on their front page. Only in the Silly Season, eh? Why can't they take him seriously? Illusionist David Blaine is spending 44 days in a plastic box dangling over the Thames. It's the ultimate feat of endurance, he insists. So why aren't people treating him with proper respect?    He's had yobs bombarding his box with eggs, fish & chips, bottles and bananas, and drunken women flashing their tits at him. Drunken golfers have tried to hit his box with chip shots off Tower Bridge and a yob tried to cut his water supply pipe. And Southwark council's Noise Control Department has been called out by people on both sides of the river to 'abate' idiots like the mad drummer, who thought it would be cool to keep everyone awake into the small hours.    Houdini would never have had all this bother.    But on a slightly serious note; if this is the way people behave in London, which has a police force and infrastructure, it makes the behaviour of the locals in Baghdad seem almost reasonable when they nick everything not nailed down and shoot at everything that moves. 'Ecstasy' Trial Blunder A study at Johns Hopkins university in the US found that lab animals suffered severe reactions when injected with MDMA or 'ecstasy'. They concluded that clubbers face irreversible brain damage and a risk of developing Parkinson's disease after just one night on 'E'. But, it seems, they made a bog of their tests.    Someone supplied them with methamphetamine in bottles labelled MDMA and their results have now been found to be worthless. So bad is the situation that the journal Science, which published the shock-horror story a year ago, has been forced to take the unusual step of printing a retraction. Hanging On To The Dosh Up to the end of July of this year, a cash deposit made via the Post Office was credited to a LloydsTSB account after 09:30 on the next day. From August to the middle of this month, it was taking 2 days for the cash to be credited. Following complaints, the next-day credit was re-established. But we're keeping a close eye on the situation, LloydsTSB! LloydsTSB has been fined a record £1.9 million by the Financial Services Authority for mis-selling high-risk bonds to unsuspecting novice investors. This is further proof that the TSB's customer service has gone to hell since it got involved with Lloyds. Every Chat-Room To Get A Moderator (Maybe) So MicroSoft is closing its chat-rooms to make the world a safer place? Well, one cheer for Bill! But it occurs to us that if he wants to do something for the betterment of Mankind, it might be an idea to give us computer operating systems that work rather than new, bloated versions with different bugs and all the useful bits either removed or hidden?    And doesn't it seem likely that Internet chat-rooms are full of journalists talking dirty and 'grooming' one another so they'll have something to write about the next day?

POLITICAL NEWS The Mugger Bogs It Up The Chancellor, pro tem, has told his New Labour colleagues that his brief Tax & Spend & Waste Dosh era is over. His unrealistic forecasts of the country's earning power have finally caught up with him.    He is now hovering on the brink of a monumental black hole in his accounts. So as far as New Labour's customers are concerned, it's a case of, "Fasten your seatbelts, chaps!" as we hurtle into a New Labour era of Tax More & Cut Budgets & Waste Dosh.    It would now appear that the Hutton Inquiry and the Alastair Campbell 'resignation' are both smokescreens intended to cover up latest of The Mugger's failures since he dumped Prudence. 'Been There Before' Department The prime minister promises to reform the public sector. The prime minister gets into trouble through lying to the electorate about why he's starting a war. The prime minister has to let his party's trade union paymasters vet his reform plans to stop them making trouble at his upcoming party conference. The trade union leaders don't want any changes. The government makes 'reforms' but nothing changes.    The prime minister is happy because he's kept his job. The trade union leaders are happy because they've justified their existence to their members and they can put in for a pay rise. Only the people are unhappy because public services are costing more and getting worse. But hey, what do the prime minister and the trade union bosses care about the public anyway? The Cambell Legacy: "He helped to transform Labour from unelectable and clueless to electable and clueless." Immigrants face a test of their Britishness before they can have a non-forged passport. It would be interested to know how many members of New Labour could pass this test! At his monthly press conference, Vice-Prez Blair promised not to be deflected from his policy of doing convenient U-turns according to whichever way the wind is blowing. Coincidence or Conspiracy? One day, the Triv-Dems announce that they're not playing on New Labour's team any more. The next, they publish numbers to show that the railways are getting worse under Labour. So how come they've only just noticed? Is it because they've been riding around in Fat Johnny Prescott's fleet of Jags till now? The successor to spin Vice-Prez Blair is now operating a policy of omission now that spin is officially dead. In his dodgy white paper on the Draft Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, he left out all the scary stuff about loss of our vetos and loss of control on taxation, employment, social security, border controls, trade, our culture, defence, civil defence, foreign policy, etc., etc.    And for his next trick, he leaked a speech to the trade union bosses containing all sorts of tough stuff – and omitted the tough stuff from the actual speech.    Sneaky, or what! Mrs. Vice-Prez Blair's 'lifestyle guru' has been deemed a security risk and her Downing Street pass has been cancelled. So Cherie will have to make the house calls when she needs to be told what to wear – unless they do it all on the Internet with mutual webcams. This 'omission' lark, how does it work? Take the simple phrase: "Vice-Prez Blair is not telling the truth about his dodgy dossier," the Inquiry said. Omitting one small word give the more harmonious official version: "Vice-Prez Blair is telling the truth about his dodgy dossier," the Inquiry said.    And then the customers have all the fun of decoding the official version by guessing the omitted word. Anarchy in the People's Republic of Brent! The voters of Brent have had a by-election laugh at the Vice-Prez, electing a Trivial-Democrat to supply their government. Which is a bit like selecting RailTrack to supply their gas and electricity.    Of course, if there were any justice in Vice-Prez Blair's domaign, the seat would have gone to the Don't Care Party, which claimed a large majority of the votes [64% of the electorate] over the Triv-Dems (gold), Labour (Red), Conservative (Blue) and Others (Green.) Apparently, it was all Mandy's fault that his party lost Brent. Nelson Mandelason, or whatever his name is, talked the Vice-Prez out of holding an election in July before the wheels came off his image completely. Education, Schmeducation! Vice-Prez Blair's Qualifications & Curriculum Authority has gone off its trolley. It has ruled that school kids will no longer fail exams and get an F for Fail grade. Instead, they'll get an N for Nearly grade. Similarly, the words 'right' and 'wrong' will be abolished and replaced by 'creditworthy' and 'not creditworthy'. The Big New Idea behind the change is to shield kids from the real world and any suspicion that the country is being run by idiots.    Anyone wondering where the nation's taxes go has had their answer – on the dope and booze which rots the minds of the V-P's minions! Stealth Tax #62 The mugger is putting 7p per gallon on petrol (with the VAT) and trying to pretend that he's doing the nation a favour. Looks like he's been attending the dope and booze parties thrown by the QCA. Don't Gaol Burglars, Say Triv-Dems Simon Hughes, their home affairs correspondent, reckons that burglars who don't come into contact with their victims don't cause distress, even if they steal everything valuable and trash the rest, and they shouldn't be sent to gaol to give society a break from them.    "Nurse, he's out of bed again!" ID cards must be compulsory, says the Home Office. Especially for everyone who looks a bit foreign. According to this month's Grauniad/ICM survey, the Vice-Prez has the following popularity rating: Content     Discontent     Don't Care     Vice-Prez Puts Labour Party On Notice His message came in a tough speech released by Vice-Prez Blair's new spin doctor – the one who looks like Inspector Frost, not the ex-drunk with attitude. "Shape up and stop moaning about Iraq and all the other stuff; or else!" the V-P will say if he ever actually delivers the speech to an audience. And if New Labour doesn't shape up, he'll sack the entire cast of his government and ship in a new bunch of sheep. There's a rumour going around that 25% of Labour MPs have demanded that the V-P resign right away. But this is clearly a wind-up of some sort. "I will listen to people, and then I will just go ahead and do what I was going to do anyway." – Vice-Prez Bliar, 27th September.

TRANSPORT NEWS MAD – Motorists Against Detection Militant motorists are well on target for achieving their initial aim of wiping out 1,000 speed cameras. Their current score is 700+ and rising daily. Cameras costing £24,000 to replace have been battered down, blown up and shot to bits from southern England to the highlands of Scotland and from Norfolk to west Wales.    Chief constables all over Britain have raised public anger levels to unprecedented heights through their policy of raising cash with speed cameras while ignoring the types of crime which have the biggest impact on people's lives, such as burglary.    Perhaps burgled citizens need to take the same sort of affirmative action adopted by the motorists. Insisting on a personal apology from the chief constable for every unsolved home invasion would be a good start, and having their noses rubbed in their own mess might help some senior coppers to focus their minds on their failure to do the job that the customers want done. Spray-On Invisibility for Speeders The police are reported to be offically 'unconcerned' by Photoblocker, a US-made spray for making number plates unreadable by speed cameras. Available from the website of Isle of Wight-based Vanguard Alliance, Ltd., the spray allows number plates to be read by the human eye but it reflects the flash from a speedcam. Apparently, it's a criminal offence to obstruct a police officer in the execution of his duty but you can obstruct to the max, pieces of equipment like speedcams. For the moment.

WAR NEWS Vice-Prez Blair said: Iraq had WoMD available for use in 4 to 5 minutes Iraq was buying uranium from Africa to make atomic bombs Iraq's government had links with Al Qaida But none of it was true. So are we going to reinstate Mr. Hussein and what's left of his regime and leave Iraq with grovelling apologies? And are we going to rebuild that nice Mr. Hussein's palaces as a gesture of contrition before we go? And how the hell are we going to afford the £9.8 billion that Vice-Prez Blair's war with Iraq will cost us over the next couple of years? Today's Conspiracy Theory The US government and its military wish to keep Osama bin Laden alive; or to conceal the news of his death; in order to preserve the prime focus of Prez Bush's 'War on Terror'.    No bin Laden and no big bucks from Congress and no carte blanche to do what the hell they like where they like.    Sweet deal, or what! Yesterday's Conspiracy Theory The Yanks weren't actually in World War Two, but they're trying to pretend they were by making movies about it. Not sure? What about Errol Flynn liberating Burma when there were no Yanks in that part of the world? How about the film in which the Yanks allegedly recovered an Enigma coding machine from a German submarine? And how about the coming film which claims that the Yanks won the Battle of Britain for us?    'Nuff said! Jack Straw steps off sinking ship The Home Sec. didn't want to go to war with Iraq, he has let it be known. He wanted the UK to give Prez Bush our best wishes and let him get on with it. But Vice-Prez Blair told Straw, "Back me or you're sacked." And he chose to keep the fancy office and the company limo.    But now that the wheels are coming off 'Dodgy' Blair's war, Mr. Straw is trying to slide into the 'Not me, Gov!' camp, war-wise. "My people did not sex up our dodgy dossiers." – Vice-Prez Blair. "Oh, yes, they did!" – senior Intelligence officers. Hans Blix says Saddam Hussein destroyed his WoMD in the summer of 1991 and the Yanks and the Brits deliberately exaggerated (lied about) the danger from Iraq to their citizens. Prez Dubya says Saddam Hussein wasn't involved in the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. Not much luck on the WoMD Front Prez Bush and Vice-Prez Blair have had 1,400 weapons inspectors scouring Iraq. But the idle sods have come up empty after drawing their pay for 4 months. Not a sniff of anything lethal, according to the leaks from their report.    Stage 2 of the justification process has now been implemented. What passes for our government is now working on producing documents to prove that S. Hussein was planning to build WoMD, even if he never actually got round to doing it. Let us hope that they give the job to someone more competent than whoever came up with the 'African Uranium' dodgy dossier. Saddam Hussein is about to be featured in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's official Master of Deception. All the compilers have to decide is his category. He either fooled the world into thinking that he had WoMD available for deployment in 4 to 5 minutes, or he fooled his customers into fooling themselves into believing that he had such weapons.    Mr. Hussein is also believed to have emailed an application to join the Magic Circle from his bunker in the badlands of northern Iraq. The Mugger fires a salvo Chancellor Gordy Broon, the man who ruined the pensions industry and the savings industry, and imposed 62 Stealth Taxes on us, is hoping to bring ruination to the whole country. Recycling sound-bites from an old speech of Vice-Prez Bliar's, he let everyone know what while he supports Tone fully, he himself is available to take over the top job if anyone feels like giving him a chance.

SCIENCE NEWS Government plans to put some fizz in the North Sea It is government policy to pretend that it can control the global climate by reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the UK. The notion is largely an excuse for taxing New Labour's customers even more harshly, such as by imposing the Carbon Tax. And to get away with their taxation, the government has to be seen to be doing something, no matter how cosmetic.    But someone at the Department of the Environment has blown a fuse and come up with a Big Idea. The plan is to collect all the carbon dioxide generated from burning fossil fuels at power stations and pump it into the North Sea using giant diffusers, similar to the ones used to oxygenate domestic fish tanks. The nett effect will be to lose the carbon dioxide while turning the North Sea into the equivalent of a heroic-scale, salty, fizzy drink.    The DoE insists that microscopic marine vegetable life will consume the carbon dioxide and reproduce at a higher rate, which will increase the food supply for the dwindling stocks of fish and other marine life in the North Sea. 'Not so!' say members of the environmental industry, particularly GlobeWatch UK. They claim that there will be little or no growth in fish stocks. They are also worried about the reduction of density of the sea water which will follow when it is full of 'fizz'.    When the North Sea becomes less dense, it will become less buoyant, GWUK insists. There will be an increase in the number of sinkings if marine fleets fail to reduce the amount of cargo that their ships carry. And more sinkings equals more pollution. This sounds like an argument which could run and run. GM? Wot GM? 93% of those asked in the GM National Inquiry have said NO! to genetic monstering. But as V-P Blair and the EU want it, then the whole exercise has been rather pointless.   ADVERTISEMENT This Month's Essential Books – yours at bargain prices!!! The Downing Street Spin Doctor – His True Story by Campbell McAllister "Put this in the Fiction Section and I'll sue." Limpback only, yours for just £19.99 / €34.49 plus NO VAT because we don't believe in it. 45 spm (spins per minute) – A history of New Labour Propaganda by Raice Morningside "Roll over and make room, Dr. Goebbels!" Hardback £25.00 / €43.13, Softback £15.00 / €25.88 Alastair Campbell Ate My Hamster – The Memoirs of a Political Journalist by Harley Hackington-Smythe "Gut-churningly fascinating, not for the faint-hearted!" Hardback £25.00 / €43.13, Softback £15.00 / €25.88 Man of the Shadows – A Spin Doctor's True Story by Horace T. Firefly "Shines a light where the sun don't shine!" Stiffback only, yours for just £21.00 / €36.25 plus NO VAT because we don't believe in it. Full details from Romiley Bookstore, 101, Riverside Drive, Romiley.

SPACE NEWS Buy a tin hat and get digging! Anyone planning to live past March 21st, 2014, might be out of luck. Asteroid 2003 QQ47 is heading our way and there's a 1 in 909,000 chance that it might hit the Earth. And if you think those are long odds, the chance of winning the Lottery jackpot is 1 in 14,000,000 – and look how often someone gets rich.    The killer asteroid is 3/4 of a mile in diameter, it weighs 2,600 million tons, it's travelling at 75,000 mph and if it hits the Earth, the crater will be 10-20 miles in diameter depending on the angle of approach. The result of an impact will be a 'nuclear winter', during which the Earth will freeze because dust in the atmosphere blocks out sunlight. So mass extinctions can be expected with a whole lot of humans high on the list of expendables.

FOREIGN NEWS Spam an Eyetie and end up in clink In Italy, sending e-mails without the permission of the receiver is against the law. And from this month, anyone who sends an unsolicited junk e-mail there with the intention of making a profit will face a fine of up to €90,000 and from six months to three years in gaol. The Italian government's privacy watchdog has upped the ante in the hope of limiting the online bombardment of advertising and promotional junk.    The European Commission has guestimated that spam e-mails cost EU companies €2.25 billion in lost productivity last year. EU legislation banning unwanted e-mails will to come into force in November but it is expected to have little effect as most spam comes from the United States and China (although quite a lot comes from Holland).    Of course, what would be great fun would be to make the penalty for spamming an EU citizen death by public hanging. And then offer the police a really big bonus if they ever catch a spammer. It's all down to those Gascons! Apparently, the French oath 'ferque' is a contraction of the ancient Gascon battle cry, "Feux Coeurs!" (hearts of fire). We thought you might like to know this. Bigger Bribes Needed Italian vulcanologists are warning that Mount Vesuvius is getting ready to blow its top again. They fear that the next eruption will be even more violent than the one which buried Herculaneum and Pompeii, and all points in between, in 79 ADP (After Datum Point). The authorities in Naples are trying to bribe people into leaving the danger zone. They have a 15 year plan to move 100,000 people out of the 'eruption shadow' but they're offering their customers only €25,000 apiece as an incentive to go, which is not very much in real money.    Their big problem is that the land around a volcano is incredibly fertile and the locals won't abandon their lucrative vines and peach trees. The old folks won't go because they're betting that they'll croak before the volcano blows and younger people are holding out for more cash. So the scream headline after the next Vesuvius eruption is likely to be: Big Bang, Lots Dead, "We told you so!" Say Authorities. Further 'Sieg Heils' from a safe distance It is illegal to display swastikas and anything to do with the Nazis in Germany, but they can't do much about foreigners who cash in on their former national monuments and national heroes. Like those Italians, for instance. The German embassy in Rome has been protesting about the 'historical' labels on Alessandro Lunardelli's fine wines since 1997. And much good it's done them!    The collection is not just about Hitler. It includes other famous dictators like Mussonini, Stalin and Napoleon I – and also that famous hero of democracy Winston Churchill. Other labels are designed to appeal to bikers and other odds and sods. A trip to the website http://www.vinilunardelli.it told BlackFlag News that there seem to be rather more Hitler labels around that the ones shown there, so perhaps the Krauts are right to suspect that the Eyeties are twisting their tails again. [The website is currently (2019) http://www.vinilunardelli.com. Ed.]    Much as the Germans would like to have Hitler wine banned, only the Italian authorities can do the job – but Italian justice minister Roberto Castelli responded to the latest protest by saying that he had no idea that the wine was on sale. [So has he been in hiding since 1997? Ed.]    When challenged, Signor Alessandro Lunardelli insists that his wine labels are educational and conversation pieces. And he can't stop selling his Hitler wine because it's his most popular brand and he shifts 30,000 bottles a year. Sweden says 'Nej' to the euron So that's another bucket of cold water all over Vice-Prez Blair's ambition to become Prez of Europe and Vice-Boss of the Universe. But his customers in the UK can be sure that he will continue to peddle further dodgy propaganda on the miracles of the European Superstate with all the bad bits omitted. Hurricane Saddam shuts down Washington. Prez Dubya heads for the hills, which he seems remarkably good at when the merest hint of trouble arises. Arnie Marches On! The spoilsports have failed in their attempt to block the election of a new governor for California, where the incumbent, the Democrat Gray Davis, has been accused of making a total bog of the state's finances and, even worse, not listening to the customers.    Among the 196 candidates on offer is Arnold Schwarzenterminator, who is being 'egged on' quite literally to follow in the footsteps of actor turned politician Ronnie Reagan. He collected this particular political adornment while delivering his first major poltical speech at California State University, Long Beach, Los Angeles.    Unlike our own dear Deputy Vice-Prez Johnny 'Two Jags' Prescott, Big Arnie can take an egg without getting into a punch-up with everyone nearby. Not much fun for the meeja vultures, but life is tough all over. Research in the Czech Republic has found that having a 'beer belly' is nothing to do with drinking beer. It's all to do with genetics, sloth and gluttony. Mention the War by all means! The Japs have been rewriting the history of World War II for the last 50 years, taking the position that, like the Yanks, they weren't involved in it. Only they go one step further and pretend they weren't even in the movies of it. Now, German Prez Johannes Rau is getting in on the act. Apparently, he reckons the Brits were as guilty as the Nazis for stirring up World War II.    If Neville Chamberlain had stood up to Adolf Hitler instead of appeasing him to buy time, and trying to make amends for the Treaty of Versailles, there wouldn't have been a war – or so Herr Rau reckons. Hitler's bad behaviour was the fault of his victims, in other words. All of which makes Herr Rau sound like a society's to blame social worker or an ambulance-chasing lawyer.    The evil Brits are also to blame for the fate of the Germans who were brutalized and chucked out of Silesia, East Prussia, Danzig, the Sudetenland and all the other former German territories after World War II. We should have prevented the former underdogs from taking indiscriminate revenge on their former oppressors. Quite how a small country shattered by six years of global war could have managed that was not mentioned. The blackouts are spreading. Baghdad, a large chunk of the US and Canada, and now the whole of Italy. Where next?

MEDICAL NEWS Fatness is an issue of the past? Obesity can be abolished in 5 years if the naturally occurring hormone PYY3-36 can be developed into a wonder cure. p.s. The Atkins diet might make its users more susceptible to diabetes, heart disease, cancer and ... obesity! It's all in the mind, you know No cure is needed for 'morning sickness', the experts say. It's a mainly psychological condition and most of the women affected by it feel nauseous because they think that's what they're supposed to feel in early pregnancy. More work (and profit) for the lawyers Fat people are threatening to sue pub operators for selling them addictive food, which they just had to gobble in vast quantities. Now, landlords are planning to counter-sue fatties who take up too much room in their pubs and cut their profits. This might persuade thin drinkers to sue fatties for depriving them of elbow room and causing stress by blocking access to the bar. BlackFlag News is sure that greedy lawyers will be able to come up with lots more bogus charges. Unstoned in Canada A court ordered Health Canada, the Canadian equivalent of the NHS, to supply cannabis on prescription to people with a number of medical conditions, including cancer and AIDS. A contract worth C$5.75 million was awarded to Praire Plant Systems of Manitoba to produce official weed. One small snag was reported when it became available (at C$5.00 per ounce). The customers are describing the product as 'disgusting' and 'unfit for human consumption'. And they're demanding a refund for their prescription charges. So it's back to the friendly neighbourhood drug dealer for the patients and back to the drawing board for the Canadian government. Sun Shocker! People wearing 'sunblock' are more likely to get skin cancer, according to the latest medical opinion. Apparently, suntan creams block UVB rays from the sun, which cause burning and blistering of the skin. People feel safe because they're not getting burned but they're not really safe at all. Why? Because shorter wavelength UVA radiation isn't blocked and this is what causes skin cancers. So it looks like the only answer to the problem is to stay out of the sun, you fools, or you'll die!   ADVERTISEMENT WHO is looking after YOUR website right now? A. A friend. B. That web designer bloke. C. The guy with the beard. D. What? Don't trust a vital asset like your website to any old Joe. Guys with beards ALWAYS know what they're doing! Trust no one else. www.GuysWithBeards.co.uk your first stop for website design & maintenance

EUROMEDDLER NEWS Why does the EU want to impose VAT on children's clothing in the UK? The New EU Flag - the Triple Cross The EU say: "Children's clothing carries VAT in Denmark and it's cheaper there than in the UK, which shows that those bastards in the UK are profiteering." Which is interesting if irrelevant.    No, the real reason behind the Eurocrats' enthusiasm for VAT is that they collect a slice of all VAT raised in the member countries. So if they can bung it on children's clothing in the UK, the EU tax pot will be bigger. And why do the Eurocrats want a bigger tax pot? Simple. The EU's usual suspects can claim they need more junketing to go with their increased responsibilities. The officials can claim higher salaries for administering the extra dosh. The crooks can steal more because the bigger the pot, the more you can steal from it without anyone noticing. And more junketing, higher salaries and theft & racketeering are what the EU is all about. [Apart from stopping the Germans invading France again. Ed.] A place at the Euro-trough for Mandypoos What do you do with failed or disgraced Labour politicians? Send them in the footsteps of Woy Jenkins and Neil Kinnock. Send them off to dig their noses into the EU junketing circuit. And that's where Vice-Prez Blair is sending his best buddy Mandelson (while the V-P still has his job). Mandy will be taking over as EU Commissioner when Kinnock quits next year; if the Welsh windbag isn't sacked before then.    The EU Commission, the governing body of the Great European Adventure, has become a retirement home for 2nd rate failures, crooks, conmen, windbags and cronies, so Mandy should be right at home there, selling his country out while he wallows in the European sea of corruption.    Meanwhile, 'Sleaze-buster' Kinnock, who sacked the EU's chief accountant when she tried to do something about the endemic fraud, and 'Zero Tolerance' Prodi are trying to claim that the current corruption scandal is nothing to do with them.    What's the scandal? Officials at EuroStat, the EU's statistical unit, have been shunting millions into secret 'reserves' while awarding fictional contracts and cooking up dodgy invoices to inflate the costs of real contracts.    Why is it nothing to do with Prodi and Kinnock? They reckon the whole thing began before they took office and so it wasn't their job to put a stop to it – even if the Eurostat slush fund was still operating as recently as a couple of months ago. British civil servant Robert McCoy tried to expose the fraudulent claims for expenses of Eurocrats 'working' for the Committee for the Regions, where he is an auditor. Apparently, the 200+ members routinely travel to meetings on budget tickets but claim the first-class fare, and they claim the £144 per diem attendance allowance even if they can't be bothered to turn up. Other Euro-scams include bogus mileage and rail ticket claims.    When Mr. McCoy tried to blow the whistle on the crooks earlier this year, his bosses told him to lay off, threatened him with disciplinary action for asking 'inappropriate questions' and told him it wasn't his job to sniff out corruption. Then they removed his staff without decreasing his workload.    Still, with the likes of Kinnock and Prodi in charge, what do you expect?

VINDICTIVENESS NEWS Govt. too busy to put anything right - official "Looks all right to me." This government is up to its eyebrows in its own messes. So what's the latest suggestion for a new bit of legislation? A bill to restore some order somewhere? No, it's a bill to deprive Lord Archer of his peerage while carefully avoiding doing the same to all the Labour peers who've ended up in gaol.    Next on the agenda is ... something useful? No, a bill to neuter the BBC so that it can't expose dodginess cooked up by Labour party spin doctors disguised as civil servants, and it can't expose lies and omissions by the government and its allies.    And after that ... the Vice-Prez is going to screw around with the House of Lords a bit more to make sure he gets no more opposition there.

	Paying to support political parties out of the public purse to spare Vice-Prez Blair the embarrassment of crawling to the trade unions for handouts. The French government stopping a French charter airline from flying British troops to Iraq.   The notion that Robin Cook is entitled to be 'secure from any form of confrontation'. It's okay for a police superintendent to skive off work to shag his gang of mistresses, and lie about his colleagues, as long as he's non-white and foreign-born.   It's okay for a Labour party-run Commons committee to clear Downing Street of sexing up dodgy dossiers. Drinking 4 pints in one night amounts to binge drinking.   The government 'getting tough' with councils over council tax rates after The Mugger adopted a stealth policy of cutting grants to local councils and loading council tax to keep income tax rates down. [The core policy: Blame-shifting]

Created for Romiley Anarchists' League by workers in revolt against oppression. © RAL, September 2003.