2005/May    FINAL

Diamond Jubilee Offer for Our Readers Two novels in zipped PDF format. Download them from the Romiley Literary Circle website. Category : TTM : Crime/contemporary fiction. Vintage: late 1980s. Category : TBG : Science fiction.

BRILLIANT IDEAS What's in a name? Some genius at Downing Street decided to change the name of the Department of Trade & Industry, which is universally familiar as the DTI, to the Department of Productivity, Energy & Industry. And oh, yes; the taxpayer would have had to pay a million or so quid for redoing the notepaper, signs, etc. But after a week, someone realized that having such an important governmental institution known as 'Dippy' for short wouldn't work out. So the name change was junked.    [Pity they didn't do the same with the Downing Street genius. Ed.] Although the name change was 'on' for just one one week, the government blew £30,000 of taxpayers money on changing name plates, websites and publications, and then changing them back.    "What's In A Name 2" or New Labour, New Lie The government has created the Office of Public Sector Information as a means of handing jobs to cronies and clients, who will publish its propaganda without being too concerned about trivialities such as truth and accuracy. The government is also in the process of abolishing Her Majesty's Stationery Office in stages as it has an obvious connection with the Queen.    Guilty about doing this, the Cabinet Office has blamed the abolition on an EU directive on access to public sector information. The only problem with this explanation is that HMSO could have provided as much access as necessary if the government's liars had not been intent on doing away with it. What's Prescott for? The pretty well redundant Deputy Prime Minister has come up with another brilliant idea. He's going to send Bathroom Police round to every home with a thermometer. Every citizen wanting to take a bath will be required to phone or text the Bathroom Police at least 2 days in advance. On bath day, the Bathroom Police will come around and check that the bath water does not exceed the Maximum Governmental Target Temperature and the bather is safe from scalding.    The DPM is confident that he can recruit, train and have his Bathroom Police up and running by 2006. The picture [above, left] shows him fighting to get his scheme through Parliament in the face of stiff opposition. The Deputy PM has been stripped of responsibility for elections because of his eagerness to push fraud-prone postal voting, which has caused significant damage to the New Labour cause. Crony/ex-flatmate Charlie Falconer has been awarded this poisoned chalice.    Go ethnic or lose your subsidy The Arts Council, a New Labour quango, is threatening to cut off funds to theatres and arts organizations which fail to meet ethnicity targets. Such organizations will have to recruit writers and performers from ethnic minorities and ensure that all audiences are representative of their local ethnic mix. The quality of the work performed and the standard of performance will be placed officially second to achieving ethnicity.    New Labour imposed a similar ethnicity requirement on museums and art galleries in 2000 (with the same threat to funding). The idea was junked in 2001 after effective ridicule.    New fashion outfits for yobs (and lrigs) Stung by accusations that it is doing nothing about 'yob culture' (An oxymoron if ever there was one, Ed.), the Home Office has come up with a plan. All teenage criminals, who have learnt their 'values system' through 8 years of New Labour misrule, will be forced to wear bright outfits in Guantanamo Orange (with neither hood nor baseball cap) when they venture out of doors to serve a 'socially useful punishment'. And if they cause trouble while 'oranged up', the police will be authorized to chain them to the nearest lamp post for the rest of the day.    Alternatively, yobs and lrigs could be outfitted in the Downing Street preferences – Asbo Yeller (left) or Purple Crushed Velvet (right) [both modelled by Antonio].    Another brilliant idea for screwing things up The Office of Fair Trading thinks it would be a good idea to close down 20,000 small newsagents and 1,000 specialist magazines, and throw thousands of people out of work. Why is this going to happen? Because the OFT wants to mess about with the distribution system for magazines in the name of introducing competition.    The net effect of the meddling will be to push up the cost of delivering magazines to small retailers, which will result in a monopoly for supermarkets, extinction for up to 50% of magazines currently being published, as happened in the United States when the same scheme was introduced over there, and also extinction for 36% of the country's newsagents, especially those in rural areas.    Strangely, the OFT has no objection to retaining the present system for distributing newspapers and it seems blind to the absurdity of not delivering magazines in the vans used to distribute newspapers. But maybe the genius at the OFT who dreamed up the notion is planning to hand over selling newspapers to the supermarkets in due course, and put the rest of the country's newsagents out of business.

DEPARTURES Frank Gorshin The man who played The Riddler with such gusto in the unforgettable 1960s Batman TV series has died at 71. He started his career as a US Army entertainer, broke into movies and became a top-flight impersonator.    He was impressed by the quality of the Batman scripts and threw himself into his part with enthusiasm, creating a fiendish laugh and a fiendish sense of humour for his character. The Riddler joined The Joker, The Penguin and Cat-Woman in leading the Dynamic Duo many a merry dance and helped to give the series its cult status.    Frank Gorshin starred in his first Broadway musical in 1970. He pursued his career mainly on the stage for the next 30 years but he was sought after for cameo roles in many popular TV series along the way.

SPORTS NEWS Who's the bastard in the black? Well, any of the Man. Utd. team in the FA Cup Final. The officials looked more like goal keepers in their yellow outfits [which could have been the intention as a form of camouflage to hide them from outraged fans, Ed.] and it was no surprise to see Arsenal, in their 'winning red' outfits, triumph after the penalties.    Afterthought: It was oddly fitting, not to say symmetrical, that Scholes, who blew the first scoring chance, should have his penalty kick saved. An excellent bit of script-writing.    McLaren winner for Spanish Grand Prix Kimi Raikkonen enjoyed the benefits of his car (unusually) finishing a race. He strode off into the distance from pole position and looked in danger only from mechanical failure or a back-marker's stupidity or malice. Alonso didn't win his home GP but he was a creditable 2nd and still a convincing championship candidate. Raikkonen did it again in Monte Carlo, which actually featured some overtaking for a change – a lot of it desperate. Congrats to the Williams team for claiming the other podium places. Raikkonen pushed his luck too far at the European GP and the wheels came off – literally! Vibrations from a severely flat-spotted right-front tyre broke the suspension as he started his last lap in the lead, and Alonso nipped past to win his 4th race of the season.    5-Times European Champs Congrats to Liverpool FC for being better at taking penalties than AC Milan. But what were they doing playing the final of the European Cup in Turkey, which isn't even in Europe? Is the final going to be in China next year? Or somewhere in Africa? And what sort of a competition doesn't have an automatic entry for the reigning champions so they can defend their trophy? Europe sucks, big time!

JUSTICE NEWS One law for the police . . . The Metropolitan police service is operating a recruitment policy which is both racialist and sexist. White male recruits are being kept off training courses in favour of women and men from ethnic minorities. But the Met reckons it can get away with this because it is offering jobs to all of the white males eventually. They just have to wait up to 3 years to get on the payroll.    Sounds all very dishonest and New Labour! An advanced driver in the West Mercia police videoed himself doing 159 mph on the M54 at the dead of night. He also did 84 mph in a 30 zone and 131 mph in a 60 zone. So his jobsworth bosses hauled him into court; only to be savaged by the judge. Mr. Justice Morgan accepted that the copper was entitled to 'practise his skills' in a new car on empty roads, and condemned the local police force for not having any sort of training system for maintaining the skills of advanced drivers.    So the moral is – if the police persecute you, just claim you were practising your skills as it's an automatic 'get out of gaol free' card.    League Tables for judges? The Chief Constable of Hampshire would like judges and magistrates to be graded for performance and the results published in league tables. Performance will be assessed on the basis of how effective the sentence for a convicted criminal was. So if a regular customer with a couple of hundred convictions gets 'one more chance' instead of a stiff gaol sentence and goes right back to business, the judge in question will receive null points.    What happens next is the problem, however. People can avoid a bad school, or a heart surgeon with a 100% kill rate, but prosecutors and prosecuted don't get to choose which court they go to, and judges, like New Labour ministers, don't get the sack for failing to deliver.    Legal Aid bankroll clamped! Alfonso B. Liar crony and ex-flatmate Lord Charlie Falconer, currently the lord chancellor, has come up with a cunning plan to cut the length of trials, stop greedy lawyers from dragging things on endlessly and stem the haemorrhage of legal aid funds. He wants the judge to decide how long the trial will last right at the start. The lawyers will be paid for only the estimated period of time and if the trial over-runs, they won't get any more cash. Prosecutors will play their part in the new scheme of things by going only for lesser charges, which are easier to prove and carry reduced penalties, as part of New Labour's policy of being soft on criminals. Royal Mail to be done for fraud? Ever found a 'sorry, but you were out' card behind the front door on a day when you were in all day and nobody rang your bell or rattled the knocker? This used to be a mystery which ranked beside the phantom phone calls, which are disconnected the moment someone picks up the receiver. But the truth has slithered out.    The Royal Mail has sacked its parcel delivery staff to cut costs. And in their place, it has hired casuals, who can't be trusted with parcels but who can go round shoving cards through letter boxes to tell the customer that he/she has mail but he/she will bloody well have to go to the depot to get it.    As this practice amounts to fraud – the cost of the stamps on a package too big to go through a letterbox is supposed to include delivery to the customer's home – executives of the Royal Mail can expect to find themselves up before the beak when someone bloody-minded enough lodges a complaint. Always assuming they can find a police station that's open.    He still doesn't get it Lord Woolf, the burglar's friend, has yet to gain contact with reality and he still wants to keep criminals out of gaol. BUT THE WHOLE POINT OF PUTTING THEM IN GAOL IS TO GIVE HONEST PEOPLE A REST FROM THEIR THIEVING AND DESTRUCTION. GOT IT? Or do we have to shout louder?    Easy on the causes of illegal immigration The government's plan to be tough on illegal immigrants has hit another set of buffers. Under Health & Safety regulations, immigration officers are not allowed to chase after illegals who run away. In fact, they have been issued with a 12-point code of conduct to tell them how to let illegals get away with it.    Jobsworths rule and it's not OK. Rip-off merchants fined Manchester United, Umbro, JJB Sports and Allsports have all been fined multi-million pound sums by the Competition Appeals Tribunal. Their crime was selling replica shirts costing £7 to make for £40. The bank formerly known as the Abbey National has been fined £800K by the Financial Services Authority for ripping its customers off. First it sold the customers dodgy endowment mortgages then it refused to pay off on legitimate complaints.

HOME NEWS English Parliament Invaded by Foreigners Antonio B. Liar, a Scotsman (possibly of Italian extraction), has gained control of the English Parliament in London through a combination of postal voting fraud, gerrymandering with the complicity of the Boundary Commission and infiltration of a total of 71 outsiders from other countries. The election results are shown in the figure (left).    All attempts to get an interview out of Mr. Liar have failed thus far as he is cocooned in police protection. Word is that he has fallen foul of another member of his criminal gang, a menacing character called Scotch Gordon, who feels that Mr. Liar stabbed him in the back some time ago. Gordon is reported to be eager to return the compliment at the first opportunity.    Below: members of the new government Prime Minister Antonio B. Liar Revenue Minister Scotch Gordon Homeland Security Mr. Alphonse Europe Minister Mr. Adolph    Diana's Ditch reopened The memorial to the previous Princess of Wales was reopened to the public on the day after Election Day following a £200,000 rethink on access. Grassy areas around it, which turned into mudbaths due to bad drainage, have been replaced with gravel pathways. The operators are now anxiously awaiting the next disaster!    Don't mention The War! VE Day + 60 didn't really happen in this country because the prime minister doesn't like people talking about wars. Mainly because he's guilty of pushing the country into an illegal one in Iraq while sucking up to the leader of an overseas fundamentalist regime, everyone knows it and he thinks people are getting at him.    Reverse bank robbery! Anyone going into a bank these days is at risk of being mugged – by staff who can double their salary by selling high-cost loans, high-cost insurance as a condition of getting the loan approved quickly, credit cards, pensions and the other financial products which the bank offers. The customer's ability to pay counts for nothing as the high-pressure salespersons are all on a low salary and eager to build it up to a decent level.    You Have Been Warned!    Don't bother Busy Billy Former Tory leader William Hague has turned down the job of Shadow Chancellor because it would interfere with his plans to make his fortune in the City. Which begs the obvious question of why he's bothering to pretend to be an MP if he can't be bothered to do the job. Is it just force of habit? No, it's more to do with Billy boy making more dosh if a company can put someone with MP after his name on the letterhead.    Get ready to melt! (Or not) The Department of Health has issued its customers with guidelines for surviving a heatwave. There is no reason to think there will be a heatwave; other than a dodgy long-range forecast from the Met Office, but the inconvenience of contact with the real world has never troubled the jobsworths of the DoH under New Labour. Hot weather fans, take heart! The Met Office has announced that its prediction of a heatwave didn't come from its new supercomputer, which has quickly established a reputation for making seriously off the mark predictions. No, this one was done by the blokes in the back room with the aid of an abacus.    George gets it seriously wrong George Galloway, Respect Party MP, has been accused by a US Senate investigation committee of being up to his neck in scandal associated with Saddam Hussein's oil for food programme. Specifically, he's been accused of being slipped coupons for 20 million barrels of oil, which are worth a tidy sum at $50 per barrel! Mr. Galloway, of course, is denying everything. But he's doing it like a politician and destroying any credibility he might have.    All he can manage is a combination of bluster and irrelevance. And look how far that got his former party leader when Antonio B. Liar claimed he didn't lie to the country to get us into an illegal war in Iraq. Dignity and focus are what are lacking, George. And by the way, what are you doing lounging about in Portugal instead of getting on with the job you've just been re-elected to do?    Spel cheker not kneedid or Ignorance is no hindrance The government is failing to meet its target for English for 14-year-old school kids. But the Department of Education is not panicking. It has merely instructed examiners not to knock marks off for bad spelling. As a result, test scores will be boosted artificially and the government will be able to 'prove' that it has met the meaningless target.    Time off for bad behaviour? The Westminster Wonders have voted themselves a 3-month summer holiday to recover from all the lying that they did in the run up to the election. They break up in July and they won't be back on the job until October. A government spokesman almost admitted that the length of the break is designed to give the government the chance to publish as much bad news as it can while Parliament is not sitting.    How to deal with government red tape Charles Clarke, Home Sec. pro tem, has made good on his promise to cut police red tape by adding a new bit. In future, police officers will have to ask a 'stop & search' target his/her religion so that the Home Office can cobble together statistics to 'prove' that Moslems aren't being treated unfairly.    More phone number messing about The government has come up with another brilliant idea. It's going to mess about with London's phone numbers again. In addition to 0207 for inner London and 0208 for outer London, there's going to be 0203 for . . . well, who knows?    The wheels come off Essex and Lincolnshire councils have come up with a meals on wheels scheme involving fewer wheels. Pensioners will be issued with a fridge-freezer and a microwave oven, and a stock of frozen meals will be delivered once a fortnight. Any Luddites who insist on a hot meal delivered every day will be charged twice the current meal price to make them think again. Anyone bedridden or with terminal arthritis will be left to starve to death.    Lying for New Labour Home Sec. Charles Clark saw a single group of middle-aged men on probation out painting things and wearing blue overalls. Then he spun a story to a radio interviewer about New Labour having a nationwide scheme for putting young criminals to useful work in shame-inducing garments. Which raises the interesting question: Do New Labour ministers receive special training in lying and making things up before they are turned loose on the news media? Or are they chosen for their natural ability to do this without expensive training? The big problem with making Kenneth Clark the Conservative leader is not just that he's too old. He's also too bloody lazy to make a proper job of it.    Carry on cheating – it's official The government has turned its back on proposals for reforming the postal voting system from the Electoral Commission. A Downing Street spokesman indicated that New Labour is quite happy with the level of electoral fraud it is currently enjoying and hoping to do better in future. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has been doing a Blunkett and using her civil servants to issue press releases on behalf of her husband, who is awaiting trial in Italy on charges of helping Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi to evade tax and launder money. The whitewash is currently being stirred before liberal application to Mr. Jowell's reputation.    The Big Lottery Fund is at it again Sandiway and Cuddington, villages in Cheshire, share a crumbling community hall. But they can't have a grant for a new one because they don't meet a government target for benefitting asylum seekers and/or ethnic minorities. Only under New Labour could the majority be denied any benefit from their money.    Who needs the Beeb? Staff at the BBC staged a strike on the penultimate Monday of the month but a poll of BlackFlag News staff revealed that no one had missed them. Everyone was too busy working during the day to watch telly or listen to the wireless. And in the evening, everyone was watching Sky or other digital TV channels. So, Brothers, your little strike was all rather a waste of time.    Not exactly convincing, is it? The BBC's new multi-billion dollar crap weather map looks extra silly when they're showing rain and it looks like the country is covered from one side to the other by a vast puddle. Even though that's what Romiley tends to look like on a wet day after years of neglect of its pavements by the Trivial Democrats running Stockport Council. The Sellafield Effect? The Millennium Dome is to receive a cosmetic name change in an effort to disassociate its next use from the failures of this New Labour white elephant's past. But if it looks like the Millennium Dome, and it consumed the best of a billion quid of taxpayers' dosh which won't be repaid, then people are still going to think of it as the Millennium Dome. Even when, or if, it reopens in 2007.    "ID cards will save us millions." – Antonio B. Liar    [But cost us billions. Ed.] Biometric identity cards cards will happen, the government says, and the guesstimated cost of them has gone up in the last 12 months from £77 to £93. So at the same rate of increase – 20% per year – customers can expect to have to shell out £160 when they are issued in 2008. So it comes as no surprise to be reminded that Scotch Gordon, a man whose reputation (the good bits) is built entirely on the efforts of other, assured the nation that the ID card scheme would be entirely self-financing. In fact, the man who has created a huge black hole in the nation's finances is probably trying to delay their introduction for a few more years to push the price up even more!    And by the way, the government has been lying about their effectiveness. The biometric data on trial ID cards provides just 69% accuracy on facial recognition, 80% for fingerprints and 96% for iris recognition. The ID card scheme is on course for costing three times the government's guess of £5.8 billion. So if the cards are to be self-financing, they will have to retail to customers at £300 a time. Believe it or what! A cruise company would have us believe that people were much happier in the 1950s and everyone is too stressed out in the 21st Century to have a good laugh. According to this piece of 'research', the amount of laughing per day is down to one-third of the 1950s value. When challenged, the company was unable to produce the time machine which would be needed to go back to the 1950s to count exactly how often people laughed back then.

WONDERLAND NEWS Foot-draggers and jobsworths This government has got its priorities seriously out of whack. One part is dragging its feet over inquests on service people killed in Iraq. Another part is in an indecent rush to prosecute as many service people as possible for 'crimes' committed in Iraq.    The inquests are being delayed over a row about a sum of money which pales into insignificance compared to the £5,000,000,000 already wasted on Iraq. Yet the government feels free to chuck any amount of taxpayers' dosh at prosecutions. So it comes as no surprise to learn that there is a hidden agenda behind delaying inquests.    The government doesn't want damaging truths to be revealed about troops who were sent to their deaths with defective equipment. And it's hoping to put claims for damages on the grounds of negligence beyond the time limits for such things.    The reason for the prosecution mania is less clear as it could put the government in danger. The politicians are eager to prosecute right up the chain of command, putting colonels and generals in the dock for 'crimes' committed by private soldiers. But by the same argument of chain of command equals chain of responsibility, then Buff Hoon, Antonio B. Liar, that clown Jack Straw and all the rest of the illegal warmongers should be in the dock, too, as they are at the pinnacle of the chain of command and bear ultimate responsibility for everything.    [But not under this government's system of rule without responsibility. Ed.]

WORLD NEWS Brussels Bandits Bribe French Opinions polls have been predicting a solid 'No!' vote for the French referendum on the EU constitution on the 29th. So EU president country and major scrounger Luxembourg has offered a bribe to the French public.    The EU Parliament has been resisting attempts by the restaurant lobby in Paris to get VAT on meals cut. But suddenly, it has become possible to reduce the sales tax from 19.6% to a mere 5.5%. The immediate response in French opinion polls was a rapid swing to a majority for the 'Yes' vote.    Normally, a 'No!' vote from France would just result in re-runs of the referendum until the French people give the answer the EU wants. The clumsy overkill of offering such an obvious bribe shows just how worried the EU has become by the prospect of losing the vastly added powers conveyed by the Constitutional Treaty.    Don't mention The War! It's all very well for the German ambassador to our country to complain about the way we keep going on about the war. But it's mainly because the Germans haven't done anything terribly interesting over the last 60 years. So if anyone thinks about their country, the war automatically springs to mind. Especially as we were on the winning side! Don't let them vote! The Dutch referendum on the EU constitution will be the first in that country for 200 years. And the government is threatening that it will be the last referendum for another 200 years if the people fail to do the decent thing and vote 'yes'. Their big problem is that too many residents of the Netherlands are quite happy being Dutch and they don't want to be drowned in a faceless super-state called the United States of Europe.    [Sounds a familiar story. Ed.]    Having been denied a chance to vote on the euro and all the other big EU issues, the Dutch have a lot of pent-up frustration to release. So even if the fickle French can be bought off, it's unlikely that the EU will get too far with the Little Hollanders.    Don't expect gratitude EU president Manuel Barroso was pathetically grateful for our government's help in achieving the top rung of his ladder. He has shown his gratitude by trying to snatch back our rebate. "Don't trust foreigners, they're all crooks!" was a popular slogan in the past. Reviving it for Senhor Barroso seems a good idea.    The new champion Mao Tse Tung has been nominated as the biggest mass murderer of the 20th Century with a death toll of 70 million people during his period of despotism.    Another political fantasy Zimbabwe's economy is in such deep shit that the governor of the country's central bank thinks it would be a good idea to bring back white farmers. The corrupt Mugabe regime brought about the collapse of farming by stealing well-managed farms from white farmers and handing them to party supporters, most of whom lacked sufficient brain cells to achieve a double-figure IQ. Showing surprising sense, governor Gideon Gono suggested that returning farmers should be guaranteed 10 years' freedom from government interference, knowing that Mug will have croaked before the grace period is up. Unsurprisingly, evicted white farmers are greeting the suggestion with well-deserved derision. Sue the bastards for all they're worth! Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer is to sue The Scum for billions of pounds after the popular red-top tabloid dared to publish pictures of the World's Favourite Despot in his pants.    The lawyer thinks the pictures are 'an insult to humanity, Arabs and the Iraqi people'. [So no one important, then? Ed.] And he's looking for cash from the newspaper, everyone involved in making the pictures available and everyone who's seen them!    The good news for victims of the Saddam regime is that they can then sue him for compensation knowing that he can afford to pay it. The bad news is there won't be all that much cash left by the time the lawyers have claimed their share.    It seemed like a good idea at the time . . . A woman in California bought a severed finger from a workmate, planted it in a bowl of chilli in a diner and tried to sue for damages. She's now in gaol facing charges of conspiracy to commit fraud, attempted grand theft and grand theft. If convicted, she faces 10 years in gaol and a damages bill of $2.5 million from the diner chain.

GOOD NEWS Boozing battles cancer Drinking whisky prevents cancer, the whisky industry would like us to believe. Whiskies, especially single malts, contain the strong antioxidant allagic acid, which zaps rogue cells and prevents cancer cells from reproducing and spreading.    In the light of this splendid news, BlackFlag News is starting a campaign to persuade the government to allow whisky to be prescribed on the NHS. We anticipate few problems. The government will be easily able to afford the concession from the savings on cancer treatments, which are the most expensive going. We did considered offering a bottle of whisky to the first party leader to adopt the policy, but we were warned that we would be killed in the rush from Charlie Kennedy.

NOT SO GOOD NEWS A free ride to oblivion If you're in an ambulance and your heart stops, don't expect a jolt from the electric shock machine to get it started again. Apparently, paramedics are in the habit of strolling off with everything that's not nailed down, including defibrilators, and selling them on eBay.    Another cover-up awaiting a leak A report on the collapse of the MG Rover car company; prepared by the government's Financial Reporting Council; is to be kept secret. This decision confirms (A) that something dodgy involving the government occurred and (B) that it was of sufficient magnitude to do significant damage to the already thoroughly discredited New Labour regime.    Going soft as a strategy for advancement? The government is starting to go soft on Britain's 'rebate' on its contributions to the European Union. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wrestled it back in 1984 to address unfairness in the collection and redistribution system, which was designed to take cash from warmongering Germans (and the Brits) and hand it to inefficient French farmers to ensure European peace.    Prime Minister Antonio B. Liar, soon to be evicted from that job, is desperate to buy popularity in the EU to achieve his ambition of becoming President of Europe in his declining years (Dodgy ticker and bad back permitting. Ed.). And if the price of his advancement is a dirty deal on the rebate, that's no problem for the man who dragged his country into an illegal foreign war. So it's up to the rest of us to make sure it doesn't happen by any means we think appropriate.

ROMILEY NEWS Who's got the money? Romiley residents received a modest shower of literature during the run-up to the general election – which inspired this survey of who had the most money to spend on their propaganda.    UKIP managed a full-colour A4 leaflet. Labour went in for a full-colour half-A3 (lengthwise) leaflet which was folded into a 4-page booklet. The Conservatives delivered a letter, an A4 leaflet and an A3 leaflet, all printed in black and shades of blue. But the Trivial Democrats really splashed out the loot on printing.    They sent 2 mock newspapers (folded A2), 3 full-colour A3 leaflets, 1 intermediate size full-colour leaflet, 1 full-colour A4 leaflet, 2 letters, a 1/3-A4 help request slip, a CD-size (12 x 12 cm) fluorescent mini-poster, and a postal vote farming form for return to the candidate. Maybe someone should take a very close look at this candidate's declaration of election expenses! You'd never know there's a general election on in Romiley – no visits from the candidates and no posters! There's just one for the Triv-Dems on the main road and that's being displayed by the village undertaker, which seems a fair comment on their chances of ever forming a government.

Spring Offer for Our Readers Pass The Parcel by Philip H. Turner When Nicki and Jeff Jenner arrived at their country retreat with their friend Guy Duggleby, armed men were waiting for them. They deduced that their mutual friend Toby Ryun had been using Jeff's name at the gambling tables again – his usual ploy for changing his luck. What follows is a straight adventure story with no other ambitions. Kidnapping, currency fraud and violent death, mainly in France.    Read the Blurb & Comments on the RLC website    Read the Book on the RLC website Category : Crime fiction. Vintage: early 1980s.

PLASTIC NEWS Attorney General hauled up before the beak The Bar Council wants to talk to Lord Goldsmith about his failure to observe his code of conduct, which requires him to act independently at all times. Complaints have been received from a number of sources over flip-flopping in connection with his advice on the legality of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. If convicted, Goldsmith faces a reprimand or suspension or disbarment.    [Yeah, like that will happen! Ed.]

Pre-REGIME CHANGE NEWS George on the warpath! George Galloway, MP for Baghdad East, gave the ITN lunchtime news crew a good verbal thumping when they confronted him with an 11-year-old film clip (minus its context) and a Scottish floating voter even though his Respect party has candidates only in England. Mr. Galloway spent his 6 minutes proving he's a man who's able to get his point of view over, he's an enemy of all Arab dictatorships and he has the big recommendation that he was chucked out of the Bliar Labour Party.    A divine warning? A May Day Bank Holiday tornado struck Hoghton, a Lancashire town between Blackburn and Preston, assaulting 30 houses and causing damage estimated at £100,000. Could this be a divine warning for traditional Labour country of things to come if Vice-Prez Bliar gets in again? Call it coincidence but the following quatrain appears in Century III of the prophecies of Nostradamus: When the limping man goes to the Kingdom, A bastard, close to him, will compete with him. The Northern town will be brought low, its dwellings scattered, And the lame man will suffer great shame. Looks like the warning was for real. Vice-Prez Bliar got back in as a busted flush and he has a grabbing bastard breathing down his neck!    A new snooker world champion: a 22-year-old god-botherer The snooker world breathed a huge sigh of relief when Shaun Murphy completed his 18-16 victory in the world championship on the May Day bank holiday. The prospect of having a champion with a haircut as stupid as Matthew Stevens' was just too awful to contemplate! Rare contemporary picture of Vice-Prez Bliar V-P still MIA Vice-Prez Bliar is still not having anything to do with the public as he rushes around the country doing his electioneering [NewLabSpeak for lying. Ed.]. Jacket off, superabsorbent vest on under his shirt to soak up rivers of sweat and smug bugger grin pasted firmly in place, he is meeting only the party cannon fodder. Real people are excluded from his presence by gangs of local Special Branch officers. They are instantly recognizable by the bald head, the earphone and the air of smugness conveyed by a temporary licence to behave like a cross between an agent of the US Secret Service and the Gestapo. Their job is to make sure that no one who might disagree with him gets within a mile of Vice-Prez Bliar as they bring Democracy In Action New Labour-style to a sceptical nation. Yawning for England? Vice-Prez & Mrs. Bliar really know how to shoot themselves in the foot. All the bragging to The Scum about how many times a night they can copulate must have done wonders for the missus's credibility in court.    If she makes a bog of something, or if she nods off, everyone else will be giving her a knowing look to say: "Was it five times last night, Judge? Or did you manage six?"

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT Crooks In Action The European Union is promising to do something about the criminals who send out emails about bogus lottery wins and extract cash from the gullible as 'administration fees' (but don't hold your breath).    In the meantime, as a public service, Jenson Farrago is offering access to his collection of examples of lottery, phishing and other email spam. CLICK HERE to find out what miracles they offer.

ODDMENTS Answers to Correspondents A question to this feature in the Daily Mail asked how fast Vice-Prez Bliar could get to Washington for a face-to-face meeting with Prez Bush now that Concorde is history. One answer was that he could be there in 2 hours and 20 minutes in an RAF Tornado. But that's only in theory because no pilot would be able to resist the temptation to hit the eject button half way there to launch the lying bastard into the Atlantic.

	Kofi Annan's belief that he has a divine right to the job of UN Secretary General no matter how much sleaze piles up around him.  New Labour's belief that all spending of taxpayers' money is good, even if the cash is wasted and the taxpayer gains no benefit from it.  Following the election result, the New Labour Project.  VE Day – at least, this is where the UK's celebration plans ended up.  The amount of money the Royal Mail's bosses are paying themselves for screwing things up and missing all of their targets.  The Ageism Police trying to ban 'grumpy old git' birthday cards in the workplace.  New Labour's postal voting fraud and gerrymandering.  Police drivers getting away with speeding when they're late for a tea break rather than on a call.  The BBC's crap map and its 3D weather.  French fraudster Jacques Chirac blaming us for a NO! vote in his EU constitution referendum.

This edition of BlackFlag News was compiled in accordance with official 10 Downing Street guidelines on accuracy and veracity.

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