2005/September    FINAL

FREEDOM OF SPEECH NEWS Old bloke mauled by thugs at labour conference. How's that for respect? Warning: Under new labour's Suppression of Information Act 2005, reading this item could leave you liable to assault by new labour's storm troopers. new labour is so afraid of its membership that it packed the conference hall with wall-to wall thugs. Their job was to pounce upon anyone who dares to raise a note of dissent when one of new labour's stars was delivering his/her load of lies.    Trouble makers found themselves either surrounded by big blokes with a menacing aspect or, if they were frail and 82 years old, hauled out of their seat by the scruff of the neck and frog-marched out of the meeting. This was the fate of Mr. Walter Wolfgang when he described jack straw's spiel about Iraq as 'nonsense'. He was later detained by the police under the Prevention of Terrorism Act until his conference pass could be confiscated.

DEPARTURES Don Adams The star of the Sixties TV series Get Smart has died at the age of 82. As Agent Maxwell Smart of the US intelligence agency Control, he played a bungler who always managed to get the job done more by accident than design. He was assisted by the gorgeous Agent 99 (played by Barbara Feldon), who had more than enough brains for the pair of them, in his battles with Kaos, an international gang of bad guys. This series was the high point of his career, and anything that he did subsequently was overshadowed by his cult classic sitcom. But Mr. Adams was smart enough to take a percentage rather than a salary for the show, and he made a lot of cash out of it.

SPORTS NEWS The nation trembles with anticipation! Or does it? The 5th and final test match against the Australiens had the whole nation biting its nails. "Cricket is the new football", newsreaders assured us. [Yeah, right!]    Still, there was a good prospect of rain shortening the match, which increased England's chance of achieving a draw, but lessened the chance of another glorious victory to sock it to the Australiens even more.    p.s. The Ashes – have you seen how big their container is? Three inches high, tops. What a lot of fuss over something so tiny!    p.p.s. England duly won, everyone went crazy (or so the meeja would have us believe) and new labour got a good kicking because no one will be able to watch the next Ashes series because it will be on Sky TV only. When it comes to football, the prime minister has severe targetting problems. Given an open goal, as he proved on a junket in China, the best he can do is miss it by 6 feet. Which rather explains why his political goals are generally unreachable. When it comes to scoring goals, the England football team has the same problem as mr. b. liar. The cries of "Sack the Swede" have become even louder after the dismal 1-0 loss to Northern Ireland on the first Wednesday of the month. We all thought losing 4-1 to Denmark was part of a strategy to make everyone think England is rubbish and field the B-Team against them. But, evidently, they really are rubbish! Two racing champions crowned Fernando Alonso became the youngest ever Formula 1 motor racing champion at the age of 24 by sneaking home 3rd behind the McLarens in the Brazilian Grand Prix. Montoya won the race with Raikkonen in formation behind him to make it a long overdue McLaren 1-2.    Meanwhile, in Malaysia, Valentino Rossi won the MotoGP championship for the 5th year in succession with a 2nd place behind Capirossi, who won his 2nd race in succession.

CRIME NEWS Gold-blaggers pay the price of too thorough preparation A gang of eight thieves crashed into a warehouse full of gold at Heathrow airport last May [as reported in BlackFlag News], hoping to do rather better than the Millennium Diamond robbers of November 2000. Unfortunately, they suffered the same fate.    Informers sank the gang hoping to steal the Millennium Diamond collection. The gold robbers were spotted 'casing the joint' before their ram-raid, and when they crashed through the shutter-door of a loading bay at the warehouse, armed police were waiting to shoot out their tyres and bust them.    This month, the ringleader of the gang collected a sentence of 13 years in gaol and the others were sent down for 6-8 years. British forces in Basra stage gaol break Tanks demolished part of a police station after Iraqi police in cahoots with local Iranian-funded insurgents arrested 2 undercover British soldiers, who were on counter-insurgent operations. The rescue operation became more vital when the British force discovered that their men were no longer in the police station – they had been handed over to the insurgents. The tanks turned their attention to the nearby home of the local police chief (another insurgent), the bad guys fled and the prisoners were liberated.    A spokesman for the Army in Iraq said, "We tried to be nice about it but the locals just gave us the runaround. So we had to teach them a small lesson in manners and remind them who stands between them and total chaos." The governor of Basra now has his hand out demanding compensation for the audacity of the British Army. It's high time we sent antonio b. liar to Iraq and brought the army home. Just 6% of police officers caught out by speed cameras actually pay a fine. The rest get their tickets fixed. The two speeds of the CICB – dead slow and stop! The Criminal Injuries Compensation Board is to be officially inquired into for dragging its feet over making payments to the people who survived the July 7th bombs in London. As there are survivors still waiting for payments from the 1999 Soho pub bombing, there can be no doubt that the Board has wall to wall excuses standing by.    p.s. scotch gordon promised £10 million for the victims of the victims of the July 7th bombing a fortnight after the event, but the cash has failed to materialize. But then he always was about grabbing other people's money, not paying it out. The police are now focussed so firmly on raising cash from speed traps set for motorists that they are ignoring drunken drivers. Last year, speed cameras raised world record amounts of cash while road deaths caused by drunken drivers were at their highest level since 1992.

RLC NEWS Ministry of Defence lags 30 years behind Back in the late 1970s, Romiley Literary Circle author Henry T. Smith came up with the idea for what developed into the Sergeant Enterprise trilogy. 'sunny' jim callaghan's labour government was cutting the military to the bone, and beyond, and letting a lot of valuable assets go to waste. So, in Henry Smith's ideal world, a group of enterprising NCOs decided to put those assets to better use by hiring them out. Their schemes included hiring out tanks to a film company, and then miniature submarines for a gold prospecting venture in Scotland.    Almost 30 years later, another set of labour's military geniuses has decided to nick Henry Smith's idea. Their Big New Idea for raising revenue for the Ministry of Defence is to hire out troops, military equipment and buildings to film production companies.    Accordingly, they have place adverts on film industry websites and every likely target for their services can expect a glossy mail-shot in the near future. "no idea too big or too small to steal." – new labour's motto CLICK HERE to learn more about the Sergeant Enterprise trilogy.

HEALTH NEWS The latest medical shock-horrors! Taking B vitamins and folic acid can cause repeated heart attacks and strokes, and also trigger cancer. Smoke 'n' slim – if you can find the right stuff! Cannabis sativa has been found to contain 2 chemicals which have opposite effects on the appetite. Tetrahydrocannabinol is a psychoactive drug which can trigger an impulse to eat everything in the fridge. It also makes the muncher fat. Tetrahydrocannabivarin, on the other hand, is an appetite suppressant. Most sources of cannabis contain a lot more THC than THCV, but slimmers should be told that there is a Pakistani variety which contains decent amounts of THCV.    Bad News : Cannabis smoking causes heart attacks and strokes in the young. Well, who'd have thought it! New Labour's 48-hour target for visits to the doctor makes it harder for patients to get an appointment with their GP. The main problem is that if all the appointments for the next 24 hours have gone when the patients rings the surgery, he/she is told to ring again the next day so that the 48-hour clock can be reset to zero to fiddle the statistics.    When challenged during the general election campaign, the Labour party lied about this situation, saying that 99.98% of people can see a GP within 48 hours. The truth has come out 4 months later in a survey by the Healthcare Commission, which has blown Labour's lie out of the water. The survey also found that over 30% of patients can't make an appointment over 3 days in advance at a time which suits the patient. Smokers are twice as likely to go blind in old age compared to non-smokers, and smoking causes diabetes. Eating liver and pâté gives you brittle bones. Binge-drinking has turned just 8% of British males into alcoholics. The government is hoping to do better when 24-hour drinking becomes compulsory in November. Radiation from mobile phones, computers and microwave ovens causes headaches, joint pain, depression and fatigue. Really sensitive people are also affected by electromagnetic fields around TVs, hair dryers and other common household electrical goods. The Sunset Yellow food colouring (E110) used in sweets, soft drinks, chocolate snacks, sauces and pickles could contain the carcinogen Sudan 1 as a by-product of the manufacturing process. Household sprays containing air and carpet fresheners, window and oven cleaners, and polishes can trigger asthma. Anyone living near a farm will be contaminated by sprays of pesticides developed from nerve gas weapons. Good News! Eating cheese before going to bed doesn't cause nightmares. And pomegranate juice is overflowing with antioxidants, which keep the heart healthy and let the consumer live forever! When in doubt, leave it out! If a pregnant woman is exposed to household cleaners, perfumes, furniture, tin cans, CDs, plastic boxes, soap, clingfilm, toothpaste, chopping boards, electrical goods. non-stick pans, water-resistant clothing or practically anything you can think of, the unborn child will be poisoned in the womb.

Early Autumn Offer BlackFlag News is pleased to announce that this ground-breaking work by one of Romiley's most distinguished authors can now be read on-line.    Read the Book on the Romiley Literary Circle website    Read about the Book and the author's other works on the Romiley Literary Circle website Category : The future of recycling in a violent & lawless society.

HOME NEWS Qualifications for citizenship? Being peter mandelson's boyfriend is a sure winner. Being an Albanian pimp is also good. But being a white, male, heterosexual, non-criminal, successful coach to the England cricket team means, "Sorry, you don't qualify." "The dog ate my homework," says Foreign Office. Foreign Office staff in the United States have claimed that the US authorities told them not to go into the New Orleans area to help British tourists trapped in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But the US Homeland Security Department has denied issuing any such order.    'Don't do your job then lie about why you didn't do it' seems to be par for the course under new labour. Kenneth Clark, pro & con Con : Clark is idle and he would like to see this country run from Brussels rather than Westminster and using the euro instead of the good old pound. [But he has recently recanted his Euromania. Ed.] Pro : Antonio B. Liar is scared of him and Clark would give him a good going over if he ever dragged his idle carcass to the House of Commons. Clark created the inflation-free economy which Scotch Gordon is claiming as his own invention, and he won't be afraid to say so if he ever drags his idle carcass to the House of Commons. The Tory leadership contest seems to have pumped new life into old fatty Clark. He has appointed himself Minister With Special Responsibility for Savaging new labour, and he's making speeches exposing the manifold deficiencies of antonio b. liar and scotch gordon. But don't expect it to last if Mr. Davis becomes the party's next unelectable leader. Old fattypuff will just slope off back to the boardroom and get on with selling fags again. Desperate measures needed . . . Little has been heard from scotch gordon recently. BlackFlag News can reveal that this is because he has been seeking help in an addiction clinic as part of a government-funded [i.e. taxpayer-funded Ed.] initiative to keep essential officials in tip-top fighting trim. He is booked in at the clinic until Parliament resumes (just in time to break up for its Xmas hols.) but the staff are not optimistic of any improvement in his chronic condition.    "mr. gordon is hopelessly addicted to spending other people's money," a member of staff told BFN's roving reporter. "And about the only way to stop him doing it would be to cut his hands off and chain him up in a deep, dark dungeon. The prime minister would really like to do this, but he daren't. So it looks like we'll be back to more of new labour's 'stealth tax and waste the proceeds' policies when Parliament resumes." 'Nagadivs' on rampage in Ulster They have seen the IRA get away with bank robbery and not handing over their bombs and guns, not to mention their protection rackets, drug smuggling and other criminal enterprises. They have watched vast amounts of taxpayers' cash to go IRA politicians and killers walk out of gaol after serving a token couple of weeks. Now, the 'Loyalists' have returned to what makes the difference in Ulster. They're rioting in the streets again. new labour Abolishes Capital Letters Following on from its grammar-revision policy of abolishing verbs in political statements, the labour party has decided to eliminate capital letters as well. "grammar and correct pronunciation are @#%$ing elitist," commented the downing street press officer david asberger when he unveiled this latest policy initiative. "they exclude the *#!@ing ignorant and the willfully stupid. accordingly, we have responded to public opinion and &#%ing abolished them from new labour literature. we hope everyone else will ^#!@ing well follow our lead if they know what's good for them." Another new labour history lesson Admiral Lord Nelson was killed at the battle of Cape Trafalgar on 21st October, 1805 and he was actually buried on 8th January, 1806. But these facts have been dismissed as 'just @*&#ing details' by downing street spokesman dave asberger when he was asked why the Nelson funeral procession on the Thames was recreated on 16th September, 2005.    Still, the Trafalgar Survivors' Association had a good time, as did the bloke who got to lug around a small ceremonial box containing the ashes of Lord Nelson's wooden leg. Cheerful news for the coming winter The Met Office is predicting an end to the recent string of mild winters. The next one will be freezing cold with lots of snow and icebergs drifting all around the coastline.    Worst, the demand for gas and electricity will shoot up so much that the system will crash, gas central heating systems will be cut off, the lights will go out when power lines crash down under the weight of accumulated ice and anyone who doesn't have a coal fire and candles will freeze to death in the dark.    BlackFlag News would like to wish its readers Happy Xmas and a good New Year while they are still alive to appreciate the sentiment. What's Prescott up to now? The latest Big Idea from the office of the deputy prime minister is to recruit a force of energy wardens. These new labour jobsworths will invade homes and offices to give people advice on efficient use of gas and electricity.    Of course, the next logical step will be to give the 'energy police' the power to issue on-the-spot fines to anyone thought not to be doing his/her best to save energy. blunkett goes for a mandelson Award david blunkett, disgraced ex-home sec., has been caught out in a second abuse of office. He got his officials to ask some pointed questions about his son's A-level results in 1998, when the QCA was making a bog of its marking and issuing duff results.    blunkett is denying getting his minions to drop heavy hints in the right ears, just as he denied fiddling his expenses and fast-tracking a visa for his girlfriend's nanny; offences for which he was evicted from the home sec. job. These guys are to blame for the Iraq war! The Church of England is feeling deeply guilty and it has decided to apologize to some Moslems for the Iraq war – which answers a few questions. So it was those bastards who really started it, eh? The Daily Mail was indecently pleased to report that skeletal clothes horse Kate Moss has been sacked by her big-money clients in a cloud of cocaine dust. What did she do to upset the Mail? Such unholy glee has to come from something deeply personal. "I see Camilla wore that hat and won the bet." Land owners in the Forest of Dean have the right to let their livestock roam freely, which results in at least one sheep per week being killed on the area's roads. So the Commoners' Association has decided it would be a good idea to spot their sheep with luminous paint to make them easier targets on dark nights.

bliar news What does he have to sweat about this month? Does this man look like a blank page with no beliefs of his own, who lets focus groups shape his decisions? The prime minister has admitted that his war on loutish behaviour has flopped despite the efforts of louise, his yobbism 'n' loutishness guru. So this week's initiative is a respect task force with louise at its head. And when that flops, he'll have another Big Idea ready to go as soon as the next focus group comes up with one.    One thing he won't do, however, is call off his 24-hour drinking plan, which is generally acknowledged to be 'rocket fuel for yobbism'. The fix is too deeply in.    p.s. Just 1% of objections to licence extensions succeed – which shows exactly how deeply the fix is in. Despite letting alastair campbell shunt cricket off terrestrial TV and onto pay-more-to-view Sky, the prime minister couldn't resist leaping aboard the Ashes bandwagon, hoping not to be deafened by shouts of, "Hypocrite!" Meanwhile, the labour party, which is frightened by competitive sports, continues to encourage labour councils to sell off school cricket pitches. Wondering what scotch gordon will do in the wake of his "I'm going to be around for ages, actually" speech to the labour conference right after gordon did his "It's my turn to be PM now so I'm going on a 12-month pub crawl around the country to meet common people" speech. Mr. Humphreys sleazed – but on a less attributable basis The new labour sleaze machine is no longer working directly from Downing Street. A lot of the current sleazing operations have been delegated to alastair campbell's former bagmen, who have been encouraged to set up their own PR firms to provide a degree of separation from new labour's rotten heart.    One of the ex-bagmen is behind the knocking piece in the times on the first Saturday of this month, in which Mr. Humphreys was accused of saying nasty things about labour ministers and mentioning that the current prime minister took the country into an illegal war in Iraq on the basis of a sexed-up dodgy dossier.    The prime minister is known to be afraid of Mr. Humphreys, which is why mr. b. liar refuses to be interviewed by him, preferring to give his BBC business to Labour stooges such as Jim Naughty. Further, the labour party is still feeling guilt over the chain of events and betrayals which led to the death of Iraq weapons expert Dr. David Kelly. The current sleaze campaign is aimed at getting rid of Mr. Humphreys so that mr. b. liar can make a triumphant return to safe hands on BBC radio news programmes.    But if the dastardly plan succeeds, and the Beeb is dumbed down that bit more, Mr. Humphreys knows that he can always return to his award-winning role as the nation's heart-throb in "Are You Being Served" and achieve greater freedom to express political views and expose government corruption. Mark Thompson, DG of the bliar broadcasting company, decided to tick off Mr. H. on the basis of what he read in the labour propaganda organ the times. He chose neither to view a video of the after-dinner speech in question nor to read a transcript. Mr. H. is reported to be feeling 'throughly ticked-off' by his employer's conduct. The prime minister has suffered a reversal of course on his Council Tax revaluation plan for homes in England. Both he and scotch gordon are worried about the effect on the outcome of the next general election of massive C-Tax rises. Mr. b. liar is also worried about the effect on his 'legacy' of new labour's policy of demanding big increases in council spending on education, etc., and not providing the money to pay for them from central funds.    The effect of this disreputable tactic has been to shift taxation from a national to a local level, and double the rate of C-Tax over the last 8 years.    A spokesman for the prime minister called the u-turn: "another desperation act of political opportunism." Fewer police forces equals better, according to new labour new labour's latest Big Idea for policing is to amalgamate all of the police forces in England and Wales into half a dozen huge regional forces and sell off the 999 phone service to a call-centre agency in China. new labour has responded to complaints that it is overloading the nation with bureaucrats and regulations. It has created 2 new gangs of bureaucrats, the Better Regulation Executive and the Better Regulation Commission to look for red tape which can be junked. antonio b. liar is in trouble with ex-president of France Valery Giscard. The crusty frog is complaining that Britain has held the EU presidency for 2 months now and absolutely nothing has happened to push forward the European agenda. Eurosceptics everywhere are asking for more of the same for the rest of the year.

COMMENTS It definitely had to be said at the time "New Orleans has been built on a site that only the madness of commercial lust could ever have tempted men to occupy."    London Illustrated News, 1853 "Only some ghastly, dehumanized monster would want to get rid of Routemaster buses."    London mayor Ken Livingstone, 2001 "My enthusiasm for the European Union and all its works is as constant as the Northern Star."    K. Clark, 2002 "The God's Punishment agitators who are rattling on about Hurricane Katrina should be arrested, subjected to police brutality and thrown in jail for giving aid and encouragement to Al Qaida and America's other enemies."    General Hardly Worthit, Head of US Homeland Security, 2005 "My government will be purer than pure."    antonio b. liar on becoming prime monster in 1997 "Oh, yeah?"    Lance Price, memoir-publishing, former downing street spin doctor, 2005.

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WORLD NEWS It's not his fault, is it? No one blames George W. Bush for Hurricane Katrina. What they do blame him for is cutting federal funds for flood defences, sending all the local National Guardsmen in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and the neighbouring states, and their equipment, to sort out his messes in Iraq and Afghanistan and putting a clueless crony in charge of the federal disaster management agency.    They also blame him for his complacency after the hurricane struck and his failure to understand how desperate the situation was for people in the flooded areas. And also for his failure to do anything about political corruption in the Southern states and elsewhere in the United States. The effect of Hurricane Katrina has been to send the price of petrol in the USA soaring from the equivalent of 34p/litre to 42p/litre. But compared to the £1/litre in the UK, what have the bastards got to whinge about? They're at it again in Brussels The inmates of the Brussels lunatic asylum are hell-bent on passing legislation making employers liable for any ill-effects of sunlight exposure on their staff. Employers will have to monitor sunlight levels and have a sun-block monitor standing by to ensure that workers are wearing an adequate coating of sun-resistant goo. The list of workers affected by the proposed legislation includes labourers, farmers, police officers, fishermen and footballers. Falls over in amazement! This dotty plan has actually been booted into touch! Which must mean something even sillier is being nodded through behind closed doors. The next Big Idea from the Euromeddlers in Brussels is for all immigrants to swear an oath of loyalty to the United States of Europe rather than their chosen country of residence. In return, the immigrant will get the chance to sign up to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. At least 2,400 Palestinian civilians and children have been murdered by Israeli troops over the last 5 years, while the troops have been operating an illegal 'kill anything that moves' policy in the occupied territories.    The Israeli army has investigated 131 cases of 'misuse of firearms' during this period. 18 soldiers were charged and 7 were convicted. "I'm crap at my job, but so what?" Kofi Annan, the U.N. Sec. Gen., is taking full responsibility for his negligence, which allowed corrupt and illegal mismanagement of the Iraq oil for food programme. But, following the fine examples set by new labour, he's not planning to resign. Kissing a Chinese corpse How do the Chinese manage to undercut rivals in the 'beauty products' market? Well, one way is to harvest the corpses of executed criminals for collagen, the protein used for lip-plumping injections to create the infamous 'trout pout' and implants to enhance bottoms and calf muscles. Warmer and wetter Global warming will be good for the top part of Africa, Dutch meteorologists have calculated with a computer simulation. The Saharan region and the horn of Africa will receive enough extra rainfall to end the severe droughts which are normal there. The region might even be quite a nice place to live by the 22nd Century if the carbon taxers fail to do anything about climate change. Foreign war criminals? No thanks! Israel is upset because British anti-terror laws are preventing its war criminals from attending fund-raising events in our country. The Israeli army officers who sanctioned Israel's 'shoot anyone on sight' policy in the Occupied Territories and illegal demolitions of Palestinian homes are now liable to arrest and prosecution for violating international law. So they're staying away. FEMA bogs it up again The US Federal Emergency Management Agency came in for a great deal of stick over its lack of response to the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina (with some help from Rita). Headed by a Pres Dubya Bush crony (until he got the bullet), FEMA dithered instead of doing.    Now, what FEMA has been doing is the target of complaints – wasting millions of dollars by housing refugees on 3 luxury cruise liners at twice the going rate. The ships offered 7,116 beds and their owners were paid $1,275 per refugee per week. The going rate for a cruise to the Caribbean is $559 per person per week.    Worse, the ships are owned by a company registered in Panama and it won't be paying any US taxes on the contract.

KANGAROO NEWS Will the kangaroos trample Red Ken? London mayor Ken Livingstone was shopped to the Standards Board for England in February of this year for being robust with a pestering journalist. The 'crime' reported to New Labour's deeply flawed, local authority watchdog was failing to treat others with respect, which is an absolute offence under the SBfE's code of conduct. The defence that the 'victim' of the crime was undeserving of respect won't wash.    The latest news about this saga is that Livingstone has now been referred to the Adjudication Panel for England, the Standards Board's kangaroo court. Staffed by mainly unqualified quango-fodder, this 'court' has the power to sentence anyone hauled before it to be barred from office for up to 5 years.    The big question, however, is: "Will they dare to do anything to Red Ken with the London Olympics on the horizon?" Most people are putting their money on a ruling that 'no further action need be taken'. How the system 'works' The SBfE's standard operating procedure is to send a draft 'charge sheet' to the accused in the hope that the victim himself will assist in the process of firming up the charges and give them stickability. The Board decides what the evidence is.    When a case reaches the kangaroo court, the president of an Adjudication Panel has the right to decide whether or not the accused can call witnesses. The president also decides which questions the accused is allowed to ask. The accused may not put questions to the SBfE's investigator.    The 'court' decides its cases on the balance of probabilities and applies the lowest standards of proof necessary to secure a 'conviction'. It then hands out ridiculous sentences for non-offences, and the accused is forced into the expense of going to a proper court, the Court of Appeal in London, to obtain justice. Facts about the SBfE    • The Standards Board is a typical quango, which seeks to maximize its case load and hence its apparent usefulness; which is why a great many of its 'cases' are trivial complaints arising out of political vendettas.    • The SBfE is notorious for having staff who cannot reply promptly to correspondence and who are not 'authorized' to perform even the simplest tasks or to divulge the most harmless information about the Standards Board.    • SBfE investigators have a history of sloppy and selective information gathering.    • The SBfE imposes ethical standards on others – but it has none of its own! Its hallmarks are obsessive secrecy and inaccessibility. It is a prime example of failure to think things through by central government.    • The SBfE's sense of insecurity is such that it wishes to shield all of its activities from external scrutiny in case they are exposed as arbitrary and/or just plain silly.    • The SBfE is quite happy to provide to third parties, inaccurate information about members of the public. For further information on the part the SBfE plays in petty political vendettas, see the Board's entry on the Contents Page of the Garbagegate website.

NEWSPAPER NEWS TheGuardian becomes theguardian Size & shape comparisons 1988 Gaurdain 1963 Daily Herald 2005 theguardian 1969 Daily Sketch The proprietors of the Grauniad found that they had to reduce the size of their paper stock to ensure continuity of printing without breakage of the paper web on new colour printing presses. Their big problem was that if they went tabloid, people would be asking, "How come you're not selling 4 million copies a day, like the Daily Mail, if your paper is as brilliant as you say it is?" So they had to pick a size that is neither fish nor fowl – smaller than broadsheet but bigger than tabloid.    But what they don't seem to realize is that anything big enough to require folding in half becomes unwieldy when you try to turn the pages. And the half-size, sub-tabloid G2 supplement has become even more of a joke. Worse, the typography is a disaster area in places, particularly when they use spindly fonts in pale colours on a white page for headlines.    Not surprisingly, the standard of reporting shows no great improvement in the revamped paper. In the obituary for former Kansas City Chiefs' head coach Hank Stram on 2005/09/16, Michael Carlson writes about the Chiefs' clash with the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl I: "The Wisconsin team (the Packers) won that particular battle but Stram, the Chiefs and the AFL won the war – three years later, they demolished the Minnesota Vikings to win Super Bowl IV."    This curious statement ignores the fact that the 'war' is still going on in the 21st Century and NFL teams are now on the road to Super Bowl XXXX, and the score in the 'war' was just two-all after Super Bowl IV. The Packers had won the first 2 for the NFC and the Jets and the Chiefs had won one each for the AFC. For anyone who knows anything about American football, this tosh brings to mind the words 'total' and 'bollocks'.

	Dyslexia – it doesn't exist say academics, it's just a fancy name for people with poor reading skills and a blunt instrument for extracting funds from governments.  The hurricane that hit New Orleans was God's Punishment. If a god was out to punish anyone, George W. Bush and corrupt politicians everywhere, never mind just the ones in the Southern states, would be a much more logical target than the city of New Orleans and the people in it. Unless the god is not only vindictive, but also cross-eyed and stupid.  England's overpaid footballers, especially The Boy Beckham & The Boy Wayne, and also Shagger Sven.  The prime minister's pretence that he's remotely interested in cricket.  The government's 'evidence-based policy making', which actually involves burying inconvenient evidence and using only 'evidence' that makes new labour look good.  new labour's policy of using taxpayers' cash to make single parents better off than couples in order to make the misfits and deviants among its supporters feel they're part of the mainstream.  Adding up the gaol sentences of last year's failed Heathrow gold blaggers and putting the total in newspaper headlines.  The notion that we have an independent civil service after 8 years of new labour, according to Lance Price.  The European Commission moaning about the size of non-euro-zone Britain's budget deficit after failing to do anything about the persistent illegal deficits of euro-zone nations, e.g. France, Germany, Italy and all the others.  The idea that the IRA has given up all its weapons and it has none left for usual business – bank robbery, murder, extortion, punishment shootings, protection during drug deals, arms dealing and all the other stuff it does when not blowing people up. And what about the 26 million quid they stole last Xmas? When is the IRA going to surrender that?  The vanity and control freakery on display at the labour party conference.

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

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