2006/October    FINAL	Every edition of BFN is compiled in accordance with official 10 Downing Street guidelines on accuracy and veracity.

ARRIVALS A New Addition to the Periodic Table An element of atomic number 118, provisional name ununoctium, has been made by collaborating American and Russian nuclear researchers based at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) at Dubna, north of Moscow. Three of the atoms were detected when high-speed calcium atoms were smashed into a target made from californium.    The atoms existed for only 0.9 milliseconds, then they decayed into element 116 and then element 114. The next target for the Livermore-Dubna team is element 120, which they hope to make in 2007 by bombarding a plutonium target with iron. Element 118 is expected to be a noble gas, which belongs in the periodic table of elements directly below radon.

REDISCOVERED QUOTE OF THE MONTH "Thou art the man!"    Thomas De Quincey / Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) [see page 183 of the 1994 Wordsworth edition. Ed.]

VISIBILITY NEWS Preferably Not Seen The most popular suggestion for a new law to go into the next Queen's Speech is one requiring labour MPs to wear an Islamic-style veil until they acquire a sense of decency. Derision is the only possible response We tried to scan a newspaper version of American 'artist' George Condo's pathetic 'portrait' of the Queen for inclusion in this edition of BFN, but we were laughing at it so much that the job never got done. Mr. Condo says he modelled his work on the Spanish artist Velazquez – that's José Velazquez, age 6, of Barcelona. Gone, but still raking it in! The good news for Kurt Cobain, sometime lead singer with Nirvana, is that he earned $26.3 million between October 2005 and this month. The bad news is that Kurt has been dead for 12 years and he is in no position to spend the dosh. Elvis ($22.1M) and Peanuts creator Charles Schultz ($18.4M) complete the top 3 in the league of posthumous earnings. Albert Einstein (d. 1955) came 5th behind John Lennon.

ROMILEY NEWS A spot of consumer news Apparently, Stockport Council's Trading Standards Department no longer handles complaints about local rogue traders – which raises the question of what it's for; apart from to offer public sector jobs with a rosy pension to a favoured few at no benefit to Stockport's Council Tax payers.    Anyone who does have a complaint has to contact Consumer Direct by phone on 0845 404 0506 between 8 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. on Monday to Friday or between 9 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. on Saturday. Alternatively, Consumer Direct can be contacted online at: http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/complaints.shtml Sunday, 15th – Romiley's roadside barbeque? Big excitement among people going out to buy their morning papers – a car on fire on Compstall Road beside the park. There was no sign of the driver hovering anxiously near it when the crowd lost interest. Several serious fire extinguishers were on offer but no one seemed to be brave enough to use one.    Motorists were charging through the chicane of parked rubber-neckers with their usual casual abandon and disregard for the speed limit. The fire brigade must have arrived eventually as there were no reports of an explosion even though the whole of the engine compartment was gushing flames in all directions.

CRIME NEWS Courts told to jump all over extortionists Salford council is to be prosecuted for extortion after a failed attempt to screw a £60 parking penalty out of a motorist. He parked in a gap in a set of yellow lines. So a council workman painted lines up to the car's wheels, then he lay down beside the car [left] and painted under the car to complete the yellow lines. and make the car look as if it were illegally parked. As a follow-up, a parking warden slapped a ticket on the car.    Unfortunately for the conspirators, the entire incident was filmed with mobile phones from nearby office buildings. It is thought that officers of the council will face custodial sentences 'as an example to others with similar larcenous schemes in mind'. U R wot U txt Criminal psychologists are studying text messages to find out if they could be as distinctive as handwriting. At present, the police can determine whether a mobile phone was used at a crime scene by fixing its position by a process of triangulation. But they can't tell who was using it without witnesses and/or CCTV. But they are hoping that the pattern of omissions, abbreviations and other short cuts, or the user's sheer illiteracy, will be able to tell them who was operating the mobile. No bites but maybe the odd ruptured spleen? North Wales police have come up with an interesting way to use police dogs. Their dogs are not taught to bite a suspect's leg to restrain him/her. They wear a muzzle and they are trained to launch themselves at the suspect's midriff like a flying torpedo. The tactic is so surprising that most criminals are busted while trying to work out what the f*** is going on! History Revisited When prisoners rioted at Lincoln gaol in October 2002, dave blunk, then Home Sec., got on the phone to the army and 'shrieked' at them to machine gun the rioters as he didn't care how many staff and/or inmates were killed.    Curiously, this phone call isn't mentioned in the diaries, which he is currently trying to flog. Nice work if you can get it! The deputy speaker of the Russian parliament, who is paid less than £13K per year, is claiming that stuff worth £260,000 was stolen from his apartment by a burglar. The alleged haul included £57,000 in cash. Other members of the parliament would be very interested to hear what Lyubov Sliska did to assemble so much loot.

DEPARTURES Colin Barber The man who hauled typesetting into the computer age has died at 72. A research engineer with a background in mathematics and physics, he was a pioneer of the concept that once data has been keyed into a computer memory, it should be in a form which can be reorganized as required and never need re-keying ever again.    His work on computer typesetting in the middle 1960s played an essential part in the revolution in the newspaper industry in the 1980s and laid the foundations for the computer printing systems which are taken for granted in the 21st Century. DEPARTURES Paul Hunter A rising snooker star, who had established a reputation for comeback wins, has died at 27. He won his first major title, the Welsh Open, at the age of 19, and he was known equally for his cheerful attitude to life and his weird hairstyles. He will be remembered for his victories in the snooker Masters in 2001, 2002 & 2004, all of which involved coming back from a deficit of 4 or 5 frames. DEPARTURES Cory Lidle Largely unknown in Britain (except to baseball fans), a pitcher for the Yankees has died at 34 after crashing his light aircraft into a 50-storey apartment block near E. 72nd & York in New York and achieving world-wide notoriety. His flying instructor also perished. What Mr. Lidle was doing, larking about in restricted airspace, has yet to be revealed. DEPARTURES Ed Benedict The creator of Fred Flintstone had died at 94. He joined Walt Disney's studio in 1930 and eventually became lead animator for Hanna-Barbera, where he did his best work. The Flintstones was a hit from its first showing in 1960. Mr. Benedict's other creations included the equally popular Yogi Bear as well as the Jetsons and Huckleberry Hound.

HEALTH NEWS Public Information Spot If the NHS cuts the wrong leg off, the technical terms is 'wrong site surgery'. We just thought our readers would like to know this. Garden decking is providing an ideal habitat for rats and other disease-spreading vermin. Which means extra business for DIY stores. After making a mint out of the decking, they can also extract a few bob more for rat poison and traps!    "A mandelson of a marketing strategy," said an industry insider. Mobile phones are okay – Official! The only reason for banning mobiles in hospital is to spare people the annoying ring tones. Studies have shown that they have no harmful effects on equipment and the reason why hospital administrators keep them out is so that they can rip off the customers via extortionate charges for using bedside phones. Wildlife Warning! Other creatures are advised to avoid the Matley Wood area of the New Forest, where stroppy pigs are on the prowl. They are allowed into the forest for two months to eat up the acorns, which are poisonous to other residents. But if they see humans, dogs or other competition for their snacks, they are liable to attack en masse!

ANNOUNCEMENT We are seeking nominations for the biggest political piss-take of all time. For our part, we can't get past David Steele telling the Liberal conference to go home and prepare for government. It's even better than Harold Wilson's tale about devaluation not affecting 'the pound in your pocket'. All suggestions to the above email address, please.

HOME NEWS What has corrupt blair labour done now? New ability legislation came into force on the first of this month. In addition to sex, race and all the others, employers will no longer be able to select recruits on the basis of ability to do the job. Mucky weather down south Brighton survived the attentions of a tornado at the beginning of this month. The twister raced in from the sea, bringing with it a 1,000-foot water spout, but it turned out to be a bit of a paper tiger, collapsing and dispersing as soon as it hit land. Same rip-off, different alibi The government has given up on 'fighting terrorism' as its reason for wanting to make hugely expensive ID cards compulsory. 'Catching illegal immigrants' is the new excuse. Words of the 21st Century 1. blunkett! – the sound of a corrupt politician's career hitting the buffers.    Why does blunk want everyone to know that the exposure of his abuses in office, which got him sacked from the Cabinet twice, made him chemically depressed? Is he hoping for a sympathy vote to speed his return to another ministerial job? Or is he after compensation from the public purse for his self-inflicted wounds? Insecurities of the 21st Century The real reason why jack straw wants Moslem women to remove their veil in his MP's surgery is that he's worried they're making faces at him behind all that black cloth. FRAUD WARNING The government is planning to introduce fortnightly refuse collections by stealth while allowing councils to continue to charge their customers the rate for weekly collections. They also want councils to bring the schemes in by stealth during cold weather to overcome initial resistance before the weather becomes warm enough to make 2-week-old garbage stink. WARNING – this card will damage your wealth! Jim Soward, the man behind the Standard Life Bank and the Intelligence Finance Bank, would like to see government health warnings about rip-off interest rates made compulsory on credit cards the way there are health warnings on fag packets. Tax the Polluter – what's that all about? Well, basically, the polluter keeps on polluting but pays more and more money to the government, and the government wastes the money instead of spending it on saving the planet.

JOKES OF THE MONTH 1. "There's a little nip in the air, as they said when they hanged the Japanese criminal." 2. David Onamade, head of Somerset Racial Equality Council, who got his knickers in a twist when a vicar put this joke in his church newsletter.

PHONE NEWS ntl TRIPLES weekend phone rates Telecoms giant ntl is 'improving' its service to customers in October by abolishing its "3-2-1" call plan, which offered cheaper phone calls at weekends and evenings. As a result, evening calls will cost 50% more and the price of a weekend phone call will triple. Worse, the rates for 0845 and 0870 calls are also going up – by a massive 25%. The price rises are thought to have been triggered by the current broadband war, which is slicing into the profits of the major telecoms suppliers.

POLITICAL HONESTY!!!   "You know the definition of politics? Well, 'poli' means more than one and 'tics' are blood-sucking parasites.    – Kinky Friedman, candidate for the governorship of Texas in the 2006/11/07 election. If Moslems were a bit more laid back, they'd have a quieter life. In fact, they might even end up complaining that the West is ignoring them. But as things stand, there will always be people who can't resist winding up humourless fanatics, even if a lot of them are homicidal, suicidal maniacs. Members of the British government [and we all know who they are] have been cosying up to the Internet gambling companies over the last 2 years because it is corrupt blair labour policy to make Britain the online gambling capital of the world. The government says biometric ID cards will cost £5.4 billion over 10 years. corrupt blair labour also said the Millennium Dome would cost £40 million but spent £800 million on it.

SPACE NEWS 'a' world of difference "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."    The quotation makes sense only if it includes the indefinite article, Neil Armstrong meant to include it when he stepped on to the Moon 37 years ago, but he doesn't seem to in the recording of the occasion.    Step forward Australian computerologist Peter Ford, who put the NASA recording through his sound-editing software and detected a very abbreviated 'a'. History breathes a sigh of relief!

SPORTS NEWS Olympics on the cheap? The government is encouraging the campaign to make darts an Olympic sport for the 2012 Games. The thinking behind the move is grounded in pure practicality. Most Olympic sports need vastly expensive facilities, most of which turn into white elephants if they ever get built. But darts is a pub game, and there are lots of pubs already in London! The organizers of the 2012 London Olympics are under fire for signing up McDonald's as a sponsor at a time when Britain is a shoo-in for gold medals in any fatness events. World Champion again Congrats! to Fernando Alonso for becoming the youngest Formula One competitor to win consecutive championships. A second place in Brazil, the final Grand Prix of the season, was enough to give him the title; and also hand the constructors' championship to Renault. Congrats! also to Mr. Massa for becoming the first Brazilian to win his home Grand Prix since the late Mr. Senna did it.

TRAVEL NEWS Fly Turkish Airlines and don't expect to get there! A Turk who didn't want to live in a Moslem country any longer successfully hijacked a TA flight from Tirana, Albania, to Istanbul by strolling into the cockpit and telling the pilot a silly story. The door was open so that drinks could be served to the crew. Hakan Ekinci announced that he had accomplices and they would blow the plane up if it didn't fly to Rome. The aircraft was diverted to Brindisi in southern Italy, where Mr. Ekinci, a convert to Christianity, said he was sorry but he wanted to claim political asylum and there was no gang and no bomb. Not paying attention? The government banned the use of mobile phones while driving 3 years ago. But the latest government figures show that more people are doing it now than before the ban. Everybody take one step to the left! Poland is depopulated because its citizens flooded here when their country joined the EU. So Poland is inviting the Romanians and Bulgarians who can't get into Britain to fill up their gaps. Which raises the interesting question of who will plug the holes in Romania & Bulgaria!    It could be that unskilled British workers will be doing that job if they can't find work in Poland. Some 100,000 of them have lost their jobs to foreigners in the last 2 years.

WAR NEWS Party? What Party? President Dubya Bush was hoping to blow $20 million of taxpayers' cash on a 'Victory In Iraq' party in Washington this year. The appropriation, which was steam-rollered through the US Congress by the Republican party, has been quietly rolled over to 2007; and the expectation is that it will keep on rolling down the years until someone blags the cash for something else. Yeah, like that's true! Our present temporary prime minister is saying that the IRA has given up violence – so you can be sure it ain't so but some dirty deal with the terrorists is on the way. You can have anything you want – except what you really want Typical politician! Our present temporary prime minister promised the British army that they can have anything they need in Iraq & Afghanistan. Only he didn't say when and he didn't include in his list, what the army commanders need most – more troops. Communication Problem The government has been shamed into offering extra payments to troops in war zones, including Iraq & Afghanistan as a result of British troops chatting to their American counterparts and discovering what a relatively rotten deal they're getting.    The one-off payment is £2,250 for a 6-month tour of duty to help to pay income tax. Many troops will pay a lot more than this, but that's just their hard luck, apparently. Some comparisons American troops are excused tax while serving abroad. Foreign criminals who have been gaoled in Britain are offered £2,500 to leave the country. The up-side of genocide President Dubya Bush, America's warmongers, and our present temporary prime minister and his corrupt blair labour colleagues have helped to kill 2.5% of the Iraqi population since 2003, according to a study led by Johns Hopkins University.    At this rate of extermination, which is much greater than deliberately distorted government estimates, the country will be empty by 2104 and the British government is already negotiating with the Americans over making use of the empty space.    The new Iraq is likely to become a dumping ground for failed migrants, home-grown Jihadistas, convicted foreign criminals and similar undesirables. corrupt blair labour has opened a new front in its War Against Truth. The target is General Sir Richard Dunnatt, the new head of the British army, who dared to say the overstretched British army needs to be out of Iraq 'soon' as its presence is now doing more harm than good. Cynical British squaddies are saying that Gen. Dunnatt wants them out of Iraq only so that he can send them to Afghanistan.

WORLD NEWS American tradition under threat Halloween pumpkins are in short supply in most of the United States of America. Adverse weather – lots of rain and then a drought – devastated the main growing areas in Massachusetts and New England and this year's wholesale prices are double last year's. Big Bang Big Prize Congrats to John Mather & George Smoot for winning the physics Nobel prize for their work on big bang theory. They helped to design and build the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (1989), which provided data on background microwave radiation in the universe. Their work helped to turn cosmology from a theoretical science to an active endeavour involving direct observation and measurement. Deutsch Über Alles! Some outraged Germans have decided to take a belated stand against the creeping menace of Denglish – the insinuation of English words into their everyday language. Led by Norbert Lammert, the president of the parliament, the purists have launched a campaign to gain constitutional protection for the German language. Meanwhile, we British will continue to wallow in our much invaded linguistic swamp while enjoying Schadenfreude at the Germans' expense. Scottish Scroungers Sabotaged Members of the Scottish Parliament claimed £1.8 million in expenses in the first quarter of 2005. They have claimed just £227,000 in the same period of this year. Why? Because this year, they're having to account for the money they say they've spent. Brilliant idea! Why didn't someone think of it sooner. A bogus American landmark The official population of the United States reached 300 million this month. But that the US government doesn't know (like what passes for a government in Britain) is how many infiltrators there are and when the population really hit this landmark number. Which didn't stop them naming some kid as the official 300 millionth citizen. Crime gang link ditched Plans to join Sicily and the Italian mainland with a 2-mile suspension bridge have hit the buffers. The struggling Italian economy can't meet its end of the bill for what would be the world's longest single-span suspension bridge. Which is good news for Britain's taxpayers, who would have been told to cough up a big chunk of the inevitable subsidy via our contributions to the EU's theft-plagued budget. It's also bad news for the Mafia and the 'Ndrangheda. Italy's major crime organizations were hoping to make a bomb out of stealing from the construction programme before enjoying easier communications for smuggled good after the bridge opened. Breaking the habit President Ahmadin Egad! has sent his Tobacco Police out to round up all the hubble-bubble pipes in Iran's restaurants and tea houses. Hubble-bubbling is suddenly too decadent for Mr. Egad!'s Islamic regime and, like boozing and similar illicit pleasures, it is now being driven underground. No Bowling By Order! The Spanish government has shown what good Europeans they are by preventing a private bowling alley in Barcelona from hosting the 2007 Ten Pin European Championship. Why? Because a team from Gibraltar is competing. Offensive but not belittling An attempt by Moslem groups to sue the newspaper which published the unfunny Mohammed cartoons in September 2005 has flopped. A Danish judge ruled that Jyllands-Posten might have offended some Moslems but there is no reason to suppose the cartoons were intended to belittle Moslems. Rioting Moslems killed 50 people around the world in response to the cartoons, but none of them ended up in court.

	sir ian blair (no relation)'s ban on the term 'yob' for, well, yobs. BlackFlag News would like to suggest the acronym from 'Youthful Offending Bastards' as an alternative. The Church of England thinks domestic violence in general, and wife-beating in particular, is caused by people assuming that the church's god is male. The CoE also blames marriage for creating 'an enhanced sense of ownership' which triggers domestic violence. "The IRA has gone away" the people 'monitoring' this gang would like us to believe. What, they've given up bank robbery, drug dealing, protection rackets, punishment shootings, VAT fraud, other cross-border frauds and all the rest of their stuff? Yeah, like that's going to happen! Arriva Trains Wales were late during the summer because pollen blocked the radiators of their diesel engines and made them overheat. Yet no other train company with the same type of train had this problem. And Arriva trains are late all year round, Shrewsbury & Aberystwyth Rail Passengers' Association added. Watford council has banned bonfires on Bonfire Night. It might be on health & safety grounds to stop people hurling themselves onto the bonfire, it might be because the fire will create smoke in a smoke-free zone, or it might be because the council is usable to have enough bossy-boots on duty at the bonfire party to tell people what to do. Lord Chief Justice Phillips, who would like to see serious criminals getting care in the community rather than long prison sentences. Allan Leighton, chairman of Royal Mail, who thinks 'The households we deliver to are not our customers; big business is my priority'. Which certainly explains why postal deliveries & collections, as well as the postal service itself, have been going down the nick steadily. The people who are having a go at the Boy Wayne for waving a V-sign at a stroppy and disappointed football fan. British Gas call centres. Every time you phone one of them to get something done, they take it as a challenge to screw things up in a different way. British Airways for not letting militant Christian Nadia Eweida wear a crucifix. corrupt blair labour's bogus national debate about Moslem hoodies. The Home Office for letting visa-overstayer Zeinab Bibi stay in Britain because she says people pick on her in her native Pakistan for being 7' 2" tall. Oh, yes – she also wants to be an NHS scrounger. scotch gordon broon's latest pledge to cut red tape after issuing similar worthless promises for the last 9 years. Sending johnny '2 Jags' prescott to South East Asia to sort out the North Korean nuclear problem when he's more likely to get into a punch-up and start World War Three. Teaching assistant Aishah Azmi, who removed her veil for her job interview but who won't remove it in the classroom, even though wearing a veil prevents her from doing the job. The bloke who thinks Princess Margaret was his mum.

Created for Romiley Anarchists' League by workers in revolt against oppression. Sole © RAL, 2006.    Free web counters are available from www.digits.com