2007/April    FINAL	Every edition of BFN is compiled in accordance with official 10 Downing Street guidelines on accuracy and veracity.

ROMILEY NEWS "Pavement Politics" bites Triv-Dems Triv-Dem canvassers for the local election are getting a lot of stick on the doorstep about the state of Romiley's broken pavements. "More puddles than pavement when it rains," they are being told. "Romiley's pavements are not just neglected from year to year – it's decade to decade!"    The Triv-Dems seem very good at bragging about their £500 million plan for another pointless redevelopment of the centre of Stockport, they can hand out fancy salaries to councillors with 'cabinet' posts, the town clerk and assistant town clerks, but when it comes to the basics, like Romiley's broken pavements, they just don't want to know.    But there can't be as many free lunches in a pavement repair contract as you can expect from a £500 million redevelopment.

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SPACE NEWS ESO finds first every Earth-like planet A team using the European Space Organization's 3.6-m telescope has discovered the first fairly Earth-like planet some 20 light years away. It hurtles round the red dwarf star Gliese 581 in just 13 days as it is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun. Luckily, Gliese 581 is smaller and much cooler than the Sun – it has one-third of the Sun's mass and emits at least 50 times less radiation.    The estimated surface temperature of the planet is 0-40 deg.C, it has an estimated mass 5 times that of Earth, and its gravity is about twice Earth gravity. If the planet has a magnetic field (which is not yet known), it could have an atmosphere, liquid water on the surface and, possibly, life. If not, it is likely to be just a lump of bare, airless rock.    The planet has at least 2 companions – one the size of Neptune with a year lasting a mere 5 days, and one half-Neptune size with a year lasting 84 days.

HEALTH NEWS Hope for Harassed Hounds? Dogs, which can get extremely depressed on their own, are being offered canine-formula Prozac in the hope that it will stop them barking aimlessly, ripping lumps off the furniture and ripping the paintwork on doors to shreds.    The message from the veterinary profession is that the owner would be better advised to train the dog in acceptable behaviour rather than trying to feed pills to it.

CLIMATE NEWS   Is climate change causing violent policing? The EU Commission is to set up a special Europe-wide research team to look for evidence that a warmer climate affects the behaviour of police officers disproportionately.    Earlier studies in South America have suggested that the type of person who joins a police force and volunteers for the riot squad is particular susceptible to Thermal Dementia.    This state of reduced responsibility overcomes people with a weak personality when the local temperature exceeds a certain threshold.    The EC study hopes to determine the likely effects of TD on the numbers of deaths of members of the public at the hands of riot police, and the likely level of compensation claims, if European temperatures rise by 2-4 deg.C. over the next 35 years. The study will include a 'correction sub-section' performed in Russia, where most police violence is orchestrated by the government of President Putin. This additional data will provide a 'state involvement correction factor', will be subtracted from the results for Europe to ensure that 'climate-only' violence is considered. Save the planet, cut your own throat! The Australian government is worried that the guilt industry building up around greenhouse gas emissions from jet flights will leave their country isolated and knock the bottom out of a multi-billion-dollar tourism industry. Long-distance flights are the only practical way of getting "Down Under" and even worse, climate change is threatening to take out the major attraction of the Great Barrier Reef. EU hypocrisy condemned The EU's shuffles from Brussels to Strasbourg for monthly parliamentary sessions, which is entirely for the financial benefit of the French, costs £180 million per year. The environmental price is even more extraordinary.    The extra carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by shifting the MEPs, thousands of EU officials, hangers-on like journalists and visitors amounts to 20.3 kilotonnes per year. This homage to French vanity is higher than the annual carbon dioxide emissions of each of 134 sovereign states. The 134 States are: Afghanistan, Albania, American Samoa, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, French Guiana, Gabon, Georgia, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Moldova, Mongolia, Montserrat, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands Antilles, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niger, Niue, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Republic of the Congo, Réunion, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Samoa, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, The Gambia, Togo, Tonga, Tuvalu, U.S. Virgin Islands, Uganda, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe

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CRIME NEWS The mouth writing cheques the ass can't cash? After releasing all sorts of horror stories about the disgusting state of the turkey farm in Suffolk where there was an outbreak of bird flu in February, the Food Standards Agency has gone all coy over prosecuting the Bernard Matthews organization. "There is insufficient evidence to guarantee a successful prosecution," a spokesman for the FSA announced with an air of embarrassment. Looks like the FSA spin-doctor got a bit over-excited! TURKEY BLOG    "Alternatively, is it possible that Mr. Matthews offered half of the £660,000 compensation that he got for the slaughtered turkeys to corrupt blair labour to buy an immunity from prosecution?"    necranom@grappoloin.com "It's unlikely; but only because 300 grand isn't likely to buy all that much from corrupt blair labour now there's been all the trouble. They're not likely to do a deal for less than a million quid these days."    SwankHolly@parkerconsulting.com A great business opportunity! The prisons are full again and anyone with a garden shed in which a convict can be locked up securely is advised to contact the Home Office, which is offering excellent deals to Home Prison Contractors. All applications should be made between 09:00 and 12:00 on 2007/04/01. Contact Info : website : http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ email : public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk snail mail : Home Office, Direct Communications Unit,                      2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF telephone : 0207 035 4848 (09:00-17:00 Mon-Fri) fax : 0207 035 4745 A step too far for men of conscience? Magistrates are starting to resign over scotch gordon's stealth tax on fines, which arrived at the beginning of this month. They feel that the £15 "victim's surcharge" added to every fine – a sum which will be spent on more bureaucracy, not victims – is fundamentally unfair when it is collected from speeding motorists, TV licence dodgers, etc.    Come to think of it "fundamentally unfair" is a description which sums scotch gordon up rather effectively! An attempt to make serious criminals pay the surcharge was abandoned "because court computers were unable to make the necessary calculations". Pathetic, or what! EU wimps out but victims battle on In June last year, the European Commission weaseled out of a court challenge to the campaign of illegal seizures of vehicle and duty-free goods operated by British customs officers. But 10 victims of this scam have complained to their MEPs, who are lobbying for the case to be taken up by the European Court of Justice. Which provides scotch gordon with yet another reason for wanting to do a runner from the Treasury before his severely tarnished reputation is soiled further.

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DEATHWISH NEWS Everything will be okay. Not! The government of Indonesia is inviting companies from France, Japan and Russia to bid for a contract to build a nuclear reactor next to a dormant, but not extinct, volcano.    "Mount Muria is a small volcano and it poses no threat to the reactor, which will be completely earthquake-proof," a spokesman for Indonesia's National Nuclear Energy Agency said.    "These sound like pretty good famous last words," BFN's resident geologist said with the broad smile of someone living well out of the firing line. Everything will be okay. Not! corrupt blair labour has got itself into a terrible tangle over the succession. The problem is that their cock-ups in office have shown up the whole gang in the cabinet as a bunch of third-raters, which may even be an exaggeration!    scotch gordon has what he thinks is a solid deal with corrupt blair to take over but he has shown himself to be 'fundamentally flawed' and 'Stalinist', and he's not a team player. In short, just about everyone hates him. But that doesn't matter.    Anyone who has a chance of beating him in a straight fight is too scared to take him on in case he loses and ends up off the gravy train. And anyone who wants to take scotch on is a joke. For example, charlie clark, who was sacked as Home Sec. for gross incompetence and john reid, who's currently make a bog of the same job in his own way. So it looks like we're going to be stuck with scotch until the next general election; or the miserable nail-biter is run over by a bus.

DEPARTURES John Backus The creator of the mathematical computer programming language Fortran has died at 82. A long-term employee of IBM, he decided that there had to be an easier way of programming computers than using alphanumeric machine code. After working on the problem for 2 years, his team came up with a formula translation language, which allowed instructions to be written in English words and mathematical expressions, and translated into machine code, for a computer's benefit, via a compilation program.    Dr. Backus was awarded the national medal of the National Science Foundation (1973), the Association of Computing Machiner's Turing Award (1977) and the National Academy of Engineering's Charles Stark Draper Prize (1993). His computer language is still in regular use in the 21st Century, and those who learnt it in the 1970s were able to make an easy transition to Basic when PCs became affordable in the 1980s/90s. DEPARTURES George Sewell An actor who was at home playing both coppers and villains has died at 82. He began his career in the theatre after the war, and played the first of his TV cops in the 1960s series Z Cars. He was one of the villains sent to get Michael Caine in the film Get Carter (1971). He branched out into science fiction, playing a colonel of SHADO in the series UFO, he worked as a guest in TV sitcoms and he is seen regularly on digital TV playing the long-suffering boss of Jasper Carrott and Robert Powell in The Detectives (1990). DEPARTURES    Kurt Vonnegut One of America's most influential authors has died at 84. His best known work is Slaughterhouse 5 (1969), which was based on his experiences in wartime Dresden.    As a prisoner of war, he was put to work clearing up the remains of the people who died in a firestorm caused by Allied bombing on February 13/14 1945. He himself survived in an underground meat store called Slaughterhouse Five.    His work is described as science fiction but he was mainly about writing satire and taking a pessimistic view of the way society is going. He was the archetypal 'voice of the counterculture' and his work was always touched by a strain of weirdness.    Despite being labelled as the worst American writer ever by Gord Vidal (now the last surviving major American writer who served in uniform in World War II), Kurt Vonnegut became one of the most widely taught authors in American universities. DEPARTURES Terry Hall One of the earliest children's television entertainers, and the ventriloquist who gave a voice to Lenny the Lion, has died at 80. He got the idea of using a talking lion as his puppet at the Tower Zoo in Blackpool, and the singer Anne Shelton is credited with suggesting that the initially fierce lion should be made bashful and even a little camp.    Lenny, and his keeper, first appeared on BBC TV in 1956, they got their own show in 1957, and the Beatles made one of their earliest TV appearance as guests on a 1963 episode of Pops and Lenny. Terry Hall's TV career continued into the 1970s and he and Lenny appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in the United States. In later years, Terry Hall moved into producing educational reading-books for small children. DEPARTURES Paul Lauterbur One of the pioneers of the medical technique MRI has died at 77. The phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance has been used as an analytical technique for organic compounds for over 50 years. Developments by Paul Lautenbur and Sir Peter Mansfield allowed the technique to be used for imaging the human body, especially soft tissue, without using X-rays. Their work was rewarded with a shared a Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2003. DEPARTURES Dick Vosburgh A playwright and performer, who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Hollywood films and the American theatre in his specialist period, had died at 77. His writing career began in the early 1950s, he wrote for Bernard Braden's radio show then for David Frost and Ned Sherrin's TV shows. He also supplied gags to a wide range of comedians, including Bob Hope and Tommy Cooper.    He was a writer and adapter of musical shows, and an accomplished performer on quiz shows, especially on BBC Radio 4, where could be relied upon to trot out obscure facts in a witty manner. "The funniest man I know," according to Barry Cryer, who knows what he's talking about in that department. DEPARTURES Boris Yeltsin Russia's first democratically elected president, and an heroic friend of the alcohol industry, has died at 76. He had no qualms about sending tanks out against Communists who tried to reverse reforms. His term of office saw mass privatization, which handed vast amounts of loot to the beneficiaries, vote-rigging on an industrial scale, the creation of a private business sector, the collapse of authority and the system for paying the police and other public servants and a flowering of organized crime.    Countries annexed to the Soviet Union by its war machine were allowed to regain their independence but Yeltsin started a war with the Chechen republic, which lingers on and on. He ended the persecution of the Orthodox Church and he made friends with Western politicians. Yet his popular image remains "Boris the Blotto", a man who was too drunk to know what he was doing most of the time. He was the champion of a reforming agenda yet, ironically, he handed over power to KGB Col. Putin, who is now busy trying to recreate the old Soviet Union and abolish the freedoms of the Gorbachyov/Yeltsin era. DEPARTURES Alan Ball Another star of England's 1966 World Cup winners has died at 61. Alan Ball was a regular goal-scorer for Blackpool before being transferred for a record fee (just about a week's wages for some of today's overprices 'stars') to Everton. The World Cup win came at the start of his decade as a regular member of the England team. At the end of his playing career, he moved into management, with varying success, for the rest of the 20th century.

DOSH NEWS Everything's going up this month From 2007/04/01  • STAMPS First class stamps with cost 2p more at 34p and 2nd class stamps will cost 1p more at 24p  • PRESCRIPTIONS Free in Wales, up 20p to £6.85 everywhere else, a rise of 3%  • COUNCIL TAX Up an average of 4.2% but up 4.7% in Romiley thanks to the Trivial Democrats  • TV LICENCE The colour licence goes up £4 to £135.50, a rise of 3%  • WATER RATES The charge is going up an average of 7%, which is over double the government's preferred rate of inflation of 2.8%  • FINES Motorists and anyone else fined in court will have to pay a surcharge of £15 to a fund 'to help the victims of domestic violence'. The actual victims will see none of the cash in the form of compensation. The money will go to counsellors, lawyers and court officials.    But violent criminals, who are sent to gaol, won't have to pay this stealth tax. This is what passes for justice under corrupt blair labour.  • NATIONAL INSURANCE is up 9.5% for Class 2 contributions and 4.6% for Class 3  • Patientline PHONE CALLS FROM HOSPITALS up 160% from 10p to 26p/minute with a 40p minimum charge. More empty threats? Apple faces a fine of 10% of its £323 million turnover for ripping off British customers for music downloads. The company charges 79p/track to British customers and €0.99 (67p) in the rest of Europe. But as it's the European Union making the threatening noises, no one is expecting anything much to happen. Another bank rip-off The Royal Bank of Scotland, part of Britain's 2nd biggest banking group, is charging customers £12 for failing to notify the bank of a change of address. And another The HSBC (Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank of Criminals? Ed.) is charging customers £10 for the privilege of putting money into their ISA. The 'Auntie Wainwright' School of Banking? The banking regulator, Ofdosh, is keeping a watching brief on plans by the big banks to charge customers a fee for access to their branches. The fee will be 'invested to provide affordable security in dangerous times', said a spokesman for the Federation of UK Banks (FUKB). A least 2 of the major FUKB members are also considering an 'atmosphere premium', which will be charged to customers on the basis of the length of time that they spend enjoying air-conditioned premises. The NatWest coughs up a world record amount! The NatWest bank has paid £36,000 to a businessman living in Norfolk to avoid being taken to court over penalty charges. Even though his business had a turnover of more than a million pounds in the first year, the bank refused to give the customer an overdraft of £10,000 and charged him an average £250 per week in penalty fees over 2 years. He got his own back with a claim for £26,000 for illegal charges and £10,700 for interest and costs. Dollars aren't quite 2-a-penny but they're 2-a-quid this month, so it's a good time to buy stuff from the USA.

HEALTH NEWS A new labour alibi? The government is constantly telling us how much taxpayers' cash it has thrown at the NHS in response to persistent complaints that the NHS is getting worse, not better. Now, a study has found out why the NHS is chronically short of surgical instruments – doctors are leaving them in patients!    At least 2 people per week leave an operating theatre with equipment of some sort inside them, especially if the patient is obese. As a result, the NHS has to fork out the extra cost of a retrieval operation, follow-up care and the inevitable compensation. Can't win, won't win! After telling us for years that we have to eat oily fish to avoid obesity, diabetes and an early and painful death, the latest research has triggered a U-turn on this advice. Apparently, oily fish are particularly good at extracting pollutants from the sea, such as DDT and PCBs, and anyone who even looks at an oily fish is liable to drop dead on the spot. We just thought you'd like to know this in case you were planning to have sardines on toast for your tea. Can't slim, won't slim! The gloriously named Professor Hitman of London's QM School of Medicine has found that 16% of the people in Britain carry an obseity gene, which gives them a better than even chance of developing diabetes. So anyone who can't stick to a diet now has a new alibi.

New on Lulu.com – The Cold Fire of Madness by Philip H. Turner BlackFlag News would like to bring to our readers' attention, this work by one of Romiley's premiere authors.    Read about the Book on the Romiley Literary Circle website   Category : Crime, set in 1987

HOME NEWS Not an April Fool? There are notices up in the Health & Safety Executive's premises telling staff they are not allowed to move tables and chairs themselves (even chairs with castors). Anyone wishing to move their chair from one end of their desk to the other, or bring a visitor's chair over to the desk, has to fill in a Furniture Movement Order and give 48 hours' notice of the furniture rearrangement plan to the portering staff. Insult + Injury = scotch gordon corrupt blair labour doesn't seem to know the political truism: "If you're deep in a hole, stop digging." Documents released to The Times under the Freedom of Information Act (which corrupt blair labour is currently seeking to sabotage) have revealed that scotch gordy broon was warned of the consequences of stealing £5 billion/year from private pensions in 1997 before he began this disgusting act of piracy, but he went ahead and did it anyway.    When the truth came out this year, his reaction was to run away and hide in Afghanistan while his minion, eddie balls, got on with some spin-doctoring. eddie was so short of inspiration that he tried to blame the whole thing on the Confederation of British Industry, claiming the CBI lobbied for the tax change. That lie has now been nailed and the nation is awaiting the next one with its usual lack of enthusiasm.    Meanwhile, the number of people still in a final-salary pension scheme has dropped from 11 million in 1997 to just 4 million in 2007, and the man who stole your pension is looking forward to a pension of his own of £100,000/year out of the money which he stole from private pensions. Nice work if you can get it, being a politician. If scotch becomes prime monster, his pension pot goes up from a disgusting £1.9 million to a totally shameful £3.5 million – all of it stolen from other people's pensions. Carbon con-man gets the wind taken out of his sails Dave 'Planet Saver' Cameron is finding that gesture politics can have a high price. He had a wind turbine fitted to his London home, but only briefly. It had to be removed because it was attached to the side wall when his planning permission said it had to be attached to the chimney; which might not be strong enough to handle the vibrations from the cosmetic gadget anyway.    His neighbours in Notting Hill are reported to be pleased that he's having so much trouble with his eyesore turbine, which is supposed to pay for itself in 40 years by generating 1 kW of electricity when the wind blows at 28 mph. But as the average wind speed in a city is about a quarter of that figure, the posturing Mr. Cameron will be long dead and forgotten by the time the fiscal neutrality point is reached; assuming the turbine lasts that long! Another labour crony installed in a top job The BBC has a new chairman. Sir M. Lyons will take over on 2007/05/01. A bean-counter for scotch gordy broon, who got him the job, the new incumbent admits that he doesn't watch TV much, which comes as no surprise to the staff of BFN, who rarely visit the garbage on BBC 1 and BBC 2. Nothing positive here! The BBC has pulled the plug on a 90 minute TV play about Pte. Johnson Beharry, Britain's youngest surviving winner of the Victoria Cross. The anti-British management of the Beeb felt that Pte. Beharry's story is 'too positive' about the war in Iraq as it is BBC policy to make only negative programmes which show Britain in the worst possible light. Institutionalized greed Two-thirds of MPs think they're underpaid even though they have just voted themselves an extra £10,000 per year for election expenses. 99.999999% of the British people think they're a bunch of grabbing bastards with no shame, and all that will happen next is that the grabbing bastards will vote themselves another gut-busting pay rise at the first opportunity. Sleaze the whistle-blower? Again? A. McNeil, the SNP MP whose complaint to the Met triggered the current cash for honours investigation, is being sleazed by MI5 on the government's orders. Details gleaned from surveillance of his movements and a break-in at his office in the Commons are being leaked to the media to distract attention from government corruption. Allegedly. Smug Bugger decides not to quit 'for the sake of the country' With no obvious successor willing to show himself, and scotch gordy broon thoroughly discredited and shown up as a damaged Stalinist who stole the nation's pensions knowing that it would mean financial disaster for millions in their old age, the prime monster has decided that the country would benefit from a period of continuity and stability.    So he intends to stay on until the next general election. Rally round the duffer, chaps! There was a world record number of government ministers in the Commons on 2007/04/16 to hear Defence Sec. d. brown offer 'a degree of regret' for making such a bog up of the sale of the Hijacked 15's stories to the meeja and for going AWoL on holiday when all the wrong decisions were being taken.    In addition to most of the front bench, 27 junior ministers were there to doughnut brown for the sake of the in-house TV cameras. The Chancellor, of course, wasn't there – but, of course, he never is when there's trouble in the air. More bogus human rights Drusillas Park Zoo in East Sussex has been told that it can't recruit a Fat Controller for its Thomas The Tank Engine ride because advertising for a fat man is now illegal as it discriminates against thin applicants. And finally . . . Small earthquake in Kent – Richter 4.3 – power cuts, some property damage, no one killed.

MOVING NEWS   The HIP alternative From 2007/06/01, home owners will have to provide a Home Information Pack to a buyer when they want to move on. The government estimates that this somewhat watered-down stealth tax will cost customers £400-650, but the price could be as high as the original £1,000 as the govt. has made a bog of things, as usual.    There are too few home inspectors to go around as the govt. has failed to train enough of them. So the deputy vice-president of the Law Society has come up with an interesting idea. He suggests that it might be cheaper to pay the £200 fine for not supplying a HIP to avoid getting involved in the scam.    Especially as the inspectors handling the energy certificate, who are allowed to visit every room in the dwelling, won't have to pass a criminal record check and could well be in league with their local Burglars' Federation.

The Guardian of the Legacy 10 glorious years of achievements!. www.BlairLegacy.org.uk Celebrate tony blair's glorious heritage! Visit this homage to the greatest living Brit TODAY!

SPACE NEWS Solar-powered blackouts Research funded in the USA by NASA and the National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration has found that solar flares are having a greater than expected effect on the satellites of the Global Positioning system. And that's why SatNav systems in vehicles suffer peculiar blackouts.    The researchers want more cash for a closer study of solar flares to see if they can set up an early warning system for damaging solar flares which will produce blackouts.

THIS MONTH'S DREADFUL THOUGHT brown Deity Danger? People are always complaining that God is nowhere to be found when something terrible is happening. And the same is said of gordon brown. And have God and brown ever been seen together? Oh, no! He couldn't be, could he . . .? God forbid!

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THIS MONTH'S INTERESTING FACT Only For The Educated? Old-style railway ticket machines used a 3-letter code for stations. The current generation of computer-operated ones need the ticket seller to type in the name of the destination. So if no one can spell it, you don't get to go there!

TRAVEL NEWS U fly BA but your bags won't! British Airways has the worst record in Europe for losing baggage and trying to swindle passengers out of proper compensation. BA blames its mess on new government security regulations and too many people wanting to use its alleged service. Envirofascists blow a fuse! Carbon conmen are complaining about the Polar Race, a 350 mile trek to the north magnetic pole, and the North Pole Marathon, which was held on 2007/04/07 and featured 44 competitors. The races were called "thrill-seeking at the expense of the environment" by a guy from SCCS. He sounds like someone who needs to get a life after he gets a sense of proportion. Brit doing great abroad Formula One driver Lewis Hamiltion is going from strength to strength. 3rd in the Aussie Grand Prix and 2nd in Malaysia. Is a first place in Bahrain too much to expect? Probably. [Yes, it was, he came 2nd. Ed.] VA pilot not so stoned! A Virgin Atlantic pilot has been cleared of attempting to pilot a commercial aircraft while intoxicated on curious biological grounds. His breath tested positive for alcohol when he was busted but a blood test showed a negligible alcohol level. Apparently, the guy had been dieting strenuously, possibly in an attempt to reduce his carbon footprint, and a side-effect of the diet was to give him a beery breath laden with isopropanol, to which the breath-tester reacted, even though he was an ethanol-free zone. Persia – a paradise of empty hotels President Dinner Jacket's posturing, and the lunatic antics of the Iranian police, military and religious factions, have conspired to wipe out their country's tourist industry. President DJ is fond of going on about Persia's 7,000 years of history but no one living beyond its borders is likely to get any first-hand benefit of it for quite some time.    The head of the government-run national tourist organization promised this year to build more 5-star hotels than you could shake a stick at. Which is a particularly smart move when every travel firm dealing with Iran has cancelled all tours to the end of the 2009 season.    If the tourism minister wants to get the trippers back, it looks like he's going to have to offer travel firms a hell of a lot more than the current bribe – £10 for every American or European and £5 for everyone else. And the possibility of Israel bombing the fu*k out of Iran's nuclear industry isn't helping matters any . . .

WAR BLOG What are these bloody Iranians up to? "These bloody Iranians are like a bunch of teenage thugs, hanging around on a street corner, looking for trouble."    anthropocentricmiasmas@abaco.com.br "Right! It's the same mentality as bored teenage yobs strolling into someone's garden and pinching the gnomes."    fingerprintedderegulating@prudential.com.vn "Our navy doing anti-smuggling operations is no threat to Iran. Riding about in a boat does no damage to Iranian property. There was no need to hijack them and drag them back to Iran. In fact, the whole kidnap thing is a total waste of time which leaves the Iranians looking an even bigger bunch of wankers than they did before."    traducedharmonic@abargainauto.com "I have to agree. It was like a bad TV reality show."    jumptables@spinneys-dubai.com "The government-controlled Iranian papers are saying corrupt blair labour deliberately sent the 2 boats into Iranian waters to provoke an incident to deflect attention from the Iraq war. Which makes what passes for the Iranian government look all the more stupid for falling for the scam."    conveyorhydrometer@accordsoft.ru "That medal the head hijacker got from pres. dinner jacket? How much do you think it would fetch on ebay?"    obvalidate@explodetheinternet.co.uk "About 15 cents on a good day. There are too many of them around."    reverencedwimp@shakadivers.com "So now that the Hijacked 15 are back home, are we going to see the captain of HMS Cornwall face a court-martial for negligence?"    necranom@grappoloin.com "Foxtrot Oscar to that! They should be court martialing the berks at the Admiralty who came up with the so-called rules of engagement and the dozy politicians who let them get away with it."    traducedharmonic@abargainauto.com "If anyone gets put on trial, it should be president bloody dinner jacket and he should be facing war crimes charges at The Hague for killing 4 British soldiers and a Jordanian bloke with one of his bombs the day after the hijacked 15 went home. Not to mention all the other people his stooges have killed."    istamimi@grondinpoudrier.com "Where was that slimy sod scotch gordon while all this was going on? Nowhere to be seen, as bloody usual."    SwankHolly@parkerconsulting.com "What has corrupt blair labour done to the Navy? Mr. &#@*! Bean crying himself to sleep because he lost his #?*@% ipod? Pur-fukn-lease!"    necranom@grappoloin.com This thread is getting so silly in the 'real world' that we're calling a halt to it.     BFN Editorial

WORLD NEWS No wonder the capital's called Grozny A former rebel turned Kremlin stooge has been installed as the president of Chechnya after effectively running this blighted land since his president father was exterminated in 2004. With his record of involvement in murder, kidnapping and torture, he reflects the continuing trend for a reduction of standards in leadership world-wide.    This trend is particularly evident in Europe, where the British premier is a proven liar and sleaze-monger, the president of France would be in gaol for corruption if his job didn't give him immunity from prosecution, there's nobody in charge of Italy at the moment and the leader of Germany seems intent on creating a European megastate of Fourth Reich proportions by stealth. Police brutality the norm in Europe The assaults on British football supporters in Rome and Seville at the beginning of this month reflect a growing trend to violence as a first resort among European police forces. Poor quality leadership from the top down is seen as the major cause of universal degradation of policing standards.    The way London's riot police got away with violent and unprovoked hysterical assaults on anti-war demonstrators in Parliament Square in September 2004, and also serial abuse of their human rights, has encouraged their Continental cousins to get stuck in recklessly whenever they feel like it.    Which is why lawyers are busily collecting CCTV and videophone footage and planning massive class actions for compensation. If they get their way, policing may become unaffordable in Europe for a decade or so, as all police funding will have to be channelled to defending court actions and paying compensation to victims of assaults by out of control police forces. All American professors to be armed New legislation being rushed through Congress will require all professors at universities in the United States to take close-quarters combat training and carry a handgun, and a back-up weapon, at all times in a bid to prevent another massacre on the Virginal Tech scale.    The professors will also be issued with a carte blanche permitting them to shoot dead, any student (or member of staff) who is behaving oddly. Given the prevalence of weirdos in American universities, class sizes are expected to be reduced dramatically when the self-defence/culling programme is in effect. Nothing like getting your hopes up! Residents of one of the Marshall Islands, which was exposed to fallout from US nuclear tests in the 1950s, have been awarded over a billion dollars in compensation. But they stand no chance of getting their hands on a cent of it. The Nuclear Claims Tribunal in the Marshall Islands, which made the award, doesn't have 2 cents to rub together and the United States isn't going to cough up the cash. Nigerian govt. told to do a better job of vote-rigging The presidential election this month featured blatant ballot box-stuffing and claims of extraordinary voter turn-outs in some areas. The only problem was that international observers saw the tainted ballots go into the boxes and they were present at poorly attended polling stations.    "A government which does such a poor job of stealing power doesn't deserve to hold it," a spokesman for the International Election Oversight Commission said.

	President Dinner Jacket of Iran and the twat who got the medal from him for hijacking 15 British naval personnel in a blatant act of war. Foreign Sec. margaret bucket's apology for Britain's victory in the Falklands war. Bournemouth University, which gives degrees to sub-standard students to massage the university's pass rate upwards. NUT president B. Ghale and Prof. G. John, who think that teaching British values in schools will encourage racialism. The Somerset police, who are eager to harass kids playing hopscotch in the street; the Merseyside police, who are eager to persecute kids who use slang the coppers don't understand in emails to their mates; and the Cumbria police, who sent 2 coppers to investigate a newspaper joke about grey squirrels on spurious animal cruelty grounds. All 3 'police services' seem to have forgotten that it's their job to harass burglars and other criminals, not the honest citizens who pay their wages. Italian & Spanish riot police, who need to be numbered so that the psychopaths can be identified and persecuted. The MoD's decision to let the Hijacked 15 sell their stories to the media as part of corrupt blair labour's 'vulgarization of Britain' campaign. Poole hospital, which has banned Hot Cross Buns in case they offend non-Christians. The Royal Mail, which spent £225 million on building a brand new post office in the centre of Exeter but failed to provide any slots in the glass front for posting letters out of business hours, and which is now awaiting planning permission for an external pillar box. The aptly named Good Hope hospital, Sutton Coldfield, where sheets and pillowcases aren't changed between patients to reduce the laundry bill, so patients have to hope they don't catch anything from the previous occupant of their bed. The Department of Health, prop. pratty hewitt, which keeps dozens of bureaucrats with no job to do on the payroll while telling hospitals to leave jobs unfilled to save cash. The US military, which refuses to co-operate with inquests into the deaths of British troops who were killed by ill-trained or reckless Yanks, who are supposed to be their allies. Rochdale Council, which swindles its customers by doing fortnightly refuse collections when they've paid for weekly collections, and which won't empty wheely bins unless they're parked completely on the pavement and in everybody's way. Mr. Justice Ouseley, who puts the human rights of foreign terrorists above those of the British people, who pay his wages.

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