2008/February    final	Every edition of BFN is compiled in accordance with official 10 Downing Street guidelines on accuracy and veracity.
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ROMILEY NEWS Signs of activity in the park The council reckons it has started work on solving the drainage problems in Romiley park. The work will cost £30,000 and last 6 weeks. Why? Because if it's done like any of the other public works jobs in Romiley, the contractor will start things off then bugger off to work on something else for the next fortnight. Let us hope they replant all the trees they chopped down; unless that was the first step on the road to turning the people park into a car park. Good News! Stockport council has a freephone number for reporting lost or broken recycling boxes. Bad News If you ring the number, no one answers the phone. Another earthquake in Romiley – Are they getting more frequent? Anyone unfortunate enough to be awake at 00:58½ on Wednesday 27th, or a light sleeper, was lucky not to be shaken out of bed by an earthquake which lasted around 10 seconds. This one was the fringes of a Richter 4.7 shaking with its epicentre in Lincolnshire. A witness reported:    "It felt like a big lorry crashing past the house but it went on much too long to be one lorry. And given the time of night, what was a lorry doing crashing along a side street? So it had to be an earthquake."    This earthquake comes just 6 years after the cluster, which shook the town three times during October 2002. You have to go back 18 years to 1984 for the previous Romiley earthquake. So if global warming is reducing the time interval between earthquakes by a factor of 3, Romiley can expect its next shaking in 2010. But if there isn't one then, that's global warming blown out of the water!

CONSUMER NEWS Little Yellow Feet! People who buy goods by mail order are falling foul of idle suppliers, who are buying stuff from China and failing to make sure that it meets British Standards. Take customers of the firm Cotton Traders, for instance. An outraged mail order customer has contacted us to complain that he is out of pocket to the tune of £12 in postage and return postage after ordering some boots from this firm.    He asked for size 10, it said size 10 on the box and the soles of the boots, but when he measured them, he found that the internal length was a quarter of an inch short of the length for a British size 10.    The moral of the story seems to be: beware of anything from China, and be even more ware of people selling Chinese goods in Britain.

KRAZY CORNER House of Commons Logic or Cash for Criminals MPs are abusing their tax-free, second-home allowance. So, to stop the abuse, the average cost of this perk is to be added to their salary. Plus an extra 40% to cover the tax. Which means each of them will cop for a further £22,100 per year from the taxpayer. Not to mention even more going into their pension pots. Only the inmates of the House of Commons would think it makes sense to stop swindlers dead in their tracks by giving them even more public money. The Prime Example If you ever wondered how to describe the labour party's total uselessness, you need only consider the case of Network Rail.    On the same day that the company was fined £14 million for causing New Year chaos on the railways by letting engineering work overrun, Ian McAllister, the NR chairman, copped for a knighthood for 'services to transport'. And as NR is owned by the state, the 'fine' is just the Treasury moving cash from one pocket to another while saddling the taxpayer with a bill for the cosmetic legal posturing in the courts. Not to mention rail fares going up to plug the gap in NR's funding left by the fine.

CRIMINAL NEWS How much dozier can they get? A Brazilian illegal immigrant was busted on January 31st at the House of Commons, where she was working as a cleaner. She had been using someone else's security pass for 2 months. The government is being investigated for attempting to cover up this latest breach of both security and duty, and immigration minister liam byrne could face arrest and prosecution for aiding and abetting. It's the way he tells them! Work & pensions sec. james purnell claimed a £20,000/year allowance on a London flat after declaring it at the House of Commons as his second home. But when he sold the flat, he told the taxman that it was his main home to evade capital gains tax. Mr. purnell thinks he has done nothing wrong. Not a lot of people know this . . . But if you go into the witness box at a coroner's court, you're allowed to libel anyone you like as much as you like. Which is exactly what M. Fayed did at the Princess Di inquest. Full House! On 2008/02/22, Britain's prisons were declared officially full. Justice Minister jack straw promptly ordered all courts to let everyone go, no matter how serious their crime, until he has had time to release some more dangerous criminals. Judges & magistrates promptly offered a communal 2-fingered salute and announced that they would be doing business as usual. The NatWest Three have each received a 3-year sentence for their Enron-related scam, and they have been ordered to replay the £3.5 million, which they made via insider dealing.

DEPARTURES Barry Morse A British actor who became a big hit in the United States has died at 89. He began his career on the stage before moving with his family to Canada. He won the best TV actor award 5 times but he became best known for the role of Lt. Gerard, who pursued David Janssen all over the USA in the TV series The Fugitive (1963-67). He featured in the cast of many British TV adventure series of the 1960s and 1970s on ITV, including The Saint (1966), The Adventurer (1972) and the short-lived The Zoo Gang (1974). He ventured into outer space and roamed the galaxy in Space 1999 (1975-76). He found more satisfying roles on the stage and in BBC TV productions, but he got to play the American president in the brilliant Whoops Apocaplypse on LWTV (1982). His final TV part was in the daytime soap Doctors (2002). DEPARTURES Roy Scheider The actor who played the sheriff in the blockbuster Jaws (1975) has died at 75. Somewhat nasally flattened during his amateur boxing career, Roy Scheider began his acting career in the theatre and broke into films in the 1970s, appearing in Klute (1971) and winning an Oscar nomination for his part in The French Connection (1971). He reprised his sheriff's role for Jaws 2 (1979) but received his 2nd Oscar nomination for All That Jazz (1979), his third major success. When not working in films and the theatre, he was a political campaigner, latterly against the Bush/Blair Iraq War. DEPARTURES Digital Radio Commercial broadcasters are closing down their digital stations after finding that they just lose money. Soon, only the BBC will be offering Digital Audio Broadcasting. Unfortunately, the current system is inferior to the new DAB+, which is incompatible with existing digital radios. And as FM radio isn't being switched off (or the government hasn't worked up the courage to flog off this part of the EM spectrum yet), there's no real incentive for anyone to go in for inferior (compared to FM) DAB. DEPARTURES The Premier League's International Plans Sepp Blatter, the boss of FIFA and a nominee for the post of Most Corrupt Person on the Planet, has widdled on the idea from a great height. So the PL won't be following in the footsteps of the NFL, which is now doing regular season American Crunch matches in Britain, and playing 10 matches abroad as a money-raising scheme. DEPARTURES Polaroid Photography This revolutionary concept in instant imaging has hit the buffers at the age of about 60. The Polaroid Corporation ceased production of its cameras in 2007. It has now abandoned making film for them. Founded by Edwin Land in 1947, the company had a turnover of one billion dollars per year at its height in the 1970s. But digital photography, which still can't produce instant prints with the convenience of a Polaroid camera, has taken over and rendered the technology unprofitable. DEPARTURES Steve Fossett This millionaire American adventurer disappeared with his light plane over the Nevada desert in September 2007, but he has just been declared officially dead by a Chicago court. Extensive searches have turned up no trace of Mr. Fossett and his heirs now want to get on with enacting his last will & testament. DEPARTURES The Hollywood writers' strike After downing pens and keyboards for 100 days, the screen writers of America have won a cut from sales of their work on the Internet and DVDs. They went out on strike because they have been excluded from repeat income from new media in the past, and they didn't want to be screwed again. DEPARTURES Berwick upon Tweed (if the natives get their way) Having been part of Scotland 13 times in the past, the citizens of this border town (well, 2,000 of them) this month voted 3:2 in favour of giving England the boot again. They did it on the Tonight programme (ITV) and the main reason for wanting the transfer is that Scotland offers better public services (which are paid for by English taxpayers). DEPARTURES Fidel Castro from his job of dictator The son of a millionaire Cuban landowner, he led a successful revolution against a corrupt government, then proceeded to install his own corrupt, Soviet-client regime. He then dedicated his life to posturing on the world political stage, scrounging from other Communist regimes and surviving inept CIA attempts on his life.    He leaves his brother with a shambles of an economy and crumbled buildings and infrastructure. The best hope for Cuba now is to make friends again with the United States in the hope of a rescue package of the sort promised to war-ravaged Iraq. DEPARTURES Mike Smith The lead singer of the Dave Clark Five has died at 64. He was part of a band which sold 100 million records and had 30 hit singles worldwide and, like the Beatles, enjoyed major success in the United States. The band made 23 albums during its career, and its members are due to be inducted into the American Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame next month. DEPARTURES George 'Buddy' Miles The drummer who played with EVERYONE has died at 60. His father let George sit in with his group at 9, he played gigs with established blues & souls bands through his teens, he founded his own short-lived bands and he hit the heights for the first time as a member of the Jimi Hendrix Band of Gypsies.    He enjoyed a long association with Carlos Santana and picked up regular session work with a who's who of the top names in rock & pop. His final recordings, made in 2004, were a return to the Band of Gypsies material with fellow former gypsy Billy Cox.

CLIMATE NEWS   Nothing very 'super' about Tornado Tuesday 67 of them caused 54 deaths and mayhem from Arkansas north to Ohio as American voters were choosing between a bloke who's not very black and a woman who's not safe to be near as the person to lead the Democrats into the next presidential election.    No doubt the usual suspects will blame global warming for the tornadoes and hang around with their hands out for donations, as usual. If that does happen, responsible citizens are encouraged to thump the carbon con-men (and women) and shout, "1925!" at them. This is still officially America's worst year for tornadoes, even though it belongs to an era before global warming was invented. Boneheads in Action The European Union and others have rushed ahead with plans to turn farmland and forest over to producing crops for making ethanol as a petrol additive and palms for making biodiesel. The intention is to reduce the use of fossil fuels and the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere.    It will come as no surprise to students of these offerings to learn that doing this, according to a study published in Science, releases 17-420 times more carbon dioxide than is saved by not using fossil fuels. So our blundering politicians are making things worse (if you believe all this stuff about global warming) in the name of making things better. Great! Wot bloody global warming? The northern hemisphere is having it's coldest winter for 50 years and the most snow since 1966. The global temperature in January was lower than the average 20th century January temperature, and the summer ice level in the Antarctic is 30% above normal. In fact, some climatologists are now wondering if the Earth is about to go into a temporary colder period. Which is very bad news for the carbon con-men. Rip-off warning From May, Marks & Spencer will be ripping their customers off for 5p if they dare to ask for a plastic carrier bag costing just a fraction of a penny. But they hope that telling people they're doing it in the name of saving the planet will prevent riots and let them get away with it. scotch gordon has jumped on this cash-raising bandwagon. He's giving other supermarkets a year to put a similar scam in place with threats of imposing compulsory carrier bag charges on their customers if the supermarkets won't play ball.

DOSH NEWS Credit Crunch makes bankers fight dirty The Egg bank is facing a class action for slandered from disgruntled customers, who were labelled 'high risk' and unlikely to pay off their debt when the bank cancelled their credit card.    In fact, many of the customers are people who pay off their credit card every month, and the bank's tactic is seen to be more about shedding unprofitable customers than reducing its exposure to risk. How new labour 83.33% of the members of the Commons committee on members' estimates have been charged with sleaze and/or abuse of expenses, and/or concerted attempts to stop details of MPs' expenses claims making it into the public domain. The committee includes the Speaker, a.k.a. Gorbals Mick, who has been described as a major roadblock on the road to full disclosure.    No surprise, then, that scotch gordon has appointed these sorry characters to review MPs' expenses and perks, and take their time over it so that he can claim that the problem is being dealt with and move on. The Wrong Sort of Newcastle! The dosh should have gone to the one 'upon Tyne' but those dozy buggers at the Treasury sent £2.8 million to the one 'under Lyme' instead.    Worse, the Newcastle in the Midlands won't be paying the money back, so the taxpayer will have to stump up another £2.8 million for the Newcastle in Geordieland. The Wrong Sort of mortgage-holder! The NatWest bank has lost a house worth £250,000 to an Iranian bloke, who became a squatter and was allowed to get away with it. Djabar Babai took out a mortgate on a house in Heaton Mersey (not far from Romiley) in 1989. He was behind on his payments to the tune of £62,000 in 1992, when the bank got tough. He managed one more payment of £40 before going bankrupt in 1993.    His debt had risen to £165,000 by 2006, when the bank tried to repossess the house. But as Mr. Babai had been effectively squatting in the property without paying for it for more than 12 years, the bank was told that it had lost its claim on the house. But Mr. Babai's creditors from his bankruptcy are still on for a half-share in the sale of the house.    Alternatively, Mr. Babai could pay them off by re-mortgaging the house. If he can find anyone daft enough to lend him the money. [Banks in the United States are pretty good at lending to bad-risk, sub-prime clients. Ed.] HM Revenue & Customs a.k.a. Dept. of Squanderbugs The government department which loses data by the ton and billions of pounds of taxpayers' cash (but doesn't give a damn), has blown £1,340,000 on coming up with a new slogan for itself – HMRC Ambition. [And we're bloody lucky they didn't go for a whole sentence! Ed.] Believe it or what! Having run out of dither, scotch gordon says he nationalized the labour party favourite Northern Rock bank 'because he's looking out for the best interests of the taxpayer'. BF News says: "That will be a first!" A the good bits of Northern Rock's business have been moved to an off-shore company, which won't be included in the nationalization. So the government has put up £110,000,000,000 of taxpayers' cash for a load of leavings and general rubbish. British Gas profits are up 570% this year. How did this happen? Because they shoved the price up when the wholesale price of gas went up and didn't bring it down in proportion. And by the way, they're shoving the price up by 15% this month. Criminal migrants are costing the police, and therefore the taxpayer, £24 million in fees for translators. Zimbabwe is now the unchallenged world leader as far as inflation goes. Their rate has hit 100,000% official (150,000% actual). Iraq is in 2nd place with an inflation rate of a mere 60%. The former bread-basket of its region now has a Gross Domestic Product under the Mugabe regime of $9/head/year.

HEALTH NEWS Just to prove you just can't win . . . An outfit called the National Institute for Public Health & Environment has calculated that healthy people are more of a burden on the NHS than fat people and smokers. Why? Because they live longer and they end their lives with expensive diseases, so they need expensive long-term care.    Fatties and smokers usually die early, and the ones who aren't to fat or too short of breath to work contribute National Insurance payments to the NHS without requiring anything back in the way of pensions and treatment for the diseases of old age. If it's not one swindle, it's another Ambulances carrying patients are being parked outside Accident & Emergency departments for an hour or more in the name of meeting the government target of treating all arrivals within 4 hours of passing through the doors of the A&E department. That the emergency vehicle is being taken out of service while it's parked up doesn't seem to matter in the crazy world of labour's bogus health statistics. Depressing News Prozac and the other big-selling anti-depressants are no more effective than sugar pills.

HOME NEWS Yet another new labour way to waste taxpayers' cash The latest housing minister, cazzer flint, thinks it would be a good idea to evict council house tenants if they don't get a job.    But local councils have a legal duty to house homeless families. Which means that the evicted jobless will just end up in a different council house, from which they will be liable for eviction again after a further spell of threats from the government.    It's just circular bureaucracy and jobs for life for the council staff handling evictions and rehousing. Not to mention more cash extracted from the taxpayer's pocket to pay for wages and pensions for these surplus bureaucrats. More ways to waste YOUR money Easington District Council in Co. Durham will pay one-half of the cost of an exorcism for council house tenants who are feeling poor as well as haunted. It's the way they tell them! The latest government excuse for a bog-up is "bad drafting". It was trotted out when the Treasury had to do a U-turn on tax increases for non-domicile high earners. The original Bill drew clouds of flak, so the government claimed that it was rewritten because the original had been badly drafted and unclear. Translation : We made a bog up with the first stab so we're going to bog things up again but in a different way. Socialist envy boomerangs In a misplaced fit of class-war zeal 3 years ago, the labour party got foxhunting with dogs banned. But hunts have gone from strength to strength while the ranks of those opposed to the activity have declined year on year, and the antis are on course to become extinct in 2010.

SPACE NEWS Atlantis squeaks into space despite terrible weather The space shuttle Atlantis lifted off 2 months late despite dire warnings of a 70% chance that the launch would have to be cancelled due to bad weather. As this was just a couple of days after Tornado Tuesday, when 67 twisters battered the United States, pessimists were in the majority. But, miraculously, the shuttle got the go-ahead to deliver the European-built Columbus space lab to the International Space Station.    The lab is designed to be operated by ground staff at a European Space Agency control centre near Munich. Columbus will be used to perform experiments in the fields of biotechnology, medicine, materials and liquids.    The shuttle launch was delayed by apparently misleading readings from the sensors inside the liquid hydrogen tank. NASA eventually tracked the problem down to the connectors between the wiring inside the tank and the external wiring. Don't mess with the U.S.! The US Navy managed to hit a rogue satellite with a missile, ostensibly to prevent it from coming down in one big chunk and spilling the toxic contents of the hydrazine fuel tank. In fact, it was a counter blast to the Chinese missile test, which took out an obsolete weather satellite amid much international posturing. The last total lunar eclipse until 2010 was a total flop in this here as the whole country was covered with thick clouds. But what else can you expect under a labour government?

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SPORTS NEWS Wrong Manning wins Super Bowl 42 Everyone was expecting Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts to halt the progress of the New England Patriots to a perfect season, but it was younger brother Eli and the New Jersey Giants who dented the dynasty juggernaut.    Unbeaten in the regular season and taking an 18-0 record into the last match of the season, the Patriots were hot favourites, having participated in one-half of the Super Bowls of the 21st century and having already won 3 of them. The Giants, in contrast, were in the same boat of the 1981 Oakland Raiders, who got to Super Bowl 15 as a wildcard entry to the playoffs (and won).    The Giants made an opening statement with a 10 minute drive, which produced a field goal from their Scottish-born kicker, Tynes. Their defence gave Brady, the Patriots' quarterback, an unaccustomed battering and sacked him 5 times over the course of the match.    A low-scoring match worked in the Giants' favour, and when the Patriots took a 10-14 lead with less than 3 minutes to go, the Giants needed just over two of those minutes to strike back. Manning made the play of the match when he evaded a rush of Patriots, who had hold of his jersey at one stage, to fire off a vital pass. And when he found Burress wide open in the end zone a few plays later, that was it.    The Giants collected the Vince Lombardi Trophy and Eli Manning got a black Caddy as the Most Valuable Player. Although, he should really give it to the Giants' defence and their co-ordinator, who gave him the chance to shine. The logo for Super Bowl 42 has been voted the naffest ever created.

TRAVEL NEWS Scammers busted British Airways & Virgin Atlantic are now in a hole for $200 million after conspiring together to rig fuel price surcharges. As the result of a class action brought in the USA, around 6 million British airline passengers can claim refunds if they can prove that they flew the Atlantic with the offenders between 2004/08/11 and 2006/03/23. If you're thinking of flying anywhere at Easter, it would be a good idea to give British Airways a miss. Their pilots have voted to strike over BA's plan to run a local airline at reduced aircrew wages.

WAR NEWS No way, José! The online petition website StopBlair.eu is hoping to collect 1 million entries to prevent smug bugger from becoming president of Europe. The website's backers insist that it would be a total contradiction of the values professed by the European Project if he got the job.    But as these 'values' are universally neglected, particularly by Spain, France, Italy and Greece, to name but a few, maybe smug bugger's brand of maladministration, sleaze and cronyism would be a fitting tribute to the way these 'values' work out in practice. It's the way they tell them! A previously suppressed, early draft of the blair regime's September 2002 dodgy dossier on Iraq has crawled into the public domain despite determined opposition from the Foreign Office. The draft shows that spin doctors, not spies, cobbled together the lies which tony blair used to drag the country into an illegal war. How very unusual! The spokesman for the Commons' Speaker, b.k.a. gorbals mcmick, has been forced to quit for lying to journalists. Which is rather strange as everyone does it and everyone expects it. The truth is sneaking out! scotch gordon broon is fighting a bitter rearguard action to prevent Cabinet minutes from entering the public domain. Why? Because he wants to conceal his 'passionate' support for tony blair's illegal war in Iraq, which is now politically inconvenient for him. What else did they expect? 70% of the aid which George Bush handed over to the Pakistani military in the hope that it would be used to fight 'terrr'; some $3,700,000,000; has vanished into thin air. How did it happen? Because the US embassy in Kabul uses the same accounting procedures as the European Commission and the House of Commons.    Claims for cash are accepted without the need for receipts, as asking for proof that the money is going to a legitimate project could cause embarrassment of allies. Consequently, there are lots of Pakistani senior officers with new homes and private jets. Not to mention a healthy pension pot in a Swiss bank. And they're not even grateful for everything that they've received.

WORLD NEWS Nourishment for the Nation? Hot on the heels of Super Bowl Sunday came Super Tuesday, when fans of oven chips came out in force to support their hero, Senator John McCain. He looks like leading the Republican ticket into battle with whomsoever the Democrats pick come November, the better part of a Mormon and a creationist. Schule des Monats The Klaus Riedel** Kinderschule, Bernstadt auf dem Eigen. The school is expected to be twinned shortly with the Bomber Harris Mixed Infants' School of Lancaster, Suffolk. ** A German rocket scientist who helped to give the world the V2. A new nation in Europe! Kosovo became Europe's 46th country this month when it achieved independence from Serbia, which was booted out of control of the territory for oppressing the 90% ethnic Albanian population. The Serb rump minority is now feeling very threatened by payback for past crimes.    Kosovo is supposed to be Serbian heartland, which was infiltrated by Albanians. It worked as part of the former Yugoslavia, but the current majority had no wish to be part of a Greater Serbia, especially given the Serbs' penchant for genocide against the politically and ethnically inconvenient.    The new country will not be recognized by places worried about minorities going their own way, e.g. Spain, which has the Basque problem. Serb rioters responded by torching the US embassy in Belgrade. The Serbian president had arranged to be in Romania during the riot in a lame attempt to avoid blame. Some Kosovan History The region was conquered by the Serbs in the 13th century and they kept it under their thumb for 250 years until they were evicted by the Ottoman Empire. Kosovo never became part of Serbia when the Turks were evicted early in the 20th century. It remained in limbo until it was incorporated into Yugoslavia. So, no, it's not Serb heartland after all. Thieves' Charter EuroMPs have been stealing from a fund for paying their staff for years. They are also putting in false claims for travelling expenses, office costs, meals and anything else they can think of. They've been allowed to get away with this because the European Commission has installed layer after layer of secrecy around all financial matters. Which is why the EU's auditors have refused to sign off the accounts for the last decade.    Good News! the labour party is dead keen to introduce the same system for corruption protection in Britain. Obama Mia! dismay at the thought of such an empty vessel becoming president of the United States of America.

	The 'elf 'n' safety nazis who banned the traditional Shrove Tuesday pancake race in Rippon, which has suddenly become too dangerous after 1,400 years. The call centres of BT and British Gas, both of which are useless for dealing with complaints. [And also for getting anything done in the case of BG. Ed.] The Archy Bish of Cantab's notion that permitting sharia law in parts of Britain would be a good idea. [Although, stoning lying and corrupt politicians to death could be a good idea. Ed.] Prof. al ainsley-green, the government's Yobs; Commissioner for England, who thinks we should let the little darlings run riot. Language GCSEs which contain no requirement to be able to write the language (just multiple choice tick-boxes) and no oral test because that's "too stressful" for schoolkids. The Fayed Grand Conspiracy Theory, which involves everyone in Britain, including the security services, the Royal family and every other Tom, Dick & Harry, illegals included. The security staff at the House of Commons, which let 5 protesters unfurl from the roof, banners about the new runway for Heathrow airport.

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