2009/January    final	Every edition of BFN is compiled in accordance with official 10 Downing Street guidelines on accuracy and veracity.

ROMILEY NEWS    DEPARTURES    Harry Turner This internationally recognized artist and graphic designer has died at 88. The son of the music hall artiste The Great Deville, Harry Turner grew up in the era of the famous science fiction 'pulp' magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, and applied his skills as an artist and writer to work in advertising as well as his niche in the world of science fiction fandom. He also designed material for clients as diverse as the British Journal of Russian Philately and the Wyndham Lewis Society.    His interest in art turned towards abstract art and visual illusions, and he established a reputation as a creator of 'impossible object' designs, some published commercially, some received by the grateful editors of fanzines.    Although his working life was spent in the era of Letraset, he was drawn into the world of computers, and their possibilities for design and typography, in his seventies. His computer allowed him to create booklets of memoirs about his time spent in India as a member of the RAF during World War II (and afterwards), and his experiences in the world of science fiction fandom, as well as commercial material for friends.    When not at work in his studio, Harry Turner found time to assemble vast collections of jazz & Classical records and CDs, as well as an enormous collection of books on all sorts of subjects, which overflowed the storage capacity of one single house. He is survived by his wife, Marion, his three sons and three grandchildren. CLICK HERE for the Harry Turner memorial website.

THINGS TO COME?    One of our correspondents wishes to pass on the following good news from a friend in the United States of America:    When someone gets a traffic ticket or is charged with a misdeameanor in West Virginia, the case goes to a local Justice of the Peace, who decides on guilt or innocence without any help from a jury. If innocent, the accused walks away. But if found guilty, the JP imposes a fine, which is divided 50-50 between the JP (it becomes part of his income) and the police retirement fund.    The American friend added: "How do like the odds of being found innocent?"    So if you hear about some bozo from our demented government in Britain going on a 'fact-finding' trip to West Virginia, spread the word and MAN THE BARRICADES! Because there will be another Stealth Tax swindle on the way shortly thereafter if scotch gordon is allowed to get away with it.

CLIMATE NEWS    Don't Panic!  • Global sea levels have not risen at all in the last 2 years after years of truly tiny increases.  • There has been no nett rise in global temperatures over the last decade.  • If all the requirements of the Kyoto agreement were carried out, they would reduce the global temperature in 2100 by 0.0075 deg.C.  • Britain's contribution to the above temperature drop would be too insignificant to measure but the financial consequences would be crippling and a total waste of taxpayers' cash. Another brown stealth tax scam The government has come up with another stealthy plan for separating the customers from their hard-earned money. Because the government has failed to provide sufficient recycling facilities, local councils are being forced to consign recyclables to landfill sites. Result: the government imposes massive landfill taxes and fines on the councils, they shove up the Council Tax and everyone ends up poorer. Another Great Global Warming Lie The people making a living out of the Great Global Warming Swindle seem to have their hooks deep into new US President Barack O'Bama, who is intent on blowing more money than can be imagined on "rolling back the spectre of a warming planet." The trouble is, the doom-mongers aren't exactly known for their honesty.    One thing which has always embarrassed them is that the Antarctic region isn't warming up. In fact, it has been getting colder over the last 30 years. Cue Professor Eric Steig, whose team has come up with 'evidence' based on manufactured data and impure guesswork to prove that Antarctica has been warming up – by just one degree Fahrenheit over the last 50 years, but the team doesn't shout about that bit.    Among the members of the Steig team is Michael Mann, who became notorious for creating his 'Hockey Stick' graph, which shows global temperatures soaring to amazingly high levels in recent years. But his fiddled data resulted in the Hockey Stick becoming the most discredited piece of hokum in the history of science.    If President O'Bama is having his ear bent by the likes of these fine fellow, then history will be most unkind to him when the Great Global Warming Swindle is finally consigned to its dustbin. "Nurse, he's out of bed again." The lunatics in charge of the NHS are proposing a ban on using meat and dairy produce in hospital meals in the name of reducing the size of the health service's carbon footprint.    Nutrition, evidently, takes second place to empty gestures. We always knew it was a swindle The EU's pollution permit scheme has turned into just another scam, which pushes cash into the pockets of big companies to no benefit to the taxpayer. The permits were handed out free under the EU's emissions trading scheme and, thanks to the Brown Slump, companies find that they won't need to use up their pollution quota and they can sell off surplus permits to do the balance sheet a bit of good. Something doesn't add up The Alps are enjoying the best snow conditions for a generation while Australia is suffering the worst heatwave for 150 years. Let's see the computer climate change model which can produce both of these outcomes together and we might start believing the predictions. "Labour's recycling schemes are damaging the planet!" That's the opinion of a leading advisor to DEFRA, who is less than impressed with the way the government is handling things. Vast amounts of energy are being wasted on moving materials around, recyclables sorted by householders are being cross-contaminated at council depots, and the government has ignored the benefits of on-the-spot energy generation, which can be a better alternative to sending materials thousands of miles to other countries. [See the novel below, which tackled this issue back in the 1970s! Ed.]

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

CRIME NEWS  Doing the job they're paid for The police will be prevented from harassing people who confront hooligans and arrest & detain criminals if the Tories win the next election. Shadow Home Sec. D. Grieve has promised a return to common sense policing, and he will 'encourage' coppers to ignore spurious complaints instead of wasting time on them to meet arbitrary targets. "Gimme that camera. You're nicked, sunshine." Police officers with nothing better to do are using the Prevention of Terrorism Act to harass train spotters when they take photographs of the rolling stock inside stations and school kids, who take photographs of station buildings as part of school projects. More labour DoubleThink Criminals doing unpaid work in Kent no longer have to wear orange jackets labelled "Community Payback" because members of the public are mocking them and hurting their rotten feelings. Rumble in the justice division Lord Justice Judge, the newish Lord Chief Justice, seems to be on a collision course with the labour party. He thinks courts should be tough on burglars, not let them off with another chance to burgle, as his predecessors advocated. Crooks Everywhere! It's not just the Chancellor, a.k.a. 'im with the eyebrows, who's flooding the economy with dodgy cash. The Department of Guesswork reckons there are now 37,500,000 fake £1 coins about – that's 2½% of the number in circulation.

DEPARTURES    The 100W Light Bulb Born in 1879, the commercial incandescent light bulb has been killed off by one of scotch gordon's bright ideas in 2007. It will have to be replaced with low-energy fluorescent bulbs, which are vastly more expensive to buy and give an inferior quality of light while triggering a number of medical conditions. The public, of course, were not consulted, which is the usual way new labour 'improvements' go.  DEPARTURES    Wedgewood The iconic pottery & crystal manufacturer has been put into administration with debts of £400 million as it enters its 250th year of business. Wedgewood sank as part of a cobbled together conglomerate, which had abandoned former high standards of quality and design. The firm's products had slipped in status to 'nice to have but sometimes rubbish' from 'must have' and the Brown Slump applied the coup de mort to the conglomerate.  DEPARTURES    Dave Dee The sometime police cadet, who teamed up with Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich to conquer the British pop market in the 1960s, has died at 67. Dave Dee & his band served their apprenticeship in the clubs in Germany, like the Beatles, before enjoying 5 years of success with a string of hits in the pop charts. They didn't crack America, possibly because their name was too long for the Yanks to handle, and when he felt that the band had had its day, Mr. Dee went solo before becoming head of A&R at WEA Records. He resumed performing in the 1980s, DDDBM&T reformed in the 1990s, and they still had gigs booked at the time of Dave Dee's death.  DEPARTURES    David Vine The BBC's ubiquitous sports reporter has died at 73. David Vine did the Olympics, Ski Sunday, snooker, Wimbledon and just about everything sporting offered by the Beeb. He also co-presented the sort of sports It's A Knockout and chaired the quiz show A Question of Sport. He was everywhere until his retirement in 2000.  DEPARTURES    Patrick McGoohan The man who created the iconic TV series The Prisoner has died at 80. Patrick McGoohan's career began in the theatre and progressed to West End productions. He achieved success on television in the ATV series Dangerman as a spy who used his brain and didn't have to chase a new leading lady in every episode. Severely typecast by The Prisoner, he moved to Hollywood as a director, but he still took the occasional acting role in films and TV series. But The Prisoner will always be what people remember him for; just as Joseph Heller is remembered for Catch 22.  DEPARTURES    Ricardo Montalban The Mexican actor, who strove long and hard to abolish negative Hispanic stereotypes in the entertainment industry, has died at 88. He was deflected from his early ambition to be an engineer into acting. He was a film star in his native Mexico before being signed up by MGM. Between films, he took roles in stage plays and musicals. His career was revived from a slump by his starring role in the TV series Fantasy Island. He is also remembered as the bad guy in the Star Trek film The Wrath of Khan, which he played with bare-chested gusto.  DEPARTURES    Sir John Mortimer The barrister, author, dramatist and champagne socialist who created Rumpole of the Bailey has died at 85. This champion of the rights of ordinary citizens in an increasingly intrusive and oppressive state began to write for radio and television in the 1950s. He defended the publishers of Lady Chatterley's Lover and Oz magazine, and then the Sex Pistols. He was viewed as a fully paid up member of the permissive society but upheld high moral standards. His literary output included novels and autobiographical works as well as the adventures of Horace Rumpole, and he turned Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited into a highly successful TV series.  DEPARTURES    John Martyn This rumbustious singer and songwriter has died at 60. John Martyn was a man dedicated to making music in his own way without regard for genre labels, someone who knew how to enjoy himself, and a man who had little time for fools and even less for journalists.    He was the first white artiste signed by Island Records and his 1973 album Solid Air is one of those classics which are found in every decent record collection. To the despair of his recording company, he refused to stay in its niche and insisted on a move in the distinctly anti-commercial direction of further experiments with electronic effects for his next offering.    John Martyn was well respected by fellow musicians. He was a man who always moved away from his musical past instead of remaining tied to it. He regarded his work as his autobiography and he "worked with the best and inspired the rest". He received a lifetime achievement award at last year's BBC Folk Awards and an OBE in this years's New Year Honours.

DOSH NEWS  Joke of the Month smug bugger blair, Britain's previous discarded prime monster, has been presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by soon to be discarded US Pres. George Dubya Bush for his lies in the cause of the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.  • Mr. b. liar is still waiting for a major, major global bad news day so that he can collect his Congressional Gold Medal of Honour (awarded to him in 2003) without anyone noticing. A failure of imagination? Pound World of Poole has been driven out of business by a 99p shop, which opened across the road and pinched all of its customers. Which leaves us wondering why Pound World couldn't have dropped its standard price to 98p to see off the competition. Bigger ain't so beautiful HBoS & LloydsTSB have combined to form the Lloyds Banking Group. After seeing the subsequent share price, BlackFlag News confidently expects that LBG will be obliged under the terms of the Trading Standards Act to change its initials to NBG. Still, they're not in as big a hole as the Royal Bank of Scotland. Shares at 11p a pop? What's that all about! Pull the other one! The numbers being thrown about over the latest bank bail-out cum nationalization have slid from scary to frankly silly. The Daily Mail was throwing ONE TRILLION POUNDS around on its front page at the middle of the month.    Let's get sensible, Daily Mail! Nobody has a trillion quid to lend, and even if they did, scotch gordon would be the last person they'd lend anything at all to. Very little, very late British Gas has cut its gas price by 10% after showing it up by 42% last year. Meanwhile, the wholesale price of gas has dropped by 40% since last summer. Don't they know we're in a Brown Slump? BT is putting up its prices and scrapping discounts. Some lucky customers will end up paying 45% more on their phone bills. lord sleaze of mandelason, the government's expert on raising mortgages without the benefit of assets, is to lend £2.3 billion (which he doesn't have) to the ailing British vehicle industry. Ever hopeful, ever grasping The directors of the expanded Lloyds TSB are hoping to sneak themselves a big pay rise. These are the same directors whose machinations saw the share price fall from a fiver to 33p at one stage, and whose 'expertise' in the world's financial markets required a government bail-out to stop the bank going bust.

HEALTH NEWS Something else to worry about! Golf clubs can make you deaf! Apparently, the latest generation of titanium drivers create a sonic boom and an impact with a golf ball that sounds like a gun shot. And there's enough noise generated to damage the hearing of someone who isn't wearing ear protection! A failure of imagination? Buying a high definition TV is a waste of time for one-third of the customers because their eyesight isn't up to appreciating the 'superior resolution and colour'. Maybe we'd be more inclined to believe this research is it hadn't been done by a chain of opticians, who have a vested interest in flogging specs to TV viewers. O'Bamination – Yet another set of promises from the guy who's going to change the world in a week. Obesity is caused by a virus and, therefore, it's no one's fault. How convenient!

HOME NEWS  Welcome to England, home of the rip off Parking at NHS hospitals is free from this month, but only in Scotland. People in England and Wales will continue to be ripped off by charges, which went up 38% in 2007/08. But relief is in sight for the Welsh, who will get free parking at hospitals in April. The not-so-united kingdom Moray council in Scotland thinks it needs to pay some lucky person £20K/year of taxpayers' cash to encourage kids to play football in the street. But Down South in Cambridgeshire, the police have made street football one of their priority targets for arrests and ASBOs in 2009. Go figure! "Stand up and fight, that man!" Most Conservatives would like their leader to be less wishy-washy and much grittier in his leadership during the coming year. David Cameron isn't being bold enough for their tastes. An appreciated retro trend JD Wetherspoon pubs are dropping the price of their beer to the 1989 price; 99p/pint; during the Brown Slump. Some of our readers remember when a pint of beer cost 1/6d, and they're wondering if another pub chain could be persuaded to revive the 1960s. No surrender to the sleaze merchants? The Conservatives are promising to keep Britain out of the euro zone – something which convicted sleaze-monger p. mandelson seems to be keen on inflicting upon us. By stealth, if necessary.   • Interest rates in the euro zone were lower than Britain's during scotch gordon's period of reckless spending and failing to pay off debt, which would have made things worse. They are now higher than Britain's bank rate, which is a recipe for making our recession last even longer and putting more people out of work. Justice for savers The latest Tory election bid is no income tax on their savings for basic-rate taxpayers PLUS an increased personal allowance for pensioners. Dour & Doom Everywhere! scotch gordon's latest BIG IDEA for cheering up the victims of his Brown Slump is to go on a nationwide tour. Although quite how having scotch glowering at the customers will do anything to raise morale has yet to be explained.

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EU NEWS  Something to shake up the cosy cartels? The European Union now has a Eurosceptic rotating president in Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic. He is an economist, who opposes bank bail-outs, doesn't like what the architects of the Lisbon Treaty have in mind for Czech sovereignty, and who is wise to the Great Global Warming Swindle – in fact, he's even written a book about it. We know rubbish when we see it! The latest surveys warn that the public perception of the European Union is that nothing it does is for the greater good. The customers believe that every decision is a shoddy political compromise with an in-built swindle aimed at shoving taxpayers' cash into the pockets of the unworthy.

SPACE NEWS  An Englishman was first, but forgotten by history Galileo Galilei gets the credit for making the first drawings of the Moon as seen through a telescope, but he was just following in the footsteps of Thomas Harriot, an English teacher of mathematics, who had a talent for picking unfortunate patrons, such as Sir Walter Raleigh (imprisoned and executed) and Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, who was gaoled as one of the Gunpowder Plotters.    Mr. Harriot got in first with his maps of the Moon mainly because he was rich enough to be able to buy an example of the newly invented Dutch trunke while Galileo couldn't buy one and had to figure out how to build his own telescope.

TRAVEL NEWS  Too huge for their own good The Aussie Flying Doctor service is having to buy bigger and more powerful aircraft so that they can transport massive patients weighing up to 41 stones. On a road to nowhere? A UFO is getting the blame for bending one of the blades of a wind turbine and ripping another blade right off. The operators of the site at Conisholme, Lincs., have discounted a lightning strike and an assault by a helicopter. A cow-size lump of ice, which fell off an aircraft then melted, is the prime suspect.    Neighbours of the wind farm have reported seeing balls of orange light with tentacles in the night sky. Although, quite what aliens would find of interest in this expanse of bleak Fenland remains a mystery. Shark attack If you're going to Australia, or you're already there, steer clear of the beaches. Sharks are holding conventions there, and they've already tried to chomp 3 surfers or swimmers in the first couple of weeks of this month. No doubt the shark hunting fraternity will see this as a licence to wage jihad and the Great White population will take a battering. No tolerance zone Anyone planning to visit Delhi needs to do a plastic bag check as a matter of urgency. The bureaucrats running India's capital have decided that mere possession of a plastic bag is a Crime Against The Planet deserving 5 years in gaol. Crisis planning US Airways has been exploring the potential use of the Airbus 320 as a submarine. If the global warming swindlers get their way, air travel will soon become available only to the very rich and scroungers like MPs and other residents of the public purse. Which means that there could be a lot of redundant airliners around.    In a test at the middle of this month with a flight out of La Guardia airport, New York, the airline found that an Airbus can land in one piece on the Hudson river and submerge. But bringing the aircraft back to the surface under its own steam remains a problem. And plugging the leaks is another concern. Russia stakes territorial claim in Channel An island of wood invaded the Channel after a Russian freighter ran into a storm at the middle of the month and shed some of its deck cargo. The island, some 500 feet long and 125 feet wide, was declared a hazard to navigation by the Coastguard Service. It is believed to have been a prototype of a permanent island, which the Russian government hopes to anchor in the Channel to gain access to British coastal fishing quotas (after making suitable bungs to corrupt officials at the European Commission). Use less, pay the same The price of petrol in Britain has gone up because of the pound's slump against the dollar. So people who are not driving as much are still paying and paying. Is the Law an Ass, or the Donkeys who created it? A second-hand car has been stuck in a car park in Graz, for the last 2 years because of the city's parking laws. The car, worth £5,000, was abandoned when its owners, Romanian illegal immigrants, were busted and evicted from Austria. It has collected £20,000 in parking charges and the law says that the city can't have it towed away until the owners pay up.

WAR NEWS  Where's that skiver? Hamas & Israel are at war in Gaza but where's the Middle East peace envoy, who's supposed to solve all the problems there? smug bugger blair is still enjoying his Xmas hols and he's not likely to be back in action for a while yet. One in the eye for the French Departing US president Dubya Bush has fired a parting shot at the cheese-eating surrender monkeys, who refused to join in his campaign against Saddam Hussein. One of his final acts in office was to raise the import duty on Roquefort cheese by 300%. New appointment President O'Bama has appointed George Mitchell as his envoy to the Middle East. Mr. Mitchell is best known as the leader of the George Mitchell Minstrels, a musical combo which performed on the BBC for 20 years until overtaken by political correctness in the 1970s. Unintended consequences Israel's assault on Gaza has done Hamas a power of good. The movement's control of the region is now broader, deeper and stronger to the exclusion of its rivals.

WORLD NEWS  Full marks for cheek! The US porn industry is feeling left out in the American version of the Brown Slump and its entrepreneurs are looking for a bail-out from the government. A couple of major league Pornographers In Chief think about $5,000,000,000 would be an appropriate stimulus package.    They don't actually need the money at the moment but they think that if the US government is handing zillions of taxpayers' dollars to the likes of dodgy bankers and the car industry, then it would be nice for moguls of the porn industry to have the odd five billion in their collective hip pockets, just in case. You couldn't make it up!    [Well, actually, if the US porn industry isn't taking the piss out of the US government, someone did make it up! Ed.] Same old, same old? Vlad Putin, the bloke who caused the European gas crisis, called a press conference to deny his responsibility. He is believed to have consulted scotch gordon's media advisors in the hope of making his denial more convincing. Sadly, his performance was about as convincing as scotch gordon's when gloomy old scotch is denying he even thinks about holding a general election this year. Democracy in Israel If you want to support your fellow Arabs, or if you want to vote for an Arab political party – forget it. They're banned. Did anyone notice a difference? Attention our American readers! Now that Saint O'Bama has a parking place on Pennsylvania Avenue:  • Is everything in the garden suddenly blooming?  • Have all of America's problems withered on the vine and blown away like dust?  • Has anyone noticed change they can believe in?    We'd love to know! Wheels coming off Tsar Vlad the Putin's plan to become Russia's president for life is derailing. His party is in revolt and his temporary president, Gospodin Medvedyev, is starting to feel his oats. The big problem for Putin is that he's spinning Brownian delusions about the state of the Russian economy but the people can see that he, too, is living in a dream world.

	The idiot at Weather Control, who decided it would be a good idea to start the year with a Deep Freeze. Linda Kingdon, the head of Watercliffe Meadow primary in Sheffield, who wants the place to be known as a 'place for learning' because she thinks 'school' has negative connotations. Lancashire country council, which wants to pay £100K (including a car) of council taxpayers' cash to an "Anti-Recession Guru". Bedford Borough Council, which won't listen to police evidence about violent disorder at gypsy camps when hearing planning applications for new gypsy parking places – because the council's officers think that the evidence is 'racist'. Trade Minister baroness s. vadera, who claims she can see green shoots of recovery sprouting in the morass of the Brown Slump. Housing minister m. bucket, who can also see green shoots. Not to mention employment minister t. mcnulty, who's also seeing things. Sir Fred 'The Shred' Goodwin, whose reckless acquisitions wrecked the Royal Bank of Scotland (after he'd collected a knighthood from the blair regime and a vast pension pot). The Grampian police 'service', which force has blown £170,000 on 22 unsuccessful prosecutions of a male stripper on charges of impersonating a police officer and possession of an imitation truncheon. John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, who made such a bog of administering the oath of office to President O'Bama that they had to do it all over again later to make sure that Mr. O'Bama really was the pres. The BBC, which is citing bogus impartiality grounds for refusing to broadcast an appeal for aid to the civilian population of the Gaza strip after showing a continuously pro-Israel bias during the extended military assault on Gaza. Sky News, which is citing bogus impartiality grounds for refusing to broadcast the aid appeal for Gaza. [But who watches Sky News anyway? Ed.] Bookstart, the taxpayer-funded charity, which is bowdlerizing the past in the name of political correctness by such exercises as taking all references to alcohol out of its version of "What shall we do with the drunken sailor?", which is now about a grumpy pirate. Pathetic, or what!

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