2005/July    FINAL

SPACE NEWS NASA suicide space-probe a big hit After a 6-month journey, the Deep Impact spacecraft successfully parked its copper Impactor probe in the path of comet Tempel 1 at a distance of 83 million miles from Earth. Impactor was duly splatted when the comet overtook it at a closing speed of 23,000 mph, and Deep Impact stood off and took pictures of the collision.    The object of the mission was to provide information on the structure of the comet and one of 3 possible outcomes was expected: (1) the probe would make a big crater in a solid comet; (2) the comet would be soft and the probe would just bury itself without trace; or (3) the 9 x 6 kilometer comet would be so fragile that the probe would hurtle right through it and emerge at the other side.    Outcome (1) was what we got, along with pictures of craters on the comet from earlier impacts, which offers hope that when another comet is spotted on a collision course with the Earth, its surface will be solid enough to allow it to be pushed into a non-collision orbit. NASA bogs it up again July the 13th turned out to be another unlucky day for NASA's beleaguered space shuttle programme. First of all, the weather was dreadful but the storm eventually blew away from Cape Canaveral. Then, at T minus 140 minutes, a check picked up a faulty sensor in the system which reports on the level of hydrogen fuel in the main tank.    So it was a case of drain 2 million litres of fuel out of the external tank and send everyone home until . . . whenever.    Our man at the Cape reported: "NASA is now suffering from terminal incompetence and a total loss of confidence. It needs a success and it needs one today, not next week." NASA finally gets it up! (But still makes a bog of it.) The space shuttle Discovery headed into space at 15:39 BST on July 26th after a lot of fun and games with a fuel sensor, which caused the last launch attempt to be cancelled but which started working again 3 hours after the scheduled lift-off time and kept on working perfectly.    The shuttle was laden with cameras and they showed all sorts of bits falling off during the launch. Unfortunately, no one could say how big, or how important, the bits were because NASA was in a state of information overload and it had a mountain of data to process.    As a white object could as easily be a falling thermal tile as a piece of disposable paper, the meeja pack took the opportunity to speculate wildly. In fact, a suitcase-size bit of insulating foam fell off the external tank in an area from which foam isn't supposed to fall. So NASA hadn't done anything about that area. Which leaves us wondering what other things the dozy sods have been ignoring for the last 2½ years.    The current situation is that Discovery has been declared safe to return to Earth, but the shuttle programme is grounded again until the dozy sods at NASA can stop foam falling off the external fuel tank. Painting it with some sort of highly cohesive coating might help – the tanks on the first 3 shuttle missions were painted white until someone decided it was adding unnecessary weight. But that's probably too obvious a solution for the geniuses at NASA.

HISTORICAL NOTE   The ten shilling note was abolished on 1970/11/20 while Ted Heath was prime minister, and the pound note became one with history on 1988/03/11 while Margaret Thatcher, Heath's successor as Conservative party leader, was enjoying her final term as prime minister.

DEPARTURES Salvatore A. Lombino The author who wrote the 87th Precinct stories under the name Ed McBain has died at 78. He used a variety of names, including Evan Hunter, to establish a reputation as a 'serious' novelist. Then he hit on the idea of making police procedures as important a part of a crime novel as the dastardly deed(s) and the characters of cops and criminals. From Cop Hater (1956), the collection grew to some 55 volumes, the last of which is published this year. He also enjoyed success with his series of books featuring lawyer Matthew Hope. DEPARTURES Sir Edward Heath The man who took Britain into the European Common Market has died at 89. He was the first Tory from a working class background to reach the top job in politics and he served as prime minister from 1970 to 1974, when he lost a general election during an ass-kicking contest with the trade unions. After being replaced as Tory leader in 1975 by Margaret Thatcher (who sorted the unions out a decade later), he went into 'the longest sulk in history' on the back benches of the Commons until 2001.    He will be remembered as a curmudgeon; as a politician who gave us reckless spending, inflation and a 3-Day Working Week because there wasn't enough electricity to go around; as a successful international yachtsman whose yacht Morning Cloud won the Admiral's Cup in 1971; as a musician and orchestral conductor; and as the man who surrendered his country's fishing industry to the wreckers in Brussels. DEPARTURES James Doohan The Canadian actor who played the allegedly Scottish 'Scotty' in Star Trek TOS (The Original Series) had died at 85. He began his career in radio and he won the part that would define the rest of his life when he was in his mid-forties. 5 years after the series was cancelled, his dentist is reported to have told Mr. Doohan to accept that he was typecast and that he should just get on with being Scotty. So he spent the rest of his working life on the lecture circuit and attending Star Trek conventions, and he also found time to star in 5 of the films featuring the original crew of the starship Enterprise.

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GOOD NEWS Potatoes are okay again! The humble potato contains kukoamines, which help to reduce blood pressure, which is officially a good thing. The bad news, however, is that the gadgets used for measuring blood pressure in hospitals and clinics are so wildly inaccurate that millions of healthy people have been diagnosed as having hypertension and people with sky-high blood pressure have been given the all-clear. So the 'potato effect' is unlikely to show up until someone sorts out the measurement situation. If you don't eat red meat (including corned beef), you won't get Crohn's disease. Avoiding Mr. Crohn is another good strategy. BBC promises 'No more repeats' But when you get down to the fine print, only after 2012, when analogue transmitters are switched off and everyone has to go digital or be excluded, and only if the Beeb gets lots more cash. So the Blair Broadcasting Company's promise seems to be as empty as any other New Labour pledge. Somehow, we knew this would happen! In areas where the local council chose not to get involved in a government traffic camera incentive scheme, road deaths went down. Deaths on the roads went up everywhere else. Eating lots of chocolate is good for you! Chocolate contains ring flavanols, which have beneficial effects in treating diabetes, strokes, heart disease and dementia. Ring flavanols are also present in tomatoes, green tea and red wine. Chocolate also contains theobromine, which is better for a tickly throat than most cough medicines. Supermarket chains are endorsing New Labour's 24-hour drinking culture. All the big ones are applying for licences to sell alcohol all day and all night, too.

ATTENTION ALL READERS Here's a great opportunity to make some dosh! You may have read about the Russian spiv, who is trying to sue NASA for hurt feelings after they crashed a probe the size of a washing machine into 9 km by 6 km Comet Tempel 1. Her case is that the impact changed the course of the comet enough to affect her horrorscope. She's also trying to kid us into believing that the impact knocked out mobile phone transmissions and that the comet might just have been put on a collision course with the Earth!    Being a confirmed pessimist, she won't consider the possibility that her horrorscope has been changed for the better and that she'll be dead and long forgotten before the comet comes anywhere near Earth.    No, she want hard cash to soothe her damaged feelings – $330 million of it!!! – And given the right dozy old judge, she might just get herself awarded a few bob in Moscow.    Here's the good bit! So, in the same spirit of enterprise, BlackFlag News is inviting its readers to subscribe to a 'cosmic interference' class action against NASA. We guarantee to have the case heard before an appropriately dotty old judge, who can be relied upon to rule in our favour out of sheer perverseness.    All you have to do is stump up $146.00** and pretend 1. that you don't think astrology is a load of old cobblers and 2. that you are seriously worried about what NASA's space experiments are doing to your horrorscope, and that it will take a lot of lovely money to make you feel better (no pretence needed on this last point!).    Come and join us! If enough people sign up to this scam, we could be on a real winner! Full details from Romiley Legal Services, 146 Riverside Drive, Romiley. ** All credit/debit cards welcome, cheques on major banks and international money orders also welcome.

RANTS Stop messing us about, you bastards! They tried to tell us the 3rd millennium started at the year 2000, they gave us Trafalgar + 200 in June instead of October and this month, we got the end of World War 2 plus 60 years on what was neither VE Day + 60 nor VJ Day + 60.    New Labour keeps telling us British history is irrelevant and shameful; so why do they insist on messing it about so much? Ignore Live8. What Africa needs is decent government and fair trade deals. But caught between their corrupt politicians and ours, Africa is unlikely to get either. Who's to blame for the London suicide bombings?  • The Moslem 'community' for wallowing in victim culture and giving aid and comfort to the bombers and/or ignoring their machinations. Also for failing to issue a fatwah against Osama bin Laden and all his terrorist mates – also The Catholic Church for failing to do the same to the IRA and helping to make terrorism acceptable if it's only the Brits on the receiving end. • New Labour for dismantling our border controls, letting anyone into the country and encouraging extremists of all colours (except white, of course, because that would be racist) to flock to Britain and set up shop here without fear of extradition. • Ken Livingstone for encouraging the IRA and making terrorists welcome guests in London • Selected Chief Constables, Police Commissioners and their staff for their persistent racialism against white people and the partiality which they show to every other ethnic grouping. • Local councils for handing over vast sums of public money to racialists from ethnic minorities. • New Labour for preventing the security services from investigating terrorist networks established in Britain for fear of upsetting the Moslem vote and for creating Londonistan – a safe haven for extremists of all left-wing persuasions. • New Labour for undermining the military, the police and the security services with its blame culture, under which everyone else is guilty but the government can get away with lies, dishonesty, corruption and everything else that would get politicians evicted from office and shoved in gaol in a decent society. Excuse me, you extremists . . . . . . but how was an attack on Iraq in 2003 an attack on Islam and Arabs? Saddam Hussein was running a secular regime and he was oppressing Arabs. And the invasion opened the place up to clerics with a political agenda and turned Iraq into a safe haven for scumbag insurgent murderers.    So alibi denied. What's up with this bloody country? The problem is a loss of moral authority. In the good old days, people knew next to nothing about the top politicians and they were able to have a bit of respect for them. These days, everything comes out and we know for a fact that we are being ruled by unrepentant scumbags.    We have a Prime Minister who took his country to war on the basis of manufactured evidence and who is directly responsible for the deaths of well over one hundred British citizens. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has got his sums hopelessly wrong, he's wasted the golden legacy he inherited from the Tories and he has resorted to crude exercises in cooking the books of the sort that would get his ass jammed in gaol if he were running a private company.    The previous Home Secretary fiddled his expenses to transport his mistress around the country and then used civil servants from the Home Office to harass her. The Foreign Secretary is a joke who's never held down a proper job. The Deputy Prime Minister is a political dinosaur who has had a proper job; but nothing to prepare him for the job he's failing so spectacularly to do now.    A former Transport Secretary is in court trying to explain away lying to Parliament and defrauding the shareholders of a company which he wished to renationalize. Our European Commissioner has been sacked from two previous ministerial jobs for thinking he was above the rules and just about every New Labour establishment figure got his or her job through cronyism.    The Attorney General is feeling guilty about prostituting his office and letting himself be persuaded to change his mind on the legality of invading Iraq to serve the needs of New Labour. So he's now mad keen to prosecute members of the armed forces, and their commanding officers, for war crimes as a twisted way of redeeming himself. But, with typical New Labour hypocrisy, he's not including the government in his chain of command.    There is a marked lack of probity in government these days. When Ministers are caught out in a lie, their immediate response is to try to blacken the character of the person who spotted the lie. It's not just Moslems who feel disconnected from society, it's everyone who is not part of the New Labour scheme of back-handers.    The murder of President John Kennedy was seen as an international tragedy back in 1963. But would anyone be all that bothered if someone stuck a bomb under our current Prime Minister? I think not! The IRA surrender, but what are they up to really? We've been here before lots of times. The IRA say they're giving up and then they demand the Earth and stomp off in a huff when they don't get a big chunk of it. And what do they mean by 'giving up criminality'?    Does that include drug dealing, selling arms to other insurgents, murder, extortion, protection rackets, bank robbery, VAT swindles, etc., etc.? And does giving up their guns include the ones they use to shoot people's kneecaps off? The obvious question about the guns is where they're going. In the bunkers they built on farms with EU grants with the key in the pocket of some trustworthy terrorist? [Oxymoron warning. Ed.]    One thing at the back of all this is that Adams, McGuiness and the other non-playing MPs have been cut off from their parliamentary expenses and they'd like to get back on the gravy train. But while we're talking about cash, are the IRA going to hand back the £26 million they stole in the Boxing Day bank robbery last year? That should definitely be a condition of settlement.    Another thing that would be nice is for all those 'Irish Americans' to pay compensation to the relatives of the people who were killed by the bombs bought with their donations to the IRA.    Which brings us back to what the IRA want out of the deal. Is it to be all their killers released from gaol with pensions and compensation for being locked up? An apology from our soggy prime minister? Two free pints and a pound out the till? Whatever the outcome of the final round of negotiations, the British taxpayer will be screwed and the leaders of the IRA will become richer.    Desperate to create a 'legacy' our busted flush of a prime monster is already scrambling to do a dodgy deal with the IRA. Starting off with getting his orange-faced loon Peter Hain to release an IRA serial killer from gaol. But perhaps Mr. B. Liar thinks it's better to be seen to be a complete idiot rather than some sort of half-arsed trainee.    p.s. Everyone knows what will happen next. The 'reformed' wing of the IRA will expell all the active criminals and then claim they're nothing to do with them while continuing to accept an under-the-counter share of the loot.

HOME NEWS Taxpayers fear billion-pound payout for Govt. fraud All eyes should be focussed on the court where small shareholders in Railtrack are bringing an action against the government and 'Liar' Byers, who was Transport Sec. when the company went into liquidation. The shareholders are saying that Byers conspired to make Railtrack insolvent and he defrauded them out of their investment. They stand to collect £160 million in damages if they win. "Byers didn't react to Railtrack's insolvency; he caused it." But what should concern the rest of us is that if the Labour government is convicted of fraud, the big institutional investors in Railtrack will be back for another bite. They settled for peanuts as their compensation packages but a fraud conviction will nullify any deals that they made. And they'll be back for BILLIONS – from the taxpayer as the criminal; this New Labour government; has no cash of its own.    The government is now hoping that the courts will do their duty and throw out the small shareholders' claim. Because if that doesn't happen, there's going to be a lot of blood shed and not just in government circles. ASBO for Liar Byers? New Labour seems quite happy to do nothing about this former minister, who admitted lying to Parliament during this court case. Which is why a group of concerned citizens has applied for an Anti-Social Behaviour Order, under which Byers will be banned from every building in the country where political activity takes place. It is believed that Railtrack shareholders are campaigning for similar ASBOs to be imposed on all other politicians and civil servants who conspired to defraud them. The prime minister and the chancellor are top of their hit list. Narrow boat owners hit by parking fines The failure of an old wooden gate cause part of the Bridgewater Canal to drain into the River Medway, stranding dozens of canal barges. Their owners received a severe shock the next morning. Big boots clumping about overhead on their decks turned out to belong to Manchester City Council's contract traffic wardens – who were busily applying fixed-penalty parking tickets to the stranded vessels. WARNING: Don't buy Spanish lettuce! Farmers in Spain's drought-ridden regions have been irrigating their crops with raw sewage and imports of their lettuces have caused outbreaks of salmonella poisoning in England and Wales. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! What a difference a day makes Or Prime Minister B. Liar brings Baghdad to London On Wednesday, London was counting all the lovely loot it can expect for staging the 2012 Olympic Games – 10 billion quid, or so. On Thursday, the Afro-Caribbean wing of the IRA was blowing the place up and forcing Prime Minister Antonio B. Liar to leave the G8 plotting and planning without him. Does it really pay to get yourself noticed or is quiet anonymity better?    The ironic thing is that the bombs started going off after New Labour's favourite cop, Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, was on the wireless telling everyone that the Met is "the envy of the policing world in relation to counter-terrorism". Perhaps we'd all feel a bit safer if the blokes in charge of the police were a bit less politically correct and definitely not complacent paperclip-counters, who won't go near a Moslem suspect for fear of creating Islamophobia. Which? magazine reckons that HSBC, LloydsTSB, RBS-NatWest, Barclays and Halifax-Bank of Scotland are ripping off the punters to the tune of £400 per customer per year through overcharging on loans, credit card interest rates and small-print stealth fees. The latest fashionable social disease is Mobile Phone Elbow, which is nerve damage caused by bending the elbow for long periods of time while yakking on a mobile. The police now have the power to seize vehicles belonging to drivers with no insurance. Flogging off used car bargains is reckoned to be the next big growth area for police forces when speeding fines max out. London's hotels were quick to cash in on the transport freeze after the bombs went off, raising their prices by up to 400% for the benefit of stranded travellers. Leakage update Thames Water has missed its leak-reduction target for the third year in a row. They were losing 915,000,000 litres per day at the end of March of this year. Their target is a mere 905,000,000 litres/day. The loss is the equivalent of 100 litres per customer per day, or 3 times the daily amount used by an average customer. p.s. Ofwat will administer a mild ticking off rather than a fine of 10% of the company's annual turnover. p.p.s. The Thames Water area hosepipe ban is on schedule for August. Loud and Illegal! Channel 5 has been convicted by the Advertising Standards Authority of doing what all TV companies do but deny: turning up the volume of the adverts. There is actually a broadcasting rule that states that adverts cannot be 'excessively loud' compared to the programme in which they are embedded. Anyone who has ever watched Sky will know how bad loud adverts can be.    Channel 5 blamed its intrusion on a technical mistake. Among the new laws to be enacted in the wake of the London bombs will be the offence of 'cultural treason'. The legislation will give fellow citizens who hear the word 'multiculturalism' an absolute right to hang, draw and quarter the offender on the spot. A sin postponed is still a sin The Parliamentary Ombudsman has been investigating the government's part in the collapse of final-salary pension schemes since November 2004. Charges of maladministration have been levelled at the Treasury, the Inland Revenue, the Department of Work & Pensions and the (now defunct) Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority [Opra]. The report should have been published in the first full week of July 2005 but New Labour has delayed publication until October 2005 at the earliest.    As the ombudsman will have no choice but to confirm that there was maladministration, given the level of competence in office of New Labour, it seems likely that the prime minister is hoping that a comet will hit the Earth in the next 3 months and spare him further embarrassment. Livingstone to be deported London's mayor Ken Livingstone is to be placed on the list of people to be deported for supporting terrorism. It is understood that the Foreign office is having trouble finding another country willing to take him but Ireland is looking his most likely destination as he has a long history of supporting Irish terrorism. This month's Number One criminal offence In the United States, any person of colour driving a posh car is liable to be busted on a charge of DWB – Driving While Black. The Metropolitan police have come up with the analogous charge of BWA – Backpacking While Asian. Terrorist suspect gunned down in London A Scotland Yard spokesman said, "We were extremely lucky to be able to scrape together enough bullets to get the job done as New Labour screw-ups have left us as short of ammunition as the British army.    "There seems to be plenty of cash available to fly the prime minister and his family to foreign holiday destinations at public expense, but when it comes to everyday anti-terrorist expenditure, the piggy bank generally turns out to be empty."    The spokesman added, in private, that the ammunition shortage is a direct consequence of the Chancellor's maladministration. But he was too scared of Scotch Gordon to say it in public. BBC adopts New Labour policy on the truth The BBC showed a film by an Islamic extremist on 'Newsnight' and when someone asked if there had been any complaints about it, the answer was, "No, there have been no complaints at all." But when people who had complained about the programme complained about this answer, another Beeb spokesman added, "We were just following the standard British government protocol of lying when offering the truth is deemed a less desirable option."

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COCK-UP CORNER Another cock-up over Iraq The government is sitting on evidence of Saddam Hussein's crimes in case handing it over to the Iraqi authorities violates his human rights. Other governments have successfully applied for a special exemption from the Human Rights Convention but the Foreign Office under Jack 'Waste of Space' Straw is collectively too dim to know this. Another Stealth Tax on the way Buff Hoon, sacked Minister for War, is trying to soften us up for compulsory voting at general elections. It would appear that the 'Don't Vote, It Only Encourages Them' lobby is having enough success to get New Labour worried about its lack of a mandate. Labour was supported by just 22% of the electorate in last month's election compared to 39% support for the 'Don't Vote' party.    The sting in the tail of the compulsory voting scheme is, inevitably, another Stealth Tax. Mr. Hoon is also keen to introduce a 'Didn't Vote' fine for those who choose to exercise their democratic right to find none of the candidates on a ballot paper worth a trip to their polling station.    CLICK HERE to see the list of New Labour Stealth Taxes on the Garbagegate website. How appropriate it was that PM Antonio B. Liar appointed as his head advisor on anti-social behaviour a loutish woman who behaves like the Queen of the ASBOs. All he has to do is point at her and tell everyone to do the exact opposite. The average petrol price in Britain is now over £4 per gallon and there is another increase on the way as world oil prices hit ridiculous levels. The Chancellor was shamed out of a planned tax rise in September; but he's going to get the cash anyway via VAT. Jobs for just about anyone, no experience needed Lord Falconer, former schoolmate and flatmate of the prime minister and now posing as the Lord Chief Justice, has a bit of a problem. Not enough of the 'right sort of New Labour people' are becoming judges. But he has an answer – abolish the lawyers' monopoly.    If he gets his way, any New Labour stooge, irrespective of qualifications and competence, will become eligible to wear a wig and lord it over a courtroom. 'Diversity' is Charlie's current buzz word. So we could soon see members of Al Qaida presiding over terrorist trials 'in the interests of fairness and not upsetting the Labour voters'.    How jolly life can become when one dares to think the unthinkable! The prime minister promised that he would eliminate the problem before the election. So it comes as no surprise to find that people still can't book an appointment with a doctor more than 48 hours in advance because doctors don't want to lose the bonus for fiddling their waiting lists to 'meet' this arbitrary New Labour target. Unfit to run a bloody whelk stall! The Ministry of Defence is doing such a swell job under New Labour that the army has run out of blank ammunition. So the army now has the choice of cancelling training exercises or ordering soldiers to shout BANG! when they pull the trigger of an empty rifle.    Given that this is the same New Labour controlled MoD which sent troops to Iraq with insufficient clothing and equipment (such as flak jackets and radios), no one is surprised. Prime Minister denies link between illegal Iraq war and London terror bombs How curious, then, that his MPs are queueing up to tell anyone who'll listen that is it beyond doubt that Iraq was a big bit of the terrorists' excuse. How curious, also, that the Royal Institute of International Affairs reached the conclusion that the Iraq invasion inflamed Islamic terrorist groups and encouraged them to attack Britain.    Could the PM have got it wrong? Surely not! Sharing the blame Prime Minister Antonio B. Liar can expect to find himself in the dock if any senior army officers are prosecuted for war crime to further the government's political correctness agenda. As the man who took his country to war on the basis of manufactured evidence, the P.M. can he held as liable as the C.O. of a soldier who went too far in his enthusiasm to curb criminal behaviour in Iraq.    Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, who is pushing the P.C. prosecutions with unnatural zeal, could also find himself in the dock. As the man who shirked his duty for political reasons to declare the 2003 Iraq invasion legal, he can expect to be charged with abuse of his office.    Further, their parts in New Labour's campaign to undermine the morale of British troops serving in Iraq could lead to treason charges for Goldsmith, Mr. Liar and their associates. The government and the biotech companies which are its paymasters all insisted that genetically monstered crops are safe and definitely WILL NOT lead to the creation of herbicide-resistant superweeds through interbreeding with nearby plants.    Guess what? Herbicide resistant superweeds are springing up where GM oilseed rape trial crops have been grown. And, of course, New Labour tried to hide the news in the bowels of the impenetrable DEFRA website.    Tell a lie & hide the truth – it's the New Labour way! Home Sec. admits he's about as much use as a chocolate teapot Charlie Clark has rebranded himself as a semi-detached Home Sec. by taking his planned summer holiday during a policing crisis. Dave Monoblot, the Tsar of the Downing Street Press Office, said, "Charlie feels he can make no useful contribution to the hunt for the suicide bombers and it would be better for all concerned if he got out of the way. So he's going on holiday for a month or so. And he's prepared to stay away for longer if that would help."

GORDON NEWS Chancellor's spin on Africa unwinds Scotch Gordon's promises of debt cancellation for African nations have been shown to be just a hollow sham. The Make Poverty History group has accused him of passing off half-promises as commitments to 100% debt cancellation.    The worrying thing for the government is the shortening time span between the triumph of one of their Big Deal Announcements and the big let-down that follows close scrutiny of the fine print.    In Scotch Gordon's case, any feel-good factor generated ahead of the G8 summit has already faded and the gathering's final communique is bound to spread more gloom when it is compared to his lavish promises ahead of the summit. "He knows Gordon is not a bloke to be on the wrong side of!" Trouble brewing . . . Former Transport Sec. Stephen 'Liar' Byers is reported to be living in fear of retribution from Chancellor Scotch Gordon. Byers admitted in court that he had lied to a Commons sub-committee about his knowledge of a plan to drive Railtrack into administration (to defraud the shareholders of their investment).    Scotch Gordon is reported to be increasingly worried by the amount of detail leaking into the public domain on the Treasury's part in Byers's sordid scam, such as the emails which show his part in 'triggering' and 'engineering' the collapse of Railtrack as a means of defrauding the shareholders and re-nationalizing the company. He is now busy arranging a suitable revenge for the man who has caused further damage to his already tarnished reputation for fiscal rectitude.    p.s. A spokesman for Scotland Yard has indicated that the police investigation into the disappearance of Prudence, who was last seen in the company of Scotch Gordon, remains on-going. 'Golden' Rule devalued to 'Tarnished Brass' Scotch Gordon Broon used to pretend that he would borrow money only to finance long-term investment and pay for day-to-day expenditure out of tax revenues over 'the current economic cycle'. But the wheels have come off his 'Golden Rule' due to the wildly over-optimistic forecasts of tax revenues that he made before the general election.    So what was his answer? Admit he'd made a bog of things? No way! He has resorted to a typically crude, New Labour fiddle. He has changed his 'Golden Rule' into a moveable feast and shifted the goalposts to add 2 years to the 'current economic cycle'. From which we conclude that the Black Hole in the country's finances must be truly enormous if he has been forced to resort to such blatant trickery.

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WORLD NEWS Solidarity? Well, hardly! "The people of Great Britain can know that the American people stand with them," said George W., who pretends to be president of the United States.    So why have his troops in Britain been told not to travel inside the M25 ring in case they get blown up?    "We will stand with you – but nowhere near you if there's the slightest danger," is what old George should have said. The ban was lifted after a couple of days in the interests of international solidarity with the Brits and making the United States look a bit less chicken-hearted. Double standards, anyone? Israel is sheltering a Jewish war criminal, whom Poland wants to extradite before he croaks of old age. He is accused of murdering 1,500 German prisoners and civilians at a prison camp in 1945. The drought spreads Like the Spanish, the French are having a major water crisis. Their 'water police' are going round handing out €1,500 fines to farmers who are using more than their fair share of water to irrigate their crops. Of course, the farmers are just paying the fines as they stand to lose many thousands of euros if everything is allowed to desiccate in their fields.    The big problem for the French government is that large numbers of their lawless citizens are refusing to be deprived of the right to use as much water as they want. Which will make things rather difficult if there's a riot and the police are unable to fill up their water cannons. Mr. B. Liar 'sweats for Britain' yet again This month's EU ban on sales of many minerals, nutrients and vitamins used in food supplements received a massive helping hand from the British Prime Minister. He ordered his government to support the ban and he removed Labour MPs who opposed it from the Commons committee which scrutinized the EU Food Supplements Directive.    The Directive is designed to safeguard the profits of the major pharmaceutical companies in the European Union's sphere of influence and Mr. B. Liar knows better than to upset such a powerful lobby! First ever EU fine for the French! The European court of justice has fined the French regime €20 million for failing to observe EU fisheries conservation laws and there will be further fines of €57.8 million every 6 months until the French can demonstrate that they are using the right net sizes and they have stopped catching and selling undersize fish.    The EU has been in dispute with the French over breach of conservation laws since 1991 but it has taken until 2005 for the useless bastards running the EU to bring a major criminal to book. EU Parliament is coke-snorters' paradise A German TV news channel which specializes in testing political buildings for drugs has been swabbing the European Parliament in Brussels. 90% of their swabs from toilets and public areas tested positive for cocaine. The amounts were too high to have been brought in on clothing, an expert said. And in some cases, the level was high enough to set a police sniffer dog barking.    The findings explain the often bizarre regulations which come out of the EP – the MEPs who passed them were all out of their skulls on coke at the taxpayer's expense. Radical approach to tackling corruption in Ukraine The president of this former Soviet client state, who was poisoning (non-fatally) by the Russians in an attempt to install their stooge in his job, has had it up to here with his traffic police. Which is why he had abolished them! President Yushchenko has told them time and again to stop accusing drivers of imaginary crimes and extorting payments. The traffic police didn't listen and now, they have all been given the sack. Spanish mail fraudsters busted A gang operating from Malaga was making around €100 million per year out of an international scam when the Spanish police rolled them up. They were offering a chance to share treasure troves like the stashed loot of Saddam Hussein's family; cash, gold and other valuables recovered by stealth from the ruins of the World Trade Centre; and a winning ticket in Spain's El Gordo monster lottery.    In fact, they were offering the sort of thing which Jenson Farrago has collected on the Crooks In Action pages of his website. Only these crooks were using ordinary mail rather than email.    At the peak of the scam, the gang was posting 18,000 letters per day at post offices in Malaga using addressed trawled from the internet and commercial mailing lists. The recipients of the letter were offered a chance to lay their hands on huge sums of money – subject to an administration fee of €3,000 or so. Anyone who fell for the con was squeezed for more cash until they realized that they were being swindled.    The gang had bank accounts in the 45 countries to which it was sending letters, and it was spending £4 million per year on postage, stationery and printing. 300 people were arrested and Spanish lawyers are now rubbing their hands with glee. EU insists on applying its maritime rules to land-locked countries Hungary and Slovakia have absolutely no coastline but the European Commission is threatening them with fines if they don't jump through one of its hoops. The crime of these two rogue states is failing to incorporate EU directives for passenger ships and prevention of pollution from ships into their national laws.    Slovakia's case is that no one is allowed to register a passenger ship in their country and so the EU directive is irrelevant. Hungary thinks that as the country has no ports, then it doesn't need to pass laws about port facilities for ship-generated waste.    "That's not the point," said a spokesman for the European Commission. "The price of EU membership includes having your time wasted by the bureaucrats in Brussels. Both Hungary and Slovakia knew that when they sought membership and they must play by the rules now they are members of the club."    Both of the rogue states can take heart from the example of the Commission's treatment of the French, who were able to flout fishery conservation laws for 15 years before they were hauled into court to be hit with a fine which they won't pay. Hungary and Slovakia should be able to ignore their problem until at least 2020; by which time, with any luck, the present EU monster will have disintegrated or evolved into something that works.    [Memo from the Editor – this type of reckless optimism needs to be eliminated.] Irish insurgents to pack it in? The IRA has announced that it wants to give up being terrorists because the leaders want to become respectable and cash in on their memoirs. All Adams, McGuinness and the rest of them have to do now is convince the rest of us that they're sincere [Not an easy job, given their general shiftiness. Ed.] and persuade the rank and file to go along with an end to bank robbery, murder, extortion, drug-dealing and all the other money-making schemes of the modern international terrorist. Congrats to Lance Armstrong on winning his 7th Tour de France in a row.

2012 Olympics Update    We step into the bullet's path! Britain's strategy of leading them on and making the Frogs work their socks off to get the 2012 Olympic Games has been a total flop. Knowing that New Labour and Ken Livingstone couldn't run a whelk stall, the strategy was to let the French 'win' the race because the Games will cost a bomb and they will be a financial disaster. Unfortunately, it won't be a French disaster now.    We get the second prize The only thing to be said for 'winning' permission to hold the 2012 Olympic Games in London is: "At least the French didn't get it."

WHAT IS IT WITH THESE CRAZY FROGS??? Crazy Frog President warms up new career Dead duck French president Jacques Chirac is planning a new career as an alternative comedian when he is eventually evicted from office.    His act consists mainly of food jokes directed at 'les rosbifs' in Britain (and Finland for no apparent reason), according to a preview recorded by MI6 while Chirac was slagging the British off to the Germans and the Russians during the scramble to host the 2012 Olympics.    [It should go down well in D-Wing of the Bastille when he is eventually gaoled for theft of public funds during his spell as mayor of Paris. Ed.] Another crazy frog speaks out The mayor of Paris is accusing Britain of winning the 2012 Olympic Games by cheating because the British delegation carried on lobbying after the French thought about doing some more flesh-pressing then decided they couldn't be arsed. Yet another crazy frog speaks out For some reason best known to himself, the French Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, [That's a very French name. Ed.] invented some stuff about the Yorkshire suicide bombers then rushed off to a press conference to attribute it to Charles Clark, his counterpart and our dolt of a Home Sec. Poor old Clarkie had to dash to his own press conference to do an out-of-breath denial. Sounds like the minister needs a spot of fitness training. No doubt Sherri, the prime minister's missus, can steer him in the direction of a personal guru as she seems to be an expert on that field. Crazy Frog Sarkozy thinks putting the boot in to dead duck president Chirac will make him (Sarkozy) look like a contender for the presidency in 2007, when Chirac swaps his presidential palace for a gaol cell. [Dream on! Ed.] Sarkozy is relying on the well-worn political theory that it you kick a loser, that makes you look less of a loser than you really are.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT Crooks In Action The European Union is promising to do something about the criminals who send out emails about bogus lottery wins and extract cash from the gullible as 'administration fees' (but don't hold your breath).    In the meantime, as a public service, Jenson Farrago is offering access to his collection of examples of lottery, phishing and other email spam. CLICK HERE to find out what miracles they offer.

	Giving aid to African dictators instead of killing them.  "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." – Mayor Ken Livingstone's policy for saving water and spreading disease in London.  Bob Geldof's 'Sail8' armada of little boats, which failed to bring a single G8 protester over from the Continent.  The French sour grapes and accusations of cheating after they failed to get the 2012 Olympics.  The Tour de France team with a name that sounds like "Leaky Gas".  Radio 4, PM, 17:25, 2005/07/09 – "The Tsunami Bombings," said Olympics Sec. Tessa Jowell. What has she been smoking?  The BBC's 'guidance order' telling journalists not to call the London suicide bombers 'terrorists' to avoid compromising the Beeb's tarnished reputation for impartiality.  Labour's claim that 99.9% of patients can see a GP within 48 hours of trying to make an appointment.  Putting Afghan war criminals on trial in this country instead of sending them home to face whatever passes for justice in Afghanistan.  Telling schoolkids that failure is 'deferred success'.  The Gordon Brown method of passing an economics exam – set the questions, mark your own paper and cheat.  "That Brazilian bloke with a fake visa the police shot in London? He was lucky he wasn't carrying a table leg or he'd have been in real trouble."  The prime minister rattling on about making the world safe from terrorists while his wife sounds off about their human rights. [Out of which, she hopes to make a whole lot of cash. Ed.]  The euro, according to Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, who reckons Italy was screwed by it.  The notion that you can believe anything someone called Blair tells you. It's not so much Deferred Truth Syndrome as Totally Abandoned Honesty Syndrome. [Or Incapable of Honesty Syndrome. Ed.]

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

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