Symptoms

Blimey, very faint stirrings seems to be emerging from the corpse called Forum, once in a previous life vigourous but moribund after his last incarnation. Dr Tezmarez is a dab-hand with the defribulator ... I say sign him up to permanently care for the patient.

Just as well those Wigan cops weren't tooled-up. Just imagine the scene .... "Yes your honour, even though he was unarmed, as a soldier he could have been a trained killer so we had to shoot him dead to protect ourselves and members of the public". "That's OK Officer you were only doing your duty and following orders - walk free with your head held high".

And today the Government has waded in with an extra 20 odd million of our money to meet the shortfall from sponsorship. When's it going to end?

Welcome back Terry. I remember your Tezmarez from the old Forum; it could indeed be a very spiteful place. This new place, after some hurtful and hateful early postings, seems to be more civilised (but maybe duller).

Then when an innocent gets topped on the Tube by the Boys in Blue (actually they weren't in uniforn) the Coroner, at today's Inquest, directs the Jury that they CANNOT return an Unlawful Killing verdict. Rubber stamp get-out for all those 'just following orders'. Picture the scene sometime in the future in a former mining town in Northumberland ... Bloke quietly walking down the street, stopped by a Bobby, "your papers please", "I ain't got 'em on me", "you know it's a crime not to carry them and we've been watching you on CCTV - up against the wall", bang, bang. Some time later ... "Yes your Honour, I feared for my life and for those around me, I thought he was wired-up, so I shot him", "that's OK Officer you were only doing your duty and following orders - walk free with your head held high". Sound familiar?

Denzel - is this what you've been hiding from us?

The Board of UK Sport meet today to divi-up the funding for the various sports for 2012. All the usual suspects are likely to get whacking great shares of the dosh but other (deserving) groups will probably fare badly. Watch out for piles of dosh being heaped onto rowing, sailing, equestrian, fencing, etc. - mostly the stuff the born-rich or upper-middle class do. Elite athletics (read drug cheats) will be rewarded for their crap performance in China (4 medals only 1 gold) with loads of our money. The problem with raising the required dosh from sponsorship is that the firm (Fast Track) tasked with this can't allow those Companies who wish to donate permission to use the Olympic Rings logo. So what Company is going to give-up tons of dosh if it can't display the Rings and other Olympic logos. I don't think they can even use the word Olympic as it's copyright rests elsewhere.

I say John Barrowman can do no wrong! Unless that single complaining LISTENER has some sort of Xray eyes that can see along a radio wave how can they be offended by the ACT of him getting his todger out? And again those craven, weak-kneed, yellow-bellied Beeb bosses have caved-in and removed the broadcast from IPlayer.

"Iranian Embassey.........then...............er????" But wasn't that the Boys from Hereford? Hasn't it always been denied that Trevor Lock (for our younger viewers - the armed Bobby on the inside) shot one of the bad guys?

The first steps of the rehabilitation of Jonathan Ross happened this morning ... The Guardian gave away a sheet of Xmas wrapping paper designed by the great man himself. It's part of a series, designed by artists, actors, musicians, performers, etc., given out everyday. Excellent stuff!

That YouTube film is brilliant. I loved the line " ... scaldin' them sheeps' dottles" and was impressed at how fair-minded they were at admitting women into the Society. Discussed their membership at Committee then rejected it!

Please share it with us ...

London Underground has a similar platform-based system for predicting if people are about to jump in front of the trains to commit suicide.

Now it's been confirmed that there are no scanners to read the card data and it'll all be down to some some guy eyeballing the card when it's presented. There are no plans to issue scanners either! What a waste of dosh! From The Observer this morning: "Britain's first ID cards, issued last week with fingerprint and facial details, cannot be read by any official body because the government has not issued a single scanner. Ministers promised to roll out hundreds of electronic readers of biometric details. However, a spokesman for the Home Office admitted last week that no employers, police forces, hospitals or colleges have been given the machine - and there are as yet no plans to issue them. The disclosure means the ID cards issued last week to foreign students and the foreign spouses of British citizens can be used only in a similar way to a valid passport and visa. Instead, authorities will have to rely on visual checks on the card and calls to a UK Border Agency hotline if they fear the card is not genuine. The admission bolsters concerns the ID verification scheme is now just a 'flash and go' card similar to those used by many companies. Home Office documents revealed last month that the cards' biometric details will only be cross-referenced with the National Identity Register in a minority of cases."

HP wrote "You can kill one in about a second." Perhaps the fella in this story was following the theme when he topped Foggy the Bedlington Terrier: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10...ng-morning.html

She was a really, really attractive woman but heavily into radical feminist politics.

Both of my Granddads (and various Uncles) grew leeks to show at their local clubs. I remember them producing very large crops, then selecting the show specimens and the seed plants. They used to camp-out in their allotments to stand guard over the plants nearing show time 'cos of the risk of sabotage to the show specimens and theft of the seed heads. One of my Granddads used to empty the contents of his potty (they did have indoor plumbing but he wanted to save his waste ... yuk) into a 55gal oil drum, this mixed with other stuff (God only knows what) became his leek feed. My memory was that all the old timers throughout the North East were obsessed with growing leeks and showing them. Pigeon lofts also seemed to be everywhere when I was a lad ...

I knew a girl who used to go to Greenham Common to protest ... it's an industrial estate now, Yanks all gone. Mind, there could be underground bunkers there for holding the dissidents, camouflaged by an MFI store. Maybe that's why MFI's gone tits-up ... they never sold anything 'cos they were a Government ghost organisation.

I think they still have 'The Big Meeting' as they call their Durham version of the Picnic.

Now, what data will that little card chip contain and be copied to the Government's databases? All the usual stuff like height, eye colour, Nationality, marks, on so on; stuff they already have from passport applications. The new stuff, like our dabs and other bio-metric measurements, will also be included. Next comes the spooky stuff culled from the NHS Spine, our blood group, DNA, diseases/illnesses suffered (including pox clinics visited), allergies, hereditary information, and so on. Next the financial stuff - the data from the credit reference agencies, Land Registry, The Revenue, our Banks and credit card transactions. What next? Oh, yes - they'll get the data about our subscriptions to magazines and membership of clubs and unions. Oh, and there's our travel habits picked-up via Automatic Number-plate Recognition (have you noticed how many of these fixed cameras have sprung-up in the last year). Blimey, I almost forgot about our ISP's having to keep all of our emails for years and log all our web browsing. All/much of this data is/may already kept by individual organisations but when (not if) it all gets sucked onto one database (and burned onto that card chip) it can be more easily interrogated by GCHQ. So what? The Government will sell this information onto insurance companies so they may well refuse cover for those whose Granddad died of cancer. A subscribing company won't hire you 'cos your cousin is a villain (criminality might run in the family). Union membership ... drag the trouble-maker off to the Jails (Camps). And a thousand other ways to restrict our freedom. If you don't hear from me again you'll know the Government's plans are further developed than I thought and I've been 'lifted' by the Boys in Black, injected, chucked into the back of a van, delivered to a deep underground installation on the Outer Hebrides and water-boarded for posting this. I'll leave you with something Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote years ago ... First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist First they came for the Socialist And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist First they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist First they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me

Amstrad maybe?

Until the Boys in Blue say "Your papers please" (in a mock Jerry accent); no papers and you get whipped off to the Nick, have your mouth swabbed and a rubber glove up your ar*e. Oh, and to help you along the way a good Tasering to soften you up.

Pete - "... it sounded like they flew from one side of the living room to the other, ...". Early surround sound I remember reading an article in Scientific America (don't mock ... I was a student in the late '60's) about wiring-up 4 speakers in a particular fashion to create a quadraphonic effect; this was at the time when proprietary quad hi-fi systems were just coming onto the market but with prices the likes of us could never afford. Anyway, I followed the instructions and was amazed by the effect.

"Did they sell powedered egg?". Yep, during the last big bun fight with Jerry Hun.

And do you know why it's going down the pan ... all they sell these days is cheap Chinese plakka tosh, sweeties and a few CDs. Back in the Day you could get just about anything there ... from shoe repair materials (I remember my old man buying leather soles & steel taps for home repairs on his last) through to furniture and everything in between. It was the poor man's John Lewis.