Introducing your new poster boy for the Bath police

Avon & Somerset Constabulary has a new blogger – Chief Inspector Richard Corrigan – to replace our old friend Andy ‘Gordon’ Bennett the Cuddly Copper.

As Big Dixie says:

Policing can be a subject that divides opinion and I fully appreciate this. I will give the story from my perspective and I know that often you will not agree with me. That is the reason why policing is so interesting and challenging.

I’m sure we will all do our best to make him feel welcome.

Headline Of The Day: Star Wars Baddie On Big Brother Goody

From the Evening Post, naturally.

The ’story’ continues:

He revealed his illness earlier this week on Absolute Radio in an attempt to raise money for the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.

Speaking from his home in Croydon, Surrey, he said: ”I now know what it’s like to go through this treatment, and I have sympathy for anyone in the same position.

”Jade should be commended for her achievements, and should be thoroughly proud of raising the awareness of cervical cancer.

”She has done more than anyone else in memory to convince women to go for regular tests.”

Married father-of-three Prowse, who stands 6′7” tall, added: ”If I can do the same for prostate cancer in men, then I will be happy.”

Body-builder Prowse was chosen to play the villain in Star Wars in 1976, but because of his West Country accent the character’s lines were spoken by the deep-voiced American actor James Earl Jones.

He told Absolute Radio’s Christian O’Connell that he was making good progress and felt ”fantastic” despite his condition.

He said: ‘I’m undergoing treatment for prostate cancer, would you believe. I’m having my very last treatment this morning.

”I’ve had two months of radiotherapy at the Royal Marsden. It’s the most fantastic hospital. I feel fantastic, no problems whatsoever.”

Jade, 27, spent Sunday with her two sons Freddie, four, and Bobby Jack, five, her mum Jackiey (corr) Budden, 50, and her 21-year-old hubby Jack Tweed.

She has already made full arrangements for her funeral, which she hopes will be a ‘celebration’ of her life.

Jackiey said: ”It’s not day by day now. It’s more like hour by hour.”

Leaving the sub’s note on spelling in there is a nice touch, adds that gritty realism that the story demands.

The poetry of vultures

I spotted this yesterday on my NetNewsWireLite blogreader. I was particularly impressed by the tags.

Pep talk & Shirley

My absentee councillor, Shirley Brown née Marshall, has broken cover and spoken to the Evening Post about her ‘moment of race jibe madness’!

Nearly six years after she was voted in, Shirley Brown remains Bristol’s only black councillor.

In a city that has had a large African Caribbean population for more than 50 years and now has a significant proportion of residents from backgrounds across the globe, she does not think that is good enough.

Shirley, 48, intends to spend the two remaining years of her second term as Liberal Democrat councillor for Ashley ward trying to improve the situation.

“It is really important for more African Caribbean people and more black and minority ethnic people in general to become engaged with the political process and I will be working on that,” she said.

…She has had huge support from the people of Easton and St Paul’s, and never more so than when opponents criticised her for spending too long in America in the early months of her marriage to Byron Brown.

“People really rallied round me – but seeing what I went through does make some of them reluctant to put themselves forward for public life,” she said.

During her first term on the council, from 2003-2007, mother of three Shirley said she spent up to 60 hours a week on council work, attending more than 30 meetings every month.

But a couple of months after she was re-elected, and shortly after the death of her father, the then Shirley Marshall collapsed at work in Easton and was taken to the BRI.

Although it turned out not to be a stroke, as suspected, Shirley took it as a warning sign that she was burning herself out.

She went to America to recuperate and it was while she was there that her friend Byron, whom she had met when he was visiting Bristol on a council exchange, proposed.

Four days later, the pair wed and three days after that Shirley came back to Bristol. Early in 2008, she returned to the US for an extended honeymoon and soon began to attract criticism for picking up her £11,000 council allowance while she was across the Atlantic.

The Lib Dems felt this was unfair, given that councillors from all parties have had long illness absences that have not drawn so much attention.

In her defence, Shirley contended that she was continuing some of her ward work by email and her fellow Lib Dem Ashley councillor Jon Rogers was covering the rest.

She now has an unexpected opportunity to repay him for that, as Jon is a cabinet member following the surprise elevation of the Liberal Democrats to control of the council last week.

Shirley said: “Jon and I work very well together and now he is an executive member it will mean I will be covering ward work a lot more.”

…She played an active role in many events for Abolition 200 – the 200th anniversary of the Bill to end the slave trade – and is a supporter of the Legacy Commission, which will carry on some of that work.

She was therefore horrified that an Asian Conservative councillor, Jay Jethwa, spoke out at the council meeting last week against continuing funding for the commission.

“I could not believe she was saying that,” Shirley said. But the Tories were equally incredulous at the Lib Dem’s response, in which she called Councillor Jethwa a coconut, and made an official complaint.

Her boss, Lib Dem Councillor Barbara Janke, was not impressed either and has told Shirley to apologise, which she did.

As well as the council, Shirley has her paid work helping young people with personal development and working with women’s groups, as well as speaking engagements and motivational seminars.

There is also her faith. She is a preacher, although she has cut back on her work since her illness…

I await this renewed interest in ward casework with bated breath.

EXCLUSIVE: Mark Bradshaw hates Bristol bloggers!

I just thought I would see if my earlier post had earned (ex-’transport supremo’) Mark Bradshaw any more Twitter friends, only to discover that the blighter has blocked me!

Good to see a politician with such a healthy interest in engaging with local people, as ever

The Bristol Web 2.0 Careers Advice Service

Following the booting out of the Labour minority cabinet at Bristol City Council, ‘transport supremo’ Mark Bradshaw has been wondering what to do with himself.

Tweet your suggestions to @mark_bradshaw

ETA:

I see Terry Cook has also discovered the jobseeking potential of Twitter.

Discussion:

• The Bristol Blogger
• Green Bristol Blog
• Stockwood Pete

Bonecast update

The Ian Bone Anarchism In The UK podcast is bubbling along nicely as the back catalogue is slowly added to the archive.

Currently available to download or stream are:

• #3 Ray Hulm (28th September)
• #6 Si Mitchell (19th October)
• #9 Seth Wheeler (9th November)
• #10 Ian Bone’s Anarchist Half Hour (16th November)
• #11 Ray ‘Roughler’ Jones (23rd November)
• #12 Robb Johnson (30th November)
• #13 Alessio (7th December)
• #15 Andy Meinke (4th January)
• #16 Paul Stott (11th January)
• #17 Sandy Hale (18th January)
• #18 Ellenor Hutson (25th January)

Links:

• Anarchism In The UK podcast page
• Ian Bone’s blog
• Resonance FM

Just say no to GHB, kids!

This made me proper LOL when I saw it on Facebook…

In case you didn’t know it, Carl Williams is currently serving life with a minimum tariff of 35 years for a series of murders connected to the ecstasy and amphetamine trade in Melbourne…

Wikipediaphile: Alfred Wintle

Alfred Wintle

Stop dying at once and when you get up, get your bloody hair cut!

Wintle to Trooper Cedric Mays (Royal Dragoons), who recovered and lived to the age of 95.

Tip o’ the titfer: ITTODBTBIA

THE MOST DANGEROUS PODCAST IN BRITAIN

Ian Bone’s weekly ‘Anarchism In The UK’ radio show on London’s Resonance FM has now been archived on a podcast page, so even if you miss an episode’s original airing, you can stream or download it later at your own convenience

Interviews up currently include those with Ellenor Hutson (LCAP), Si Mitchell (Guerillavision), Paul Stott (‘9/11 truth’ debunker) and Sandy Hale (Liberty & Solidarity); older interviews with the likes of John Rety, Phil Ruff and Martin Wright will be added as soon as possible.

» Anarchism In The UK podcast page «
» Anarchism In The UK podcast RSS feed «

Greek graff

Lest we forget: Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

Via GiaNt

Wikipediaphile: Tom Wintringham

Tom Wintringham was born 1898 in Grimsby, Lincolnshire. He was educated at Gresham’s School, Holt, Norfolk and Balliol College, Oxford but abandoned his university career at the outbreak of the First World War to join the Royal Flying Corps. At the end of the war he was involved in a brief barracks mutiny, one of many minor insurrections which went unnoticed in the period. He returned to Oxford, and in a long vacation made a visit of some months to Moscow, after which he returned to England and formed a group of students aiming to establish a British section of the Third International: a Communist Party. As the party formed, Wintringham graduated from Oxford and moved to London, ostensibly to study for the bar at the Temple, but in fact to work full time in politics.

In 1923 Wintringham joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1925 he was one of twelve CPGB officials imprisoned for seditious libel and incitement to mutiny. In 1930, he founded a newspaper, Daily Worker, and was one of the few named writers to publish articles in it. In writing for the Communist party’s theoretic journal Labour Monthly, he established himself as the party’s military expert. In LM articles and in booklets on the subject, Wintringham formed the arguments against Air Assault and called for ARP precautions several years before Guernica. His arguments were the basis for the most successful of the Communist Party’s wartime campaigns, that for ARP provision, and shaped government policy on the issue in the years leading up to the war. Although at the centre of the CPGB organisation, he was often at odds with Party policy, believing in a communism of alliance and co-operation, rather than the dominant comintern ideology of class against class. Wintringham’s ideas became party dogma when the Comintern announced the ‘Popular Front’, a form of communism Wintringham was prepared to fight for.

In 1934, he became the founder, editor and major contributor of Left Review, the first British literary journal with a stated Marxist intent. Although published by Wintringham and funded by the CPGB, it embraced writers of all shades of socialism, regardless of their party affiliations. The journal established a pattern for what was to become cultural studies.

During the Spanish Civil War, Wintringham went to Spain as a journalist, but he joined and eventually commanded the British Battalion of the International Brigades. Some socialist commentators have credited him with the whole idea of “international” brigades. He also had an affair with a US journalist, Kitty Bowler, whom he later married. In February 1937 he was wounded in the Battle of Jarama. While injured in Spain he became friends with Ernest Hemingway who based one of his characters upon him. He spent some months as a machine gun instructor. When he returned to the battalion the next summer he contracted typhoid, was again wounded at Quinto in August 1937 and was repatriated in October. His later book English Captain is based on these experiences.

In 1938 the Communist Party condemned his wife as a Trotskyist spy but he refused to leave her – he quit the party instead. He came to mistrust the party’s subservience to Stalin’s Russia and Comintern.

Back in England, Tom Hopkinson recruited him to work for the newspaper Picture Post.

At the outbreak of World War II, Wintringham applied for an army officer’s commission but was rejected. When the Communist Party promulgated its policy of staying out of the war due to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, he strongly condemned their policies. Because of the appeasement policies of prime minister Neville Chamberlain, he also regarded the Tories as Nazi sympathizers and wrote that they should be removed from office. He wrote for Picture Post, the Daily Mirror, and wrote columns for Tribune and the New Statesman.

In May 1940, after the escape from Dunkirk, Wintringham began to write in support of the Local Defence Volunteers, the forerunner of the Home Guard. On July 10, he opened the private Home Guard training school at Osterley Park, London.

Wintringham’s training methods were mainly based on his experience in Spain. He even had trainers who had fought alongside him in Spain who trained volunteers in anti-tank warfare and demolitions. He also taught street fighting and guerrilla warfare. He wrote many articles in Picture Post and the Daily Mirror propagating his views about the Home Guard with the motto “a people’s war for a people’s peace”.

The British Army still did not dare trust Wintringham because of his communist past. After September 1940 the army began to take charge of the Home Guard training in Osterley and Wintringham and his comrades were gradually sidelined. Wintringham resigned in April 1941. Ironically, despite his activities in support of the Home Guard, Wintringham was never allowed to join the organisation himself because of a policy barring membership to Communists and Fascists.

From the Wikipedia entry on Tom Wintringham.

Fascinating chap!

Tip o’ the titfer: Paul Stott (“At Ian Bone’s Christmas piss-up yesterday, I was disbelieved when I stated that one episode of Dad’s Army contains a Spanish Civil War character, brought in to teach the men guerilla warfare. Captain Mainwaring is particularly wary of our Spanish comrade, fearing he may be an Anarchist… More seriously, the political nature of the Home Guard, and in particular one of its key figures, Tom Wintringham, is often forgotten. A reappraisal of Wintringham by modern Socialists is long overdue. If you get any book tokens this Christmas, can I suggest you spend them on Hugh Purcell’s study of Wintringham The Last English Revolutionary?”)

“Just one more thing…”

So it wasn’t common-or-garden forgetfulness, and it wasn’t genius sleuthing, it was just Alzheimer’s…

Columbo – the only honest cop.

Keep on banging up those greedy rich bastards!

Mainstream too bland for taste of Spicer

Remember that whole thing about upscale lawyers Schillings putting the squeeze on the publishers of former ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray’s forthcoming book, which promised to dish the dirt on the profiteering activities of mercenary Tim Spicer and others?

Well, it appears to have had the desired effect:

My former publisher, Mainstream, have finally pulled out of publishing The Catholic Orangemen of Togo, intimidated by libel threats made by notorious mercenary commander Tim Spicer.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/Schillings.pdf

I have therefore decided to release the full text free on the internet on 12 January 2009. I do hope more people will learn about the truth about Spicer that way, than they would if Schillings had not intervened. I am very much hoping that I will be able to make some copies of an actual book available at the same time. But you should of course be aware that if you read it you will cause Tim Spicer “profound anxiety and distress”, according to Schillings. Possibly less, however, than that caused to the families of those killed by his mercenaries over the years.

Meantime, here is the epilogue to the book. You don’t get the full force of it unless you have read the history of British involvement in Sierra Leone in the book, but you still might find it interesting.

Download file

ETA:

Craig is looking for volunteers to host the book!

Spartaci Wanted

You’re chance to shout “I’m Spartacus!” Volunteers are wanted to post a PDF of “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo” on 12 January. UK volunteers are very welcome, but as many jurisdictions as possible are helpful.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/Schillings.pdf

The downside is that you may have your collar felt by Schillings, and be disliked by some rather unfriendly mercenaries. OK, that’s a big downside. The upside is that you’ll get to read the book before everybody else.

Volunteers please email athollpublishing@googlemail.com

If you don’t have the facility to host the PDF, be ready to post a link to one on the day.

Greek forensics: The UFO Defence

A mock-up of a TV reconstruction of the ‘UFO defence’ that child-killer Epaminondas Korkoneas appears to be relying on, if the statements of his lawyer Alexis Kougias are to be believed:

This tragedy is the result… of an act by the policeman to fire into the air. The bullet ricocheted, we have an entry wound from above. It proves irrefutably that it was a ricochet.

Occupied London’s On The Greek Riots blog looks like it shall be returning to both the issue of Kougias’s involvement and the broader strokes of the defence offered by the killers of Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

ETA:

I believe this is video of Alexis Kougias outlining his client’s position on Greek television. Translations welcomed.

(Image slightly modified from one scavenged off the internet.)

The Hellenic Republic: home of child-killers, provocateurs and opportunists

The police are pigs and they deserve what they get. They don’t have the balls to go after the anarchists. Instead they pick on us kids, stop us in the streets all the time. It’s wrong to smash up shops, but I see it as a symbolic act to throw stones and rocks at the police because they’re bastards.

Andreas, 19, student protester (quoted in The Guardian)

The child-killers

The provocateurs:

The opportunists:

More info:

• NEA από όλο τον Κόσμο/Garizo (Greek blog)
• Newfoundland Road police station in Bristol attacked “in solidarity with Greek anarchists” (Bristol IndyMedia)
• On The Greek Riots (from-the-frontlines reports from across Greece via Occupied London)
• Ian Bone’s blog (lots of reports and comment from other sources)
• Twitter updates (using the #griots hashtag)
• Global Voices Online (aggregating citizen journalism)
• Open Anthropology (comment and perspectives from an anthropological perspective)
• TapesGoneLoose (music blog now helpfully translating eyewitness reports from the original Greek)
• Center for Strategic Anarchy (collecting links and info)
• Red Star Commando (more links etc)
• The Heat Of It All (ditto)
• подсъзнателното на бай далай/Baidalai (Bulgarian anarchist(?) blog – use Google Translate)
• GiaNt (Greek blog – use Google Translate)
• Vice Magazine (pseudy, but has photos from insurrectionists besieged in the National Technical University of Athens)
• Amor y Resistencia (American blog)
• LibCom (collection of articles and more on the Greek unrest)
• Troktiko (Greek blog with news and pictures – use Google Translate)
• Anarchofront (Russian blog with news and links – use Google Translate)
• Teacher Dude’s Grill & BBQ (English language teacher in Greece – excellent pics plus reportage from demos etc)
• Occupied School of Theatre, Salonica (Greek blog – use Google Translate)
• Stop Police Violence (detailing individual incidents of brutality from Greece)

(Edited to add more links and pics)

Criterion: April sentenced

April Bright, who was yesterday found guilty of the murder of Mohamoud Muse Hassan, was today sentenced to life, with a minimum tariff of twelve years.

She is eighteen years old.

Justice Roderick Evans, at Bristol Crown Court, said he hoped that, in handing down the minimum term of 12 years, it would deter other teenagers from equipping themselves with knives.

Sentencing Bright, the judge said there was no excuse for anyone to arm themselves with a knife.

“When you went out on carnival night you took with you a knife, that you told the jury was for your own protection,” he said.

“That is no possible justification for taking a knife.

“The carrying of knives is a matter of grave public concern and the presence of knives on our streets in clubs, pubs and in the hands of young people of your age so often leads to serious injury or in this case death.

“A slight, an insult, an inappropriate behaviour, real or imagined, so often leads to the production of a knife and to the consequences in this case.”

Bristol Evening Post

Criterion: April convicted

April Bright was convicted of the murder of Mohamoud Muse Hassan today. She has yet to be sentenced.

Croydon Tory Provo exposé!!!

Croydon’s education chief has dramatically quit after she admitted this morning to close associations with the Provisional IRA in the 1970s.

It is understood Maria Gatland was sentenced to death after revealing her role in the Irish terror organisation in a kiss and tell book published in the 1970s.

This morning, she admitted she was the author of To Take Arms: My Year with the Provisional IRA* in 1972 under her maiden name, Maria McGuire, and she resigned as the council’s cabinet member for education.

In the book’s prologue, she writes: “I agreed with the shooting of British soldiers and believed the more who were killed the better.

“I remember occasions where we heard late at night that a British soldier had been shot and seriously wounded in Belfast or Derry and we would hope that by the morning he would be dead.”

In the book she also tells how in 1971 she made a trip to Amsterdam to buy ammunition and arms for the Provisional IRA.

Following the sensational admission she has also been suspended from the council’s Conservative group pending an investigation.

Speaking to the Advertiser, she said: “I have resigned. I am not prepared to say anything more at this stage.”

Council leader Mike Fisher said Cllr Gatland had offered her resignation at a meeting with him and he had decided immediately to suspend her from the group while an investigation was carried out.

…Cryptic clues to Cllr Gatland’s past were given at Monday’s council meeting by Dr Peter Latham, one of the leaders of the trade union backed, Save Our Schools campaign.

Following up a written question on academies answered by Cllr Gatland, Dr Latham referred to her as Cllr McGuire.

Apologising quickly and suggesting he was a bit mixed up he said he was a devotee of Irish history and had been reading a book about a year with the provisional IRA which “you Cllr Gatland might have heard about as your are Irish.”

From the Croydon Advertiser.

(Tip o’ the titfer: Slugger O’ Toole.)

* Written with Colin Smith.

Pic of Maria Gatland trying out a dastardly new terror cycle taken from the Croydon LCC website.

Edited for typos and to add links & tags 3/12/08.

Gettin’ High #005: Patton

General George S Patton (actor George C Scott) looks up at the mirrored ceiling of his bordello-like hotel room having just been told he’s effectively being shitcanned for not keeping his gurt big gob shut, from the excellent Patton.

Happy birthday, Carl

Happy birthday, Carl!

Easy on the cake though, lad.

Inner city lullabys

Tonight the streets here in St. Paul’s have been filled with slowly perambulating clusters of young folk. They’ve been noisy but largely good natured, from what I’ve seen.

Apart from one incident: I think some chaps must have thrown a firework in the road, because there was a loud BANG, shortly followed by a not-so-young woman pushing a pram, who began bellowing at five or six boys who by this time were all shuffling off in the opposite direction from her as fast as their shuffling would carry them, hooded heads bowed, hands in pockets.

And bellow she did; as one might expect of a mother pushing home an infant whose sojourn has been interrupted by pyrotechnics exploding near her. Her bellowing appeared to take the form of a lecture in the Fireworks Code, liberally retooled for the twenty-first century. The more she bellowed, the more they shuffled. A straggler had to pass her to rejoin the group, and I suspect he may have made an inopportune remark, because the bellowing lifted louder, and the instruction in firework safety became ever more broadly interpreted. The specifics were a little tricky to identify, though she was rather clearer with the broader strokes, to wit, the gregarious young gentlemen in question were

Ras claats

and indeed,

Pussy claats

into the bargain.

Given that the young men continued their shuffling with only the faintest of defiant mumblings, and never whilst looking back, all as our stickler for appropriate rocket handling continued her presentation, I like to think that we all learned valuable lessons tonight.

–«– –•– –»–

Some while later, more noise drew me to the window. This time it seemed that two friends were having something of a heated discussion, an argument even; I’m sorry to report it appeared to be over money – like so many fallings out. Except that there was only one man there, and whilst it is entirely possible he was Bluetoothing into a phone, his swift gait, stooping posture and robotically swinging arms all hinted that this was not a member of the laptoperati.

You were wrong! That’s it… Friendship over. No more. You shouldn’t have done that. That was my fifty pence. You can make your money on that fifty pence. Friends no more.

And with that, he was gone, a two-legged test transmission in stereophonic sound, panning from right to left and sinking back into the night from which he had risen in just a few seconds.

–«– –•– –»–

No evening here could be complete, though, without a little mercantile hustle and bustle. The brandy-and-cigars of tonight’s feast of street scenes involved two gaunt fellows and their mute female friend discussing prices, routes and methods of transport in brisk fashion. I may be mistaken, but I think they flagged down a passing motorist, and appeared to negotiate a small fee to carry the trio to an informal all-night pharmacy where the smallest of the three held a store account. After two fifty pees (oh, how I wish neither of these was the fateful coin which destroyed a friendship) were passed over to the driver, our seekers finalised their order by consensus:

Well, I’ll pay for the brown, but what about stone?

We’ll get a stone on the way back.

You sure?

No problem, I’ll pay for that, I trust you.

And with that, all three – brooding cipher, affable guide and treasurer – slid into their chariot and were away, car driving off before even the doors were shut.

Good night, St. Paul’s.

Pic: Worth1000.com

Frayling at the edges

The other day I watched a programme in a series called Nightmare: The Birth Of Horror*, in which Christopher Frayling looked at the creation and success of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Today on Shadowlands I noticed a reference to “Sir Christopher Professor Frayling”.

This led me to have a quick look on Wikipedia to find out more about Frayling.

Apparently, when Frayling was knighted, he

chose “PERGE SCELUS MIHI DIEM PERFICIAS” as his motto, which translates as “Proceed, varlet, and let the day be rendered perfect for my benefit”. In more modern English, the phrase would say: “Go ahead, punk, make my day”.

* This programme also taught me the word ‘bibliogenesis’ (in Frayling’s words, “birth by books”).

Never fear, Super Coops is here!

The Bristol blogosphere’s favourite lackey of the Post is back at work!

Framed Documents #005: Hardware

In the post-apocalyptic near future world of Richard Stanley’s 2000AD-teefing SF flick Hardware, Jill (Stacey Travis) pulls out another Major Good Vibe reefersplifftypedoobie…

(Whilst pootling around the web reading up about the film and its director, I came upon a very interesting and long interview with Stanley conducted by Tom Huddleston. The Shok! incident is not mentioned, though.)

Forget-Me-Knot #004: Sadie

Contact Sadie

I’ve had this on my phone for months. Who the fuck is Sadie? I don’t think I’ve ever met a Sadie, let alone known a Sadie. Why “contact” her? Why not “speak to” or “call” or “visit”?

Most troubling.

Wikipediaphile: Split S

So it’s half four in the morning, I’ve got a documentary on in the background (People’s Century episode 6, ‘1927: Great Escape’), and I’m idly stroking threads of human knowledge…

Bonus Army > General MacArthur > Billy Mitchell > Hap Arnold > USAAF > P38 Lightning > Split S

The Split S is an air combat maneuver mostly used to disengage from combat. To execute a Split S, the pilot half-rolls his aircraft inverted and executes a descending half-loop, resulting in level flight in the exact opposite direction at a lower altitude.

So now you know.

Is Marc Cooper the new William Boot?

My Twitter has a new follower, one Marc ‘Coops’ Cooper*.

Coops appears to be a scoophound for local rag the Bristol Evening Post.

Coops has filed an astonishing seven stories on his Twitter in just under three months, including thrillers such as

Sorting out stories from paper to web, scratching my, not sure if i liked the new Indiana Jones film i saw last night

Hatching a plan to avoid sitting in traffic in my car twice a day. It really gets me down. How can I escape Bristol traffic hell???

and

I reckon life’s too short to worry, except when it comes to family. What to do?

He even manages to squeeze in four mentions for the Post (one slightly oblique)!

Coops is an anagram of Scoop. Need I say more?

* Amended 29/5/9 from @BristolCoops to @CoopsMarc

“If you see him, punch him in the face for me”: Scratcher a rent non-paying little mummy’s boy!

There’s a great little piece in English language Andalucian newspaper The Olive Tree about Mark Thatcher facing eviction from his Spanish bolthole in the wake of Fighting Mann’s EG coup trial:

MARK THATCHER is hiding out in a gated community on the Ronda-San Pedro road in fear of being kidnapped.

He fears an international snatch squad has been ordered to extradite him to Equatorial Guinea to face trial in an overthrow plot, he allegedly helped to fund.

This week fellow plot leader Simon Mann was found guilty and sentenced to 34 years in jail.

The son of former UK PM Margaret Thatcher rarely leaves his £3million bolthole in exclusive El Madronal, which has round-the-clock security.

He has installed a series of high-tech security systems in the home, that is owned by a former school friend Stephen Humberstone.

But now his days are numbered after Humberstone ordered him to leave the home he has rented since 2005 over unpaid bills.

Claiming he is three months in arrears to the tune of over 20,000 euros, Mr. Humberstone this week reportedly plans to serve court papers on him via the San Pedro courts.

“I want him off my property as soon as possible. If you see him, punch him in the face for me.

“I have absolutely no idea why a man as wealthy as him, who can still drive a Porsche, cannot pay his rent.

“All I can think is that he has no money. After talking to Mark I get the feeling he is receiving an allowance from his elderly mother.

“He always likes to pay in cash and even though the villa had maximum security he has fitted even more alarm systems. That shows how scared he is because he is a nasty piece of work and he is not liked.

“Despite all this he can still afford a driver and a cook – so why can he not pay his rent?”

Sir Mark, 54, who is estimated to be worth £64million, denies that he is behind in his rent and insists he has received nothing in writing from his landlord.

The piece goes on to talk about Scratcher’s fears of being kidnapped and sent to Equatorial Guinea to face trial, a theme which TOP covers in salacious detail:

Alarmingly for Thatcher there are an estimated 120 international mafia gangs operating on the Costa del Sol, each capable of undertaking kidnap plots.

In 2005 there were a reported 50 plus kidnappings and “settling of accounts” on the coast.

In 2004 a Lithuanian gang kidnapped British businessman Frank Capa in broad daylight on the Ronda-San Pedro road.

The gang released him after nine days when the family paid a reported £1m
ransom.

A police source told the Olive Press: “There are quite a few groups of former soldiers from the Eastern Bloc, highly-trained with no money, and prepared to carry out these sort of crimes.

“There have been an alarming number of kidnappings over the last few years, most of them going unreported.”

Fret not, Scratcher! I’m sure you’ll be fine!

EG coup blog posts:

• Fighting Mann’s lawyer cries Guinea foul over coup extradition
• Fighting Mann: A “mere instrument” or a total tool?
• Fighting Mann drops Scratcher in the shit
• Fighting Mann earns 34 years
• Sugaring Spicer: the sensitive side of a professional gun

Anonymous scribbler vs national media combine

“Never pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrelful…”

(Judge Phelan in The Wire)

• Bristol Graffiti on the Mail’s Banksy story
• Ian Bone on the same
• And ditto TBB