I often put on my snorkel parka for a criminal reason

Laila Cunningham, Reform UK's London mayor candidate stated that no one should cover their face in an open society. She added: “It has to be assumed that if you’re hiding your face, you’re hiding it for a criminal reason.”

Letter to the Editor

Dear Sir, I write most strongly to protest at the government's plans to re-enlist ex-soldiers up to the age of 65 back into the army should there be an International Crisis such an invasion of Greenland.  During the last war I was told that I was too old to fight despite being only 54.  

This was a bitter blow to my personal pride at the time but instead of drafting us into the regular army, the government set up a special unit known as the Local Defence Volunteers (later the Home Guard) specifically for gentlemen such as myself who were not quite spry enough for normal combat situations because they might need to be excused at a vital moment or had signs of early onset dementia such as continuously shouting that "they don't like it up 'em" at inappropriate moments or because they had important business activities to perform such as supplying essential supplies, managing a bank or running the local undertakers.  I would remind you that as Mr Edwin Starr said undertaking is a very important business sector during armed hostilities.  I feel very strongly that such a force if brought into being again could be far more use to His Majesty than drafting important local figures such as myself directly into the regular army particularly since I unfortunately now have considerable mobility issues which have prevented me actively participating in the renovation of Frambourne-on-Sea pier.  Indeed, I hardly get out at all since the Reverend Timothy Farthing invited me to join the invisible choir.  I hasten to add however, that I did indeed serve in the regular army during the Great War and was deployed to France in 1919.  

I've heard that modern warfare is much more about pressing buttons than physical dexterity but I can't see, for example, the King's younger brother flying a drone let alone a helicopter again given his great difficulty in seeing anything untoward going on around him.  Even if he says it is no sweat, I do not think It is a good idea.  Therefore I propose that the time has come for our Prime Minister to consider a relaunch of the Local Defence Volunteer force.

Yours sincerely,

Capt. George Mainwaring (141)

St Aldhelm's Church Cemetery 

Walmington-on-Sea 

 

When Robert Jenrick escaped across county lines

Lawmakers should not be Flyposters

Today I am most amused by Kemi sacking Robert Jenrick.  I tried to grass his for fly posting ages ago but he escaped across county lines like in a Western.  He really is one of the worst poo stirrers in the Conservatives ... Or was...

On Thu, 28 Aug 2025 at 11:01, Juliet Bravo PC2892

Juliet Bravo wrote:

Edmund,

Thank you for your Online crime report to Nottinghamshire Police re the post on Robert Jenrick of him raising a Union Jack flag.

There are no laws which say this countries flag cannot be flown. If the relevant council have an issue with where this flag was erected, this is for them to deal.

I have viewed the post and there are no criminal offences for Police to deal.

It is not flyposting as you suggest. Flyposting is pasting / sticking flyers to walls, buildings etc and you could not report this from a different county by seeing a post on Social media, the victim which would be the council for the area would have to report this. Flags cannot be flyposted and this is not illegal.

Should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards,

Juliet Bravo

Pc2892 

Nottinghamshire Police

Contact Resolution & Incident Management, Rota 4 – Force Control Room, Remote Investigations,Contact Management

Tel : 999 Emergency number / 101 Nottinghamshire Police Non Emergency number 

Sent: Me

To: Juliet Bravo 

Subject: Re: Nottinghamshire Police - b79edeb0-83ef-11f0-bec5-8188720fb729

Hello

It surely is flyposting since the position of the government is that all flags constitute advertising and the permission of the Highway Authority must be gained before hanging a flag on the road?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/flying-flags-a-plain-english-guide/flying-flags-a-plain-english-guide

Thank you

Anthony Miller 

On Friday 29 August 2025 at 07:14:31 BST, Juliet Bravo PC2892 wrote:

Anthony,

It isn’t, I don’t know what more I can say.

As stated below, there are no criminal offences.

If the local council have an issue with it, then it for them to deal.

You , as a person living in another county also cannot report this as per crime recording rules, if there were a crime and is isn’t.

Also, as I stated it is not a criminal offence to fly flags of the UK in the UK.

I will not be answering anymore emails as I have explained now in two emails that this is not a criminal offence and there is nothing for Police to deal.

Regards,

Juliet Bravo

Pc2892 

Me to Juliet Bravo:

I'm pretty sure that if I started putting posters on lamposts I'd be prosecuted 

no matter if I used cable ties or adhesive

like the many people who own a cat called fluffy

https://pearshapedcomedy.com/hansard.html

However, I was previously unaware that one could avoid justice by simply crossing County lines like in a Western.  

Thank you for this useful information

Anthony Miller

The Lusitania Experience

From its grand construction to its tragic end, this immersive journey brings the legend to life with stunning high-tech visuals, artefacts and unforgettable AR & VR storytelling.  

Relive being hit by a torpedo on 7 May 1915 at ten past two, 11 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale. 

It may sound frightening, but remember that as my mother used to say ..."if you survive something then it's not a disaster - it's an experience".  

So imagine you were one of the 767 survivors and not one of the 1193 who perished and you'll have the time of your life experiencing other people's deaths.  After all, there's always someone worse off than yourself so cheer yourself up with some sentimental voyerism about the people who's lost lives caused Woodrow Wilson to eventually enter the First World War.  Remember yesterday's disaster is tomorrow's virtual reality experience, marketing opportunity and gift shop.

Young explorers can create their own masterpieces at drawing stations.  Imagine you are Admiral Hugo von Pohl waging a U-boat campaign and see how many passenger liners you can sink.  Practice causing havoc not just across the continent of Europe but also on the high seas in an attempt to scupper shipping.

Enjoy our U-20 experience.  It's like a U-2 concert but in a smaller space.  Then play at being  Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger trying to explain to Count Bernsdorff trying to explain to the Kaiser why you've just sunk what was obviously a passenger liner after telling the British Government you wouldn't stoop to that sort of thing only the other day.  Brainstorm hilarious excuses with your friends such as "we thought it was secretly carrying weapons".  And write in the margins of angry letters from Woodrow Wilson that "this is the most insolent thing in tone and bearing that I have had to read since the Japanese note last August."

Explore life aboard the Lusitania from stunning recreations of the most lavish spaces to harsh realities of below deck life. From the first-class dining room to the third class toilets.  Experience what it's like to pour salt water over furniture first hand and see what things were like for unreal using a virtual headset that you probably could have used at home for half the price because it's a lot cheaper than building physical sets.  

You'll completely forget that you're in a small warehouse on the south of the river Thames that no one knows what to do with because it stands on poisoned land occupied by an old gassworks.  Imagine seeing the Lusitania magestically floating down the Thames even though she sailed from Liverpool.  No point in mounting an experience there as they aren't silly enough or rich enough to buy our overpriced tickets.  

Remember it's a day out.  Like wandering aimlessly round a shopping centre but without having to make decisions to spend money because you already paid.

Experience the suffocation induced by the submersion of the mouth and nose in a liquid that many aboard Lusitania would have experienced by experiencing our new Waterboarding experience.  Don't be scared, it may feel like dying but all our waterboarders have been highly trained by the best at in the business at the technique at a US Army base [Note: Entry to the Lusitania Experience also includes Free Entry to the Guantanamo Bay experience].

See the many articles never recovered from the seabed because the wreck is 93m underwater and you need to use mixed gasses and the wrek is covered in depth charges, hedgehog mines, fishing nets and sediment.  No watches, no plates, no jewlery, no cups and saucers, no clothes and no souveniers.  There's literally nothing to see here!

Note : The VR experience may contain some flashes at the point where the torpedo hits the ship and during the secondary explosion in the engine room which may trigger epileptic seizures.

If Britain was invaded...

 "If Britain was invaded and, in one day, about 8,000 Brits were murdered, mutilated, raped, and kidnapped near London, what would you do?"

Same as last time.  Make a tapestry.

The two Dons

The Trump Twins today have offered to invade Greenland.  "Greenland didn't know it wants to be invaded by America but it does... By a lot.  If we don't invade then it's sure that Russia or China will invade even though they've never said they were going to.  Therefore we kindly offer to invade first to stop them being invaded.  We plan to offer lots of other countries our protection too in order to prevent them being invaded".  The two Dons say they think that International Law has had it's day and a new doctrine is needed which will be called the DonDonroe doctrine in which countries extort whatever they want from each other by offering protection services.  They say their long term plan is to replace the United Nations with a new organisation which like Your Party doesn't have a name yet, although popularly mooted names include "The Bigly Firm" or "Our Thing" which will be translated into Italian to help it appeal to people from the old country.  The Trumps say it is an offer you literally can't refuse.

Meanwhile, Don brothers' enforcer "mad" JD Vance said "the people of Greenland are going to have self-determination.  We hope that they choose to partner with the United States, because we're the only nation on Earth that will respect their sovereignty and respect their security.  We would hate for something bad to happen to Greenland and it can happen so easily.  It would be very bad if they fell into the hands of someone unscrupulous. We've put a lot of work into training our police to work in their harsh weather conditions by setting up a special unit called ICE."

The Phantom of the Trump Center

 

Sing once again with me

Our strange duet

My power over you

Grows stronger yet

And though you turn from me

To glance behind

The Phantom of the fascism is there

Inside your mind

Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points II

Wilson's 14 Points II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants 
 

Apparently the "Five Eyes" have already stopped sharing Carribbean intelligence with the US Government.  So we'll stuffed if Dr No starts his shenanigans again...

Isolation

 Presidential Actions

Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States

Presidential Memoranda

January 7, 2026

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby direct:

Section 1.  Purpose.  (a)  On February 4, 2025, I issued Executive Order 14199 (Withdrawing the United States from and Ending Funding to Certain United Nations Organizations and Reviewing United States Support to All International Organizations).  That Executive Order directed the Secretary of State, in consultation with the United States Representative to the United Nations, to conduct a review of all international intergovernmental organizations of which the United States is a member and provides any type of funding or other support, and all conventions and treaties to which the United States is a party, to determine which organizations, conventions, and treaties are contrary to the interests of the United States.  The Secretary of State has reported his findings as required by Executive Order 14199.

(b)  I have considered the Secretary of State’s report and, after deliberating with my Cabinet, have determined that it is contrary to the interests of the United States to remain a member of, participate in, or otherwise provide support to the organizations listed in section 2 of this memorandum. 

(c)  Consistent with Executive Order 14199 and pursuant to the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby direct all executive departments and agencies (agencies) to take immediate steps to effectuate the withdrawal of the United States from the organizations listed in section 2 of this memorandum as soon as possible.  For United Nations entities, withdrawal means ceasing participation in or funding to those entities to the extent permitted by law.

(d)  My review of further findings of the Secretary of State remains ongoing.

Sec. 2.  Organizations from Which the United States Shall Withdraw.  (a)  Non-United Nations Organizations:

(i)       24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact;

(ii)      Colombo Plan Council;

(iii)     Commission for Environmental Cooperation;

(iv)      Education Cannot Wait;

(v)       European Centre of Excellence for Countering

Hybrid Threats;

(vi)      Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories;

(vii)     Freedom Online Coalition;

(viii)    Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund;

(ix)      Global Counterterrorism Forum;

(x)       Global Forum on Cyber Expertise;

(xi)      Global Forum on Migration and Development;

(xii)     Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research;

(xiii)    Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals, and Sustainable Development;

(xiv)     Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change;

(xv)      Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services;

(xvi)     International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property;

(xvii)    International Cotton Advisory Committee;

(xviii)   International Development Law Organization;

(xix)     International Energy Forum;

(xx)      International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies;

(xxi)     International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance;

(xxii)    International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law;

(xxiii)   International Lead and Zinc Study Group;

(xxiv)    International Renewable Energy Agency;

(xxv)     International Solar Alliance;

(xxvi)    International Tropical Timber Organization;

(xxvii)   International Union for Conservation of Nature;

(xxviii)  Pan American Institute of Geography and History;

(xxix)    Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation;

(xxx)     Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combatting Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia;

(xxxi)    Regional Cooperation Council;

(xxxii)   Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century;

(xxxiii)  Science and Technology Center in Ukraine;

(xxxiv)   Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme; and

(xxxv)    Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.

(b)  United Nations (UN) Organizations:

(i)       Department of Economic and Social Affairs;

(ii)      UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) — Economic Commission for Africa;

(iii)     ECOSOC — Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean;

(iv)      ECOSOC — Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific;

(v)       ECOSOC — Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia;

(vi)      International Law Commission;

(vii)     International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals;

(viii)    International Trade Centre;

(ix)      Office of the Special Adviser on Africa;

(x)       Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict;

(xi)      Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict;

(xii)     Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children;

(xiii)    Peacebuilding Commission;

(xiv)     Peacebuilding Fund;

(xv)      Permanent Forum on People of African Descent;

(xvi)     UN Alliance of Civilizations;

(xvii)    UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries;

(xviii)   UN Conference on Trade and Development;

(xix)     UN Democracy Fund;

(xx)      UN Energy;

(xxi)     UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women;

(xxii)    UN Framework Convention on Climate Change;

(xxiii)   UN Human Settlements Programme;

(xxiv)    UN Institute for Training and Research;

(xxv)     UN Oceans;

(xxvi)    UN Population Fund;

(xxvii)   UN Register of Conventional Arms;

(xxviii)  UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination;

(xxix)    UN System Staff College;

(xxx)     UN Water; and

(xxxi)    UN University.

Has anyone tried just not coming up with shit policies that everyone hates in the first place?

 

Think you voted the Tories out?

Dear Anthony,

Thank you for contacting me about legislative changes on cumulative disruption in the Crime and Policing Bill.

I fully and unequivocally support the right to peaceful protest, including on issues in the Middle East. However, I am afraid that in recent times we have seen repeated protests which have left people feeling unsafe, intimidated and scared to leave their homes.

It is right that the impact of the cumulative disruption caused by protests is considered by the authorities. However, it is important that we get the measure right, which is why Conservative Lords have put forward an amendment to replace the reference to a geographical area in the definition of relevant cumulative disruption with that of a subject area. This is to ensure that the police consider the context of the content of the protest or assembly when deciding whether to impose conditions on it, as opposed to solely considering the location. 

Ultimately, I believe it is appropriate to give authorities greater discretion and foresight in managing public order, ensuring that overlapping events are appropriately regulated to minimise community impact.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.

 

Kind regards,

Chris

..

Chris Philp MP

Rt Hon Member of  Parliament for Croydon South

Come back Mr Chamberlain, all is forgiven

This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, we would expect to be fully appraised of the reasons for this fast moving and developing situation.

I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is upholding International Law by saying that we don't know because we're not experts.

You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has had to be reframed more ambiguously. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done and that would have been more successful than continuing to invite Herr Hitler on lavish state visits.

Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland, but I can't say more than that.

The proposals were never shown to the Poles, nor to us, and, although they were announced in a German broadcast on Thursday night, Hitler did not wait to hear comments on them so we did not offer any. His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. If only we could think of some way to stop him but there is none so we will just suck it up.  We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace. The situation in which no word given by Germany's ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel themselves safe has become par for the course. 

And now that we have resolved to do nothing, I know that you will all play your part with calmness and courage in also doing nothing at all.

He's not in Venezuela

 

Well, no one's going to exactly miss Maudro and his regime but the casus belli of Trump's new war - narco terrorism? - is flimsier than a piece of Andrex.  It's interesting that he says the US is now going to run Venezuela as going to war used to be a decision that could only be made by Congress.  Also regime change is an illegal war aim... Keir Starmer is slithering round as usual trying to avoid saying that the US attack on Venezuela is anything other than a flagrant breach of international law.  I mean, who ever heard of narco-terrorism?  Well, actually it seems the term was coined by United States Attorney General William Barr who accused Maudro of it... Although what it consists of I'm not sure? Nose powder of mass destruction?  Surely hardly an issue going to war over?  Previous the US Justice Department put a huge bounty on Maduro leading to people teasing them that "I think he's in Venezuela".  Well, he's not any longer...

I wonder what the MAGA base will make of their new illegal war and colony?  This has been on the horizon for a long time with the US making gruesome unprovoked attacks on shipping.  I guess with Canada and Greenland not turning out to be pushovers, Trump went for the weediest child with the least friends in the class...

I see the usual US apologists are abroad telling us International Law never really existed despite the fact modern international law is a US invention born out of Woodrow Wilson's 14 points.  And they certainly made a big song and dance about it in 1945...

Keir Starmer of course has the spine of a jellyfish 🪼 and is all "we need to see all the facts".  And of course there's the classic "it's not for me as a political to interpret International Law".  Top tip: that's what you have an Attorney General for.

In case anyone's still in doubt that it's all about oil, Mr Eyeshadow spells it out for you...

The president offered multiple off ramps, but was very clear throughout this process: the drug trafficking must stop, and the stolen oil must be returned to the United States. Maduro is the newest person to find out that President Trump means what he says.

Kudos to our brave… pic.twitter.com/b1fqkdbB4x

— JD Vance (@JDVance) January 3, 2026

Tarrifs

I was just sitting on my golden toilet the other day when I started to wonder what happened to Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" Tarrifs.  After a stock market meltdown in May and a recalibration of policy with reality .... It seems Donald has backed down from his original position of hitting everyone with like 25-50% and things have settled down now at 10->15% for most countries except those who are on the US Naughty Step like China, Iraq and Iran...

According to the Trump Administration's United States Trade Representative (USTR)  the tariffs "are calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the U.S. and each of our trading partners", aiming to "drive bilateral trade deficits to zero" which came as news to Australia which has a baseline tariff of 10% despite the US running a trade surplus.  

Reuters Reported on November 14th that Trump on Friday rolled back tariffs on over 200 food products, including coffee, beef, bananas and orange juice, in order to head off inflation and many tarrifs are not yet in full effect (see here).  Other factors such as the current orders looking like they may be struck down by the Supreme Court as executive overreach some time soon may be keeping a lid on things... and it's hard to get a full picture of the US economy because of the government shutdown a few months back but ... things don't seem to be as awful as predicted... partially because Trump has chickened out.  Although small businesses don't seem that happy...

Inequality Street

 

When I was a child we were brought up not to "accept sweets off strangers" so it's always interesting at Christmas to observe the Royal Family doing the exact opposite.  This isn't a one off and I've often wondered what becomes of these gifts.  I kind of used to imagine that for security reasons MI5 would quietly and swiftly whisk any boxes of sweets or chocolates off to some DSTL laboratory like Porton Down where lots of men in white biohazard suits would spend hours analysing them for traces of novichok, anthrax or cyanide before destroying them in a hospital waste incinerator for good measure... as the position of food taster seems to have gone out of fashion. 

That said apparently President Obama definitely had a food taster so they haven't died out completely (occupational hazard?) but.... then again according to a policy published on the Royal Family website Family members are indeed allowed to have a good chow down on these gifts... so that they can come to learn what Sainsbury's food tastes like as opposed to just Fortum and Mason and M&S.

They are also allowed to give them to charity which raises the spector of some foodbank customer somewhere just keeling over because they've scoffed a box of Quality Street containing a deadly nerve agent... but personally I still reckon they go to a DSTL laboratory.... which would kind of make giving the Royal Family children sweets a next level pointless gesture...

Who'd have ever thought that ...

...one day taking up smoking would be cheaper than posting letters?

 

Blue Origin's Dress Code

Does anyone know why passengers on Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin Amazon rocket have to wear a blue uniform?  Why can't they just wear their own clothes?  I was just about to pay £235,000 for a trip into space but Bezos started telling me that I needed to wear some shit Spandex spacesuit.  "Fuck off, mate," I said.  "There's nothing wrong with a rugby top and jeans.  I'm not going into space looking like Jimmy Savile? Can we compromise on a business suit?". "No," he replied.  Honestly you don't see this on Star Trek ... So anyway I decided to stay home.  But it just goes to show Prime membership gets you nothing....
 

Want to change a political policy? Threaten to top yourself...

It seems that threatening to starve yourself to death is back in fashion as a method of changing government policy.  Several Palestine Action protesters on remand have taken to hunger strikes in order to challenge the government for not letting them out on bail and various other demands that are rather convoluted.  The government says it can do nothing due to the separation of powers.  However, I seem to remember that when the Suffragettes went on hunger strikes the Asquith government responded with the "Cat and Mouse Act" (see here) which allowed people who were starving themselves out of prison so that they could be rearrested after they'd had a good chowdown.... If the government could catch them.  It was later repealed by section 54(2) of, and Part I of the Fourth Schedule to, the Prison Act 1952 but presumably could be activated again. 

Historically hunger strikes have seldom been politically effective - although the Suffragettes got lots of publicity out of the horrors of force feeding.  You'd think force feeding would have died out but apparently many of the Guantanamo Bay detainees were force fed during waves of multiple hunger strikes.  This was even filmed and there was a court case about trying to get the tapes released.  Richard Reid tried it at one point but was also force fed by the US.  Bobby Sands starving himself to death never endeared me to his cause.  I'm still with Mrs Thatcher on that one - more fool you.  The ANC toyed with hunger strikes as a tactic but Nelson Mandela called it off because he didn't see the point.  The most famous proponent of the tactic was Ghandi who used to use the tactic as part of his philosophy of Ahimsa (non violent direct action) but even Ghandi stopped at approximately 21 days max ... and effectively used it as a political stunt without actually endangering his own life.

So my advice is it's Christmas so ... Have a break, have a KitKat.

In other news the farmers have bullied the government into raising the inheritance tax threshold by threatening to top themselves ... so maybe there's something in this emotional blackmail thing ... Don't like a policy? Threaten to top yourself.

Not Only ... But Also... MI5

Yesterday I was unfriended by someone on Facebook.  I questioned the narrative generally wheeled on in articles such as this that all the BBC's destruction of archive material was accidental.  I said we know that this is not entirely the case.  The evidence I presented comes from the late Harry Thompson's biography of Peter Cook (see here).  This recalls Peter Cook discovering the BBC was planning to destroy the master tapes of "Not Only... But Also" and writing to them pleading for them not to.  He even offered to replace the video tapes with blanks and store the originals at his own expense but the BBC bluntly refused stating this was against policy and destroyed them anyway.  

I have since depersonalised this post to remove that contemporaneous discussion as it isn't really the point I was trying to make and if the BBC can delete embarrassing material so can I... so astute readers may notice that this page has been rewritten several times and been airbrushed better than one of Joseph Stalin's photos.  

I'm still not sure what ethical boundaries my original comments crossed that caused him to unfriend me apart from "spreading conspiracy theories" but in my defence I would say that the central claim that Peter Cook and Dudley Moore had a conversation with the BBC protesting that their tapes were scheduled for deletion is fairly well sourced.  However, I'm not a professional historian.  I do remember from GCSE history (which is where my education level ends) that you should have at least 2 primary  sources to stand something up ... Not just one secondary one and I think Harry Thompson spent a ridiculous amount of time researching what actually happened here and still couldn't get to the bottom of it perhaps because there's nothing to find but shadows...  Is it then irresponsible to speculate on it ?  Perhaps my acquaintance is right and it is so here are my mad "conspiracy theories" on my blog where they cannot offend anyone because I largely talk to myself here and most of the protagonists are dead.  I find myself to be most agreeable when taking to myself but strangely however to benefit humanity however much I plan, yet everybody says I am a disagreeable man?  But anyway just keep in mind that some of the below may be bollocks.

The central story about Peter Cook is almost certainly true but it is still only one incident in one book and perhaps we shouldn't read too much into it but it shows a case where an author and performer who clearly shared the copyright with the BBC wrote to them and literally begged them not to destroy the only existing copies of his performance and the BBC callously ignored his pleas.  Why? Was it because Equity feared that repeats would destroy work for new actors?  Was it a policy?  Ironically I can't tell you the exact story because it's in a 500 page book that I sent to the Saint Christopher's Charity Shop at the end of last year because I didn't regard it as of enough cultural value to hang onto but copies are out there somewhere for some keen archivist to recover.  

Jimmy Gilbert and his quality combover

In the light of considerable sustained interest in this page by the kind of people who think there is no surviving BBC TV footage of WWII because the BBC deleted it to hide coded wartime messages, I got hold of the digital version of Harry's book.  It actually opens with the story of the tape wiping which may be why I remember it so vividly.  Scanning it closer for the word "wipe" I found a bit further in where Jimmy Gilbert (then Head of Comedy) explains how the BBC's myopic wiping policy for Comedy at the end of the 60s actually worked in practice:

"The Head of Comedy simply didn't know anything about tape retention.  When I was head, Bob Galbraith, who was my organiser, used to come in with these print outs, and he would say "We're only allowed to keep eighty shows, so I'm suggesting we have the first and last of this and the first and last of that." I believe the thinking was, in a hundred years time you'll at least get a flavour.  But the first and last of every series meant absolutely nothing".

The Gnomes of Dulwich might concur with this sentiment if they hadn't been completely exterminated.  It's hard to tell but it may be that what Gilbert is saying here is that given an invidious choice, it made more sense to him to jettison entire series and serials than to preserve a collection of "orphan" episodes.  It's also pretty amazing how he can abjure all responsibility whilst claiming to have been in a meeting discussing the subject.  It may have been the last subject on the agenda but... There used to be a joke that the BBC TV Centre was a circular building to reduce the chances of executives being stabbed in the back... Well, certainly the blame seems to go round in circles...  

The late Harry Thompson
with one of his girlfriends

In the article linked to above contemporaneous with the release of his biography of Peter Cook, Harry mocks the BBC for having the cheek to call their VHS "The Best of ... What's left of" when it's pretty much the only extant material, most of which was illegally filmed live off his own TV by the Producer who feared his creations being wiped... As indeed they were.  "That's why the so-called classic scenes from the series are the only ones you ever see," said Mr Thompson, "It's the only ones they've got." That's all there is, there isn't any more... as Ethel Barrymore used to say.

The generally accepted view is that all this destruction was accidental and no doubt much of it was.  Videotape was expensive and reusable so many tapes were simply reused.  The BBC's website puts the cost of a Quadruplex 2 inch tape in the late 1950s shortly after it was invented at ~£2000 a reel inflation adjusted for today.  However, there were still political decisions to be made about what was and was not important.  And £2000 was probably still only 5% at most of most program's budget so how much was this policy of recycling tape like scenery really about the money even if we factor in storage costs?  That said, to an accountant 5% is ... 5%.  It's hard to know what program budgets were in the 1970s but Jon Pertwee claimed to be on £350 an episode some time in the 70s.  If the Quadruplex tape's cost was still the same as when it was invented - reverse inflation adjusting it would give £182 in 1973 ... Half of Pertwee's salary. 

Frank Bough and his quality combover

So I think my 5% guess is reasonable.... As there was no FOI in those days it's hard to know what people were on unless they leaked the info.  Recently Selina Scott claimed that at the start of Breakfast Television in 1983 she was on £50,000 a year (a figure so shocking it was discussed in Parliament) whilst Frank Bough was on £200,000 (a figure that wasn't shocking because he had a combover and wasn't a bird).  Colin Baker is quoted as once saying he was on £1000 an episode in 1986 but I can't source this.  Peter Purves said on a DVD commentary somewhere that he was on £50-60 an episode around 1966 with Hartnell believed to be on about £300 an episode by the end although we don't have that latter figure from the horse's mouth.  The Telegraph (which like a broken clock is sometimes right twice a day) claimed that recordings were ranked on a scale of A to E and the responsibility of deciding what to tape over was made by individual producers.  But someone still had to come up with the ranking system and categorise things.  That's a political decision not just a technocratic one...? 

Christmas Tree 🌲 

Now going off on a bit of a mad tangent we do also know that despite it's much vaunted independence from the government that from the late 1930s until 1984, MI5 stationed an intelligence officer (latterly Ronnie Stonham) at the BBC to vet editorial applicants because this was revealed by a 1985 Observer investigation. The personnel records of anyone suspicious were stamped with a distinctively shaped green upward-facing arrow resembling a Christmas tree.  Barry Letts who had strong left leaning political credentials expressed some astonishment of having ever made it through such a vetting process.  Many journalists were blacklisted.  Given the BBC was at the time probably the most powerful media organisation in the country by a long chalk it would be a bit surprising if there wasn't some such arrangement but... well... okay... now then now then now then ... Now, it's a bit of a leap to say from this that the BBC had a deliberate policy of deleting potentially embarrassing material but it's not a conspiracy theory to suggest that MI5 was at the BBC to shape policy and that by extension the policy of what to select for deletion and preservation may have been shaped in some way by such an arrangement.  For example Thompson said that many of the "Not Only... But Also ..." tapes were reused for News because it was seen as a priority to save every news item ... even local news.  We know News was where vetting was at it's most active and what the government was most interested in so it may be this priority was set or influenced by ...

The purpose of vetting is to create thought conformity.  Therefore it may be that the fact that the BBC erased 60 to 70 percent of it's own archive over 30 years is not an accident or a conspiracy but a classic example of Groupthink.  This is normal, so it must be sane.  "Jimmy Gilbert, head of comedy at the time said there was no opposition to the order," recalled Thompson... even though there was.  It was ignored.  Indeed, however you spin it.... in  the case of "Not Only ... But Also..." the policy does appear to have been directly challenged which does make the destruction of the material apparently for it's own sake to comply with "a policy" a deliberate and conscious decision and not just a case of "just following orders" ... at least on this one documented occasion.

One characteristic of Groupthink is the existence of "Mindguards".  Persons who act as self-appointed censors to hide problematic information from the group.  Much like me being ejected from a Facebook conversation half way through and becoming completely confused by what was said and the sudden ostracisation. No one told me what the problem was, I was just cut dead.  The explanation I was given for my ejection was "persnicketiness" - that I was putting too much emphasis on "minor details".  That's one way of looking at it.  Another is I was rejected by the group because my ideas did not meet with the group's need to reach a unanimous consensus.  I guess we're all guilty of blocking people on social media who we find annoying... but there is a downside to this.  We create our own echo chambers...

Harold Wilson using his pipe as a prop

One criticism of conspiracy theories is that they are unrealistic because real conspiracies are actually hard to conceal and frequently leak information.  How then did the BBC manage to keep it's Christmas Tree Files secret for 50 years?  And did the BBC having a secret vetting system stop being a conspiracy theory when it was found to be true?  I joked that the BBC had deleted "Not Only ... But Also..." on some kind of instruction from Harold Wilson.  This didn't happen but what did happen is that straight after resigning as Prime Minister, Harold Wilson went into TV Presenting with the help of David Frost.  He hosted some of the worst chat shows in history.  Is this what was taped over Not Only but Also ...? During Christmas 1978, Wilson appeared on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special.  Wilson's TV career was a bit of as a disaster as his dementia prevented him interacting with enough mental agility - his best output "A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers" for Yorkshire TV is still worth a watch ... as it was prerecorded Frost & Wilson were able to work around the dementia problems.  But anyway, the point is there was a bit of a revolving door between the government and the BBC at the time... and at the end of the day the various board members are political appointees... So Wilson may not have had the motive or opportunity but we can place him at the scene of the crime - the BBC Comedy Department during the late 1970s.  

A cyberman who was deleted

One of the things that makes conspiracy theories so popular with their consumers is that they are emotionally satisfying.  If we are to believe Sue Malden's official BBC account of the archive gaps, video tapes were simply bunged after 3 years into a blanking machine having been stamped only with three words "No Further Interest".  At least if there was a conspiracy it would suggest someone cared about archiving and preserving the past even if they made the wrong decisions.  Actually, if the truth is simply no one was interested - no one cared at all - that's actually more shocking.  Then again, Sue tells us that everything was recorded so it must be out there somewhere.  This isn't true.  Almost all the original 60s black and white Dr Who that exist ...only exist because film prints were made for overseas sale.  At the end of their life they were either returned to BBC Enterprises to be destroyed or destroyed by local broadcasters who were required to provide a "certificate of destruction".  Most of the remaining episodes that still exist today ... exist only because of localised disorganisation at purchasing TV networks.  These avenues of recovery have been almost completely exhausted now which is why the BBC is in seemingly endless negotiations with "private collectors" - people who either half inched the films instead of throwing them in the bin, picked them up at a jumble sale or found they'd fallen off the back of a lorry. 

 

An Expensive Gloat

Unfortunately if you have something unique it is more or less priceless so there are financial issues in getting hold of these telefilms.  There's also the fact that many of the film collectors are now so old that they've literally forgotten what they own due to various forms of dementia... There's also the question of whether not sharing your collection with someone is a power trip.  Why would you just sit on an archeological discovery when... ?  Taxes the mind... There's also ethical issues raised by the fact that these telefilms which should have been destroyed and were rescued by various dumpster divers actually belong to them or ...

Wiping the videotapes of "Not Only... But Also" might be classed as a stupid decision .  Wiping the master tapes and physically destroying the telefilms of Doctor Who simply to stop anyone else watching them is such next level incompetence, it's hard to believe there was not some degree of malice.  The peak of the BBC's wiping is said to have been reached in the late 60s/early 70s when the launch of BBC2 doubled the number of videotapes needed overnight... This is why there are bizarrely more extant William Hartnell Dr Who episodes than Patrick Troughton... For anyone wanting to know the minutiae of Dr Who mastertape wiping this is recorded in painstaking detail in Andrew Molesworth's book "Wiped!".  67 and 69 were peak years but the BBC were merrily blanking away Pertwee's stuff right up till 76.  It also recalls all the known telefilm copies and when they were made so if you have a spare decade you can probably work out what might possibly turn up if...  Still, none of this stopped the launch of the Target Novelisation range in 1972...

A plot

According to Wikipedia a conspiracy is a plan or agreement between people for an unlawful or harmful purpose.  Well, the routine wiping of video tapes and the routine destruction of telefilms certainly fulfills the criteria of a secret because the BBC told no one about it.  As BBC archivist Sue Malden says... when she started work there she expected it all to just be on a shelf.  It wasn't.  There were big gaps all across the archives.  One argument advanced for the BBC's deliberate destruction policy was that if it had been learned that they were spending a lot of money archiving old material then there would have been public outrage at the waste.  But would there?  We don't know because no one outside the BBC was told of the policy.  Perhaps a deal could have been done with the National Archives or the BFI or some other institution.  Indeed, the BFI seem to have been one of those institutions in the 70s pressuring the BBC to...  The BBC told Peter Cook that they couldn't allow copyright material off the premises but also that it had no commercial value anymore.  There is an obviously illogicality here.  If it had no value why was Cook not allowed to buy the tapes?  The bizarre situation was that only British Television Licence Payers were not allowed to buy the tapes.  Foreign TV stations were still allowed to buy them until every penny of their foreign resale value had been drained.  Ironically Peter probably could have saved his tapes if he'd pretended to be a foreign TV station.  The thing is he wouldn't have known about the activities of the BBC's commercial arm because before the Freedom of Information Act 2000 the government and the BBC didn't have to tell the public anything.  When I was a Civil Servant in the 90s literally everything was an official secret.  Even stationary deliveries...

To what extent can we blame the Actor's Union Equity?  Well, I don't know.  But I will say that whilst the closed shop was supposedly abolished by Mrs Thatcher, whenever I performed at an Arts Centre rather than the back of a pub, they always asked if I had unnecessary Public Liability Insurance which I always suspected was a backdoor method of checking that I was in Equity who offer insurance as a freebie... but that's another story...

Unfortunately satirical comedy has very little resale value.  Even in the 80s tapes of programmes like Radio 4's Week Ending were routinely wiped (which is probably for the best).  When they released a complication tape sketches had to be rerecorded.  Still, as Peter Baynham once observed... very few people are interested today in once up-to-the-minute jokes about Gladstone and Disraeli...  That said if I'd really thought my old reel-to-reels were the only extant copies of some of R4's less exiting output I may not have sent them to landfill... It's something I think of more now Harry Thompson & Bill Dare are no longer with us...

A balloon debate

So anyway I suggested there might be a political angle to some of the BBC's wiping decisions.  By that I don't mean that some producer sat down and decided to record over Peter Cook's tapes out of malevolence or personal spite (although someone clearly personally tipped him off) but there might be an element of prejudice in what was selected for deletion which could contain political motivations.  After all, if you were a 70s producer and you had to select something to tape over because that was your job you'd probably select something you didn't like - if it was me there'd be no Test Match Specials or old episodes of Question Time or... If we look at this decision making on a macro level you could say the selection of material for deletion must have mirrored at some point a balloon debate engaging the worst excesses of socialism and capitalism wrapped together which is probably hilariously recorded in an archive somewhere - we can't consider anything's economic value more than three years ahead and at the same time we must create work even if it means destroying things so we can rebuild them.  One could argue that the latter argument contains a certain logic since a huge industry has been created in recovering, remounting and reanimating old work.  In that sense the policy has in fact been a tremendous success.  It's just in terms of archeology that we see a problem...  

Coronation Street Battle-axes 

Then again having said there was no malice involved, who can forget the time Michael Grade said he "hated" Doctor Who?  That's a very strong word suggesting not just a lack of interest but an active dislike.  I don't particularly like Coronation Street (of which interestingly Granada has kept all 11,746 episodes back to 1960) but I wouldn't go around saying I "hated it".  It doesn't surprise me that Doctor Who & Peter Cook were among the first on the blanking machine.  I don't think they represented a view of the world that those in authority wanted to preserve for posterity...  

That might seem a leap but here's an example from my own life (sorry, if it's not in a book yet - I'm too busy to write one)...

A few years back YouTube decided to delete an old YouTube channel of mine.  After a two year investigation by the Information Commissioner it was recovered and restored.  Google claimed that this was because the channel had been deleted in error and it has to delete material because of the sheer volume of material uploaded to YouTube. [They estimated their worldwide upload rate at 400 hours of video uploaded every minute] .... and this may be true but I have another personal private channel the public can't even see that's never been deleted and you'd have to be the world's least skeptical person not to ever get an itchy chin given the political nature of the material.  

Data deletion and selection for deletion isn't a problem that's going away because of changes in technology.  Indeed, with more data being produced than ever before there will be more problems than ever before.  The placing of data in "the cloud" as a safe place might in fact make some of it more ephemeral.  I personally lost quite a bit of data when Xtranormal went bust.  It was wiped by the administrators and cannot be recovered.  Companies going bust or amalgamating can be a major reason for archive material being lost.  In fact some companies have reportedly fallen on such hard times in the past that they've melted down their own film stock to resell the silver in the silver nitrate ... Sort of Cash My Silver TV...

Anyway, I also questioned whether the BBC's claims that it's deletion of material was just "standard industry practice" holds up to scrutiny.  The level of material deletion in the 70s and 80s varied a lot partly because of the regional franchise model of ITV creating a lot of autonomous regional franchises but some people had a more careful attitude towards their archiving.  Much of the material Lew Grade of ATV/ITC produced still exists because he insisted on using film so they couldn't be taped over and even filmed in colour before Britain had colour TV so that he could maximise overseas sales.  Meanwhile the BBC at the beginning of the 70s was left with a lot of black and white footage that was hard to sell abroad because it was late to the colour market producing eventually big archive gaps at the end of the 60s as few film video transfers for overseas sales were made....  Still PAL produced a better and more stable picture than NSTC so swings and roundabouts...  

Quadraplex Tape Machines 

Oh well, as Sir Arthur Greeb-Streebling used to say hopefully the purpose of studying history is that we will all learn from our mistakes so we can repeat them exactly... a bit like the BBC who despite sitting down to draw up a new archive policy for videotape in 1978-9 were still destroying film cans when Ian Levine turned up at BBC Enterprises in 78 and found all 7 negatives and positives of "The Daleks" marked "to be junked".  He only gained access by waving his chequebook at them and expressing an interest in buying old prints... Sue Malden over at the main archive was unaware films that were missing from her videotape library were being methodically dumped in a skip to "make space".  

The BBC whinged a lot about space.  They claimed in their 1978 report to be have a library of 350000 cans of film and 60000 spools of videotapes which was expanding at a rate of 12000 cans of film and 6000 spools of videotape a year.  Barry Letts said that you'd need somewhere about the size of the Albert Hall to house it all.  I think that's a slight overestimate.  Looking just at the tape because we can accurately calculate it's physical size ... 60000 tapes x 0.05m tape thickness x 0.30m tape diameter = 750m^3 .  The volume of the Albert Hall is ~80,000 m^3.  If we take the cubic root of 750m^3 the 60000 spools should all fit into a cube 9m x 9m x 9m.  Or a 2 storey building (i.e. ~ 2 m high a story) of 375 m^2 footprint.  Or 19m x 19m footprint.  Perhaps a 4 story building if we allow for walkways and racking.  Mind you maybe they'd have required less space if BBC Enterprises warehouse wasn't duplicating much of the main archive because of a lack of internal communication..?

Patrick Troughton filming the War Games
at a rubbish dump which is where many
of his telefilms were shortly to turn up...

Of course one other issue that we could consider is that, for example, any reels of film sent to Landfill are actually still technically costing the government money to store.  These days there are higher "Landfill Taxes" to dissuade businesses from just throwing things away rather than recycling them...  Strange, isn't it? People spend their time making nice things and other people come along and brake them.  

Further research reveals that actually this Peter Cook incident wasn't a one off.  Monty Python also entered into negotiations to buy their tapes off the BBC.  Terry Jones recalled to the Daily Express that the BBC "hated the show" and that he and Michael Palin smuggled tapes out to copy for preservation on Mr Palin's own domestic video recorder.  I'm not sure how you could copy a 2 inch Quadruplex tape onto Betamax or VHS but maybe this was a copy of a copy making a copy.  Separately Terry Gilliam claims that the BBC master tapes only still exist because he purchased them off the corporation... Oh well, at least policy changed ... The BBC regularly claims it had no archiving policy till 1978 or something but ... That can't actually be true as labelling tapes A to E would actually be a policy, wouldn't it?  Or was that Sue Malden's 1968 numbering system?  I'm lost now... Then again given they taped over the Moon Landings maybe ... The survival of more mid seventies programs might also have something to do with the replacement of Quadruplex tapes with Type C 1 inch tape which took away the commercial advantage of recording on a format that by the mid 80s was drifting into obsolescence... until the invention of helical scanning in the mid 70s there hadn't been a major format advance in a quarter of a century...

Of course it wasn't always the production company's decision to erase material.  On some occasions it would be due to a contractual agreement with the artist.  Producer Peter Morley of Associated Rediffusion recalled how Benjamin Britten did a reverse Peter Cook and contractually demanded the destruction of a tape of "Turn Of the Screw" made for Associated-Rediffusion in 1959 two years after it's broadcast.  This resulted in "a ceremonial wiping of the master tape". "It was," he said, "like attending a wake." The footage was later recovered as a film can ...

At the bottom of the heap and fastest on the blanking machine appears to have been children's TV.  About 3600 Quadruplex tapes of Playschool dating back to the 60s were wiped ...some as late as 1993.  When the Philip Schofield scandal was in the papers I discovered most of his broom cupboard links had simply never been recorded at all...

I was watching some old documentary on WWII the other day and the first twenty minutes was the historians discussing why they were making yet another documentary on WWII when the subject would seem to have been relentlessly explored.  They said that there are always more angles to be explored and more perspectives to view things from ... Which reminded me of an old Alexei Sayle routine about professional historians continually having to come up with new theories about history because that's their job and if they didn't constantly come up with new material like comedians...