Today, funding for the Madeleine McCann case runs out (again!) but the Metropolitan Police have applied for an extra £300,000 in order to continue searching for poor little Maddie.

The investigation has already cost £12 million: I'm not sure how much is spent on the average missing child in Britain but I believe it's the equivalent of about thirty bob in old money. To be fair, however, Madeleine was an exceptionally attractive three-year-old and her parents were both doctors so I can understand why she had to be given special treatment.

And, of course, it's not as if we don't have police officers to spare in the London area.

On the other hand, it's now 12 years since she went missing and I can't help wondering how Maddie will feel if she's discovered alive and well after all this time and compulsorily returned to the parents who left her home alone in bed with two other tiny tots while they fecked off down the boozer in 2002.

If she's alive and well in 2019, it wouldn't surprise me if she wants to stay exactly where she is.

Quote: Rood Eye @ 31st March 2019, 8:53 PM

In Texas, Luis Arroyo, 41, who escaped from jail only to be recaptured one hour later was sentenced to 99 years imprisonment for the jailbreak.

Interestingly, the sentence wasn't decided by an ultra-right-wing judge: it was decided by a jury.

I get the impression that Texas folk don't take lightly to having their laws broken.

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It sounds more like they're incentivizing him to escape again.

Dear Editor

I can't believe I am the only representative of the people to have spotted the error in your recent piece on so-called Sir Oliver Letwin. Shurely, it should be Sir Oliver Iwontletyouwin. Please rectify, along with your misspelling of the MP Stanley Boles.

Yours sincerely

Arthur Throgmorton, Chipping Ormskirk

Someone I know - I will call him Fred - is in the Civil Service, Shortly after the referendum, everyone in the same team as him was ordered by their groovy 30 something head into a small room. She said something along the lines of now, look. We all know that we voted Remain. I just want to make it clear to everyone how we need to be careful in the way that we deal with the public as it possible that they could see us as biased if we are not sufficiently aware of the difference. So all those who voted Remain go to that end of the room and at the other end of the room that theoretically would be the Leave end, Well, of course, the point was that everyone expected to walk to the Remain end and then see what they had done and nervously giggle. But Fred, it turned out, was not on the same page and headed alone to the Leave end. All the other people were enraged and completely forgot what the exercise was supposed to demonstrate..

So they all turned on him like a pack of wolves.

What makes me hoot about Yvette Cooper and her 16 million supporters is if you were to put it to them that the member of the British Commonwealth that is the St Montmorency and Wingo Inuit Islands,, (population 1700, no industry or banking sector. and the only known flora there being daisies one Saturday every other Summer), should not be given independence for its own good there would be an absolute (hollow and, oh my god, Jocelyn,, we will lose our slave labour Latvian toilet cleaners plus Florence-Elspeth won't be able to do TEFL in Moldova) outcry. Oh yes. The fingers would jab. Don't you think they can't stand on their own two feet? How dare you, You are a 19th Century Empire builder. Etc, Etc. The whole world has gone crazy and as soon as members of the Commons are illegal drug searched the better in my humble opinion. Vote Alien Clowns for Communism and Ickean Astrology at the forthcoming European "Elections" to protest.

My best teacher was Jamaican. I studied race relations at a top six university with a view to improving them following my weekly visits to family close to the riots in Brixton in the early 1980s. I chose the subject as my preferred option and did well in it.

I worked hard to end apartheid including at the celebrity gig on Kennington Common in 1986. I was a regular at Womad for over ten years, You could say I'm an expert.

Freedom of Movement is a racist policy. (note that Barnier, Juncker, Selmayr, Verhofstadt and Tusk are all mega-rich white men). It will lead to race (as well as class) wars.

I'm for working people of all backgrounds in the here and now. And the middle class pinko liberals have become idiotic money-centred fascists (because they have done all right, Jack) and need bringing into control. I'm not having racial tension because of their fantasies of never having to have cages around their houses South African "big wealth" style.

This is just one reason why I am largely ignored. I am a lower middle class bloke who doesn't have a lot of money (although I can't complain) and whose roots are too genuinely poverty stricken for them. Plus I have strong credentials on race and also a bit of a brain.

Vote nudism.

And this is the sublime memory from the 1986 anti-apartheid gig. The late Gil Scott-Heron, black American, the black Dylan in some ways although it shouldn't perhaps be written in that way,and - curious and wonderful world - his dad played as a footballer for Celtic virtually before black people had been in British football.

This is one of the best little known "pop"ballads ever written; so moving and if you are interested investigate everything Gil did - an addict like Amy Winehouse rather than the usual crass addict : addicts because they had so much talent they just couldn't cope with it, love them, - almost all of it was fantastic : totally in awe really:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvHNmx41fo0

Norman Tebbit is demanding that Frankie Boyle be banned from television.

In a recent edition of "New World Order", Frankie mentioned Theresa May's recent meeting at Chequers with various high profile government colleagues and asked, "Where the f**k are the IRA when you need them?"

The joke has upset Sir Norman - not altogether surprisingly when you consider that the IRA's bombing of the Grand Brighton Hotel in 1984 severely injured his wife and left her paralysed.

However, the Brighton bombing killed five people, unlike World War II which killed 50 million and yet I've never heard Sir Norman complaining about "Dad's Army" or any of the other TV and film productions that have used World War II as a basis for laughs and giggles.

While sympathising with Sir Norman's personal tragedy, I think perhaps he needs to get on his bike and look for his sense of humour.

Rood Dad's Army was the TA not the real Army, then again Frankie wasn't joking about the real IRA, OK I get your point now.

Did Tebbit complain about spitting image, or the release of IRA murders ? A joke is where he draws the line, mind you not sure I've ever seen him smile.

I have now completed my personal Brexit. I left one forum on music because it was full of British Europhiles who place money above democracy and were turning out nasty. Then I joined one which is mainly full of Americans and Canadians. I never in a million years thought that I would be waving a flag for North America as so much of it is bonkers but the tone of it couldn't be more different. It feels much nicer and dare I say it more British. In parallel, on my football and other travels recently, I have maintained extremely good relations with European people, finding that the Dutch and Norwegians are more friendly than anyone born in these islands. People here on both sides seem full of gloom - especially the ones with old pictures of our troops in 1939-45 and union jacks on the wall - and I don't think mainly it is their fault. They want Attlee/Churchill but instead have a bunch of malevolent clowns. Now we hear that Macmillan who I met and spoke with as a kid on the cliffs just outside St David's in the mid 1970s was not quite as keen on the Euro project as we had thought.

Today, the North Suburban Association of Chiefs of Police, which represents more than 30 North Suburban Cook County police departments, joined the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police to announce they have passed a "Vote of No Confidence" in Kim Foxx, the Cook County State's Attorney who suddenly dropped all 16 felony charges against "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett.

Apparently, police chiefs are enraged because, as well as letting Smollett walk away, she has a long history of letting drug offenders and retail thieves walk free from court.

Police are complaining of historic and ongoing difficulties persuading Kim Foxx to bring felony charges against assailants who attack and seriously injure police officers - some of whom have suffered broken kneecaps and severed fingers in attacks.

How on earth did this woman get such a responsible job the first place? The simple answer is that she was elected to office by the people over whom she was to have jurisdiction. The Chicago underworld must've thought all their birthdays and Christmases had come at once when she was allowed to stand for office.

Can you imagine the situation in England if the underworld were allowed to elect their friends as judges in our crown courts and appeal courts?

It seems the cops in Chicago were on to her from day one: when she was first elected, it was despite fierce objections from the police.

Please also complain that whenever she's criticised, she accuses her critics of racism rather than choosing to address the actual issues.

She's a wrong 'un, and she should be in jail - alongside Jussie Smollett.

I'd be astonished if more than one British person in a million recognised the name "Brenda Spencer".

I'd be equally astonished if any British person of mature years didn't recognise the song title (or indeed the song) "I don't like Mondays".

Well, Brenda is the woman who, some forty years ago, was the teenager who inspired the Boomtown Rats' hit by opening fire with a .22 rifle on a schoolyard full of kids at an elementary school in San Diego, California, shooting eleven of them, two of whom died.

The reason she's in the news again today is that she's coming up for parole.

She might be paroled or she might not. In any event, she's already served forty years in prison for her crimes which, as shocking and as dreadful as they were, don't add up to a hill of beans when compared with the almost unimaginable evil that motivated the murder of James Bulger in Liverpool.

His murderers served a mere eight years in custody.

You've got to hand it to America: they certainly know how to sentence criminals (unless the prosecutor is Kim Foxx, of course, and the felon is released without a judge having a say in the matter).

Quote: A Horseradish @ 4th April 2019, 4:49 PM

I have now completed my personal Brexit. I left one forum on music because it was full of British Europhiles who place money above democracy .

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What happened in 2016 was hardly a great advert for democracy. One side was all about fear, fear and Bob Geldof in a boat on the Thames. The other side was about pie in the sky economics, dog whistle racism, Russian money and Nigel Farage in a boat on the Thames. It was not this nation's finest hour.

The truth about the Brexit referendum is that millions upon millions of voters voted "Leave" because they believed that leaving the EU would mean a bonus of £50 million per day for the NHS.

The campaign was fraudulent and ballot-rigging is not acceptable in a democracy.

Hopefully, news of a second referendum is not far off.

"A short life and a gay one" - a new slogan for the Brunei Tourist Board?

Quote: chipolata @ 5th April 2019, 9:34 AM

What happened in 2016 was hardly a great advert for democracy. One side was all about fear, fear and Bob Geldof in a boat on the Thames. The other side was about pie in the sky economics, dog whistle racism, Russian money and Nigel Farage in a boat on the Thames. It was not this nation's finest hour.

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That's the best unbiased description of the campaigns that I've seen in ages.