Dear Spotter, No offense at all and no 1-upmanship perceived. I just wondered how something self evident could be based on anything beyond itself, be it a pack of lies or whatever else. Were that the case, then the item in question would not be 'self' but 'otherly' evident.

Now, since Tom kept slaves (and I don't remember offhand his subsequent actions in their regard but he did have issue with at least one, whose descendants were recently met together in DC), does it invalidate his contention that all men are etc etc? Not really; it merely shows that even he, manifestly a man of his times, fell short of the created ideal, as it were. He was after all only 33 when he set down the Declaration. I have always seen the statement as one of an ideal that so, despite my own failure to date to achieve it, doesn't per se lose validity; his having made an alteration in his final draft is straightforward enough if he wrote the document was in the first place.

As for the Venezuelan situation, byzantine, in flux, not to speak of never a dull moment, the whole thing is as it is because the various rights and purposes of government, whereof even Tom would only claim authorship, not origination, are being grossly honoured in the breach. I would contend that the dissidents moved because they felt indeed, as you cite, "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” and that the present version here is not making any progress in that direction, mainly because they are driving in an entirely opposite one. Wherewith I seek to convey that our present situation here would confirm Tom's contention rather than provide evidence against it. I think.

It was nice to see the good old 'codswallop' in print again, taking one back to the days of rascals, bounders, blackguards and people who, when unintroduced, declared that one 'had the advantage' of them. Not to mention Preseland Road at four in the afternoon. Or Geneviéve Bujold.

1997 Their Steward BINNED them

1999 Their Headmaster BINNED them

1999 They LOST a hopeless, self-inflicted court case and a Judge BINNED them

2000 The Police BINNED them

2000 Their own Solicitor BINNED them

2000 They LOST another hopeless self-inflicted court-case and another Judge BINNED them

2001 Their replacement Steward BINNED them

2001 Their membership BINNED them

2002 Their LANDLORDS BINNED them

Dear Spotter, How do you make out the thing where 'self evident' truths being based on something beyond their 'self evident' character? I don't get that. Also, I looked again at the Declaration (at http://memory.loc.gov/const/declar.html) and wondered which lies you were referring to exactly?

I refrain from asking his mayorship which other menagerie members, if they can come through, can be blind-eyed, Russian Bears, German Eagles, les gazelles de Pomfret Major Sur Mer...

"For the third year running the Club has traded at a loss!
Deposits in the Savings Bank have been virtually wiped out just to pay the bills!
Last year I WARNED the membership of the very position in which we now stand!
My exhortation 'use it or lose it' seems to have demonstrated your preference for the latter!...."

A members club is not the same as a pub. A pub licensee/manager has an absolute discretion to serve or not to serve anyone he likes/dislikes. We know that before we walk through the door - and if we are not amenable to the pub or vice versa there are plenty of others to choose from. A club, on the other hand, is an entirely different proposition - every member is a joint owner of all the property of the club, and to attempt to remove one member is only possible, according to the law of England, on four conditions - ALL of which must be strictly adhered to.

i) the rules agreed among the members do actually confer such power on a committee of the club.
ii) such rules are followed to the letter.
iii) during such proceedings the principles of natural justice are followed.
iv) only bona fide grounds are permissible for such action to be taken against a member.

Alas, in the OldBoys case, there was repeated WHOLESALE disregard of ALL of the above. The whole thing was just a malicious private frolic doomed from the start to BOOMERANG BADLY on the originators. Even after being slapped-down at court these kamikaze-pilots decided to continue with their carnival of malice. Like Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines, these losers came back week after week with some new harebrained, cack-handed, improbable scheme or excuse for their failure to catch their "pesky pigeon" - and week after week they would predictably crash in flames. This obsession went on and on until the club was inevitably destroyed...

(*)It could be argued that, as this is a guestbook, we should limit the comments to the "lovely site, brought tears to me eyes" G.B.-type comments. So:

Love You Guys!

And Canada! A flowing of goodwill, going from Canadian, Eh? breakfasts in Columbia, sunny circuses, as it were and Globo-Activism writ BIG, not forgetting Geneviéve, natch, and overall, a welcome and easygoing appreciation all round, plus a familiarity, heretofore probably diffuse, with Nunavut, details at http://www.gov.nu.ca/Nunavut/ among others. Would the world have been apprised as succinctly as has been the case were it not for TCC, one muses? That has to count for something: how many community sites are discussing matters as diverse and globally topical as wind farms, MoD daftibility ratings, Cirques á tout faire, aircraft development milestones, Geneiviéve Bujold, ahem, Key Lime Temptations and Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookies, Power Bars, Roy Rogers and Trigger, polyfacetical burgeoning Burboism, and these but a single case of stuff, triggered by 'our' spotter in Florida, bolstered by our 'men in' the Tronnas, Formby and all sortsa in between to name but a few.

Go Claire!

He once sqeaked in desperate and impotent rage:-

"WE MUST SOMEHOW GET SGT. TEESDALE TO REALISE THAT OUR PROBLEMS ALL STEMMED FROM ONE INDIVIDUAL!!...."

Well!!!, HE-LLO!!! don't you think that Teesdale knows his job - that he has tangled often enough with that "one individual"?? - the evasise, bilious, bumptious, supercilious, malicious, disingenuous, asinine barrel of humbug who has finally run the OldBoys into the ground....

ONE has died... (only one?)
FOUR have resigned...

"WHAT POWER HAVE *YOU* GOT IN THE CLUB??"

Well!!! Now that your "Castle in the Air" has evaporated, perhaps you recognize that the gods do not give POWER to DSS paper-shufflers(except in their drunken imagination). You can now return to your proper calling in life - constrained to being pleasant and polite to The Great Unwashed - for the forseeable future....

Well!!, how could you think you would get off so lightly????

NO!!, YOU USELESS, MISERABLE PIECE OF VOMIT...

THE SKY...THE SUN...THE MOON...AND THE STARS *ALL* FELL IN ON YOU!!!!!
ARGHHHH! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! ha ha ha ha..........

As for other stuff, there are the millions who've enjoyed "Anne of Green Gables", not Shakespeare, no, but certainly a book(s) for cutting your teeth on: I just gave 4 volumes to my 9-year old granddaughter, a lazy reading starter but who, after a quick shufti, knocked them off delightedly. Old Anne got her to self start reading in one easy lesson. TCC is full of reminiscences and memories of yesteryear, witness to the fact that childhood ideals and perceptions are critically influential in forming the caste of our adult essence: in that light, Anne easily rivals Shakespeare's sonnets.

What about the cultural heritage of all those 'Canadien voyageurs' of yesteryear? Some of their songs are at http://www.contemplator.com/folk.html and have contributed to Canadian's and others' culture. Showbiz must figure obviously but, being the case, then I feel that a longer view should prevail over an instantaneous take. And, there, Canada oozes talent from high and low, including but by far not restricted to: Pamela Anderson, Dan Ackroyd, Megan Follows, Donald Southerland, Mort Sahl, John Candy, Rae Dawn Chong and my very favourite, Geneviéve Bujold.

With all that and lots more besides, what does Canada need any Saxe Coburg incoursion for at all at all?

As for other stuff, there are the millions who've enjoyed "Anne of Green Gables", not Shakespeare, no, but certainly a book(s) for cutting your teeth on: I just gave 4 volumes to my 9-year old granddaughter, a lazy reading starter but who, after a quick shufti, knocked them off delightedly. Old Anne got her to self start reading in one easy lesson. TCC is full of reminiscences and memories of yesteryear, witness to the fact that childhood ideals and perceptions are critically influential in forming the caste of our adult essence: in that light, Anne easily rivals Shakespeare's sonnets.

What about the cultural heritage of all those 'Canadien voyageurs' of yesteryear? Some of their songs are at http://www.contemplator.com/folk.html and have contributed to Canadian's and others' culture. Showbiz must figure obviously but, being the case, then I feel that a longer view should prevail over an instantaneous take. And, there, Canada oozes talent from high and low, including but by far not restricted to: Pamela Anderson, Dan Ackroyd, Megan Follows, Donald Southerland, Mort Sahl, John Candy, Rae Dawn Chong and my very favourite, Geneviéve Bujold.

With all that and lots more besides, what does Canada need any Saxe Coburg incoursion for at all at all?

WHY???

The answer is straightforward enough and is as old as history....

A moribund, anachronistic organization falls, by default, into the "control" of a handful of intellectually-challenged idiots, who consider the parking of their fat backsides on committee-chairs the summit of their lifetimes achievement, and behave entirely predictably....

Intoxicated on their so-thought "power", these aments really believed that by subverting all known law they could victimize and ostracize certain people with impunity, for their own amusement....
WELL, YOU STOPPED LAUGHING A WHILE AGO, DIDN'T YOU????

LOSERS YOU WERE BORN AND LOSERS YOU WILL DIE!!!!!

Did you really think for one moment that the Headmaster would cover up your crimes for you?????
NO, HE IMMEDIATELY DISOWNED YOU - BECAUSE, IN HIS WORDS, YOU WERE BRINGING HIS SCHOOL INTO DISREPUTE!!!!!

Did you really think you could fool a High Court Judge???
NO, HE TOLD YOU, EX-SCHOOLTEACHERS, TO "GO AWAY AND PUT ON YOUR THINKING-CAPS"!!!!!

Did you really think you could fool your OWN expensive barrister???
NO, IDIOTS, BECAUSE HE GLADLY TOOK YOUR MONEY OFF YOU- THEN THREW IN THE TOWELL AND COMPLIMENTED YOUR VICORIOUS OPPONENT ON HIS LEGAL EXPERTISE BEHIND YOUR BACKS!!!!!

Did you really think you could fool the Police???
NO, BECAUSE THEY OBJECTED TO YOUR LICENCE AND WILL DANCE ON YOUR GRAVES SHORTLY!!!!!

Did you really think you could fool your membership????
NO, BECAUSE THE VAST MAJORITY OF DECENT MEMBERS, WHO YOU SHAMELESSLY TRIED TO MANIPULATE, QUIETLY CREPT AWAY FROM THE CESS-PIT YOU CREATED!!!!

Did you really think you could fool your landlords?????
NO, THEY'VE GIVEN YOU NOTICE TO QUIT, BECAUSE THEY KNOW THE DIFFERNCE BETWEEN BUSINESSMEN AND LOSERS LIKE YOU...

GOODBYE.....LOSERS, IT'S BEEN FUN WATCHING YOUR CONVULSIONS FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS...

Yes, there's food for TTCers' implemetation of their natural fertility rights, sure enough!

And how utterly elegant to quietly pastel in that Belle Starr wore her 6-shooters slung at an angle to her waistly horizontal identical to that at which the River Alt at Hightown joins the Mersey by using her name in the e-mail addy. You gotta take your cap off to that. Welcome Anon!

It will have escaped no-one's notice that Crosby's early American connexions are tumbling in, fast and furious. I wonder whether spotter has a handle on that info source of the early days; would there have been any Jeffersons in the borough then, I wonder?

For another, though really only another take on the same point, from our Florida "spotter", I wanted to take issue with the phrase, 'When the final decision is taken on the Burbo flag I hope you....' implying that there is some entity, to which spotter doesn't belong - hence 'I hope you...'- that will take a flag decision. Well, if we are to have a set-up where each a is as good as the rest, then there ain't no 'you'. Whilst all such set-ups will ultimately designate fellas for flags, strategy, Sniggery infiltrations etc, at the present stage, spotter is as much of a flag man as any other, the more so, I'd say inasmuch as, thanks to his dilligence, we become apprised of our Burbo area's having constituted a geopolitically and socially pivotal entity in yet another of history's great milestones, being the American Civil War! If spotter's data update on Brighton-le sands and Burbo is the case, then I think that it would be remiss of any, as yet undesignated, flag committee to omit some reference to event and events thereform emanating and would further urge incorporation of one or more of the Dunworthy Bulloch addresses on tourist literature (starting with TCC's 'famous people' section?). The form of a flag inclusion of our Dixie past would be a matter for debate but I see the inclusion itself as a matter of duty.

The anthem: while seconding the mayor's gusto and feeling suggestion and Babs' Sattie incorporation proposal, I would like to observe that no mention has been made of the melody part; we can't keep the familiar one, a) because it jibes with Burbogeon independence; and b) because somebody's already using it. Babs, with her suggested modification of the mayor's initial one, has also broached the other point, namely, a mere taking of a familiar anthem and tweaking it doesn't cut the mustard. We must, I most urgently urge, tweak LARGE if ours is not to risk being called 'a ruddy knock-off'. So, while lyrics may be suggested, I myself personnally here would like to hear what folk would like as a melody: Lillibulero? Johnny Tod? Theme from Von Flotow's Marta? A potpourri affair, including a few bars from Dixie? The Dambusters' March? Hey Jude? Eleanor R? An updated Albinoni's Adagio, scored for basson and twelve-string guitar? The Wabash Cannonball? Take the A Train?

Having said that, I would further hasten to observe that I am far from the first to strike a resounding blow for Burbindepandance: AF, our flagman himself, already flagrantly, courageously and publicly dismissed hidebound tradition - tradition solely for tradition's sake - in the design of the flag shewn in his post; without so much as a 'by your leave', he blithely omitted the sharp accent belonging over the penultimate 'e' in 'dancettee'. Take that, 'masters'! And power to his arm, I cry! There's a man we can follow in the solid confidence of his committment to Burbo notwithsatnding the mildly worded 'red herring' protest, 'Who? What? Where? When?'. Let us not forget that, when the world knows that one of that sort of political sophistication is rowing for Burbo, it can only buttress the overall cause. I was struck to by the groundbreaking 'wavyline and nebulyline', relishing a hazy recollection of the the old 'de Maupassant' story, Histoire d'une Nebulee (de Maupassant, Oeuvres Completes, Sedan 1870, Staatsdruckerei.) (Aside: Yes but my home machine has no accents)

As for Queen Jules I, I had taken it as an honourary term of endearment endowed by a sort of extention from Beatrice and Wilhelmina somehow, underlining Burbo's Dutch bond, purely symbolic of course, being an acknowledgement of their low lying areas - below sea level - and our own Burbogeon ones. Such a foreign policy posture may some day pay off, in free goodwill dykery degree courses leading to a B.Dy and Ph.Dy, for instance.

And so to the history issue. Yes, yes and yes again: countering a grave and insideous modern tendancy I have observed that ushers electronic youth into adulthood, mentally locked almost always in the 'now', growing up, virtually 'without a past' as it were, our history project can only do good, taking in as it must the ample range of influences, from very ancient, to ancient and on down, all melded into the characteristic Burbogeon ready smile, indefatigable scholarship and rendering a people of such ready versatility and, oddly enough, drop dead good looks: the dark 'eyes of Araby' dash and elan, the penetrating Viking seagoing gaze and the irresistable and romantically rogueish stance, posture, je ne sais quoi, call it what you will, that's rubbed off from contact with jolly Irish traders, some of whom actually put down roots on Burbo. I am solidly behind uncle Frank's suggestion: let's hear it for the Mayor's imagination and literary skills in moulding the future by smelting the past into a jolly good yarn! Go, Mayor!

Moreover, I think we ought to move ahead in inches rather than great strides. We should be able to low-key it for a while so as to reduce expenditure to a mininum so, army navy and air force could be left until a later page. The main income would be turbo rents or swish tax: as the blades turn, they 'swish': we charge 0.0005 Euro's per swish. I don't quite get the concept of a (coherent) non-denominational currency but, from a fiscal standpoint, it seems to me that, should it prevail, most visitors will be arriving by preference on night flights, when the airport is saving on electric light and less frequented. Exciting stuff when you think on.

I would also outpoint that the discussion of an anthem does not of itself exclude other discussable itemry. Being nascent and all that, the whole caboodle is still up for delineation, including the bailiwick of the office of Mayor and other functionorial stuff, not excluding the Foreign Sec spot, presently occupied with a good lookin' chap but a bit far away. Yes, I realise that, on a global channel linked by the internet, the 'far away' term, indeed, the concept itself can be deemed questionable. But it's my knock-off time so, as was said by some daily scribbler before, to bed.

... & God bless

* When I was sitting in on weather briefings years ago, the met officer would tell of today's 'contrail levels', being, for instance, from 25 to 27, so approximately from 25,000 to 27,000 feet: This meant that as our then front line Hunters would come tooling down through that band, the pilot could, that day, expect his position to be given away at that moment. The effect is as a turning on, or off, as the contrail-favouring circumstances are entered or left behind. I can imagine that most traffic over Liverpool, namely, flights descending into Manchester or on their climbout, would be going through those sorts of altitudes, more or less as they cross our coastline. Just a thought anyway.

Now, I feel there is bone picking scheduled for the 'Burbo Ruling Gentry' phrase. I accepted the Burbo Foreign Affairs Portfolio on the understanding that we have a 'Republic of Burbo' all nascent and new. Just as once before when a dominant Burbo religion was bruited about, so also in this case too I would energetically reject any breath of a 'ruling gentry', ungentry or indeed, any ruling caste/elite/cronies per se. I see Burbo, surely susceptible to all the ills that flesh is heir to, as something of a model of what can be done if founding principles, admittedly but latent in the word 'republic' but as yet unspelled out, are maintained as our guiding guide, as it were. 'No to ruling gentry then' would be my reaction there altogether. If, on the other hand, someone figures there are unsaid things to be said about that, then I am willing to upgive the Foreign Affairs portfolio but not before the next Ministerial Complimentary Bavslice Conference. I shall campaign thereafter for the position of "member of Burbo's Latin American desk".

Disguise is of the essence so true anarchist members are urged to look non-Descript and wear forgettable glasses, such as the metal-rimmed 'Strelnikov' model, on sale at all good anarchist film library outlets. Moreover, regardless of how awkward or out-of-character members may feel, they should try to act like persons when in public or Plotting with Colleagues (especially One-Eyed Helga, played by Kristin Scott Thomas with a dirty hankey)

Eat this posting before or after committing it to the trashcan, wastebasket, pubelle, rubbish bin, Abfalleimer, or basurero, depending on the location of your current railway-station waiting room.

If you wish to make a difference, you ought too to tighten up your argument, distance it from what comes over as ritually self-righteous and jingoistic Yank-bashing and rid it, among other things, of animals such as 'credible pretexts' --Yer wha'?

To the NittyGritty: I shall be among the first in line for those BavSlices. In fact, since I will have to catch a plane back to Caracas immediately after the final slurp, I am generating a case for foiling white feather ladies by being way out at the front. Maybe I could wangle an extra one for the journey, to be solemnly and respectfully partaken of just as the aircraft is banking, Liverpool-managed turbines awhine, to set course in its initial climb to cruise altitude for the transatlantic leg, over The Great Burbo Bank.