a younger Victor Meldrew but interesting - I hope - nice sometimes !
Somewhere up North
Joined January 2009
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Nah, she’s shown no interest in the detail since returning to government and likes to say leasehold is Pennycook’s “baby”. She talks up the risks of judicial review and falls back on leasehold being “fleecehold”, which is actually the term used to refer to unadopted estates.
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Metallica at home in the "Metallica Mansion," 3132 Carlson Boulevard in El Cerrito, California, on July 25, 1985. Left to right: Cliff Burton, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett, crammed onto the couch behind a coffee table loaded with beer bottles and that day's San Francisco Examiner, its front page announcing that Rock Hudson had AIDS.
Photo by Ross Halfin, who was sent by manager Peter Mensch that summer to shoot the band at home. The same session produced the famous group portrait printed on the inner sleeve of Master of Puppets. Hetfield and Ulrich shared the little bungalow, and its garage was where the songs for that album took shape in the spring and summer of 1985.
A few weeks after this, the band played the Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington, then headed to Copenhagen to record at Sweet Silence Studios with producer Flemming Rasmussen from September 1 to December 27, 1985. Master of Puppets came out on Elektra on March 3, 1986, peaked at No. 29 on the Billboard 200 and became thrash metal's first platinum album. It was also the last album Cliff Burton made with Metallica. He was killed when the band's tour bus crashed in Sweden on September 27, 1986, at just 24.
🎸 In 2015, Master of Puppets became the first metal recording chosen for the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. Where were you when you first heard it? 🎸
ALT Metallica's Cliff Burton, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett on a couch behind a cluttered coffee table, reaching toward the camera
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No one can just say to the court I’m a journalist let me in. You have to have a press card it’s as simple as that. If you are a freelance journalist and you want to go into courts, all you need to do is apply for it your NUJ otherwise really you are just a blagging Frauditor!
Most of the citizen journalists here to report on @TRobinsonNewEra were unable to get into court this morning. @ezralevant just left court - talking about how no citizen journalists were allowed into the mainly empty press gallery
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The Stanley Mills dilemma facing Graham Alexander at Preston North End trib.al/ZtqIiRV
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Don’t let them fool you. I’ve seen this a thousand times straight out of the football‑hooligan playbook. March up aggressively, pick your target, goad them into reacting, then in this lads case cry victim the moment they do. That’s exactly what happened here. Ryan Bridge from Raise the Colours singled this protester out and, with his little entourage, manufactured the whole confrontation.
And let’s be honest: even the old football firms didn’t go running to the police every time things didn’t go their way. Bridge does because he’s a wuss. Too thick to realise he’s documenting his own downfall in real time. Tick tock, lad. The law’s coming, whether you understand it or not.
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Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley sold KISS in 2024, the name, the songs and the likeness, in a deal reported at more than $300 million. Peter Criss, the drummer who created the Catman face, turned down $1 million in 2001 for 8 shows in Japan and never wore it for them again.
Eric Singer has played the drums in the Catman makeup ever since.
In the video below, a fan asks why Singer and guitarist Tommy Thayer still dress as the Catman and the Spaceman instead of creating their own characters. Stanley tells him to ask "the 35,000 people" outside. Singer, in Criss's makeup, adds: "The band in the past did try another makeup. Guess what? It didn't work."
Criss left in 1980 and came back for the 1996 reunion on a salary, not as an owner. On the 2000 farewell tour he learned he was paid $10,000 a show less than Ace Frehley, and he painted a teardrop under his eye in protest.
The case for Simmons and Stanley: they kept KISS going for 16 years without its original drummer, and they own the rights to the makeup. "The makeup is earned," Simmons has said. "Just being there at the beginning is not enough."
Asked in the same clip about Gene the musician and Gene the businessman, Simmons answers: "It's all business."
So did Simmons and Stanley earn the Catman face, or did they just keep the one thing Criss made himself?
I post one famous deal like this every day, with who got paid, who got played, and the numbers that never made the poster.
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Victims Left Behind: Time Running Out for Horizon Scandal Redress ⏳#PostOffiecScandal computerweekly.com/news/3666…
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Look who is on the walk of shame going back into court this afternoon. Amongst them Anthony Barnes (AY Audits) and Sponge Bob Square Head, who (he says) has bail conditions following his arrest yesterday not to enter Central London.
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#PostOfficeScandal Another brilliant article as always by @Karlfl at @ComputerWeekly
Thank you for helping to highlight the continuing struggles by some to receive redress and the inconsistency applied to victims of the scandal. The @PostOffice doesn’t seem to be able to ever help itself generating bad press rather than doing the right thing. Such a poor unempathetic approach to those who have been wronged.
Many had problems decades ago, some have suffered illness and others have died in the years since, but new cases are emerging, and some deserving of redress could miss out unless changes to rules are made.
Former subpostmasters were entitled to a £75,000 fixed sum award under the Horizon Shortfall Scheme (HSS) if they had evidence of any unexplained shortfalls. This particular redress scheme has paid out over £1bn to subpostmasters.
The statutory public inquiry into the scandal agreed to a date of midnight 27 November 2025, when no claims for financial redress under HSS could be made after. The Post Office accepted this recommendation, but decided on a later date of 31 January 2026.
However, Computer Weekly has spoken to elderly former subpostmasters that were not even aware of the redress scheme until it was too late to apply and had applications rejected. Others have only discovered letters from the Post Office when their former subpostmaster parents have died.
Last week, the government reconfirmed its commitment to providing compensation to every effected subpostmaster and “strengthening fairness”, but there is a cohort fighting for acceptance on redress schemes.
Raft of changes
In a recent statement after announcing a raft of changes to redress schemes, Post Office minister Kate Dearden said: “We remain unwavering in our commitment to provide fair, comprehensive and timely redress to all those affected and ensure that a scandal like this never happens again.”
Chris Head, a former subpostmaster and victim of the scandal turned campaigner, said: “The Post Office says it wants to make sure that everybody who’s eligible receives their redress, but at the same time, there are people that are, for all sorts of different reasons, not going to receive it because they are refused access to a scheme.”
Head said he is currently supporting about half a dozen cases where this is an issue.
One case is that of Robert Nichol, a former subpostmaster who ran a Post Office branch in the village of Dalston, Cumbria, from 1982 to 2004.
Speaking on his behalf, his wife, Anne Nichol, said they had problems with Horizon, with regular unexplainable shortfalls after being forced to replace paper-based accounting methods with the software in 2000. By 2004, Nichol resigned as a subpostmaster because “he just couldn’t cope with Horizon anymore”, said his wife.
Now the couple face being left out of financial redress schemes. Anne Nichol said the couple, who have moved several times since giving up their branch, never received any correspondence from the Post Office regarding the redress they could apply for, and when they finally applied to the Horizon Shortfalls Scheme in March, they were rejected due its closure. The Post Office claims it sent letters to Mr Nichol.
The first letter sent by the Nichols claiming redress was on 30 March, just two months after HSS closed for new applications at the end of January this year. “We’ve got eight emails of rejection, all saying the same thing,” Mrs Nichol told Computer Weekly.
The latest Post Office rejection letter said: “We have reviewed the points you have raised and the information provided. We acknowledge your comments regarding not receiving correspondence about the HSS, your personal circumstances, and your views on the handling of late applications. However, as previously advised, the HSS is now closed to new applications. It is not possible to accept new applications under the scheme, and there is no appeals process in relation to this decision.”
Read the full piece👇
computerweekly.com/news/3666…
Victims Left Behind: Time Running Out for Horizon Scandal Redress ⏳#PostOffiecScandal computerweekly.com/news/3666…
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Revel in the ridiculousness of the Kingstanding Nonce Bonnets as they take a cross for a walk in the countryside. 😂😂😂
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The actual issue here isn't the filling of it , it is the stark reality that it is a very small hall and they cannot fill it
It seems to have been a struggle to find volunteers to fill the room for Reform UK’s pre-Budget announcement today. Watch now on @GBNEWS.
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The price tag for the London Stadium has reportedly been set at £50million. 💷
West Ham currently pays just £2.5m in annual rent, while the stadium reportedly makes annual losses of £19m.
It is not thought that the club have made an offer to purchase the stadium as of yet.
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When Graeme Souness returned to Liverpool as manager in 1991, he had spent years at the top of football without ever having serious concerns about his health.
He had won five league titles and three European Cups as a Liverpool player, before going to Rangers and winning another three league titles as manager.
But nine months into his return to Anfield, his blood pressure was getting dangerously high.
Eventually, he went to hospital for tests.
The results showed he had suffered a mild heart attack.
He was only 38 years old.
An angiogram revealed that he needed a triple heart bypass, and when the consultant broke the news, Souness immediately asked:
“When can you do it?”
The operation was arranged for the following Tuesday, just days after Liverpool’s FA Cup semi-final against Portsmouth in April 1992.
“Let’s do it.”
The night before surgery, the surgeon arrived to explain what would happen the following morning.
Souness told him to make sure he got home early and had a good night’s sleep.
The surgeon had other plans.
“No, I’m off to the pub.”
He started telling Souness about a nearby pub that served particularly good real ale.
“Make sure it’s only two pints.”
The operation went ahead, and initially Souness was recovering well enough to start walking and using an exercise bike.
But an infection developed, forcing the doctors to open his chest again.
He also developed fluid on his lungs and became so breathless that he could barely speak.
“You have to do something, I can’t breathe.”
There were four or five doctors standing around him, and his wife Karen was so distressed watching what was happening that she fainted against the wall.
Eventually, one of the doctors rolled him onto his side and inserted a needle into his chest three times to drain the fluid.
Souness never forgot the pain, but he could finally breathe properly again.
Back in intensive care, he lay awake with only a night-light on, staring at the clock.
“This is how you die, so I’m not going to sleep.”
He had always considered himself physically strong, but now he was struggling to recognise the man looking back at him in the mirror.
And while he was recovering in hospital, another problem was developing.
Souness had agreed to give an exclusive interview to The Sun about his operation.
The interview appeared two days before the 15th of April, but a photograph of him recovering in hospital was published on the third anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster.
Souness had been managing Rangers when 97 Liverpool supporters suffered the fatal injuries at Hillsborough in 1989, and he had badly underestimated the feeling towards the newspaper on Merseyside.
The fallout damaged his relationship with Liverpool fans, and Souness later admitted he should have resigned immediately.
But he was still recovering from major surgery and convinced himself that within a couple of months he would be back to normal.
Instead, he spent 28 days in hospital and took almost a year to feel like himself again.
He began suffering panic attacks and found himself becoming emotional over things that previously would never have bothered him.
Yet he continued managing.
Liverpool won the FA Cup that May, and Souness remained in charge until January 1994.
Looking back, he regretted ignoring what his health was telling him.
But there was one decision from those years that troubled him even more.
The interview with The Sun.
“It ultimately soured my relationship with the Liverpool supporters forever.”
“If I could turn one thing round in my football career, it would be that.”
#football
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