Random Cuttings - Kenya Crime, Witches and Gold (1998)

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This was Kenya on 10th October 1998. Kenya had, and still has, the death penalty for murder, treason and armed robbery but no-one has actually been hanged since 1987.  In East Africa the traditional belief in the powers of witchcraft is widespread and witch hunts continue to result in police action or, more frequently, the murder of suspects by the accusers. A Kilo of pure 24 carat gold - free!. For the life of me I can't see the catch, but there must be one. Mustn't there?

Random Cutting - Death of Burt Lancaster (1994)

22nd October 1994

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Film and theatre actor, circus acrobat (in an act with Nick Cravat), singing waiter, film director and producer, Burt Lancaster will be remembered (by me) for Don Siegel's 'The Killers' (the first of over 80 films), as J J Hunsecker in 'Sweet Smell of Success' and in 'The Professionals' alongside Lee Marvin and Robert Ryan (oh and Claudia Cardinale!)

Random Cuttings - James Stewart obituaries (1997)

3rd July 1997

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3rd July 1997

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James Stewart was not just a great film and theatre actor, he also flew Liberators and B24s in combat missions from Britain in World War II and was awarded the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the French Croix de Guerre among others.

I saw him close-up and personal once in 1975. He was signing autographs and chatting to fans outside the stage door of  the Prince of Wales Theatre in London's West End where he was starring in the play 'Harvey'.

Major the Meteoric (1990)

Daily Mail dated Wednesday November 28th 1990

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John Major was born in 1943, the son of an ex-Music Hall performer who had gone into the garden ornaments business. He was brought up in Brixton and didn’t attend university after leaving school at 16.

He entered politics as a Young Conservative and stood as a candidate for Lambeth Council when he was 21, winning the seat and becoming chairman of the Housing Committee. He stood for Parliament winning Huntingdonshire in 1979 on the third attempt.

In 1981 he became a ministerial aide, a minister in 1985 and a member of the Cabinet in 1987 as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was promoted to Foreign Secretary in 1989 and Chancellor of the Exchequer in October of that year.

When Margaret Thatcher resigned in November 1990, John Major became Prime Minister. He was 47 years old.

He went on to win the 1992 General Election and was PM until 1997 when the Conservatives lost to Tony Blair’s Labour Party.

Life on Mars – Official

Daily Mirror dated Wednesday August 7^th 1996

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With childhood memories of Dan Dare and radio’s ‘Journey into Space’ serials this headline was greeted with a smug ‘told you so’, but dreams are made to be shattered. It was soon disclosed that the rock sample in which evidence of life on Mars was found, had been contaminated here on Earth. But it still makes a great headline.

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Then as now. According to the BBC, Barclays Bank made £5.9 billions profit in 2012.

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Another pun headline that doesn’t quite work. Ok, so he’s a fork-lift driver but the phrase ‘forking out’ implies he’s making reluctant payments from his £1.4m lottery win. Or is it me?

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In July 1996 Caroline Dickinson was murdered while on a school trip to France. Having arrested and released Patrice Pade, the French police arrested another vagrant in 1998 but had to release him too. In 2001 a Spaniard, Francisco Montes, was arrested in Florida for breaking into a woman's apartment and a US Immigration officer connected him to the killing of Caroline. DNA tests proved positive and he was extradited to France. In 2004 he was convicted of the killing and got 30 years in prison.

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Newspapers do occasionally print apologies when they get things wrong, but like this one, it is likely to be 1 column inch at the bottom of page 14 and 9 months too late. I wonder if the writer of this piece will print an apology to his or her English teacher for not being able to spell ‘school’.

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Remember when the coming of computers in business was hailed as the arrival of the ‘paperless office’. It didn’t happen. Nor has the people-less office with everyone working from home as predicted here. With desktop PC’s, such as this one advertised on the same page, it’s not surprising. 

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What’s to say? Bob Morgan was a diver. He won a gold medal at the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland. He couldn’t afford to train properly for the Olympics despite representing the UK four times. "I coulda beena contender.."

James Bulger Trial Verdict

The Independent dated Thursday November 24^th 1993

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The 20^th anniversary of the murder of toddler James Bulger by 10-year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson passed recently and the more serious newspapers marked it by re-opening the great Nature Vs Nurture debate – were these two children born evil or were they products of their environment?

They were both released in 2001 after a parole board decided they were no longer a threat to the Public. In 2010 Venables was sent back to prison after being convicted for possession of child pornography.

The Ulster Volunteer Force was created in 1966 by a former British Soldier with the aim of combating Republican attempts to free Northern Ireland from British rule. 

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When I worked in central London I spent a lot of time on the Tube and dreaded those times when the packed rush hour train slowed to a halt and the lights dimmed. The heat and the body-odour were nothing compared to the uncertainty as to whether the train would ever start again.

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Definitely a case of she who sups with the Devil should have a long spoon. Or, at least, have more sense than to voluntarily spent time alone with a convicted murderer.

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Packard Bell Legend Elite with 170Mb of hard disk space! That’s 0.17 Gb! At the moment I have 48 mpegs on my system, each one larger than that. It may well be a case of rubbish expanding to fill the space provided for it. And don't get me started on the 16MHz processor on the Apple Macintosh. 

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Silvio Berlusconi was born in Milan in 1936 and by 1993 had amassed a fortune as the head of a business empire owning newspapers, publishing, cinema, finance, banking, insurance, sports and more than half of Italy’s TV output.

In 1993 he decided to enter politics and formed the anti-communist Forza Italia Party and by 1994 started his first of three stints as Prime Minister. He has been accused of corruption, neo-fascist sympathies, lying to the Electorate, possible criminal dealings with Vladimir Putin, false accounting, tax evasion, corruption and bribery of police officers and judges, witness bribery, soliciting minors for sex, abuse of Political office and Mafia connections. He also has the diplomatic tact of the Duke of Edinburgh at a meeting of the Ethnic Minorities League.

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Hip-hop artist (whatever that means) Tupak Shakur and others were charged with sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room. At the trial Shakur was convicted of sexual abuse and sentenced to 1½–4½ years in prison. After serving part of his sentence he was released on bail pending appeal. In April 1996 he was sentenced to serve 120 days in jail for violating terms of his bail. On September 13^th 1996 he was murdered in a drive-by shooting.

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If the Anti-gun ownership lobby in the USA want proof that they are right and that strict gun control works, they should look at Japan. They have very strict gun ownership laws and, despite what you might see in Japanese crime films, on average about 12 homicides by shooting a year. 

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‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ was the first of a long list of musicals written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, Richard Stilgoe, Ben Elton etc that I have never seen nor would want to. Oh! – except  ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ as filmed by Norman Jewison.

Condoms in Court

Daily News (New York) dated Thursday March 28^th 1991

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Judge Gustin Reichbach was a student activist at Columbia University during the 1960’s and then became a lawyer in New York. This condoms incident happened just three months after he became a judge and had been assigned to the ‘grave-yard shift’ or Night Court. As a result of the Daily News front page he was transferred to the Civil Court. A long and sometime controversial career followed and he died of cancer this year (2012).

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Alfred Visconti was apparently murdered because he was gay and/or a police informer, neither of which would have been tolerated by his Mafia bosses.

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4 men escaped from a high security (obviously not high enough) prison in upstate New York but 2 were retaken the same night. Kenny Ryan was arrested as he left the 53^rd Street subway station in Brooklyn on March 20^th and George Gatto was caught on April 16^th.

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For any ‘Dr Who’ fans that are interested there is a YouTube film of the Bonhams Auction here at the end of which a Dalek is sold for £6400.

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Aldo Ray started his film career in 1951 and by 1955 was co-starring with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Ustinov in ‘We’re No Angels’. By the 70’s he was appearing in small roles in small films and had been diagnosed with throat cancer. Hollywood, showing its infinite good will to all men, revoked his Screen Actors Guild membership because he was acting in non-union films just to pay his medical bills. 

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Democrat Douglas Wilder never made it to Pennsylvania Avenue. Having declared as a candidate in 1992 he withdrew early in the race. He was the first Black Governor of Virginia from 1990 to 1994 and Mayor of Richmond from 2004 until 2009.

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Anthony Riggs’ wife Toni Cato Riggs and her brother Michael Cato were tried for his murder and Michael Cato was convicted but Toni was acquitted.

And that could have been the end of the story, but a year later an undercover DEA operation accidentally filmed Toni Cato Riggs confessing to the murder of her husband. She was re-arrested, tried and convicted.

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Donnie Walhberg went on from ‘New Kids on the Block’ to join his brother Mark Walhberg as a film actor.

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Elevator surfing apparently became a popular way of killing one’s self at American University campuses (campi?) in the early 1990’s and is still going on.

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Chester Gould created the Dick Tracy comic strip in 1931 and he wrote and drew it until 1977 when Max Allan Collins took over the writing. By 1991 it was being drawn by Dick Locher who carried on until 2011.

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Doonesbury has been written and drawn by Garry Trudeau since its creation in 1970. Both Dick Locher and Gary Truseau have won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.

Last Issue of Today

Today dated Friday November 17th 1995

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The Today newspaper was launched in March 1986 by Eddie Shah, but changed hands 4 months later when Lonrho bought him out. It passed to Rupert Murdoch’s company in 1987. In 1986 it was the first national daily to use computer photosetting and full-colour offset printing.

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The comedian, actor, jazz musician and composer Dudley Moore died in 2002 of progressive supranuclear palsy, a terminal degenerative brain disorder. Early symptoms of the illness caused him to be wrongly thought of as a drunkard.

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Essex schoolgirl Leah Betts died after taking an ecstasy tablet and drinking 12 pints of water, Her death caused a tabloid paper outcry against the drug but the inquest found that it was the combination of the ecstasy and the large amount of water that killed her and on their own neither would have.

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Fred and Rose West were a married couple who between them murdered at least 11 young girls and women. Fred confessed but never came to trial because he committed suicide while on remand in Winson Green Prison. Rose was tried and was found guilty of 10 counts of murder.

Janet Leach was a social worker who also did duty as an Appropriate Adult - someone who could be called in by the police sit with youngsters or adults with learning difficulties. She spent many hours with Fred West listening to his confessions. The newspaper group mentioned in the article was the Mirror Group.

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Yitzhak Rabin was the Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister when he was gunned down on November 4^th 1995. His assassin, Yigal Amir, was immediately arrested. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 14 years for other related offences.

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You get to the final of ‘Pointless’ and the problem is to find an obscure Wesley Snipes film. You say, “To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar”. The big board clicks down to zero and you win!

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On June 12^th 1994 O J Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and a friend, Ronald Goldman, were murdered. The ex-American football player and actor Simpson was tried for the murders but was acquitted.  Both Brown’s and Goldman’s families then brought Civil actions against Simpson. 1997 a Civil Court found Simpson guilty of wrongful killing and awarded the families $35.5million compensation, which due to legal wrangling has never been paid.

In 2008 O J Simpson was sentenced to 33 years in prison for armed robbery, kidnapping and conspiracy during a 2007 incident in Las Vegas.

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Having worked in offices and particularly IT departments for most of my life I really love Scott Adams’ cartoon strip ‘Dilbert’. Pointy Haired Boss, Alice and Wally join software engineer Dilbert in satirizing the madness that is life in an open-plan office. Books, board games, calendars, and even an animated TV series followed.

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Following the violence both on the field and in the tunnel during and after the Birmingham City game against Italian team Ancona, lawyer Henri Brandman, advised that the City players involved ignore all requests to attend hearings in Italy. The investigation into the incident carried on, and the threat of extradition and possibly prison hung over Liam Daish, Michael Johnson and David Howell for years. The three men were ordered to stand trial in May 2000 but they refused to return to Ancona. In 2001, goalkeeper Ian Bennett was called to give evidence for the investigation, and he too failed to attend.

(info paraphrased from the http://thetwounfortunates.com website)