Romania's Ceausescu and Wife Executed (1989)

Today dated Tuesday December 26th 1989

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What a cheerful headline for Boxing Day 1989.

Romania became a Communist country in 1947 and Nicolae Ceausescu soon found himself a series of important posts in the Government finally becoming second in command to President Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. When Gheorghiu-Dej died in 1965 Ceausescu took over. He ran an extremely strict Communist state allowing no criticism or debate.

In 1982 he ordered the export of much of the country’s agricultural and industrial production. The resulting extreme shortages of food, fuel, energy, medicines, and other basic necessities drastically lowered living standards and intensified unrest. He appointed his wife, Elena, and many members of his extended family to government and Communist party posts.

The Ceausescu regime collapsed after he ordered the police to fire on anti-government demonstrators on Dec. 17, 1989. The demonstrations spread to Bucharest, and on December 22 the Romanian army defected to the demonstrators. That same day he and his wife fled from the capital in a helicopter but were captured and taken into custody by the Army. On December 25 the couple were hurriedly tried and convicted by a special military tribunal on charges of mass murder and other crimes. Ceausescu and his wife were then shot by a firing squad.

The end of the Berlin Wall

Today dated Saturday November 11^th 1989

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For many years I didn’t realise that Berlin was actually 100 miles inside East Germany and thought that the Wall was just part of the East/West border. Actually its 96-mile length encircled West Berlin while the 866-mile border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran from the Baltic Sea in the North to Czechoslovakia in the South. This border had been closed in 1952 and by 1960 the East German government had realised that the Berlin road and subway access to the West was a gap through which more and more of their citizens were ‘escaping’, so the work on building the Berlin Wall started in 1961.

In the summer of 1989 thirteen thousand East Germans fled across the open borders between Hungary and Austria to West Germany. In September the leadership of the Social Unity Party that ran the GDR started to give in under pressure from a growing protest movement and on November 9th 1989, the government relaxed travel regulations and allowed East Germans to cross directly from East to West Berlin. When hundreds of thousands of people gathered at the checkpoints in the Wall later that day and demanded to be let through, the leadership was unable to withstand the pressure, and the Berlin Wall was opened.

Over the following days the Wall was ‘occupied’ by both East and West Berliners and was breached in several places both unofficially and officially to create new crossings. The total demolition of the Wall followed in June 1990 and the reunification of Germany followed on October 3^rd 1990.

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Oops. Apparently the mistake cost about £180,000 in printing costs. I wonder if anyone kept one from being burnt. It would probably be worth a bob or two to a collector.

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I think there may be a printing error here – ‘£179.6’ – for what, a litre? A gallon? A tanker full? According to www.theaa.com the price in 1989 was about 185.8 new pence per gallon, so I reckon the above should read £1:79.6p a gallon or 39.5p a litre.

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The final paragraph of this article about Myodil is typical of the response from a big company like Glaxo – “we did warn you in the leaflet”. Who, when about to be injected by a nurse in prep for an X-ray asks to read the leaflet that was supplied with whatever is being administered? 

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What’s acid house music? Apparently it’s a variant of house music characterized by the use of simple tone generators with tempo-controlled resonant filters primarily using bass-line synthesisers and a drum track. It originated in Chicago and arrived in England in the late 1980’s. The word ‘acid’ doesn’t refer to LSD. Quite what it does refer to I can’t work out. The drug choice of Acid House fans was Ecstasy and it was the media fuelled moral panic over the use of this drug that led to the police raids and arrests of party organizers like Robert Darby.  Doncha just love it when someone in their late 60’s tries to explain youth culture? Almost as bad as some spotty TV presenter who was born this side of 1990 trying to tell us what it was like to live through the 1960’s.

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Maureen Lipman’s Beattie in the British Telecom (get it? Beattie – BT – British Telecom) adverts was for a while one of the most popular characters on TV and as instantly recognisable as Alexander the meerkat is now.

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An odd competition – win a house but, by the way, you’ll have to sell your own home to make up the £66,000 shortfall on the purchase price.

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The TV viewing charts and predictably the top 10 programmes by viewing numbers are all soaps. ‘Naked Video’ was not what it sounds like – this was the comedy sketch show that gave us Gregor Fisher’s Rab C Nesbitt and, my favourite, John Sparkes’ Welsh poet Siadwel.

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The puppet based satire show Spitting Image ran for 19 seasons between 1984 and 1996 and featured the voices of such household names as Steve Coogan, Alistair McGowan, John Thomson, Jan Ravens, Harry Enfield, Enn Reitel, Hugh Dennis, Phil Cornwell, Jon Culshaw, John Sessions, Phil Cool, Rory Bremner and Pamela Stephenson.

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Regular readers of this blog will realise that it isn’t the exploits of David Bryant or an interest in bowls but the drawing that attracted me to this item.

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)

Victory in Kuwait - First Gulf War

Today dated Wednesday 27th February 1991

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Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Forces invaded the neighbouring country of Kuwait on the 2^nd of August 1990 and the UN Security Council brought immediate economic sanctions against Iraq. President George H. W. Bush sent American forces to Saudi Arabia and soon 30 other countries, including the UK, joined the Coalition and also sent troops. The scene was set for the 1^st Gulf War.

The action to expel the Iraqi from Kuwait began on the 17th January 1991 with an aerial bombardment followed by ground troops crossing into Kuwait from Saudi on the 23rd February. Between the 24^th and 28^th Operation Desert Sabre cleared Kuwait of Iraqis and pursued the retreating forces to within 150 miles of Baghdad, then President Bush made the decision that the Coalition’s objectives has been achieved and declared a ceasefire. The War officially ended on the 28^th February 1991.

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Bush Senior’s decision not to carry on into Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein seemed to have been based on a reluctance “to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq”. Maybe he should have sat George W on his lap and explained what invading Iraq would lead to.

The United States hoped that Saddam Hussein would be overthrown by an internal coup, and the CIA used its influence in Iraq to organise a revolt, but it failed.

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From my own experience of what comes out of office coffee machines I am surprised it only took 3 cups for Michael Parkinson to realise he was drinking bleach and not strong white with extra sugar.

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Madonna and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The Beauty and the Beast. You decide which is which.

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Christian Brando, the eldest son of film star Marlon Brando, had shot and killed his stepsister’s boyfriend, Dag Drollet, in 1990. He claimed it was an accident but was finally charged with manslaughter. It would have been murder but the only witness, stepsister Cheyenne Brando, had been sent to an asylum in Tahiti by father Marlon and couldn’t be extradited.

The trial ended with Christian getting 10 years of which he served 5. Cheyenne committed suicide in 1995.

Christian was also implicated in the murder of film actor Robert Blake’s wife in 2001. He died of pneumonia in 2008 at the age of 49.

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Wrong. The Poll Tax or Community Charge introduced by Mrs Thatcher’s Government was scraped by John Major’s and replaced by the Council Tax, which was really the old Rates system under another name, and no-one minded except Nicholas Ridley.

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Apart from the obvious ‘if it’s too good to be true then it isn’t’ adage there are a couple of things that worry me about this advert. Does the alternative prize of £5000 cash imply that the house is only worth £5000? In 1991 that would have bought you a caravan. ‘Half an hour from the West End and City’ by what? Concorde? That could put the house in the middle of the Atlantic. A closing date 10 months hence – plenty of time to forget you parted with £9 and never heard another thing. Or am I being too cynical? Again.

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Now this is more like it! A New York apartment for $1? Probably overlooking Central Park. Woody Allen across the hall. Robert DeNiro 2 floors above. Where do I sign up?

Nuclear Nightmare

Today dated Wednesday April 30th 1986

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The World hears about the Chernobyl Nuclear accident, which had occurred on the 26^th April at the nuclear plant in the Ukraine just outside the city of Prypiat.  53000 people were evacuated from the city the next day.  They were told it would be for only 3 days so many left all their possessions behind.  The city lies within the 19 mile exclusion zone that still surrounds the Plant and is still empty except for those processions.  The journalist Dom Joly has a very good chapter in his book ‘The Dark Tourist’ in which he describes visiting Prypriat.

31 deaths were directly attributed to the accident at the time. This figure rose to 64 by 2008, but if deaths from cancer and other illnesses brought on by radiation exposure are taken into account the figure could be as high as a hundred thousand.

Suprisingly the other reactors not wrecked by the accident were kept in use, the final one being shut down in December 2000!

The story at the bottom of the page was the final chapter in the saga that began with the death of George V in 1936 and his son Edward VIII deciding that marrying divorcee Wallis Simpson was more important to him than being King.  After Edward’s abdication the couple became The Duke and Duchess of Windsor.  He died in 1972 and she followed in 1986. 

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This appeared on the Astrology page.  Quite good on the past (1960’s) – not so good on the future (1990s).  I wonder how he got on with predicting the by-election results.

Spot the mistake.  Yes, that’s Robert Hardy in the top picture and probably Bill Jordan in the bottom picture.

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If only today’s youth problems could be solved so easily.