What Do You Think Today?

[Skyweir]

Gotta say I totally understand where Murrin is coming from ... who has the time or inclination for adversarialism ... better we all go down the pub and have a few drinks

[peter]

Well, you were never going to agree with me on my position in respect of lockdown Sky, I accept that.......but we are down to levels of daily deaths from Covid being in single figures {some days only one}, every at risk group is protected by the vaccine {which you either believe works or you don't}, every group as yet unvaccinated is not at risk.........and yet our policy is to continue to stifle our economy with stringent curtailment on rights of business to operate and trade freely, on people to meet and freely interact as should be their God given [metaphorically] right and to keep sixty seven million people under restrictions for the next seven weeks.

Riddle me that?



[Let's just put the Covid death figure in perspective; every day in the UK over 200 people will die from smoking, over 100 will die in their cars. Every day, week on week, year on year, yet we choose to turn a blind eye to this - no banning of tobacco; no restricting speeds to 25mph. Riddle, as I say, me that?]

[I'm Murrin]

You're right that we're heading in a good direction, such as it is, and that's why the government are comfortable gradually easing restrictions - with understandable caution. One important point to be made however is that when you say "every group as yet unvaccinated is not at risk", the "at risk" label is applied to groups that are at extra risk from the virus, it does not mean people who aren't considered in those groups are not in danger of serious illness or death. Perfectly healthy people have had severe responses to covid, and there have been lingering long-term effects of the disease on a lot of sufferers. It's not a pleasant illness.


As for your last part, seems to me that going "we accept these easily preventable deaths, so we shouldn't try to stop other preventable deaths" is coming at the problem from the wrong direction. We should have stronger protections for things like smoking and alcohol (although I think the speeding argument is a bit of a distraction here). The answer, of course, is that tobacco, alcohol, and automotive companies have a lot of money, while the people lobbying to keep covid around have a far weaker argument and no profits to back them up.

[Skyweir]

It IS interesting that those who seek to downplay the COVID riddle ... seek to normalise the impact it has on society with comparisons to other causes of preventable death as if that somehow justifies COVID deaths.

I hear you Peter ... it must be frustrating and indeed infuriating ... I remember the pushback from all sorts of regulatory requirements .. like wearing helmets on bikes.

People wanted to ride motorbikes unhindered by wearing a helmet as their ... lol .. god given right to do what they want .. but as you know I do not prescribe to what to me is a convenient fallacy of such rights.


The same was so of seat belts and countless other similarly imposed restrictions.

We make the compromises we make for the wellbeing of all of society not just the convenience of the individual.

Is the UK a nanny state? Only you and Murrin can answer that ... cuz Im long gone from the country of my birth now.

And even after saying all that ... I dont fully appreciate the difficulties of navigating COVID protocols in the UK as we have not experienced the deaths much of the world has. And I being rurally located have not seen a single case of COVID thankfully, nor a single COVID death.

However this is the result of less than 1k total deaths (I think it is about 900 something deaths to date). So a very different set of circumstances down under.

I have however, friends in the US who have had COVID and know of people who have lost loved ones who got COVID and did not recover. A friend who had COVID has significant health issues now that the doctors believe are COVID related.

And to me that is a rather scary phenomena .. heightened by a consensus of medical opinion that are still operating in an unknown space ..

I have to pay great respect to the medical profession however who are experiencing a huge learning curve to catch up.

[peter]

I think the important point in respect of the traffic and smoking deaths here is that they put the Covid situation into proportion - and isn't that what it is all about? There is always a balance to be struck in the State's response to these situations..... that the response must be proportionate to the threat or risk. The question now has to be "does it remain proportionate, to continue to maintain the current levels of restrictions in the face of the current threat, or in so doing do we risk adding on a cost in terms of life-hours lost by virtue of collateral damage, that is greater than the life-hours saved by maintenance of the restrictions?" At this point, it seems to me that the latter might well be the case, unless we go down the route of saying that the vaccines are not to be trusted to deal with the threat of variants coming in from the wider world - in which case we remain under restrictions virtually ad infinitum until the virus is totally eradicated globally (likely to take half a century if historical example is anything to go by) by which time we will have no economy left.

But no - we have the road-map; let's stick with it, taking the cautious approach and then (hopefully) put this thing to bed altogether.

[Skyweir]

AMEN to that!!!!

I am a big fan of proportionality and reasonableness

[peter]

Close to where I live, in the next few weeks, is to be held the forthcoming G7 Summit, during which leaders of the member countries plus those of a number of invited guests will gather to discuss the major economic issues facing this collection of the world's richest nations, which together hold nearly half of the globe's collective wealth.

Traditionally one of the events pencilled into the 'i-spy Protest Collector's Handbook', this year, and in this place, the nature of the alternative event will be somewhat different. Already severely curtailed as a result of Covid-19 precautionary measures included in the 'Covid Bill', additional restrictions included in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (such as Home Secretary Priti Patel being able to decide on an ad hoc basis what protests may be held and what not) mean that the right to gather to protest must be applied for, and approved (which comes with specifications of the designated sites where the protest may be held) before it can legally go ahead. In the case of this year's summit, two locations have been approved, one fifty miles from the event and the other a more generous twenty five.

Now I have no particular axe to grind in respect of the G7 organisation - I'm sure that the people who protest at such events know in depth what specific crimes and grievances they hold against the member states - but I haven't looked into such lofty world-spanning things and know little beyond the clear and obvious fact that inequality exists and is a blight on us all. But I do have views in respect of people's rights to protest, which seem to me to be a fundamental aspect of any society that would aspire to anything that equates to being free. The idea that one should have to ask for permission to protest strikes me as in some way contradictory?.... illogical?.... irrational? Surely the whole point of a protest is that it is made on the terms of the person or group who are making it? Don't the protesters get to be the ones who decide when, where and what they are going to protest? Clearly, they will be limited in their access to events such as the G7 Summit for security reasons and the like - but beyond this security which is in the hands of the host country and the individual security services of the nation's involved, isn't it the onus, indeed the right, of the protesters to decide when and how they will protest (within the reasonable constraints of law and order that common sense tell you should prevail).

But not, apparently in the UK. Not under the regime of Boris Johnson and Priti Patel in the year of 2021. And with Covid restrictions being eased in respect of other areas of our lives, not, I'm betting, here in respect of this little bit of legislation. No - this is one of our freedoms that I'm betting won't be returning anytime soon. Kim Jong whatever his name is would be proud of you Boris; the path to totalitarianism is composed of a million such small steps.

[peter]

The overturning of the convictions against thirty-nine sub-postmasters and mistresses last week will have been noted by many as the beginning of the process of redress for the unfortunate group of individuals who it appears have been the victims of what is being hailed as the largest miscarriage of justice that has to this date occured in the British judicial system.

This is true, and no doubt we will have shaken our heads in disappointment and disapproval that something like this could have happened here, and then forgotten about this as the news moved on to the next story on the evening broadcast.

There is no crime in this - this is the nature of life and it is hard to bring yourself to high emotion over every story that you watch, especially so in these times when the sheer scale of loss and suffering that life entails is being pushed at us through our screens on an hourly basis. But I'd like to take a moment to just bring home what this has actually meant to some of the people involved - individually as opposed to just thinking of the larger numbers and in terms of words like 'convictions overturned'. What we are talking here is innocent people, adrift in a system that was telling them that they were doing wrong (and I refer both here to the aberrant Horizon system used by the Post Office and the investigation/judicial system that found against them) when they knew that they were not. I'm referring to the innocent people, pulled from their businesses and taken to the police stations, lied to by the people who were investigating them, accused repeatedly of theft, hauled into Courts and found guilty of crimes that they had never committed. I'm talking about some of those who were 'taken down' to prison, stripped naked and made to squat above mirrors, held in cells and debased in the eyes of the guards standing over them and the society that was judging them, while the people who sat in offices and meeting rooms in the Post Office and Fujitsu (the company who developed the IT system that caused all of the problem) knew that their system was at fault. I'm talking about people who in their possibly hundreds, had the shortfalls that the system threw up in their accounts aggressively recovered by the Post Office, often loosing their homes, their businesses, their livelihoods - and in some cases most likely their lives as well - as a result.

And that this went on for decades. And it went on long after it was known that there was a serious, serious miscarriage of justice taking place at the very heart of our system. And I'm asking what this tells us - that this could happen, that this could be allowed to happen - about our system? And I'm asking where else, might other things - things that are simply too uncomfortable, too inconvenient to be thought about, to be addressed - be happening........

And somehow, it no longer seems as easy to forget as it did when it was allocated its two minutes of air-time on the evening news a week or two ago.

[peter]

There are some points to be considered in respect of the above that are illuminating in a consideration of what went wrong.

Firstly, the acceptance of the infallibility of the Horizon computer system by the judiciary, when considering the cases before them, must be addressed. It seems to have simply have been taken as read that 'it's a computer system - it cannot be wrong', and this erroneous belief seems to have coloured all decisions made about the people standing in the dock from the moment they first stepped up into the box. If the system said that money was short - it was short. This was simple naivety on the part of the presiding judges.

Secondly the way that the legal system contrived, not deliberately perhaps, but effectively nevertheless, to prejudice the situation of these individuals in the most disastrous of ways. The Post Office, being a Crown agency, can bring it's own prosecutions to the Crown Court without the need for intervention by the Crown Prosecution Service (which serves to oversee police prosecutions entering the Crown justice system. This freedom effectively allows the Post Office to bring forward prosecutions based on evidence that in the case of ordinary police investigations, simply would not stand up to scrutiny. But the intention of the Post Office was not in this case, to see justice done in respect of a crime committed - the usual reason a person accused of theft appears in court - it was rather the recovery of the shortfall money that was their preoccupation. In pursuing this end rather than the former, they used their knowledge of the justice system in a way that would have to be considered inappropriate, if not bordering on criminal, in itself. They knew that if someone had pled guilty to a lesser crime than theft, such as false accounting, then this alone would allow them to aggressively pursue the money they had 'lost'. Thus, in putting forward their own prosecutions they were able to combine both the accusation of theft (which in many cases they knew was not applicable) together with that of false accounting (which many had been forced to do simply in order to continue with their day to day activities - the signing off of a previous days accounts being a prerequisite for the beginning of the next day's). When solicitors and barristers then advised their clients to plead guilty to the lesser charge of false accounting in order to avoid potentially recieving a custodial sentence, they were (inadvertently or otherwise) opening the door for the Post Office to be able to pursue aggressive claims against the victims estates, which was their (the Post Office's) chief desire anyway. That numbers of the victims were found guilty of theft anyway and handed out prison sentences simply served to add insult to the forthcoming injury that the Post Office intended to inflict upon them in the near future.

And while this was going on, behind the scenes in the Post Office, people well aware of the shortcomings of Horizon were worrying themselves that public confidence in the institution must not be compromised by an admission of failings within the system - and Horizon developer Fujitsu itself were refusing to acknowledge any problems in public, while behind the scenes operating a whole team of IT specialists to try to stem the raft of bugs and glitches that it was throwing up daily.

And innocent people were being sent to prison and having their homes repossessed.

The third thing to consider relates back to our unwarranted confidence in computer systems in that when, following it's installation in tens of thousands of Post Office sub-branches, the number of shortfalls between the money the system said that operators should have in their tills and the money they actually had in their tills skyrocketed - the Post Office reasoning was that this was because the system was exposing endemic theft far more efficiently, rather than consider the possibility that it was the system itself that was at fault. How many of us work in situations where computer output is considered more reliable than human activities on a daily basis; where if what you can see with your eyes goes against what the computer says should be the case, then still it is the computer that wins the day? Perhaps it's time we rethought our relationship with these seemingly all-knowing appliances and maybe, just a bit at least, put them back in their box.

And lastly we must think on why the legal system, once knowing that there was a serious miscarriage of justice going on here, was still so slow in getting its act together in respect of redress? Why are there still people in their hundreds for whom the nightmare is ongoing? It's like it's all just a game to the legal profession/system. Like "You are just the small people - you can't expect the grave institution of Law to dance to your tune! The wheels of justice turn slowly and you'd better like it!"

Well screw that - I don't like it. This is all simply wrong. Whosoever is still sitting in prison on the basis of one of these changes, get them out - today! Whosoever is facing homelessness because of Post Office pursuing of claims against them, suspend those actions - today! If this is going to be a country worth living in, worth bringing your children up in, then let's see some fucking action on this. Let Johnson appoint a Minister with an especial brief to terminate any ongoing prosecutions, investigate on a case by case basis those historical and currently ongoing ones. Organise the immediate release of anyone held in connection with this and suspend any actions ongoing by the Post Office in this area. This is the least we can do in the immediate and first instance. Then let those affected be compensated in full for their losses and those in the know who were in any way involved or implicated in allowing this situation to proceed unchecked, to face the full consequence of the Law in respect of their sins of omission and comission. Then let there be a full and public judicial enquiry into this situation and it's broader implications be conducted so that such a travesty of justice can never, never, happen again.

We owe this to these injured people and we owe it to ourselves to see this done with alacrity. Only then can any faith we retain in our system from top to bottom, be restored.

(Edit; It appears that the Post Office and Fujitsu have now accepted that the Horizon program upon which many of the prosecutions were based was fundamentally flawed and have indeed ceased to bring such prosecutions forward. They have contacted the many hundreds of victims of this miscarriage of justice and are advising them on how to proceed in dealing with the situation that they find themselves in. The current managing director has issued a full and unreserved apology to those affected and said that compensation must be paid commensurate with their losses and the damage to their lives resulting therefrom. Sadly this will come too late for those who have died in the intervening twenty years since these terrible prosecutions began to be brought. For the Government's part, they have announced an enquiry of sorts, but not one where witnesses may be compelled to appear or will be publicly accessible for all to hear. Toward this end the collective of sub-postmasters and mistresses effected have put forward an application to the High Court for a full and public judicial enquiry to be held as per my suggestion above. It must be hoped that they will be successful in achieving this end, if for no other reason than that public confidence would be damaged far more by a failure to do so than any savings to the same that may be achieved by the kind of whitewash enquiry that the Government is currently proposing.)

[peter]

There is a nasty undercurrent of racism, nebulous but there nevertheless, beginning to creep into the commentary on vaccination in the press and media. It has long been reported that uptake of the vaccination is lower in the BAME communities, the very communities that for some reason, be it social deprivation related or otherwise, seem to be disproportionately hit by the virus(s) (is it still a single virus or not...??.....f***ed if I know).

Then we heard that it was within this group of NHS/care workers that vaccination hesitancy was at its greatest.

Now the Government/epidemiologists report that the 'Indian variant' is spreading fastest in the towns of the UK where the highest Asian populations may be found (and where presumably the 20,000 people who came in from the sub-continent while the Government decided whether India should be on the 'red list' or not, mostly headed).

And today you have the Daily Mail or Express (one of those shit-sheets...... I can't even be bothered to find out which) saying, "We won't have our roadmap to freedom derailed because of the refuseniks"........well, it doesn't take much to join up the dots does it?

This will all be grist to the mill of the right wing racist bigotry that pervades our society in an insidious and invisible manner - the type of thing so nobly expressed by the image of Farage standing in front of the poster of queues of immigrants - and they will suck it up and spray it out over the counters of a million shops like the ones I work in, over a million bars where at last they can gather to discuss the contents of the daily papers and agree sagely that it's "them wot's to bame" and we should "send 'em all back".

Nasty business from where I stand, but am I surprised; not a bit of it. All of that bigotry and hatred previously reserved for the EU (and tapped into so adroitly by the powers that brought us to this place) has to go somewhere - as the situation in this country becomes ever worse as the days go on (and it will), someone will be needed to take the blame and the right wing shit spreaders are already focusing on their next target.

[Skyweir]

100% it does .. thats how populism plays out .. it needs a target enemy ... driving BREXIT is was the EU ... and immigrants to be fair ... and now its ... deflected to a new target ENEMY ... it is a nasty business indeed.'

Isn't this a Tank perfect issue?

[peter]

Mmmm....... it's still a bit loose, more of an opinion than a cohesive thing that you can get your teeth into Sky. But I was gratified to hear James O'Brien (presenter of political commentary station, LBC's 10am to 1pm slot) saying the same thing yesterday when I switched on, so it can't be just me that is picking up on it.

----------------------------------0-----------------------------------

Residents and the authorities in my town are up in arms about an illegal traveler encampment transgressing the laws on trespass that has sprung up on a local park and ride carpark. Eviction notices and police responses are being prepared as we speak and these will no doubt meet with generalized public approval when these nuisance residents are eventually moved on. Penalties for this kind of activity will shortly, under kind Boris Johnson's watch, be increased with stiffer custodial sentences being part of the deterrence measures used. But with the increase in the size of the stick, there is no suggestion that there should be any concomitant increase in the size of the carrot. As long ago as 1994 the statutory obligation of local authorities to provide stopping places for traveler communities was lifted (against the will of the police and farming community who foresaw the obvious rise in illegal encampment that would result) and while the Johnson administration seem perfectly happy to demonstrate their law and order based political ethos by clamping down on this traditionally easy target, they seem less inclined to recognise the travelers rights as an established ethnic grouping with their own needs which must be catered for. Was it ever thus. As in my previous post, it's always good to have a few of 'the other' to direct public angst against and to justify each step you take toward the more authoritarian culture that your core vote seems to expect of you.

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Finally inflation seems to have hit even budget supermarket Aldi in my town; my wife returned yesterday with some of the sweet biscuits we like, formerly known as 'millionaires shortbreads' and which were displaying a new moniker......trillionaires shortbreads!

[peter]

The propoganda arm of the Government, the BBC, has received a complete drubbing at the hands of Lord Dyson in respect of the publication of his report into the Martin Bashir/Princess Diana interview and the means he used to obtain it.

Playing on the fears of a mentally unstable individual, he concocted a tissue of fabrication in order to ensnare her into an interview, the ramifications of which would damage her, the family and the institution of Monarchy in this country, and the effects of which are being felt the this day.

The report goes on to say that knowing this, rather than own its responsibility for his actions, the BBC for years attempted to cover up what it had done in a skein of obfuscation and misinformation.

In it's response to the report the BBC is typically cynical. It issues a hands up 'mea culpa' - but always for past 'historical' wrongs that (it goes without saying) would never be done now. Ten out of ten to William and Harry for calling them out on this and making it clear that nothing has changed. The corporation remains as shifty, as manipulative, as self-serving and untrustworthy, as it was on the day that the interview was aired. It should be broken down and sold forthwith. 'Auntie' - my arse!

[peter]

Recieving the second jab of my two course Covid vaccination program yesterday, the nurse asked me if I was taking any blood thinning drugs such as (warfarin or aspirin I presume). I said not, and she replied, "Good - no bleeding problems then."

"Not on a catastrophic scale," I replied, "but I often wonder if all of these reports of people having headaches after the vaccine aren't caused by micro-haemorraging at a much lesser level?"

She threw her hands up into the air and replied, "I don't even want to think about that!"

It will be interesting to see how the figures for strokes and other cerebral haemorrhage events stack up over the next few decades, I'm thinking.

[jelerak]

I think that it is time that I start regularly coming back to the Watch. I missed you guys (and gals).

[peter]

Some "new blood" in terms of input would be absolutely great for the Watch jelerak. I see you first joined in 2004 - wow! Here's hoping that the intervening years have been good for you! How long did you remain a regular poster? I've been around for a good many years now and can't remember that we've 'met' before.

But irrespective of this, good to see you around and look forward to hearing what you have to say on any topic that piques your interest!





Meanwhile...........


The papers today inform us that Britons are going on their holidays abroad in droves as restrictions are reduced. Well not in my street they're not. Despite what the media would have us believe, for the average Joe (and I speak to hundreds a week) holidays in the sun remain a distant dream. The quarantine requirements, combined with the cost of flights, the testing requirements and the limited (to say the least) number of green-list countries, make it damn near impossible for the bulk of people to travel, even if they were disposed to navigate the thousand different obstacles and risks that threaten to disrupt their plans at short notice, which most aren't. On the street when you question people, despite what the papers report, the story is always the same; for this reason or that, for the risk of loosing their deposit or not being able to fulfill this requirement or the other, they are deciding to put any plans on hold. The Government's mixed messaging on this has been appalling and this also has not helped.

But in many respects this situation in respect of holidays is mirrored right across the so called easing of restrictions and in my opinion is simply another example of the duplicity with which this whole business has been shot through. Ian Hislop on last week's Have I Got News For You referred to this whole thing as "the return to freedom which isn't" and I absolutely agree with him. Further, I'd go to say that the whole manner in which it is being carried out is a deliberate and calculated means by which people will be attempted to be hoodwinked into believing that "things are going back to normal" via repeated messaging in the media, while simultaneously freedoms are returned in dribs and drabs with little alterations here, little omissions there, such as the Government want to retain or alter in respect of the way we are allowed to live our lives. And all the while a clarion call of "freedom is returning" is blasted into our ears to convince us of just that. This is manipulation of the population in a manner and on a scale that would have had any totalitarian leader of history clapping in applause.

It's bullshit - don't buy it. Freedom will have returned when we can do all - all - of the things that we could before the pandemic without let or hindrance. When business can throw open its doors to who it likes, when it likes and in the manner it likes (or at least to the degree it could before the pandemic struck). When we can move around without our faces being covered, when we can meet with who we choose, in what proximity we choose, when we choose and where we choose. When we can decide freely and without being coerced by the implied threat of imposed limitations in terms of what we will and will not be able to do should we decline, about what we have injected into our own bodies and when.

But reality check - it ain't happening. You know that and so do I. That we are entering an age of more centralised authoritarian governance, where freedom of travel is a thing that will be limited to a limited number of people in certain designated ways - and most likely freedom of movement and association in our own country as well. How quickly it has happened. It's all been done under the auspices of the pandemic - for our own good, so we're told, and maybe so. But even under another name it remains the same. As the old saying goes, "If it walks like an elephant, talks like an elephant, looks like an elephant - it is an elephant!

[jelerak]

Was a regular for probably 7 years or so then changed jobs and time became less available before. Got on very intermittently since then but not in a very long time since. Had some good years, posted a lot of lyrics and poetry, enjoyed a few robust and fun years with our Watch Fantasy Football league. Sports and heavy metal music took up a good portion of my posts along with many posts about Stephen R Donaldson and his works and a few other authors here and there. Delved some into social issues and politics but not too heavily. I just really enjoyed reading everyone else's thoughts and opinions and over the years gotta say there were some pretty entertaining verbal jousting going on, and I see that that has not changed much (which while not totally unexpected, very happy that everyone here always has and still does have a voice).

As for some general thoughts (since this is a 'what do you think today' thread) to our new pandemic culture for some very selfish reasons. My near future plans are on hold and it sucks. We bought our tickets last year to Summer Breeze 2021 in Dinkelsbuhl Germany. The festival starts in the 3rd week of August. The festival still has not announced if will take place. Wacken in 2 weeks prior and has yet to announce. No idea if the lineup will change but ok with that. Thinking the US and Canadian bancs may not make the trip but I will always have opportunities to see them at some point stateside. Ugh. Been holding off on buying the airfare, Me, the wife and boys all got our vaccines. We got our physical passports as we all needed them (more expensive than I would have thought). So our summer plans are on hold, I still gotta get airfare and line up RV rental for the week that we will be there. I wish someone would make a call soon on this as is less than three full months away and there is a lot that needs to be planned for us as a family to make this trip. Just would like to know. Sure, if cancels can just roll our tickets over to 2022 but just want to know if this will happen or not. I have been so disappointed in the entire EU in their vaccine roll out, application and shut down parameters. I would have thought that of all countries that Germany would have had it together. So we sit here waiting, still trying to figure out f we are doing this or not. While i know that me and the boys can pull this off last minute on the fly the wife is another situation entirely as she does not work well on something like this with very short notice. And rightly so, if we know that the festival is not taking place then we can plan for something else to do this summer.

Glad to be back!

[peter]

Absolutely fingers crossed for you and the family jelerak! I'd be a wreck not knowing if a trip of this scale was going to happen or not by now - it simply isn't fair on people!

Like your wife, I'm not in a position to drop everything on short notice - both Mrs P and I have to book our time off months in advance and then stick with it. The younger ones in my family have missed Glastonbury festival for two years running and the Boomtown one (which you should look into it you're a 'festival head'. (Lots of weird stuff like interactive thriller games that run the whole length of the weekend.)

If I had to bet I'd say that the likelihood is that they'll probably pull the festival; everyone is pretty freaked out about the Indian variant (certainly in the UK at least) and Germany has been ultra-cautious up to this point. I'm very surprised that they haven't made the call yet and this, if nothing else, is probably in your favour. The later they leave it the harder it is to pull the plug.

Absolutely hope it falls your way!

[Skyweir]

I think that it is time that I start regularly coming back to the Watch. I missed you guys (and gals).

Were you always jerelak or would we have known you by another nic?

Regardless it’s always good to see Watchers return. You can be sure you’ve been missed as our MUA threads attest.

The Watch is a richly diverse and awesome community - some of us were part of the original EZ-board Watch created by Jay. After 9/11 Vain created this webhost Ihugny (I hug New York) as a site for the Watch.

Look forward to reading your posts jerelak

[jelerak]

Well I did make the cut in the original Anthology under that name!