britishexpats.com - serving expats wrong

Having subscribed for 350 USD to a sports streaming site for a year (liveuktv.com), and been in sportsfan heaven for four or five days tuning into all Sky Sports and Setanta, it all went belly up to my horror barely a week in. First there were some solicitous replies to my queries, stating they were "having routing problems", then 48 hours later the site was taken down altogether, replaced by a summary notice from the hosting company (Global Media Group) declaring the site's illegality (which is ripe, considering I'd been buying the streaming to individual events from the site for over a year).
I started to delve around for a way of either getting my telly or my money back, and a spot of Googling threw up a forum on a site called britishexpats.com where others who had been had were having their say. Only trouble was, they weren't the only ones.
For those not familiar with the workings of a forum, here's how it goes. When you visit a forum it is generally because that forum caters to a particular interest. Within that forum there are usually a number of topics being discussed at any one time, or that may have been discussed in the past. You can trace these topics and the interchanges via a thread, which corresponds to the subject line in an email. If the thread is still alive, you can contribute to it. This is what I did for the thread: "What the frig's happened to liveuktv?", or words to that effect. There were a few contributors who had a similar experience to myself, and were wringing their hands and seeking advice, too. Unfortunately there were also a bunch of oafs going on about something and nothing, at a complete tangent to the thread, and scumbags with nothing to offer but abuse. So it is that, for a forum to work properly, it has to have a moderator. The moderator is meant to keep everything in order. The idiot moderator on this site - pseudo Bob - dictatorially declared that the thread was being closed down because it was going around in circles. No doubt since I'd signalled to him my opinion that he couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery (couched in far more diplomatic language, I might add), I wasn't surprised to find he'd cancelled my forum login. So why was I trying to log in, might you ask? It certainly wasn't because I wanted anything to do with this poxy forum stroke community ("Pwease can I be your fwend?"), but it just so happened that I'd discovered a way to get a full refund, and I would have liked to share the solution with the other poor suckers who'd fallen foul of the siren of liveuktv. Thanks to Bob the Shite Moderator of Britishexpats.com, those poor suckers are going to have to find out for themselves.

John Cooper Clarke

I've just been listening to the Paul Morley documentary on John-Cooper Clarke on Radio 4, and the talk of how he deflected hecklers with humour reminds me of when I saw the estimable punk poet supporting Be Bop Deluxe at the Manchester Apollo. A rather geeky chap I was with (no names, no pack drill, Jonesy) yelled out half way through his number: "We want Be-Bop!" Quick as a flash, Clarke riposted: "Just Ships in the Night". Sure enough, who remembers Be-Bop Deluxe these days? Meanwhile, JCC is up there on a cultural plinth, being fêted on the tranny.
Incidentally, some time around the time I saw him in concert, I remember being on a school outing to the Goethe Institute in Manchester with my A-level group when I spotted JCC outside a shop. I pointed out to those around me, not particularly loudly, "Hey, look, it's John Cooper Clarke". Noticing that he'd been spotted, he seemed to take fright, turn tail and march off smartly. Maybe that was the period when he was heavy into heroin with Niko, and we looked odd and menacing through the druggy haze. Maybe he thought we were monsters from outer space, just landed with his ex-wife, pursuing him for alimony.

Liz Collins RIP

I've just discovered that Liz Collins (BRGS, 1972-1979) has passed away, but I don't know any more details. I did my A-Levels with her and liked her a lot, she was very intelligent and vivacious. The obit says she was married to Stephen Wilkinson, also of BRGS. The name rings a bell but I can't place him. A Crackerjack pencil will go to the first person to send me a photo of Stephen or let me know what poor Liz died of. I am curioz orange.

The things they say

Stan: "J'ai assez fait de la voiture, je vais prendre mon bébé et faire le hibou."
("I've played enough with my car, I'm going to get my baby and play at owls.")

Stan (pulling a tricycle with a hoop hooked around the handlebars, negotiating some garden furniture): "Vache! Fais attention à la chaise!" ("Cow! Mind the chair!").
Alice (twenty minutes later): "Je vais traire ta vache." (I'm going to milk your cow.")