It's A Funny Old World...

23/5/2025

Still you have to laugh! Can't beat a Queen song, especially Innuendo.

"Coincidentally, who remembers those wonderful 1960's Flintstones cartoons. Now how did the ending song go, you know the final words? "we'll have a (something) old time", cant quite remember... Old age eh? The memory is not the same, something about having a "grey old time".

14 Comments

INTERESTING

24/5/2025 08:59:07 pm

Posted by Mike BarracloughUser Info on 24/5/2025, 17:00:36
The Divided Dial is a Peabody award winning podcast on how right wing talk radio became dominant in the US. First series dealt with it on medium wave and FM. Second series is on shortwave, podcasts around 35 minutes. Produced by NPR station WNYC, also included in their weekly long running On the Media series.

First episode in the second series dealt with the early broadcasts, then broadcasts on shortwave to and from the US in World War Two and the Cold War.
Second series dealt with the far right and extremist broadcasters from the many newly licenced stations in the 1990's. Lots of audio from the broadcasters in each episode.

Latest episode may be of particular interest to readers of this forum as it features Al Weiner.

"Today, in the internet era, much of the shortwaves have been left to the most extreme voices — including a conspiratorial flat earth ministry, and an ultra-conservative cult complete with everything from sexual abuse to dead infants and illegal burials. In the 737-person northern Maine town of Monticello, one of the world's farthest-reaching radio stations has given them a home, pumping out extremism and conspiracy theories to the world as the voice of American broadcasting."

Katie Thornton visits WBCQ to watch a solar eclipse and chats extensively to Alan Weiner as well as Timothy B Smith (engineer who started on landbased pirate radio and now has a music show Radio Timtrom) and a transmitter engineer who used to work on Christian Science station WCSN.

Starts with audio and reports on Al Weiner's time on offshore radio station Radio New York International. Audio of broadcasters includes Brother Stair, World's Last Chance and Hal Turner. World's Last Chance provided the funding for the 500kw shortwave transmitter he now has.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/divided-dial

Some more background for those unaware of it.

Al was a landbased pirate broadcaster in New York from the late 60's when he was in high school. Then had licences for some low power AM and FM stations. Thought about starting an offshore radio station in 1985, knew about Radio Caroline.

He rang up Caroline's New York office and said he was interested as working for them as an engineer. Spoke to Ronan later and joined them in November. Spent three weeks there including reconditioning their shortwave transmitter which then tested on 6215, a frequency that caused them problems with the authorities as it's a marine distress frequency. Ronan wanted him to stay but at the time he had his station in the States and wanted an offshore station one. Ronan suggested he call it Radio Caroline West.

John Ford, American DJ who was on Caroline for five months in 1985 helped him fit out the MV Sarah Radio New York International broadcast from and was also involved when it came back on air again for a short time after it's initial raid.

His first contact with Brother Stair was when he fitted out a proposed offshore station for him in 1993 on the Fury 5, four shortwave, one medium wave and one FM. It was thought it would get a licence from St Nevis/St Kitts. They pulled out, ship got raided by the FCC in 1994. Brother Stair has broadcast from several other shortwave stations and still is despite him having passed away.

In August 1990 shortwave station WWCR rang him up to see if he would be interested in leasing time from them to broadcast as Radio New York International. Started the next month Sundays 9pm to 1am EST. From I think 1991 they included 30 minute broadcasts from Radio Caroline. They were also broadcast the following Wednesday on Costa Rican station Radio for Peace International.

Three are available for download or streaming on Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/radio-caroline-wbcq

The two Tony Kirk ones are the most interesting IMO as they give details of what was happening at the time on the Ross Revenge in Dover, future plans and items for sale from Caroline. The Chris Watford one is mostly a history of radio in the UK from the 1960's.

He wrote a 246 autobiography Access to the Airwaves published in 1997, he'd applied for a shortwave licence by then, which I have. It's now out of print.

Shawn Combs Flat Earth Society and record jail time producer

25/5/2025 04:48:13 am

Look Caught, in my defence

My orthodontist told me a couple of white plastic whoopers would help me rap out lies better from my fat baby oiled lips

I also love island it how UK Mr Prime 8 mile Extreme Pawn Shop owner Starmer and the reformed classic pastrami on a free ride Brits are now having freak off press tweets singing "we've got your back covered"

They copying me right? You feel?

My pro bro buddy and race relations attorney Kane Western rapped his hero Hans landau lyricised "Shoozana, it's the fat US Cats that get the UKFA cup cream"

This trial is complete kittens dudes

I ain't no Jeffery Einstein man

I can't do no Johnny Cash time no more

All my green going to my legal team

ORDER ORDER

Mervyn Hagger

25/5/2025 08:20:53 am

Mike Barraclough is not a mindless dummy, but Mike has a problem. He tries his best to stay in the deceitful past of a pirate radio era that never happened (in the way most anoraks like to pretend that it did), and maintain civil contact with me. But my name is poison to anoraks because I tell they truth, and the majority of anoraks promote lies about a past that never happened.

For the real story about Weiner, go to: http://foundthreads.com/14.html

Malcolm Smith is nothing more than a scavenger of pensioners' money using a rust bucket hulk as his begging bowl.

But recently I have discovered a site which caters for anoraks and which allows me to post the true origins of Radio Caroline in 1964.

Since someone has just drawn attention on Mike's Board to a news item on one of our many web sites, I will personally refer readers there because for the very first time anywhere I have just made a big reveal about the 1964 birth of Radio Caroline on that same site, with a note of reference to the source of the item that caused this revelation to take place.

PS: It is the same revelation of fact that Chris Edwards of OEM magazine - who worked with me to investigate the IEE book called 'Radio Man', then quit and said that what I was searching for over a 10 years period of time - did not exist. Well Chris, it did and it does exist because I found it.

Now go to http://www.allaboutradiocaroline.co.uk/ and you will find it too!

(But tell the loon with his make-believe offshore museum not to steal my info and try to make it his own. That also goes for the Pudding Bowl Man who knows nothing but pretends that he does. As for Ray Clark and his "true story" books (NOT), he wouldn't know the truth any more than he is willing to admit that "Peter Moore" is a rusting fraud.

Justin by accident

25/5/2025 10:33:28 am

https://youtu.be/_M1PBv1wy_I

There is this there an interesting do you remember the days of Saturday night Juliet Bravo TV of ham CB radio memory exchange from the 55 year aged born on Christmas day in Nottingham Macmaster visiting as he does every other week to sniff fish and chips in Blackpool at 10.50 to about 13.42

I can't isolate the few minutes but he is one of the more tolerable sniffing fishy and chips in Blackpool and Benidorm, New York, Vegas and California vloggers when not moaning about his devalued electric Poached eggs car and hash browns which do not belong on a real full English Breakfast with horrible black at night pigs blood pudding. I tried that once in Derby. It was yuck

Onwards my friends let go!

James McGregor. Can't beat a Queen song, especially Innuendo.

25/5/2025 12:10:35 pm

TBH I thought the Westpoint speech was great. to a point. No teleprompter and then there was that awkward nervous laughter over the trophy wives gag gaff, after that it just rambled on into an embarrassment of totally unrememberable life skill pointers over how every real estate guy on Earth apart from him was a born loser and he only likes winners

I think it was such a shame

If that graduation speech could been cut down to the good stuff it would have been legendarily inspirational

but it just went on and on and the graduates, the free world's Team America future military leaders must have been thinking, omg the Superbowl was going so well and then the Kipper fumbles the ball pass

They are smart guys and gals and the president is the best man currently leading democracy on Earth but that was a bit of a let down sorry to say

Mervyn Hagger

26/5/2025 07:58:57 am

As usual, the little band of anorak theives stay silent after I rose to their challenge and began, for the very first time, anywhere, to reveal key details about the origin of Radio Caroline in 1964. More will follow in video and print formats. 'Dial 999 for Caroline - the story behind a palimpsest hoax' - is in the works. It reveals with proven evidence (not schemes to rip-off gulible pensioners on behalf of Malcolm Smith and his rust bucket), who, how and why, Radio Caroline was created in 1964, and why Ronan O'Rahilly was nothing more than a fraud spewing lies.

Mike - Admin

26/5/2025 07:43:57 pm

REMINDER - If you want to moan & whinge about stuff on Facebook then go there and have your say. Comments left here about stuff there will not be published.

Mervyn Hagger

26/5/2025 11:47:32 pm

Mike, they acted like scared rabbits in an old black and white corny movie where the person that the crooks let in, was found to be a cop. I was the cop and the sucker was Craig Frensby. He's the guy you mentioned whining about a Facebook page sheltering Malcolm Smith, Paul Rusling, Ray Clark in the lion's den of Ray Anderson. They panicked, and began removing all of the documented evidence I posted on their anorak site which revealed that to show they were con men. But too late. Anyone exposed to that site has been exposed to links that reveal that the demented Ronan O'Rahilly was a patsy turned fraudster. In other words, like that famous last line, the Malcolm Smith anoraks can't stand the truth. My guess is that Malcolm is going to have a fit and lash out sooner or later on the so-called Free Radio Forum. Now they all know that their day of reckoning with the truth is just around the corner. But better still, Felixtowe now knows that it has been helping crooks steal from pensioners by deceiving them. I guess Craig thinks that he has saved the day, but in reality he has just sunk Malcolm's hulk. They cannot claim now that they did not know the truth!

Mervyn Hagger

27/5/2025 09:00:19 am

Mike, this morning I discovered that my original comments (and links) are still on the Felixtowe page, what seems to have disappeared is the complaining voice that may be the same one who appeared here, so both his comments to get me banned, and my comments in response have disappeared.

My apologies to that page's Admins, and my congratulations to them for not falling into a mode of strict censorship. I have no complaints at all with anyone who presents both sides of an argument.

Mike - Admin

27/5/2025 08:26:04 pm

The reality is that in real terms very few people in the UK are interested in Radio Caroline these days, however like yourself, I think it will be good to set the history book right regarding the stations origin and who really was behind that and the other sixties offshore stations. So many people have been dumbed down for decades now, and one of the biggest culprits is mainstream news TV and press.

The BBC recently dismissed what is happening to white farmers in South Africa as 'largely debunked'. This is an outright lie, yet because of who they are and their current propaganda campaigns through alleged fact checking and BBC Verify (I wish they could verify how many neo-marxists work for them) they get away with their lies.

Anoraks are largely no better and would rather believe the 'traditional stories' than find out they have been mislead for most of their lives.

The haters come here and get moderated out, if all they want to do is have a hissy fit and lob insults, rather than engage in a discussion.

These days I am engaged in another project that is getting quite exciting, so this site is mainly moderated once a day or two days, interestingly we seem to mirror traffic levels similar to the two forums, when they are quiet we go quiet, sometimes as low as seventy unique visitors a day,so maybe the whole anorak things is quietly drifting in to the mists of time.

Double standards?

28/5/2025 04:51:51 pm

Mike deletes comments that he deems inappropriate. Fair enough, it's his board.
Mervyn Hagger deletes comments he doesn't like. Fair enough, it's his page.
The 'anorak site' deletes comments it doesn't like. Fair enough, it's their page, but for some reason Mr Hagger gets all uppity about it.

Mr D.S. Examiner

28/5/2025 09:19:03 pm

But who are you?

Mervyn Hagger

28/5/2025 09:22:12 pm

The important stuff was left alone! The mystical anorak attacker was deleted and therefore my response also vanished. But that site seems to be very honest and fair.

Mervyn Hagger

27/5/2025 09:31:33 pm

Mike, if what we are doing is just investigating Radio Caroline, I would agree that it is such an extremely fringe issue of relevance to only a few old men, that it would make our venture absurd and just plain silly.

But it is more akin to pulling on a loose thread on a sweater, and in more than just a few tugs the sweater ceased to exist and a pile of wool was at our feet.

We have been pulling and pulling and pulling and come across a legacy newsman named Merriman Smith who won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the JFK assassination. Then he shot himself and NIxon, who was President, lowered the US flag on the White House in his honour.

At Yalta, Winston Churchill gave Joe Stalin Eastern Europe, and then, a few years later in America, he blamed Joe Stalin for creating an 'Iron Curtain'.

"Wonderful Radio London" had nothing to do with KLIF, it copied "Wonderful KBOX" which created a fake JFK assassination narrative with Merriman Smith that was sold by CBS records.

Everyone knows about Bletchley and ULTRA, but not about Sefton Delmer for whom the 'Aspidastra' transmitter was bought to broadcast both porn and fake Catholic religious broadcasts into Nazi Germany.

There is much, much more and it all begins with pullng on the Caroline loose thread. Yesterday never happened.

That's what we discovered when the 'sweater' vanished into a pile of wool.

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