Death Notices

[Tony Baloney]

10 Best Comic Soccer Players.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,1093419,00.html

[saffron sam2]

10 Best Comic Soccer Players.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,1093419,00.html

Billy The Fish was magnificent.

[All of a Sludden]

10 Best Comic Soccer Players.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,1093419,00.html

Billy The Fish was magnificent.

Hell of a keeper, is he still playing?

[Tony Baloney]

Tony Scott. Apparently threw himself off a bridge in LA yesterday. RIP.

[Billys Boots]

He was in something well before Roy.

I think Hot Shot Hamish was in Tiger before he transferred to Melchester Rovers.

Pretty sure Hamish didn't play for Melchester Rovers though, he played for Princes Park and I think himself and Mighty Mouse then went to another team called Glenlow Rangers or something like that.

It was Tiger (incorporating Scorcher). 

[Shamrock Shore]

Scott McKenzie

The lad who insisted that if you went to San Francisco you had to wear flowers in your hair.

1939-2012

[Minder]

Tony Scott, British film director, directed Top Gun, True Romance, Crimson Tide, Days of Thunder dead after jumping from a bridge in Los Angeles.

[Ulick]

Dom Mintoff


Dom Mintoff, Fiery Proponent of Maltese Independence, Dies at 96
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: August 20, 2012


Dom Mintoff, a fiery postwar socialist leader of Malta who closed NATO bases, evicted British interests, courted China and Libya and even banned The Times of London to chart an independent course for his tiny Mediterranean island nation, died on Monday. He was 96.
Associated Press

His death was announced by the Maltese government, The Times of Malta reported.

Mr. Mintoff was secretive, unpredictable and, to enemies, a ruthless tyrant. But to admirers, he was the father of modern Malta, a charismatic Labor Party fixture for 35 years who was prime minister from 1955 to 1958, when Malta had limited self-rule as a British colony, and from 1971 to 1984, when his vision of a nonaligned, self-sufficient republic was substantially realized.

In an often-conquered land used as a strategic military garrison by the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Knights of St. John, Napoleon Bonaparte and, since 1814, the British, Mr. Mintoff fiercely sought an end to Malta's exploitation by foreign powers, a revival of national dignity and economic and diplomatic ties with nations that could underwrite Maltese neutrality.

Malta, a rocky archipelago 60 miles south of Sicily, the size of Queens, has little arable land and few natural resources. But it has a fabled history as a seafarers' watchtower of striking beauty. Its man-made features are the work of thousands of years by, among others, Crusaders known as the Knights of Malta, who built fortresses, palaces, churches and inns that stand in the sunlight like the intricate work of a goldsmith.

Mr. Mintoff, an architect and civil engineer, helped rebuild Malta after devastating bombing by Axis powers in World War II. He rose to prominence as a socialist legislator in the late 1940s and led his party to power in 1955, battling against the conservative Nationalist Party and feuding with its allies in the Roman Catholic Church.

In three years as prime minister, he sought to integrate Malta into Britain, with a status like Northern Ireland's — having a legislature of its own but electing members to Parliament in Westminster and gaining access to British economic aid, military defense and other benefits. When England refused, Mr. Mintoff resigned as prime minister and began advocating full independence for Malta.

In 1964, after intense Nationalist Party negotiations with London, Malta gained independence under a constitution that initially retained Queen Elizabeth II as head of state; a resident governor-general exercised executive authority on her behalf. In addition, British influence remained pervasive in Malta's seaports, banking, communications, military services, law-enforcement and government agencies.

Upset by the terms, Mr. Mintoff boycotted the independence ceremonies and campaigned for years to oust the British, even banning The Times of London as "hostile" to the nation. He accelerated the campaign after becoming prime minister again in 1971 and largely succeeded over the next decade.

In 1974 Malta declared itself a republic within the British Commonwealth, with its president as head of state. And in 1979, when a defense agreement with Britain expired, the last British forces left at Mr. Mintoff's insistence. He also closed the British-run bases of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Rents of $60 million were lost, creating a hole in Malta's budget, but Mr. Mintoff insisted the cost was justified.

"When we took office, we had an English governor-general, an English queen, English currency, a Bank of England man as the head of our central bank," he told The New York Times. "We had a police force run by a commissioner who stated openly that his loyalty was to the British crown and nobody else. This was only eight years ago. Now Malta is a republic. Everything has changed. Nothing is British anymore."

Mr. Mintoff turned to other nations for support, provided they accepted Malta's neutrality. He courted Libya's Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi until they had a falling out over offshore oil fields both claimed. But Italy pledged $95 million over five years. China offered a $40 million loan and long-term aid aimed at keeping the Soviet Union out of Malta. But Moscow edged in anyway, buying rights to store naval fuel there.

Mr. Mintoff's efforts to play foreign rivals against one another often worked. But his domestic politics were fair game for critics, who charged that he corrupted democracy by using patronage, gerrymandering, legislation of doubtful constitutionality, even goon squads at the polls and physical bullying. He once had a fistfight in Parliament with the Nationalist Party chairman, who had called him "a despoiler of the church."

A feud between Mr. Mintoff and the Catholic Church, the religious affiliation of 90 percent of Malta's 350,000 people, generated heated clashes from time to time. Mr. Mintoff accused the church of threatening to excommunicate Labor Party voters, closed church-supported hospitals and demanded that the church abandon tuition charges in its schools. The church accused him of intruding on religious freedom.

By 1984, when he resigned, one of Europe's longest-serving heads of government, Mr. Mintoff had eliminated foreign military bases in Malta, signed pacts for economic cooperation with the United States, China and other countries, and set his nation on a road to self-sufficiency with a welfare state, socialized medicine, diversified industries and most of its trade and tourism coming from the West.

He was a short, compact man, with a high forehead, a tight smile and a quick temper. He hated small talk and tended to walk out of long meetings. He spoke cultivated English, but deployed peppery Maltese oratory on the stump. Visitors to his office in the ornate Auberge de Castille in Valletta, the capital, or at his nearby home in Tarxien, found him genial, but not always.

Dominic Mintoff was born in Cospicua, Malta, on Aug. 6, 1916, one of nine children of Lawrence and Concetta Farrugia Mintoff. His father was a Royal Navy cook and his mother a money lender. He studied science and engineering, earning degrees in 1937 and 1939 at the University of Malta, and in 1941 as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University in England. He worked as a civil engineer in Britain for two years.

Returning to Malta in 1943, he joined the Labor Party and soon rose to leadership posts. Four years later, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly under a new constitution giving Malta limited self-rule. In the ensuing Labor government he became minister of reconstruction and deputy prime minister.

In 1947 he married Moyra de Vere Bentinck, a Briton. They had two daughters, Anne and Yana. His wife preferred to live in England with their daughters, and the couple lived apart for many years. Information about his survivors was not immediately available.

Mr. Mintoff became Labor Party leader in 1949, a post he retained for 35 years. After stepping down as prime minister in 1984, he kept his seat in Parliament, serving until 1998, mostly as a vociferous gadfly backbencher.

[Sandino]

The first lady of stand-up comedy, America's Phyllis Diller, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 95.

[Shamrock Shore]

Maureen Toal aka Teasy in Glenroe dies in Dublin aged 82

[laoislad]

First man on the moon Neil Armstrong aged 82 has died.

[ziggysego]

Neil Armstrong - First man on the moon.

[Minder]

First man on the moon Neil Armstrong aged 82 has died.

You beat Ziggy by 13 seconds there, well done.

[Tony Baloney]

Neil Armstrong - First man on the moon.

Any news about him other than he was the first man on the moon?

Found his lack of forthcoming on the Apollo 11 mission exceptionally frustrating. But RIP anyway.

[Hoof Hearted]

Neil Armstrong - First man on the moon.

Any news about him other than he was the first man on the moon?

Found his lack of forthcoming on the Apollo 11 mission exceptionally frustrating. But RIP anyway.

he's dead !