Many many many words have been written via this whole England’s England blog place about radio ‘anoraks’. Most of them by me, but a few far more articulate sentences have come from a guest writer Peter Moore. Peter is currently the man that is Radio Caroline by virtue of owning the trade mark and being the ‘name’ that has put his neck out in all matters since Radio Caroline’s ship ceased to be a radio threat at sea.
This of course upsets people.
Hmmm. That sentence should appear twice because, firstly, it upsets people that Peter appears via Christopher England’s site, whilst in matters relating to Radio Caroline I am considered by some to be an or the anti-Christ (I think it might be ‘an’, as there seems to be so much dissent these days). Over the years I have spoken out about my views on Radio Caroline, and they were not necessarily complimentary of Peter or his ability to steer a radio station, let alone what was once, when these things mattered, a legendary radio station. So, Peter Moore appearing with the enemy? Yep, that upsets people.
The second appearance of that sentence should be because, for some not entirely odd reason, Peter’s views on many matters complement mine. Or mine, his. Forgetting that this is potentially a confusing enigma for those doing the writing, this definitely confuses radio ‘anoraks’ to the point that their heads actually explode after a few choruses of, “Does not compute! Does not compute! Does not compute!”
The strangest thing is that ‘anoraks’ care not that we can jointly or severely wax lyrical about many different matters, from the thought control that comes with the Climate Change con through to how there are too many do-gooders out there backing the annoying wasters in society, such as some (but for legal reasons I’m forced to add, not all) travellers (Actually, I’ve not written about travellers myself, please note, so I’m ok when it comes to the tar and feathering due anybody that might have dared to calmly describe experiences with these folk). ‘Anoraks’ only get a quickening pulse when we write about radio, such is their disinterest in the rest of the world around them.
‘Anoraks’. That is one subject we can both be independently scathing about, the radio ‘anorak’ (for all articles about ‘anoraks’ click here). Writing about radio ‘anoraks’ upsets them. Extremely. I’ve written about them many times, and more recently Peter has written about them. Well, so far he’s written about bus ‘anoraks’, but it wasn’t hard to put two and two together in the minds of the radio ‘anoraks’ who feel a need to shout and scream about how wronged they’ve been. They are so upset with Peter that they have stamped their feet in a most odd fashion, making various empty gestures about what they are going to do to prove how hurt they are at being so wronged by the man who dared to tell it the way it is.
What is the way it is?
Well, radio ‘anoraks’ have always been bonkers, and until recently were mostly harmless. Something seems to have happened to them as they’ve gotten older, and each month it gets worse. Well, they’ve turned absolutely mad. Slightly scary mad. Mad in the way you wouldn’t like to be alone in the same room as them, mad. Mad in a restraining order way, mad.
Where once radio ‘anoraks’ would listen to every word, even knowing how to recite certain passages in radio’s golden age, they are now bitter and twisted folk on the whole, completely incapable of properly ‘listening’ to anything anybody actually says. Long after somebody has said something against the unwritten rule, they will be shouting and screaming about it via the messageboard of their choice. They can never forgive, forget, accept that they are in the wrong, or move on from their bizarrely entrenched position.
I guess it’s a bit like hating Germans.
When the World War was on it was very important to hate Germans. Whenever there’s a war, the foot soldiers of our country are essentially fed awful (and usually untrue) propaganda about how terrible the enemy collectively is. I mean, it doesn’t work if your foot soldiers are shooting at people who are “quite nice really” or “decent chaps”, they need to believe that they are shooting at people who eat babies and want to rape their sister.
When the war is over, there’s a need to move on. It’s at this point that our country’s fodder are told that most of the enemy don’t want to eat babies or rape our sisters, and don’t need to be hated any more because they are quite nice really and decent chaps. Some people can’t handle this, and so, as I mentioned, they still irrationally hate Germans as they were initially hypnotically trained so to do.
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| A real anorak will tell you this is NOT Radio Caroline’s ship! |
Radio ‘anoraks’ are the same. They will hate people who they’ve considered have done a wrong, and will continue to irrationally hate them for decades onwards. From my perspective, I have people who hate me so much they ‘block’ me on Facebook, or as soon as something happens they can’t handle they say, “Christopher England is behind this” (There’s some mad American ‘anorak’ who regularly does this), and my favourite is the raving mad anorak who tries to copy my blogs and take the piss out of them. He sees it as some kind of payback for me having wronged Radio Caroline, and he’s been doing it off and on for almost ten years! (He did get mighty confused by Peter’s article, and his head exploded via a messageboard, so maybe he’ll stop copying me, and maybe start copying Peter.)
Beyond their hounding of people who dare say anything they disagree with, radio ‘anoraks’ also have a bizarre belief that by doing something voluntarily to aid (say) Radio Caroline they instantly buy themselves some kind of position of responsibility as part of that organisation. When that doesn’t work out for them, they will spend the rest of eternity banging on about how back in 1967 they paid for new wicks for oil lamps. Insignificant ‘anoraks’ will dine out on their tales of their three week involvement in 1967 working for nothing for Caroline, and indeed, paying for the new wicks out of their own money. These chancers will surround themselves with ‘anoraks’ who did far less but want to worship an ‘anorak’ who did very little yet manages to talk about it a lot.
I have written before about how I consider both camps of ‘anoraks’ to be dangerous and a hindrance to any future plans of Radio Caroline, like the plan to force Ofcom to give them a broadcasting licence, yet ‘anoraks’ remain divided in their ‘for’ and ‘against’ the legitimacy of today’s Radio Caroline or those who own/run it.
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| Pintsize, from today’s pirates |
They seem to be getting more entrenched, more vitriolic and more scary as they use the messageboards to spew their odd views and extensive buckets of hot angst. So, I can understand why Peter Moore has had enough of them. They are not necessarily that representative of today’s Radio Caroline listeners, yet they think that because they once listened when Caroline came from a ship at sea that that gives them the right to make judgement calls and to continue to hate their version of the Germans, all these decades later.
You might understand how I took to laughing out loud reading the whimpering from those who’d decided they’d been wronged by Peter’s article, and so majestically set about maligning him or objecting to being treated so badly after all they’d done all those years ago. What dick-heads.
I cannot hide the fact that I have a proud radio ‘anorak’ heritage, and I am still a media/radio ‘anorak’ to this day. Maybe because of my employ, I lean more to anoraking about what’s on TV, but I do ‘anorak’ about good and different fun radio (including radio from times gone), and the exciting pirates that places like London are so lucky to have.
What I find so odd is that most of these so called radio ‘anoraks’ refuse to listen to today’s pirates, dismissing them as if they aren’t actually there rather than seeing them as the exciting future and result of the building blocks of pirate radio from the last century. They will even write diatribes about them rather than embracing them alongside the old ones, as indeed they should be embracing today’s Radio Caroline alongside the old ones.
England's England 
THE RISE OF THE DEMENTORAKS (part one).
I am glad that CE has reopened this discussion. It enables me to explain some things and clarify some others.
It is fine to like Radio Caroline or not to like it. In the second case, don't listen, don't assist us. Listen to something else.
In the first case listen and enjoy, be our guests. If you like Radio Caroline a lot, you can donate to help us continue and we in turn will work for no wages to provide the entertainment, repair our boat and hope to be able to use it for a worthwhile purpose. There is no obligation at all, what we do and what our supporters do is all a matter of free choice.
It is all so delightfully simple and it works.
It has been suggested that I have ' turned ' on the supporters, absolutely not, I love them. The vast majority do not even feel the need to make contact. The few that do, write sensible leters and I make sensible replies. But we need to define ' supporters '. Supporters provide support, observers, just observe.
I'm not even targetting Anoraks who just look on. Radio Caroline devised the phrase and it now has passed in to general useage as someone with a unusually strong interest in any specialist subject, but mostly interests of mature males and mostly mechanical and historic such as old trains, machines, buses, aircraft and Pirate Radio.
The problem is with the small number of Megoraks, Madoraks and Dementoraks, for whom a completely acceptable interest in Pirate Radio has assumed a towering importance in their lives.
CE has suggested that these people are dangerous to Radio Caroline, even if they are in favour of the station.
He is correct in part. In practical terms they are not dangerous since they are small in number and I doubt that they actually contribute anything to the station financially or materially.
But now we are dealing with 71 MP's in our attempt to gain a decent AM frequency. I will not go in to the precise details of why we feel this is deserved. The info is on our web site. MP's are intelligent and mostly ' normal '.
The danger is if they get a letter written in green ink on lined paper torn from a notebook, saying ' Peter Moor is an traytor. He did take THE LADY from her writeful plaice in the sea which is FREE and did do a deal with the DTI who are the ' Dasturdly Terribule Infidels'.
Conversely ' Peter Moor is an heroe, he did save THE LADY. Now she must have an licence for an Million Watts.
Johnie Walkah did say' Radio Caroline belonges to yew and she loves you' so Radio Caroline does belong to me ,cos he said so, and now I want you to get a licence so we can beam our signal to a free and peaceful nation. Oh yes '.
In each case the MP says ' Oh my word, these people are raving mad '. Because…. they are .
(part 2 to follow…)
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(part 2)
So, that is the problem, this handful of people with nick names like ' Mi Amigo Rudder Bearing ' or ' Mebo 2 Hand Basin', who inhabit these strange message boards that have sprung up.
For a while, quite a long while in fact, I posted on these sites, based on the fact that I like to write and the hope that the board members might be interested in some hard facts. But they did not like my facts since they did not fit their impressions of the truth. In the end I realised that I was fighting a hopeless cause and that my very involvement may suggest that I was part of the general lunacy. So I quit.
Even here, the Derangeoraks could not take this in. ' Hah,' they said ' We have FLUSHED HIM OUT. It Got TOO HOT FOR HIM, he is RUNNING SCARED '. This lack of understanding of their utter insignificance is very frightening.
There is an old joke of someone, completely lost, who stops an old man on the street and asks him for directions. The old man says ' If I were you I would not start from here '.
When the whole matter of Radio Caroline landed in my lap, I could not choose the circumstances and was not informed of the various skeletons in various cupboards. I could only say that for better or worse, this was the situation existing and that the choice was to give up or see what could be rescued.
Some would say that ' given the circumstances ' we have done rather well. The Lunoraks deny the circumstances and thus conclude that we have done very badly.
But if you ask them what would make them content, a hundred differing opinions appear.
So, as I say, I give up. Better people than these, deserve my time and appreciation.
I guess in the same way that the Protestants and Catholics will always fight over bad things that happened 90 or 150 or 300 years ago .
' What about the Potato famine ?'. ' There was no potato famine'. 'Oh yes there was '.
' Who caused the potato famine ?'. ' It was that Peter Moore who did cause it '.
Oh no, here we bloody well go again.
Peter Moore.
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So let me get this write. Yu are sayin that yu bout all the spuds in irelund wen yu wuz supply man for the lady and it wuz yu who cauzed the famine?
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Is it impolite to politely enquire – What is the income of Radio Caroline – What is the expenditure?
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Hello,
What I will say, on this public forum, is that the expenditure of Radio Caroline is slightly higher than the donated income and has been ever since we went full time on Sky 0199.
When the shortfall becomes problematical, I or one of my colleagues will put our own money in, saying ' oh well, we will get it back one day ' knowing of course that we never will.
This is why it could be hurtful when people infer that I am earning money from Caroline, some chance.
But if you check the Anorak message boards and note the contributors foaming at the mouth and making wild suggestions, you will see why I post no figures here. Further, I have not the first idea who you are.
In the same way I would not expect you to tell me what you earn and whether you have any savings. What has that got to do with me ?
If you want to contact me privately using your actual name, I will probably be forthcoming.
If you support Radio Caroline financially or materially, I will see you on our supporters list and in that case will answer any question put to me.
Yours,
Peter Moore.
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I'm sure the Taxman would be most interested to view the real figures regarding the present day Caroline!
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Don't see what point you are trying to make Bill.
If I go to work, I get a wage, but before the wage reaches me, my employer has given the Government what they regard as their share for Tax and NIC etc.
The balance that ends up in my pocket is 100%mine.
Obviously if I buy something, 20% of the purchase price again goes to the Government in VAT.
If I save my money in a way that earns interest ( aside from an ISA ), the Govermnet take what they regard as their share of the interest, before I get the rest.
But, if I want to give some of my money away, I can do that, since it is my money and has nothing to do with the Tax Man.
A lot of people decide to give Caroline small regular donations of their own money, which they are perfectly entitled to do.
I and my colleagues decide to work for no wages or expenses and we are entitled to do this as well.
If we ever got to a stage of paying wages ( hugely unlikely ), the wages may well attract tax, but we don't, so the matter does not.
arise.
It might be possible to actually have the Government give us 20p or so for every Pound donated, but for this we would have to make ourselves a Charity and aside from the huge complexity of the endless forms, we do not actually do anything ' charitable ', we just operate a radio station to give people enjoyment.
If you are determined that ' something ' is going on under the surface, I doubt that any explanation I can make would satisfy you.
I make the same offer to you, that I made to the guy above. Contact me using your actual name if you wish and, if it is any of your business, I will communicate with you directly.
If you just want to snipe and make vague inferences, there are plenty of forums available. I have given up posting on radio enthusiast sites and I came here instead for some intelligent discussions.
Peter Moore.
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