The Rusty Wire Service

Legendary gunslinger Billy the Kid was turned down for a pardon today, nearly 130 years after his death at the hands of Irish American lawman Pat Garrett on 14 July 1881. Bill Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico, had promised he would decide whether to give the controversial pardon to one of America's most notorious desperadoes before leaving office on Dec 31. The Kid is reputed to have shot dead 21 people; one for each year of his short and violent life. Richardson considered whether Lew Wallace, the state's governor at the time (and author of Ben Hur), had reneged on a promise of an amnesty for the Kid's crimes in return for him testifying as a witness in a murder case. In the end however, Richardson, whose campaign generated significant media attention, decided there just wasn’t enough evidence to allow a pardon. "I have decided not to pardon Billy the Kid because of a lack of conclusiveness, and also the historical ambiguity as to why governor Wallace reneged on...

There are no crystal balls. The Deptford Croppy is sadly possessed of neither extra sensory nor pre-cognitive skills. That being the case, we are reduced to the ancient art of sifting through the entrails of the year past to divine glimpses of the year to come. And in fairness, we are about as likely to be correct in our predictions if we’d just had done with it and slaughtered and eviscerated some poultry. So for what it’s worth, this is what TRWS found when we poked through the offal of 2010... It’s not good news folks but we’re guessing everyone already knew that 2011 was always shaping up to be the mother and father of all anni horribili (pardon my latin). Let’s take a look at dear old Blighty for starters. The Coalition limped to the end of the year amid open (and not so open) plotting and recriminations on both sides following the newspaper sting on the constituency ofices of a number of Lib Dem MPs, including (former media darling) Vince Cable. We didn’t even get from ...

Diplomatic leaks, backroom financial deals, rioting students, protest marches, nuclear brinkmanship...2010 has certainly been eventful. Luis Urzua: Last miner out The good news stories are however very thin on the ground this year. The Chilean Miners warmed the global cockles, no doubt about it but even that feel-good story is tempered by the tragic fate of the New Zealand Coalminers later in the year... Science clearly marches on in 2010 with major landmarks like the first ever capture of anti-matter. The fact that it is done without the creation of a black hole that swallows our dimension is probably one of the year's overlooked good news stories... It has also been the year when the shadowy world of online espionage came to the attention of the established media in a big way and that, perhaps more than anything, is likely to be a portent of things to come... September Pastor Jones: Nice tash... The day is 5 September , the venue is Croke Park and the occasion is the All...

The second third of the year was just as short on silver linings... May Picasso: yours for $106.5m The Eurozone and the International Monetary Fund agree on 2 May to a €110bn bailout package which involves sharp Greek austerity measures. It is also the day that Labour overtakes Fianna Fáil in the Irish public’s estimation, according to a poll published by the Sunday Business Post. A Picasso (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust) sets a new world record on 4 May when it sells in New York at auction for US$106.5m. It probably won’t surprise anyone who’s witnessed closing time on a Friday night to hear that on 7 May, scientists conducting the Neanderthal genome project announce that they have sequenced enough of the Neanderthal genome to suggest that Neanderthals and humans may have interbred. In a taste of things to come in Ireland, several people are injured by gardaí during a protest against the bank bailouts in Dublin on 11 May. Demonstrators had attempted to storm Leinster House. The UK’s...

The Rusty Wire Service only went live in mid November but it’s fair to say we’ve always been avid zeitgeist-watchers down here in SE8 so here’s our take on some standout global and local events for the first four months of a year that really was light on upbeat stories... January The year did start out brightly enough news-wise, at least if you like a lot of ‘schaden’ on your ‘fruede’... Haiti: crisis continues,  long after departure of media/celebrity circus On 6 January (The feast of the Epiphany funnily enough), the ‘Northern Ireland Assembly’s First Minister Peter Robinson gives an emotional TV statement revealing that his wife Iris Robinson had engaged in an affair with 19-year-old, but he forgave her and they would try to save their marriage, according to ‘thejournal.ie’s 2010 round-up (well worth a look). It was a satirist’s wet dream...Sinn Féin maintained a respectful and dignified silence as they were wrestling with some moral dilemmas of their own (see be...

‘I just don’t believe in Richard Dawkins ,’ says God in a recent sensational interview published in Halo!  God, an all powerful deity and self-proclaimed supreme ruler of the Universe, told a reporter in a vision yesterday that He just wasn't convinced by Richard Dawkins, even going so far as to label the Oxford-educated philosopher a ‘bit of a numpty’. “You compare the lad Dawkins with the big boys, your Nietzsches or even on a good day, your Kierkegaard s and he’s only a clogger, a journeyman atheist,” says God in a frank and exclusive interview with Reggie Cakebread. “Those lads were real nihilists, masters of the abyss game; they even had Me questioning My own existence. Just as well ‘the man downstairs’ picked up their post-mortem contracts,” confided the omniscient being. Dawkins, widely and inexplicably believed to be very clever (and proof according to God, that ‘intellectually speaking, you really can polish a turd’), has become a household name with his ea...

Boarding a Hercules ('Fat Albert')   Several years ago, The Deptford Croppy was sent out to Afghanistan to report on the work of the Royal Engineers in Helmand Province; here are a few observations on arrival in Kandahar... "Ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching Kandahar Airforce Base, could all windown-seat passengers draw down their blinds and could everyone please put on your flak jackets and helmets before we black-out for landing." I was awoken by the soothing and urbane tones of an RAF pilot who made it all sound tickety-boo over the intercom . It wasn’t exactly a common occurrence but it had been known to happen that the Taliban would launch rocket attacks on planes approaching the ISAF Coalition’s main base of air operations in Afghanistan. Apache Attack Helicopter   With a nonchalance I didn’t feel (but copied studiously from the laconic Marine sitting in the aisle seat beside me), I strapped myself into my Kevlar co...