From the office of The President; General Communiqué - June 2008

I'm very sorry that the May Communiqué has only just been sent and the April one misfired so you've only just read that as well.  Some people have been giving me grief about this but there has been nothing I can do.  I don't understand computers, and I do not understand the language of computers; if I can't get the assistance to make a computer work, there is nothing that I know how to do that will make the situation better.

The Boat takes place on Saturday 5^th July and costs £25 per ticket.  This is one of the very best SM/Fetish parties of the year; a boat full of delightful deviants cruising the River Thames, right through the kinkiest city in the world: London is beautiful from the river - The lights, the London Eye, St Pauls, Westminster, HMS Belfast, City Hall, Tower Bridge - what better place to enact your very favourite fantasies?  The Boat is a night never forgotten. This is a very special night; don't miss it.

Many people respond to the prospect of buying Boat tickets with ‘I don't know what I'm doing yet', and in some ways that's quite fair, but on the other hand, what could the vanilla world come up with that could compete?  Burying a loved one?  No; that's only on weekdays.  Just put the ‘I don't know' to one side, and make the decision ‘Yes, I am going on The Boat'; it will be better than all the other options.

And yes, now that there is so much going on, there is bound to something else on the same night, but isn't it going to be on next month as well?  Probably in the same venue?  Containing the same people?  I know there are various neuroses about repeating certain behaviours, but unless you really do suffer from one, there's no reason not to alter the pattern for just one month; the demons of Hell will not come for you, and the sky won't fall in.  Come on The Boat; you will have a better time.

Boat tickets are cheaper bought in advance; either from The Firm c/o 13 Riddlesdale Avenue, Tunbridge Wells, TN4 9AB, or from Liberation, nr Covent Garden, or from Zeitgeist, Holloway Road.  The most sensible thing to do is to send your cheque to Tunbridge Wells now, because then we will have the money and we will mail your ticket straight back to you, the old fashioned way.  The very worst thing to do is to buy your ticket on the day of the party from one of our two London agent mentioned above, because that way you get the benefit of the (considerable) advance discount, but we get none of the benefit of the advance payment, and since we have to pay for the boat in advance.  Some promoters might increase the price for the last couple of days, just because we don't does not mean that we are inviting persons to take the Mickey.   (That's the polite term).

The next Phoenix schools will be at the Purple Turtle in Camden on Saturday 14^th June, 12^th July, and 30^th August; all 12md - 4pm.

Concerning the recent laws passed against violent pornographic images, this is the parable of Mary Whitehouse.  In the olden days of the 1970s  there was a programme on television called Dr Who.  It was a very good programme and up to 12 million people watched it every Saturday tea time.  But Mary Whitehouse did not like Dr Who because it was scary, so she and all her horrible friends ganged up on the BBC, and demanded they change Dr Who, and the BBC were cowards and they got rid of the producer and replaced him with someone who would do what Mary Whitehouse said.

A subsequent producer once said ‘When I saw my prayers at the foot of the bed every night, I pray that Mary Whitehouse complains because that automatically puts 2 million on the viewing figures'.  He was wrong; what he should have done was to call for everyone that liked Dr Who to go to wherever the evil old bag was lobbying and to shout out their anger that someone was trying to spoil their programme, but he didn't, and eventually the programme was so spoiled that the BBC took it off the air.

The forces of Evil Old Bags have now made a law to stop you looking at violent porn, and they got away with it because not enough people stood up to them.  We've only had Dr Who back for four years, and if you want the Evil Old Bags to get rid of it again, just carry on not standing up to them, and you'll have The Dr played by Ant and Dec accompanied by some bint selected by a phone-in gameshow faster than you can say ‘boring vapid shite', and the Slytheen and the Ood and the new Sontarans and the dead realistic werewolf will all be gone.  Stand up for freedom or lose it; it's that simple.