Am 06.01.2012 11:57, schrieb Paul Rigg:
I think his point was, and I think he is right, that the DDR authorities
allowed anyone to cross the wall who was either not one of their own
nationals or a national of another country (ie the Eastern Block) with
whom they had an agreement to stop travel.

The West German authorities did not check entries to West Berlin from
East Berlin, presumably because of the four powers agreement which said
that West Berlin was made up of British, American and French Sectors.

Nationals of anywhere outside the Eastern Block could arrive at
Schonefeld Airport and get a transit visa to Friedrichstrasse and cross
into the West there. If I recall it resulted in quite a few
Palestinians living in West Berlin at the time.

The astonishing thing is that Herr Schwanke does not put YOU on the
bank of culprits for stating the facts.

And in the fall of 1987, the Westberlin and FRG authorities with
their press waged a big campaign to force the GDR government to close
the last hole in the wall which you describe above.

Thanks for stating the facts!


Cheers,
L.W.

On Jan 6, 6:08 pm, Charles Ellson wrote:

On Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:09:38 +0000, The Real Doctor
[...]
Mind you, I think I was wrong, anyway, 'cos Scotrail is run by First, isn't it,

IIRC only on the basis they are the only current contractor/franchisee
for the services covered by that brand.

Which is a somewhat long winded way of saying 'yes' !

On Jan 6, 6:17*pm, Lüko Willms wrote:
Am 05.01.2012 15:50, schrieb Graham Nye:

The links are legitimate. You can look at them safely.

* *If that is the case, why are they hidden? Is there something to be
ashamed of?

L.W.

I just shortened them because, in the absence of HTML, they're ugly.
If you're too scared to follow links to the LIbrary of Congress and
Wikipedia, that's your problem.

On 06/01/2012 20:45, ian batten wrote:
If you're too scared to follow links to the LIbrary of Congress

Oooo! Library of Congress? Works of fiction in the capitalist west!
Can't access that - beware lies and more lies!

[Keep the thread running, please, it's the comedy highlight of 2012.]

--
Dave,
Frodsham
http://s1213.photobucket.com/albums/cc461/Davy41/

On 06/01/12 18:52, Lüko Willms wrote:
Am 05.01.2012 15:57, schrieb Graham Nye:
So thread drift is only a problem for you on selected occasions?

I certainly reject any effort to mount a show trial. I am not ready to
stand as victim for "questions" like "When did you stop to beat your
wife?!".

The point about "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is that an honest
answer from an innocent person sounds bad. "Do you believe the Holocaust
happened?" is not that sort of question, and your continued declining to
answer it is both disappointing and, regrettably, suggestive.

For a man who takes every opportunity to attack the British state for
evildoing, you are curiously reluctant to say anything at all critical
about the Third Reich. I can understand (if not sympathise) with your
political reasons for refusing to criticise Soviet repression and
colonialism, but the Nazis surely merit at least a mild rebuke?

Regards

Ian

On 06/01/12 19:23, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
The West German governement positively denied immigration to any number
of foreigners, and they may well have asked East Germany to help them
doing so. I'm not disputing it, I'm saying that's fine. But they never
locked any person into the country - convicted criminals excepted of
course -, or asked another government to do so. They positively never
asked the East German government to lock foreign asylum seakers into
the Eastern bloc, like they did with their own citizens.

What was West German policy towards those who escaped from the East?
Were they allowed to settle in the West as a matter of right?

Ian

In message , at 17:58:26 on
Fri, 6 Jan 2012, Charles Ellson remarked:
Mercury was also mentioned but unlike BT they had nothing in the way of
a universal service obligation and served a very small market.

I'm not aware that dialling the Mercury Access code was in any way
restricted, other than people, wherever they were, signing up for a
Mercury subscription.

Mercury was not providing the infrastructure for that service, merely
using an established provider to connect the calls to their much
smaller network, a bit like Sainsburys being obliged to allow a
competitor to set up order desks within its premises.

It's a bit more complicated than that, because Mercury was, where
available, able to use its own infrastructure for backbone and
international calling (which was after all C&W's core business).

The main thing they were doing was sharing the local loop, and the
domestic market was always a bit of a distraction from their offering to
businesses.
--
Roland Perry

On 06/01/12 18:48, Lüko Willms wrote:
Am 05.01.2012 15:52, schrieb The Real Doctor:

Again slandering and avoiding the subject under discussion:

Says the man who accuses anyone who disagrees with him of being a Hitler
apologist

No. You just show again that you are a habitual liar.

Well, you've accused me on several occasions in this thread alone of
being a Hitler nostalgist. Not a shred of evidence, of course, and
completely irrelevant to the points under debate.

Good heavens, this takes me back to the heady days of student life in
the 1980s, and the lefties who shrieked "fascist" at anyone who
disagreed with them. Particularly other lefties, of course.

You introduced the Third Reich, the Falklands and so on as topics.

No, why should I?

I don't know.

No, I'm wholly opposed to show trials

But you try again and again to mount a show trial. But your victim is
not at your disposal.

Not like the good old days of the NKVD, eh?

You are disgusting.

I am cut to the quick.

Ian

On 06/01/12 18:41, Lüko Willms wrote:
Life does not stick to your rigid ideas!

You said it, Lüko baby, you said it.

Ian

On 06/01/12 18:31, Lüko Willms wrote:
The thatcherite ideology that no possibilty to make a profit may be
barred to all those bloodsuckers around to enrich themselves at the cost
of all

Readers who are having difficult extracting any meaning out of that may
care to note that Google translate renders it in German as

"Die Thatcher-Ideologie, keine Möglichkeit, einen Gewinn zu machen, um
all jene Blutsauger kann ausgeschlossen werden, um sich auf Kosten aller
zu bereichern"

which it then translates back into English as

"The Thatcher ideology, no way to make a profit to all those
bloodsuckers can be excluded in order to enrich themselves at the
expense of all"

which I am sure everybody will agree is much clearer.

Ian

PS My lathe and milling machine were both made in the DDR and sold for
profit.