Party Vibe

you got the spelling of utrecht correct that time (even the other one wasn’t 100% wrong but a century or two out of date).

towards the end of the 1990s war I managed to tune into the Serbian military comms circuits on HF radio – normally this was digital encrypted other than a few operators, but at weekends they allowed the soldiers to contact their wives/girlfriends/mums but everything other than the digits dialled was in the clear (soldiers were trusted not to jepoardise their own units security nor that of their family and I think this might even have been deliberately done so they were careful what they said, knowing it was a insecure connection).

you would hear one female voice at the comcen saying stuff like “telefonski” and then the üüüü (1 sec) / (4 secs silence) repeated of a European ringback tone, and then a female voice would answer – I didn’t (and still do not) know a word of the language but could tell from the emotion in the voice who was the comcen operators and who was the soldiers relatives. It seemed more like something out of a 1950s cold war spy thriller than the late 20th century.

I lived in a Northern suburb of Reading at the time, where just 5 minutes away from me other folk sat in a big mansion house doing exactly the same thing, except they did understand what the Serbs were saying, and would have been carefully writing it all down and filing it away. And some will still be doing this for this current war and the next, except the languages will be different.

there is a strong techno and house scene in Eastern Europe, though many tracks are near to Eurodance.

A while back (may have been whilst I was still working at Defra) I read that a farmer in Serbia was growing melons (its a Southern European nation with relatively good summer weather) but was plagued by numerous bears stealing these, so he erected several horn loudspeakers on wooden posts and played gypsy techno at loud volume to deter them. he was subsequently arrested by the police and environment ministry officials and made to remove this sound system as they were trying to align their animal welfare laws with the EU and it was classed as cruelty.

it is actually illegal to play harsh distorted music or any bad noise to bears (and a great number of other EU protected species) to disrupt their feeding or reproduction, though playing good quality music where it may be heard by them in the wild (such as overspill from a festival) or when they are in the zoo, vet or other captive area is permitted.

@NN~Gazatryptamine 492491 wrote:

Hisssss the evil defra man!!!! Lol I’m quite up to speed with defra, I have a copy of the 75-76 countryside act sat somewhere, as well as multiple other rural rights and what not.

Just after I left they totally confused most of our new entrants to the UK.

For some years every EU country has employed scientists to count what wildlife exist in each nation. Everything from wolves and bears to small bugs, but excluding animals normally kept as pets or those in zoos or private collections, as these are counted separately. The data is then collated, entered into computers and sent via an encrypted circuit to somewhere like the Netherlands or Denmark or other similar countries where they are good at doing hard maths and statistics and have more spare time because they have less creatures to count.

The list of wildlife and the count is then audited and sent back to each member state, which uses the data to decide what species should be classed as protected. Of course non native species should have a zero marker against them.

Someone forgot to remove the zero entries (probably a post removed by budget cuts) leading anyone checking the list of UK protected species to think that bears and in some cases wolves were native here. This error was perpetuated via the Internet – in my new job I worked opposite the head of HR in one office and heard several staff from Eastern Europe say they were afraid to visit wooded areas in Suffolk for fear of encountering bears or other large predators. It was only recently this error has been corrected.

On my other PC I have a copy of RO’s wolf and bear management plan, in which they mentioned that there are plenty of both but bears tend to get a better reputation than wolves. Also University education improved attitude (for young people, not the bears)