"memorial services taking place for 9/11/01 (as opposed to 11/9/01 as we Brits have always written such dates...unless something happened on the ninth of November that we weren't informed about"

The Americanisation (more correctly AmericaniZation) of the Julian calendar is all but complete here too. It is most confusing to we older folk. I ended up commemorating the WTC disaster somewhat prematurely at our local 7/11 store.

"Those bastards being, on the whole, the friends and relations of, or even the actual, plastic-bag wearing, Tory sex-Gods who sold off what didn't belong to them in the first place."

Downunder we have bypassed these middlemen flunkies and sold them directly to the corporate Chuck-come-latelies from the Land of the Free ("Free" as modified by the Department of Homer-land Security Act of "1984") who have parlayed the taxpayer hard earned financial reserves of these utilities into "perfomance bonuses", share options, executive swimming pools and speculative non core (and invariably belly up) investments.

"Uncle No-seriously-I-am-a-socialist Tony"

AKA Uncle No-seriously-my-nose-is-Dubbya's-weapon-of-mass-colonic-irrigation Tom, the idiot brother of Uncle John No-seriously-I-am-not-tall-enough-for-my-nose-to-wedge-itself-between-Dubbya's-Botox buttocks-and-that's-why-I-suffer-from-"Blair envy" Howard.