I'm afraid we've experienced the worst attack of spam this board has ever seen. It started just before 8am BST and continued till about 1pm BST.

The General Discussion forum has been cleared, but worst affected is the Off Topic Forum. Between shortly before 8am BST and about 1pm several hundred (identical) posts were dumped in the Off Topic forum by a spam bot. Some 250 post remain to be deleted, and it's unlikely I will be able to finish this task in a single day. This is not helped by the fact that I am having problems getting connected as my ISP seems to be trying to block my VPN - although, I'm not that easily defeated!

Thus, for the time being the Off Topic forum remains unusable. Sorry for any inconvenience. Normal service will be resumed ASAP.

I regret having to say it's going to take at least another couple of days to get rid of all the spam posts in the 'Off Topic' forum, although good progress has been made.

At least this forum is clear of it, for now. No doubt we'll yet see some more spammer barstewards trying to throw a spaniel in the works.

Progress is slow, if steady, alas. Connection often short-lived, and for several hours tonight no connectivity at all, no phone (over IP), things like that don't help I regret to say. Damn lot of aggro. I always knew we should have stuck with the abacus and maybe the penny post at most!

It's all finally cleared, every last damn post deleted! All six forum pages of it. I've done it, but I'd be unlikely to do it all on my own again, and especially not when struggling with connectivity problems.

Call this 'progress'!? Progress my arse! Gigabit broadband - no shit, IIRC Japan & S. Korea have had 2Gb/s for years. Anyway, who the hell needs it! And phone over IP! One daqy all this shit is going to end in tears, no doubt. Like I said, abacus and penny post - can't go too far wrong with that.