I would have loved to read it, but unfortunately it has gone.....
re:merseygull
Actually, as Jon and Rob point out, it's still there...
www.torquayunited.net/forum/index.phpclearing cookies will help..
ATB,J.
Thanks for pointing out my removal error. tis gone.
re lambethgull
The disappearance of Mervo's site is very amusing...it's current content makes far more interesting viewing!
It's hardly a contest is it. The site was an emergency backup and that's
what it became...backed up by you know what.
re merseygull
Aussie, bristly as ever I see!! I'm not worried at all about one of the other sites, but the apparrent diappearence
of Mervo's site had me a bit bewildered....
That's all....
ATB,J.
hey mate I never knew it was active until I got a mail from Louis asking me to remove a post...which I did not...
well I did but I didn't...I hid the lot...but not well enough as my lurking revealed. They will never be seen again.
the whole site is gone...not backed up...deleted, expunged, game, set and match.
re: Jon
I wonder if the mighty Mervo got the hump with HIS forum being referred to as "OUR backup forum" and so decided to redirect the link.
hi Jon...thanks for the other complimentary comment. I did get the hump but not over that.
dotNET was reliable for almost 10 years. The longest outage, other than my deliberate withdrawl
of the site for a couple days, was seven hours. Those Argyle cgi hackers were quite clever ...at
least they thought that ... for a while...hehe Winuke anyone haha...(so you think
Gary McKinnon was a clever hacker...what a joke...an amateur at best poor sod...a sting op if ever
I saw one...I call it terrorist baiting and entrapment plan.)
I lost four messages and only ever removed the most vile/racist/offensive messages.
I NEVER once edited posts. I believe in freedom of speech as long as exercising that right
does not impinge on the freedom of others. I left many personal attacks with reason. It remains
as an indictment of the writer, not the person so attacked. I have no intention of running a football
or TU board again so I have pulled the plug because I did not wish to see the name dotNET get further tarred with
the brush of unreliability and censorship. I read one comment on TFF which actually suggested Louis could see IP
addresses of posters on my dead backup. That is absolute garbage. As I said I had no idea the site was active
until a few days ago when I was asked to censor.
re ohtobeatplainmoor
I only had one private correspondance with Mervo and I would say that he was a good hearted person - certainly
a little eccentric but never a bad thing in my book! I think he would look at this website as very much of a proud
legacy (in terms of the quality that is posted on here) rather than the one that he passed-over a couple of years ago.
Thanks mate and as far as websites are concerned you are right. I view TFF to have carried on the spirit of dotNET.
Dave...you have done a top class job...well done!
Before I handed the site over I had bought new space with many bells and whistles in preparation for video/pics/audio
and an interactive audio chat box. At the time we were headed down and everyone was righteously ticked off. The complaints
rolled in, the site became busier and I had ONE...repeat ONE offer of help. I disagreed with
Mike B as an owner for the lack of vision etc. although I had been heartened that when Leroy was boss he
got players help with nutrition. The club turned down free help from ____Balsom who was Sweden's national team physio or kinesiologist.
From my perspective there was a culture of alcohol at Plainmoor. It's simply
dumb for athletes to consume alcohol after strenuous exercise. Sure it feels good at the time...then you try to uproot
a palm tree or go on a bender the night before a game. However I hold Mike Bateson in high esteem as a human being
if not as a club owner. I know things about Mike and Sue which many do not. They do not broadcast their good deeds but
any man who takes in and cares for abused animals has my vote of confidence as a human. Any man who funds holidays for
kids from Chernobyll is a good person. Please don't ever forget that about Mike and Sue. I was not prepared to allow
his family to undergo more abuse and asked myself how I would feel in that situation. I cloesd the site,
handed it over and called him and we had a nice chat.
My proudest moment was the rooting out of Chris Roberts for the fraud he was. I wrote one sentence at the time;
"Mike Bateson never said he sold the club." (he said he had handed over "controlling interest").
Well that sure got me flak! Was I put down as a paranoid on the board or what! However a 'gang' from dotNET looked in
all the right places and found what we were looking for. I read something about Dave Thomas and how he
exposed the scam. The journalistic spade work was done by members of dotNET. Dave was informed and chose to release it
when he did. We should all be glad that Mike B never did sell the club to that charlatan Roberts. I called Mike B and
told him who was involved, who looked where and at what. With reference to one of the fraudbusters he said "I
might have known she was involved, Greek buyers my arse."
re my old mate merse
Do it yourself dentistry and observation of cloud formations drifting over Canada from George Bush Land
give a hint of the eccentricity of the Great Mervo. He is a genuinely brilliant guy, hugely intelligent and a
genius with computers. The very last person I expected to bump into in Leyton High Road a few years ago
having not seen the guy for almost forty years; it will remain one of the highlights of my life and lucky old
Capitalgull has had both the funds and the good fortune that I have not to visit him in "Duelling Banjos" country over there in Canada.
The son of a Football League official from the old days and a born (in Exminster) Exeter City fan,
but we don't hold either of those things against our very good friend and mentor of ALL webmasters Torquay United ~ all hail the great man.
What a nice post you have made dedicated to Merv Scoble, I really enjoyed reading that!
Well I pulled nine teeth, made molds of upper and lower and formed my own teeth. I still have a little filing to
do on the bottom but the teeth are already constructed. No offence mate...but they look better than yours!
I am looking for non-titanium self tapping mini bolts to fully secure them. Infection? Not once. I learned how to make
molds at Newton Art School and used contemporary dental materials.
Well I guess all weather watchers are eccentrics! google Lyme Bay spraying and Operation Cumulus Lynmouth
and see what you find. I've predicted school absence spikes after continual spraying over these parts. The trails have
been analysed and shown to contain barium and aluminum. I guess being eccentric means choosing media outside
the mainstream. I never ever watch TV or listen the news. There's a damn good reason news reporters call their pieces
"stories."
I will tell you now that from my calculations the rotation of the earth is slowing at a rapid rate.
Got a wind up clock...where do you get the time? How many atomic time clocks are there? How do you
stop people from figuring out the world is slowing? Add a few seconds to the atomic time clocks controlled
by a handful in order the sun rises and sets at the perceived same time. I am not alone in this theory.
It explains incredible winds we are getting and unbelievable weather changes. Besides that watch for a
mass coronal ejection to wipe out all computers and the grid. The last big one in 1859 caused all the
telegraph wires to fail and they went back to carrier pigeons...owned by the Rothschilds of course...they who
own Reuters today. Be prepared for computers to die and have no record of money, no electricity, no transport
and no food. So I am mad. I built a new studio singlehandedly this summer and it's designed to float with the
use of yet to be built floats so it will be like a catamaran. In the meantime it will be used to support my
windmills and plan to make the damn hydro meter go backwards so they end up paying me.
I too shall remember my stroll down Leyton High Road as a highlight and Capital Gulls as my spiritual TUFC home
away from Plainmoor. Now if you stayed away from the races you could afford to come over and would be welcome.
It was there I informed Bob Brimson the game would be 2-0 us and that I would practise psychokinesis to achieve it.
Ask Bob if he was blown away after what I did seconds before the goals! He posted about it after the game.
I do not practise that much now...it's dangerous and opens one up to 'entities.' I puked the whole weekend after that.
Wes truly showed his weakness as a coach that day and that win was largely down to one man...John Gayle who I thought
was superb walking into all the right spaces and players. Great use of the elbows too and wonderful dipping volley.
It was definitely the best performance in a TU shirt I had seen for 30 years! Khalid Chalqi looked to be playing a
division or two below his level. He cost us 25k signing on, 25 k wages and 25k release. The agent got all the siging on fee
and he played 22 games. The most expensive player in TU history at the time...over 3 grand a game and Colin Lee released him.
News to me: My father a league official...that is absolutely hilarious mate. He never was and I know where he was that
Christmas of 1954...with his family at home. He failed his eyesight test for WWII. His footballing claim to fame was
as founder of Exmouth Amateurs F.C. and being dropped by Ladysmith School team in Heavitree. His replacement was 18 months
younger than him. The lad scored five goals including a penalty which he hit straight at the keeper. The ball and winded keeper
ended up in the net. That lad went on to play for Exeter and Arsenal. I met Cliff Bastin when he was publican of the
Horse and Groom in Heavitree. He was still using Brylcreem! Dad died shortly after that.
....>>>>
I am going to retain the domain torquayunited.net. As it's a well established domain it is useful on a purely
selfish basis as a portal to my art site -
www.savedbyart.com.
However that does not preclude its use for a Torquay United fan purpose. That is why I set it up in the first place.
I am open to suggestions. webmasteratmervo.com
As an historical fact in order to quell revisionist TU website history:
1. The first TU site was Neil P's based in Newcastle...I believe.
2. Ian McArthur had a mailing list which was by no means instant.
Ian packed his computer to go to uni and I think it was close to his
speakers. I recall him losing info.
3. My first TU site was set up on October 26 1996.
4. In late June of 1997 as Ian's list was sporadic I took the names of about
70 and mailed each one.
5. I posted the first posting. Edward Wil was not his real name but he is a
real person who Pete Hicks met. I was really surprised that a posting came in
from Japan the first night. The ONLY alias created during the first weeks was
by my rascal daughter Sarah and she did it once. During the FLPTV traffic audit
myself and the Barnet webmaster Mike Edwards had discovered a club using an
automated script to inflate its totals and garnish more money from FLPTV.
The same club along with one other managed to grab 69% of the available betting revenue
during the first payout. I know exactly how they did it too.
We knew all the clubs were encouraging fans to keep logging on. I encouraged
the use of logging on and off to get a new IP...people recognized the need for more
handles to appear and obliged to help the club. We ended up 29th of 71 beating
out many championship teams. Exeter handled it all the wrong way...should have called in Exeweb.
They finished way below us and Argyle narrowly beat us. It was worth 350k to club.
Mike B never read the contract and it was signed by Mervyn Benney in his absence.
I read the contract over and over and was absolutely horrified when Mike told me he
had not read it. I read out one clause to him on the phone...essentially the club sold out
many rights for 17 years. The guys at FLPTV were an absolute joke! While I had been doing it..
they had been learning how to do it at uni...they were years behind when they got jobs.
They added pointless features because they could. They never understood the idea that
people had limited time and got bored with games and quizes and they never ever grasped the concept
of community. When I quit the official .com site as its webmaster I threw 1000 quid a month
down the tube and was accused of disloyalty, letting people down etc. Fact is I was told
to implement the FLPTV directives on the site I founded or face quote..."harsh action."
I was not at that point on any salary, rather the occasional honorarium but had been offered a grand a month
by Mike. It led to a job for Richard Hughes and spawned a decent journalistic career for him and that
pleases me...face it...I was a fan and they were corporate whores and I wasn't about to don a condom and
screw the site I had birthed.
Feel free to repost this.
I do not post anymore as I simply do not have time for debate. I care for my 95 year old
mother paint, make videos and write music. I was told by a particularly obnoxious poster of
many years to enjoy my retirement. I'll never retire and I'll race his blubbering lardass around
the block any day of the week.
Finally Dave...you have done us all proud...keep it up.
Let me know your ideas for dotNET.
It's a name which deserves something worthwhile I think.
How about you.
best wishes
Merv
The archive is still there and on four computers and many disks here.
www.torquayunited.net/archive/
Ealinggull 
got headbutted and his nose rather bloodied in the High Street afterwards and I got my dangly bits spray painted with a golden aerosol. This seemed a laugh at the time, but by the time I staggered home in a rather drunken and sorry state, the paint had turned to dust and took a bit of explaining to a very sceptical girlfriend who subsequently decided I would sleep on the sofa that night! 
I myself had major issues with the other site, unfortunately it took me some time to "tune in" to this forum, (despite an email from jamie)... in the intervening time I have been in a "yellow limbo", so glad to be some part of the "yellow army" again and even more happy that some of you have "discovered" the archive, which give me personally endless hours of pleasure..... I was soooo worried that with the apparent loss of mervo's site that they were "lost" to all that come after...
that saw Phil delete his account on here due to somethings that were said that really should not have been said.Thankfully after I had a chat with him he rejoined us and as the adults we are on here we all moved on.
