I have been unable to find asolution so looks like I'll have to delve inside my own head
Have you tried a different user? It may be that for some reason your user account has stange permissions which don't work properly. I would create a new user and see if that one can delete them.
If it can't log in as admin and see if you can. That will show whether it's a permissions issue. If it isn't post back.
crabby