Sunday 28 February 2010

Other people's stuff.

Not much from me tonight. I hope to have this report in the post before Tuesday when the next one starts. If I can. I'll only be two behind and this one earns enough that I won't need more income in this tax year so I can hold back some bills. Sure, I could put the excess into my remaining ISA allowance but, one percent interest or twenty percent tax plus NI... it's not a difficult sum.

Next year's income will also be restrained to the bare minimum and that will continue until we get a government with a brain. I am not working harder than necessary just to have it snatched away. I have absolutely no incentive to earn a penny more than I actually need and if that means the cure for the diseases I am working on is delayed, well tough. The stuff I'm working with now can already reduce Campylobacter in poultry guts and could, potentially, remove it completely without using any antibiotics. If the government really want that, and the Clostridium difficile cure and the Salmonella eradication program in any kind of hurry, give me a bloody reason.

So tonight I'm report-writing, the last one that's going out in this tax year, and I've been invited to send a short story to an anthology too, therefore I don't have time to rant this evening.

I commend to the reading eye these, from a quick blog-browse;

Old Holborn has a 'donate' button to help pay the fines imposed on Nick Hogan, the landlord jailed for allowing people to engage in a legal activity within his private premises. I have just received payment for an article in an online mag, it's not a fortune but it's getting donated.

Obnoxio makes a very good case for not voting Conservative. I won't vote Labour to keep them out but that's not a problem for me. The biggest challengers here would be SNP and while it might cause physical sickness and severe emotional distress, I might consider it. Although I'd rather there was a party that wasn't just the same as Labour.

If you're still thinking of voting Labour, why not vote BNP instead? There doesn't seem to be much of a difference any more. Well, there's one difference. The BNP aren't cowardly about expressing their intentions. Labour have deliberately flooded the country with immigrants and are now blaming them for the country's problems. If anything, that's worse than the BNP's proposals. At least they don't propose to import people to blame.

As to which of the variations of authoritarian socialism are likely to win the next election, it's getting to the coin-toss stage now. The Snowolf is impressed by the complete and utter failure of either Tories or Lib Dems to sound better than the current bunch of deranged misfits.

An entertaining video series on Captain Ranty goes some way to explaining how the people of this country - and others - have been turned into drones. It might also explain why few of them understand what is happening to their country. A country where we are all so mistrusted that anyone wanting a bit of canine companionship will need a dog driving licence. Watch out for packs of abandoned dogs when the owners find out how much it will cost.

Finally, a bit of good news.

Iceland is selling 22 units of cider for £2.75. There's one just down the road. I think I'll visit tomorrow. It might be crap cider but at that price for three litres it's worth a try. As the commenters say, just because it's a weeks' allowance in one bottle doesn't mean you are obliged to drink it all at once.

I certainly won't. Three litres? I'd need to fit a catheter to get any sleep at all.

Normal service will be resumed once the report is done.

Saturday 27 February 2010

Stock up!

The Budget is likely to crank up the price of my favourite tipple considerably. This will, of course, have absolutely no effect on the amount of cheap booze smuggled in from overseas just as the huge tax on cigarettes (to pay for all those no-smoking signs and ASH) has had no effect on the amount of cheap baccy available in every pub in the land. What a bunch of idiots.

Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, is under strong pressure from 10 Downing Street to "make an example" of whisky, gin and vodka drinkers when he makes his Commons statement next month.

Well, drinkers, don't say the smokers didn't warn you. You are to be made an example of. Quite how that works, well, don't ask me. I haven't figured out how 'making an example' of smokers was supposed to work. All it's done is annoy us.

Thing is, most of the tanked-up trash staggering about the place on a Saturday night have reached that level of oblivion on beer, lager, alcopops and that weird fluorescent stuff they drink as shots. I've never tried those. I don't want to drink something that looks radioactive.

There are very few who go out for the evening, hit the malt whisky and then go and smash a shop window. It's not guzzling stuff. There's no point paying those prices when you can't taste it any more and most of the names are hard enough to pronounce sober.

Likewise, gin tends to be associated with business suits and tonic. Not T-shirts with 'Brits on the Piss' stretched over beer guts so large that every summer, when they all go to Spain, the planet tilts a little.

Vodka, well, maybe. It's seen as a 'hard man's drink' although it tastes like paint stripper to me.

Most of the people drinking these things are not at all associated with brawling and spewing and screaming in the street. Most of them don't vote Labour either. Is there a connection?

Under the "nuclear option" plan for increasing duty – designed to appease the health lobby and show that ministers are serious about tackling the problems caused by binge drinking – the cost of a bottle of spirits would rocket, along with the cost of spirit-based alcopops favoured by young drinkers.

Designed to appease the Righteous puritans. Not one jot of concern for the people who vote for them. Just their big pals in their Soviet-style quangos and fakecharities. You and me, voters, we don't count. We just have to do as we are told. Pay freeze? Out of work? Income diminishing? Tough. You must pay more and more so that the Brown Gorgon and all his laughing pals can have cheap booze in their own bars. What's that you say? Why are they laughing? Ask not at whom the MPs laugh. They are laughing at you.

Let those bloody puritans vote Labour. I never have and never will. Any Labour canvasser at my door will hear two words and a slam. That goes for any party that wants to decide for me how much I smoke and drink and what I eat. Yes, Oily Al, you too. And you, Cameroid. I am a smoker and I like malt whiskies. You hate me. You absolutely despise me and you charge me for the privilege. You cannot possibly expect me to vote for you.

A bottle of Bells whisky could rise from £14.79 to £23.73 while Gordon's gin, another favourite of middle-class drinkers, would increase from £12.79 to £21.17.

Wait till this hits the smoky-drinky place. We generally go for whiskies that cost £25 or more a bottle now. Bells is going to cost that much. Bells. It's drain cleaner. What the hell will this do to the price of the Singleton, the Ardbeg, the Laphroaig? They are already at the £30 mark.

I haven't been to the smoky-drinky this weekend. Too much work. I have more samples arriving next week and have to keep up with reporting because I don't get paid until the reports are in. There will be an emergency meeting midweek.

At which I will hand out printouts of this. (found in Dick Puddlecote's roundup).

No, it's not tinfoil hattery, it's a matter of historical record. When the American Righteous found that the people didn't want prohibition after all, they poisoned the alcohol and caused ten thousand deaths. Even after the link was demonstrated, even though it was clearly deliberate poisoning inflicted by the government on its people, they continued. You must die. It's for your own good.

How long before ASH add poisons to tobacco? A good enough reason to source an overseas supply, I'd say. A far more important reason than the cost. How long before this government decide that the only way to stop us drinking is to poison it all?

These people don't care about the voters, only about their Righteous friends. Would you put it past this government to kill people 'for the greater good'? Would you put it past the Dreaded Arnott or Dumb Shenker to do this? I wouldn't. They are certainly evil enough. Kill a few smokers and drinkers? Oh, why not? They are killing themselves anyway and think how many second-hand smokers/drinkers we'd save.

Never happen? It happened during prohibition in America. Who was prosecuted? Nobody. Who gets to face disciplinary action in this country when a photographer is arrested? Nobody. Who went to jail when an innocent man was shot on the underground? In this country, if you are a Labour Lord who kills someone, you go to jail for a couple of weeks. If you let someone smoke on your premises, you go to jail for six months.

In this country, if you are accused of being a paedophile by a shop worker, you have to face the police who will make up laws to suit themselves. Who gets sacked or disciplined for calling you a paedo or for inventing non-existent laws? Nobody. Authority without responsibility. None of these Gestapo clones are ever held to account. That's why they keep doing it. Nothing will happen to them and they know it.

So if the Dreadful Arnott laced every tobacco supply with strychnine, what would happen to her? Nothing.

If Dumb Shenker laced all the booze on sale with antifreeze, what would happen to him? Nothing.

They know it.

I'm going to have to stock up on some decent malts before the budget. The Cameroids won't reverse this because they can afford those prices and so can all their mates. They have shown that they are anti-enjoyment too. None of those parties show any interest at all in tackling problem drinkers, all they want to do is punish everyone for the actions of a few. Dumb Shenker must be wetting himself with girlish glee at the news and stocking up on antifreeze at the same time. Expect to hear this revolting little man declare that cranking booze prices up to a range only lottery winners can afford will have no effect on pub closures. Expect to have to travel further and further to find a pub that's still open. I'll see you in the last one, just before it closes.

Our government is taking money from us by force and using it to pay witchfinders to criminalise everything we do. They will not balk at poisoning us. They don't even see us as people. We are just economic units.

Are the Tories any different? I don't see it.

I will vote for whoever has this at the top of their list.

Stop. Funding. Witchfinders. All of them. Right now.

A quick funny.


No deep or insightful comment. It just made me laugh. A lot.

Jailed for allowing smoking.

As far as I know, nobody has yet gone to jail for smoking.

However, a publican has now gone to jail for allowing others to smoke.

In this wonderful free country where everyone has the choice to do as they are told, not doing as you are told is automatically a criminal offence. As is not forcing others to do as they are told while they are on your private property.

The man is in jail for running his business in the way that 95% of his customers wanted it run. That is his only crime. He did what his customers wanted, not what the current Nazi regime wanted.

But let's hear from one of the child-obsessed filth at ASH, Righteous Debbie herself. She can justify this travesty, surely?

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of the anti-smoking group ASH, insisted it was a myth that the anti-smoking legislation had forced pubs out of business.

No, she can't, so she's just going to lie. Well, that's what we've come to expect from these vile and reprehensible perverts so there's no surprise there.

She said: 'Many pubs have shifted their focus to serving food, so they have changed their nature.'

Many pubs have shifted their focus to bankruptcy, you hideous harridan. You did that. You, personally, have destroyed and are still destroying pubs and restaurants and cafes at a rate Genghis Khan would marvel at. You and your child-obsessed pervert gang are still, even now, trying to fine and jail more people for something that is not illegal, for which the harm to others is at best not proven and at worst entirely fabricated, for no other reason than you don't like it.

That's all you really have, Arnott. A personal dislike for something. You have turned it into a crusade that Matthew Hopkins would have delighted in. You are a modern day witchfinder and you have invented as much rubbish as Hopkins did when he was profiting, like you, from the persecution of others. You, Arnott, should not die a quick death.

She added: 'Mr Hogan is the exception, not the norm, because compliance rates for the ban are way above 90 per cent.'

You maniacal old bat. Compliance rates are high because you put people in jail if they don't do as you demand. Compliance rates for any stupid rule are high if you have a gun to your head. Pubs are not banning smoking because they want to. They are banning it because you will put them out of business if they don't. Mr. Hogan is the exception because he was not afraid to lose everything in standing up to you and your Righteous Borg drones. He sees you for what you are, Righteous, as just a bunch of bullying thugs, and you are terrified of that. So he must be crushed and made an example of. Murderers and rapists serve half their sentences. Let's see if that applies to Righteous-deniers too. I bet it doesn't.

ASH consists of nobody who was elected or in any way chosen to rule our lives. It is full of child-obsessed weirdoes and control-freak sociopaths who demand that their arbitrary rules are followed to the letter on pain of violence. ASH is nothing more than a government sponsored protection racket.

Deborah Arnott is pure evil. She will extend her personal morals to every single person in the country whether they like it or not. She is not an elected representative. She is a Witchfinder. Labour are funding a lot of these witchfinders with the money they take from the very people they despise.

If the Tories don't state, categorically, that they will immediately stop all funding to Labour's witchfinders, then I must do all in my limited power to prevent them forming the next government, short of voting Labour. That would be one step too far.

Well, Davey boy, what say you? Are you a Righteous or are you a human being?

Quick now, the election is coming and I have some campaign literature to write for the Smoky-Drinkers.

Friday 26 February 2010

Once they get their hooks in you...

Deliberately provoking the Righteous can be a risky game, especially if you've been working for them. They hold grudges forever and they will put considerable effort into destroying you if you look even remotely like a threat.

Christine Pratt, the anti-bullying woman who has been in the news for breaching confidences (which I think is possibly over-reaction, since the Rawnsley book had already done more than she did, although then again he didn't set up a confidential hotline so it's an arguable point) has seen the sponsors of her anti-bullying business melt away, the contact details summarily deleted from the Government website and has been publicly called names by Monsters of Parliament.

That's not enough. They haven't finished stamping on her yet.

She was involved in a case of workplace bullying, where a head teacher was accused of bullying her deputy.

Catherine Maltbaek was formally warned about her conduct after a tribunal heard that she had made the life of her deputy head at St Mary Roman Catholic School in Plymouth a "total misery".
Sue Preston, the claimant, received a £56,000 payment for constructive dismissal.

So the tribunal thought there was something in it. Apparently Mrs Pratt gave evidence and said something along the lines of 'it was the worst case of workplace bullying she had come across'. Well she would have been going on evidence provided by those who claimed to have been bullied, the same evidence as presented to the tribunal. She wasn't present at any actual incident. She could only work on the basis of what she was told. So can any court, tribunal, whatever. It is possible to get it wrong if the evidence is wrong.

But last night the General Teaching Council (GTC) ruled that the allegations against Mrs Maltbaek were unproven.

There were a lot of allegations from a lot of staff. A tribunal accepted them as true. Now, just after this woman annoyed the government, it seems none of those allegations had any basis in fact whatsoever. What a remarkable coincidence.

The verdict raises new questions about the professional record of Ms Pratt, whose National Bullying Helpline is now being investigated by the Charity Commission for allegedly going public with the concerns of callers.

Yes indeed, Mrs. Pratt. You dabbled in the world of the Righteous by hitching your wagon to the 'bullying' train and then you annoyed them. Expect a lot more of this sort of thing. They will not stop until you are out of business. Your husband, too.

Don't expect fair play. The best option now would be to resign and drop into obscurity. Your husband might want to move his business overseas too. There'll be a tax audit looming. A long and complex one.

One more thing -

Mrs Pratt has also faced questions about the relationship between her charity and the human resources company owned by her husband, after acknowledging that she referred callers to the firm.

If you must dabble with the Righteous you have to stay squeaky clean. They will store up information like this for the day they want to bring you down. I'm sure this little wheeze of yours was well known for some time, just like all those MP's expenses scams, but overlooked as long as you did what you were supposed to do.

They'll drag every skeleton from the closet and polish them up for public display. They will reverse everything you've done. They will humiliate you and they will shut you down.

Mrs. Pratt claimed expertise in bullying. She has come up against black-belt bullies now and she can't even phone her own hotline.

Give it up, Mrs. Pratt. You cannot win this one. Retire from the fray, consider what you've learned and come back to fight another day.

In the long run, it's the only sensible option.

Scrawny wenches.

(This post is sponsored by most of a bottle of Highland Park. I've finished the stats and won't start the report until tomorrow. Logic has the rest of the night off).


Having a bit of Italian genetics can be useful. I've never been in danger of falling asleep at the wheel when driving, despite having low blood pressure. My blood pressure is maintained by being constantly enraged at every other driver on the road. Nevertheless, I stopped bothering because of all the tax and the tax on top of tax and because there were so many idiots allowed out there and because I didn't like it.

Another bit of Italian genetics applies to my preference where women are concerned. I am not at all attracted by someone who weighs less than a photograph of themselves, nor by a skeleton covered in painted latex. I like, as they say in Yorkshire, summat t' get a hold of. The chunkier women, somewhere between Lisa Snowdon and a barrage balloon, are the ones I like. Scrawny wenches are scrawny because they don't like food and because they are obsessed with fashion. I, with my bolognese-stained string vest and ability to rage with my hands, like women who know how to cook. Let's face it, if you can't cook pasta you can't cook at all. It's easier than boiling an egg. If a woman has no flesh on her bones she's going to feed you on tofu and cucumber and you can't last long on that.

So this piece of beef jerky is hauled up by the Hairy Male as an example of a typical teenage girl. I don't care all that much, I'm way too old to bother with teenage girls and currently regard any woman under 30 as a giggling idiot. This one isn't giggling but fits the other criteria very nicely.

''I'm 5ft 6in and weigh 7st 7lb.

You are scrawny. Get a lasagne made with real tomatoes, not tinned or supermarket ones, some decent butcher's mince rather than the extruded cereal-laden lard you normally get and a proper pair of red and white sauces. And real cheese. Then have another. Otherwise you'll be literally gone with the wind.

At the moment I'm a size 8 but I can squeeze into size 6 skinny jeans. I would love to be a size 0 which, I think, is a UK size 4, but I can't see that happening.

Size zero is 'dead'. In fact it's 'very very dead'. Even Tutankhamun isn't a size zero and he's been dead for thousands of years. It is not an attractive look, he hasn't had a girlfriend for a very long time. UK size 4 refers only to exhumations of bodies more than ten years dead. If you can get into size 6 skinny jeans you are thinner than the average archaeological exhibit. Quite how you can regard that as a good thing will always elude me.

My Dad gives me £50 at the start of the week and that's meant to cover my lunches and my train fare to college.

Fifty quid pocket money? How the hell are you so malnourished? How much is this train fare anyway?

But I always buy about two packets of cigarettes a week which cost £12, so there's not much left for healthy food.

There's £38 left. That buys more apples and bananas than anyone could eat in a week. You could buy rollups which will cost a fraction of your current tobacco spend. If you're on 40 a week (amateur) you'll get that and more out of a fiver's worth of rolling baccy, even at UK prices. You can even get menthol filters. I've tried them, in combination with liquorice papers, and it's really funny.

This is the 'oh, I can't afford healthy food' bollocks again. Most healthy food is growing wild at the roadside. I have filled buckets with blackberries, raspberries and wimberries (they are not blueberries but look similar) and all of them were growing wild and free of tax or profit. Apples are cheap. Most ordinary fruit is cheap. Lettuce and cabbage, well, I wonder why the supermarkets bother to charge at all. They can only be making trivial amounts of profit. Even meat and fish. Come on. Watch for the markdowns at the end of the day. You can buy steaks and whole fish for pennies. Don't give me that 'I can only afford overpriced and overprocessed and overpackaged fast food' rubbish. You are a lazy bitch. Admit it.

By 5pm I was starving and I ate a bar of Galaxy, a full bag of prawn crackers and a current bun.

I'm sure a current bun was a better option than an antique one. Daily Mail, if you're looking for a proofreader, I offer reasonable rates. Sarcasm is added for free.

In the evening, I told my mum I was going to a friend's house to study, but went to the pub with my boyfriend. I had a glass of water with lime in it and a glass of cola.

You lied about going out for water and pop?

I didn't order alcohol in case one of my parents' friends saw me - I hate living in a village sometimes.

Now we are into a whole new dimension of stupid. She lied to her parents and went to the pub where her parents' friends might spot her and report back, but she thinks she is invisible if she only drinks water and fizzy pop.

This is the future of this country, you know.

The brain is largely made of fat. The nerves are insulated by fat. It's a particular form of fat called myelin. You need it. Fat really has to be in your diet.

Otherwise you end up believing that lime flavoured water makes you invisible and that Tutankhamun without the bandages is a look that will attract normal boys rather than serious weirdos.

I think I'll stick to the more substantial women. At least their brains are working.

They can cook too.

Thursday 25 February 2010

The Saltfinders are coming.

The food post I've been working on has become huge. I'll have to deal with food a bit at a time.

Today it's salt, because that's in the news again. There is a huge anti-salt movement building for no good reason other than to demonise practically everyone all at once. Salt will soon have health warnings.

____________

Salt is an essential component of your diet. Without it, your nervous system will collapse and all sorts of other horrible things will happen to your body and then you die. In pain.

Too much salt is bad for you. Too little salt is bad for you. The same is true for cholesterol and fats and carbohydrates and proteins. Even water.

That sentence should be the sum total of any government's advice on diet to any sensible population. It is then up to the individual to decide what constitutes 'too much' or 'too little' for their personal circumstances. The reason it should be left to individuals is simple. We are all different. The ideal salt content for me is not the same as the ideal salt content for you. You might be okay with much higher levels of cholesterol than I can tolerate. You might throw up on levels of whisky that will make me mildly tipsy. It's a matter of difference, not of 'wrongness'.

Some people will get fat on a set intake of carbohydrate while others will stay slim on the same intake. It's not just a matter of exercise but also of metabolism. Which can differ even between family members.

That's why diet plans rarely work. They are based on set, measured amounts of intake but people will metabolise them differently.

When I was a much smaller ugly little freak, there were many sweet shops. There was one in the town here until recently, and the school kids would mob it every lunchtime. They were banned from going there by the school. The shop is now a French food outlet which I have yet to try out. The Righteous will insist there is no connection between banning a shop's primary clientele from visiting and the subsequent closure of that shop. Just as there is no connection between effectively banning all smokers from pubs and the closure of pubs. "If there really was a demand, they'd still be open", isn't that the saying? There was a demand, Righteous. You banned those customers from the premises. Do try to engage at least one brain cell, once in a while.

The sweet shops of my youth had things like sugar mice. This was the size and shape of a mouse and made entirely from a solid lump of sugar with a bit of string for a tail. I didn't get fat. My teeth didn't all fall out. True, I had some experience of the dentist's drill but that wasn't the fault of the sugar mice. It was my fault. Those sugar mice didn't follow me home and sneak into my mouth while I slept. I wanted them and I ate them, entirely voluntarily. And I'd do it again.

I haven't seen them for a very long time. They've probably been rounded up by the Pied Piper of Banelin by now. The same Pied Piper who is coming back for your children.

I eat more salt than is recommended and quite possibly more than is good for me. I like salt. It is essential on salads because they don't taste of much otherwise. The only way I'll eat celery is to have a bowl of salt beside it for dunking purposes. Salt is wonderful. I can eat it raw. In fact I might take to carrying a salt cellar around with me so I can visit health restaurants and add it to food. Will I be thrown out of there? Hell, yes. Second hand saltiness is deadly, you know.

The sweets and their evil second hand sweetness are to be taken from view by the cretins in the Scottish government. Yes, Oily Al, I mean your lot. What the hell are you playing at? When the SNP first gained power we heard nothing from you for at least a year. That was A Good Thing. It meant you were all off doing serious government things and leaving us all alone. And while I'm pointing at you, Oily Al, you said you were going to abolish council tax. You froze it - and thanks for that, it's appreciated - but you said you wanted to get rid of it. Oh and if you have occasion to visit Aberdeen City Council, do try to point out to them that one small rented laboratory is not a viable source of tax plunder. No matter how many letters they send they won't be getting any.

But I digress. As Dick Puddlecote noted, shops will soon consist of one huge counter with all the stock under it. They will look exactly like those State shops I remember seeing in Yugoslavia, about 25 years ago. Somewhere I have a photo of that historic bridge at Dubrovnik before the Philistines smashed it. The shops were bare affairs, everything in drab packaging and staffed by people who wore the prototype sour faces for modern British supermarket staff.

Cigarettes in plain grey packs. Soon, booze in plain grey bottles with a skull and crossbones on them. Grey sweets in grey bags covered with pictures of dental decay and Mr. Blobby.

Do the nosedrips in power actually believe that we eat everything we see? Every time I visit Tesco I see rows and rows of white wine but never buy any. I see asparagus and courgettes and never buy any. I see ready-chopped meat at higher cost than the same amount unchopped and I don't buy it because a) I'm not too lazy to cut up some meat and b) meat can only be contaminated on the surface. Increase the surface area, then store it, and the contamination risk is vastly increased. That's why burgers should never be eaten rare. Mince is a contamination risk in a class of its own.

I also see rows of chocolate and sweets. A whole aisle of them. Once in a while I might buy a bar, but not often. I'm not a big fan of chocolate. It's a once-in-a-while mood. You see, Oily Al, I can resist the glittery sweetie wrappings and I can even resist when the prices are cut. I will, naturally, buy an Easter egg or two but not until they are at their last price reduction. They'll last me a while. All those things are easy to find and I don't buy them often. Make them hard to find and I might not buy them at all. That'll really help the economy, eh, Al?

One thing that's hard to find lately is salt. People are likely to look out of their windows at night and find me licking their driveways if this keeps up. It's not really likely. My salt supplies will outlast the winter and I'll increase them when the stuff gets back on the shelves.

I'll increase them a lot. In the comments to that Puddlecote post, the Big Yin speaks of the Saltfinders.

Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash) said 25% of 575 types of soup it analysed failed to meet Food Standards Agency targets on salt content.

Yes, you read that right. There is an entire group of people whose lives are dedicated to controlling how much salt we eat. These are a specialist group of Righteous, just like ASH (whose acronym they are trying to emulate) or the Shenkerites and they all want the same thing. They want control. Any control, of any aspect of life. As long as they are controlling something they are happy. Won't someone please give them a train set?

If you sell soup and you make it too salty, people won't buy it. If you make it not salty enough, people won't buy it. Just like Little Bear's porridge, you have to make it just right. Otherwise nobody will buy it.

What is 'just right'? It's what your customers will buy. Not what some unelected petty dictators demand. What the customer demands. Follow those Righteous demands and you'll be producing soup nobody wants to buy. Which is not a good business plan.

Guess what salt causes? That's right. Heart attacks. Just like everything else. It's amazing there's anyone left alive, what with all those heart attacks attributed to smoking, drinking, cholesterol, being overweight, and now salt. I am of the opinion that they are all the same heart attacks, recycled for each new scare.

You know what really causes high blood pressure and heart attacks? Reading things like this: -

The ideal daily intake of salt is no more than six grams and ministers want everyone to achieve this by 2010.

Ministers? Aren't they supposed to be sorting out the desperate state of the country's finances, the pathetic state of education and a thousand other disasters of their own making? No, they are too busy checking your salt intake. Well if they send an inspector round to me, I'll show him salt. I'll cut him off at the knees and stand him in a bucket of it. You have been warned, O Salty Righteous.

If you have high blood pressure, you might want to consider cutting back on your salt intake. It's up to you, or should be. If you suffer from water retention, less salt in the diet can help with that. What you absolutely must not do is eradicate salt from your diet because you will die in horrible pain if you do that.

If, like me, you have low blood pressure, a little extra salt can help. If these cretinous ministers restrict my salt intake to 'normal', I will fall asleep all over the place. The irony of definitions of 'normal' being laid down by the most abnormal people on the planet would be funny if it was happening somewhere else. It's happening here.

The nonsense is aided by the usual silly science:

All of the 3,126 people studied by the US team from Boston had had high-normal blood pressure, or "pre-hypertension".

Pre-hypertension. That's like saying any stiff joint is pre-arthritis or any sexual activity is pre-AIDS. It's a diagnosis of a non-illness that has been given a pseudo-medical term. Their blood pressure was a little on the high side of normal. 'Normal' in this case means 'average'. There is a considerable difference between those two terms. The average height of a human might be somewhere around five foot nine - I neither know nor care what the real figure is - so does that mean short people should be put on the rack while tall people have to have their spine shortened? They aren't 'normal'.

We don't do that. It would be silly. Those people are all normal, just not average. Yet we are all to conform to the average salt intake even though it will only really be 'normal' for the few people who fit exactly into the average. It will make the rest of us - every single one of us - ill, either from too much or too little salt. We are not clones. If only the medical profession would realise this simple fact. I don't expect Ministers to realise it because I am still astounded to find they can dress themselves. It's best not to push such limited intellects too far.

You medics, though. What are they teaching you in medical school? Here's a human body. It looks like this. Exactly like this. Here is its metabolism. It works like this. Exactly like this. Any deviation is wrong and must be dealt with. By force if necessary. Resistance is futile. They will all be assimilated.

Not me, matey.

I will never record my salt intake. If I am forced to, I will lie. I will never record my intake of anything. If I am forced to, I will lie. If something in my diet is making me ill I will sort it out. It's not difficult. If I gain weight I will eat less. if I lose weight I will eat more. My clothes fit this body shape and I am not replacing them all. Not even at Tesco prices.

Doctors already do their best to get your blood pressure and cholesterol tested. They get paid for every test, you know.

Soon they will be paid to check your salt levels too.

Let the Saltfinders come. I plan to stock up with enough to rival a Siberian mine because since it's a mineral, it can't go off. It just needs to be kept dry and it will last for ever.

Soon, it will be taxed as an Unhealthy Thing and children will come home from school and be horrified at the salt shaker on the table (next to the glass of wine and the ashtray). Their blood pressure will rocket and they'll die of heart attacks at sixteen.

History will no doubt be further amended to remove salted roast pork from the menu of those old sailing ships. Lumps of roast pork in a barrel of salt. Anyone know why? The sailors lived on that for months, and they could clamber up scary heights of masts in rough seas and fit the sails out onto the spars, without dropping from the rigging every five minutes clutching at their chests.

The Salt Manufacturers Association said the evidence did not prove that salt reduction would have any significant health benefits for the majority of people.

They are right. However, they should talk to the tobacco and booze industries so they know what they are up against. Any research they do will be ignored and discounted. They might as well not bother.

It conceded that individuals with high blood pressure might be advised to restrict their intake.

Shouldn't have done that. folks. One concession is all they need.

Second hand saltiness coming soon!


UPDATE - As pointed out in the comments, JuliaM had this one earlier.

Wednesday 24 February 2010

True or false, it's funny anyway.

This came to me by Email. I have no idea if it's really true or not but it made me laugh.

________________

This is a genuine complaint to Devon & Cornwall Police Force from an angry member of the public
A true email sent to the force, lengthy but brilliantly written......

--------------
Dear Sir/Madam/Automated telephone answering service,
Having spent the past twenty minutes waiting for someone at Bodmin police station to pick up a telephone I have decided to abandon the idea and try e-mailing you instead.

Perhaps you would be so kind as to pass this message on to your colleagues in Bodmin, by means of smoke signal, carrier pigeon or Ouija board.

As I'm writing this e-mail there are eleven failed medical experiments (I think you call them youths) in St Mary's Crescent, which is just off St Mary's Road in Bodmin.

Six of them seem happy enough to play a game which involves kicking a football against an iron gate with the force of a meteorite. This causes an earth shattering CLANG! Which rings throughout the entire building.
This game is now in its third week and as I am unsure how the scoring system works, I have no idea if it will end any time soon.

The remaining five failed-abortions are happily rummaging through several bags of rubbish and items of furniture that someone has so thoughtfully dumped beside the wheelie bins. One of them has found a saw and is setting about a discarded chair like a beaver on ecstasy pills.

I fear that it's only a matter of time before they turn their limited attention to the caravan gas bottle that is lying on its side between the two bins.
If they could be relied on to only blow their own arms and legs off then I would happily leave them to it. I would even go so far as to lend them the matches.

Unfortunately they are far more likely to blow up half the street with them and I've just finished decorating the kitchen.

What I suggest is this - after replying to this e-mai l with worthless assurances that the matter is being looked into and will be dealt with, why not leave it until the one night of the year (probably bath night) when there are no mutants around then drive up the street in a Panda car before doing a three point turn and disappearing again. This will of course serve no other purpose than to remind us what policemen actually look like.

I trust that when I take a claw hammer to the skull of one of these throwbacks you'll do me the same courtesy of giving me a four month head start before coming to arrest me.

I remain your obedient servant

------------

Mr ??????,

I have read your e-mail and understand your frustration at the problems caused by youths playing in the area and the problems you have encountered in trying to contact the police.

As the Community Beat Officer for your street I would like to extend an offer of discussing the matter fully with you.

Should you wish to discuss the matter, please provide contact details (address / telephone number) and when may be suitable.

Regards
PC ???????
Community Beat Officer

---------

Dear PC ?

First of all I would like to thank you for the speedy response to my original e-mail.

16 hours and 38 minutes must be a personal record for Bodmin Police station, and rest assured that I will forward these details to Norris McWhirter for inclusion in his next book.

Secondly I was delighted to hear that our street has its own community beat officer.

May I be the first to congratulate you on your covert skills? In the five or so years I have lived in St Marys Crescent , I have never seen you. Do you hide up a tree or have you gone deep undercover and infiltrated the gang itself?

Are you the one with the acne and the moustache on his forehead or the one with a chin like a wash hand basin?

It’s surely only a matter of time before you are headhunted by MI5.

Whilst I realise that there may be far more serious crimes taking place in Bodmin, such as smoking in a public place or being Muslim without due care and attention, is it too much to ask for a policeman to explain (using words of no more than two syllables at a time) to these twats that they might want to play their strange football game elsewhere.

The pitch on Fairpark Road , or the one at Priory Park are both within spitting distance as is the bottom of the Par Dock.

Should you wish to discuss these matters further you should feel free to contact me on If after 25 minutes I have still failed to answer, I’ll buy you a large one in the Cat and Fiddle Pub.

Regards
?

P.S If you think that this is sarcasm, think yourself lucky that you don’t work for the cleansing department, with whom I am also in contact!!


_____________________


So. Was it one of this blog's readers? If so, I owe you a bottle of a very fine malt.

A smoke a day keeps the paedos away.

That's what this advert seems to say (thanks to Snakey in the comments two posts back for the tip).

Children, take up smoking now. If you are ever forced to your knees by an apprentice Gary Glitter and he unzips, aim the hot end of your Silk Cut right into his jap's eye and cauterise it shut. He won't trouble you again. He won't even trouble a urinal for the foreseeable future.

If you're not smoking when one of these perverts grabs you, well, the result might be nastier than a bit of a cough.

Therefore it is essential that all children are provided with cigarettes at once, on the National Health, in order to destroy the country's paedophile rings by searing the ends of their trouser snakes with hot ash and nicotine. Don't worry if you don't get the target first time, kids. If you accidentally extinguish your cigarette on the perv's bag of lumps, simply light another while he's rolling around and screaming.

Seriously though, that's not what the advert was intended to say. As has already been pointed out by the Velvet Glove and Taking Liberties, the advert's purpose is to equate smoking with the rape of children.

Which is patently ridiculous. Everybody knows smokers eat children, not rape them. Make your minds up. If you're going to make up lunatic assertions and draw idiotic conclusions from self-evidently ridiculous and transparently faked research, at least try and apply a touch of consistency.

ASH and all their antismoking buddies have always had this unhealthy obsession with children. This advert, I think, shows their own subliminal desires coming to the fore.

The reason they don't want children involved with smoking is that they prefer their victims fresh.

Deny it if you like, ASH, but the advert is a dead giveaway, isn't it?

We know what you're up to. Pervs.

Kids, take up smoking. The paedos don't like it. It's the only way to be safe from them.

Inverse Policing.

Grampian police have always seemed to me to be largely immune to the lunacy elsewhere. Nobody gets arrested for blowing their noses here. So far. However, the madness is spreading very fast now.

Quiet Man has the story of the Terror of the T-shirts. Apparently, in Aberdeen, a shop has been selling 'Anyone but England' T-shirts for the World Cup. I don't care about football and with the snow back today with a vengeance, it'll be some time before I'm shopping for T-shirts so this won't trouble me.

There are a lot of English people living in and around Aberdeen. The locals aren't, on the whole, racist at all despite being very white indeed due to the rare appearance of that yellow ball in the sky. So rare is its appearance that when it does, women faint and children scream and the old farmers sacrifice a chicken. There are rabid racists here but they are few and are universally despised. Then again, a place this cold doesn't attract a lot of immigrants. Certainly, moving from Pakistan or anywhere in Africa to a place where the people regard any temperature above zero as 'balmy' would be a severe shock to the system. The 'immigrants' are almost all second or third generation and have adapted to British weather further south before moving here. The Poles do well here, although most foreign visitors/students have a rough time in winter.

A little enclave of non-Righteousness - well, nearly. The local NHS managers did try to ban Easter one year in case it upset the Muslims, but the loudest voice shouting them down was that of the Muslims themselves. Here they integrate. They don't want their peaceful coexistence messed with and they are not cowed by radicals (you can't wire a bomb if you can't feel your fingers) so they say so.

Non-integration is not an option here. The locals won't attack anyone wearing a black tent and veil. Nobody cares about the dress but if you walk into a shop wearing a veil they won't accept your existence. They won't insult or attack you. You are simply not there. It's much the same tactic as observed in rural Wales if you don't speak Welsh.

Headscarf, fine. Hardly anyone goes out without some kind of head covering here because there's always something wet dropping out of the sky. Floor-length dress, fine. It'll get wet at the bottom but if you want to put up with that it's nobody else's business. Bare feet and sandals, fine. Frostbite is nasty but not contagious. Nobody else's problem. I have only once seen a woman in the full gear with veil and sandals. She has never appeared again (I don't know if she's still here or moved away, she had a mask on that time).

There was one very nasty racist attack here last year. The victim was Polish, and the perpetrators were benefits drones. The sort who complain that 'foreigners are taking our jobs' even though they have never worked in their lives and have no intention of doing so. The constituencies where most attacks take place are Labour ones, full of benefits junkies, who cannot be scared off with threats or weapons although a job application form works like Kryptonite. If you find yourself in an area of Aberdeen and you notice that all the shops have steel mesh over the windows, get on a bus quick. Any bus. Especially if you have a non-Scottish accent and aren't wearing a shellsuit.

Even then, few of them pick on people because of their colour. They'd beat the crap out of me if I was stupid enough to go there on a Friday night. If I was black and had a Scottish accent, I'd be fine. These are people who are still fighting Culloden even though they don't know what or where it was. They get their history lessons from Mel Gibson films and their political understanding from the BBC. They are, fortunately, few and concentrated in easily-avoided areas.

However, it seems those T-shirts, which have been on sale and on display in the shop window for months, have attracted no complaints at all. Even the professionally offended have overlooked them, but then that's because the race they are aimed at is white. The professionally offended confine their upset-by-proxy activities to the non-whites. That's why that attack on the Polish guy was hardly mentioned in the news, even though it was something not heard of since the days of mediaeval torture. He was white. He doesn't count as a racist attack in the eyes of the Righteous.

Nevertheless, not one English person has piped up with 'Racist!' which I think says a lot more about the English than about the people who play this card at every opportunity. The English just shrug it off and ignore it. If that T-shirt said 'Anyone but Pakistan', it would be different. There would be a national outcry. Not necessarily from the Pakistanis who live here, but most certainly from the Righteous.

Grampian Police went round to have a word with the shopkeeper and warn him that his T-shirts could be considered racist. Well, nobody was arrested or cautioned so no real harm done, yes?

The thing is, there were no complaints. None. The whole matter came about because of a police officer acting on his own initiative.

The job of the police is to keep the peace. To deal with those who break the law and to deal with disturbances. It is not the job of the police to predict disturbances nor to decide what might or might not be against the law. To be fair, it's hard to determine what's against the law now that Labour have produced so many of them but even so, the correct course of action would be to first determine whether that T-shirt display broke any laws. If it did, have a word. If it didn't, leave it alone. It is certainly not the job of the police to bring to the attention of the professionally offended some trivial thing they have so far overlooked. The police should be concerned with preventing trouble, not provoking it.

And yet, nationally, it is becoming difficult to decide what the police are actually for. While they will come down on litterers, smokers and nose-wipers like a ton of bricks, they won't tackle travellers who have stolen a van. That might be dangerous without guns, dogs and helicopters.

We have travellers once in a while. Since their pitch is next to a part of town known locally as 'Fuckwitopolis' they don't make much difference to the level of trouble. They don't stay long anyway because they are real travellers, not one of the mobile crime gangs masquerading as travellers while they look for a pliant council who will let them build a permanent base without all that 'planning' nonsense. Ours don't look all that dangerous, certainly no more dangerous than the local hoodies.

If the group in the Telegraph article have become dangerous, it's because they have been allowed to become dangerous. Just as all those feral children have been allowed to get away with anything they like for so long, they have no fear of a police force that is too scared to even give them a ticking off. Helicopters? Guns and dogs? For a traveller site? How did the police manage before, when one local bobby could move them on - and if they refused, a vanload of unarmed police would follow up?

The softly-softly approach to real crime has made it all much worse. Add to that the treatment of something nobody has complained about as if it was promoting Nazism, and it's easy to see why people have lost respect for the police.

We pay them to catch criminals, not to harass the innocent.

Under Labour, the police have lost their way. I don't hear the Tories even mentioning this so it's not likely to change in the near future.

Therefore, the way to avoid arrest is to appear as dangerous as possible. If you are law-abiding and generally peaceable, they'll get you. It's best not to present an easy target because those are the ones the police seem interested in.

Time to get a spiky leather jacket.

Tuesday 23 February 2010

An eyebrow a day keeps the bullies away.


Would you buy a used government from this man?

(Picture brought under severe duress from here)


Many have leapt to the defence of poor old Brown Gorgon. Corporate thug and unshaven, shabby Lord Alan 'Sacker' Sugar has chimed in. Ex-cabinet heavyweight brawler John 'Smackdown' Prescott is determined to find those who accuse the Prime Monster of bullying and beat some sense into them. Ed 'Bouncer' Balls, minister for bullying families and schools, has bulged his eyes in a threatening manner at interviewers and even the suave yet deadly Pete 'Stiletto' Mandelsnake has been on the case.

Some woman from the Bullying Helpline stated that her organisation had indeed received calls from Room 101 Downing Street. They might not all have been victims. One might have been from the Gorgon himself -


Gorgon: Hello, is that the bullying helpline?

BH: Yes, how may we help you?

Gorgon: Well, I can't seem to get this bullying thing right. I mean I've set myself a high target, I know, because I want to bully the whole country at once. Any idea where to start?

BH: Hmm. This isn't the sort of call we are qualified to deal with. Tell you what. I'll transfer you to ASH. If you want bullying expertise, they have a very impressive reputation. They'll get you started and they'll help you take it from there.

Gorgon: Thank you very much. Now, if you would be so good as to send me your dinner money and tell nobody about this, I won't set Phil 'Nutcracker' Woolas on you. For now.


Ah, but the woman from the helpline has now broken her silence. Much is made of this breach of confidentiality, that those who bore the wrath of the caged furies otherwise known as 'advisors' might be identified as a result.

Possibly. I suspect the bullies already know who they are bullying, and would have already been furiously working out who grassed them up for the published book, never mind the confidential helpline. At the moment they are all busy bullying the Bullying Helpline. Even miniature mobster Woolas has been let off the leash. Later, they will no doubt discover just who grassed them up by the simple method of beating all the staff until they confess. For now, they are otherwise occupied.

One of those calls might have been made by one or both of Al 'the Hat' Darling's eyebrows.

It seems that when it comes to Government ministers and their tales of how the Gorgon is actually a nice man who meant those thrown Nokias to be caught and accepted as gifts, the concensus is not quite complete.

Oh well. The Mandelsnake will be along in a moment to explain why the Chancellor is a closet Tory seeking to politicise something-or-other with the aim of replacing Labour with something that is almost, but not quite, slightly different.

Then he'll steal the reporter's dinner money and give him a Chinese burn, to prove there's no bullying going on.

If I were you, Chancellor, I'd be looking for a really good place to hide.



Additional: Is it just me, or does anyone else hear the theme tune to 'Reservoir Dogs' whenever they look at that picture?

Monday 22 February 2010

The Eve of the War.

A while back I started on a dystopia novel, in which people are tracked by embedded chips, no child grows up with its real parents but are allocated to Party members and workers, and an underground movement of de-chipped people are known as 'ghosts'. Real-life work makes it slow and it's proving hard to keep ahead of the game anyway. Just when you think you might have some new horror thought up, it turns out Labour have already written it as policy.

Frank Davis is just starting a similar themed novel - his is based on a world where smokers and anti-smokers are approaching open warfare, and for him too, reality is fast catching up with imagination.

In real life, of course, it's always the smoker who gets the entire blame. No matter who started it. The antismoker who approached and insulted the smoker is blameless. They can do no wrong. Any retaliation by the smoker will attract the full force of the law.

Senior management consultant Linda Buchanan warned Ionel Rapisca against smoking at the station, telling him: 'I don't like the smell of cancer,' jurors were told.

Yes, well, we've all come across these. People who are so utterly useless at anything that they have to refer to themselves as a 'management consultant' and take it upon themselves to demand everyone follow their narrow and spiteful little lifestyles. They have proliferated in the last 13 years. It's best to be ready for them. Comebacks include -

"I don't really like smoking but it's the only thing that masks the stench of you" (now that one's worth a T-shirt).

"I don't like the sound of a voice that's not connected to a brain, so if you wouldn't mind turning it off, that would be nice."

Antismokers never expect a comeback because they imagine the mere act of nonsmoking is enough to guarantee intelligence and at the same time, they assume we smokers are all stupid. It's standard procedure. Anyone who does not agree with the dogma must be stupid and it's fun to push the stupid around. The bully culture of government extends all the way down to their drones. It's fine, insult the smoker, thump the smoker, they aren't allowed to fight back and if they do, the courts will always treat them as scum.

Righteous Linda enjoyed her bullying session so much that the next day, when she saw the smoker again, she made straight for him intending to have another go. He's a smoker. They can't fight back.

Well, this one did.

It is alleged he then pushed her on to the track as she had her back turned to it, causing her to land 'dangerously' near a live line carrying 750 volts.

Was it deliberate and malicious on the part of the smoker, or did he just want this irritating little harridan to leave him alone? Could it be that he just didn't want to take the bullying any more?

The antismokers reading this have already decided it was deliberate, and will no doubt have a ready explanation for what happened next.

On the track, as she lay there, Ms Buchanan could see him standing over her and she thought he might do something else.
'But in fact he jumped down and dragged her back on to the platform.'

The actions of an attempted murder or could it be, just maybe, that all he wanted was for her to go away? Could it be that he did not intend to push her off the platform at all? She was, after all, the initiator of the altercation on both occasions so she must accept part of the blame, surely?

Opening the prosecution's case, Mr O'Higgins said Ms Buchanan suffered a fractured wrist, bruising to her thigh and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the fall.

It seems not. Breach of the peace does not apply to non-smokers when smokers are their target. Only the smoker is on trial and the hideous raddled bint is going for the full compensation package as the only victim in the case. She is the victim of a fight she started. Twice. She stands accused of... nothing.

The smoker? The one who was twice accosted by this revolting wench and who pushed her away, the second time? Who, when he saw she had fallen off the platform, risked his own life to jump down and haul her up? What is he accused of?

Romanian Rapisca, of Joyce Green Lane, Dartford, denies grievous bodily harm with intent and two alternative charges of GBH and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

He is a smoker. Therefore he must be evil by default. She is an antismoker. She was following the Smokeless Path and therefore is pious and Righteous in all things. Her testimony is worth twice that of a smoker. I wonder where they got the idea? Smokers are second class citizens. Less than that. You'd be prosecuted for kicking a dog but not for kicking a smoker. Smokers are evil. They were evil in 'Waterworld' and that's enough proof for most of those drones.

Well, antismokers, if evil is what you want, evil is what you're going to get.

With horns and tail included. No apology, no conscience and no prisoners. But only where there's no CCTV.

You offer no quarter. Expect none in return.

Still it continues.

If you're a photographer who fancies a picture of Accrington town centre, beware.

Photography is now anti-social behaviour, so you will be arrested and held in a cell for eight hours then released without charge. Unless you give in to the bullies and hand over the personal details they are not entitled to demand other than from those who have committed actual crimes.

All those protests. All those publicised occasions of harassment of photographers. Pronouncements from On High. Even old Jacq the Ripper, when she was Porn Secretary, stated quite clearly that photography was not a crime.

And yet it is still treated as one. Eight hours of wrongful incarceration because a policeman thought it was a bit of fun to bully an innocent member of the public, and who will be held accountable for this? Nobody. Nobody will be disciplined. Nobody will be demoted. Nobody will be fired. There will be no consequences for the police, nor for the pseudoplods involved. None at all. They can do what they like and their superiors will make excuses for them.

Then those same superiors will wonder why it happens again.

UPDATE: Obo caught this one too.

Look out, it's the Bullies!

Nothing can describe the feeling of tapping down the final 'least significant difference' and at last saving the tables of data I've generated. There's always that deflation when masses of numbers are contracted into a few tables, but at least it's done. For now. There are two more sets but I don't yet have all the data for them. Campylobacter takes a long time to grow!



Still, I now have a couple of big bottles of Tsingtao beer which bring back fond memories of China and how I managed to impress them by eating roast dog and disgust them by eating raw garlic. No whisky tonight, some seriously dangerous beasties to deal with tomorrow. Still, time for a browse of blogs and news. And there's possibly the funniest headline of the decade in the Telegraph, too.

Gordon Brown attacked by anti-bullying chief

Oh, those anti-bullies. Always attacking people. You'd think they'd set an example.

The Mandelsnake has been on TV, hissing 'Trust in me' like he did in that cartoon film where he kept trying to catch a small boy, and which has been in the news recently because cartoon orang-utans are racists for playing the blues (hey, this is the world we have to live in. I don't make the rules. I'm just trying to make sense of it).

'The Gorgon is misunderstood', hissed the Mandelsnake. 'He's not so bad. He listens to what people say to him as long as they don't say 'no' and as long as they do as they are told. He doesn't hit anyone. He never has. A phone might hit someone after he's thrown it but the Gorgon has never hit anyone so he's not lying. Very much.'

And yet the head honcho of the anti-bullying hotline (probably a fake charity anyway) claims to have received calls from No. 10 and it wasn't just wrong numbers dialled by Ed Balls in a fit of innumeracy brought on by reading A level exam questions. No, they claim it was someone with a Nokia lodged in their eye-socket querying whether that, and the Hewlett-Packard printer currently working its way upwards through their digestive system, constituted bullying of some form.

The Gorgon's nosegoblins are so panicked at the idea of an election campaign based on relative sanity levels that they are even denying things that have not been claimed to have happened.

It suggested that Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, was so concerned at reports he received that he investigated before delivering a ''pep talk'' to the PM and a warning to calm down.

Sir Gus investigated - which means he had a few words with the printer-digesting staff and asked them 'What's up, dudes'. To which the reply was 'A printer, and it's a long way up'. Then he went to see the Gorgon and asked if he wouldn't mind not battering his staff quite so much. That is what is being claimed. Here is what is being denied.

A Cabinet Office spokesman said it was ''categorically not the case'' that Sir Gus had asked for an investigation and Number 10 said the ''malicious allegations are totally without foundation''.

There's no claim that Sir Gus asked for any kind of official investigation. The claim is that he had a look at what was happening himself. It's an understandable mistake. Labour, like all socialists, cannot conceive of the possibility of individual action so an 'investigation' must necessarily mean a whole committee and a big budget. They cannot accept the possibility of someone working alone and not charging massive amounts for their time. They rarely even blog as individuals, only as a collective.

So they have not actually denied that Sir Gus investigated and had a quiet word. They deny he asked for an official investigation, which has not been claimed. Those lawyers know how to fiddle around with words.

Stories of the Gorgon's assistant-eating ways have been around since he was at the Treasury. Only now, as the Doom of Labour approaches, are panic-stricken Monsters standing up to cry 'Oh no he isn't, he's a very nice man, used to give his mother flowers and that, and he never nailed my head to a coffee table - that was a lie, I deny that completely. The video was faked.'

They have a new soundbite: 'He's no shrinking violet'. That's going to be coming up again and again over the next few weeks. No, he's not a shrinking violet. He's more like a rapidly-spreading nettle patch. With a nest of rattlesnakes in it, which someone is throwing stones at.

I think he's going to blow soon. He's come close on live TV before but the day is coming when he's going to erupt into a full-on rage in front of the cameras. I hope it's not on the BBC. They'll cut away quick, and we want to see him morph into the Incredible Sulk right in front of the cameras. Think of the viewing figures and the royalties as the clip roams the world! Even the BBC would have trouble spending that much money. On second thoughts, no. They would have no trouble spending the entire tax take five times over if they could get at it all.

The bullying thing isn't confined to the Gorgon's immediate vicinity. Over at Corrugated Soundbite, it transpires that the police have arrested EDL leaders who were on their way to Scotland, then raided the homes of those arrested leaders with machine guns, and stole their computers.

They always steal computers. That's why there's nothing interesting on mine. It's all backed up and stashed all over the place. Backup media is cheap and plentiful nowadays, and very, very small. There are no child images on mine either, in any form, and won't be until it arrives at the police station and they load the Glittery Disk of Incrimination. You don't think they would do that? Every computer they steal is suddenly found to hold illegal images. Every one. No matter what the charge, they take the computers and always find those images. I'm betting that in most cases, they are the same images. I'm also betting that those EDL member's computers will have them by now.

The bullying goes even further. Manchester has metal detectors in the streets. How long before nudie scanners are at every bus stop? Youngsters are being taught to drive under supervision on private tracks, where they can make early mistakes without endangering anyone, and the Righteous insist it must stop. Why? Because they say so. There's never any other reason.

Councils must all go to fortnightly bin collections. If they decide to do what their customers want rather than what the government bullies want, they will be punished with bad reports.

Give up smoking. If you don't, the drones of the Righteous will sneer at you as if they are actually thinking for themselves, and if that doesn't work, they'll limit your job choices. Most of the bullies involved here don't think of themselves as bullies. But that's exactly what they are.

So could the Gorgon be a bully? How could he not be? He is leader of the party that has done, and continues to do, this and this. Not to some ethereal and elusive 'other people'. To you. Every day.

The EDL leaders have been arrested for 'incitement to commit a breach of the peace' which roughly translates as 'they might say something we don't like and someone might be a bit upset'. Or it could translate as 'Shut up and do as you are told or we'll have machine-gun-wielding yobbos at your mum's door by dawn, and we'll nick your computer and if you have more than one you must be a terrorist anyway so it's fine to fit you up with Gary Glitter's collection'.

This will continue until they are gone. Not just reduced in number. Eradicated. We need to show not only the Gorgon, but also the Cameroids, that being one of the two main parties does not make them indestructible. If Labour are obliterated at the next election it is a message not only to Labour but to the Tories too. They are not too big to be wiped off the map. Watch it, Davey boy. You're not immune to ridicule.

Unfortunately that won't happen. There are too many mindless drones who can barely spell 'X' and who will put it in the wrong place again this time round. Labour aren't going to get the obliteration they deserve and the Cameroids will learn nothing.

Labour: A future fucked for all.

Conservative: Change? Not in your pockets, once we get hold of you.

The bullying will continue. I wonder if the worms remember how to turn?


UPDATE: Labour don't like to have their failings pointed out. I suppose that's why there's no specific name on this Telegraph article.

Sunday 21 February 2010

Home, and not as sober as the Puritans would like.

Not sober at all. It's a nice feeling.

Tonight I passed around Electrofag with absinthe flavour, to much amusement. If it's going to be banned too, might as well increase its use as far as possible, right?

Interesting news from one smoky drinker. One who doesn't mind the smoking ban as long as there's a shelter outside. His favourite pub is no longer restocking whisky. I think it's clear what that means - and that pub does have a sort-of shelter outside. He'll get the idea eventually.

In a little town adjoining this one, there is but one pub. It has closed. It had no outside shelter.

That smoky drinker is of farming stock. His whole life has been spent outside in all weathers so a five-minute spell in the cold won't even faze him. Likewise, I've spent nights out in the cold so really a quick visit outside isn't going to harm me. He does not realise that many other people, especially nowadays, have grown accustomed to central heating and office work. They cannot cope with the 'get outside to smoke' so they stay home. Those other people are important to the pub's business. We old fogies remember ice on the inside of our windows in the mornings but those who were brought up in the world of storage heaters and radiators do not. We oldies cannot sustain the pubs on our own, it's up to the next generation to do that. Their smoking component is banned and their non-smoking component is, by and large, not interested.

Other EU countries don't seem to have the same Inquisition mentality as here. The damn foreigners are more human than us. At least, their antismokers are more human than ours.

Anyway, I made no mention of the terrible child events in nearby Aberdeen. I was concerned to learn that the stolen child's parents were not able to see him last week, apparently he was ill, but that can happen at this time of year. Rapid fluctuations in temperature can really mess up your immune system.

Eyes and ears at the ready. I'll call in on the grandfather midweek if I can, for a smoke and a chat. Just to see how things are going.

Saturday 20 February 2010

Kafka writes Labour's election plans.

Working today because I had to dispose of pig crap samples. I have to sterilise everything before it can be thrown away, which means steaming it all to death in a big pressure cooker called an autoclave. I do it at weekends to avoid making the other occupants of the place sick because if there's one thing that smells worse than pig shit, it's cooked pig shit. On the plus side, the experiment looks like it might have worked. I don't know which pigs were on treatment and which on control but there's a clear separation into two groups. I just hope it's the right way round!

Anyway, on to today's merriment.

Labour have stolen another BNP slogan for their campaign and have instructed their drones not to mention Labour's record in office while campaigning. They believe that nobody they will speak to has noticed anything amiss, I assume. Best of luck, drones, and I'd recommend wearing body armour if you're knocking on doors over the next few months.

Alexander the Not-so-great thinks Labour will win because they have a snazzy new campaign slogan that everyone will fall for. He is also hoping that the entire population of the country have the memory span usually attributed to goldfish.

...Labour's campaign slogan will be "A future fair for all" – a phrase designed to compete with what Alexander describes as David Cameron's "valueless promise of change".

Compete? For unbelievability perhaps? It wins that round, I think. While life is unlikely to change perceptibly under the Tories, the notion that Labour have any 'fairness' on their agenda is beyond parody. They have never promoted equality. They use the word to push forward divisive and oppressive laws. There is no fairness in anything they have done, nor in anything they might do in the future. Agree with them, follow the directions exactly, or be quashed. That is Labour's idea of fairness.

Labour plans to stop the Tories winning the general election by tapping into a "submerged optimism" about the future and by applying Barack Obama's reliance on word-of-mouth campaigning, backed by the internet...

No doubt headed by Drippy Draper's flagship site and Kerry McCarthy's twitterability. They have missed the point of Barry O'Blimey's campaign. He was up against an existing government that had become widely hated. Labour, you can't apply the same technique because in case you hadn't noticed, you are the existing government who is widely hated. You cannot win by pointing out your own mistakes and pretending you have any intention of fixing them.

So Labour's campaign plan consists of stealing ideas from the BNP, pretending the Brown Gorgon is charismatic and black and hasn't been in charge all this time, talking to Labour activists on Labour-only websites where any questioning voices are booed offstage then blocked, and pretending the last thirteen years never happened.

It's going to be a laugh a minute.

Friday 19 February 2010

Dilemma

Tomorrow night is smoky-drinky night, which is why tonight is another statistics-and-report night. No real drinking again. I only have a half bottle of Glenfiddich 12-year-old just to oil the cogs. The other half bottle is downstairs (Morrisons have the half-bottles on sale so two half-bottles are £6 cheaper than one whole one).

As I've mentioned in the past, one of the smoky-drinkers is the grandfather of a completely non-abused child with several congenital flaws and a mother who, while a calm and pleasant enough woman, could most kindly be described as 'not Professorial material'. This child has been taken by the SS.

Having read this, and having followed it up through several other sources since, the following dilemma presents itself.

Do I tell him about this stuff? Do I load those videos onto my laptop and take it along? Or do I keep silent?

We are, after all, in Aberdeenshire. And if I did tell him, there's not a hell of a lot he could really do other than lose a lot of sleep.

The eyes have you.


Big Maaa is watching you.

(Picture re-educated from here.)

Cameras in your home, watching your every move, controlled remotely by some secretive and fervent drooling pervert with a nine-pack-a-day man-size tissue habit.

It can't happen. Nobody is going to let any authority do it. If they tried it we'd just tape over the cameras and pretend there was a technical problem. There is no way anyone will voluntarily allow a camera in their homes unless they are certain they control it themselves.

Sure?

Bought a new laptop recently? Look at the top of the screen. Most of them have a built-in webcam but that's no problem. It's your webcam. You control it.

That's what these American kids thought when they received shiny Mac computers to help with their schoolwork. It never occurred to them that the donors of those laptops might have installed software to allow the cameras to be accessed remotely. Who would imagine such a thing? They are educational tools, nothing more.

Well, turns out they were a little more after all.

The district retained remote control of the built-in webcams installed on the computers – and used them to capture images of the students, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court this week.

The ruse was revealed when Blake Robbins, a student at Harriton high school, was hauled into the assistant principal Lindy Matsko's office, shown a photograph taken on the laptop in his home and disciplined for "improper behaviour".

Improper behaviour - in his own home! The kid was disciplined for something he did in private, at home, when he thought nobody was watching. What he did must be left to the imagination of the reader, but whatever it was it wasn't illegal. If it was illegal the police would have been involved. No, he did something in his own home which Big Brother deemed inappropriate. Big Brother was watching. Through a webcam this kid thought he had control over.

My computer has no camera attached. I have a laptop with a lid camera but it's no use to me so there's a bit of tape over it. Paranoid? Read the article again. I'm no computer wiz. I can't tell if that camera is on or not. There's no indicator light. I can't tell if there is software pre-installed that runs it. I can't tell if that software is running or not.

Keep in mind that this kid was shown a photo of this 'improper behaviour' when the school hauled him into Room 101. Then read the last paragraph:

"The district never activated the security feature for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever," he wrote. "We regret if this situation has caused any concern or inconvenience among our students and families."

They claim the webcam control is to catch someone who has stolen the laptop. They claim they have never used it for any other purpose. Yet they showed this kid a photo of whatever he was up to. The doublethink here is impressive. We say it didn't happen so it didn't happen, and it can't have happened because we say so, but the punishment stands because he was caught and we have the proof in the form of surveillance we are not doing.

There are already cameras in most homes. Eye toys, TVs which can be controlled by waving at the installed cameras, and so on.

Who's watching at the other end?

We'll find out when they ban smoking, then drinking, then fatty foods in the home.

HOW skint?

January is the month when the tax receipts come in from all the businesses who have enough sense not to pay bills before they are due. Therefore it's the one month of the year when the government has never needed to borrow any money. Never.

Until now.

Even with all that tax money arriving at once, The Gorgon's Magnificent Spending Machine needed to borrow an extra four point three billion quid just to keep ticking over in January.

Imagine you get your pay once a year instead of once a week, or month. As the year wears on, you need to borrow money because nothing's coming in. Then the annual payday arrives, you pay back most, if not all, of the money you borrowed and you're solvent for that month at least.

Not this government. They have spent all this year's tax take already because they took it all last year as 'tax on account'. Now all they have is the tax on next year's projected bills and those are all pretty dire. There's no money coming in. They've taken it and spent it all already.

It's so bad that Cameron is getting scared. He'll have to make massive cuts just to cover the interest on those loans and is, by now, on a ten-a-day underwear changing regime. He's going to get the blame and the Tories can vote him out with ease. He wants to change their rules to make it harder to kick him out.

In his place, I'd have picked a sucker and handed over control already. Like Blair did. Or simply resigned and run for the hills, as many others are already doing.

We have not yet seen the depths of the mess Labour have landed this country in. Even Eyebrows McDarling has been keeping well out of sight. He's no good at lying. The Gorgon imagines it's all fine and dandy and thinks he's going to win the election by promising to fix the mess he's created. He'll say he's going to fix it by spending more money we don't have and the total cretins who vote for this party will cheer. Even when France extends its territory to Newcastle by buying up the country on the cheap, they'll still be cheering.

There are many who will vote for him. There are a lot of drooling imbeciles who still think it's all Thatcher's fault. She left power a long time ago but they'll pretend she's responsible for every Labour cock-up for the next century. They actually believe that the Gorgon inherited a massive deficit and fixed it! They genuinely believe this! The reality is that he inherited a fortune and spent it but you cannot penetrate a wall of stupidity that dense. Not even with a uranium tipped shell. Although it has to be worth a try.

The thin and barely detectable silver lining is that it might cause the Gorgon to try for an earlier election date, before the kilograms of sample I tested today make contact with the windmill across the road. Go for it, Gorgon. I will make time to vote whenever you choose.

Why am I working so late? What's the point? They've already spent the tax on what I'm earning now and they're spending the tax on what I might earn next. I might as well shut up shop, claim benefits and demand repayment of that tax on account because with no business, no tax.

I'm going to delay every bill until after April 5th, even if it means beans on toast every day for the last month. Then I can see what the Tories plan to do before I decide.

If Labour win, hand me the Burberry hat and the six pack of Stella. Nobody else will have any income at all.

The sheep-pig reaction.

I've known this for a very long time so should have known better, but it's seriously cold these days.

So I was all wrapped up in a thick woollen jumper today, when dealing with large quantities of pig crap.

The thing about wool and pig-crap stench is that you don't actually need to get any on you. Not one tiny morsel of pig crap needs to touch that wool. You just need to be in an enclosed space with it. Wool absorbs the stink and releases it at rate that makes you check yourself over and over again for accidental spillage or spontaneous trouser malfunction (I'm not yet old enough to worry about that, but I'm getting closer).

Third hand smoke be damned. I'm suffering third hand pig defeacation here.

They should be banned from doing it indoors. And I need a much more powerful extractor fan. Tomorrow it's thick cotton shirt, no wool, and probably two passes through the washing machine for that pullover.

I wonder why wool is so efficient at absorbing pig stink? Could it be some kind of adaptation that allows sheep to pretend they're pigs, in case of attack by a short-sighted wolf? Or, a sheep-repellent adaptation by the pig, maybe.

Anyway, if you ever have cause to visit a piggery, don't wear anything made of wool. You'll regret it.

Thursday 18 February 2010

Now is the Winterton all discontent.

Nick-your-last Winterton is outraged. Outraged, I tell you. He is far too important to travel in cattle class with the commoners. Why, someone of his standing should be sitting in the front with the driver. He's so important he should be allowed to disembark three stops before his destination. Without even slowing down the train.

...he was "infuriated" that MPs might no longer be able to claim for first-class train travel and complaining about the "totally different type of people" in standard class.

What a pompous git. We don't want your sort in cattle class, Mr. W. We like to doze off now and then and we don't want to have to chain our wallets shut while we do it. Yes, there are a different class of people in standard class. A much better class of people. People who don't pretend to be stealing from you for your own good.

The Tories have wisely, and quickly, distanced themselves from his remarks. They will be damaging nonetheless but at least the Tories have an effective damage limitation machine. If this was a Labour MP, it would be days before the party started muttering about whether something should maybe be done at some stage.

Nick-your-last is still stamping his feet about his special train seat. He seems to have lost sight of what this will do to his party's parliamentary seat.

"They want to stop members of parliament travelling first class," he said. "That puts us below local councillors and officers of local government. They all travel first class. Majors in the army travel first class.

Local councillors all travel first class? I hope the next stage of this reform is to put a stop to that too. They should be strapped to the roof, and none too securely at that. Oh, and not necessarily with sufficient clearance for bridges and tunnels. Think of the revenue to be had from renting out space on railway bridges to photographers and to people with bricks.

"So we are supposed to stand when there are no seats ... I'm sorry, it infuriates me."

I'm sure it infuriates everyone who has paid a huge price for a ticket only to find the train is packed to a degree that, if it were done with pigs, would incur very large fines under animal welfare legislation. You're an MP. Do something about railway overcrowding. We can't do anything about it, we just have to put up with it. Oh, and we pay for our own tickets as well as yours. There's a novel concept for you. If you want to travel first class, pay for it yourself. Or at least pay for an upgrade.

"I believe that the facilities extended by the rail companies to travel first class are very valuable for businesspeople and I include in that category MPs."

Those other businesspeople... do they get to charge their tickets to the taxpayer? Travel any way you like, Mr. W. Travel by private plane powered by a huge green elastic band if you like. Travel by subterranean James Bond machinery. As long as you don't expect the rest of us to pay for it, we don't care if you travel by matter transporter or magic carpet.

Nick-your-last Winterton is not standing at the next election which is mere weeks away. So why does he care at all about the new rules? They'll hardly affect him at all.

In fact, many of the loudest squealers among the stuck pigs of parliament are standing down and won't be MPs by the summer. They'll still get their pensions and payoffs. So what's all the moaning about?

Looks like they're trying to do as much damage to their own parties as possible, and to Parliament in general, before they go.

There is a way to stop them. Expel one of these idiots and make sure he loses his pension on the way out. That might focus the minds of the others somewhat.

Nick-your-last does at least appreciate why we are so cheesed off with politicians, at least with other politicians.

"They have no experience of life outside. Have they ever paid wages at the end of the week? Have they ever been through negotiations over a business deal? Have they been in the law? No."

Have they ever been caught fiddling their expenses when working for a real business, or when filling in a tax return? We all know what can happen to us if we try that.

It's an awful lot worse than being told not to travel first class.




(Still statisticating, or whatever the verb is, so the big food rant is on the back burner)