There is a lot of denial around lately. I don't mean climate change because there is no denial involved there. The climate changes, nobody can deny that. So-called 'climate change deniers' don't deny that the climate changes, nor that large scale pollution can affect those changes. We dispute - not deny - the ridiculous notion that 'the science is settled' when science, by its nature, can never be settled and because the 'science' so far revealed has contained an awful lot of hokum. We dispute the sensationalist conclusions that have been based on that hokum.
No, the denialists are those who are most likely to use the term 'denier' when applied to others. There's a lot of it about lately.
At Devil's Kitchen, the Filthy Smoker finds them in the fakecharities and the governments who still think they have any real power. Told that minimum-pricing on cigarettes is illegal under EU law, the Irish Righteous insist their government should do it anyway. Well you lot voted for the EU so if you don't like it, tough. The Scottish Righteous are trying the 'ah, but' denial. They think that the EU ruling will not apply to them because they want minimum pricing on alcohol, not tobacco. Well, you lot took us into the EU without even asking so tough.
I am not happy that the EU can overrule the government of this country but they wanted it, they can bloody well deal with it. They didn't ask us if we wanted to have our governments overruled by people we have never elected and will never have the chance to elect. They decided that we were not worth asking. They took it upon themselves to decide that, whether we liked it or not, they would hand power to Brussels.
Now they find that their petty nannying is being overruled by their masters and I can't help but laugh at that. How stupid are you, politicians? You gave away the powers you are now trying to exercise. You have, in the process, demonstrated who is really running the show here. You have demonstrated just how important and useful you are. Not at all. You are an irrelevance, and you voted to become irrelevant. Deny it all you like. The fact is, you cannot even set the price of a bottle of wine! A Tesco store manager has more power than you and is held in higher regard by the public, too.
You really should have given us that referendum, you know.
The NHS is a hotbed of denialists too. There's case after case of 'Oh, no, that wasn't us' listed here.
All health issues are, of course, plagued by these people. ASH, the Shenkerites, the Salt Gestapo, the Fatty Controllers to name just a few. CAMRA are a group who like real ale and sneer at the lager drinkers and wine bars. They sneer at smokers too. Well, they are now finding that the anti-alcohol gang have come to town and they are too small a group to do much about it. As the Pub Curmudgeon notes, the attack is on all drinkers, not just those with real ale dripping from their beards, and they won't get far as a series of disparate, infighting groups. Pity they worked so hard to alienate smokers (read the comments). We like pubs too, but CAMRA don't want us in theirs. many said at the time of the ban that it was the start of a slippery slope. Many others laughed. Just keep laughing and denying, folks, because there won't be much to laugh about soon.
The smoking ban is closing pubs. Nick Hogan is still in jail for trying to defend his business against it (not for long, though, not for long) and yet even the signs in pubs explaining their demise refuse to mention it. Note the 'we will no longer be offering catering services' part. Serving food is the main reason given by those who pretend the pub closures are not real, or at least have nothing to do with banning more than half the customers. Temperatures here have barely risen above zero for over three months. We are not smoking outside. We are staying home. It's not that we don't like pubs, and it's not the pub landlords who have banned us. It's not a protest. It's sub-zero temperatures that are keeping us away.
In the summer we'll be there in the beer gardens and you raging antis will bleat that every smoker in the pub is in the beer garden - where you put us. Then you will ban smoking in the beer garden and we will be effectively barred from every pub in the land, pub closures will accelerate, small breweries will die and you'll claim it has nothing to do with you deciding who a publican is allowed to serve beer to, on his own private premises. Stick your fingers in your ears and sing 'La la la'.
I have a leaflet here from ActionAid. They are angry about big business taking over African farms and starving the small farmers out. Something that does indeed stir anger because it's just more bullying. Guess what those big businesses produce on that land?
Biofuel. A Green group protesting about a Green initiative. Is the rise of biofuel anything to do with them? Of course not. Big business is entirely responsible. It has nothing at all to do with Green groups vandalising power stations and demanding 'sustainable' fuels.
There are many, many examples of the denialists in action, far too many to cover here. There is a common theme in all of them.
The politicians demanded we hand over control to the EU and are now finding they have none left, and they don't like it.
The antismokers demanded we smoke outside and now that we do, they don't like it.
The Greens demanded sustainable biofuel and now it's here, they don't like it.
The common theme is an absolute refusal to consider the consequences of their actions. They never think ahead. The attitude is 'I want it and I want it NOW' and they stamp their little feet and threaten death and destruction until they get their way. Then they find it wasn't what they expected at all. They don't like it, so what do they do? Do they say 'Okay, that didn't work, let's scrap it and try something else'?
No. They stick their fingers in their ears and sing 'La la la'. They deny the reality and impose further controls along the exact same lines. Those biofuel deniers do not propose going back to oil and then trying another route from there. You can't have oil and you can't have biofuel either. Fit sails to your car. Soon it will be the only way to move it.
The antismokers will not countenance smoking and non-smoking pubs, nor even private smoking clubs. Instead they want to extend their ban to outdoors too.
The NHS will not admit that spending their budgets on deep pile carpets in admin blocks is leading to the deaths of patients. Instead they will employ more 'co-ordinators' and fewer medical staff and pretend the problem has gone away.
The idiots in 'power' will not consider taking powers back from the EU or even asking us if we want to be in it at all. Instead they will attempt to override EU laws and they will end up getting us fined by the EU, so we'll be even poorer.
The real failure of all these people is not in their actions. It is in their absolute inability to admit when those actions were wrong.
9 comments:
I think "unintended consequences" is the great theme of our age.
I can't think of a single thing the government or their pet fakecharities have done that has not backfired in spectacular style.
They never seem to see it.
Spot on, Sir.
(Although whether the pub closures were 100% unintended is to me an open question)
Anon - good point. Although CAMRA's support for the ban was certainly not intended to close down pubs, the Righteous certainly had that in mind. Drinking and smoking? Stop them both at once!
It may be a more efficient dictatorship when they can get the citizenry to screw themselves over to begin with and then go all out spying on one another to make sure it remains that way, without the government having to step in and physically present force to make certain that is how the system results.
It may also be that having tried it once the other way, in Europe during the 1930's and 40's, they are now more reluctant to make a large show of brutal force upfront as it's apt to be met with too much resistance and create a war, where-as doing it this way and causing it to creep in slowly with the citizen's own allegiance to doing their ownselves in, cutting their own throats, is a less costly and assured way to bring about the intended results - and have them be longer lasting, once it is established.
So it may be something along those lines, studied in think-tanks, endorsed by the highest elite, test marketed in various cities across the globe, a little of this in one city, a little of that in another, and then as successful self-suppression is obtained, then it becomes ratified into a written plan of action, from which governments in other localities simply have to follow the written procedures, checking off the boxes, one by one, as each step is taken and the final results already guaranteed.
That is pretty much how the world works today.
Excellent Mr L-I.
As for closing all pubs? Why not, they're dens of iniquity aren't they?
Mrs R - The best ones certainly are.
Anon no.2, it's certainly a creeping form of tyranny. Rather than rely on a Che Guevara to do it in one go, this method uses a host of Goebbels to do it a bit at a time.
I was taking a smoke break a while ago with a colleague who knows a "councellor" or some such.
He told me that there has been a rise in the number of clients who have been subject to workplace "encouragement" to stop smoking.
Heaven forbid, but could this be bullying?
Before I became "politically" aware, a couple of years ago at my workplace we had someone come around trying to stop people from smoking.
If I knew then what I know now about contracts/law/constitution I would have volunteered to see this harridan and given her hell.
Maybe I should put in a request to have her or one of her colleagues to pop in again. I have one or two questions to ask her/him. Under oath or affirmation, of course.
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