Dripping water on a stone.

I've been following Captain Ranty's 'Freeman' journey with some interest. I haven't declared myself Freeman yet, because I like to know exactly what I'm letting myself in for before taking such a step and I want to be armed with every minute detail before making a decision that big. If you're going to take on the entire apparatus of State, you need to know exactly how it all works before you start. There is a hell of a lot to learn.

It's rather like my job. If I were to start dabbling around with these bacteria without knowing exactly what I was doing from the outset, I'd soon need a fridge full of toilet paper and a good supply of rehydration mixture. So I'm cautious. I like to know how it all works before I press 'go'.

So far, it seems that demands for things like council tax can be regarded as if they were invoices issued by a company that you have no contract with. The same goes for television licences and all other similar demands. It's as if Tesco delivered a vanload of stuff you hadn't ordered, then demanded you pay for it, and then took you to court when you refused.

In court, and even in dealing with the police, all that ritual isn't just pomp and tradition. It all has meaning, it all involves signs and codes which are as good as an exchange of contracts and if you don't see them coming, they've got you. They appear to be such little things.

For instance, when a policeman reads you your rights and ends with 'Do you understand', it seems a harmless enough question. 'Did you, or did you not, understand what I just said?' That isn't what it means though. Answering 'yes' to that question means you have just accepted the limited range of rights spelled out by the policeman and forfeited all other rights. You have accepted a contract which gives the police authority over you. They don't have any authority over you, you know, unless you have broken an actual law.

Even the act of standing up when a judge or magistrate enters a courtroom is an acceptance of contract. You show, in that act, deference to the judge and when he sits down before you do, you symbolically accept his superiority over you. You give jurisdiction to that court by that simple act.

The forces of law know what all these symbols and movements and answers really mean. When you don't follow the exact protocol, they are stumped.

The Freeman method is not an easy course of action to take. It means going up against people who are experts in these matters, who are trained and well practised and who know the fine detail of court protocols, and it is a very serious matter indeed if you get it wrong. If a court succeeds in getting you to submit to its jurisdiction after you have given them a hard time for a few hours, you can be sure they will be especially vindictive. if you start this fight, you have to be certain of winning it.

Losing is not an option because losing does not put you back where you started. Once you set this thing in motion, there is no way back to where you started. You win it all or lose it all. It is not something to take on lightly.

Lately there have been calls to speed up the process of changing this country. UKwebspider has lost patience, as have others now and then, and I can see why. It is frustrating to see such a slow pace of change but remember, we're up against people who have set up this system over a period of centuries. We are not going to defeat it in a few short months, we need to understand exactly how it works before we can fight it.

What can we do? It's easy to feel powerless in the face of a State machine that is designed to make us feel powerless. They have authority, don't they? Well, no, they don't, in most cases. It's all about contracts and that's especially true when those 'authorities' are set up as profit-making businesses. Unless you agree to a contract with them, they have no authority over you. They cannot simply demand money for a 'service' you have not requested.

There are a few things we can do, listed most recently here, and previously here. Most of them look like small things, but from what I've been finding, the State controls us by even smaller things. Stand up when an official orders you to stand up, and your obedience gives them authority over you. It's that simple. I don't know if it can work the other way - if you are presented with a council official on your doorstep, you insist he comes inside to discuss whatever he wants, and he complies, has he handed authority to you? Still a lot to learn.

It will not be easy and it will not be quick. Bloggers, even the big guns like Guido Fawkes, have only a tiny fraction of the population of this country listening to us and those that are listening are mostly those who already agree. Press releases? The press ignore the Freeman issue entirely. They ignore the smoking-ban compromises reached in the rest of Europe. They ignore the questions hanging over the global warming scam. They ignore Geert Wilders' trial in Holland. They ignored Nick Hogan's plight until he was freed, then made a grudging mention which was soon buried under the latest celebrity shagfest or who-has-the-shiniest-outfit contest filled with grinning vacuous bints with smiles as fixed as a gecko's and tits more plastic than Barbie's. Even if the apparatus of State could be exposed in the press, it would disappear under a mountain of glitz and irrelevancies and save-the-vouchers-for-your-very-own-free-ID-card rubbish. They are also, for the most part, what you might refer to as 'not entirely impartial'. The mainstream press are not going to help at all. There is no quick way to get any message out.

The quickest way would be an uprising but that must not happen. Oh, the government would love it to happen, which is why they went on and on about the 'summer of rage' last year which turned out to be a very British 'summer of being rather miffed, as long as it's not raining' instead. That's why they harass photographers, say they won't, then do it again, then say they won't do it again... it's why they fine people for dropping their wallet or overfilling their bins or sending their children to a good school or putting a baked bean tin in the paper bin. They want an explosion. The Gorgon would love to invoke his civil contingencies act.

Rioting must not happen because it will not work. We are fragmented. Ex-smokers who have moved to Electrofag now despise smokers as much as the antismokers do, but both those groups also despise each other. Real-ale drinkers still look down on canned-lager drinkers as being an inferior species. Thin people have been set against fat people, black against white, Muslim against Christian, gay against straight in ways that were never before so open and so State-approved. Any rioters will get only a small support base, they will be easily crushed and then there will be armed patrols on the streets 'for our own safety'. The rage on the streets is not focused enough for a riot to be effective. It has been misdirected by the Government and the MSM for years and cannot easily be controlled. By anyone.

There are other ways. Nonviolent ways. Slow, patient ways. I am not naturally patient but I force myself to be. Last week I finally convinced two Smoky-Drinkers that the party they vote for because they always have is the same party that has made the Smoky-Drinky places necessary, and the same party that now wants to price those malt whiskies out of their reach. They now realise they have been voting for a party that hates them.

There are others. many others, who vote as they have always done for no other reason than that it is how they have always voted. One by one, I work on them, and point out what they had not realised. Those votes they cast are directly related to the reasons they have to stand out in the cold to smoke, and are paying more for the privilege, and can't afford to go to the pub too often anyway. Those votes are the reason they are dictated to on levels so petty as to define exactly how far their bin must be from the kerb and what time it must be out. Those votes are directly related to why they are out of work and now can't even get a job collecting trolleys in the supermarket.

One by one. It will take time, but I hope that each one will go on to tell others and that the idea will spread. I will never have a BBC slot to explain this. I will never have even a corner of an obscure page of the Daily Sport to explain this. One by one, like water dripping on a stone, I make a tiny and imperceptible difference. But as long as I keep that drip-drip-drip going, as long as those I convince add to the dripping effects, the stone will start to wear through and one day it will crack. It won't be quick. It won't happen in time to sway the election but I hope, by then, at least in this little corner of the country, someone will notice a dent in that majority they have felt so entitled to claim as their own.

It would be quicker if we were not fragmented. Even those opposed to the smoking ban - freedom2choose and FOREST and others - are competing with each other at some level. Some Electrosmokers act like born-again non-smokers while some real smokers regard Electrosmokers as traitors. They want the same thing. They want to smoke indoors. People's front of Judea, Judean People's Front. Fragmentary groups who bicker amongst themselves are easily dealt with. There are so many now. Even black groups, Muslim groups, gay groups, Christian groups, all fragmented into subgroups that spend more time arguing with each other than with those they were originally designed to argue with.

There will always be 'my way or no way' individuals in every group. Every group. No exceptions. I have seen comments by smokers deriding Electrofag as a girlie feeble excuse for smoking. I have seen Electrosmokers talking about smokers in terms ASH would be proud of. ASH want us all treated as scum, folks. If we fight amongst ourselves, we are doing half their work for them.

The fragmentation cannot easily be fixed. So we need a new common ground. One that does not involve a specific lifestyle choice.

So consider. If you are feeling put-upon, if you feel your life is somehow less pleasant than it was, if you find people are calling you names and the press is printing stories about how terrible you are... who did that?

If you are Muslim, you are blamed for terrorist activity even though there hasn't been any in this country for years. Who did that? Who is blaming you? Who is saying it's your fault they have to install nudie scanners at airports? Who is saying it's your fault there are now barriers and policemen at every railway station? Are any of the other parties promising anything different? Are you really going to vote for a party that hates you?

If you are a photographer, are you going to vote for a party that will allow the police and pseudoplods to harass you? If you are overweight, are you going to vote for a party that will deny you treatment if you get sick and put you on bread-and-water for your own good? If you are gay, are you really going to vote for a party that makes a big issue out of it by patronising you with 'we is down wiv da gay folk' bollocks when you know they are not remotely interested? If you are Christian and you vote for any of the main three parties, well, that is turning the other cheek so far you'll probably snap your neck. They hate you. All of you.

They want your vote because it's worth money and power to them. Even if they lose, your vote is worth money to them. They don't care about any of us in the slightest, never have and never will. Once they are in, they have five years free reign to slap us around to their heart's content. All of us. You might not smoke, you might hate smoking, you might be delighted that smokers are getting a beating but do you drive? Drink? Attend any religious gathering? Put salt on your food? Like red meat? Prefer to wear a hat when outdoors? Have a waistline outside State limits? You will experience exactly the same thing because you have voted for a party that hates you.

For an individual, the only way out is the Freeman route. No riot will work because no fragmented group can ever get enough people together to do it. The only way to survive the Freeman route is to spend a lot of time learning absolutely everything about it before you start. This is not some whizz-bang afternoon session with a management consultant telling you when to use 'paradigm' and 'customer-centric-delivery-matrix' and other nonsense that lets you take control of a corporation by sounding as if you almost have a functional brain.

This takes a lot of time and a lot of learning and a lot of thought. This State is a nasty and devious thing. Every day we make contracts without even knowing it. The deception has increased in recent years.

I remember, many years ago, watching TV shows about private detectives and lawyers, few of which I can remember (Raymond Burr as 'Ironside' is one). There was a rule with a court summons. It had to be delivered into your hand. Until it touched your hand it was not binding. You had to physically accept the summons. Dropping it through the letterbox was no good, you could just leave it there. I remember thinking it was a bit like passing the Runes (I was allowed to watch scary films as a youngster and if I hadn't been, I might not have such a long list of short stories to my name now) because unless you accepted it, it didn't affect you.

I don't see that on TV law-oriented shows any more. There is no mention of the summons at all. Do they come by post now, and if they do, can you claim not to have touched it, therefore you are not bound by it?

How many know?

The intricacies of the legal system are astounding. It is all based on your acceptance of contract and acceptance of someone else's authority. The way in which that acceptance is agreed is cryptic and convoluted and if you don't understand it all, it is easy to be caught out.

Go back through Captain Ranty's blog for a start, but be aware it's just a start. This is a very deep rabbit hole indeed and learning about it is much more like learning Kung Fu than learning chess.

While learning, keep dripping water on that stone. The more drips, the faster it will break.