Thursday 30 September 2010

Inquisition.

I've mentioned the Spanish Inquisition in connection with Righteous methods many times. The reason is that the Inquisition were possibly the most open and blatant form of Righteousness so far seen on the face of the planet. Not the first, and far from the last, but the most obvious. Their methods are still in use today.

One of their defining features was that they were never wrong. Never. They would charge you on the say-so of any local town gossip with a grudge against you but once charged, you were guilty. Nobody was ever sent away with 'Sorry, it seems the informant was lying'. If they found the allegations against you were baseless they'd find something - anything - and you'd be guilty of it. If your sentence was to make a donation to the Church or say Hail Mary until your tongue bled then you weren't actually guilty of anything. No matter what, once charged by the Inquisition, something was going to happen to you.

As with Cat Bin Woman. It sounds like a Captain Beefheart song title, but it's not. Pity, it would probably have been a good one. She behaved like an idiot but as the police said at the time, there is no law specifically prohibiting her from trying out Shroedinger's thought experiment with a wheelie bin. So the police took no action.

The RSPCA however, had hyped up the story to the point where they could not back down without admitting they were wrong. They are prosecuting her under RSPCA law, and like their Inquisition ancestors they don't tell you what that law is until you break it.

The Case of the Pink Moggie is another along the same lines. No harm befell the cat, its owner did nothing cruel or harmful to it, but the RSPCA and a silly vet woman had worked themselves into a frenzy of Righteous indignation at the sight. Once it transpired that the owner had done nothing wrong, did the RSPCA back down, apologise for being hyperactive hysterical harpies and slink quietly away?

Did they hell. They plan to visit the woman to lecture her on her sinful ways and make her say 'Heil Mary' until her tongue bleeds. They cannot admit they were wrong, ever. Not even in a case where it is blatantly obvious to everyone that they reacted like schoolchildren in a fairground ghost train.

It's not just the RSPCA. Another Inquisition trick was to imply vague retribution for not following their instructions, even when the instructions had no basis in law. Rather like the story Subrosa describes. If you don't fill in the form completely and truthfully, the NHS will Do Something to you. Even though they have no authority to do anything other than medicine, which is the one thing they don't seem interested in doing. I'd be wary, they now have quite a collection of experimental diseases in those hospitals.

Detention without charge was an Inquisition favourite. They'd arrest you but they wouldn't tell you why, nor would they tell you who had accused you. Then they'd hold on to you until you confessed to something. You had no contact with the outside world, nobody knew where you were or what you were accused of, you simply sat in jail until you thought of something you did that might have put you there. Then you confessed to it and if it wasn't serious enough to kill you and impound everything you owned, they'd fine you. The ultimate phishing scam, one that Labour tried to reinstate.

I think, in the future, the Inquisition will be regarded as only the second most blatant expression of Righteousness. Now we have their agents everywhere and they have no qualms about stopping and charging you even if you break no law at all. Take a photograph, look less than delighted by the sight of a veiled woman in a bag, drop ash from your cigarette, have a knife in your car for peeling fruit on holiday, say the word 'black' even if referring to a telephone or charcoal. Anything can be a crime even if it's demonstrably not. You can be charged with hate crime for saying something that a third party decides might be offensive, no matter the context. A joiner's tools are offensive weapons and insisting you know what's best for your child is abuse.

If you have too much rubbish in your bin, you are fined. If you try to dispose of it elsewhere you are prosecuted. If you hoard it you are a health hazard and if you burn it you get an ASBO. Yet everything comes in multiple layers of packaging. The best one I've seen was a multipack of scissors that would be impossible to open without scissors. I remember buying nails and screws in paper bags, by weight. Now they are carefully counted into plastic boxes with flip-top lids of the type we'd have hoarded in the past because they were useful and rare. These days they are just in the way.

I remember, as a fifteen-year-old, buying a pound (weight) of sodium chlorate weedkiller, and it was always handed to me in a brown paper bag. No markings, none of the plethora of warnings that accompany the child-proof packs of today. No questions from the shopkeeper, even though he knew full well that my rate of purchase of this substance meant that if I was really using it for its intended purpose, there should be no plant life at all within a five mile radius.

In those days, chemistry lessons were really useful. If my old chemistry teacher was alive, if he taught now what he taught then, he'd be arrested as a terrorist trainer. I doubt the stuff is even available any more. Maybe sulphur is although I suspect the only remaining ingredient I could get now would be sugar, and its days are numbered.

Meat used to come wrapped in paper from a butcher's. Now it comes in a little plastic coffin and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the addition of a brass plaque with the animal's name on it. Everything else is on there. How is it that obesity is on the rise now that everything has the exact calorie content stamped on it? We used to get 'a bone for the dog' for free even though we didn't have a dog. The bone made soup, the residual bone was a toy and eventually it was buried and left to rot in the garden. Nothing went in the bin.

Bins used to be far smaller and made of galvanised steel. No wheels. They were referred to as 'the ash can' because coal-fire ashes were their main contents. Old newspapers and paper bags were used to light the coal fire. At Christmas and birthdays there'd be wrapping paper but that went on the fire, as did the boxes the toys came in. Those small bins were never overfilled because anything combustible had been reduced to ashes.

Nowadays coal fires are frowned on even though the waste generated by one week's shopping could provide several hours of free heat. Instead, we meekly sort it into separate bins so that one lorry can come around and pile it all together in the back. It's soul destroying. It's meant to be. It's control by humiliation.

At school, prefects and sometimes teachers would give us 'lines'. Some meaningless drivel such as 'I must not picknose myself' or 'I must learn to grammarise proper' we'd have to write out a few hundred times. Then, when we presented our efforts, they'd tear it up in front of us. That recycling that ends up in one Chinese landfill is the same. Do the work and watch us destroy it. Because you are less than us, we are Righteous and you are there to amuse us.

Even the Inquisition didn't go quite that far. Oh, they had Catholic guilt, enough for everyone, and it was yours free at the moment of your birth but they didn't make the serfs sort horse crap from cow crap and then send round a cart to mix it all. They still made sure everyone lived in hopeless despair.

Everyone was a Sinner from birth. Quite how anyone was meant to sin before they gained any control over their body was explained as inherited sin. Your parents obviously had sex, which is a sin, therefore you are the product of sin, therefore you are a sinner. Second hand sin. Oh, the lunatic version of science used by ASH has been around for quite some time.

Every Righteous Inquisition has its targets. usually they include the Jews but this time they've found better targets. You and me. Whatever we like to do can be turned against us. There's no need to limit themselves to particular groups this time. Drinkers can hate smokers, fat people can hate drinkers, everyone can hate everyone and everyone feels justified in their hate. This time it's Equality Righteousness. We all get a target, and we are all a target.

Once, Jews were all thought to be like Fagin. People believed it. They informed on Jews and sent them to the camps. Now, all smokers are as depraved as Jarvis and people believe that too. All fat people are Mr. Creosote and all drinkers are Rab C. Nesbitt. Oh, there are many who believe it all. However, they are not the main force behind this New Inquisition. That lies in the pitting of one despised group against another.

There are smokers who despise fat people. There are smokers who despise drinkers. We smokers are not immune to the programming even though we like to think we are. There are cigar smokers who hate cigarette smokers and pipe smokers who hate rollup smokers, and there are hash smokers who hate us all. The animosity between smokers and Electrosmokers is well known. Even within groups, we are split.

Electrosmokers can inform on smokers with impunity - for the moment. Wine drinkers can inform on Special Brew drinkers with impunity - for the moment. But they are not the Righteous, they are merely tools of the Righteous and when a tool's use is done, it can be disposed of.

In this incarnation of the Inquisition, they have pitted their targets against each other. No more 'us' vs. 'them' as in the days of Torquemada. Now it's 'us' vs. 'us' and whichever way it goes, we lose.

The Inquisition eventually failed and they will fail again. There are signs of it already. It won't happen overnight and it will be messy. The smoking ban is breaking in Europe and it will eventually break here. Ireland is about to run out of cash for the Righteous to play with and so are we. The entire EU is on the verge of collapse and when it goes, centrally dictated government goes and our current politicians will have to function without instructions from above. They still won't listen to us but their replacements might.

As the facade falls apart, interesting people are showing up with interesting things to say. There is more history coming out now than has ever been taught in any school. The central theme is, of course, money, and I could rabbit on about that topic for a whole new post, but I'll save it for now.

Money, power and control are what the Righteous desire and in order to achieve the last two, they need a lot of the first. For the Righteous, money is fast running out.

And with it, time.

The Face of Hate.

Look, children, if you don't smoke, this will happen to your face.
You'll turn into the Joker and you'll become deranged.


We smokers can't really expect the pubs to support us when the tobacco industry doesn't give a damn about us. They are willing to see their customers shafted by the likes of ASH and their puppets in government and when taken to task, all they can do is make excuses. We can't trust the tobacco companies. We're better off growing our own.

So who can we trust? The pub industry? Despite their own industry falling apart because the weather this year has been too vile for al-fresco smoking, they are, by and large, trying to blame their problems on supermarkets selling booze cheaper. Which the supermarkets and indeed off-licences have always done. The pub was never about price. It was about socialising. Now it's only about socialising if you don't smoke. If you do, you might as well stay home and pay off-sales prices. Why pay a premium to smoke in the rain? CAMRA won't see it. The pubs won't see it. When the current oppression breaks, Smoky-Drinky will get a licence and New Pub will rise from the bankrupt remnants of the old. We already have regulars to rely on.

We can't rely on the pubs. With a few notable exceptions, they have caved in.

The government? Not a chance. The government are all spineless and mindless and in thrall to the Joker pictured above. They are only interested in us when it's time to vote. None of them give a well-rotted cowpat about us in between voting days. They are in it for themselves and I wouldn't trust any of them any further than I could comfortably expel a badger from my left nostril. They are as reliable as a wax fireplace. Utterly useless and one enormously expensive white elephant.

The antismokers target anyone in the public eye who might like a cigarette. It's for the cheeeldren. The cheeeldren might see. The cheeeldren will definitely take up smoking if they see sportsmen or film stars or even vacant bimbos on daytime TV smoking. These new cheeldren aren't worth keeping if they are that weak-willed.

I was 21 when I first decided I'd like a smoke. My father smoked since before I was born. Never interested me. As children, he used to send my brother and I to the corner shop to pick up a pack of cigarettes. We were allowed to buy sweets with the change. It never occurred to either of us to be even remotely interested in the cigarettes. Then one day, the shop said 'no'. This did not deprive us of cigarettes. It deprived us of sweets because our father had to go to the shop himself.

In all the films of my youth, everyone smoked. Cigarette machines were outside the corner shops. George Best was the greatest footballer around and not one of us took up smoking or boozing as a result.

These modern cheeeldren are so weak-willed that even a picture of Winston Churchill with a cigar will turn them into fifty-a-day Players Navy Cut puffers. Why keep them? What use are such easily-led morons? We have enough politicians. Let natural selection take its course and weed out the stupid and the feeble.

None of my friends smoked when I started. I started not because of films or sporting heroes or peer pressure or shiny packets, not even because of my father's smoking. I started because of flies.

Even then, I knew that nicotine was poisonous to insects (and that chocolate was poisonous to dogs, and that cow crap was lunch to flies but poisonous to humans. There's a reason I have so many qualifications in biology).

So, when camping, I'd buy a few cigars to keep the flies away. It worked. I tried cigarettes as a cheaper option but didn't like them. Rollups were better - Franklin's was my choice at the time. Then a brief foray into pipe smoking, some bandying about between readymades and rollups and finally settling on rollups with occasional cigars. I decided I enjoyed it so I carried on.

Back then, if you were a smoker at any outdoor event, the non-smokers loved you because your smoke kept the evening insects away. I remember many occasions where I'd move away from a non-smoking group to light up, only to be called back as a human insect repellent. I can't pinpoint when that changed into 'we love being bitten by flies, you can smoke in the next county, you filthy scum' but it has. The antismokers prefer to risk infection from insect bites rather than tolerate a subhuman in their midst nowadays.

The really weird part is that some of those who wanted me around to repel insects years ago, are the same ones who now want me in a rowing boat five miles out to sea before I light up. They honestly don't remember twenty years ago. Doublethink in action.

So even those old nonsmoking friends are friends no longer.

The pharmaceutical industry and the Face of Po, the Dreadful Arnott, don't want us to stop smoking but they want us to keep trying. They want us to use patches and gum that they know don't work. We are to fail to quit and return to smoking so they can sell us the patches and gum again. And again and again. Pharmers and ASH are in the business of profit, not health. They are not our friends.

The world of medicine sees us as an anomaly to be eradicated. We are not Standard Humans and must be made to fit. We're far from the only ones in their sights. Anyone putting their trust in the medical establishment needs their head examined.

So who is left? We can't rely on medics, Pharmers, old nonsmoking friends, anyone in any position of authority, the pubs, not even the tobacco companies we support.

Other smokers, surely? We can rely on each other. Can't we?

How many smokers have you heard supporting the smoking ban? It's much nicer in pubs without the smoke, they say. Oh, that's really comforting to hear while shivering in the snow or trying to light a cigarette in the rain. Maybe it is much nicer inside for them, when they are allowed inside. For me, the inside of a pub is now a place of oppression and pointlessness.

There's also 'I'm a smoker but I hate the smell of smoke'. Then you are an idiot. If you don't like it, don't do it. I never buy spiced rum because I don't like it. I never eat marzipan because I don't like it. See? It's not hard. Doing something you hate when you don't have to is just stupid. It's also exactly what the Dreadful Arnott wants to hear.

There's that CAMRA favourite - 'I smoke decent stuff, everyone else smokes crap and they should be excluded from my wonderful presence'. I like particular tobaccos and don't like others. I have enough of a brain to see that if I demand others' tobacco preferences be curtailed, then they have an equal right to demand mine be similarly curtailed. CAMRA's members - and others - have no such mental capacity.

Many smokers now go outside their own homes to smoke. Soon that will be enforced and they'll just accept it because they've been conditioned to do it already. They have fallen for the second-hand smoke lies and the 'for the cheeeldren' made-up nonsense.

Smokers are not just isolated. We are divided too. All on the basis of what? Science? Facts? Research? No. All on the basis of lies and personal prejudice. The Dreadful Arnott and the BMA have lied over and over and they have escaped censure and scrutiny at every turn. It has now reached the point where brainless wenches on TV can call for the shooting of smokers and nobody bats an eyelid.

Pat Nurse suggests the prosecution of the Dreadful Arnott for inciting hatred and for fraud. I think it's a good idea.

Oh, I am sure the government and the legal system will brush it aside but in doing that, they will make clear that smokers are of no consequence to them. If those mindless TV harridans had called for the expulsion of travellers or the shooting of disabled people or the rounding up of Muslims, they would be in court today. Because their remarks were aimed at smokers, nothing will happen to them. Smokers are an approved hate target. The same treatment, applied to any other group, would bring the full force of the law. If you smoke you are held in less regard than dog shit by your government. It's fine to hate you.

That is what needs to be made clear to those smokers who are cowed into apologising for their own existence every day.

We are hated, and the government not only approves of that hate, it sponsors it.

With our own money.

A ramble about plonk and pies.

I have a small bottle of a Chianti named Piccini. Well, I like to try new things so I thought I'd give it a go. It's not to my taste so it won't be high on the list next time I'm browsing the wine shelves.

The back of the label had some interesting new pictorial instructions, just underneath the advert for something called 'drinkaware.co.uk'. I won't be visiting that website. No need, the logic is obvious. If you're capable of drinking then you must be aware. If at any point you cease to be aware while drinking, that would be an appropriate time to stop.

Anyway, the label informs me that it contains seven different nationalities of sulphite, but above that are the three little pictures of interest.


The first one obviously means 'drink as much as you like, it won't make you fat'. The second tells you what you can expect the room to do if you overindulge.

The third one looks like a one-armed man taking another bottle from a rather large wine rack and is an encouragement to open another one. How does a one-armed man operate a corkscrew? This and other deep questions have occupied many a booze-fuelled discussion in the past, and no doubt will in the future.

Anyhow, I didn't like this one too much. Fortunately I have some port to finish off the evening later so I can take the taste away.

I can drink like this because I am an Adult, you see. I've long since passed every silly stage in the progression from child to adult, a process that in most societies happens overnight but here in Civilisation we like to make it take about five years. Currently the supermarkets want to check your age if you look under 25 so achieving adulthood in Tesco now takes even longer. Then everyone wonders why people don't grow up any more. There is no longer any defined state of 'adulthood', it's so blurred that there are 40-year-olds still acting like children because nobody's told them it's time to look after themselves.

That 25 thing is an odd rule, really. We are told that drinking to excess makes us look older so if someone looks young, why check if they are old enough to drink? Obviously they aren't going to drink the stuff themselves or they'd be all wrinkled and saggy. Just like all those fast-breeding smokers on the estates, who are impotent and have sperm that can only swim a few inches before they are out of breath. Must be the stork bringing all those children. Or perhaps there are some lies involved in the propaganda?

Al the Oily Fish has tried to defy his EU masters by imposing minimum pricing on alcohol, because he hates the working class and wants to make them suffer. His rich friends already pay so much for their champagne that minimum pricing won't affect them. No, it's you Buckfast, Carlsberg, Stella and Bells drinkers he wants to stamp on. He's going to ask you to vote for him soon. Then he'll stamp on you harder.

Now he wants to let local councils make it illegal to sell off-sales to anyone under 21. He's been slapped down this time but he'll try again. If you're 18-20, get some stock in. Soon all you'll have to choose from will be pub prices and if you smoke, you'll be out in the rain between overpriced pints. Once those pubcos have you as a captive customer, once the supermarkets refuse your business and you have nowhere else to go, what do you imagine they'll do to bar prices?

If you're over 21 you could dodge bar prices at the supermarket as long as you are not in the company of anyone under 21 and you look 26. Otherwise a 17-year-old till jockey will make your lifestyle choices for you. Illegal stills can only be a matter of days away now.

Criminal gangs will be gearing up for New Prohibition as I type this. They are already involved in tobacco supply and we smokers are supposed to care about that. Look again, we're classed even lower than criminals now so why would we worry about funding their operations? It's either pay low prices to criminals or pay high prices to fund ASH and the health Nazis. At least the criminals are not using the money to persecute us. It's not a hard choice. No conscience required - the other side doesn't have one, why should we?

It won't be a hard choice for drinkers either. Fund criminal activity, or fund your own persecution. Funding your own persecution costs more.

Next up, anyone who is overweight. Expect to see dodgy hamburgers in the backs of little white vans soon.

There's a new magazine out for women who aren't skeletal. Proper women, with something to get hold of. Look at the comments:

hope it's kept on the top shelf+1 in the horror section and is quickly placed in a brown paper bag as soon as it is purchased. I for one wouldn't want to see that being carried down the high street.

Gaz, n/e, 30/9/2010 00:18

Gaz wouldn't want to see people smoking or drinking either. Now he objects to someone carrying a magazine he doesn't want to read. Why? Because fat is just another word for 'smoking' in what passes for his mind. Gaz is pure Nazi through and through and will be there to fire up the ovens for those human beings who don't conform to a worldview so narrow it's two-dimensional. He doesn't see them as human. He is only obeying orders, but he's loving it.

looking at those pictures - these women would definitely be described as obese in medical terms - and should lose a few kilos - well, a couple of stone in one case.
Or is this another attempt to justify the obesity problem the western world is now faced with. Size 12, even 14 - but 18 and above is definitely OBESE.

peter, sydney, 30/9/2010 00:17

You must give up smoking because I don't like it. You must stay sober because I say so. You must be the approved size because I declare it so. Conform or be eradicated. Cleanse the population. It's final solution time again. Peter might be surprised to find just what the medical profession consider 'obese' these days. It's whatever they want it to be, Pete. Could be you.

Why should these women lose weight? Does Peter care whether they want to or not? What effect does it have on Peter if they are a little larger than the BMA's British Standard Human? In fact, what effect does it have on anyone?

Costs the NHS money? Don't talk rubbish. the NHS costs us money, not the other way around. It's our money they are refusing to spend on us. They take money with threats, tell us it's to fund a health service to look after us then refuse to let us use it unless we live our lives according to their dictates. They can refuse to treat us, but we cannot opt out of paying for a service we are not allowed to use.

That is, no matter how you look at it, fraud combined with theft. It cannot be justified on any grounds. You don't want me, as a smoker, using the NHS? Then stop stealing my money to pay for your personal doctors. I don't steal yours to buy my tobacco. You don't pay for a drinker's beer, nor do you pay for a fat boy's pie, but they too are paying for your personal health insurance and you declare they can't use it. Let us all opt out of paying for it and we'll get private health insurance. You can have all the NHS to yourself. Enjoy the free-at-point-of-infection diseases you can't get anywhere else. But unless I can opt out of paying for it, don't dare to tell me I'm 'costing you money'.

When the SNP first took over, they seemed to be doing things right. We'd hear about the Tiny Blur or the Brown Gorgon and their deranged henchmen every day, but not a peep out of Oily Al
and his shoal. They left us all alone and busied themselves with running the country.

Now they are the same as every other party. In the news a lot, and all of it bad news. Ridiculous proposals for insane laws passed by people in thrall to pressure groups. They don't run the country any more. They run individual lives. They are piddling about with who can buy a bottle of wine in a supermarket while the economy crashes around us all. There's only one conclusion that can be drawn.

There is not a single politician in this country who actually knows why they were elected.

So at the next election, when they ask for your vote, ask them that old interview standard. 'Why do you want this job'?

I'll be interested to hear if anyone gets an answer to that.

Wednesday 29 September 2010

Special Ed.

Over at Counting Cats in Zanzibar, I read this quote from Moribund the Loser:

I see Ed as a special person to me.

And at once my somewhat twisted, alcohol, nicotine, salt, caffeine and fat-encrusted mind led me to a most interesting connection:



It is possible, you know, that one day this country will be led by Special Ed.

If it ever gets even close I'm off to somewhere more civilised. Somalia, perhaps. Or Bristol. Not much to choose apart from the fare.

Sometimes they make it too easy.

(Picture gaseously emitted from here)


What an interesting juxtaposition when linked to a story like this one.

Although I plan to blame the Great Windmill Waste on the Greens, mostly. I have other plans for Oily Al.


Update: There's a caption competition for this photo. Be merciless.

Anticampaigning.


Holyrood elections approach, and it's time to get busy with some initial subliminal campaigning. Gentle suggestions first, building to all-out 'kill all smokers, fat people and drinkers and send the unemployed to the workhouse' posters later. Every party that hates me will be on the list. I will ask any independents where they stand on the smoking ban before deciding whether to campaign against them.

I won't campaign for anyone. You won't want to be associated with me, especially when the main parties decide to 'out' me because they think it will embarrass me into stopping. If you aren't on the side of death camps for smokers, I'll leave you alone. If you are, well, you started this war and defined the terms of combat. It's far too late to get all prissy about it now.

The Lib Dems get it first because their despicable dictatorial dickhead equated repealing the smoking ban to bringing back the death penalty, then simply ignored all the comments on his 'I'm listening, just not to you' website, and is perfectly happy to let the antismoking Stasi call for violence and death towards smokers. If you're a Lib Dem, you are going to get the worst of this.

But don't smile if you're Labour. You brought this ban in, remember. Don't get too complacent if you're in Oily Al's 'minimum pricing' party either. There will even be a Tory anticampaign although not too hard, not because I think the Cameron is higher up the intelligence rankings than cheese (I don't) but simply because you're not going to win anyway.

All bets are off, the gloves are off, no compromise and no bargains. Don't expect me to trouble myself with facts or honesty in this, because none of you have in your campaign against me. You can bleat 'unfair', which coincidentally rhymes with 'don't care', all you want. I'm doing this your way. The modern politics way. I'm not listening to any objections.

Why the rage? Look at the comments on the story of smokers forced to clock out to smoke. Look at the Righteousness of them. Smokers take all this time to go out to the smoking area and they should be penalised. For what? For complying with the law? A law that is the delight of the same antismokers who constantly whine about us complying with it?

There was a time when I could take paperwork to the coffee room and smoke while working. Hell, there was a time I could smoke in my office. Now? Even in my one-man lab, I have to go outside. I can't even take work with me. Nobody is affected in my case but when I was in the land of Nine to Five, I had to find time between work to go out for a smoke. And yes, I heard all the 'you smokers take too much time and should be paid less' long before the Nazi ban actually happened. I heard this from those who spent at least half an hour, morning and afternoon, in a coffee room I never used. I took less time off than they did yet I was the one taking too much time.

Look, those of you who gurn and whinge about smokers going outside to smoke - it's you that decided they have to do that. They are not doing this to you. You are doing it to them. You can't see that, can you?

Now it's fine for vacuous bints whose brains have long since been lost in their cleavages to sit on national TV and proclaim that smokers should be lined up against a wall and shot. And all you antismokers nod in agreement while polishing your jackboots and shining up your skull badges.

Still you can't see it, can you?

You antismokers are not 'like Nazis'. You ARE Nazis. You are doing to smokers exactly what your great hero of the past encouraged you to do to Jews and travellers and Jehovah's Witnesses and the disabled and smokers and more. Just add up the groups you are now encouraged to despise. How many camps and gas chambers will you need this time? How many of you look forward to standing up when it's all over and trying the 'I was only obeying orders' defence?

Clegg has had multiple chances to prove that he gives a runny shit about what people think, and each time he has proved he does not care at all. He has your votes now, he doesn't need you any more.

The same is true for each and every one of them. I no longer care who voted for or against the smoking ban. If you're in a party that supports it you are a legitimate target, no matter where you stand. You have chosen your side and it's not mine.

Tobacco companies are now advertising jobs in New Scientist again because they despise their customers too and have gone over to the Righteous. Well, I once got used to Yugoslavian tobacco and I can do it again. I'll let Man with a Van know I'm interested in anything that doesn't come from Western companies. And I'll be planting my own in the spring.

So when the posters get wilder and the claims get more bizarre, remember who wrote the rules of this game. It wasn't me.

I will, however, play by those rules.

Dirty postcards.

A businessman seeks the revival of the old saucy joke postcards. Brilliant. They were worth going to the seaside for.

That was back when you could take photos at the seaside without being branded a terrorist, a peeping tom or a paedophile, you could have a few cans on the beach and nobody minded at all, you were even allowed to smoke in the open air without New Puritan disapproval. Even - shock horror - you could have a coffee or a beer and have a cigarette at the same time - indoors!

Remember all those antismokers keeling over in the bars and cafes? Remember the bar staff with cancerous lumps all over them while each and every cafe waitress had a hacking cough and was stained yellow? Remember the St. John's Ambulance running to the aid of someone whose child caught a glimpse of a cigarette packet and suffered a seizure?

Remember those elderly matrons swooning at the sight of a rack of dirty postcards and children screaming in horror at cartoon boobs and lifted kilts? Remember the police swooping on cafes that had salt on the table, in full view and easy reach of the cheeeldren? Remember that evil candy floss (now that stuff really was evil, it was the invention of Sticky Satan) and the waddling bloated whales we all turned into as a result of hot dogs, ice cream and fizzy pop?

Remember all that? Now that I think of it, neither do I.

So in response to the pompous Mail headline:

Oo-er, too saucy? As a businessman seeks to revive classic seaside postcard, do we really want to bring them back?

Yes we bloody do. Bring all of it back.

Even the candy-floss. It made many a dentist's career, that stuff, and it was the one thing guaranteed to make any child want to wash their face.

Tuesday 28 September 2010

Clock out for coffee.

I used to work in the World of Nine to Five. In that world there were several pompous, arrogant little shits who declared that my occasional smoke-breaks were 'wasting work time' while their half-hour coffee breaks, morning and afternoon, were not. I didn't take those breaks because I couldn't smoke in their coffee room and because the banality of conversation in there drove me nuts.

Instead, we smokers would take staged five-to-ten minute breaks during natural lulls in work throughout the day. The coffee breaks the rest took were equivalent to six to twelve smoke breaks. We didn't often get anywhere near the level of indolence of the non-smokers and we didn't down tools at the designated hour of the break. Yet we were the ones 'wasting time'.

Now it's official. Non-smokers sitting on their voluminous buttocks imbibing caffeine for half an hour are still paid while doing it, but smokers taking a dose of the similar compound 'nicotine' for ten minutes are not. Smokers must clock out to smoke. Caffeine addicts don't have to.

There is bleating about 'the time it takes them to get to the designated smoking area, five miles away' and that is covered here.

What the caffeine junkies don't see is that in Righteous eyes, they are smokers too. Only they don't smoke it, they drink it. In the name of 'productivity' it is a matter of time before they have to clock out for coffee.

They'll also have to clock out to check their Facebook status or to browse RedTube. The IT department will do it for them automatically.

Still despise us? Carry on with that, because we are just the tip of the iceberg.

You're next.

Oh, right...

One thing I noticed on Amusing Bunni's blog, and others, was 'Rule 5', which involved pictures of attractive women for no reason other than 'Rule 5'.

Finally, I know what it means. Via the Mind-Numbed Robot, Rule 5 is to be found in the list of rules here.

And so, in compliance with the rules...

(Picture seduced from its hiding place here)


You know, I'm not sure I have the hang of this just yet. Should I set my sights a tad higher, do you think? Or should I stay realistic in my expectations? If I did that you'd get Bella Emberg pictures.

And I'd get depressed.


Hattie Jacques.... phwoar!

Whisky burns...

...when it comes out of your nose.

If you have anything in your hands, put it down. Swallow or spit out whatever is in your mouth (no, I don't want to know what it is).

Ready?

Here we go -

Shadow Treasury chief secretary Liam Byrne accused the Government today of being ''hell bent'' on destroying the foundations of economic success laid by Labour.

Remember that 'There's no money left' note? The total absence of money is Labour's definition of economic success. Along with the total absence of intelligence, common sense and hair.

A different planet? These people are in a parallel universe.

Monday 27 September 2010

Not so funny for the Bunni.

Amusing Bunni, she who failed to appreciate the Socialist view of Barry O'Blimey's acolytes, has vanished.

I hear via Email that it started with her connection to a particular site (which I will not name since the site owner has no wish to make things worse for her, and neither do I) and then when she responded to a Twitter thingy that revealed her Email address. From there, the loonies found her house.

Now, my Email is in the sidebar. It is possible to trace me through that if you can get through the series of Emails that set it up. None of which have my address. So if you did trace me through that, you are not working as a swivel-eyed Socialist drone. You had help. Big help. Perhaps from someone who would ban you from their entire country for insulting them. Kim Jong-Il, perhaps.

Or Barry O'Blimey.

Amusing Bunni is scared because Barry O'Blimey's wild thugs are after her. One insult is enough for them to demand she lose her head. Behead those who insult O'Blimey! Freedom go to hell!

Sounding familiar?

And we wonder why the Socialists are so keen to accommodate radical Islam.

They are the same.

Good luck, Bunni, and be thankful you didn't post any cartoons. The Islamobamas would have exploded.

Sunday 26 September 2010

The last days of Empire.

So many numbers... Lazy link-to-others post tonight because of work.

"Excuse me, Mr. Emperor. I don't want to intrude, but I thought you should know that Rome is burning. What? Oh, I see, I'll come back when you've finished fiddling. Will your expenses take long?"

If Rome had invented the Internet, the last days of Empire would look like today. A world where pink-dyed cats cause mass outrage while the stoning to death of a woman is calmly discussed with 'well, it's their law, innit?'. Where Nelson's famed (but probably apocryphal) line, 'I see no ships', is revived in Parliament as 'I see no report'. Where Tories press forward with a Socialist agenda that would cause a hiss of breath if suggested in the Kremlin.

A world where money is the only thing anyone cares about. Where the government want to take all your money and give you pocket-money, as much as they think you deserve. Someone will be round to check your room is tidy before they decide how much you can have. And yet every country is in debt to every other country. How does that work? How long before whoever it is who loaned all that money starts foreclosing on countries?

They'd better be quick. The Euro looks likely to collapse at any moment, and most other currencies are looking shaky too. We'll be back to bartering with shiny stones soon.

What are the Emperors doing? We have so many of them now it's hard to keep track. Some of them are engaged in prosecuting a man found in possession of a sense of humour with intent to tell a joke. Oh, that's really important work they are doing, protecting us from inadvertent laugh-related injury. When we hear how much of the money we don't have they've spent on this, all thoughts of mirth will flee and we can settle into a morose safety.

Ah, but think how much they've saved by ignoring an old lady's pleas for help and allowing her tormentors to kill her. They have Priorities, these people, and we are not on that list.

We are so infantilised we are to drink beer (if we can still afford any on our pocket money) from plastic cups. Soon they will come with a lid and a spout. Like those take-away coffee cups already do. Ever noticed the similarity? How about the 'sports' drink bottles that look very like baby bottles? I always take the lids off. My days of drinking anything from baby cups and teats are long past.

Treating us like children is far more important than actually running the country. We are, once more, ruled by Nero but this time he's brought the whole family along. Every one a certifiable crackpot with no idea why they were elected and not a clue what to do now they are. It can only end as Rome ended, in a hell of a mess. I hope there are booze-fuelled orgies this time too.

We have 'diversity' rammed down our throats such that any militant faction of any group (other than Christians or smokers) can demand what the hell they like and get it. Whether the rest of the people crammed into that pigeonhole agree is of no consequence. The diversity agenda is set up to keep us involved in playground squabbles - all white men are racist so we get gangs of non-whites going around beating up white men because that's allowed. They're all racists. All men are evil thugs so women can pretend to be raped and get them jailed because that's allowed. Any man proven to have been set up is deemed guilty anyway. He was carrying a rapist weapon in his trousers therefore intent is proved, in the simple mind of the modern pundit.

Then we are repeatedly told that all Muslims are Jihadists, although I can tell you that the Palestinian guy who runs the local kebab - chips - pakora - pizza - hell, whatever you want to eat he's got it or can get it (except pork) - shop is one of the nicest guys I've ever met. He doesn't care if you arrive a little unsteadily when the pubs close. He'll chat to chatty drunks and ignore abusive ones. He's never blown up anything and even though he's Muslim, he doesn't have a beard. I expect the kebabs are Halal but I doubt his chicken pakora is. He buys it ready-made and deep-fries it while you wait.

Then again, we are told that all the food outlets and all the supermarkets are now stocked only with Halal meat. Considering the total turnover involved, that must mean there are Imams all over the country, hoarse from continuous superfast recitals and permanently spattered with blood. Have you seen how fast a chicken processing line goes? He's lucky if he gets five seconds per bird before it's off to the defeathering tank. Halal requires a specialist abattoir. There aren't enough of them to supply at supermarket rates of sale.

Halal is also a specialist market, like Kosher, which can command a premium over the everyday dead chicken. Buying in that premium-cost meat and then pretending it's plain is like buying a Ferrari and advertising it for sale as a Cortina. It doesn't make sense. What purpose is served by sneaking Halal into our diets or even by telling us it's there? It can achieve nothing other than turning people against Muslims and who wants that to happen? Seriously, consider who might want that to happen.

No, Muslims aren't filling the supermarkets with Halal meat. The Daily Mail is filling our heads with it. Why? To keep us looking the wrong way and to get us to help create our own enemy.

Oh, but never mind Halal. Soon we'll be told that Guinness is funding terrorists and Tesco salads have four-leaved clovers sneaked into them by leprechauns, who have also taken all our gold and hidden it at the end of a rainbow. Yes, we are to fear the wrath of another EU zone who thinks this EU zone still has any say in what happens to them. The IRA are back in town.

It seems the Jihadists are not living up to expectations so we've had to fall back on the good old Catholic enemy of old. Someone has to keep the population scared and all those imported 'terrorists' are busily setting up corner shops and complaining about the ban on advertising their biggest sellers, tobacco and booze. What? You thought Mr. Patel was making all his money from chocolate hobnobs and the Daily Mirror? No, he is now too busy fending off ASH and the Shenkerites to worry about blowing up buses. So it's time to wheel out the trusty old IRA, give them back their guns and tell them some lies about the UK government having some kind of authority still.

Who will be next? The Provisional Boy Scouts? The Real Brownies? The Wahhabi sect of the Tufty Club? Rupert bin Bear and al-Sooty? Will we have MI5 announcing 'Beware the Jabberwock' before the year is out? It doesn't seem unlikely any more.

It's easy to get enraged by the newspaper stories. That's what they are for. If you relax, have a smoke, sit back and look at it with a reasonable frame of mind, it looks like the stuff Monty Python discarded as being far too silly for the show. It reads like a rejected script for Spike Milligan's 'Q' series.

Yet almost everyone falls for all of it, all the time. While taking their pocket money, drinking coffee from baby cups and raising bottles with nipple-drinkers to their lips. While accepting that they have to taste plastic with their beer because the pub they go to, which has never seen so much as a raised voice, might one day be filled with dangerous maniacs. While accepting that they have to go out in the rain to smoke and that they are evil because their T-shirt has 'XXL' stamped on the label. So many people sleepwalk throughout their lives with their iPods in their ears and their thumbs blistered from texting. When they get to the end and their life flashes before their eyes, they'll see what they missed. Too late.

Meanwhile we have bin wardens who can spot a glass bottle in a paper bin from three streets away, councils that use satellites to check whether you are an inch outside the catchment area for your chosen school, and many, many things too ludicrous to mention enforced by people too nondescript to name. And nobody seems to mind.

No matter how insane the world gets, people just accept it. Scanners that show you naked and store the images (oh yes, they do) so that pervy scanner operators can pass round photos of you and your children naked? Well, nobody minds. Council-employed private enforcers who can fine you for stepping on the cracks in the pavement or anything else they fancy? Well, nobody minds. Police who pounce, mob-handed, on parents picking up disabled children from school while ignoring street gangs who terrorise pensioners? Well, nobody minds.

This country doesn't need a superhero. They'd merely censure Batman for wearing a mask, wheel-clamp the Batmobile and take all his weapons away. No, what this country needs is exactly the opposite. Batman would let them sleep. The Joker would wake them up. Islamists and the IRA won't because they are working to a plan, and they have money at the heart of everything they do. People know what they are dealing with in those organisations. They know what to expect. Unfortunately the Joker is no more real than Batman, but it would take pure lunacy, untrammelled by any obvious connection with money, to really wake people up.

Well, we may yet see that. Our government, and those it answers to, are near to the line that separates the totalitarian with an agenda from the chaos of the Joker. Very near. Emboldened by the meek acceptance of ever more lunatic laws and job descriptions Douglas Adams couldn't have thought up, the UN has an entire office dedicated to greeting visitors from space. No doubt they have space-aid budgets lined up too and armies at the ready in case the aliens have oil on their planet.

The whole edifice is insane. It cannot hold. New World Order? With this lot in charge? What we have is the New World Shambles. As for Common Purpose, they might as well advertise their services as cat-herder trainers. All of them treat six billion people as if they are one homogenous cloned mass. That doesn't even work with bacteria. Each of them, individually, thinks that six billion people want exactly what they want, and desire to live exactly as they declare. Every one of these Righteous thinks that way but every one of them thinks of a different Utopia, and every one of them thinks theirs is the right one.

The irony is that all those who want to make us clones are themselves individuals. They cannot see why their fellow Righteous don't agree with them, so they will never see why the rest of us don't.

The EU is going to fall apart and it'll be messy. The United States might fall apart too. It was never one country, not really. Compare Utah and California and you might as well be comparing Japan and Iran. Very different places with people who have very different ways of life. Like the regions of the EU, they all resent centrally-dictated rules that please nobody.

Those who dictate from the centre won't trouble themselves to look out of the window and see the flames. They are too busy fiddling. So their excesses will get wilder and more insane with every passing day until they have spent the last Euro and the whole thing collapses.

When it does, they will find they have created a population no longer able to look after themselves and who will wring their hands and look for someone to blame.

And then, as the Joker says, '...these civilised people? They'll eat each other.'

I'll start with the Dreadful Arnott. Smoked.

Mmmm... Parma Arnott... with salt.

Moribund Minor - not the people's choice.


The Battle of the Moribunds is over, so Ronnie and Reggie can get back to the family business of being Marxist and therefore more equal than the rest of us. The interesting thing is that they come from a family who fled exactly the kind of regime they want to set up here, and who, on arrival in the UK, immediately started rebuilding the horror they had escaped.

No wonder they're so friendly with radical Islam. Captain Hook can't be deported because if he went back to that regime he wants to set up here, they'd kill him. So he wants to make here the same as there, which means we'll then kill him and he can't escape back to there because they'll still kill him. Don't any of them ever see that?

However, Mr. Ed, the incredible talking horse's arse (oh what a gift, even better than the Brown Gorgon), wasn't the favourite of the MP part of the vote, nor the Party membership component of the vote. No, he is solely the choice of the Unions and all those inside the party know it.

All those outside know it too. So when the unions decide to strike all over the place, guess who their new frontman is?

It's Moribund the Strawb!

(The reference might be lost on younger readers, you sprightly young thirty-year-olds might need a refresher).

Yes indeed, even the Labour party members will know who to blame when their bins aren't collected and their dead are piled up alongside. Oh, that is going to sting. No matter what the party members want, no matter what the MPs want, the Unions have decided who's in charge of them now.

There is nothing they can do about it. There is no Labour party now, there is only the Union Puppet Party. Nothing else remains. No policy other than 'do what the Unions say', no future other than bleak Communist greyness, no aspiration permitted, no advancement allowed. A Toynbee dystopia is all they can offer the voters now. Oh, and a whole series of new bans.

It gets better. Moribund Minor won by the slimmest possible margin so at least half of the Labour party is disgruntled this evening. A split might even be on the cards. Certainly he will face leading a party that didn't want him in charge and who will, even now, be wondering why the Unions can override the wishes of party members and MPs. They will wonder why the talking horse's arse beat Bananaman even though they didn't vote for him. Interesting times lie ahead.

It's hard to resist bursting out laughing.

So I won't.

Saturday 25 September 2010

Pink Pussycat.



A pink cat has been found, possibly a descendant of the one Devo were looking for in 1978.

This one has been dyed, and sniffing the chance of a prosecution for a non-crime, the RSCPA have declared it a Terrible Thing.

As Corrugated Soundbite implies, having seen what people get away with doing to poodles, I'd say the cat got off very lightly. Poodles are highly strung, and who can blame them when all the other dogs laugh at their toilet-brush hairdos?

The cat has not been harmed at all. As the article states, the dye is non-toxic, is evenly applied and has been kept away from the cat's eyes, nose and mouth. Not a slapdash job but a clearly professional one. Why do I think that? Look at the evenness of colour. There is no way to achieve that on a resisting hamster, never mind a cat. The picture shows a healthy, clean and well cared for animal.

Well of course it's clean. The first thing these RSCPA idiots did was give it a bath. Offhand, I can think of nothing a cat hates more than being dunked in water and scrubbed. It is possibly the single most stressful experience any cat can have. Worse even than being dyed pink. Just ask Tiddles here:


As Quiet Man points out, the colour of this cat is not down to a gang of Ferals with spray cans. Just look at the symmetry of the colour around the face. This was most probably done at a pet salon somewhere, by a professional, with minimal stress to the animal and under the supervision of a doting owner. If it was thrown over a fence then it was probably stolen, perhaps by Ferals, but they are not responsible for its colour.

The hysteria surrounding its finding means that the possibly heartbroken owner now dare not come forward to claim their cherished pet (after no doubt paying a small fortune to have it coloured), and the salon that did the work will keep very quiet indeed.

Because you see, the knee-jerks of the RSPCA prosecution machine define 'animal cruelty' as whatever they damn well please in order to swell their coffers with fines. Remember cat-bin-woman? A callous cow if ever there was one but the police, at the time, said no actual crime had been committed. Sure, it was a nasty thing to do but it wasn't against the law. The RSPCA have their own laws and are prosecuting anyway.

So if that's your cat in the pictures, you have my sympathy. You dare not get it back. You dare not report it stolen. The RSPCA have ensured that it will remain homeless, and that you will never see it again. They have ensured that those who stole it will never be caught, nor even sought. It's you they are after.

If you're the one who did the work, nice job. However, you dare not tell anyone you did it, ever. The RSPCA are looking for you too.

It is not against the law to dye your pet different colours as long as there is no harm to the animal. Non-toxic dye and staying well clear of eyes, nose and mouth means no harm was done. It's not as if it was sprayed with a can of metallic green acrylic from Halford's. Which is what yobs would have used, rather than take the trouble to source a non-toxic colouring agent and then take care to keep the animal's face clear.

The RSPCA don't care about the cat. Don't fool yourselves into thinking they care about animals. They care about money. As your descendants will discover if you leave them any in your will - the RSPCA will chase your descendants to reclaim the death duties on their share. They are ruthless in their pursuit of money. Animals? A means to an end, and the end is cash.

This alleged animal charity operates on its own laws which are malleable depending on the situation. In any event, they will look for a prosecution long before they make any attempt to reunite a lost cat with its owner.

If it's your cat, resign yourself that it's gone. If you try to reclaim it the RSPCA will prosecute you for a non-crime. The police won't, because the only possible crime here is the theft of a cat.

And nobody is going to be interested in that.

Holes on the dole.


Good morning. I'm here for the interview for the receptionist job.
(Picture nailed among the wonderful collection here).

Okay. I work in a lab with dangerous bacteria. If I were ever to employ someone, I'd be looking for someone who is likely to take such things very seriously indeed. It's not just their safety that's at stake, it's mine too. No fripperies, no distractions. No deliberate cuts in their skin. I have no tattoos or piercings, not because I object to them, but because the things I work with need only a little hole to get in and if they do, I'm in trouble. So I would be wary of employing someone who lists 'self-perforation' as a hobby.

In many other jobs, it really doesn't matter if you hammer nails into your head as long as it doesn't affect your ability to do what is required of you. Especially in politics, where the entire removal of many politician's heads would have no discernible effect on their performance and might even cut their expenses bill a little.

Then again, first impressions count for a lot. I have a suit for serious business meetings but I never wear it to the lab. If there is a risk, however small, of becoming coated in pig or chicken shit then I'm not going to be wearing anything more expensive than a Tesco clearance sale outfit. Besides, I work alone and see few visitors because the smell drives them away. There is no point in worrying about my appearance.

It does, however, matter at certain points. If you turn up for a job interview looking the way I look when I work Sundays (when there is absolutely nobody else around) then unless you are applying for the part of Rab C. Nesbitt, you have no chance. No matter what the interview is for. If it's a job cleaning sewers, you want to look smart for the interview. Turning up covered in shit will not be regarded as 'being keen to get started'. At an interview you need to impress someone you've never met before and their first impression is formed as soon as you walk through the door. If you look like something out of Hellraiser, and the other candidate doesn't, you lose.

It really is that simple.

I'm afraid that if this woman turned up for an interview, those cheek piercings would make me think of this. The piercings are in the same places. I would see no other image throughout the conversation. No, it's not fair to her but that image would be inescapable. She wouldn't be likely to get the job and in the end it would be her own fault. Holes in your cheeks are not on anyone's list of job requirements unless it's a job that requires the ability to perform peripheral sneezing. She has the right to poke holes in herself anywhere she likes but there are consequences to that, and one of them, in this case, is reminding me of a series of films I have here on DVD. I'd be tempted to hand her my replica of the little puzzle box and ask her to solve it.

That last paragraph is, in these days, enough to produce a collective hiss of disapproval from all the professionally offended but it's the truth and as Subrosa says, sometimes the truth hurts. The tattoos are irrelevant. A normal interview suit would cover them all and in fact, any job that required contact with the public would most likely also require a dress code that would, incidentally, render the tattoos invisible anyway. It's the Borg implants in her face that will put off employers. It looks as if she's been hit full on with a shotgun, but is impervious to bullets. Really, it doesn't work as an employer-impressing device.

If you look beyond the metalwork she's actually quite pretty. Okay, not in the modern anorexic with plastic boobs and fish-lips style, but in the old-fashioned down-to-earth reliable woman style. I like women with a bit of substance to them, myself. Those Cenobite pins would put me off though. Without them she'd have a far better chance of landing a job.

Yet I can't agree with Al-Jahom's and Devil's Knife's assessment. Yes, we are paying her benefits but she is trying to get a job. Sure, she is giving herself an unnecessary handicap and then bleating about someone telling her she's done that but is that surprising? I read the other day about a university student who graduated with a 2.2 Honours degree, and who is suing the university because they didn't do better. (Update: Fear and Loathing has that story) That attitude of 'someone else's fault' is widespread now and while I can agree that the individual should be slapped into sense and told to grow up, the attitude was ingrained into them throughout school. Do what you like, the world owes you a living.

Yes, she is wrong to bleat that 'The nasty man said I won't get a job because my face looks like an explosion in a ball-bearing factory'. The nasty man is right. She will find it hard to get a job and those piercings are why.

Yes, we are paying her benefits but we are not paying her to be this way. She didn't derive that attitude all on her own. She wasn't born with it. It was instilled into her.

We paid the people who did that to her. She, at least, is showing some sign of resistance in that she wants to work rather than relax on benefits. Yet even then, there remains that 'world owes you a living' indoctrination in her head. She cannot see that landing a job depends on the employer's impression of her at an interview. She will have ten minutes to half an hour to convince an employer that his first impression of her as a walking scrapyard was wrong. She might be extremely capable and intelligent but that first impression is a killer.

So why does she think the world, and employers, must accept her as she is, silvery warts and all? We didn't pay her to think that way.

We did, however, pay the people who taught her to think that way. We paid for the 'progressive' teachers and the political correctness enforcement officers and the 'cheeldren are the future, and it is horrible' diversity outreach timewasters and all the rest of the infrastructure that created far worse than this proto-Pinhead who is actually trying to get into the job market. She is not the enemy. She is a creation of the enemy. She is trying to free herself from the Righteous but she doesn't know how.

She is not the cause. She is a symptom.

The cause is what we are really paying for. If we can break that, the symptoms vanish on their own.

Obnoxio Obituary.

So
Farewell then,
Obnoxio.

Your waistline
Has finally absorbed
Your keyboard.

And yet
In these days
Of austerity
You might yet find it again.

Under a pile of tax demands.

Keep your teeth sharp.
You’ll need them.

Static.

Internet is cutting out at random tonight. I think the ISP is meddling with something.

So I'll write something offline and post it when it looks like it's safe to do so.

Friday 24 September 2010

Shattered.

Another sixty-sample day. Very late home this evening and absolutely wrecked. The rather casual Email from the sample-sender remarked that he'd be away next week so he wouldn't send another lot until the week after.

Good! It takes a week to clean up and reset everything before I can run another lot. I thought there would be no more until the end of October but it seems I'll be busy next week, setting up for the following week. If I survive this series of experiments I'll have enough in reserve to sit back and relax for a while.

No blog from me tonight. I'm off to see what other people have to say instead.

Thursday 23 September 2010

Smokeless and drinkless pubs.

The Ciggie busters debacle continues, with those involved now trying to rewrite history (we didn't attack members of the public even though we are on record claiming that we did) and justifying the theft on the basis of 'it's only smokers'. As others have pointed out to those deaf ears, it doesn't matter that it was only a film. If they had made a film called 'veil rippers' or 'turban tearers', it would have been incitement to violence. Since it's only about attacking smokers, that's just fine.

Please, if you're thinking of commenting along the lines of 'attacking smokers is for their own good', save the wear on your keyboard. It won't work here.

Next week another local pub closes. It wasn't one I ever frequented, it was aimed at a younger clientele with gaudy decor and loud music. It was, however, normally to be found with smokers standing outside it. They aren't even allowed under the large sheltered doorway because it's 'enclosed on three sides'. They have to be out in the rain.

Here, we have experienced none of the alleged global warming. If anything, this has been the coldest and wettest summer I can ever remember with barely a rainless day since mid-June. The most successful thing growing in greenhouses here is mould.

Normally, in summer, smoking outside isn't a bad thing. Most of us would prefer to be outside on a warm summer evening anyway and the non-smokers in the groups would also be out there. Unfortunately the antismoking harridans are out there too. Those who have sat in smug warmth all winter will demand that they have the outside to themselves in summer. We don't have the option to go inside, the only option we have is not to visit the pub. This wet summer, which follows a particularly harsh winter, means an evening outside the pub has been very unattractive indeed for almost a full year now.

This summer I have not visited a single pub. I'm not paying pub prices to smoke in the rain. Smoking shelters offer no protection if there is the slightest wind, and they are deliberately legislated to be unpleasant for no reason other than spite. If your house is hijacked while you're away for a few days, nobody in authority cares. If your dog is microchipped, stolen and the new owner identified, the law cares not a jot. Yet you try setting up an outdoor smoking shelter that actually allows a modicum of comfort and the law will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

So the pubs continue to close, despite ASH insisting they are not. I'd like to support the local pubs, I really would, but I'm too old to shiver in the cold and the wet while paying far more for a whisky than I would at the supermarket. Sure, I could stop smoking, but for me smoking and drinking are linked. If I stopped smoking I'd probably stop drinking too, so that's not going to help the pubs at all.

I have Electrofag but I'm not a 100% committed electrosmoker. I still prefer tobacco. Electrofag is fun, it's a substitute, but I use it mostly at the lab when the weather is lousy because there's no shelter at all outside. When relaxing with a drink I'll go for the baccy first. So, from a smoker's point of view, the pub is an expensive way to get wet and cold. Not an appealing way to spend an evening.

The American Food and Drug Administration are still trying to ban Electrofag, no doubt at the behest of both the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries. It seems odd that 'food' and 'drugs' are the remit of a single organisation. I'd have thought they were entirely separate things. But that's beside the point. This same FDA won't tell Americans if they are eating genetically modified foods. It seems they pay far more attention to the interests of big business than to the consumer, which is really no surprise.

Some pubs don't allow Electrofag and that is their choice. Whether they allow smoking or not, well that is not their choice. If they want to exclude certain customers, they have the right to do so. They do not have the right to allow a whole swathe of potential customers even if the landlord and all the staff are smokers. Even if none of their customers were non-smokers, smokers can't smoke in there. So we stay home in the warm and the dry and we set up Smoky-Drinky evenings among ourselves. I've seen those who support the smoking ban comment 'Pfft! I've never heard of such places therefore they don't exist'. You won't hear about them unless you're invited. They can't be open to the public because if they were, they'd be subject to the same smoking ban that closed the pubs we used to frequent. We don't have a sign outside.

We also don't have membership. That would make us a private club and again, the ban would apply. Smoky-Drinky is an informal gathering under no control, with no leader, no agenda and no hierarchical structure. That's why the Righteous can't find us. In their minds, such gatherings simply cannot exist. They are looking for the ringleader and there isn't one.

The smoking ban was supposed to be about health, not a means to shut down pubs. If that is true then why are those outdoor smoking shelters so exposed? Why can they not at least be allowed to provide some actual shelter? Non-smokers would have no interest in going inside anyway so who is being protected? Those ridiculous laws on smoking shelters simply ensure that smokers won't go to pubs at all when the weather is bad.

Now we are to see further restrictions on the drink-drive limit. For no more reason than some Righteous believes it must be done. No facts, no figures, simply an imposition of one man's beliefs on everyone else. It will make no difference to drink-drivers who are well over the current limit anyway. Who will it affect? Only those drivers who visit out-of-town pubs to sample one or two pints of a particular beer.

So the pubs lose one customer, you think. Well, a car has one driver but it can have several passengers and we passengers aren't limited to one or two pints. When the driver no longer wants to visit pubs where he'll be on mineral water all evening, the rest of his non-driving passengers can't go either. The drink-drivers won't be affected in the slightest, well, not until the pub closes.

Public transport? Seriously? Public transport to out-of-the-way places stops entirely by 8 pm and is nonexistent on a Sunday. Many places see no buses at all. If you don't have a car or know someone who does, those places are off the radar. If drivers are to risk their licences on a beer or two, they won't go. Therefore, neither will their passengers.

We can't smoke in the pubs and soon we won't be able to drink in them either. The pubs will respond by becoming cafeterias selling high-priced food to cover their rents and their losses on drink. The local dairy has a cafeteria that I can't smoke or drink in, it sells reasonably priced bacon rolls and I don't need to beg a lift or worry about the last bus to get there. Food sales will not help. The pubs are doomed.

Meanwhile the drink-drivers will get tanked up at home and then drive down to the supermarket for some more.

Health? Health doesn't come into it. Never did. It was always about social engineering and forced conformity. It was always about control. That's why the smoking ban is enforced with vigour while those who take over your house or steal your dog are of no interest to the authorities. Enforcing your property rights won't help them control you. It might even give you the radical idea that the authorities you pay for are there to work for you, and that would never do.

I'd like to help the pubs but the pubs don't seem interested in resisting any of this. They just roll over and blame anything but the obvious.

Smoky-Drinky it is, then.

Tuesday 21 September 2010

Quickie.

Shh... Obo is trying to sleep.

Well, Obo's in luck here. I'm in the throes of getting ready for a big sample load on Thursday while working out what all the forms mean in the world of publishing and also working on building another, separate business on the side. So Obo (and everyone else) is spared the long diatribe this evening. Unless something gets my attention later, when I've done all the real-life stuff.

In the meantime, raise a toast to the victors of the Battle of Medway, and chuckle as the losers have their chip shops taken from them by the Righteous they supported. Now that's what I call Karma.

Also, the infantile fake-coughers have found a place to play. I hope to meet more of these feeble-minded, gullible morons as a result. I have interesting things to tell them.

For now, back to work. There is a hell of a lot of it at the moment.

Monday 20 September 2010

None so blind as a Righteous on election day.

Glastonbury Abbey is a pile of old bricks. At night it can be extremely spooky indeed. So, it's an ideal backdrop for an interview about a spooky film.

However, the site means a lot to those who are Christian and using it to promote a film about witchcraft is going to upset them. That's obvious, it would be like advertising pork pies in a mosque or a synagogue. Therefore it's no surprise to find that the custodians of Glastonbury Abbey have apologised to Christians - presumably those on whom the custodians depend for routine income rather than occasional Hollywood income - for annoying them. Ignoring things that upset your core support group is no way to stay in charge.

None of those things would bother me at all but then I don't follow any religion so I have no holy sites or sacred places. I wouldn't be even slightly ruffled by hearing about a Sikh ceremony in Westminster Cathedral or a Buddhist celebration in every mosque in the land. The religious would be incensed but it wouldn't trouble me, and none of those who run those religious places would care about my thoughts on the matter because there is no chance of any support, moral or financial, from me anyway.

I don't care that much of the meat on sale in the UK is Halal. I eat meat. To achieve that end, something has to die. There's no point getting all precious about how it dies, it's going to die, have its skin ripped off, its intestines torn out and then chopped into bits and cooked. And yes, I have done this to living things and then eaten them. I am neither proud nor ashamed of it, it is just the way real life works. There are many animals in the world who would do the same to me. Torturing animals to death is sick and disgusting, anyone with an ounce of humanity wants the act of killing to be as swift as possible but the fact remains that if you want to eat meat, the animal has to die first. Unless it's oysters.

Halal is just a method of killing. It doesn't change the meat, it doesn't make it any more dead, and eating it won't fill you with the urge to grow a beard and blow something up.

It is very, very easy to avoid Halal meat when eating out. Order pork. If they don't sell pork products, eat somewhere else. Personally, if I was in the mood for a bacon roll, I'd go to places where I know I can get one and avoid places where I knew I wouldn't. It doesn't seem much of a chore to me. I know several places that produce fantastic bacon rolls. If they sell pork, they aren't Halal no matter where they source their meat.

So Halal doesn't annoy me, but it does annoy an awful lot of people. It annoys those of other faiths who don't want their food blessed by a god they don't believe in. It annoys many, many people who find the idea of killing an animal by slitting its throat barbaric and offensive. To find that they have been eating such meat without being aware of it is... well, imagine how a Muslim would feel on finishing a curry, to be told that it was pork. That's pretty much the feeling.

It's a feeling that the Righteous selectively ignore. If a Muslim were fed pork without knowing, the Righteous would be enraged. When non-Muslims are given Halal without knowing, the Righteous adopt their best sneering tone and call the non-Muslim 'Islamophobe'. And then wonder why so many vote BNP.

The superior attitude of the Righteous is now visible everywhere. Counting Cats finds them in a housing committee. They are everywhere in antismoking, and Dick Puddlecote points out their lack of interest in the people they damage.

If you are not behaving in the prescribed manner, if you dare to live your life outside the dictates of the Righteous, if you point out the ever-present fallacies in their arguments, then they simply discount you as a person. In their minds, you cease to exist. Object to Halal? Islamophobe. Dismissed. Smoke, drink or eat the wrong foods? Dismissed. Wrong waist size? Dismissed. Object to uncontrolled immigration and free handouts for those who can't be bothered working? Racist and elitist. Dismissed.

Glastonbury's curators did not dismiss the concerns of their core supporters. They apologised for their actions, to the people who they depend on. That allows the matter to be forgotten.

Counting Cats' mother did not get an apology from the Righteous who think they are in charge of her housing block. They were only concerned that they had been caught acting like spoilt infants. Those on whom they depend for their existence are mere cattle to them. A career in British government surely awaits them.

What the Righteous forget is that those they dismiss from their own reality do not cease to exist in real reality. They can still vote, and they are likely to vote for people who are similarly dismissed.

Sweden has just discovered this, as twenty seats in their Parliament are now occupied by their version of the BNP. Before this election they had none. Now they have twenty. That's quite a swing. Their principal aim is to control Sweden's immigration, yet their success is because...

The rise of the right, meanwhile, was put down to a significant increase in the unemployed, whose numbers have risen during the global economic crisis.

Ah, of course, it's all about the recession.

The Democrats have a strong base in the south of Sweden, where many residents feel overrun.

Overrun by unemployment, or by...

Umea University expert Svante Ersson said Sweden Democrat voters were often young men who felt ignored by society.
'They don't necessarily have to be xenophobic - it could be a way to make a statement against the establishment,' said Ersson.

Yes, it's just a 'statement against the establishment'. Nothing to do with any grievances those voters might have, merely a 'statement'. A statement that put twenty members of a previously MP-less party on the seats of Parliament. Well, the rest of those MPs will just have to get used to it.

Despite denials they are racist, both main blocs have ruled out working with them.

Sweden's Parliament intends to ignore twenty of its people's elected representatives. The people voted for the wrong ones, it was just a 'statement', they didn't mean it. I wouldn't be surprised to find they have to have another election, before which they are told to get it right this time. It's the new democracy. EU-style. Yes, you have a vote, and you'll continue to have a vote over and over again until you get it right.

The concerns that led to twenty anti-immigration MPs? Dismissed. The wishes of those people who elected those twenty MPs? Dismissed. Brushed aside as 'protest voting'. What are they protesting about? Nobody in power cares. The cattle voted the wrong passengers onto the gravy train, that's all they are concerned about.

In Righteous eyes, democracy only works if we vote for the right candidates. If we vote in one they don't like, well the error is ours, not theirs. They are always right.

The cracks in Righteous reality are widening. In America, for the Tea Party, a Mad Hatter who believes science has cross-bred mice and humans has won one of their pre-election elections. That's going to worry the dormouse. In Sweden, the ex-skinheads are winning seats. Everywhere, all those people denounced as 'far right' are voting for candidates denounced as 'far right'. Who'd have thought that would happen? Who would have thought that all those people dismissed as subhuman by the Righteous would go and vote for other people dismissed as subhuman by those same Righteous?

Oh, but it can't happen here.

Just as they said in Sweden, only last week.

Sunday 19 September 2010

10538

The title will be recognisable to old ELO fans, and if you haven't heard of it, education time.

Today a man was tazered for threatening someone with a gun. No, not quite. Well, he was in an airport so he must have been planning a hijack. Ah, not exactly.

He was tazered because a member of the public told a police officer that he thought he'd seen the man with a gun while they were on the bus.

"There is no suggestion, at this stage, that threats were made to passengers or aircraft."

So why tazer him? Why not question him, with one officer behind, hand on tazer, just in case?

Why, indeed, tazer him on the basis of someone waving a police officer to one side and saying 'Oi, mate, here's a tip for ya'.

On that basis, anyone could point out anyone else they don't like and the State's free-at-point-of-use thug service will treat them as if they were a photographer. No questions asked and no accountability for the false informer. They won't even be named.

Today my neighbour (the git) was up a ladder. I don't care what he was doing up there, cleaning out the gutters or painting the woodwork, none of my concern. However, I could have claimed he was up there so he could see into other people's bedrooms. Nonsense, of course. It was the middle of the day so there's not likely to be much happening in bedrooms. Yet that is all it would take now. No evidence, no proof, just a word or two in Sergeant McTruncheon's shell-like and they'd have him off that ladder in a trice.

I didn't because the local police don't have tazers, so the fun factor wouldn't have been as great.

If we lived in Sussex, all I'd need do is wait until he drove away, phone the police and claim he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. Whether he was or not is immaterial. All it would take is two such phone calls and he'll get visited and told off. Three or four might get him a caution. Maybe even an ASBO. Note that there is no requirement for him to actually do anything illegal at all, only for me, or someone else, to claim he did. He is sufficiently despised that it would be no effort to arrange a dozen different calls. No proof required. He would have to prove his innocence and short of installing CCTV in his own car, aimed at the driver's seat, there's no way he can.

With such fun to have, would I support these measures? Of course not. They can be just as easily used against me. He could throw a brick through his own window and claim I did it. He could poison his own dog and claim I did it. The onus is no longer on him to prove I did, it's now on me to prove I didn't. Unless he makes the mistake of doing it while I'm out, and have witnesses to prove that, I can't.

Six street cleaners were arrested for talking about shooting at Il Popio, and about the pointlessness of firing bullets at a bullet-proof car. They discussed this in the works canteen. No plot, just speculation. A thought experiment. Arrested, DNA sampled and released without charge. The herd census continues.

Apparently they knew Il Popio's route. Everyone in London must have known it because roads would have been cordoned off and there would be crowds of people. If it was meant to be a secret, well that's a bit of a giveaway. Street cleaners would not only have had access to such information, they would be expected to know it because they'd be expected to make those streets squeaky-clean and free of infant detritus left by the last Catholic priests passing by.

If they were really planning to shoot at Il Popio, they would have had the weapons on them because that was the day he was due to pass. They had no weapons, unless they planned to brush him to death. I think the Pope Tank is brushproof as well as bulletproof. They would also have been unlikely to discuss it in loud voices in the works canteen. They were arrested on the word of a snitch. They have been found to have broken no laws. And the snitch? Charged with wasting police time? At least named and pointed at so we can have a laugh at the dickhead? Of course not. Snitches are the ones our feeble-minded leaders adore. They keep the rest of us scared to speak.

All it takes now is the word of a passer-by and anyone can be arrested. What for? Never mind what for. Prove you weren't doing anything and you can go. Leave a DNA sample and fingerprints so we can fit you up with something we can't be bothered to solve, later on.

1984, Brazil, all those dystopias are often cited in connection with stories like this but truth is far stranger than fiction. There's a reason for that.

Fiction has to make sense.

If Orwell had given Winston Smith and all the others numbers instead of names, he'd never have had that book published. In real life we're lucky if anyone in authority ever remembers our number. Names? Names are for human beings.

Cattle get numbers. They also get tight control.


Did you see the man, running through the streets today?
Did you catch his face, was it 10538? Ah...

If you think it's bad now, this is just the overture.