Denormalised and Proud.

I was too shattered yesterday to pick up the anonymous tip on the Norwich Smoker Terror Group. I'm less knackered and better lubricated this evening, but I see England Expects has already caught on to it.

What's interesting here is much more than the abuse of RIPA powers to attack people who aren't harming anyone (no, second hand smoke has not been shown to cause any harm to anyone at all, ever. No made-up numbers, please, and no Roy Castle case for another debunking). What's interesting is that with all the press coverage, all the hysteria, all the fake scares and kindergarten science, all the Dali logic and all the spiteful guttersnipes and hate-filled cads and bounders willing to shop a smoker via the snitchline, the council had to use spy techniques to find out about this. What does it mean?

It means nobody complained.

All it takes these days is one complaint and injustice is served. Under the twisted version of Sharia employed by British justice, a Righteous whining jessie has twice the testimonial authority of a smoker. Nobody cares if the smokers says 'But I didn't'. Nobody cares if the smoker says 'It was an Electrofag'. Nobody cares if the smoker says 'But there is no proof. How can you convict on no evidence?' On the word of the smug drone, the conviction is assured.

Therefore, in order for a council to find it necessary to spy on pubs in order to catch evil terrorist smokers lighting the Little Leaves of Doom, it can only mean that they received no complaints. Not one bun-haired, purse-lipped, cardigan wearing harridan with Dame Edna glasses and arms folded so tight she has dents in her boobs even bothered to phone the council with the message "Evil smokers are burning the Death Herb in a pub! They are chanting too, and dancing around naked and drinking and slaughtering mallards using nail clippers! They are riding brooms and sailing in sieves and consorting with demons. They are impregnating hamsters while smelling of elderberries. They are enjoying themselves, inhaling the Smoke of Eternal Denormalisation! Someone stop them! Think of the cheeeldren!"

Not one. Not one slathering hatemonger managed to work up enough bile to moan about smoking in a place they never visit. Which is, in itself, unusual.

Ozzy announced his cuts today. I find it hard to care any more. He has increased the chocolate ration from 30g to 25g per day and cut the overseas aid budget from 100% to 140% in the same speech. The Green Men and the EU will find the cuts leave them considerably better off than they were before, and massively better off than the rest of us. Why argue about it? You might as well try to catch the wind. There is no way to get through the wall of stupid that surrounds the Wastemonster now, it's tougher than the thorny growths around Sleeping Beauty's castle. It will take a prince from a faraway land who has no sense of responsibility and a violent streak to get anywhere near the place, but they've just jailed him.

One thing Ozzy will not cut is the Government funded hate directed at all those they disapprove of. They have your votes now, they don't need you any more. All parties will do the same in the forthcoming Holyrood elections in Scotland. They will promise, but don't kid yourself they have any intention of trying to deliver. Once you place that X, you cease to matter. No smoking or drinking in the polling booths, and they are built narrow to keep out another sort of undesirable. Vote for your own persecution if you wish. I won't vote for mine - or for yours.

Despite the absence of complaints from this pub, and the absence of complaints about many pubs before the Smokefinder General stalked the land, we are denied any choice in whether to allow smoking in the pub and soon, in the car and in the home. Whether you have cheeeldren or not. You might sell that car or house one day and a child might find a single molecule of nicotine and drop dead on the spot. Let's pretend that tobacco is the only plant producing it, it's not like it's in potatoes or tomatoes or anything. No, cheeeldren will only die of tobacco nicotine, not any other source. It kills on contact and there is no cure and never will be because nobody is looking. Just like nobody is looking for the cure for coffee. Shocking, isn't it?

It's not just the UK. Spain has decided to ban smoking everywhere. I can't see the Spaniards taking it as meekly as the Brits, somehow. They tend to see laws as vague guidelines rather than as rules. As in France and everywhere else, they will see smoking rates increase as a result of the ban and Eastern Europe will see a lot more tourist traffic. The odd thing about these tourists is that they arrive with empty bags and leave with full ones. I might buy shares in greenhouse companies too...

This denormalisation game, Righteous. You don't really know how to play, do you? Every measure you apply backfires. You should have learned by now - everything you do backfires. There has never been an exception.You are the failures of the species, you try so hard, you push and push and every time you push too far and it all comes tumbling down. Now you have denormalised so many people, you are outnumbered. Even your drones are starting to think 'huh?'

Over on Tea and Cigarettes is a call to fight denormalisation, but I'm not sure I want to. I think I like it. I mean, look at those antismokers who consider themselves 'normal'. They believe all the rubbish spouted by the Dreadful Arnott without question. They believe I can kill them with a breath, they believe I can leave behind a residue that makes Chernobyl look like spilled milk and they believe that if they so much as see me smoking, they will get cancer. Many of them think they can catch cancer from me even though I don't have it. Why would I want to stop this? I have never had so much power.

I can kill you just by saying the death mantra "I am a smoker". You'll die psychosomatically. You'll get chest pains when I tell you to and you will find lumps where I tell you to look. Those lumps were always there, they are lymph nodes and junctions in arteries and veins but you will shit yourself when you find them. You will fear and loathe me at the same time. You will want to kill me but you can't touch me in case you get third hand smoke. There are molecules of nicotine all over me and everyone knows that nicotine causes rabies, mouth fungus and hangnail. Nicotine can even follow the path of a bullet back to the hand holding the gun. Why would I want to stop this game? I'm winning. Weapons? Who needs them? The indoctrinated can be instructed to die with a few words. They are conditioned to believe what they are told. All you need is a straight face.

The 'normal' spend their lives filled with hate and spite. They wake up looking for something to complain about, their faces are pulled into a permanent sneer and they believe themselves superior in the same way that Ozzy believes that increasing overseas aid and EU contributions is a cut. They go to work at nine and stop at five and despite working 12 hours (noon to midnight) on big-load days, despite running a business and writing fiction and pressing a company to market something they should have marketed years ago and writing this blog and being several people at once, if I am not there in the morning rush hour I am being lazy. They have 2.4 children and a plasma TV and a leather sofa and those game box things for when the TV isn't showing them mind candy. They fear the Glitterman while indulging in a bit of cephalopod necrophilia while the miniatures of themselves are asleep and dreaming of sugar-free plums, drowning puppies and gas chambers full of tobacco smoke and alcohol fumes (Actually, I dream of that last one too, but in my dreams I'm smiling). They drive past smokers in their Range Rovers and call them polluters. They deride the Red Stripe drinker over cocktails and laugh at the ready-meal eaters over a tin of caviar. They scream about benefit claimants and scream louder when their child benefit is withdrawn. When they ask me if I know what they think on any subject I can only respond 'What you think? I'm still trying to work out whether.'

I really don't want to be like them. I don't want to be 'normal' if that's what it is like. I take great pride in being told I am not one of them. I am delighted that they consider me different from them because different from them is what I want to be. The more different I am, the better.

I am Denormalised and Proud. Everyone denormalised should be proud not to be included in the ranks of the hateful and the small-minded. You know, if you added all the various types of denormalised together, we'd be the majority.

Since we're the majority, isn't it time for some tyranny?

Why would I want to stop the denormalisation game? I haven't had this much fun since I convinced a kid at school that the graze on his elbow was first stage syphilis. I hope the school nurse has died by now.

If she finds me, she'll probably kill me. It took her weeks to convince him because every time she did, I had another reason to prove she was lying.





(Monkey Shoulder is pretty good. Not as smoky as my own preferences but pretty good. The trouble is, I will really have to try to get those metal monkeys off the bottle and the more I drink, the more likely it is to involve something sharp. There might be red stains on the next post. Don't worry. It grows back.)