Sunday 30 January 2011

Goodbye ecosystem, hello FOE.

The Great Green Hope, power from garden ornaments, turns out to be more polluting than those coal fired power stations they keep trying to sabotage. Of course, that's okay because they aren't polluting here.

Instead they are killing Chinese people.

The Greens, and Righteous as a whole, don't like the Chinese. China scoffs at smoking bans, global warming and all the rest of it. The Righteous can't set the government against the tobacco companies, booze producers, factories, power generators or any other business in China because the government runs them all. They aren't about to destroy their own profits and there is no point taxing a business that's run on taxes. You know, if you could take out the considerable State oppression, there's something to be said for China's way of doing things. Unfortunately, nobody has ever managed to operate socialism without the vicious parts.

So it should come as no surprise to find that the devastation caused by neodymium mining, that essential component of Windy Miller's bird slicing machine, does not bother those alleged 'Friends of the Earth' one bit. With friends like those, the Earth needs no enemies.

Massive concrete blocks below each ornamental windmill to keep it upright. All that steel etc. in its construction. Maintenance requirements involve tarmac roads across the countryside so diesel-powered trucks can reach each one of these ridiculous monstrosities, and take a look at what Friends of the Earth's insistence on these things has done to the part of Earth the Chinese live on. Are they shamefaced? Are they apologising to the planet? Are they renaming themselves 'Destroyers of the Earth'?

Of course not.

Friends of the Earth opposes the Arctic being ruined by oil extraction, but when it comes to damaging Scotland’s wilderness with concrete and hundreds of miles of roads, they say wind energy is worth it as the impact of climate change has to be faced.

People live in Scotland. People live in China. Nobody lives at the North Pole apart from Santa and since he's overweight, smokes, and drinks copious quantities of sherry while driving a sleigh, no Righteous group is remotely interested in saving him. So in order to save a place where nobody lives and where there isn't even land under the ice, Friends of the Earth propose to utterly destroy the landscape of Scotland while pulverising the landscape of China with something so deadly it's going to have a longer lasting effect than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Eventually it will get into rivers and then the sea, where it will make that BP oil spill look like a discarded Mars bar wrapper.

For the children? Let's see them explain that to those Chinese familes whose children died in that lake of poison.

Al the Oily Fish wants to get 80% of Scotland's energy from these killer windmills. That will mean putting up so many of the things it'll be impossible to land at a Scottish airport without having your undercarriage circumcised on the way in. It will mean a Scottish countryside transformed from peaceful glens into concrete and tarmac interspersed with whirring blades, and the whole lot covered in wild bird puree. If there is one goup more mindless than Friends of the Earth, it must surely be politicians.

You know, there's been no wind at all here for quite some time. In fact I would say there have been no more than ten windy days since the beginning of November. If Oily Al wants 80% generation in winter from his ecodisaster machinery he is going to need so many he won't have room for voters.

So his dream might be realised. Scotland completely covered with bird mashers might provide 80% of the electricity required by the Scottish parliament. There won't be anyone else here.

There won't be quite as many in China either. But then, the destruction of the human race has always been top of the Green agenda.

Saturday 29 January 2011

Zombie tale in progress.

I'm on a roll with this new zombie tale, so I'm going to tap keys until I wear the letters off them. It's a whole new species of zombie. I don't write bad guys you can kill by chucking a ring into a volcano, sticking a bit of wood into their chest or loading up with silver bullets. I'm also not going to let anyone kill something that's already dead.

So nothing from the news tonight, even though I actually bought a newspaper today. One that seemed to have required an entire tree for its production. It's not even Sunday but there were supplements within supplements to the point where I had trouble getting it home. I only wanted the free 'Guide to British Birds' and I'd have paid the £1.80 just for that bit. Although that contained bad news too - I lost a bet. I insisted the wren was the smallest British bird at the last Smoky-Drinky, against another's goldcrest, which I had never heard of. He was right, the goldcrest is a real bird and it is smaller. Damn.

If that's a Saturday paper, what are the Sundays like now? You must have to get a mobile library to carry the thing home and then hire people to summarise it for you. I'll stick to Internet news in future.

And now, back to the nuZombie...

Friday 28 January 2011

See the funny people dance.

I'm ignoring the bad news today and concentrating on the merriment.

The Brown Gorgon has risen again, not so much like a phoenix rising from the ashes, more like an unflushable turd popping back around the bend when you think it's gone. He is, it is alleged, fuelling the phone-tapping claims against Genghis Murdoch's empire. Would he, once the Prime Monster of twice as much as he could see, stoop to such petty and vindictive vengeance? Well, he is a politician after all.

Jacq the Ripper, former Sister's Home Secretary, has embarked upon a new career in porn. Fortunately for those of us who prefer to keep our digestive systems operating one-way only, she is doing it on the radio.

Dai Cameroid has blamed the economic crisis, in part, on immigrants. Yes, he said the 'I' word. Deep breath, Lefties, and... "Racist-Nazi-Bigot!" And breathe. On second thoughts, don't. Cameroid seems under some delusion that he is in control of immigration and that he can actually do something about it while his border agency is obsessed with tobacco. Non-smoking illegal immigrants will have no problem. In fact, illegal immigrants, not genuine ones, are the issue and they are unaffected by immigration caps because, guess what? They never apply.

Genuine immigrants who come here to work are the only ones he can stop. So, there'll be fewer working immigrants to help support the legions of illegal immigrants who will ignore 'we are full' signs. That's about as sensible as anything else that's come out of Wastemonster for at least thirteen years.

It's better to laugh than cry. I mean, the whole rotten edifice is crumbling, we might as well enjoy the spectacle.

Anyway, back to work for me. I am inspired to write about a new form of zombie. One capable of reasoned argument (and sufficiently erudite to persuade you to just hand over 50% of your brain because you have more than you need). I think I'll call it a Political Zombie.

Actually, I've already called it Vince.

It had to happen.

Hey, antismokers. How is that 'slap a smoker' campaign working out for you?

'Smokers are required to clock-out when they want a cigarette. Surely it is not unreasonable to expect you to clock-out if you wish to have a 10-minute conversation with a colleague about the weather?

From an Email sent to staff at Carlisle City Council.

Well, don't look for sympathy from the smokers. This was your idea.

I can barely type for laughing.

Thursday 27 January 2011

Time for a smoky one.

Another 'litterer' fined for dropping something accidentally and picking it up. It's no good, once it hits the ground it's litter even if you didn't mean to drop it and subsequently pick it up. Note that this never happens to yobs tossing aside cans of Red Stripe, only to the harmless and easily bullied. I'm considering getting some tattoos and facial piercings and having my head shaved. All I'll need then is a very wide dog with a spiky collar and a permanent scowl, and I can roam the streets unmolested by anyone in authority. I'll be able to discard anything from a cigarette end to a defunct piano anywhere I choose and those council officials won't even make eye contact.

Once again, it's smoking related litter. There is no other kind any more. Those paper coffeee cups and plastic food trays? Those are street furniture. The gum stuck to the pavement is an art installation. Only smokers drop litter.

Soon, we will get all our cigarettes in plain grey packets and soon after that we'll all have to wear plain grey overalls so the Pure can tell who we are. These plain grey packets will be invisible behind plain grey screens so children won't be tempted by the packets that have all colour removed (except in the photos of coalminer's lung and meth mouth) so that children won't be tempted... does the concept of 'overkill' mean anything any more?

The display ban, when it finally comes into action, will achieve nothing. It's not intended to. Just as the nicotine patches and gum achieve nothing. It's 'being seen to be doing something so the funding continues' without doing anything at all to change the status quo. If all smoking ceased, the Pharmers would be seriously out of pocket and ASH would be seriously out of free money. This is a war nobody wants to win.

The stupidity of it is thrown into sharp relief by the insistence that plain packaging is harder for the fraudsters to imitate. Expect to see grey packets with 'Rothmans' scrawled on them in marker pen. They'll sell anyway, they'd sell if the packaging consisted of a plastic bag full of loose cigarettes. Nobody buys tobacco to look at the packet. Nobody. Well, maybe the sort of person who buys a TV and sits staring at the cardboard box for hours. But aside from him, nobody.

Higher prices and hidden cigarettes will make Man with a Van very pleased indeed. It puts him on a level playing field as far as advertising goes and he can undercut shop prices to a huge degree. This will also lead many more to explore the savings to be made with a couple of weekends away every year.

We will hear about the criminal gangs smuggling cigarettes and will be told we are 'funding evil people' by not paying all that extra tax to fund evil people who want us to die. Well, personally, if it's a choice between giving my money to people who are coming to get you, or to people who are specifically targeting me, it's not a difficult decision. Not at all.

When I hear about some atrocity carried out with funding from dodgy tobacco sales, I will lose no sleep because well, let's face it, it'll be lies. I know it's lies, you know it's lies, the announcer on the TV or radio knows it's lies, the reporter regurgitating ASH hysteria knows it's lies. It'll be just one more lie to add to the list. There's no point losing sleep over someone else's ludicrous attempts to instil guilt.

I'm all guilted out anyway, after years of being told I should be feeling guilty over this and that. I'm immune now. I can burn stuff in my chimenea while smoking a cigar and a cigarette at the same time, while every light is on in the house and everything that can be left on standby is on standby. Oh, and the 500-watt security light on too, just so I can get a proper look at the fire in the chimenea. No guilty feelings whatsoever.

One interesting new twist has developed. Apparently, antismoking criminals have been sharing cels with smoking criminals and now they want compensation from the Scottish government. If the government says no, they'll be admitting that passive smoking causes no harm. Rock and a hard place eh, Oily Al?

Frankly, if I was locked in a small room with a 100-a-day-smoking violent criminal, I would be keen to ensure he had all the tobacco he wanted. Better to be kippered slowly by a mellow thug than to be beaten to a pulp by a raging one.

Does Oily Al have the nerve to ban smoking in prisons? Looking back to the events of New Year's Eve when prisoners denied their tipple went berserk, what would happen in Barlinnie or Peterhead if the crims had their baccy confiscated? But if he doesn't ban smoking he's going to hear more demands for compo from nonsmoking criminals. They don't even have to be sharing cells any more, now that smoke can magically pass through walls and stay in the environment longer than ammonite fossils. It's a very big rock and a very hard place, Oily Al, and you put yourself in there.

Election day looms for the Scottish parliament and every party currently in there hates smokers. They hate drinkers too, and chip shops, and in Scotland that's tantamount to racism. The people here will need to be reminded what those candidates think of them so I'll be busy with the printer and magnetic paper again.

I wonder if prisoners will get the vote before or after their tobacco is taken away?

Anyhow, I'm off to watch a zombie film. They are more honest than politicans.

Life, but not as we know it.

The civilisations of ancient Egypt and Greece were spectacular, the ancient city of Ur was possibly the first human construction that could be called a real city, the Romans brought their civilisation to many other countries. All great civilisations, and where are they now?

Dead. Gone.

In their passing, they set the seeds of other civilisations. Like those of the past, every civilisation grows into adulthood and spreads itself across the globe, as many of the European civilisations did.

After adulthood comes old age, and the current Western civilisations are no longer fit and wise adults, but are old and demented, living in a tree, taking offence at a sidelong glance and shouting obscenities at passers-by. Western civilisation is senile and dying.

It's not the end of the world. After this one there will be another. What form it takes is up to us. Islam? Get real. That particular mode of life has not moved past the sixth century. In any Islamic state, the lunatic fringe who believe that nothing invented since Mohammed's day counts as 'real' will eventually get into positions of power. Then the state moves back to washing clothes in the river and grinding your own corn between two rocks. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk knew this, which is why he made Turkey secular. So no, the next civilisation will not be Islamic. Certainly not in the UK. There are nowhere near enough of the radicals yet, and the signs are that the collapse will happen long before they can be ready to mount a credible takeover attempt.

I don't know what the next civilisation will be like. A lot will depend on the way this one fails, peacefully or violently. One thing I very much doubt is that any of those currently enjoying the high life while everyone else pays for it will survive the transition.

The death throes are in the news every day. Try to bring legal tobacco through Britain's borders and you will be treated as if you had a ton of cocaine. Carry sixty handguns in your suitcases and they wave you through. The government are, one by one, being arrested and jailed for fraudulent practices, the medical profession and all of science is now held in contempt by a population who have been consistently and ever more blatantly lied to, we are told to eat healthy food but we are told to accept GM food or watch prices double.

We are told that banning safer forms of smoking, including inhaling flavoured steam, is a good thing. On the other hand, we are told that eating less and, instead... um, inhaling flavoured steam, is a great thing. The antismokers will lap it up because their brains have been pickled with propaganda.

Shouting is the same as violence, you go to jail for seven years for being a pissed idiot and the same for stamping on a dying man's head. If you are accused of rape and completely innocent, and acquitted, you still lose your job, your name and photo is in the papers and your accuser is granted anonymity. So we don't know who she is, so she can do it again to some other poor sap.

Hypothermia is at record levels because of global warming and yet we are to face energy rationing to stop the planet unfreezing. One day we will cast the entire Westminster staff loose on an ice floe in the Thames. I say we don't wait for the ice floe.

The government has nothing important to do so busies itself with trivia and interference. Like that retired pensioner who keeps popping his head over the fence to instruct you in whatever you are doing in the garden. There is nothing important to occupy their time so they poke their noses into what you're doing and tell you you're doing it wrong.

Unlike that lonely pensioner, the government make their 'advice' law and then leave with your bank card and PIN number. Instead of governing, they play childish games, run tit-for-tat smear campaigns and line their pockets. When something important crops up, they roll out a suitable idiot to complain about it but nothing is done. Why? Nothing can be done. Eric Pickles cannot override EU directives. He's going to need more than 80 rubbish bags just for his annual pie-wrappings, but guess who'll be paying for the extra bags? Pickles blames the councils, not the EU, but Cameron can't blame councils for this one.

Nobody takes personal responsibility for anything. Not even themselves. Everything is someone else's fault. Overweight? The NHS must sort it out even if it means getting yourself even more overweight to pass the criteria. The idea of simply eating less just never even occurs. Suggest that maybe he could consider getting this operation privately and expect a whole raft of abuse from the Righteous and the professionally offended.

If you're overweight, you could embrace global warming. If you have a hankering to go on a killing spree, join the Greens. They're laying the groundwork for the next holocaust now.

Making a profit is evil, holiday companies 'hike up prices' during school holidays because of greed, say the BBC. Oddly enough, no holiday company has ever demanded I pay for their services on threat of prosecution, whether I want them or not. The BBC does. Those holiday companies don't hike up prices during peak times. Those are the real prices. They offer discounted prices for off-peak times to keep some cashflow going. If they ran with the discounts all the time they'd go bust and then where would you get your holiday?

This civilisation is ending. Should we prop it up and try to keep it going? Why? One thing early humans did was invent fire, which provided heat and cooking and protection from predators. Now, this civilisation is afraid of fire. This cannot possibly be seen as progress by anyone other than the most deranged. Afraid of the very thing that let this small-toothed, clawless, furless, weak little creature survive? There is no deeper dementia possible. No, this civilisation is finished. Let it go. It offers nothing worth saving.

When will the end come? I suspect it already has, we just haven't accepted it yet. There is no way back to sanity from here, we just have to get through to the other side and hope there's another patch of sanity waiting for us there. History says there usually is.

I don't fear the coming changes because they will clear out the dross. Those who only exist because the government are stupid enough to give them money will cease to exist. If the changes don't happen I can expect further and more intimate controls on every aspect of my life until I am forced to clench and wait for Green botty-emptying hour. That's assuming they have not already 'cleansed' me from the planet as imperfect and non-Aryan. There is nothing for me in the further development of the current civilisation. I have no place in the Green Immortal Coagulation's vision so as far as I am concerned, the sooner it all falls apart the better.

When it does, by whatever means, expect the streets to be full of the permanently enraged and the permanently terrified. They are the same people.

Game over.

Tuesday 25 January 2011

Kindling Books.

No, not the use of books as kindling. We're not quite there yet.

I have this Kindle gadget I bought after Christmas and have read this and this and this and this and am currently reading this. So far, no recharge. The battery still shows half charge. So my initial worry that I might run out of battery before finishing a book is definitely unfounded. Recharging just means plugging it in to USB and since most of my work involves computers all day, that's no hardship.

The screen... isn't. It's not a TV or computer screen. You will never play games on this. The refresh rate... there isn't one. It uses power to change but once changed it can stay changed forever with no further power. So leaving the thing on 'sleep' which puts up a picture, or on 'off' which gives a blank screen, makes no difference at all. If the book is a Kindle book you can change the text size. It will show PDF files but if they are not sized for the screen, it's not good. You can zoom in bit by bit but unlike actual Kindle files, PDF files won't reformat to cope with magnification.

The good part - many books are free, especially old classics like Sherlock Holmes or Dracula or Frankenstein and many many others. Books are in general much cheaper than buying paper versions. No postage, and the book arrives in a minute or less. No hoping to catch the postman.

There is also the matter of space and weight. Unlike bookshelves, no matter how many books you put into this thing it doesn't get heavier or bigger. If you lose it, Amazon can remotely disable it. All the books you bought can be re-downloaded from the Amazon site when you get a replacement.

The bad part - if all books ever go over to this format, one solar flare will erase all human history. Politicians will be delighted because in their stupidity, they believe that they can erase historical lessons by pretending they never happened. It never works, it just means that the same junk happens all over again.

A potentially sinister aspect is that the files could be remotely altered, so a real-life Winston Smith can change those newspapers you downloaded and kept even while you're reading them. Well, unless you burn them to CD and only read them with the Kindle wireless turned off. Winston can always be thwarted.

So what's next for my pocket library?

If you want a good book, ask a librarian. If he's called Conan, argue not, just do it or he'll speak Latin at you until you bring him a shrubbery. Conan's brother has books available on Kindle too. Soon, so will I.

Bottom line - I like this gadget. I can carry a whole lot of books around with me in this little machine and with a battery life measured in weeks, I don't have to be too concerned about recharging. For me, it won't completely replace paper books but when it comes to travelling, it's a lot easier than carrying a selection of weighty tomes around. The low prices of electronic books and the instant delivery mean I'm more willing to take a risk on one I might have left on a shelf.

If you already have an iPhone or similar gadgetry, you can download a free Kindle program for it and get a lot of the classic books for free. I don't have an iPhone and don't want one - I don't even want a camera in my phone but even the cheap ones have those now - and the screen might be a little on the small side for old eyes to read for long. The Kindle screen is paperback book sized, which is just right.

So, a successful gadget purchase, I think.

Energy is bad for you.

It seems, at first glance, that the new front in the war against the motorist is aimed at petrol but look again.

The committee has proposed a weekly ­“electronic energy rationing system” called TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas) that would be ­distributed for free to all adults.

Energy rationing. Not petrol rationing.

Under the move, all adults would be given a set number of free energy “tokens” which would be offset against any fuel burnt in a vehicle or at home.

Who heats their home, or cooks, with petrol? Petrol is just the excuse. You'll see homes go dark in winter and just as the antismoking, antidrinking, antifat zealots have crowed, there will be those who will crow 'Ha! They used too much energy and now they will pay for it!' It'll be the same cerebrally challenged individuals, no doubt, because they are easily programmed for the task at hand.

The tokens will be free but the energy won't be. The tokens only determine how much you can get. You still have to pay for all of it. Run out of tokens and (unless you're an MP or one of their pals) and no matter how much cash you have, the lights go out.

So will it really happen?

The Department of Energy and Climate Change said the Coalition Government had “no plans to implement such a scheme”.

As Paxman would say through twisted face, 'Yeeeesss'.

This comes from the same people who promised us a vote on Lisbon, no new powers handed to the EU and the Great Repeal Bill that somehow increased the number of laws. The ones who increased immigration while claiming to slow it, who claim to be cutting the deficit while watching it rise and who define the concept of personal choice as 'the choice to do as you are bloody well told or pay the penalty'. In simple terms, liars just like the last lot. Get ready for the ration books.

Rule of thumb - if it gives the monkeys a chance to rattle their cups while the elephant in the room stands on your head and the starry blue gorilla empties your wallet, they'll do it.

In every instance so far, that analogy holds true.

Sunday 23 January 2011

Pink numbers and fluffy words.

If a man cuts wood into planks at a rate of x planks per hour, seven hours a day, and if it takes 12x planks to make a shed, how long does it take the man to prepare enough planks for four sheds?

That was the sort of 'practical' question we used to see in maths classes. They were never ever worded as 'A properly butch bloke, married, with kids, and not even slightly camp, not even a bit of it, was cutting planks...'

Nor were they worded 'A man minced to work at a walking pace of three miles per hour, but stopped at every shoe shop on the way...'

Most of the time, the 'man' in the question didn't even have a name. He had no religion, no skin colour, no age, no sexual preferences of any kind and for all I knew, no teeth and no hair. He was just a generic human whose only reason for existence was to give the question a focal point.

So I was a little mystified by this statement:

"When you have a maths problem, why does it have to involve a straight family or a boyfriend and girlfriend? Why not two boys or two girls?

Well, where there were two fictional characters in such questions, they were usually two boys or two girls. There was no suggestion they were shagging each other into a frenzy, they were usually passing apples around or sharing out sweets. I recall no questions involving boyfriends or girlfriends. They were all very platonic and all focused on the point of the lesson. The maths. Not the social engineering, just the maths.

Children apply very simple forms of logic to life. If they are in a maths, English or geography lesson and their teacher starts insisting on bringing sex into it, they are first of all going to forget all the maths, English and geography and concentrate on the sex. Here's what will go through the mind of the teacher while writing up a quadratic equation in rainbow colours:

"I'm being really right-on and politically correct and all these children will now understand, through the medium of numbers, that being gay is a valid and noble way of life."

Here's what's going through the mind of every kid in that room:

"Whoa. My teacher is a poof."

The quadratic equation? Forget it, they aren't listening to that any more. They are now speculating on whether Mr. Maths is getting hot and bothered with Mr. English, whose new rendition of Romeo and Jeremy they have just had to read. Or maybe they have a threesome with Mr. Geography, who insists they speculate on why gay people move from the countryside to the town while ignoring the straight people who do the same thing for the same reason. It's where the jobs are. In teaching, apparently.

This goes all the way down to four-year-olds who have only just worked out how to use those bits for peeing and have not yet dreamed of any alternative function for them. They know nothing about sex, straight or gay, and care nothing about it either. Which is just as well since they aren't supposed to be doing anything about it for another twelve years yet. Show them video of Larry Grayson's show and they'll laugh, because it was funny. Mr. Grayson's sexuality will simply not occur to them, he's just a funny man doing a funny show.

Start putting gay scenarios in front of them and they will just be confused. Whatever lesson was supposed to have been taught will be lost among the random noise in those small brains, which are now trying to work out why the man selling planks to the shed-maker gets paid in kisses. Lessons will, as usual, not be learned.

Then they'll go home and little Dwayne will explain to his dad, Tattooed Dave, about this new and strange lesson format and Tattooed Dave will phone Hairy Bob and Tumbleguts and the entire estate will explode in homophobic rage. Then the producers of this insanity will purse their lips, tut loudly and say "See? Told you they were all homophobic." Ah, the glory of the Righteous, creating and then exacerbating the problem they claim to solve.

How can this have come about? Didn't the Coagulation say they would get schools back to teaching things kids actually need to know rather than baffling and distracting them with irrelevancies? Well, here's a clue, tucked neatly into a corner of the text:

A spokesman for the TDA said the funding was secured last March and that £20,000 was to go towards the lesson plans, with the rest spent mostly on the website.

Last March. So it's not the Coagulation's doing. It's one of the Brown Gorgon's little time bombs, with funding already placed and the fuse lit by the blob in charge of education at that time. A certain Ed Balls. The bug-eyed globule of lard who insisted that children must be taught about sex from an early age, for reasons upon which we can only speculate because they were never defined.

How many more pre-funded bombs are waiting to go off, I wonder? How many more of these land-mine groups are sitting on a pile of money, waiting just long enough to ensure the Coagulation get the blame for their lunatic actions? Should we expect the 'Delights of Divorce' group to pop up next, or will it be the 'Get your Parents Arrested' consortium, or maybe they managed to get as far as the 'Maths makes your eyes bleed' and 'Spelling gives you cancer' and 'Why learn geography when you can't afford to go anywhere' syndicates?

This Labour-produced rubbish will not 'enhance children's understanding of gay issues' at all. It was never intended to. Like all Labour's meddling, it is a distraction from lessons, a means to disrupt learning, to produce more dependent drone voters who spend all day in front of the TV soaking up propaganda. If it has any effect on anyone's opinions on matters of gayness, it can only make things much, much worse.

But then, that's all Labour's meddling ever did. If only the Coagulation could see that.


UPDATE: Quiet Man has noticed another issue here:

I just wonder how they believe our resident Muslim/Islamic community are going to react to this?

Indeed.

Friday 21 January 2011

Food is the new Tobacco.

Well, by now everyone knows how far the tobacco denormalisation has progressed. You can now get cancer by reading a blog written by a smoker whether he/she is smoking while they type or not (I am, which means it's a dead cert for you). Nicotine is a deadly poison and the cure for it is nicotine, but only Pharmer nicotine is good for you and all other nicotine is bad. And there are plenty of people out there stupid enough to accept this without a thought in their heads.

Alcohol denormalisation is well under way even though, as with smoking, consumption is already in decline. Again, it will be done by racking up the duty with VAT on top. Drinkers will see all the same techniques familiar to smokers - abuse, lies and made-up numbers.

Now it's the turn of fats. Yes, the 'fat tax' is coming to town. This time they are not even trying to hide the real reasons and they are not even pretending it's for your own good. They know that out there in the general population are many who have fallen hook, line and sinker for second, third and nine hundredth hand smoke, for 'every drinker is an addict' and passive drinking, and now they feel no need to bother with all the charade any more. Just put the tax on. The suckers will lap it up. Are they that stupid? Of course they are, they've fallen for everything else.

So-called ‘fat tax’ on food products that are high in saturated fat and sugar has been proposed in a number of countries; most recently Denmark introduced a controversial saturated fat-linked tax at the start of 2011. The government-funded Forebyggelses Kommisionen (Prevention Commission) says that if the variable tax is levied for 10 years it will increase average life expectancy amongst the Danish population by 5.5 days.

You will pay this tax for ten years and be rewarded with five and a half extra days of... paying tax. Of course, that's only an estimate. Results may vary. That doesn't matter because as usual, the results are just made-up numbers anyway.

The idea has also been raised several times in the UK, and debate over a proposed tax on sugary soft drinks has been fierce in the United States, with health care reformers seeing as a way to increase funds on the one hand, and advocates of consumer choice regarding it as a curb on individual freedom on the other.

No pretence there. They see it as a way to increase their funds so they can nag us harder.

Tiffin and Arnoult concluded that a fat tax should be seen as “a component in a suite of instruments in tackling poor diets”. They noted that measures at a combination of different social levels – community, school, family, individual – are increasingly advocated.

Yes, here we go again. It's only the beginning. Total control is on the way.

Comparing the tackling poor diets with smoking, they said that habits were changed not just as a result of price increases for cigarettes, but media attention also had a lot to do with it.

And here's the admission. It's the same techniques again. So if you're having fun villifying smokers on the net while munching on a bacon sarnie, doughnut or biscuit, enjoy it while you can. You're going to get all the abuse you dished out - and more - right back at you. You're going to see those biscuits in plain wrappers sold from behind a screen. In fact, apart from the fruit and veg, everything will be sold from behind a screen. The screens won't be labelled either. If you see the word 'tobacco' you will immediately become addicted and will be forced to smoke 40 an hour until you die, kippered.

Yes, all the banning and abuse changed smoking habits. Increasingly, we buy from vans in alleys or on shopping trips abroad instead of buying the ones that fund our persecution. We don't spend money in pubs, clubs or restaurants, we buy our drink from behind the booze screen or from Calais for now. Until the home brew is ready. Man with a Van will soon have spirits on offer. Next we'll have to learn to bake and get hold of a deep-fat fryer if we want cakes, biscuits or doughnuts. That's assuming lard isn't completely banned, but then there are ways around that too. Soon, the only place you will be able to taste any of these things will be in a Westminster bar that has only 650 members.

Oh, sure, there are those who don't smoke, don't drink, and live on tofu and dandelions but you know, the number of denormalised people will soon, if it hasn't already, far outstrip the 'normal'. That would make election interesting, assuming we get another one.

This fat tax will be billed as being aimed at the overweight. The smoking ban only affected smokers, didn't it? Nobody else ever went to the pubs that closed down, nobody who worked there really wanted to work there and the landlords didn't really want to be landlords. Only the smokers were affected.

The drinking controls only affect 'binge drinkers' (those who drink three pints or equivalent) and will never affect someone who just goes out for a quiet evening and only drinks three pints. Oh yes, they believe it.

The fat tax will only affect the overweight and won't affect those who are slim but who like a bag of chips once in a while, or an occasional cake, or a bar of chocolate...

There are occasional smokers out there. They'll buy a pack once in a while, then not buy any more for weeks or months. Those smokers get the same sneers and looks of disgust as pack-a-day smokers. There are those who buy a bottle of whisky once a month or less, take a small glass once every few days and that's all. They are subject to the same abuse as those who buy a bottle a day.

So no matter how trim your physique, you're going to get sneered at when you buy one doughnut or one Mars bar. Quite possibly by a drunken smoker. That's how division works. Everyone has someone to look down on. Everyone sneers at everyone else.

Oh, sure, the tax is a small thing. If you buy occasional cigarettes, booze or cakes then you're not paying all that much, really. But it doesn't stop there. Look back on the recent history of smoking. Look at the unfolding war on drink. Watch fat go the same way. Observe the demonisation of the food industry.

Ridiculous? Well, it's hard to regard the food industry as being demonic, compared to what are non-essential luxury items such as tobacco and alcohol. Nobody, surely, would ever consider treating food as if it was tobacco? Oh, but that is exactly the approach being prepared. Among the 'experts' testifying there is an ordinary sheeple, whose tobacco/alcohol indoctrination has taken such hold that she has this to say:

“Absolutely I think the food industry is as guilty as the tobacco industry, and the pharmaceutical industry, and probably several others, of doing anything and everything to make a profit without the slightest thought for will this make people sick except to have it "allowed" by our government, hopefully with some kind of government perk or kickback to boot. The corn, wheat, sugar and soy industries are especially guilty of this.

They KNOW the food they sell causes allergies, auto-immune disorders, diabetes, obesity, Chronic Fatigue, candida overgrowth, bowel disorders, etc. Yet they "fund" studies to prove otherwise.”

Isabel Crabtree, consumer, location not disclosed

Note that she is not talking about burgers or crisps or pork scratchings here. She doesn't even mention meat (also on the removal agenda). No, the food industries she regards as evil are corn, wheat, sugar and soy.

You know, the stuff that grows out of the ground. She KNOWS that those foods cause a whole range of diseases just as she no doubt KNOWS that every smoker dies of cancer and every drinker dies of cirrhosis. It's the food that causes obesity in her mind, not the amount eaten. As for Candida overgrowth - that's thrush, isn't it? What the hell is she doing with her food? With table manners like that I hope I never have to share a restaurant with her.

So, food addicts, are you ready to be denormalised? Yes, you are addicted. I can go for considerable periods, weeks, even months without smoking or boozing. How long can you go without food? See? You're addicted. We are all addicts with this one. Don't bother trying to apply logic and reason. The other side will never even try.

Note also the conviction in Isabel's comment that the evil food industry funds research that proves food isn't poisonous. Heard that one before somewhere? You tell Isabel she's wrong and guess what? You must be a food indistry shill. You would think that some of them, faced with exactly the same rubbish over and over again, applied to every new scare, would think 'Hang on.' They never do. They really are that stupid. Over and over, the same method works because the drones have no minds of their own and just absorb whatever thoughts they are given. If you meet one, try it yourself. They really will believe absolutely anything.

She's not the only froth-mouthed swivel-eyed shrieking banshee you'll meet. Soon they'll be all over the place, anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-AGW denier, anti-food... where do we go from here?

Anti-water and anti-air, perhaps?

They could just be honest about it and declare themselves anti-life.

Thursday 20 January 2011

From bad to Warsi.

Victimhood poker is, as the name implies, a gambling game. It looks like Baroness Warsi just played and lost.

Naturally, certain vested interests don't see it as a failure.

Shahid Mursaleen of the Minhaj-ul-Quran charity, also praised the speech.
“I agree Islam is misunderstood,” he said. “Islam is a peaceful and tolerant faith and I agree there is a real need to educate the public and to promote the truth about Islam.”

No, there isn't. The IRA felt no need to 'educate the public', and neither do the radicals in Islam. They feel the need to impose their will by blowing people up. During the IRA's heyday, neither Eire nor the Catholic Church felt the need to 'educate the public' on why they were being blown up. In fact, they kept quiet and stayed as far away from it all as possible.

I don't care what the truth is about Islam. Believe what you like, worship who you want any way you want. I don't need any education on a religion I have no intention of joining. I don't need to learn Islamic ways because I won't be adopting them. The onus is not on us to understand Islam, the onus is on Islam to go its own way and let the rest of us go ours.

So, call for Sharia law, introduce us to honour killings and forced marriage and 'Muslim areas' and demands for a new Caliphate in our country and you have our attention. But not in a good way.

Leave us alone, worship your god in your way, and we won't even notice you're there.

How often do you hear 'Oh, those Sikhs are a problem' or 'those Buddhists' or 'those Pagans' or even 'those Satanists'? None of them are demanding the entire country fall into line and live life as directed by them. None of them are demanding the law be changed to their way of doing things. None of them are trying to take over.

None of them are blowing anyone up.

Now, I know that not all Muslims want to change this country into Saudi Arabia, not all Muslims want to kill anyone and not all Muslims want Sharia law. So it is unfair to generalise. However, life is unfair and you either deal with it or don't. Shouting 'Unfair' has never solved a single problem, ever. It didn't help German Jews, it didn't help Iranian homosexuals, it has never helped anyone.

When the IRA were in full swing, anyone with an Irish accent was treated with suspicion. I worked for three years on a project where one guy was from Eire. He had nothing to do with the IRA at all. He had no violent tendencies, in fact I cannot recall him ever even raising his voice. Yet in every pub we visited there was suspicion. He was stopped and questioned by police all the time. Fair? Of course not. Not all Irish people were in the IRA, but all those in the IRA were Irish.

So it is now, with the current round of terrorism. Not all Muslims are in Al-Qaeda, but everyone in Al-Qaeda is a Muslim. So all Muslims now get treated with caution. Fair? No. Sensible? Yes. We are told there are three million Muslims in the UK, but nobody seems to have noticed the 57+ million non-Muslims here. We are told we must not offend, we must understand, we must bow and scrape and learn the ways of people we outnumber nineteen to one. The majority must pander to the minority. Imagine, Muslims, the kind of feelings that stirs in people.

Unlike the IRA, who did not want to take over the UK, who just wanted the part they regard as theirs back, Islam demands special treatment at every turn and threatens to behead those who so much as speak against it. Baroness Warsi thinks that disliking that sort of diplomacy makes us bigoted.

We've been called worse, Baroness. Think back to Labour's methods for silencing dissent. So much as mention the word 'Immigration' and you'd get 'racist-Nazi-bigot' thrown back at once. So much as question the Cult of the Green God and you're called a 'denier' and a 'flat-earther'. So call us bigots. It's all water off a duck's back now. Words have been devalued under Labour to the point where they are worth even less than the economy.

This whole 'Islamophobe' construction is nonsense. The fact is, we don't hate Muslims at all. What we are phobic about are things like this, and the extensive list compiled in a few minutes by the Quiet Man. No, we have no quarrel with Muslims, we have always been happy to do business with anyone of any faith.

The fact is, Islam has a problem with us. We are not threatening to behead Muslims. We are not rigging makeshift bombs and blowing people up. We are not hunting down Muslim cartoonists and reporters and film-makers. There is no area of the UK that has been declared a 'non-Muslim area'.

The Baroness has it the wrong way round. The acceptable bigotry exists and has long been supported by the Righteous with the help of government. It is not us spouting hatred at them.

It's them spouting hatred at us. As long as successive governments fail to see that, the radicalism will spread unchecked - actually, encouraged - by the authorities.

Not all Muslims are like this. I can speak from experience of working with, teaching and doing business with Muslims that those I have encountered have not been swivel-eyed loons with beards full of drool and an axe in each hand. In fact, I have never encountered one of those. They are out there, that's for sure. They insult the soldiers who risk their lives for this country, they carry placards saying 'Freedom go to hell', they burn poppies on Remembrance Day and they blow people up. So it's no good pretending they don't exist.

They are not the majority, but they have a way with words. They radicalise the young, they indoctrinate those who have never seen Sharia law in action with the insistence that it is what they must have. I would advise those born in this country, who demand Sharia law, to spend a few weeks in a country where it is rigidly enforced. You might find it's not what you were told.

As for the Baroness, if Sharia were already here, she would not be allowed to show her face in public, not be allowed to drive a car and would never hold any position in office. Think about what you are defending, Baroness. If it comes to pass, you won't be a Baroness any more.

If, as the Baroness insists, we are not to differentiate 'moderate' from 'extreme' Islam, what does she imagine will happen? That we will see it all as moderate? Hardly. If there can be only one label applied, it will be 'extreme' and once that is done, Baroness, there will be no going back.

Currently, there are many non-violent Muslims who don't want Sharia law, who don't want to oppress women or hang gays or force their children into marriage or blow anyone up. They just want to get on with their lives.

However, they are not being allowed to ignore the radical side of their faith in the same way that Christians can ignore the likes of the Westboro Baptist Church. It's not us, Baroness. It's your government.

By allowing and indulging the worst excesses of the radicals, you take away any barrier to Muslim youth joining them. There is no penalty for demanding Sharia law, so they do it. There is no penalty for demanding the death of the apostate, so they do it. The youth of any human culture are naturally rebellious. They will push the boundaries and with no discipline to fear, they will find no boundary. Anyone attempting to stop them will be deemed 'bigot' and 'Islamophobe' and shouted down. They believe themselves untouchable and they are easy targets for the radicals.

If they ever get that Sharia law they shout about, they will find new boundaries, and they will find that they have already overstepped those boundaries by a very long way. There will be no more shouting in the streets. No more free benefits. No shiny cars and iPods and discos and alcohol. All of it, gone. No more blue jeans and hoodies. Deviate from Islamic dress and face punishment.

Then they will find out what Sharia punishment means.

So far, there are a lot of Muslims who don't want this radical version of Islam. Well, we can't do anything about it. Our government won't let us. Muslim youth won't listen to the kuffar. They've been told we are all bigots and should not be listened to. Not just by Imams but by our Righteous who think they are in control of the radicals. They are not.

If the radicals are to be marginalised and silenced, Muslims have to do it.

Otherwise, we have no option but to generalise. For our own safety.

Writer night.

I have the novel back from the editor. Not bad, nowhere near as much red ink as I expected. I can get this dealt with and sent back again tonight, I think.

So, for tonight's entertainment, I must refer you to the sidebar. I'm off to don a wide-brimmed hat and cape and do writerly things for the night.

Damn, and there's not a drop of Pernod in the house! Whisky will have to do. It worked for Dylan Thomas.

Well, up to a point...

Wednesday 19 January 2011

Channelling Al Capone.



Minimum pricing is back, well not really, but yes really, but not quite, but it's a start.

Setting a minimum price is illegal under EU rules. It's price-fixing, which companies get hammered for all the time in this country but apparently it's okay for the Righteous to do it. Pretty much goes for anything from jaywalking to mass dehumanisation, discrimination, racism, defiling graveyards, child abuse and cannibalism, really. It's naughty unless the Righteous do it. Then it's Good.

What they've done this time is sneaky. They haven't set a minimum as such, what they've said is that shops cannot sell for less than the cost of duty plus VAT. So shops can give the stuff away as long as the customer pays duty and VAT.

Well, okay, but really this makes no difference to the Coagulation. They'll get the taxes whether we pay them or Mr. Tesco pays them. In practice, Mr. Tesco isn't going to sell below cost because that's a good way to go rapidly out of business. He is also no more likely to pay your taxes than you are to pay his. So what's it for?

Aha, here's the clever part. They aren't setting a defined minimum per unit so they aren't breaking EU rules. Once they have this 'thou shalt pay' rule in place, they can then set the duty to whatever they like. No rules broken, minimum price by the back door.

As with smoking, the entire construction is on a bed of sand, and very wet sand at that.

It'll cut crime they say. Right. So those alkies currently begging for a few quid to get some Tennent's Super are not going to get more aggressive, or turn to mugging, because they need more money than before to get the same amount of booze. Get real, Forehead Dave.

All those restrictions on tobacco have produced a thriving black market in hooky baccy and alcohol is far, far easier to produce than tobacco. Stills in the woods again, it seems, with some literally blinding moonshine of indeterminate and variable strength. Demijohns in every airing cupboard producing undefined alcohol-content wine. Beer brewed and freeze-distilled (unlike the last Prohibition, everyone has a freezer now) into especially deadly barley wine. Cut crime? Try 'will boost crime tenfold' and see how that suits you. Look at those Muslim countries where alcohol is totally banned. You can get it easily but what's in it? Nobody has a damn clue and the sellers don't care. That is what Don Shenker wants to happen here.

You can ban alcohol entirely, as the Americans once did and as many Muslim states do now. It will not make a scrap of difference other than to create a market for illegal, unregulated and possibly deadly booze. The same effect you get when you make heroin illegal. It doesn't stop the problem, it just puts the entire market into criminal hands.

Cameron, listen for God's sake. We are going to get booze and you will not stop us. You can regulate it, quality control it and tax it or you can hand it all over to the Mafia, the Tongs and Al-Qaeda and watch us get smashed anyway. You know, I think this government should look into whether Shenker, Arnott and the BMA have any links to organised crime and perhaps terrorism. They certainly seem determined to push a lot of business that way.

It'll cut binge drinking they say. Pubs closing in their thousands since the smoking ban has not stopped binge drinking. I have never seen nor heard of any pub, club or any alcohol-selling premises that is actually open 24 hours a day. It's allowed but in real life it doesn't happen. Off-sales run 10 am to 10 pm (in Scotland) and it's so strict that if you arrive at a checkout at one minute to ten and your booze doesn't go through first, the till operator is not allowed to sell it to you. Computer says no.

It won't affect binge drinking at all. Of course it won't. Shenker knows this as well as his sibling vampire the Dreadful Arnott knows that she will never abolish smoking. They have their teeth in the taxpayer's neck and as every vampire knows, you don't drink it all at once. Little sips at a time. Yes, I have Dracula on the Kindle (free book, and if you don't have a Kindle there are free Kindle programs for just about anything including iPhones).

If there was a dramatic drop in binge drinking in response to this, Shenker would find his funding drying up. What he needs is a small decline, and that's guaranteed because it's already happened anyway. He, like the Arnott, needs to keep pushing and pushing but never quite get there.

You can't escape being a binge drinker. As with the narrowing definition of obesity, binge drinking is rapidly becoming defined as drinking anything at all. Soon, walking past a display of shandy will get you registered as an alcoholic. Aimed at the wasted shirtless skinheads lying around the streets? Three pints? Do you imagine those incoherent babblers with damp trousers and melted eyes managed to get that way on three beers? This is not aimed at the troublemakers. Nothing ever is.

The pub closures are because of cheap supermarket booze, they say, Via Man Widdicombe, the Student Brewer expertly debunks this crap. If you have a set amount to spend on booze, as most of us do, you won't move to pubs when supermnarket prices rise. You'll just buy less. Personally, I like malt whisky, and some blends. I have tasted the dirt-cheap own brand blends and won't again. I don't care how cheap they get, I will not buy them, I'd rather have less of the good stuff than more of the shite. I'm not in a position to say 'Lagavulin, and hang the cost' but once in a rare while, I'll get a bottle.

I'm not rich and probably never will be but I know there are those to whom Lagavulin is an impossible dream. There are those who have to consider whether to spend a tenner on Clan MacGregor (a reasonable cheap blend, by the way). Should they be denied any taste of anything beyond a half bottle of Asda own brand firewater? Someone gave me a litre bottle of that once. Minus one small glass, which I didn't finish, it's still there.

I know people who will buy a bottle of whisky and make it last for months because to them, it is an extraordinarily expensive treat. I always decline their offers of a dram because I know how hard it is for them to afford it. I am at that point where I can afford decent whisky but balk at the price of fillet steak. I've met, at the other end of the scale, people who invite you to stately-home restaurants where there are no prices on the menu. If you have to ask, you shouldn't be there. Lucky for me I wasn't paying.

They won't be at all affected by price-per-unit because paying £100 per unit is no issue to them now. It will be some time before it affects me because paying £20-£30 for a bottle of whisky isn't too onerous, if a little limiting. For those struggling to meet Clan MacGregor prices, it will be a killing blow tomorrow. They are not binge drinkers. They are just ordinary people who like a drop of the hard stuff before bedtime. Most of them used to vote Tory, Labour, Lib Dem or SNP. Now they'd rather vote for the Church of the Militant Elvis. Which is, at least, progress.

But here we are. A first step on the antismoking - sorry, antidrinking road. It's hard to tell. The methods are exactly the same. Of course, CAMRA, being entirely composed of bearded cretins, will never notice this. As far as they are concerned, getting smokers out of their pubs was never any kind of first step to shutting them all down. It was a welcome removal of those who smoked sub-Righteous forms of tobacco. Pub closures? All down to shops selling cheaper booze, which they have done since time began and which has mysteriously never had any effect until the Ban That Dare Not Speak Its Name happened. CAMRA, time's up. Game over. You have ceased to be relevant in this fight.

Like the pub association, CAMRA are quislings who believe that by collaborating with the enemy, they will be passed over. No, CAMRA, this time they are coming for you. Three pints is now binge drinking, can you see what it is yet? CAMRA is out of the game. No further relevance to either side.

The pub association are the same. Instead of fighting the smoking ban they insisted it spread to private clubs. Now they bleat that smokers don't visit the pubs that made them unwelcome and claim it's all down to the supermarkets. Let them bleat. Let them insist on increased supermarket prices. Brewing our own is a piece of yeast piss. The pubs are no longer relevant. Let them go. We meet at Smoky-Drinky now.

As a smoker, I have seen this all before. Prepare now. Kit yourself with brewing gear and start practicing. Forget setting up a small brewery, they will all be out of business in a few years. All you will get is supermarket own brand yak's piss while those who impose this sip champagne and laugh at you. Mr. Tesco is not paying the duty and tax and is not making a loss. Who's making the loss? The supplier. Mr. Tesco does not care if a supplier goes under, there are plenty more idiots willing to try their hand. Small breweries, like small businesses, are anathema to the communism of the EU our government desires for us. Not them, just us.

Minimum pricing will not hurt the supermarkets at all. Compared to pub prices they have massive scope to pass on any extra costs and blame the government. Pub closure rates will be unaffected. Boozy bastards causing mayhem on a Saturday night will be unaffected. Smokers won't go back to the pubs now, no matter the cost difference because it was never about cost. Personally I might not ever go back even if the smoking ban were completely rescinded. I cannot get past the betrayal and abandonment of the entire pub industry. You threw me out, people, you dehumanised me and you hated me. I will not pay you money now.

Homebrew and illegal stills will flourish. Tax take will, as with all these products of the deranged mind, decline. Criminal versions of all types of booze will be on the streets and believe me, they are already in preparation. The undergound economy has always been well ahead of the one you see. These criminals care nothing for quality control or safety or age limits. They will sell methanol to five-year-olds if it makes a profit. Nasty? Very. Get used to it, because here it comes courtesy of Don Shenker and the mindless drones we call 'government'.

Just as the Dreadful Arnott has boosted underage smoking, so the Donkey Shanker is about to boost underage drinking. With exactly the same methods.

So, who is it they really work for, eh? Because they don't work for your benefit, that's for certain.

Search box added.

Some folk have asked for links to old posts. As you know, I tend to babble on a bit and am dreadful at keeping track of what post is where. This isn't like the tax stuff, which has to be kept in some kind of order (it all goes in a box labelled 'misc' which will, one day, reduce an auditor to tears). Nor is it like the day job, which involves nasty bacteria so you can bet I'm careful about keeping track of where they are. It's not even like writing fiction, which involves surprising amounts of research because you'd be amazed how many readers will pick up on details about the setting, or the things available at the time of the story.

This is rantspace. If I had thought about it I could have used tags but I didn't. So, when someone asks about a past post, I'm stumped.

Therefore I've put a search box in the sidebar. This one only searches this blog, a sort of electronic internal examination, but even if nobody uses it, at least I'll be able to find the things myself.

Still have to sort that blog list. It's a daunting job.

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Milky milky.

Beverage alert. Put the drink down and back away before reading. I am in red wine mood this evening.



Should we drink milk, asks Yahoo Health?

Obviously not, because we don't want to end up like the guy in the video. Sucking down the bodily secretions of another species is bound to turn you a bit strange.

It's nice though, isn't it? Imagine cornflakes with water. It would be like licking a wet leper. Coco Pops turning the water brown holds little appeal, let's be honest here. Capuccino would only be possible with a good dose of steamed phlegm. On the whole, milk is a better option for those things even if it does involve fondling a cow's boobs.

We've made a whole range of cheeses from a combination of milk, bacteria and fungi, all set into lumps by rennet, which is extracted from the stomachs of calves. Put like that, it doesn't sound quite so great so let's just stick with names like Stilton, Camembert and Danish blue. That sounds much better.

We do, after all, drink alcohol which is just yeast urine, and coffee which is mashed plant gonads in hot water. With milk. There are people who have cut-off plant genitals in vases around their houses, and stick their noses into them. So being squeamish about stomach-enzyme treated, bacterially decayed, mouldy cow-tit fluid is just silly. Cheese is good melted on toast with chopped chilli and a bit of onion. Cheese, onion and cucumber sandwiches are fantastic. Stilton is the excuse we need to drink port. It is an important cultural disgusting habit.

It has just occurred to me that the fear-filled who believe in all that third hand smoke crap have not heard anything yet. I'd better get my horns polished and my tail ironed. I have work to enjoy.

There was one thing missing from that article though. If you want to avoid the milky-milky stuff and still get calcium, here's their answer.

Good non dairy sources include fortified soy milk, collards, baked beans, boy choy, and supplements that contain calcium and vitamin D.

No mention of red meat, nor of sucking the marrow out of bones (now come on, I am surely not the only one). Soy milk? Soy doesn't suckle its young. Collards, what are they? Boy choy, no, I don't want to know. Beans have musical side effects and supplements are entirely artificial foods.

I'll stick with beef, and with sucking out that marrow.

Oh, and cheese, of course.

What the hell is a collard anyway? A mallard in a bow tie?

Monday 17 January 2011

Israel helps the New Nazis.

I try to space out the smoking posts so this doesn't turn into the daily rantings of a 'nicotine addict' but having seen the most appalling bit of so-called science I cannot help but rip it into tiny bits and ram the bits up the nose of the nearest ASH representative. Then light them.

Not only is it another attempt to impose controls, it contains no valid science of any kind whatsoever. If they still taught proper science in schools, a 14-year-old could rip it apart. I remember physics, chemistry and biology teachers who would have laughed until they cried at the nonsense it spouts.

It is, of course, third hand smoke (thanks to Billy the Fish and others for the link). I could end up doing a line by line trashing of this study, it's that bad.

Only recently have scientists have begun to measure and understand the dangers of exposure to thirdhand smoke.

They are not scientists, as evidenced by this study. They are propagandists, paid to invent stories to support a pre-written conclusion. There has never been any kind of illness that could be traced to second-hand, never mind third-hand smoke. There is no problem to address, but they want a solution anyway.

“There’s nicotine in tobacco smoke, obviously. The portion of that nicotine that’s not absorbed by the human body, that nicotine goes someplace, and one of the places it goes is that it sticks on the surfaces of the room that you’re in,” says James F. Pankow, PhD, professor of chemistry and civil and environmental engineering at Portland State University in Oregon.

Nicotine? Nicotine is a precursor to nicotinic acid, renamed niacin in order to pretend it has nothing to do with nicotine, which then becomes nicotinamide (niacinamide), an essential part of the biological processes in every living cell. It's not poisonous unless you concentrate it and drink a lot. All at once.

Of all the chemicals claimed to be in tobacco smoke, why pick the most harmless one to study and pretend it's a poison? Why? Well, Electrosmokers, what's in those Electrofags? No benzene, no formaldehyde, no particulates, no tar... just nicotine.

Which is harmless to the smoker, even more harmless to secondary smokers (aka cheapskates) and utterly harmless to third hand smokers. Yet now, it's a poison. If that is so, anyone who has been prescribed a nicotine patch should sue their doctor at once.

So let's look at the extent of the lies pretending to be science here.

“Nicotine can come back off of that surface to react with ozone,” says Pankow, “It forms particles.”
Those particles, known as secondary organic aerosols, are so small that they may be inhaled deeply into the lungs, where they are hard for the body to clear.

If I was this man's employer I would be sacking him at once and demanding the return of all salary payments. He knows absolutely no chemistry at all.

Nicotine is water soluble. It will dissolve in the wet lining of the lungs and be absorbed. Then it will be metabolised into nicotinamide. It cannot persist and accumulate in the lung otherwise no active smoker could live longer than a year after starting. Their lungs would be full of nicotine 'particles'. Yet he expects us to believe that one molecule, which has conveniently sat around in the environment for months without reacting with anything, will spontaneously pop off a surface which has (presumably) never been cleaned during that time and kill someone. If you believe that, I have a farm on Mars I'll sell you cheap.

And now, the methods:

For the study, Dubowski and her team impregnated three different kinds of materials, cellulose (a proxy for plant-based building materials like wood), paper, and cotton, with nicotine and exposed them to ozone under dry and humid conditions.

Cellulose is not a proxy for wood as used in building. Wood is more lignin than cellulose, and in buildings it is coated with preservatives, varnish or paint. Cellulose is a white fluffy substance that will absorb anything. Think cotton wool or kitchen towel - that's cellulose. Treated wood, in buildings, isn't even porous. So no, cellulose does not mimic wood. It mimics cotton buds.

Cigarette filters are made of cellulose. If nicotine absorbs so well to it, no smoker has ever inhaled or exhaled nicotine because it's all stuck in the filter.

Paper and cotton are also largely cellulose, you know. Both are good at absorbing things. Especially things like nicotine in solution. Nicotine in smoke, not so much, which is why they didn't do it that way. For absorbing smoky substances you need something like wool. Tip: Do not wear anything expensive made of wool if you ever visit a piggery. It sucks in the stink and keeps it for weeks. Cotton doesn't unless you spill crap on it.

They were able to see that nicotine remained on the surfaces to be wiped off onto skin or clothing.

These scientists found that if you drop nicotine solution on to absorptive surfaces, it stays there and if you poke it with your finger, you'll get some on you. Next they plan to demonstrate that the sky is blue and that it gets dark at night, and if they can get the funds they will extend that to prove that it stays dark until sunrise. Who the hell is paying for this crap? If this is what passes for research in Israeli universities, Iran might as well nuke them now. There's nothing in there worth keeping.

Even the bloody Jews hate me now. If there is one race on the planet who should understand exactly where this leads, I'd have thought it would have been the Jews. Oh, but it's fine because it's only the smokers this time. Shall we sew the badges on now? Idiots.

They were also able to measure, however, that nicotine could “desorb” off a surface back into the air where it might be inhaled on its own or react with other indoor air pollutants like ozone to form particulates.

I once taught basic biochemistry to organic farmers and basic microbiology to HND Agriculture students. None had any scientific background. Any of them could have grasped that a small molecule could become airborne with no trouble at all. These 'scientists', having proved that touching stuff gets it on your fingers, have now proved that a tiny harmless molecule can become airborne.

They have also proved it can react with ozone. Ozone is a form of oxygen with three atoms instead of two. Why choose ozone? Because it reacts with every bloody thing! That's the thing about ozone. High in the atmosphere, it's safe enough but down here, it bumps into things and reacts with them. That's why there isn't very much of it down here at all. Not very much ozone plus not very much residual nicotine equals not very much incidence of this crap happening at all. When it does happen, the nicotine will be oxidised and the ozone will turn into oxygen. That. Is. It. A B-vitamin precursor and oxygen. That's what you get. No 'particles'. Still believing all this third hand smoke stuff? How would you like to own a seafront property on Titan?

The researchers also found that humid conditions appeared to be somewhat protective against exposure to the products of thirdhand smoke.

No shit, Sherlock? Evaporation is slower in humid conditions? Just how far behind real-world science are these people? Alchemists knew this. I'll bet a few cavemen worked that one out, and here we are at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, where they have just discovered it. What's next on their list of discoveries? The wheel? Fire? Flint tools? This is what they call a university. What's school like? Drooling lessons followed by banging rocks together?

“This may not be very significant under normal indoor conditions where relative humidity is governed by comfort and kept around 60%,” says Dubowski. “However, in airplanes, where relative humidity is particularly low, less than 20%, and ozone concentrations can reach higher than 100 parts per billion, the potential for exposure to products of thirdhand smoke products may be greater.”

As Dick Puddlecote points out, this will be used to bar smokers from flying. It will also be used to stop Electrofag use on planes and to stop Electrosmokers from flying. They are pretending nicotine is the poison here, not smoking. That catches the electrosmokers too and it won't be long before it includes all forms of chewing baccy.

Look at those numbers. In planes, where ozone is really high, it's at 100 parts per billion. That's one part in ten million. So, take the internal volume of the plane, divide that by ten million, and that is the possible volume of ozone in there. It's not going to be very much. It's going to react with everything it hits. That little amount of ozone is not all reacting with the tiny bits of nicotine that might be about, it's hitting everything. The chances of you inhaling a molecule of Vitamin B are really, really, really small. Sorry, you'll have to rely on dietary sources. Guinness is a good one.

I have long watched the sad decline of science from a genuine search for knowledge into a pitiful scrabbling for money. This is a new low. This is research that the cleaning staff would have performed more diligently than the so-called scientists. To see this coming from a university is disgraceful enough, but to see the denormalisation of a particular group of people facilitated by, of all people, the Jews, is beyond shocking. I am absolutely stunned both at the appalling pseudoscience of the research and at the stupidity of those reporting it.

Listen up, Israel.

'First they came for the smokers, and I helped to round them up for I am not a smoker and they gave me money...'

How quickly your history is forgotten.

Sunday 16 January 2011

Mengele's playthings.

I think I might buy a pipe. I had a few pipes, many years ago. One of the curly Sherlock Holmes ones and two straight ones. I also had a clay pipe but it was hard to smoke because it would heat up too much. Maybe I was doing it wrong. A pipe is the only kind of smoking I don't currently do. I have roll-up cigarettes and cigars and Electrofag but no pipe. This must be remedied.

Where do I get one these days? Anyone know? I can find a shisha pipe far more easily than a Sherlock these days.

I did try those Skoal Bandits once, a long time back. I believe they are called Snus now. They didn't interest me. I never bought a second pack and didn't even finish the first. I just don't see the appeal. No, for me it has to be the smoke and nothing produces smoke like a pipe. There is an Electropipe but I can get pipe flavours for Electrofag. No, I want a real pipe again. I want Three Nuns tobacco once more.

I'm thinking ahead here. Home grown tobacco will be hard to make into rollups. Easier to make into cigars as long as I can find a dusky maiden with cigar-rolling thighs and also easier to smoke in a pipe.

Why increase the smoking? Because it's naughty. The same reason that so many children are now smoking. No, it's not because they see smoking in Disney cartoons. I watched them as a kid. I watched Tom and Jerry cartoons where Tom smoked a cigar. I watched all the Popeye cartoons with his corn-cob pipe. I watched old black and white films where almost everyone smoked. I watched Groucho Marx with his cigar and Stan Laurel with his pipe made out of his hand, lit with his thumb. I have that on DVD and it still makes me laugh.

I took up smoking at the age of 21 when I was certainly able to make up my own mind about it, and none of the cartoons influenced me at all. Few of my immediate group of friends smoked. Peer pressure, if it had existed among this chaotic group, should have stopped me smoking. It didn't work.

I will develop further smoking routes precisely because I am being told not to. That is something the authors of the 'Nudge' idea have completely failed to grasp. When you push people, they push back.

When you proclaim that 21 units of alcohol is a limit, people see it as a target. When you set unit levels for each drink, people are not shamed into sobriety. Instead they print score cards. It makes the evening more interesting. Tell them that three pints is binge drinking and they will think, as they sip the fourth, that well, it's bingeing now. Might as well make a night of it. Nothing to lose.

When you tell children they can't have booze, they will go all out to get some. When you tell them smoking is bad, they have to try it. When you tell them vegetables are healthy, they won't touch them. Children believe themselves indestructible, always have and always will. Tell them it's dangerous and they are guaranteed to try it. Tell them it's wholesome and they won't touch it. The tobacco companies are not recruiting new smokers among the youth. ASH and the NHS are.

Here's some more child-smoker recruitment from another idiot, found by Fraser. As far as the health freaks are concerned, life is about living for as long as you can even if you find it excruciatingly dull. Life, for them, is not about enjoyment, it's all about lasting longer than the guy next door and eventually dying of nothing.

Not smoking, not drinking, not eating salt or fat and remaining within the Standard Human shape will not make you immortal. You are going to die. That is certain. Your options are to live a Puritan morbid and dreary life or to enjoy the time you have. Sure, you might live longer as a Puritan and if that suits you, you carry on. I would absolutely hate to live like that and if it means I die sooner, that's my problem, not yours. Live your live as you see fit and leave me alone to live mine. Is that so much to ask?

It seems so, when fake science is the order of the day in any attempt to smack the smokers (tipped by commenter Luke and also by Email).

The researchers looked at the level of chemicals linked with cancer, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), in 12 patients after smoking.

Fair enough, you might think.

A PAH was added to the subject's cigarettes, which was then modified by the body and turned into another chemical which damages DNA and has been linked with cancer.

Well now, let's look at that first sentence again.

A PAH was added to the subject's cigarettes,

And once more for the terminally hard of thinking.

A PAH WAS ADDED to the subject's cigarettes,

The subjects were smoking cigarettes to which a carcinogen had been deliberately added. How did they get ethical approval for this? And what does it prove? That when you add a carcinogen to cigarettes, it acts like a carcinogen? That will work just as well with broccoli or tofu. It will even work with water or air. It is nonsense. The ethics commitee should be charged with attempted murder over this.

So it's fine to expose people to a carcinogen that isn't already present in detectable levels in cigarette smoke in order to re-prove that the carcinogen is a carcinogen, even though ordinary tobacco doesn't contain enough to prove an effect. It's fine because they are only smokers and don't matter.

If you proposed doing this experiment with dogs there would be outrage. Even more outrage than you would face if you kept a dog outdoors and only gave it a shelter with 50% or less protection from the weather. Try proposing to experiment with diesel carcinogens on non-smokers and see how far you get. I am struggling to get approval for a non-drug cure for Clostridium difficile that has already been proven to work and which I take a dose of daily because it stops other gut problems too, yet dosing human beings with known carcinogens just to invent a new propaganda page for ASH is okay. And you think I should trust the NHS? Hell, I object to being forced to pay for this crap. Worse, the propaganda is reinforced by the BBC who also demand money with menaces. At least when you paid protection money to the Krays, they left you alone. This is worse.

Out there are dribbling morons nodding and saying 'ooh, yes, the Dreadful Arnott is right, smokers are evil and subhuman and can be experimented on Mengele-style and that is all fine and good and Mengele's experiments on twins were justified if they smoked'. Oh yes, they are out there. Some are reading this and thinking 'What is this subhuman complaining about? We stopped experimenting on animals because it was inhumane, but experimenting on smokers is perfectly fine'.

Well, bollocks. I am buying a pipe and increasing my smoking range. I am doing this because like those who have drunk three pints in a day and have been classified as binge drinkers, I have nothing more to lose. I smoke and I am already condemned for it. I am lower than the experimental animals. Even if I stop I will be an 'ex-smoker' and treated like a drug addict so why bother? ASH and the NHS have ensured that I have no incentive at all to stop smoking. None.

I am Mengele's subject now.

Soon, you will be too, whatever you enjoy.

Old and Sad.

So Labour won in Oldham and Saddleworth, a constituency that sounds like a cheap porn film about a stables, with 20% of the electorate saying 'Yay, we want to be represented by a total cretin who thinks money pops out of the earth at the behest of the plastic hair brothers'.

I am delighted.

Why? The captain is furious. Jerub-Baal is at least despondent. Why am I hopping up and down like the Joker at a Batman-tormenting contest?

Well, look at the facts. 52% of the people of Holdem and Saddleup (wait, I think that's the film) didn't vote at all. Well over half of that electorate is now thinking 'Those buggers got in again, but at least it's not my fault'.

Well, yes it is. Over half of you could not be bothered to put an X in a box. If you had, and if you really wanted to send a message, you could easily have sent Buss Pass Elvis to Westminster. You could not be bothered.

So yes, it is your fault. Would Buss Pass Elvis have made a good MP? Well, look what you ended up with and ask yourselves if he'd have been any worse. He would at least have been amusing.

Eventually these people will realise. The only way to really waste your vote is to vote as directed. As your father dictates, as your family or religion prescribe. Or to vote because 'any vote for anyone but the Borg is a wasted vote. The little ones can't win'. You know why they can't win? Because you won't vote for them. Instead you vote for the vile three-faced machine that pretends to run things but in fact sits on its backside and lets the Grinch run everything.

Vote for Bus Pass Elvis. Vote for the Monster Raving Loonies. Vote for the cheese appreciation society and the otter poking party. Over half of you are sitting at home moaning about 'foregone conclusion'. Morons. It's a foregone conclusion only because you refuse to tick the box that stops it being a foregone conclusion. FIFTY TWO PERCENT will get absolutely anyone into the MP seat, absolutely anyone, even if it's Hurl Vom Bucket from the 'Stop the car now' party. Anyone at all. The Labour drone had 20% of the vote and won. More than double that number could not get off their lardy asses long enough to spell 'X' and okay, most of you are illiterate and utterly worthless anyway but those who can read, tell the others.

YOU did this.

YOU are responsible for the resurgence of a party that cosies up to the banks, destroys communities, and calls itself 'labour'. They did not do this. YOU DID IT.

You did it by indolence and apathy. You caused the delight among the champagne socialists. You might as well have poured their fizz and said 'Three bags full, massah.'

Eighty percent of you Oldham and Saddleworth constituents did not vote for a Labour MP. So what's it going to be, O my droogies? What will you do? You will do nothing at all. The same as 52% of you did at the election. Nothing. At. All.

Except one thing. You will feel resentment and betrayal. That's all you will do and it's enough for now.

Tunisia went 'pop' but this country won't. Not yet. Most people in this country, as in Tunisia, don't give a stuff about politics. Most of those who have looked into the matter want us out of the EU, true, but by far the majority have never even thought about it. They are just getting on with their lives and nodding their approval of every new control and restriction because they believe it won't apply to them.

They regard the inquisitive and intrusive forms they fill in whenever they encounter authority as little more than a nuisance. They nod in approval of stricter controls on smokers and drinkers, including some who drink and smoke themselves. They are complacent about further and deeper controls and demands for absolute control over everything we eat, drink, smoke and breathe. They accept that nicotine is a poison and that nicotine patches are the cure. They accept that one pint of beer is good for you and that three pints is binge drinking. They accept that they must have five portions of fruit and vegetables even when they are told it's a made-up number with no science of any kind behind it at all. They accept global warming, they regard the coldest winter for a hundred years in which 49 of the 50 US states saw snow as 'local weather' because they are told to. They believe that the warm weather moved to the south of Europe while they marvel at the frozen fountains of Rome. They still believe Australia will become a desert due to warming even while the floods cover an area as big as France and Germany combined and are still spreading.

In short, they are well indoctrinated in doublethink and they will not break out of that unless they get angry. Very angry indeed.

That is why I was delighted to see Labour place another of its troughing drones at the Oldham and Saddleworth election, and even more delighted to find that they installed an MP that 80% of the people there didn't want. If UKIP had won, they wouldn't get angry. They'd be relieved. A win by the Tories or Lib Dems would have achieved nothing at all. They are the same as Labour. If UKIP had won, the whole country would believe that the turnaround had started. Not yet, and a slow turnaround will be quashed by the troughers before it can get any momentum going.

One UKIP MP isn't going to achieve anything. They will be sidelined and ignored. How much do you hear about the SNP or Green MPs?

As in Tunisia, voting in another lot of troughing control-freaks will never achieve anything at all. As it is, that is all that will ever happen here. There are no worthwhile candidates coming up and no parties able to break that 'wasted vote' mantra that keeps the pigs in their sty. The only way out is if the whole lot comes crashing down, all at once. Then we can start again.

That will not happen through some lefty students smashing windows and chasing Cameron in a pack, like the hunting dogs they despise. Look at the election result again. Twenty per cent. There are more smokers than Lefties in that constituency. More obese people than Lefties, and far more three-pint binge drinkers than, I suspect, the total number of votes cast. In fact, I would go so far as to say that many of those who voted Labour did so because a) Dad used to, b) they couldn't bring themselves to vote Tory or for their buddies in LD, and c) they were told that to vote for anyone else was a wasted vote. Not because they genuinely believe in Labour's gradual fascism.

No, as in Tunisia, it won't be a political coup. There will be no politics at all because all three parties demand the high life for themselves and austerity for us, while we pay for it. None of them listen to the people they claim to represent. None of them can be trusted. No, it won't be political. It will be an apparently trivial incident that triggers the downfall of the British parliamentary system and it's impossible to predict when or where it will happen.

Will it be the introduction of calorie counts on restaurant foods? No, because as with 'units of alcohol', most people will ignore them. They'll be appreciated by Weightwatchers members but the rest of us will soon learn to filter them out as we do with advertising.

The censoring of literary classics like Tom Sawyer? No, because few people read it now and those of us who consider literary classics to be of importance are few. Censoring music, films and books won't trigger anything. Ask Bloke in the Pub. He'll tell you that those things are censored already and have been for years, so what's the problem? Besides, only the backdated censoring will even be noticed.

This could do it. Which is why, I suspect, the council backed off sharpish. They aren't all totally stupid. Oh, it won't be the 'Eek! Smoker!' aspect of it, it will be the denial of such films to the children of the Righteous. You can take away Poirot's cigar or Holmes' pipe but you stop kids watching 101 Dalmatians because Cruella DeVille had a Rothmans on a stick, and there will be war.

Especially since it won't stop there. I believe the seven dwarves had pipes too, one of the Aristocats was a cigar chomper (not forgetting the racist portrayal of those Siamese cats) and didn't the old guy in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang smoke in his little hut? Oh, once they get their hooks in, it all goes.

I think it will be something like that. It will be something the bansturbators and control freaks believe is just one more step on their road to total control and they will not see it as a step too far until the whole country explodes in rage. The best part? They won't understand why everyone is so angry.

That step too far has to be taken and it is, under our current deaf and blind political system, inevitable. The only way out is radical change and the utter dismantling of the whole left/right system we have now. Neither side can initiate a change because they offer no change.

If Labour had lost to UKIP in Oldham and Saddleworth, that inevitable step too far would have been delayed by a very long time. The control freaks would have backed up and regrouped. If they had lost to the Tories or the Indecisive Party, it would have been delayed because one third of the three party system would have backed off and regrouped.

Labour winning that by-election was the best thing that could happen. Winning it with such a paltry share of the vote was even better. The control freaks are encouraged to push and push and push and that step too far comes ever closer.

I don't know what it will be. I don't know when or where it will happen. Neither does anyone else but it just came a lot closer to happening.

It won't be a momentous announcement. It will be a little thing, a trivia, a small nudge over the edge of the abyss we've been nudged towards for many years.

One last, lightweight, inconsequential straw.