Tuesday 5 July 2011

Ethics and practicality.

Recently, Pat Nurse experienced the shabby man with the bag of dodgy baccy and wondered if he would have any compunction about selling to children.

No. he would have no compunction at all because man with a bag is an amateur. He'll be caught and prosecuted and his little operation will be held up as 'proof that smuggling doesn't pay'.

Shabby man with a bag is to be avoided at all costs. As Pat says, if he is selling way below any realistic EU price, then he is selling dodgy crap. You might as well run a strimmer over your carpet and smoke that. Any baccy-man who sells to children must also be avoided because he is also selling dodgy crap, or is at least very likely to be caught and to hand over his customer list. Ethics? Well, not really. More a case of reality. Remember, I've spent time in that twilight zone so pay attention here. It was thirty years ago but some rules don't change.

No serious dealer of anything illicit ever sells anything to children. No serious dealer will ever approach you and offer anything. It has nothing at all to do with ethics. Nothing.

If you're living in dodgy land, the one thing you must never, ever do is draw attention to yourself. You do not approach strangers who might a) be plain clothes police or b) might be ASH drones who will call the police. You also stay well away from children because child logic when caught is 'I can blame the adult'.

Those who are caught are the idiots trying their hand. The seriously dodgy people rely on regular customers and referrals. And don't think you're going out as an antismoker to 'sort them out'. When I say seriously dodgy, I mean people Darth Vader would cross the street to avoid.

They are on the increase, antismokers, and guess what? You are driving their business through the roof.

Well done there. Yes, you've achieved wonderful things, you really have. You antismokers have boosted crime to unprecedented levels and I would really, no really, love to watch you take on one of these groups with your fake coughs and hand waving.

I do like a bit of street theatre.

3 comments:

David Davis said...

I'm surprised that nobody has commented on the impeccable logic of this post. Perhap Legiron is quite mistaken here? But I doubt it.

Anonymous said...

“to live outside the law you must be honest” - Bob Dylan

sir paypaul stephenson - serial non-sequitur ciggy-shotter said...

the fact that dodgy-bag-man is an amateur does not necessarily imply that he has no morals and would sell to children - and even seriously dodgy-bag-man, dodgy-land realities aside, may indeed have morals. it's also conceivable that dodgy-bag man's too-cheap-to-be-true fags could be of good quality, but of uncertain provenance ie hot. obviously, obsessive guilt-ridden law-addicted law-breakers like pat nurse would have no comprehension of the reality of living morally without the law - they have abjugated individual responsibility and allowed their consciences to be integrally subjugated by the law, and cannot therefore think independently.

similarly, strauss-kahn's chambermaid victim may have a dodgy record, and may have lied - yet it does not necessarily follow that she was not raped, although, this aside, the new york attorney general's haste to prosecute strauss-kahn without assertaining the accuser's viability as a witness does suggest a cia plot to subvert the french presidential election in favour of obama's buddy, nicolas sarkozy. however, all is not lost, a white middle-class writer, with an impeccable record and a socialist mum, has now come forward to ensure that justice is done, retrospectively and poetically - her only character-flaw being her complete failure to bring a prosecution against the monster-monetarian at the time when the alleged-assault originally occurred (and thereby accomplishing the feat of scuppering strauss-kahn's chances of becoming head of international monetary fun before he'd even got his campaign-machine up and running.

of course, a more topical question, on these shores, is as to whether news international, and its slimy underworld mob of burglars, blaggers and hackers, is the privatized arm of the british police force, or whether, alternatively, the british police force is the private reporting-agency of news international - nevertheless, whatever the case, i would calculate the probability of either above-mentioned insecure-institution-of-organized-corruption employing anyone self-disciplined enough to judge between legal and illegal...or, god forbid, employing anyone with sufficient self-awareness to differentiate between moral and immoral...to be...well errr...almost next to negligible...

...but, if in any doubt, i daresay guido fawkes would give you odds on these matters.

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