Monday 28 February 2011

Smoked baby on a bed of rice.

'Smokers are all evil swines who like nothing more than to blow fumes into babies' faces or to pin down an asthmatic, force him to puff a cigar and laugh at his attempts to breathe'. So believe the smokophobes, encouraged by ASH and the likes of Nick 'What? Is it me? What?' Clegg. Smokers are used to the nonsensical ramblings of the Dreadful Arnott and her zombie army now. We know we are dealing with the terminally stupid and the astoundingly guillible and some of us have turned that into a weapon.

I now write 'Handled by Smokers' on all paper money and add a little 'LI' in one corner in case any readers find one. One day, there might be a prize. No promises. It's not so big as to be noticeable when I hand it over, but big enough to be noticed by anyone checking their pocket cash. This little game is designed to scare only those who are so utterly mindless as to believe in third-hand smoke. I dream of the day one of these morons discovers they have given such a note to their child as pocket money, or as a birthday present.

There is no real danger, in fact there is likely to be more cocaine on any given note than detectable nicotine, but they believe in this crap so let them wallow in it. As the opening of this post points out, they genuinely believe we are evil, so let's show them what evil really means.

Hey Smokophobes. I blow smoke on all my money and I pay cash everywhere. Think of that next time you accept change.

Frank Davies provides data to show how nicotine boosts concentration and other brain tasks. Not at all surprising since it's a vitamin B3 precursor and vit B3, nicotinamide, is an absolutely essential component of the metabolism of every living cell on the planet. Yes, smokophobes, you are all full of it. Who'd have thought?

Real Street takes this one logical step further. If dumbing down is what the government intend (and all indications are that they want the whole population almost as dim as an MP, if that's possible) then something that fires up the brain cells, whether nicotine, caffeine or anything else, must be removed. This might be tinfoil hattery but it does, perfectly logically, explain the current Righteous panic over Electrofag. There is nothing dangerous in Electrofag at all, but it delivers nicotine. Likewise Snus and all the other smokeless tobacco products. There's no smoke, just nicotine, and nicotine is no more dangerous than caffeine. The only way either is dangerous is if you don't want people thinking too fast.

The template is the same as the one used down the ages by all forms of Righteous. Make it a sin. Tell people that the practitioners of this sin are in league with Satan, that they will consign their souls to Hell and fry their children in butter with a little garlic, tarragon and basil and serve them up on a bed of turmeric-laced rice sprinkled with thyme and parsley. Other smokers might prefer a curry. But all this talk is making me hungry, and my jar of baby eyes in aspic is almost empty.

The point is, it's always the same. Pol Pot set up anyone with an education as 'above the common man' and the common man turned them all in for execution. Hitler managed to turn his population against Jews, gays, the disabled, the smokers, and even the Jehovah's Witnesses. Okay, I know the Witnesses annoy some folk but let's be honest, is there a more harmless group of people on the planet? Hitler managed to persuade his people to murder a group whose most irritating habit was to 'talk about Jesus' in a breathy voice. Third hand Bible study?

The Inquisition focused on Jews and Muslims but also on anyone who they could accuse of being a Jew pretending to be a Catholic. Oh, you weren't safe by being on their side, oh no. You still aren't, smokophobe. If you fail that cotinine test then you are a smoker even if you have never even seen someone smoke.

Tip for smokophobes concerned about a cotinine test - eat loads of tomatoes and aubergines. They soak up any third, fourth or fiftieth hand smoke you might have come in contact with and extract it from your body. Eat nothing else for a week before your test and I guarantee your result will be absolutely predictable.

Oh, and if you're Jewish, you might as well smoke and drink as much as you like. The socialists include you folk in every pogrom anyway, you might as well have all the fun you can.

The same technique is working for drinkers. Not drunks. Drinkers. Oh, you are told it's for the city-centre shirtless and mindless with conversational abilities that barely extend beyond 'Yeah?' but really, you know they will not be affected. When they throw bollards around, when they smash windows, when they pee in bus stops, when they brawl like rats on crack, they are already breaking laws. The police arrest them and the courts send them out to do it again. They are not punished now and will not be punished by new laws. They will continue as before.

The new laws are for you. Yes, you who likes a glass of wine with your meal. You who has a sherry at teatime. You who has that one small whisky before retiring. You who has a stiff brandy to recover from a shock. You who sips that one beer, just to wind down for the day. The new rules are for you.

Please do try to grasp this, smokophobes, drinkophobes, fatophobes, drones. When you make new laws, they can only possibly affect the law-abiding because the criminals already ignore all laws. Did you people learn nothing from gun bans and knife bans and heroin bans and all the rest of it? The law-abiding can't have those things. The criminals don't give a bijou bottle containing five MP brains with room to spare for any laws, past, present or future. That is why they are criminals. Pass all the laws you like, they are as effective as telling the rain to go back up.

Okay, let's cut the politicians some slack here. My parents always said it was cruel to mock the afflicted, and everyone knows you can't possibly get into the house of commons unless your IQ score has been comprehensively beaten by pumice. These drooling halfwits just do what the likes of ASH or the Shenkerites or the British Meddling Association order them to do, because they are so utterly useless they can find no other employment than in the YOP scheme that is modern British politics. The politicians have no understanding of the actual application of the laws they, our elected 'representatives', enact on behalf on the unelected fascists who really might as well be in charge anyway. No, our Minimal Primates just ook and eek on those green benches and the diktats of the vicious and the evil pass without recourse to any mythical 'will of the people'.

The will of the people comes later. Once the discrimination is legally acceptable, the people delight in using it to smash that neighbour who dares to be Not Like Them.

In any way. Any way at all. They will denounce the heretic as they have always done, although nowadays there are a whole host of Inquisitions to choose from. The Righteous can accuse us of heresy for anything from putting babies on roasting spits to having the wrong shape of car. They revel in it. Those Inquisition torturers, those Auschwitz guards, those Guantanamo interrogators, they didn't come from another planet. They were human. So were those they tormented, but the interrogators didn't see that.

Did you know that modern police are taught not to see their targets as human? I just throw that snippet in for the sake of interest. It's no joke, I heard it from a new recruit going through training. The police are trained to see us in the same way that Mengele saw those Jewish twins. They, and their trainers, see no problem with that.

It's not just the police. Many drones are able to be similarly programmed. Say you're a smoker and you might as well be Lex Luthor. Say you're a drinker and you might as well be George Best. 'Their' taxes are paying for you (your taxes don't count). Be a little overweight and you are a scrounger and a drain on the Righteous taxes.

Look at this guy. Fat as you can get without being reclassified as 'Homo Beachballensis' and he takes no benefits. He does not bleat 'victim'. He does not whine 'Someone else should fix this'.

He worked out how to make money by being the fattest contortionist in the world. Not my cup of tea, but he entertains, people pay, he pays tax, he claims no benefit and does not cry 'Disabled!'

Yet look at the comments.

How revolting. Who on earth would want to watch that (and I didn't even get to the video)?
- Reubenene, Somewhere In The World,

OK ..so we have found the first human Butter Ball..still makes me feel sick..
- Felix, East UK, 27/2/2011 06:50

Saturday 26 February 2011

Dai and the Gadfly.

Jimmy Gadfly, newly renamed dictator of Libya, welcomes Dai Cameroid into his home - a chip-fat and nicotine stained tent on the outskits of New Gorbals, Tripoli.

Dai taps his nose. "You ain't seen me, right?"

"Right. No worries, Jimmy, I just want a bit of your advice, innit like?" Gadfly cracks open a Tennent's and sits down.

"Not Jimmy. My name is David. We're not all called Jimmy in Airstrip One, I mean the UK, you know."

"Right, Jimmy. I mean, Davey. It's all because of the Magwai, you know, that lumpy bloke you sent back to us. He picked up an accent in that Scottish prison and it's spreading like a bleeding fungus all over this place. I can't even get a bowl of hummous now without five tons of bloody salt in it and there isn't a lamb cutlet in the country that isn't dipped in batter and deep fried in lard. What the hell did you people do to him?"

"Not us, I can assure you." Dai put aside his can of Tennent's, aware that he would have to down it before he left as a mark of respect for his host even though it was, well, a bit common. "The Scots are a strange lot. Their culture is like a virus which is why even the Romans tried to keep them out. They are so strange that hardly any of them vote for me, can you believe it?"

"Aye, I mean nah, Davey boy. Anyway, I called you in here for a bit of a chinwag, ye ken? See me? See my people? They're all bastards, so they are. They want to stop listening to me and they're getting all uppity about it. So how do you do it? How do you keep all those British so docile? Something in the water, is it?"

Dai laughed. "That would never work, especially on the Scots. They never drink any unless it's been fermented. No, we did it by a series of little steps. Things the stupid cattle never even noticed."

"Such as?" Gadfly took out a notebook and pen.

Dai leaned forward. "Right. First you have to disarm them. You can't do it yourself or they'll realise their government is controlling them. So you persuade their family, friends and neighbours to turn them in and pressure them into handing over all their weapons."

"That actually works?" Gadfly scribbled furiously in his book.

"It's worked for us for a very long time. Ours are down to tweezers and dressmaking pins and we won't let them take even those on planes."

"Damn, that's pure dead brilliant, is that." Gadfly underlined his last writings. "Go on. What's next?"

"Okay. Anyone who objects to any directive is mad or an addict. You can make up any addiction you like and if you set up a charity to drum it in, they'll fall for it. The important part is not to have anyone intelligent in that charity in case they notice it's all nonsense, but as long as the message gets pumped out daily, the daft little sods will believe every word."

"Mad or an addict. Man, I knew you were worth the money. Here, have a glass of Bells."

"Um... thanks." Dai accepted the glass, waited until Gadfly was engrossed in his writing and poured it into a potted palm.

"Right, so it doesn't matter what addiction you made up, they'll just believe it?" Gadfly sat, pen poised.

"Not at all. We've used everything from hallucinogenic drugs to coffee and even dairy products. They're scared of their own shadows in my country now." Beside Dai, the potted palm belched.

"Coffee, milk, drugs. Fantastic. Any more?"

"Well, if you really want them scared and begging for your protection, I find Islamic - no offense, mind - militants are a good bet. " Dai shifted away from the palm which had become rather attentive. "We blame just about everything on Osama bin Laden these days. The suckers lap it all up like cats in a creamery. It's really easy."

"Brilliant. We'll have these tubes back in line in no time with all this. Thanks, Davey. How about some porridge before you go? Oh wait, you haven't drunk your can. Go on, man, take a drink."

"Right. Of course. When in Rome, eh?" Dai popped the can and drank as much as he could, spilling most of it over himself in the tradition of his host. The palm made indecipherable threatening noises behind him.

"Rome, Davey boy? We don't mention that place here."

"Of course, I was forgetting. My apologies, General Gadfly." Dai performed a low and disgustingly obsequious bow.

Gadfly blushed. "Only Colonel, so far, but thanks."

Dai took one step towards the door and stopped. "Oh, I almost forgot. We have a special on bullets at the moment. Ten percent discount for bulk orders. If you know anyone who might be interested..."

"Sure, Davey. Just let me take down that web shop address and discount code. Aye, I'll pass it on, just in case anyone's interested. "

"Right, well, I'd better go. I'll see you in London soon?"

"Maybe. I have a house there. I've been thinking of visiting. See you later, pal, and good luck."

----

Next day, Dai reads the papers and has to call in his official tax-funded forehead-slapper (when you have a forehead like that, you don't have the time to slap it all yourself).

"No, Gadfly, you're supposed to do it over years, not minutes."

Oh well. At least the bullet orders went through.

Now if only he could stop that palm tree following him around...

Friday 25 February 2011

The vaccine against clean.

My mother likes to tell the tale of the time my brother and I arrived home from a day's play and sent the dogs in first. We had been to the local pond, and the dogs were completely covered in stinking mud.

We sent them in first to get our mother's rage spent, before we went in. There was a sound and logical reason for this.

We were dirtier than the dogs. Oh, she laughs about it now, but she wasn't laughing at the time. It was worse than the time we came home with mice in a cereal box or with lizards in a jar. If she ever reads this - I know those lizards didn't escape on their own in the night. The jar was in the kitchen and if those lizards had really escaped on their own, she would not have been so calm the next morning. What do you mean, hold a grudge? It was only just over forty years ago. I don't forget so easily, you know.

Contuinued exposure to filthy things gave us pretty robust immune systems. At school, it was notable that those kids who lived in houses the likes of me weren't allowed inside, those pristine showhouses with not a speck of dust to be found, were always the first kids to catch whatever was going around.

We scruffy urchins could catch things too, but it took repeated exposure before we did. The super-clean kids fell as soon as the latest microscopic nasty appeared. Fortunately there weren't too many of those disease-spreading clean kids around.

It's different now. There are still scruffy urchins with well-exercised immune systems but the clean kids are on the rise. They have parents who have been terrified with tales of germs, with stories of Gary Glitter's gang lurking behind every bush, and now with the horror of the smoker who might approach their child and make them die. These children's white blood cells are playing cards and getting drunk every night while watching re-runs of 'I'm a cerebrum, get me out of here' and some are turning delinquent through boredom. That's when autoimmune diseases get under way.

It's not really the parents who are to blame. It's not their fault they are stupid and gullible enough to believe all the nonsense they hear. They've had it continuously beaten into their eyes and ears for nearly fifteen years. So they protect their offspring - as parents are biologically programmed to do - from the threats they perceive in their environment.

These parents have been indoctrinated to believe that every bit of soil is teeming with evil bacteria, that daylight will make their child's skin bubble and burst, that every male who even glances in their direction has designs on the child's unformed parts, that every drinker will beat the child to a bloody pulp, that every smoker has Devil Breath which can make their child's lungs instantly lumpy. Actually that last one is a good one, I'll have to remember that next time I'm smoking at a bus stop.

They believe that their child can catch obesity from fat people and they believe that if the child ever uses the word 'black' he is a future leader of the BNP and must be re-educated. They believe that their child can be defined as a potential criminal at age 3 and must be scourged of Satan's influence every day so they grow up to be pious members of the New Puritan World.

I'm not joking. There are parents out there who nodded their heads all through that list. They really believe it all.

It is not about real risks. It is all about perceived risks. Parents have been convinced of the reality of these dangers while other, possibly much greater, dangers have been ignored or glossed over.

So these same parents will see no harm in the chemical mix contained in air fresheners. They perceive no risk in medication, even where the companies producing that medication list the possible side-effects of the drug. They do not consider the very low humidity of their home heating systems a problem. They see no danger in driving the child through slow, heavy traffic unless there is a smoker with half a gram of burning leaf within five miles.

They believe that they must restrict the food intake of a fast-growing child so they don't become obese. They have lost all understanding of puppy-fat, which generally disappears after age 11 so they accept all those studies on childhood obesity that mysteriously never progress beyond age 11. They believe that they must buy vitamin D supplements to prevent their child developing rickets while ignoring the free vitamin D contained in a decent diet and sunshine.

Now they will pay for a vaccine that will deliberately expose their children to a small proportion of the range of bacteria we used to expose ourselves to for free. We enjoyed it, too. Playing in the dirt and the grime built up our immune systems, kept us busy and out of harm's way, gave us regular exercise and tired us out so we'd sleep when told to. It didn't cost a penny.

Paedos? They were around. We knew who the dodgy characters were and we weren't afraid of infringing their human rights by pointing them out to any new kids. Fat kids? There were a few, yes, but they were not objects of fear. They were just kids who were a bit larger than the rest of us. Sunlight? If it started to hurt, we put a shirt on or went inside. Smoke? Around half the adults we knew were smokers. We'd build bonfires that could out-smoke a whole platoon of them and not one of us keeled over from third hand anything.

Modern parenting is producing a generation of disease-prone weaklings. It's not the parents' fault entirely, although their rampant gullibility must be held up as a contributory factor. The fault lies in many years of indoctrination backed up by the threat that if they don't follow instructions, their child will be stolen from them and enfeebled elsewhere.

Why? It makes no sense to produce a weak population. Well, it does from a certain viewpoint. If you develop a cure for a disease, it's not profitable unless lots of people get the disease. You want to sell your rickets cure? Asthma? Flu? Any disease you like. First you need to generate a demand. If you think long-term profits, what you need now are loads of kids prone to all kinds of ailments. You need to have a population with immune systems so weak they cannot survive without your drugs. Better yet, make them so scared of any possible risk that they'll pay you for a prophylactic that could just as well be sugar water, because the risk isn't even real. Now we're talking serious profits.

I know, I know, tinfoil hattery. But tell me another logical reason to produce a generation scared of everything that made their grandparents strong and healthy. Then tell me the Pharmers give a pickled rat's pancreas about the health of anyone or anything other than their bank balances.

Maybe I'm wrong. I hope so. Still, from where I'm standing, you people aren't bringing up children.

You're bringing up a whole dairy herd for the Pharmers to milk.

If you really pay to inoculate your kids with dirt, then you'll know for sure you've been had.

Thursday 24 February 2011

It'll never happen here.

(Blogger's random despaminator has been busy again. If you were missing a comment, it was probably one of those I've just freed).


Dai Cameroid is touring the troubled countries of the world to check that their installed despots have enough bullets to be going on with. He is telling them that tyranny breeds extremism. Well, perhaps he should check that mirror once again.

The smokophobes find it amusing to justify and encourage violence directed at smokers. This time it's smokers hitting themselves but hey, if they can hit themselves, it's but a tiny step to make it legal for everyone to hit them. It's already legal to deny smokers employment, housing or medical treatment. Soon there will be camps. You want extremism, Davy boy? We know we are funding criminals and possibly terrorists with our illegally-bought tobacco and we are delighted to do it. It's you or us now. We just have to hope the terrorists get you before you get us.

Here's another copy of that video (ta for Email tip). This time, observe the comments. This, to them, is a Good Idea. 'Those people do something that other people don't like them doing so it's fine to use violence to make the point'. It will make smokers quit. It does not occur to these pompous, pious drones that all this will do is make smokers more angry.

We smokers can't fight back ourselves. All weaponry of any kind is being gradually taken from us. A few days ago, a man defended his home against a violent criminal using an airgun. Inside his own house, faced with an iron-bar-weilding thug, he shot two little pellets at the man. They did no real harm.

The criminal reported him to the police for using an airgun in self-defence. He wasn't charged but his gun has been taken 'for evidence'. Good luck getting that back. This was not adequate to advance the 'ban airguns' agenda, but as if by magic, mere days later, this happened. Coincidence? As expected, in the comments...

Is there really any valid reason thesedays for people to even have air rifles?

Ask that man faced with the maniac in his own home if he would rather have been armed with a feather duster. Oh, the airgun ban will come. Prepare to defend your home with a sink plunger in one hand, a whisk in the other and your best impression of a Dalek voice. Don't worry, Davy, when the thugs break in, rape the children and murder the parents, nobody will even think that it might have been a good idea not to have banned everything. Don't worry about fostering extremism at home. Worry about those extremist pals of yours who are losing power now.

Still, why concern ourselves with all that? We can relax with a spot of fishing - ah, no, we can't. Anglers are spreading an evil monster by some biologically impossible means so angling will be gone soon too. How about a nice dinner? No meat, it's bad for you. No wine with that meal, it's been priced out of harm's way unless you're a criminal willing to steal to pay for it.

What? You thought minimum pricing was to cut down on the alkies? Heroin is illegal and devilishly expensive. How do its users afford it? By stealing from you. Now there is to be another set of rabid thieves ready to steal to fund their high-priced habits. You'll need to defend your home - did I mention you aren't allowed to have any weapons? No barbed wire or broken bottles or trip wires or anything sharp in the garden in case they cut themselves. You'll have to take the glass out of your windows too in case the poor pampered criminals hurt themselves breaking in.

Get that plunger and whisk and start practicing the voice but be careful what you say. If you hurt the criminal's feelings, he'll sue. Feeling safe in your home yet?

Take your mind off it all. Go out and have a flutter on the horses or the bingo. While you still can.

So you can't smoke or drink or gamble or eat red meat or go fishing or take pot shots at tins with an airgun. You can't have salt or chips or any fatty foods. You can't have butter and the strange fats in syntho-butters are bad for you too. If you watch too much TV you'll get a heart attack. If you try to boost your fitness by cycling you'll get a heart attack. Yes, cycling in traffic now tops the heart attack list of causes. It's crowded at the top of that list, with the no. 1 spot occupied by smoking, drinking, being overweight, being underweight, eating salt, thinking about otters, and holding a sink plunger and a whisk while shouting 'exterminate'. That's equality in action - when it comes to heart attack causes, they are all No. 1.

Ah, poor Davy believes that all the riots are caused by poor people and that the solution is bullets. In Bahrain, the protestors weren't poor. In most of the other countries, the protestors weren't poor either. It wasn't money they wanted - and Davy, it's long past time you and your government realised that money is not the cause and effect of all things - it was freedom from petty rules and stupid laws and restrictive government control.

I have a decade and a half until retirement unless the government keeps on moving retirement age away from me, as I suspect they will. I won't retire. I will do what I do until I die. Which, considering my refusal to comply with limits on drinking or smoking or anything else, and my complete indifference to five-a-day and all the rest of the made-up nonsense, will probably be about the age of 150. Meanwhile the terrified masses will die of nothing at all, before they retire.

It's not looking good. Old people are a drain on the economy - yes, they are a drain on the same economy they have spent a lifetime supporting and paying into. We are exhorted to live long and healthy and exceptionally dull and uninteresting lives but if we do, they'll hate us anyway. Smoke, drink, stuff down those salted T-bones fried in butter. You might as well be hated by your government now because there is no escape. Doing as you are told merely postpones the hate to an age where you can't fight back. An age where the NHS regard you as 'in the way'. Where goverment officials whisper of the delights of voluntary euthanasia, when your offspring regard you as a drain on their tax money and urge you to do the decent thing and get on that ice floe.

The doublethink is breathtaking. The young insist that pensioners are a drain on their current tax payments, therefore admitting that the whole system is a Ponzi scheme and that the money those pensioners paid in is already gone. Yet the young continue to pay those taxes, knowing that there will be nothing for them in their own old age and that they will be reliant on the new young, who will hate them just the same. Surely, somewhere, one of these indoctrinated drones can make the connection?

Oh, what am I saying? I have convinced them of ludicrous things myself and watched them absorb it all. Next time I meet one I'll ask if they have pets, and warn them of scratches from cats that might have stepped in tobacco ash or licks from dogs that might have stuck their noses into ashtrays. Make a connection? This lot? Look at those posting boxes on sale. See the instructions? There are many people who actually need those to form a box shape from a folded flat card. Yes, they are that stupid.

I am expected to support the economy while knowing full well that the economy will regard me as an inconvenience when I get old, and will do its best to kill me. I am supposed to 'save the NHS money' by watching what I smoke, eat and drink so I can get old enough for the NHS to regard me as a nuisance and do its best to kill me.

No.

You are worried about extremism, Davy? You have a population of drooling morons who will believe whatever they are told. They believe in the utter absurdity of third hand smoke. I have met those who think salt is a poison, that all fat is evil in whatever form and I have let them continue to believe it. Just think of me as Darwin's little helper.

I repeat, Davy, you have a population who will believe anything. Even the utter dross put out by your 'advisors' who, let's be brutally honest here, could not convince a monkey to climb a tree.

Imagine what will happen if someone with genuine convincing abilities were to get a hold of them, Davy. Imagine if they heard something that made actual sense.

While you're out shoring up your despot pals with arms and bullets, you might be advised to save a few. You're likely to need them.

But hey, I'm just a voter. You're not going to listen to me.

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Smoking Evolution.

I have failed to find my old pipes so I have three nice new pipes on the way, ordered from here. Unfortunately they don't sell tobacco and the local supermarkets' range of pipe tobacco is derisory so a visit to the Big City might be necessary. It's been many years since I smoked a pipe and I was delighted to find that the ones I remember are now very cheap. Modern ones use filters. I remember the metal tar-catchers which needed regular cleaning but otherwise lasted as long as the pipe itself. No replaceable filters, no overheads. I bought some old-style ones.

The site is a good source of rolling papers and filters too. Normally I use the local cheap-shops which are not licenced to sell tobacco, but need no licence for papers and filters. That way, buying the papers and filters without the tobacco arouses no suspicion at all.

It has occurred to me that shredding tobacco into roll-up standard could be difficult. Instead I will work on making cigars and pipe tobacco. If I can get some shredded for roll-ups, fine, but pipe and cigars are likely to be the future.

I have considered the EU cheap-baccy trips but that's more trouble than I care to bother with. Especially after reading how HMRC terrorise British citizens while ignoring guns, drugs, terrorists and illegal immigrants. The harassment of anyone coming back from abroad is their sole reason for existence, it seems. I have a feeling it will be easy for any terrorist to get a radioactive bomb into the country as long as none of their operatives smoke.

A common thread among those tales of HMRC thuggery and theft seems to be the targeting of anyone British while ignoring anyone of any other nationality. So anyone from Spain, France or anywhere else who is visiting the UK and fancies making a few quid, fill your cases with tobacco. HMRC don't care about you, so you can resell the stuff well below UK prices and make a good profit.

A possible future scenario would be HMRC ripping apart every UK-registered car and strip-searching every UK citizen on their return to this country and finding nothing. Those travellers will be stocked up with smokes the moment they leave Customs, courtesy of Hans and Pedro and every other non-UK national who was on the ferry with them. We get cheap smokes, the tourists get extra holiday cash, everyone's a winner.

It's only a matter of time.

In fact, I rather suspect that's how Man with a Van gets his imported stock into the country. While HMRC are busy playing schoolyard thug with British citizens, those they ignore are carrying huge amounts of baccy right past them. I don't know for sure because I haven't pried. I'm not the prying kind.

It will take at leat a year for my own tobacco supply to be ready to smoke but once it begins, I am off-grid as far as smoking goes. I won't even be paying the EU taxes that the imported baccy has paid. I'll need to bag some plants each year for new seed, or maybe order some different varieties once in a while but as long as the plants keep growing I'll never pay for tobacco again. Anywhere.

The antismokers will scream about this, not because of the smoking, but because of the lost tax, and because they can't control my smoking if they can't control my own supply. It's all about the money and the control. Nothing to do with health at all. Hell, I could even extract nicotine for Electrofags if they ban those too. The flavouring might be hard to make, but there is no such thing as an insurmountable problem.

I've grown ornamental Nicotiana before. It does reasonably well here. If the neighbours ask, it's an ornamental plant. Nobody is going to bat an eyelid at the sight of me removing a few yellowing leaves. Unlike cannabis, it's not an easily recognisable plant at all. Just a leafy thing with a flower on the top. And since I won't be selling any, there's nothing to trace. Besides, once I've given away excess seedlings to unsuspecting anti-smokers...

What can they do? It's my religion now and will be stated as such on the census. Any antismoker objecting will be stirring up religious hatred. Although as ManWiddicombe has discovered, any future census is likely to make us choose from a set of State-approved religions. And, from reading that pronouncement, it is clear that paganism will not be one of those religions. Apparently identifying yourself as a 'witch' is no more valid than calling yourself 'jedi'. One of those religions is a Hollywood invention, the other predates most other religions by an extraordinarily long time. Neither will be State approved in the future.

Nor, I suspect, will 'Smoker'. But then what the hell, we are not State approved now. It's not as if we're going to lose status. HMRC can steal from us with impunity, the NHS can deny us treatment we've already paid for and every public and private venue in the land can exclude us. Employers can legally refuse to employ us, councils can take our council tax and use it to employ the snide and the worthless to harass us. What can we possibly have left to lose?

Refusing to fill in the census will get you a visit from the Census Response Enforcement Team Involving National Security and continuing to refuse will get you fined. You'll still be forced to fill it in anyway. I wonder, is it a legitimate defence to state that if the officials say you didn't fill in the census, then how could they have known where you live? If you lie on the form and they say they know you lied, then they must already have known the real answer so why did they ask the question? Many circular arguments await this census.

Next week it will be March. Still very cold here but I can start seedlings in the house first, then move them to the greenhouse when the weather improves, then the garden when the frosts have finally stopped, about May. I'm hoping for a warm, sunny summer for a change rather than another globally-warmed one like the last few.

Sure, a warm and dry summer will only fuel the Climatologists (because weather is climate when it suits them) but hey, I won't mind.

I'll just have a smoke and relax.


Update: I am impressed. I placed the order late Monday night, it dispatched Tuesday and arrived Wednesday. So I'm all piped up. All I need now is a supplier who extends beyond Condor and St. Bruno. I have had some tipoffs in that regard - thanks!

All Hail the Rolled God.

Yeah, and my religion lets me have gin and vodka too.
(Image donated by Email)

Census time approaches. It's all based, like a ten-year version of the MOT, on conditions on the day. So, when it comes to employment, I might be employed as a scientist on that day. Or maybe I will be engaged in writing on that day. Maybe I will be 'idle rich' or 'idle poor' depending on what's in my bank account at the time.

Maybe I will be a gardener or a ghosthunter or a potential political candidate or a washing machine repairer or a shelf builder or a gravel raker or a floral display installer or a tobacco industry shill or an independent virginity assessor or... anything.

That's the great part about being self-employed. No defined job description and no employer. On that one day, on Census Day, I could be anything. It all depends on what I'm doing on the day. No other day matters, just that one. Hey, I don't make the rules but you can be sure I'm going to play with them. False information? If I put anything other than what I am doing on that day, that would be false. If I put what I am doing on that day, it's true. It's what I am, for that day.

How many bedrooms? A bedroom is a room with a bed in it. Just because it's upstairs does not make it a bedroom. I have an attic, and that's not an overbedroom (apart from the bit that is, in fact, over the bed).

So if all the beds are in one room for the day, there is only one bedroom on that day.

This is going to be fun. All the answers I give on that form will be perfectly true - for that day.

There is going to be a religion question. I am not going to put 'Jedi' even though it's the fastest growing religion in the country. I considered putting 'Sith' and calling myself 'Darth Leg-iron' but there are 390,127 Jedis looking for Darth someone so they can kick the crap out of him. It's not a good idea to be that someone at the moment, not until the Death Star is finished anyway, and I must remember to put a mesh over that vent this time. Besides, the Darth hat looks so dated now.

I can't remember what I put last time. It might have been 'Nun' which would cause a bit of head scratching. I remember going through all the options but can't remember what I decided on. Whatever it was, I was probably the only one.

Options this time have included 'Worshipper of the Crocus God', or maybe 'Santaist', which involves dressing in red, coming out at night, drinking, smoking, putting on weight and sneaking into small children's bedrooms with a sack while they sleep. Ho ho ho.

Mr. A. has the perfect solution. My religion will be 'Smoker'. Well Rastafarians get away with it. Smoking cannabis is part of that religion. Smoking tobacco will be all of mine.

Smokers are about 20% of 60 million people. That's 12 million. We can whup some Jedi ass this time round even if only 10% of us put 'smoker' as our religion. Two million muslims? Pah. We can wipe them out with one simultaneous exhalation of second hand smoke.

Go on. You know if you put 'Christian' they're just going to persecute you anyway so why not go the whole hog and put 'Smoker'? You can believe in any god and be a Smoker. You can be an atheist and be a Smoker. We exclude nobody. We are the most inclusive religion there is. Believe what you want, worship who you want any way you want. We don't prescribe nor do we proscribe. You can even join if you don't smoke as long as you don't mind the rest of us doing it.

All it needs is a name. Smokotology? Smokianity? Smokism?

Ah, we can work all that out later. After a smoke. Then, everything ASH says or does, every NHS pronouncement and every council edict will be 'inciting religious hatred'. Well, it works for every other religion (except Christianity) and there are more of us than them.

If every smoker did this, someone somewhere might finally sit up and realise that what ASH has been telling them hasn't been entirely (or remotely) true.

It has to be worth a try.

Monday 21 February 2011

Things that grow.

There are signs of little crocus tips poking through what's left of the lawn. Most of the shape seems to be coming up. I hope it turns out complete. I won't be invoking anything with this flower pentacle in case the Pansy Demon shows up. Think Julian Clary but with less restraint.

I had an interesting conversation yesterday. I mentioned growing my own tobacco. 'Oh,' he said, 'my grandfather always grew his own.' So I have some hints on a curing method that involves rolling the leaves into something that looks like a chrysalis and then adding a little bit of rum before hanging them up for a while. Smoky booze, or maybe boozy smokes. I have to get the details for this one.

Apparently his father remembers how it was done.

Sunday 20 February 2011

The ultimate reality game.

Clicking should result in expandification.

I am not an animal lover. Those rumours are untrue. Past pets have extended to a hamster called LHB (little hairy bastard) who hated me, a budgie who never bothered to fly and had a seed-gut that hung over the perch, and various forms of fish. The budgie was vicious too. He would look away when you poked your finger into his cage until you were well enough in that he could get a grip on the side of your nail with his beak. He never missed. Leave the cage open and he'd climb out and sit on top of it and hurl abuse in budgie-speak. He went back inside when he was ready.

No cats or dogs, even though my parents always had one or the other and sometimes both. Bigger pets need a lot of attention and exercise and I have no time for one and no inclination for the other.

None of my pets ever died of passive smoking. Last winter, my entire pondfull of fish died of climate change but not one pet has ever coughed, wheezed, or lived a shortened life. The nasty little swines I take in always exceed advertised lifespans. From my experience, climate change has killed more pets than smoking.

Many years ago, I read about an Aberdeen woman whose budgie allegedly died of passive smoking. The budgie was eight years old, and she was 93. Eight years is a good age for a budgie, and that assumes she owned it from hatching so her assessment of its age was accurate. Besides, Health and Safety should demand that every smoker keeps a canary. If the bird keels over, it's time to open a window.

I'd say 93 is a good age for a human too, never mind a smoker. How can there be so many smoking pensioners around when the medical profession tells us we'll all be dead by thirty? How come smokers' pets aren't toppling over like coal-mine canaries all the time? Could it be that it was all lies?

All forms of life, including humans, become acclimatised to their environment and adapt to fit it. Not necessarily by evolving into a new species, but through natural selection (an entirely separate thing from evolution). With natural selection, the species doesn't change, but the individuals best suited to the environment survive. Those that can't hack it die out. If you capture a whole load of budgies in the wild, some will die of panic but some will adapt to becoming pets and of those, some will become tame. It's a new environment and not all members of the species will take to it but those that do will thrive.

Inhaling smoke isn't 'natural' in that we don't actually require it to live. What happens is that continual exposure to small amounts builds up a tolerance. Overexposure will still cause damage - even a 100-a-day Capstan habit won't let you survive in a burning building. Even so, a continual low dose will let your body adapt, and those who can't survive in the presence of smoke will die. We would end up with an entirely smoke-tolerant population.

Does it sound like I'm advocating killing antismokers? Well, they have long advocated killing me so it would really only be fair. Actually, I'm not talking about smokers at all. Nor am I talking about tobacco. I am talking about smoke.

One of the smoky-drinkers has only recently switched from an open fire to central heating. In this part of the world, global warming is somewhat colder than we were led to expect. Most of those reading this remember coal fires or log fires. There is an entire generation growing up now to whom the idea of a deliberate fire within their house is terrifying. They are not normal. They are the very first generation of humanity, ever, to not have fire in their homes.

That smoke-tolerant human race is not some tobacco-company dream of the future. It is what we are right now. We have lived in the same room as fire since we learned to walk upright and expanded our vocabulary beyond 'urgh'. We are, all of us, acclimatised to a continual low level exposure to smoke. The latest generation is the first in the whole of human history to grow up knowing only metal radiators and heat that comes on before anyone is awake. The first to grow up in the tinder-dry and particulate-free atmosphere of the central heating system.

It will take the human race many generations to adapt to this new environment, assuming it gets the chance. If the oil and gas run out, what then? Modern houses don't even have chimneys. Meanwhile, those future generations will find smoke so offensive, so terrifying, that they will delight in the banning of bonfires and any source of flame. Then, when it all falls apart as it eventually must, there will be none who know how to set and light a fire and none with the courage to try. Any who make the attempt will be silenced by the offended noses of the feeble and even if they succeed, nobody will be able to tolerate being in the same room as the source of heat.

Our pets, likewise, have travelled with us through all those log and coal fires, all those smoke-filled rooms that existed even in nonsmoking homes and which might explain past tolerance of a little bit of burning leaf. It makes no real difference in a room where several kilograms of burning coal are roaring in the fireplace. Those pets, like us, have acclimatised. They are not troubled by a cigarette, their ancestors spent many hours lying in front of the fires we built in our living rooms. Do dogs and cats sprawl in front of radiators now? Somehow it doesn't seem the same.

Take away all atmospheric particulates, take away all sources of smoke, take away every speck of dust and dirt, and what happens? The immune system is left with nothing to do. Nothing to practise on. So it turns on itself and autoimmune diseases become common. Then, the isolated individual leaves their purified habitat and visits the real world - where traffic and factory exhausts vie with pollen, bacteria and viruses for their pristine bodies.

That real world is still out there and always will be. Climate will change whether we use our heating or not. There will be ice ages and there will be droughts. Bacteria will continue to develop new strains and new diseases. Viruses will change hosts. Forests will burn and grow back, deserts and seas will expand and recede. The world changes all the time.

In one generation, the human race has forgotten this. Now, a mere few degrees away from 'normal', as defined by 'in my lifetime', and they panic. Mention harmlessly minute traces of a possible carcinogen and they shriek in terror. Consider lighting the smallest of fires and they curl into a foetal ball. They can no longer adapt. Everything must stay as it is now. Everything must be kept exactly the same forever.

Well, I'm afraid Nature has other plans. Everything is going to change. Everything. Species that refuse to adapt to those changes will become extinct. It's how the world works. Humanity? The world doesn't really need us. It'll soon come up with a replacement.

This species is in its death throes. Frantically trying to keep every environment, every animal, every detail long after Nature has finished with them all. The human species believes that if it can keep the world in stasis then it will endure forever. We used to let the world change and we'd change with it. There are villages at the bottom of the sea between the UK and Europe because it was once dry land. The sea rose, we moved. No problem. We survived ice ages and hot spells, rainy times and dry, by adapting to them. No longer. Now, the human race cannot adapt. It must force its environment to stop changing.

This is, of course, impossible. The environment is going to change. No matter how many million tons of concrete we put under thousands of tons of steel windmills, no matter how many toxic lakes we create in the production of windmill magnets, no matter how much silicon we slab onto solar panels, the environment will change. Nature will do a much better job of it than the Greens, incidentally. Adapt or die. There is no other game in town.

Our pets adapted from the wild life to the tame. Many have adapted back the other way - I believe there is a population of parrots in London now and haven't there been worries about various pet rodents and even piranhas surviving and breeding here after escaping or being dumped? They didn't meekly return to their cages after finding the world outside was hard. They adapted to it.

Humans will not. The Green Dream of a pure world powered by wind and sun conveniently ignores all the ore mines, the foundries, the concrete and copper producers, the maintenance vehicles (and their roads, and the oil to run them) and all the toxic waste that results from producing Green power generators. To them, those things just don't exist. They believe they plant windmill seeds and the things just pop up and magically transmit power without the need for cables. They demand that the world stay the temperature it is now, when it has never done any such thing in the past. They cannot adapt to change so they must prevent change.

Fire is already a distant memory to the new generation. It is, to them, a cancer creator and a terror to be vanquished. They cannot make use of it when their oil runs out and their heating stops working. Adapt or die. This species has made its choice.

But they will not die of heat, as they think. They will die of cold.

Will any survive? Only those with matches and lighters...

Saturday 19 February 2011

Voting for psychopaths.

You know why I drink so much? It's the smoking ban.

Once, I would visit the pub with a friend or two and have some drinks. Sometimes I woke up without knowing how I got home, sometimes I woke up with redeye, but it was rare. There was little to no booze in the house most of the time. My self-damage was limited by chucking-out time.

Then came the ban. If I went to the pub I had to smoke outside. I paid premium prices for drink but spent half the evening out in the cold anyway, and I can be out in the cold for free. Or, I can pay lower prices for booze and stay home in the warm.

But, you see, if you spend £20-£30 on a night out you won't get damaging quantities of good quality whisky. If you spend it at home you get a whole bottle or more. There's a reason the Shenkerites followed the Dreadful Arnott into this game and not the other way around. The smoking ban was designed to make us drink at home and to excess. Then comes the 'You are drinking too much'. Well duh. Arnott set that up.

I've never felt lonely. Never experienced it, no idea why anyone considers it a problem. I've been alone a lot but that's okay with me. I realise it's not 'normal' but it's the way I am. I have a few close friends in the real world, very few, and I can see them in between periods of alone lasting weeks or months. This is not an issue for me. In another time I would have been the grumpy hermit who lived on the mountain growing hops, barley and tobacco and waving my beard menacingly at visitors. Nowadays I content myself with growling at the neighbours so they stay away.

I'm not antisocial. I speak to people but small talk is of no consequence. It gets tiring after a while. So this smoking ban and all the rest of the antismoker stuff is merely an inconvenience for me. You don't want me in your pub, club, cafe, restaurant or gaming establishment? Fine, I won't visit. Not a problem for me, I'll spend my money where it's appreciated.

For many people, loneliness is unpleasant. For some it's devastating. The smoking ban has caused misery for many people beyond anything I can envisage. All I see is rage and revenge, a game to be played in which the antismokers are of no more consequence to me than cans on a fence, but for many people, the ban has led to despair. There are some first hand accounts listed here, and those are just the ones with internet access and the courage to speak out.

But hey, there's always pets, right? Lonely people get pets and that makes it all better. I have no pets since the 2009/10 winter killed all the fish in my pond, but many people have cats and dogs and cuddly things that comfort them.

Well, those lonely smokers are to be denied that too. No pets, no friends, no grandchildren because their children are so hysterically indoctrinated they won't let a smoker near their Precious even if it's grandad. Oh, never mind that they were brought up around their father's smoking, maybe in a house with a coal fire, and grew up just fine. Their new generation is as delicate as porcelain, as precious as platinum and as strong as plasticine.

No family, nothing for the smoker in the Brave New World of the terminally offended and the feeble of heart and mind. In the evening of life, the darkness draws close so much faster now. It's a quiet and solitary darkness for so many these days, dying ignored in an NHS bed, abandoned by family and surrounded by nurses who don't speak English. Our old people die more cruelly than those cast adrift on ice floes.

This is what you have done, Clegg. This is what you have done, Cameron. This is what you have done, Lansley. This is what you have done, Salmond. This is Labour and Conservative and Lib Dem and SNP policy. The utter misery and despair of the elderly is entirely deliberate and entirely your responsibility. Do you really want to do something to improve the lives of those who voted you into office? Do you?

Then kill yourselves. You serve no useful purpose anyway. You hate people and you hate life, so why prolong it? Kill yourselves and be free. Kill yourselves and escape the dread of your own old age, shunned by all because of your vile natures. Kill yourselves now, before the real horror of your actions reaches through the fatty layers of monetary insulation you have built around yourselves and drives you insane. Kill yourselves while you have the chance. Kill yourselves before we do it for you, because we won't be quick about it.

There is no redemption for you. There is no second chance. You had the option to listen and you refused. That time has passed. Now you are the murderers of society, the harbingers of despair, the impalers of interaction, the destroyers of life. Can you turn back? You will not even try. So kill yourselves and set yourselves, and us, free.

Cameron. Clegg. 'Special' Ed. Oily Al. None of you listen. None of you care. None of you contain one nanogram of actual humanity. You are in thrall to the Mekon Arnott and Davros Shenker and all your other pretend people who you pay with our money to give you ideas to make us more miserable, and to those who vote for you, you stick up the middle finger and say 'Swivel'.

I am campaigning at the Scottish elections. I am not standing for office. I am not campaigning for, but against.

Oh, I doubt I will change much, but I will make a dent. I don't care who wins, none of them are worth more than something accidentally stepped in anyway. I have already swayed several lifelong SNP smoking voters from Oily Al's embrace and I am targeting the heavy smoking, heavy drinking Labour areas of Aberdeen too. You all hate your electorate. It's time they learned to hate you back.

MPs of all colours, and their trained monkeys, treat me as scum, as filth, as something to be sneered at and despised. They treat me as pure evil just because I like a smoke and a drink.

Watch them whine when I act like it.

Friday 18 February 2011

Worth repeating.

From Counting Cats:

I mean the Milliband arses must be so tight that when they fart only dogs can hear it.

Absolutely brilliant!

Thursday 17 February 2011

Darth Smoker.

I had the annual visit from Coupon Man today. Every year he comes around selling a book of coupons for local businesses. Twenty quid a book but you can save far more than that if you make extensive use of the coupons.

Some years ago, I bought one. I saved more than it cost. Discounts in pubs, cafes and restaurants, some of them very impressive discounts too. I haven't bought another one for years.

Today I explained why. 'You can save money at all these places,' he said.

'I never go to those places any more,' I said.

'Well, you could have a cheap night out at this fancy restaurant...'

'They don't want my business.'

'Huh?' He probably thought I'd been banned for being raucous and uncouth. That's never happened. I was once banned in absentia from a nightclub for lending my membership card to someone else but that's it. I am not a raucous drinker.

I explained that, as a smoker, I'd have to stand outside all these places so there really was no point in me visiting them at all. I could just go there and stand outside for free, so why pay anything? Once again, I had to hear the smug denouncement of my terrible addiction with 'Oh, but you can enjoy yourself without smoking, can't you?'

Yes, I can. I enjoy gardening. I might stop for a smoke but I don't smoke while I'm doing it. I build intricate models, and can't smoke at the same time. I enjoy many other things apart from smoking but I also enjoy a smoke.

It's really very simple. If I'm on a bus, train, plane, or even in a non-smoker's car, I don't smoke. That is no hardship. I am in those machines because I am at point A, I want to be at point B and this is the easiest and quickest way to do it. I am not in the machines for pleasure, I don't actually like travelling and if someone invented teleports, I'd be delighted.

If I'm having a relaxing evening in a pub, smoking is part of that relaxation. Take away the smoking and the evening is pointless. I get on a bus to get somewhere, not to enjoy the experience. I go to a pub to enjoy myself and if I cannot, then there is no point in being there.

It has nothing to do with the price of drinks in pubs. Make the drinks free and I still won't go. There is nothing to enjoy there. I'll still have to smoke out in the rain and the cold. I don't care how much discount I can get in a place that is going to make me feel unwelcome the moment I go through the door. It's like offering me a discount membership to the Women's Institute. They don't want me in there, so saving money on the way in is futile.

I could not make Coupon Man see that 'going to the pub' is not an enjoyable way to spend an evening because I can't smoke inside and unless the pub has a beer garden, I can't drink outside. No, it is not that 'I cannot enjoy myself without smoking'. I enjoy many things which don't involve smoking. How can I be expected to enjoy seeing signs that say 'We don't want your sort in here. Spend your money then get lost'.

So I didn't buy the coupons. Coupon Man went away, no doubt convinced that I am too addicted to be of help supporting those local businesses but I no longer care at all. I can care no more than I would if any local club stated it did not want me as a member, then closed down because they wouldn't let anyone else join either. Why would I support a business that despises me and puts up signs to say so?

Sure, the pubs don't have a choice, but they did. They could have fought the ban, could do so even now. Still they insist that it is supermarket prices that are driving customers away. The supermarket prices, that had no effect on their custom at all before the ban, are now the sole reason smokers don't visit any more. The pubs didn't fight and still don't. Instead they insisted the ban be extended to private clubs. Thanks to the pubs, smokers have nowhere at all to go and we are supposed to support them now?

I haven't been in a pub for a very long time. What I have noticed though, is a decline in the numbers standing outside. It has been extremely cold this winter and last, and the last two summers have been wet. Those smokers who persisted, who were willing to pay premium prices to stand in the rain, are giving up on the pubs. Several local ones are closed on midweek evenings now. I was one of the midweek visitors. I was probably one of the first to say 'The hell with this' and start up Smoky-Drinky evenings. I am certainly not the last.

The ban has had no effect on smoking. It has killed pubs and continues to do so. There is nothing smokers can do about it because we are excluded. We cannot support the pubs. The pubs won't let us in. The pubs won't even admit that the smoking ban has affected their trade at all. How can smokers be expected to help a business that denies our very existence?

Let them die. New Smoky-Drinky 'pubs' are already taking their place. They are not open to the public and cannot be as long as the ban stands. Nevertheless, smoking is not in decline because of the cowering quislings of the pub trade (with far too few exceptions). Smoking is as vibrant as ever. The pubs are disappearing, not the smokers.

The trembling wretches who are frightened of the shadow of a smoker are to be pitied, but smokers didn't do that to them. They did it to themselves with gullibility and stupidity. I will not announce myself as a smoker until I have shaken hands with them because I will enjoy explaining that only undiluted bleach can remove the contamination from their skin. If they don't read the bottle, that's their problem.

I look forward to those adverts from companies who will not employ smokers. I won't work for them and I will not buy from them either. I have no Apple products for that reason - they have declared that they will not honour service agreements with smokers in case we poison the machine. Fine with me. I won't buy any.

Make me a pariah. Make me a criminal. Make me an Angel of Death whose mere passing will kill your firstborn. I will revel in it all and I will be what you expect of me to the best of my ability. You want to be frightened? I am happy to oblige. You want to hear how and when you will die? I will treat you to a discourse more logical and convincing than anything you have heard from any antismoking campaign, and you will die as directed.

Tell me smokers are ugly. Tell me it's the smokers who are stupid. Tell me I stink even though you won't realise that until you know I smoke. I once spent an entire day in the company of a non-smoking business associate whose son was involved in the early Electrofags. He said 'Of course, you wouldn't be interested since you don't smoke'. He had never seen me smoke. He didn't know. Apparently the stench must have been muted by the fact that he had pet dogs, or some other excuse.

Right, antismokers. You cannot tell who I am or where I am. You believe all the lies you are fed and you believe you can smell me a mile away. You cannot smell me when I am next to you. You cannot see me nor can you hear me. I will stroke your child's head and then tell you I am a smoker and I will delight in your palpitations and panic. I will hold a sweet in my hand and give it to your child and not tell you about my smoking until the child has swallowed it. You can scream and wail but it's too late. Third hand smoke is in them now. Think of the money you'll save on birthday presents.

You want callous. So I give you callous. You want subhuman. I give you subhuman. You want evil. Here it comes. You want terror. It's my middle name. I did not choose to be this way. You antismokers chose it for me. Nothing I do produces any real danger but you believe it is there and it will, in some cases literally, scare you to death. Watch me not care. Think of me as Darwin's angel, sent to remove the useless from the species.

I cannot respect the stupid. I cannot care about the shrieking harpies. I cannot empathise with the brainless. Really, antismokers, what do you expect me to feel for people who wish death on me? Send me your gullible drones. I will send them back broken. I am not interested in breaking your lies any more, it's more fun to expand on them, to take them to heights your pitiful imaginations can never reach.

I am not interested in compromise. I am not one of those smokers who says maybe we can live together. We cannot. You antismokers have proved this to me. You made me. All I ever wanted was a smoke and a pint and to be left alone. You would not allow that. Now, I am your Frankenstein and I am ready to lead you onto the ice. You believe I can kill your children with my mere presence, I am happy to oblige. You believe you will die if you touch me, I will convince you that you will die if you look at me. You think you are contaminated if I live next door, I will show you how to be frightened if I live in the next street.

Who am I? Am I your postman, your milkman, your doctor, your father or your brother? I could be anyone. I might be your social worker or your Meals on Wheels visitor. Perhaps I am the midwife who delivered your child or the waiter who served your meal. I might be the barman or the one handing out leaflets on the corner. You might have touched that third hand smoke a hundred times today and not realised it. Did you sit on a bus, train or plane seat? In a doctor or dentist's waiting room? Who sat there before you? Was it one of us?

You don't buy second hand for your precious one in case it's contaminated so you buy new. Who handed it to you? Was it me? Did you touch the box at the same place as I did? Did you?

Ah, and money. I pay cash. Every penny that passes through my hands bears the mark of the Nicotine Beast. Where does it go? Did you get change today? Did you give your child pocket money, in cash, that might once have been mine? Oh, the abuse you will be guilty of is beyond compare. How can you live with yourselves?

I play the antismoker game. I do not expect to ever be allowed back into pubs, cafes or restaurants, so I have nothing to lose. You antismokers will not give an inch, you will never let up, you will never let me have my peaceful smoke and a drink ever again. You have ruined my relaxation time and I do not believe it will be back within my lifetime. So I will hurt you. I will scare you. I will boost your blood pressure and break your hearts. No, there is nothing to discuss. No compromise to be had. You will never allow it. You want a cruel, evil subhuman and you have it.

And you know, I will not apologise. You're mine for the taking.

I'll make it a career of evil.

Wednesday 16 February 2011

I forgot to put a title.

Today I received the final, absolute last chance, seriously we mean it, last chance to fix any remaining errors in Jessica's Trap before it goes to print. I have read this damn story so many times now it's hard to keep my eyes on the screen. Besides, I worked out a perfectly plausible way to have a zombie capable of thought and reason and I want to do that now.

The 'Ghosthunter' dystopia is still languishing too, but that's because every time I think up a new means to oppress the imaginary world, our government uses the same thing on the real world. I mean, they're after caffeine now. Even I hadn't thought of that one yet, and if you read the collection of shorts (PDF is free, I haven't got it on Kindle yet) you'll know I'm capable of thinking some horrible things.

Instead I have to pick through every comma and apostrophe one last time, and if I miss a mistake I can't fix it later. It's going to take a while. This is just the first book. It's going to happen every time. No wonder people laugh at writers, we all think it's going to be an easy life but it's hell out there in Grammarland.

Anyway, no time to boost my blood pressure with the newspapers tonight. Instead, here are some of the interesting things I've read while avoiding doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

A new (to me anyway) blog on politics by Bruce, which will be worth revisiting.

Mummylonglegs deals with the Girl with the Portland Tattoo in fine style.

JuliaM reports on the medic who thinks hospital food shouldn't be quite so edible. Think of the savings if nobody ate anything, and think of the instant obesity cure it would mean!

Frank Davis finds a non-scientist claiming that scientists are not scientists unless they agree with him.

Velvet Glove, Iron Fist notes a rare outbreak of reality at the BBC. Savour it, it won't last. Follow the link and you'll see the most amazing comment ever:

the thing is the drinkers of this country my be drinking less but the reason that more drinkers are being treated for alcohol poisoning is not because of how much drinkers are drinking but because of the strength of the drink especially the beer if the makers made beer of a strength comparable with that that was made in the mid 1960s the pubs would not have closed like they have

Leave aside the definitive proof that prohibitionists know nothing of grammar and punctuation, and revel in the knowledge that it's the strength of modern beer that is now the cause of pub closures. The elephant has just been joined by a walrus, a blue whale and a flock of penguins. This commenter has not yet noticed.

The Pub Curmudgeon tells of a pub that flaunts the smoking ban on its last day open. As he says, what can they do, shut it down? Again, he has a commenter that claims the smoky atmosphere on that last day was the reason smoking was banned, ignoring the detail that the pub was at its busiest on closing day when the smoking ban was ignored and that the pub, like too many others, is now closed. Space for some polar bears in that room, maybe?

Dick Puddlecote reports on a letter we should all copy to our MPs, adjusted for profession and circumstance. Like his correspondent, I will earn no more until after April 5th because I will not pay higher rate tax. I've reached my limit for this tax year.

Subrosa points out why the NHS would like to set our old people adrift on ice floes.

Man Widdicombe discovers that smoking is dangerous... if you use a blowtorch to light it, and there's a leaking gas cylinder nearby. From the referenced article -

Councillor Arshid Mahmood said: "The defendant did not heed the warnings that health and safety officers had given him in an effort to assist the company.

Yes, you read it right. His name is Arsehead. What? Something else? Ah, yes, the 'efforts to assist the company'. What a wonderfully Soviet phrase that is.

Pity they didn't assist the company with gas cylinder security rather than smoking prevention, which is the sort of assistance a Shisha bar could do without, really.

Anyway, back to picking faults in my own work. As if there would be any!

Tuesday 15 February 2011

NHS - Nothing left to treat.

Whatever happened to the destruction of the NHS to be wrought by smokers? It seems we've been demoted.

It now appears that drinkers will overwhelm the NHS by 2015. Dog Shagger, of Puritans United, stated -

"With the prime minister saying that NHS is becoming 'increasingly unaffordable', we can show how billions can be saved simply by introducing alcohol health workers in hospitals to help patients reduce their drinking."

Yes, by employing Dog's Puritan Army on the public payroll, all drinkers will immediately say 'You know, I think I'll just stop'. These new tax parasites will prove to be just as effective as all those playtime managers in schools. Note that when I was young there were no playtime managers and hardly any obesity. Now? Loads of anti-obesity parasites and kids you can roll to school.

What will really happen is that, just as with ASH, Dog's Tax-fed Puritans will soon realise that if they succeed in stopping all boozing, they will be out of a job. So, like ASH, they will propose harsher and harsher incremental controls on the back of imaginary 'studies', but will be careful never to actually solve the problem. Just like the playtime managers. If they solve childhood obesity, they're out of work.

Obesity, now classified as a disease in itself, is due to overload the NHS by 2050 even if it survives the drinkers.

Professor James, a former Government adviser on public health, said: “Obesity is the single biggest threat to our health service.

I've met him. Yes, he is what this statement makes him appear.

It's fun to watch these single-interest groups vie for importance now there's no money. Dog Shagger wants to save the NHS money by putting all his people on the NHS payroll to be Government-employed prohibitionists. Then along comes Miniature Phil to state no, forget the booze, it's obesity that needs to be funded. Any moment now the Dreadful Arnott must surely pipe up with 'Pah, booze and fat? Trivia! We must eradicate the smokers!'

Meanwhile, high-blood-pressure commenters spout 'They must pay for treatment! Why are they not paying?' The answer, as Snowolf points out, is that they already are. If you want smokers, drinkers and chubbies to be excluded from the NHS, the ECHR will waste no time in allowing those people to exclude themselves from National Insurance payments. Oh, but the swivel-eyed demand we pay NI, but also that we don't make use of the service it allegedly pays for. They regard that as 'fair'.

I have a simple solution to all of it. Shut down the NHS.

It has admitted that it cannot cope with the three primary causes of all illness - fat, smoke and booze - therefore it is of no value at all. There are no other recognised causes of illness any more and if the NHS won't treat these three then it is not treating anything. Therefore it is a behemoth of tax waste, nothing more.

There will be those who cry 'But we must keep the NHS'. Why? What's it for? Anyone who gets sick has to pay for private treatment anyway. If you've had a sherry, the NHS won't treat you. If you tip the scales at an ounce over the British Standard Human weight, the NHS won't treat you. If you once heard about someone who smoked a cigar, forty years ago, the NHS won't treat you. So who is it treating? The healthy? Why?

'But I never drink and don't go near smokers and am perfect weight. I need the NHS in case I fall over and sprain something one day'. Really? You want a multi-billion organisation twiddling several million thumbs just in case you might need a bandage one day? That is what the NHS is heading for, you know. Everyone could get private insurance for a tenth of their NI contributions and they would not be turned away just because they wear a size larger than the Government approves of.

If there were no NHS, then all those red-faced taxpayers in the comments pages of the papers could relax. Nobody, no matter how ill, would cost any of them a penny. Think of the savings in blood-pressure treatments. What's that? We need the NHS to look after the poor? But most of the poor smoke, drink and/or are overweight. So the NHS won't treat them anyway. The poor will be the bulk of those turned away by the Temperance Health Service, so no, it's not there to help the poor.

Between all these pressure groups, the NHS is left with nobody to treat because anyone ill is automatically excluded. You can argue it only applies to drunks but define 'drunk'. Define it in the context of the zero-tolerance society where you can be done for drink-driving if you put aftershave on. You can argue that it's only for 'the obese' but that definition has already been narrowing for years. You can argue that it only affects smokers, but third hand smoke means that if you live or work with a smoker, or met one once, you're contaminated.

The NHS will soon charge everyone - everyone - to use a service they've already paid for. Does that mean the service will at last improve, or does it mean that admin will expand and drive more big cars? It doesn't take much thinking about.

There is no further purpose in having an NHS at all. The only people it's truly free for are the health tourists. We are subsidising the health of everyone else on the planet and if we want to use it, we have to pay twice. We will also have to run the gauntlet of five-a-day coordinators, temperance demanders, antismoking zealots and the Size Zero Brigade before we get anywhere near any treatment. We could all get medical insurance for a fraction of the cost, and no private hospital would give the bansturbators a penny.

The NHS is finished. Shut it down.

Update - Shut it down before you get old.

Monday 14 February 2011

Here comes the... other husband.

There is much ado about the government's statement that churches are to be 'allowed' to host gay marriages. This will, no doubt, develop along the same lines that sees pubs 'allowed' to make smokers stand outside. Unlike smokers and Christians, everyone else can sue when they get told to clear off. Yes, it's going to be a compo-fest, we all know the way it works now.

It's interesting to note that nowhere in the article is there any mention of mosques being similarly 'allowed'. Then again, did anyone expect there to be? They seriously don't like gays. They don't even like each other.

I have rarely set foot inside a church. If I were to approach the local minister, with gullible and possibly drugged wench in tow, and suggest using his church to get married he is likely to ask a few questions. Chief among these (these days, just after 'are you a filthy smoker') will be 'Are you a Christian?'

Well, I was confirmed at the age of 11 and I think the little Eucharist I was given at that time is probably still at my parent's house. Read it? No.

'Ah, but have you been practising since?'

I didn't know you had to keep practising. I thought the confirmation was the qualification.

So, not being a Christian and certainly having never attended this or any other church, the minister would be within his rights to say 'Get ye hence, foul heretic, and nevermore stain this place with that oddly shaped shadow of thine, nor with nicotine, by the way pal.'

Then he'd make the sign of the cross, head-butt me and whack me with an empty Buckfast bottle until I was safely off hallowed ground.

As I said, I haven't been often. Maybe they don't do that any more. Or maybe it was just something specific to the Church of C.U. Jimmy in Glasgow. I doubt many churches have emblazoned on the wall 'See Jesus. See crucified. Aye, so just watch it, right?' I was there for a wedding, well not really, there was a couple of other folk involved in that, I was there for the free food and drink. Never discuss religion with a drunk Glaswegian priest unless you can run fast.

Anyway, as a non-Christian, I would expect a church to say 'No, you can't get married in here, and certainly not to an inflatable woman. We are not adjusting the service to say 'You may kiss the vinyl' so just go away'.

The Christian church is founded on, and promotes, Christian belief. I don't believe so I don't go. I don't live according to all the Christian tenets so I haven't joined the club. There is nothing in the Bible to prevent me joining, even Noah was recorded as having hit the bottle hard at least once. There is no mention of smoking at all as far as I know. Nothing in the Bible says 'No smokers, no liver-picklers and no revolting, seedy little pervs'. I could join if the fancy ever took me. It's not likely.

However, the Bible is quite clear on the subject of homosexuality. God's against it. The Bible, at least, restricts itself to 'Well, no, we don't really like that sort of thing' with a cheesy smile and those arms with no bones in them that all the church tea-room people seem to have. The Quran is rather more direct and gives detailed instruction in the manner of death to be enjoyed by those of alternative persuasions.

If you're gay, God doesn't like you. Allah, on the other hand, really, really hates you. Christianity is the hotel owner who says 'Two men sharing a room? Oooo, we can't have that'. Islam is the gang of skinheads out looking for anyone wearing pink. It's odd, really, to find the likes of Stonewall shouting down the old-lady hotel owner while cheering on the skinheads. But then I spent years trying to find the logic in human activity and have come to the conclusion that there isn't any.

So the logic of a gay couple wanting to be wed in any church whose core text states they are not welcome is pretty much what I'd expect to find in the human race these days. It makes no sense.

Nothing in the world makes sense. Nothing ever has and nothing ever will. Accept that and you'll live a happier life.

If there is God, I picture him, every morning, switching on his Earth monitors then burying his face in his hands and saying 'Oh, Me, what are they doing now?'

In God's place, I'd nuke the planet and start over. Although it might not be as funny next time round.

Sunday 13 February 2011

The Weeble Managers.

Apparently there are Tories in Scotland. For most Scots, that's like discovering you have mice. There is a tiny hut in Kintore marked 'Scottish Conservatives' but I've never seen it open. I thought it was some kind of folk museum.

Also, apparently...

...since the SNP came to power, the number of “active schools co-ordinators” has dropped from 661 to 451,

That sounds like a good thing to me. We used to have PE teachers in schools, not 'active schools co-ordinators'. We had a muscular goblin with a porn-star moustache who was shorter than most of the kids but more vicious than any of them. As I recall, he eventually left in disgrace after an affair with a member of the hockey team. Some things never change.

So, a round of applause for the SNP who are implementing money-saving methods by removing a layer of unnecessary co-ordinators from schools. The bleating about chubby three-year-olds, the whining about having to widen school gates for the newly-started infants is irrelevant. An active schools co-ordinator, even if they did anything useful, wouldn't be doing it before the child started school anyway.

It's good to see a Socialist party with enough sense to cut back on at least some waste. Naturally, there are screams of 'No, we must spend money on crap nobody needs, and we must spend it now!'

Glasgow Labour MSP Bill Butler, who obtained the through a Freedom of Information request, said: “If the SNP had ever been serious about tackling childhood obesity and increasing fitness and sporting opportunities for youngsters, it would have, at the very least, maintained the number of co-ordinators it inherited.

Well, that's predictable. Labour put all these playtime managers in place so their whining about the dismantling of a wasteful expenditure is only to be expected.

Liberal Democrat Jamie Stone accused the SNP of “letting our young children down”.

I see it more as 'leaving children alone' but then we have long since ceased to expect liberalism from the Lib Dems. They use the word 'democratic' in the sense employed by the People's Democratic Republic of Korea. 'Liberal' and 'Democratic' are two of those magical Humpty Dumpty words that mean precisely what the politicians want them to mean, no more and no less.

Here's the kicker:

Tory health spokeswoman Mary Scanlon said: “This is further worrying evidence that the SNP Government is giving up on the fight against child obesity. It is our children who will lose out.”

The Tories are complaining about Socialists implementing what used to be core Tory policy - cut out the wasteful and unnecessary stuff. The Scottish Tories are more Socialist than the SNP! Better keep that seriously quiet or the next thing you know they'll start winning seats.

The entire argument is based on spin. Most kids have puppy fat, some have lots of it and most lose all of it at puberty. You can define anything as 'obese', it's very much a moveable goalpost. If you do it on BMI you'll be counting all those short muscular kids too. Then there's the made-up figures and the made-up disease -

A study published last year estimated that treating people for obesity costs Scotland’s NHS £1million a day.

Treating people for obesity? A million a day? Do they have a production line for gastric bands or something? Here it is, chubby folk. Just as the disease changed from 'smoking related' to 'smoking' to 'smokers', so it moves from 'obesity-related' to 'obesity' and then 'the obese'. Like smokers, you no longer have diseases. Like smokers, you are the disease. You cost the NHS a million a day even if you never go there.

Note also the mysterious 'a study' and the caveat 'estimated'. This will be the same 'a study' that made up - I mean, estimated - every other health figure used to browbeat us these days. It's never referenced. Why? Well, that's not hard to work out.

Why are all these kids overweight? One reason is that the BMI system does not take account of puppy-fat. Another is that the entire system ignores the puberty growth spurt which is what that puppy fat is meant to fuel. There's a reason they don't bother with kids above the age of 11. Most of those kids have started turning into lanky teenagers after that.

More reasons - they don't play outside any more because if Gary Glitter's Gang doesn't get them, they might get knifed, shot, force-fed by burger shops, dragged into seedy drug dens or smoked at. Parents are too scared to let them outside. They stay in, they get computer games and TVs of their own, they get fat and they get lazy and they get rickets. Kids are well equipped to burn off any calories they consume but they are not allowed to - and no co-ordinator will ever fix that. It would take a government with the sense to say 'Well, yes, there are nasty people in the world, but not really all that many so you don't have to be permanently terrified' and 'You know, maybe it would be a good idea to actually lock some of the nastiest ones away instead of giving them a stern talking-to and sending them home'.

It won't happen. Catching criminals is hard. Making it everyone else's responsibility to hide from them is easy. So rather than letting kids burn off energy by playing outside, we have to have playtime managers to help them do what they actually want to do anyway.

I really can't believe the Tories are objecting to cutting the numbers. They don't get many votes in Scotland now, and this approach is likely to turn away their remaining voters.

Especially as the SNP are doing something the Tory voters want done.

I still won't vote for any of them. They still hate smokers.

Saturday 12 February 2011

A night of merriment.

Late back from Smoky-drinky and in far too good a mood to read the news. Instead, here are some of my favourite booze-related images from VeryDemotivational.










Ranting will resume when the good mood wears off. It doesn't usually take long.