Wednesday 29 June 2011

Attention Stony Stratford businessfolk.

Sell up quick. Take the money and run.

This is especially the case if you run a pub, club, restaurant, cafe, hotel or B&B. You know those customers who still visit even though they have to go outside to smoke?

Well, your councillors want to ban them from smoking outside your premises too. They have the full backing of ASH in this absolute ban on your customers venturing anywhere near your business.

Don't believe it will affect your business? Hate smokers anyway, and would be glad to see them banned from the town entirely? In that case, sit tight. In fact, buy up the businesses that are selling because you know, don't you, that a mysterious army of antismokers will flock to your town once the smokers are gone. Just as they did with the pubs.

All I can tell you is one smoker's experience. Before the ban I made use of cafes and restaurants and was in the pub at least once a week. I'd shop in the high street, have lunch in a cafe, and call in for a beer on the way home.

Now I shop in the supermarket or on the internet. I visit the town when I have to, to use the bank or post office and that's it. Straight there, straight back. I don't often even take my tobacco with me because even though smoking on the street isn't yet banned here it's just too much bother finding somewhere to smoke. Since I can't smoke with a beer or even a coffee, it's better to go home or call in at a friend's house on the way home.

My weekly pub visits are now annual visits and I don't care if I miss one. As for cafes and restaurants, I have not been in either since the ban. It's not just the pubs, you know. Shops are closing here, no matter what they sell, because the town is such an unwelcoming place for twenty percent of their customers that we are just not going there any more.

So, Stony Stratford, I encourage you to ban smoking entirely. Go on. Do it. The absolute destruction of the economy of one small town is the only way to get the point across, and you, Stony Stratford, are chosen to take the hit.

Not by smokers. We didn't choose any of this. I'm sure you'll blame us as the antismokers did when pubs closed. "It's the smokers' fault. They refused to keep supporting the pubs we banned them from, so it's all their fault the pubs died." Believe it if you want to. I don't care. It's your business and you are perfectly entitled to make clear that you don't want smokers spending money in it. You can even whine about us not supporting you after you've banned us if you want. You'll still be bust. We'll still be smoking. We'll still buy stuff, just not from you. The choice is yours.

Apparently Stony Stratford has some tourist industry. It lays claim to the origin of the 'cock and bull story', which does seem somehow fitting. However, pubs and the like cannot survive on a few summer weeks of trade. Once the regular customers go, the pubs go, and when the tourists arrive and find more and more premises boarded up, they stop coming too.

I know, I know, the smokophobes always respond with "When you smokers are banned, we antismokers will have clean diesel fumes to breathe and our businesses will thrive." Because it's only the smokers who will be affected. Smokers go around in little smoky groups. They don't have families or social groups in which some smoke and some don't. So it's just that twenty percent, nobody else, right?

Amanda Sandford, spokeswoman for Action on Smoking and Health, today praised the proposed ban.

Remember that name, Stony Stratford businesses.

‘Passive smoking is very unpleasant and we are already seeing the health benefits of the indoors ban with a fall in heart and lung disease.

This is an outright lie. Antismokers believe it because they want to and I say let them. Let them close all their local businesses. I don't care.

‘An unintended consequence of the indoor smoking ban is that more smokers are on the streets dropping litter and this ban would prevent that.

Unintended? It was an obvious consequence which even a retarded amoeba could have predicted. It was not unintended. It was a deliberate maneouver to the next stage. The next 'unintended consequence' will be parents smoking at home all the time and kippering the cheeeldren. That, also, is not unintended.

‘We have heard of councils banning smoking on play parks and beaches but this would be the first blanket ban on smoking in Britain.’

Bring it on. Turn that place into a ghost town. Send every business bankrupt. Show the rest of the country what such a ban really means.

Stony Stratfod is not New York. It does not have the mass of industry New York has. It does not have so much commerce that it's really difficult to move away or shop elsewhere. The New York public have ignored the outdoor ban and nobody is enforcing it. Who imagines that this will happen in Stony Stratford? There are smokophobes oiling up their cricket bats as I type.

I doubt the council will do it but I really, really hope they do.

Smokophobes, I know you don't believe a word of this and that's okay. I don't want you to believe it. I want you to invest in the smokefree land of Stony Stratford with every penny you can borrow. It will be a great success, you will live entirely smoke free and you'll never get cancer, asthma or any lung disease and you'll never die. Here is your chance to create an entirely smoke-free-town where not a whiff of tobacco smoke will ever be smelled. Go for it, it might be your only chance at Utopia.

For those who put business success above personal prejuduce, sell up quick. Before the story gets too widely known.

Best get the for-sale sign up tomorrow, because this story is making the rounds pretty fast now.

The New Dark Age.

The lunacy is accelerating to light speed.

Food is the new tobacco, with Ronald McDonald as Joe Camel. Advertising controls are proposed and the 9pm watershed won't be good enough because as Tam Fryup says:

'If children are eating the right food at least we know if they are up in their rooms snacking in front of TV then they are not eating junk.'

Because the children operate entirely independently of their parents. Children buy their own food and fit their own TV in their rooms. Oh, Tam is going to clash with the 'poor children' gang over this. He doesn't want them to have money to supply their own food. Surely he's not going to suggest that the parents should have a say in their childrens' behaviour? Come now, Tam, that's not very Marxist, is it? Get with the program.

Of course, if you're worried about your weight, you could always...

Soon there will be pictures of Bernard Manning on bags of potatoes and of a jar of liposuction residue on pizza boxes. Then all the food will be under the counter in grey packs so you won't know whether you're buying steak, bananas, whisky or tobacco until you get home. Every week you'll visit the Pot Luck Shop, hand over your cash and go home to make a Marlboro casserole with a radish and Malibu sauce. Then you'll have to endure lectures on your eating habits.

The UK border agency, better described as bunch of useless wasters only interested in stealing from UK citizens, are to go on strike tomorrow. Best watch out for all those criminals and banned extremists who have had so much trouble getting into the country, eh? I wouldn't assume that you can get your legal tobacco and booze into the country while the UKBA are on strike. Some aspects of their job are just too lucrative to give up for a day. Other aspects, well they weren't bothering with those in the first place anyway. So nothing will really change.

Jug-ears is developing into as much of a King Charles as his predecessors and seems less intelligent than his namesake spaniel. While everyone else cuts back, he's spending more. Apparently he has an official harpist. I could be wholly pist for half the cost. Oh, and the future Green King has no problem with travelling 34000 miles a year while telling the rest of us we shouldn't be driving to the shops. Really, Jug-ears, read some history, man. Axes aren't banned yet so don't push it, okay? This time you won't be able to hide in Scotland either.

Not that Charlie matters much. The throne he hopes to inherit is a papier mache fake and he'll have less authority than a PCSO. Mrs Queen already has to defer to the EU. Jug-ears isn't worth the extra money, he's not worth anything at all and he's the only one who doesn't know.

The Netherlands, possibly the most tolerant country on the planet, has decided to ban Halal and Kosher killing. Jews and Muslims are calling it 'racism' but it's starting to look as if the Dutch have had enough.

Unrest is spreading. Mr. Fan and Mr. Shit are soon to become firm friends. The Greeks are rioting because they don't want to believe they have no money and the proud boast of the Cameroid that we aren't giving them any has turned out to be another lie. Surprise! Even the MSM has noticed.

The EU is building pretty buildings and charging us for them while saying we have to stop spending because they want us to give all our mony to them. The Coagulation insist we are better off giving billions to the EU and more money to the nuclear powers of India and Pakistan while our pensioners starve because it's the right thing to do for hard-working families. Again, even the MSM has noticed.

Bad days are coming fast now. We have an increasing number of foreign criminals who we can't deport because they are wanted for crimes in countries that would actually treat them like criminals. We have an awful lot of chavs whose Stella allowance is about to dry up. Anyone can just walk through border control as long as they aren't carrying tobacco because border control isn't looking for anything else any more. All these people will still be here when the money dries up, as it must. We worry about the collapse of foreign governments and their replacement with religious radical groups. Don't worry about that happening in foreign countries.

Worry about something similar happening here.

Tuesday 28 June 2011

I feel liike drinking tonight, like drinking tonight.



And I have been. It's royalty payment time, my first ever experience of this. Okay, it's peanuts, barely beer money, because it's a first-quarter payment for an unknown author's first book, no surprise, but it is still the first royalty payment I've ever had so that calls for some kind of celebration involving whisky.


Hence, no sense can be expected from me at all. Maybe a little, but no promises.


Apparently mosquitos are attracted to boozers. Well we've known that for a long time. You know, there was a time not so long ago where nonsmokers sought the company of smokers outside the pub in the evenings. We kept the bloodsuckers at bay. They not only tolerated us, they encouraged us in those days. Times have changed really fast.

Now, the antismokers are free to go elsewhere. Over there with the insects. Have fun with your new friends, smokophobes.

We'll just keep puffing away with our pest-repellent smoke. Don't mind us.

It works on more irritating insects every day.

And now... booze.

Monday 27 June 2011

Miscellany

An interesting Sunday. Despite the Mail's insistence that this would be the hottest day of the year, it's pissed down harder than an incontinent with a fire hose in his mouth and it didn't even make 20C. The sun came out at 9:50 pm to say goodbye and give a teenager a quick skin cancer, and that was it.


Dick Puddlecote offers a possible answer to why smoke can magically pass through walls. It uses the mains wires to travel. Yes, electricity is generated by burning tons of UKBA-stolen tobacco in furnaces, indoors, in a workplace, and nobody gets fined. Nobody is at all worried about second hand smoke from tons of tobacco, not even ASH. Try lighting half a gram in a pub and see what happens.

If you're an Electrosmoker, charging the battery relies on burning far more tobacco than you could ever smoke. So it's all been a bit pointless in the end.

If you live near a power station, open the window and take a deep breath. You are now addicted, but don't worry about it because you'll be dead soon anyway. If you're a smoker, think of the money you'll save.

Watch out for those kettles. Tobbaco-produced electricity contaminates the wires and by extension, the boiled water. The yellow stain takes time to reach your house but the nicotine is there now. Best seal up all the sockets before it's too late! Does your tea look just a little darker than it used to? Oh dear.


The Euro is becoming interesting. I wonder who will be first to leave, Greece or Germany? Greece leaving would be a serious blow to this toy currency, but Germany leaving would bring a much quicker end to it. What was it for, anyway? Was it just to allow the banks to employ dimmer staff? Nobody needs to calculate exchange rates if there isn't one.


Education is still a mess. Teachers are to strike this week, which might well improve the nation's literacy. Mr. Gove wants a 'mum's army' to take over teaching while the teachers stand outside with banners provided by someone who can spell. Interesting that he doesn't want any dads involved, but then he's just showing solidarity with his leader, and staying in tune with the 'all men are paedophiles' message. We used to only be rapists, you know, and before that we were mere mysogynists. Give it ten years and you'll believe we're all trying to shag your cat.

The children, of course, are all little angels.


Finally, a Terrible Thing is coming. Health warnings have been issued and hospitals put on alert. What is it? Beansprout botty bugs? Asteroids? An escaped virus from a Government facility? Nuclear armageddon? Adam and the Ants comeback tour?

Worse. It seems there is a very real danger that it might be sunny for a day or two. But not to worry. We'll be back to normal thunderstorms and rain soon. Just wrap up well in tinfoil coated with paint and you'll easily survive the terrible hour or so of sunshine that might or might not happen.

It's safe here. Slate grey from horizon to horizon. I have a feeling the sun has risen, because the clouds look brighter.

There is still a sun up there, isn't there?

Sunday 26 June 2011

Meet 'Dreadful Arnott'.


I think plants do better when they have individual names. And yes, that's a bucket, and yes, I might well need to move Dreadful and her friends into the ground very soon. The stake is there because it's been windy and we wouldn't want Dreadful to break her neck, would we? Well, not this one anyway.

The tray is a moat. Helps keep the slugs out and also provides continuous water through the hole in my bucket.

Frank has joined in with the ASH-bashing at Liberal Vision. I haven't commented there because I don't see the point in such conversation any more. These people cannot be reasoned with. You cannot change a mind that simply doesn't work at all. All you can do is spur it to faster and faster speed until it breaks.

Look, they have not even realised yet that the exact same tobacco template has just been applied to sitting down. Sitting-related diseases and deaths included. Sitting kills 40% of those who indulge, did you notice? We're not conversing with intelligent beings here. We would have more success if we tried to lecture flies about the health risks of walking over cowpats.

Any comparison of these control freaks to the Nazis naturally results in the cry of 'I call Godwin's Law, you lose, na na na-na na', a language construct I used to hear a lot when I was seven but not so much since. There is a very good reason for Godwin's law's existence and a very good reason why these people like to use it whenever they are compared to the Nazis. It's a simple reason.

The comparison is valid.

Saturday 25 June 2011

What a lot of sit.

Are you sitting comfortably? Well, you're going to die, you filthy sitting-addict.

There's far too much in this story to rip up and I just can't keep a straight face while reading it so I'll just look at the concluding line...

Diabetes experts point out that sitting is not bad for us in moderation but can be addictive and harmful in the long-run.

...and laugh. Sitting is addictive? I'll bet it's harder to give up than heroin. Moderate that horrible sitting habit. Moderate it, I say! A child might see you sitting and think it's okay to copy you, and then it'll be your fault when their pancreas explodes.

Doesn't bother me. I'm already smoking and drinking so according to the rabid and fearful drones, I died years ago. The only reason I'm still around is that the doctors haven't found me yet so there's no death certificate. It's illegal to be dead without the proper paperwork.

All the same, I look forward to the first sitting cessation officers, secondary sitting and the removal of all seating from schools for the sake of the cheeeldren. Any day now.

The Denialists

Via the Pub Curmudgeon, it seems someone has had the nerve to post in the Grauniad with an objection to the banning of Electrofags and the denormalisation of smokers.

The Predictables have, naturally, filled the comments with 'You are all filthy' and 'You stink' and 'I am so much holier than thou' and the rest of the useless, futile arguments from useless, futile people.

Although I did have to get to page four of the comments to find this:

williamfish 24 June 2011 11:17AM This article is manipulative and constructs a straw man. I wouldn't be surprised if it was funded by British American Tobacco

Yawn. The old 'anyone who doesn't like the ban is obviously funded by the tobacco industry' nonsense. I'd love to be funded by the tobacco industry. They have pots of cash. I'd have a private pub in my house, complete with cigarette vending machine and just enough space between the ashtrays to put down your glass, if they were paying.

It also took until page 4 before Roy Castle's name cropped up. Oh, and the old 'lumpy barmaid' line.

skinhead69 24 June 2011 11:28AM Whilst I miss smoking fags in pubs, you should really look at cancer rates in barmaids and realise what this 'little luxury' is capable of. Roy Castle never smoked and he died of lung cancer due to playing in smoky clubs. It's really not that hard to troop outside and have a woodbine in the open.

This from, apparently, a smoker. Cigars clearly don't count as smoking, and a non-smoking-related lung cancer is caused by smoking. Many of those 'smokers who support the ban' reveal, in conversation, that they know sod all about smoking. They've never tried it. Sham smokers abound in comments. This might be one, or maybe he's just a dunce. They never expect sham antismokers on their sites, you know. They're so clever, in their own minds, and smokers are too dim to try their own tricks back on them. Which is useful.

Going outside is no hardship? Depends where you live. Have a look at midsummer in Dundee and ask yourself if it would be worth opening a pub there.

I didn't bother reading further. Calls for the deaths of all smokers, for the Final Solution, mixed in with pompous declarations of 'Nobody minds if you smoke, there is no hatred, you're just a smelly idiot' and one utter cretin even goes so far as to stick signs up in his house saying 'No smoking or I'll kick you in the balls'. Why? I know non-smokers who don't like smoking in their houses. I don't smoke in there. They know I smoke, they'd rather I didn't smoke in their houses, no problem. I mean, I don't force them to smoke when they visit me. If I saw a sign like that in a friend's house, they would be an ex-friend in a second.

Second, third and fourth hand smoke is well received by the hard of thinking, they truly believe it will kill them and you can be sure I make full use of that. The more dilute the smoke, the deadlier it gets, apparently. So the trace I leave on the handle of the supermarket trolley... then a smokophobe's child sits in the basket... ha ha ha. I think, next time I'm in Tesco, I'll make sure to carefully inspect all the healthy foods. I'm getting old so I have to pick up the packs to read the labels. I'll also be extra-considerate and be sure to hand things down to children who can't reach them. If you believe you will die from this, then you had better do so, decrease the surplus population and increase the country's average IQ at the same time.

One of the dribbling morons even blames smokers for the pub closures. Yes, it seems that the smoke in pubs kept the Holy Ones away so the landlords should have banned smoking years ago and pubs would now be thriving. The Olympics are coming up and I think we have a certain gold in the Missing the Point event. Reading those comments, we should easily take silver and bronze too.

As usual, there are plenty along the lines of 'I object to you vile creatures smoking when I'm paying for a meal'. It's been banned for four years, five in Scotland, and still they bleat. There is no point attempting anything to please these people. It simply cannot be done. Make them suffer instead. It's what they want. Forget compromise, they don't want to even discuss it and anyway, it's gone much too far for that now.

Supermarket booze causes pub closures because it's cheaper even though it always has been. The recession caused pub closures before it even started, through a wormhole in time. The invention of the Xbox is why people no longer visit pubs that have never, as far as I know, had Xboxes in them. The smoking ban has had no effect at all. Oh, and let's not forget that 'smokers are in denial'. Reason with these people? You'd have better luck putting a brick through your TV and then trying to talk it into fixing itself. There is no point providing clues to the clueless.

Oddly enough, Smoky-Drinky evenings have no video games. The most that will be on is the TV (like in the pub). We don't even have slot machines. What we have is a semblance of the pub, but without the pretend-coughs, the whining and the smoking ban. Unfortunately we don't yet have proper beer pumps but we might yet manage to pick some up from a closed-down pub. Have to be quick, there seems to be a fair bit of competition for old pub fittings here. Optics? No, the measures are far too small.

Someone once worried about the staff of these illicit Smoky-Drinkies. There are no staff. There are no children. It is not open to the general public. No idiots allowed, so nobody worries about second hand smoke, even if they just come along for the drinky part. No membership and no sales. Not a business, not open to the public, no staff. No sign outside and variable location. ASH - you can't touch this.

Real pubs? I used to visit at least once a week, every week, for many years. I was on a pool team for a few years but was never a great player and preferred the drinking to the game, so I gave up my place as soon as someone better wanted to play. Since the ban I rarely visit pubs. It has nothing to do with supermarket prices, nothing to do with the recession, and nothing to do with video games machines (I don't have one). I have been in a pub less than five times in the last three years and on none of those occasions did I stay long. There was a time when pubs felt welcoming. Now they just feel like bus station waiting rooms.

I recently went back to that country pub where I played pool. It no longer has a team. The pool table is ripped and won't be repaired. Not enough customers to make it worthwhile. They also no longer have draught beer because it goes out of date before the barrel is finished. Half the bar area is cordoned off, the lounge bar is closed and still nobody goes without a seat. It used to be a thriving pub, but most of the customers smoked. They have made other arrangements now.

I haven't been in a restaurant or even a cafe since just after the ban came in. Even though I wasn't smoking in them, the atmosphere in those places soon became intolerable. Everyone is now watching everyone else in case they're a smoker. Or a paedo. Nobody strikes up conversations, nobody even makes eye contact. Those places are ruined and they cannot be fixed. Let them die.

I, and a growing group of hard-drinking smokers, no longer need the pub. We have Smoky-Drinky. So let the smokophobes pretend pubs aren't closing down. Let them pretend the closures are due to anything but the smoking ban. Let them pretend the ban has had no effect at all. Let it all die.

Smokers still meet for coffee and a smoke. We still have our boozy evenings.

In fact, I think it's rapidly working out that we have the better end of the deal. So I expect the whiners will want to put a stop to that soon.

Let them try.


Update: had a browse through more comments and picked up this link, in which ASH demonstrate that false connections, strawmen, and absolute out and out lies are all perfectly okay by them.

So they can't complain if a *cough* smoker *cough* uses a real-sounding alter ego to wind up their zealots on their own sites, now can they? Lies are an acceptable tactic. Their game, their rules.

Friday 24 June 2011

It's a marrda.

If you don't remember or have never seen Taggart (the proper, old show when miserable git Taggart was actually in it), the title says 'It's a murder'.

So it appears the definition of 'murder' has changed. It used to mean that you deliberately intended to kill someone. Now it means killing someone who's trying to kill you. We used to call that 'defence' in the old days.

The test of the Cameroid's bold pronouncement that we are at last to return to the days of being allowed to fight back is now upon us. Or specifically, upon him.

What appears to have happened is this. I say appears, because the full details are not yet known to us all. It might be that the masked men were known to the householders and that they did indeed lay in wait with the intention of killing Goon #1 but if so, why would they call the police?

Let us proceed for now on the assumption that this family did not expect to see the midnight masked raiders attack their home and that they were sore afraid, possibly to the point where a change of kecks might be called on and maybe even a mop and bucket and some deodorising bleach.

Now we come to the Cameroid's words. He's good at words. Actions, not so much, but he is good at words, we'll give him that.

"Reasonable force".

If you are a bewigged and dusty judge and your fortified residence is soiled by the presence of a ragged and uncouth tradesman at the human entrance, you might define 'reasonable force' as calling the hefty footman to give the rotter a sound kicking and send him on his way with his tail between his legs, what? You might even set the dogs on him if you still had some.

If you live in a grubby part of Manchester with scrubland behind your house and a masked gang turn up at midnight and try to batter their way in, they know you're in there and they have not come to collect donations to the local soup kitchen, and there is a woman in the house, well, let your imagination tick slowly into action and what would you be thinking?

You don't have a burly footman to call on. You know perfectly well that calling the police will mean they might turn up in a day or so and if you're lucky it'll be before your corpse is completely cold, you are not allowed to have a gun and the masked raiders know it, so what do you do?

Would you grab a kitchen knife, try to scare them, and if necessary stick it into one of the bastards before they stick it into your wife/daughter/girlfriend while you watch with a knife at your throat?

Masked men are breaking in at midnight. They know the house is occupied. They are not going to causally collect up the silverware (in Manchester?) and then leave with a cheery how-de-do. Under those circumstances, define 'reasonable force'.

I define it as 'forget the phone, kill them all'. Actually, the main message from the story is this. Do not call the police unless and until the attackers look like winning. If you call the police and you win the fight, you will be charged with obstructing a criminal in the course of his duties. Or, that worst crime of all, killing a criminal who probably had a Council license to loot, pillage and rape.

Really, that message is very clear here. The reporting casts the dead criminal as the victim in this scenario. Leave that phone alone. Head for the knife rack and do it now. Practice throwing them. Get them all and learn how to dispose of the corpses. If you kill them Halal, the local supermarket will take the meat.

I'm sure the police will claim that's not the message they want to give but it's the one that comes over loud and clear. Call the police while fighting off attackers and you will be arrested and charged with fighting off attackers. This is mere days after Cameroid's proud and empty boast. Dammit, Cameroid, can't you get anything right?

Snowolf, Quiet Man, and Trooper Thompson voice similar opinions. A few days ago, so did U-turn Dave but I suspect his opinion will once more change to 'ah, well, um' now. The only one who doesn't agree is Miss Criminal Hero 2011, Shiny Chuckabatorthree.

She believes that if we are allowed to defend ourselves in our homes, we will then roam the streets to defend ourselves in our homes and will also kill Grandad when he gets home from the pub. Because we are not capable of spotting the difference between Grandad muttering and scraping while he tries to get his rubber key into a moving keyhole (been there), and a bunch of balaclava-clad thugs trying to beat the door in.

Instead, presumably, she endorses the police message. Don't bother them or they'll arrest you for being a noisy, complaining irritant and for spoiling a thug's evening.

Sure, Manchester police will say 'This is certainly not the sort of message we want to give' but it is precisely the message you have very clearly given. There is no other interpretation of the facts as known to us at the moment. Defending yourself in your home is illegal and will be punished.

As for Shiny's vigilante groups, I would be astounded if they are not already well formed in many places, and amazed if they are not already active in quite a few. The law has left people with no other option.

One day, we will have a government who will get at least one thing right. Half the population will die of shock.

Thursday 23 June 2011

For your health?

A little while ago, a consultant was most miffed by the Cleggeron and a camera crew invading his ward for political advantage. He threw them out.

His actions were correct. Hospitals have enough problems with infections without Cleggeron and their entourage spreading political contagion all over the place.

However, the Trust doesn't see it that way. To the pen-pushers, politics trumps health every time.

The NHS. Working for politics. Not for you.

Wednesday 22 June 2011

The Duty-Free Denormalised.

Beer and wine are extremely easy things to make. Stuff the 'units', just brew it to extinction and then freeze-distil it and you can produce something in your kitchen that will make your eyes melt.

You can even start with a bread yeast, if the Controllers ever ban the sale of beer yeast. The first batch will be crap but it'll adapt. Just keep using the sedimented yeast for successive batches. It's the same species of yeast, all you'll be doing is selecting the individual cells that grow best in a beer/wine situation rather than a flour/water one.

So all this concern over Government plans to tell us we can't drink when we're old is misplaced. When I get old, assuming I get that far, I plan to spend the last years of my time permanently and entirely pissed. If I die at home, nobody will notice because this corpse won't start to decay for months. If that means brewing my own, so be it. Just think of the duty and VAT I'll save. In fact, sod it, I'll start now. Rose left a recipe for mead somewhere back in the comments. I have plenty of fruit growing and all of it can be fermented.

I'll also insure myself against being sent to Hell. They won't let me in because I'll be an explosion hazard. Hell is bound to be stuffed full of health and safety inspectors and risk assessors. As for the other place, well I'll never make it up all those steps. I'll just have to find myself a Puritan to haunt.

Picture the scene. There I am, older and wrinklier and utterly guttered when the caped skeleton with a scythe shows up.

"Mr. Leg-iron. It Is Time."

"Aye, time for another drink, ya bas."

"No, it is Time to Go."

"Whit? Ah went ten minutes ago. Ma bladder's barely trickling."

Death's shoulders will slump at this point. "No, you don't understand. It Is Time. You must leave this body and come with me."

"Where to? The pub? They winnae let me smoke in there so ye can go alone, loon. And ye cannae have ma body. I have a few more bottles to pour in here yet."

"You can drink no more. It is over for you."

"Aye? I'll drink you under the bloody table any time you like, bone boy. Sit you down and we'll have a little wager. My soul, such as it is, against your stick with a sword on the end of it. First to fall off their chair loses."

"It's a scythe. I do not wager. I collect."

"Oh, a bloody taxman, aye? So whit's in it fae me?"

"Eternity and peace."

"Booze?"

"No."

"Baccy?"

"No."

"Not much of a deal then, is it? You want my soul, you'll drink for it or you'll feck off before I ram that stick right up your pelvic bone, sharp end first."

In the years following, I will tell the tale of the scythe hanging on the wall...



Tobacco plants are coming along nicely. I have some to post if I can move my body clock around to being awake when the post office is open. Those lazy buggers don't work at night.

Some of those plants are now in twenty litres of compost in buckets. The garden ones are slow because the weather is, once more, cold and horrible. A few years back I'd be sitting in the garden now because it would have been too hot in the house. Now I have the heating on at midsummer, when it used to be entirely off between May and September. If someone were to beat Chris Huhne to a bloody pulp using a large potato masher, I will be first to provide them with an alibi. Bring photos.

The slugs managed to mince one garden plant by chewing through the stem. I rewarded them with some nice blue sweeties. The slug named Blair tried to tell the others it would take me 45 minutes to mobilise chemical weapons and they'd all be yards away by then. He was wrong. I did it in five. The Brown slug tried to take 50% of the pellets because it was the right thing to do for hard-sliming molluscs. I generously provided extra. Mandelslug insisted they provide a levy of pellets to the garden next door, which has promised him access to lettuce, but that's no problem. I have plenty. If only I could stop that Milislug waving a pellet like a banana.

The Health Slugs are warning of the dangers of salt. I have a lot of that. If the rain stops, I'll provide them with some. Next I think I'll set up a pub for them, but they won't be allowed in if they've been chewing tobacco.

There are those who said there was no point growing tobacco because it'll be at least a year before it produces anything smokeable. Well, by that logic, there's no point buying a house because it'll be 25 years before it's yours, right? I have fourteen years to go on this mortgage and I have paid extra into it to bring the monthly payments right down. I'm almost halfway to owning this house in time and well over halfway in cost.

I'm also, now, halfway to having home-made tobacco. The first batch won't produce much and might not work at all. In which case I will apply the lessons from this year's batch to next year's. Even if this crop fails completely, I'll be one year closer to getting it right. Waste of time? It's my time, and if I can get it right, the return on that invested time is incalculable because the rate of increase of tobacco prices is insane. If I only make enough for say, five two-ounce packs of baccy, what's that at shop prices now? It was over a tenner a pack last time I looked. What will it be by the time that baccy is ready? Man with a Van is not a charity. He pitches his prices below shop prices but as shop prices rise, so do his. I might well find I've saved myself a hundred quid or more just by letting some plants grow.

A tip on the slug problem - they can't swim. The buckets I'm using are cheap, a quid each. Drill a few holes in the bottom, get down to the pound shop and buy cat litter trays for a pound each. Drill a couple of holes in the sides of those, a couple of inches up from the bottom. They're too deep otherwise and too much water will swamp the plant.

Stand the bucket in the litter tray, fill the litter tray with water and keep it topped up. You now have a continuous supply of water for the plant and it's surrounded by a slugproof moat. It has cost two quid per plant, and you can use it all again next year. A circle of copper tape around the bucket also works but the moat approach is cheaper.

Booze and tobacco aren't my biggest expense. Heating wins that by a long way, but in a house with no chimney it will take a big initial investment to install a wood-burning heating system. I'm working on it because I live near tradesmen who are always throwing away wooden pallettes and just down the back is a wooded area where fallen branches are left alone. Nobody around here has a chimney.

However, I can seriously cut my costs on booze and tobacco, and hence the amount of money the government steal from me, without very much effort and with trivial initial investment. The reality of both these things is that they are cheap, and the high price is due to tax. Plus, of course, tax on the tax. As the prices of booze and tobacco escalate - and they will keep escalating - so the savings grow.

Every penny saved is a penny I don't have to replace by earning. Every penny not earned is a penny not taxed. Tax is generated by the transfer of money so the less I rely on money, the less tax I pay.

I cannot eradicate cash completely from my life. Not until the council accepts their taxes in plums, the electricity and gas companies accept payment in gooseberries and the butcher is willing to trade meat for rhubarb. There are wild rabbits nearby, so that's always a possibility. What I can do for now is minimise my use of tax-heavy transactions.

Of course, the minimalist approach could be buggered up if someone turns one of my stories into a film, but I'll worry about that if it ever looks like happening. So far, no danger. Anyway, the point is to stop paying the tobacco and booze lobbies to torment me and that looks like it can be done without much effort.

With cheap buckets and dirt. Next, I'll need a big plastic bin for fermenting purposes. Those are cheap too. Insulation? Ha, the local charity shops are full of tatty clothes. Come to think of it, so is my wardrobe.

For every penny I don't pay to the government, an antismoker gets cancer. Well, I like to think that's true and it has as much scientific backing as anything the health loonies come out with. Every penny of duty I keep gives me a warm glow. It doesn't matter which party is in government, they have all stated they hate smokers so sod them all. Now they are working on drink in the same way. I am not paying for my own denormalisation.

Are you?

Abandon Law, all ye who enter here.

The Cameroid has made Big Man Noises lately. It's really funny to watch this little mouse roar. It's almost as if he actually thinks he matters. Or maybe, almost as if he actually thinks.

First he says we won't bail out Greece by giving money to the EU (we'll do it by giving the same money to the IMF instead. We're not fooled, forehead boy).

Then he resorts to 'fighting talk' when dealing with the military. Someone really should point out to him that 'fighting talk' is not at all a good idea when faced with a lot of people who are really, really good at actual, physical fighting. Still, I expect he'll find that out in time and I hope to be allowed to watch. I'll pay for a good seat within splatter range.

Now he says we can use 'reasonable force' against burglars. Well, isn't that nice? Isn't it also exactly what Strawman Jack said a few years ago, and won't it make just as much difference in reality?

A judge living in a safe place with police protection has a certain definition of 'reasonable force'. Someone with a wife and daughter in the house, woken in the night by a burly stranger drooling over the wife's side of the bed, has a definition of 'reasonable force' that might be a little different to the one the courts will expect him to have abided by. The judge's definition will be the one applied.

Get off the bloody Lib Dem fence, Cameron. The answer is very simple.

If someone chooses to live outside the law then they forfeit the protection of the law. If someone chooses to steal, kill, rape and so on, then they have no recourse to the law when caught and convicted. They deny the law, so take it as read that they deny all of it. All of it, including the Criminal Rights Act.

This can only apply to common law, of course. Statute law has so many ridiculous rules that you might as well build prison walls along the coastlines of this island. Not a bad idea, actually. If this was all a prison, we could smoke in it.

Cameron, make it clear. If you break into someone's house, you deny, and therefore forfeit, the law. The householder can do whatever they want to you. State it, Cameron, I dare you. Burglars will be prosecuted even if the court has to wait a year while doctors stitch the bits they can find back together. The homeowner will never be, not even if he put the burglar through a bacon slicer, re-enacted the entire 'Saw' series in his basement, or even smoked a cigarette at him.

Now that would make burglars think twice. All this 'reasonable force' nonsense is going to be interpreted by judges who have never been so much as punched in the face, no matter how much they should have been.

As it is, burglars know they will get a really serious ticking-off if they're caught. They know that they used to get far worse in the headmaster's office at school. Except this time they can not only keep the dinner money they stole, the law will give them more. Soon they will get off scot-free because they will have reported the homeowner for smoking, drinking, or having too much salt in his house. I have no confidence in any member of this government ever bothering to challenge that. It's their plan.

Go on, Cameron. You dehumanised smokers, drinkers, and the overweight, and recently even divorced fathers. We're all fair game for anyone who fancies having a go.

Dehumanise criminals. I dare you. Your predecessors didn't and neither have you. Move on from the easy targets and pick on one that actually matters. Stand up for something with a principle behind it instead of playing along with the whiners and the fake-science snake-oil merchants. Grow a pair. Stop talking and start doing. You are the Prime Monster, man. Prove that you are at least less worthless than the Brown Gorgon before you hand over to the next cloned drone. Ah, what the hell. You won't listen. You won't act.

You don't have the guts.

Cameron, you are the archetypal oik. And not the clever kind. The drooling kind. With a twitch.



In the meantime, if I am faced with a burglar, I can be sure that he hasn't told anybody his plans for the evening. So, no need to trouble the law with all that paperwork. And no need to trust any mollycoddled girly-man judge's interpretation of 'reasonable force'. My definition is simply that I stop hitting when my attacker stops moving.

I've had the crap seriously beaten out of me in the past. I am not talking Bullingdon japes, I am talking council estate bleeding. To hell with 'reasonable force'. All I will be interested in is ensuring that my attacker will never attack me again. If that means the tiresome chore of digging a hole in the woods, so be it. Nobody is looking for that hole in the woods because the burglar, in most cases, will never be missed.

Burglars, enter at your own risk. I don't play the 'reasonable force' game.

And Cameron, try visiting real life once in a while. You might actually end up knowing at least some of what you're talking about.

Monday 20 June 2011

Pop goes the Ponzi.

Everyone knows what a Ponzi scheme is, even those who don't know the name. They are also often known as 'pyramid schemes' and the Internet is full of them.

You join up and pay money. Then you entice others to join up and pay money, some of which comes to you. The whole thing is built on the new members and when the pool of suckers is exhausted, nobody is paying in any money and it all falls apart.

The only one who gets rich is the originator, the one at the top. Those near the top might make a little or at least break even. Everyone else gets back less than they paid in. Those at the bottom get nothing back.

Why does it work? It all hinges on convincing the new member that they won't be at the bottom when it all falls apart. The bigger it gets, the more there are at the bottom.

There is another way to make it work. You can threaten anyone who refuses to pay with jail. That way, the new member pool just keeps refilling. That kind of Ponzi can run for decades.

It's how the State pension works. The money we've all been paying in is not there waiting for our retirement. It's gone. All of it. What we pay now is used to pay the current pensioners, because the money they paid in was already gone by the time they retired.

When we retire, our pensions will come from the taxes of those who are now children. So those who are complaining about paying for pensioners at the moment will be those who are complained about in the future. That's if there is any pension in the future.

The pension age has been creeping upwards, at a rate that means I'll never reach it. I'm paying pension contributions to the State for a pension I'll never be able to claim. Well, why not? I'm paying in to a health service that wants to refuse to treat me, I'm paying towards the mortgages on MP's property portfolios, I'm subsidising their booze while they put up the price of mine, what's one more indignity heaped on that lot?

The pension Ponzi will fail because there are no longer enough taxpayers to support the current elderly. They try getting the NHS to kill them off, they try freezing them to death in the winter with coffin - I mean carbon taxes, they have plenty of homes to put them in where they can be ignored while their remaining bank accounts are emptied, but the stubborn old buggers just keep hanging on.

Meanwhile, businesses close due to idiotic regulations and spite-driven controls. More and more are out of work, more and more on benefits which means the State pays the State the National Insurance demanded by the State which really means anyone paying taxes pays that too.

They've tried raising NI, they've tried raising the pension age, they've tried killing off the pensioners and it's not enough. The money is gone. We are not paying in to a pension pot. We are throwing the money into a hole with nothing but greedy suits at the bottom.

There's only one thing left to do.

No pension age. Nobody retires. Ever.

This is sold as a benefit to you. You don't really want to retire, do you? You don't want all that bothersome gardening and tiring hobby work. Think how bored you'll be. No, best stay at work until you drop, and get a hero's funeral in a heroic mass grave provided by the State.

I know, it's not what Captain Toaster (oldies will get the Tefal reference) actually said. Look at how it works and compare it with the Righteous Standard template.

Raise NI. -------------- One non-smoking carriage.

Raise pension age. ----- One smoking carriage.

Change pension ------- No smoking on trains.
age to 'flexible'.

Next? ---------------- No smoking on the stations.


Antismokers will scoff because I compared it to the smoking template. Pensions have nothing to do with smoking, other than that most public sector pensions invest heavily in tobacco. Yet it is exactly the same template, and you can do the same comparison with drink, waist size, salt, burgers, anything you like.

Face it. If you have not retired by now, or are not retiring imminently, you're not going to. This does not mean you can stop paying NI because that's just another income tax and the government need it to support bomb-belt training in Outer Boomistan and for Hate the West lessons in Swampania.

We pay the NHS to treat us as an inconvenience, we pay the council to treat us like serfs, we pay the government to treat us like cattle, we pay the EU to treat us like something they've stepped in and now we'll be paying for a pension that's promised in the next life.

I'd rather be mugged. At least muggers are honest about it.

What to do? Write to your MP, the beneficiary of all this theft? Protest? You need police permission for that. Complain to the council? All authorities are paid out of that money taken from us all. None of them are going to help put a stop to it.

The only course of action I can see is to learn to live on an income that's just under the income tax threshold. I've managed on much less in the past. Cut expenditure to the bone, buy no gadgets, no fancy goods, and cut income to match. Barter wherever possible.

The only thing they care about is money. Stop the supply. It won't affect current pensions, they are paid out of thin air anyway.

Will that make them listen? I don't care. I no longer want them to listen.

I just want them to go.

Through the looking glass.

The world is now a maelstrom of chaos. To a dysfunctional, unsociable borderline Voorhees like myself, this is better than the maddest fiction I've ever read, and I've read and enjoyed Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy twice. I am having the time of my life reading about the latest collapse of the Righteous and I am delighted to be around to see it happening.

Remember when the Forehead of Eternal Emptiness declared himself the Heir to Blair? Well, now Special Ed Moribund has declared himself a Thatcher fan. Seems they get off on role-swapping games in Wastemonster. I look forward to seeing Special Ed wave his handbag at the Cameroid and insist that 'this baby's not for burning' and 'there is no such thing as socialism'.

Soon, Nick the Griff will convert to Judaism, dreadlock his hair and start talking like a West Indian ganja dealer (Oy-and-oy vay, innit?), while Clegg the Boy Wonder will declare war on Brussels and demand ashtrays on every bench in the Commons. The Brown Gorgon will appear on 'Britain's Got Mugs Who Think They Aren't Just There To Be Laughed At' doing Julian Clary impressions and the Tiny Blur will use all his money to buy bricks for a Jewish dog's home, then have all his teeth removed and retire to live as a hermit in the woods, where he will suck live stoats to entertain tourists.

The Blur's wife will renounce the Human Rights Moneyspinning Act and settle for a job modelling for postboxes. With her as a model we wouldn't have to pay more for large letters. Greenpeace will convert the Rainbow Warrior (the new one, without the French-adapted doyley hull) to run on nuclear power and declare themselves veal-eaters to a man. Climate change scientists will admit that, actually, the climate has been changing all the time anyway and they've just been cashing in on nature, and finish with 'April fools!'

The way the world is now, none of that would surprise me in the least.

The cracks in the Great Plan have become fissures. Even the Cleggeron's love of Master EU is coming under fire. With apologies to Creedence Clearwater Revival -

I see a bald man cycling
I see trouble on the way

I'll work on that one, it has promise.

In the meantime, how can anyone not laugh? When someone takes over a pub and decides the best way to make his business profitable is to get rid of all the customers.

But I object to swearing, tattoos and dogs sitting on chairs. If I was going to take my mother to dinner there I would not wish her to be exposed to that sort of thing.

It's comedy gold. He doesn't want his mother exposed to a dog sitting on a chair?

Then the police arrest a fork-bending magician in a bar and the bar has this to say -

Fiona Williams, boss of the Apres bar in Lichfield, Staffs, said: “We have to protect our customers and knives and forks are a security issue. He was not organised as a magician, nor announced himself or his intentions.”

I once went to a fancy dress party with a fork stuck to my nose. What was I supposed to be? Fork nose. If I did it now I'd apparently be a security risk. Look at these people. Look at them. See them cower in the presence of cutlery. Watch their terror at a dog in a chair - "My God, that dog is sitting in a chair. It's trying to declare mastery over us. Quick, trounce it with political correctness. Oh no, wait, it has a spoon!"

Then there is the ever-reliable comedy king, Trevor Philips. I see a bald man whining - no, no, save it for later. Those terrible Christians have looked at the gay community and said 'Oooo, no, we don't like it', and that makes them evil, evil people. Far more evil than those Muslims who blow people up, who want to behead everyone, who burst forth in rage about mere cartoons, who declare that freedom is wrong, who want to cut the hands off thieves, who demand that raped women produce four male witnesses and if they can't they get stoned to death, and who want to... er... kill all the gays. That's all okay with Magical Trevor, as long as they don't wrinkle their noses and say 'Oooo, no, we don't like it.'

Isn't that kind of turnaround straight from the world of Mony Python? Think of their Hell's Grannies sketch. Many of those arrested these days are arrested for farcical reasons, while those who rape children are to be set free early so they're back out before their victims get too old to interest them. Tiny Blur changed the treason laws before committing treason. One can only speculate as to why Chubby Ken wants these particular laws changed.

We live in a farce. A continuous joke. The humourless comedians run the show now and they are sicker than anything Bernard Manning, Frankie Boyle or Jim Davidson ever even dreamed of. They don't even realise they are funny. They seriously believe they are in control, that it is not all just slipping through their fingers faster than a greased eel.

So we see Chancellor Ozzy pretending he's not going to rob every Tory voter, but with this government's record for doing the opposite of what they say, stop bothering with your pension right now. It's about to be stolen from you. Again.

We see Dai Cameroid, whose memory evidently does not extend as far back as the Fathers4Justice protests on the Wastemonster roof, declaring that all absent fathers must be despised. Special Ed Moribund is to do a Thatcher on the unions who put him in power while the Coagulation declares that innocent mistakes are a crime.

I'm not having to dig far for these links. They are all in the current papers. Yes, this is just the recent lunacy. There is new stuff every single day. Far more than anyone could catalogue. An accelerating vortex of insanity, a wild ride into the depths of chaos, a madness so complete we can only weep at its absolute perfection.

Fear of everything, hatred of everything, ban everything, wrap yourself in non-allergenic carbon-neutral unbleached cotton wool and never eat or drink anything ever again. Never leave the house, take your medication, cower and squeal and hand over money to State-appointed highwaymen when they call. Beware the lack of sunspots that will bring an ice age, and fear the simultaneous surge of sunspots that will fry your iPhone. Become vegetarian to save the planet but don't eat vegetables in case you get poisoned. Save the planet for the animals by killing all the animals. Doublethink has never been so perfectly implemented.

But never fear. The government will look after you. They know where you are.

It has reached the zenith. The absurdity is complete when you are told that you are the very danger you are trying to escape. Yes, you. The final target for your unmitigated bile is not smokers, fat people, drinkers... it's you. Hate yourself, fear yourself, and finally demand a ban on yourself. For the cheeldren.

There's no point getting depressed about it. Just sit back and watch the world burn. Toast your marshmallows and light your cigarettes and laugh.

It's happened before. Civilisation has collapsed many times. From the embers, we just start all over again. Perhaps next time it'll be different.

But I doubt it.

Sunday 19 June 2011

The Smoky-Drinky Chronicle.

Back from Smoky-Drinky, and it was interesting.

There is a new Wetherspoons in this little town. It took over the most recent closed-down pub. I haven't been in and won't, it opens directly onto the street, has nowhere to put even the rudimentary so-called shelters the government allows for its most hated citizens, and the weather is still lousy. It's a non-smoking pub for non-smoking people. There's nothing for me there. They can have a free beer night and I won't be there.

The interesting thing was, none of the other Smoky-Drinkers had been in there either, and none plan to visit. Why visit an establishment that hates you when you can have a Smoky-Drinky where you are not hated? The price of drink is not the issue, something the pubs will never realise. It's paying to be hated that's the issue. We won't do that. This new Wetherspoons might thrive or fail. I really don't care either way. It's of no more relevance or interest to me, or to the other Smoky-Drinkers, than the pensioner's knitting circle.

Stolen Child is nearly four years old, still doesn't talk much and still can't eat solids. His problems were genetic, which we all knew, but his lack of development was the reason the SS used to take him from his parents. Actually, I still think the main reason lay in the fact that Stolen Child's grandfather told an SS drone to fuck off when she insisted he couldn't smoke in his own home while she was there. Spite and vindictiveness is the order of the day, among those who think they are important because their pay is extracted from real people by force. It is becoming ever more difficult for the SS to justify this decision, but they will never admit they were in the wrong and nobody will be disciplined. They are infallible in their own eyes, filth in everyone else's, and they'll never understand why.

Soon they will all go on strike. I'm looking forward to it. Let them strike, and if they are not missed, close their jobs. I'd like to think that's what Cameron plans but as he has demonstrated over and over again, he doesn't have the guts. More likely he'll cave in and do a U-turn, something his government have done on every policy they've announced so far. As soon as someone starts shouting, Cameron cowers. Spineless? Cameron is beyond spineless. He's a mollusc. If he put slug pellets in his garden, the slugs would make him pick them up.

The Angry Ranting Man has more to say on the subject. Me, I'm losing control of my fingers and the sun's coming up, so it's nearly sleep-time for me.

Saturday 18 June 2011

The Smokophobes kill the wrong target again.

The Health Nazis have succeeded in banning cigarette vending machines. I never use them, the price is way over the top, and I don't know anyone who does use them. But then we do have a 24-hour Tesco here so there's little interest in buying a half-filled pack at full price. Also, the machines have never, as far as I know, carried rolling baccy. Even so, there are obviously people who do use them or they wouldn't exist.

This is billed as an attack on smokers but really, smokers will be entirely unaffected. The only difference will be that those who forget to pick up some smokes on the way to the pub will now have to remember to call in at Local Shop on the way. Adjustment will take a matter of days.

As to the 'kiddies might use them' nonsense, those kiddies really shouldn't be in the pub in the first place and setting up a remote lock so the barman can check your age before you use the machine isn't particularly difficult. That argument is irrelevant, as are most of those already accepted by the pinheads of government.

However, the entire cigarette vending machine industry has just become worthless. Have a factory making the machines? The factory, and everything in it, is worthless. You cannot sell up, you cannot recoup any losses, the specialised machinery is a load of scrap metal now. Have a business, built from scratch, based on the supply and maintenance of these machines? All your carefully-built business is now worth less than the shirt you're wearing. All your staff are out of work. Redundancy payments? With what? That stock of machines can't even be sold to cover the losses.

Everyone in that industry, from the managing director to the cigarette machine refilling operative, is now out of work. Not in October when the measures come in. Now. Are you seriously going to keep trying to run a business the Government has declared will close in a few months? Are you really going to keep making vending machines until October, when they will roll off the production line straight into the scrapyard?

All those people will be on benefits, all those people who once paid tax. All the company taxes stop coming in. All the VAT on the sales stops coming in. Suppliers of sheet metal, glass, plastic and other materials will see their order books shrink. Transport companies that used to move the materials to the factory and then move the machines from the factory to the pub will lose money. All these companies will lay off staff, those staff will no longer be taxpayers, the companies will all record lower profits and will all pay less tax.

The effect on the tobacco companies? Zero. Smokers will simply stock up at Aziz's Late Shop so tobacco sales will be unaffected. The effect on smokers? Apart from a little irritation at a new inconvenience for a few days, zero. The effect on underage smokers? Zero. Very few of them are buying from the machines and all of them have alternative suppliers.

Next, plain packaging hidden under the counter. The effects of this? Well, the shops will no doubt lose sales but the tobacco companies won't. Man with a Van buys his stock on the continent. The tobacco companies will not lose a penny. Legal sales will plummet but smokers will smoke, children will find them even easier to get because the criminals bringing it in don't care about age, and tobacco companies will remain a solid investment for the pensions of the same pinheads who are pretending to ban it.

Effect on smokers - zero.

Effect on tobacco companies - zero.

Effect on British industry and the economy - a disaster.

So, a round of applause for the smokophobes. They have moved us all one step closer to the Brown Gorgon's dream of a destitute country while having absolutely no effect whatsoever on smoking, other than making it far, far easier for children to get hold of cigarettes.

No wonder all their pensions invest in tobacco.

No wonder the tobacco companies do no more than make a few token objections. No matter where you buy tobacco, they make a profit. The only difference is which government gets the tax, and it will always be the country that charges the lowest duty.

Oh, and if you think you're safe with an Electrofag, best take a look at this. Apparently that water vapour is even more dangerous than tobacco smoke now.

What? Did you think the truth would save you? These people are not interested in truth. They don't want facts.

They want to control your life.

Unfortunately, their pathetic attempts to control the uncontrollable will only lead to disaster for everyone. Not just the smokers. The tax take will plummet as a result of these measures and it goes far, far beyond the simple duty on cigarettes. Since the pinheads can't even contemplate any form of control on their excessive spending, they will simply find new ways to take more money from us all.

The smokophobe drones won't see it because all they have is hate and spite. The ability to reason left them long ago. They are now open to any bizarre story as long as it fuels their hate and I'm happy to wind them to greater and greater heights of idiocy.

Those who can see what's coming can be ready. I see no reason to warn the enemy.

Anyway, it's time to leave for Smoky-Drinky. No pubs, no vending machines, no staff, no public access, and no bans. Nothing here has changed.

We're still laughing at you, smokophobes.

Children influenced by adults?

Well who'd have thought it?

Lord Longrider and the Duke of Puddlecote have already covered the astounding ability of modern science to actually notice that which has been right in front of everyone else's eyes all the time. Next time, include a few windows in that ivory tower, and let the researchers look through them once in a while. It'll save a lot of bother.

Science has realised at last that those parents who don't give a damn about their children tend to produce nasty little scroats, while those who apply discipline and caring tend to produce well-brought-up and actually worthwhile human beings. My grandmother would have had words to describe these scientists, and she wasn't shy about using those words. She also wasn't shy about whacking any grandchild who used them, and we couldn't do a damn thing about it because when she used them, she did it in Welsh. It was years before we even knew she was swearing at us.

Well, science has more to do yet. Now they are fretting about the mystery of why ten-year-old boys are so obsessed with their weight that they are becoming bulimic. Why those children, who are not at all obese, are being bullied for not being stick-thin.

Maybe one day they will make the connection with the health freaks' obsession with BMI to the extent that perfectly normal children are being sent home with a letter saying 'You are fat'. Maybe one day they will realise that this bulimia isn't just some random outbreak, but has been carefully nutured and instilled into those children by all the health Nazis, and drummed into each and every child in every school.

Your child might not look fat, but computer says 'fat' so he's fat. We've informed the school and all his friends, who have promised not to bully him or harass him or call him 'Tubbo' or attempt to roll him like a barrel. They swore a solemn oath with their fingers crossed, which is their culture, innit?

Even the Daily Mail commenters have spotted it. Well, the lesser froth-mouthed Mail commenters have spotted it.

When, I wonder, will science? And if they do realise that they are responsible for this in the first place, will they ever admit it?

Friday 17 June 2011

Computer decoke.

Last night I found out what was making the computer fan scream every time the antivirus scanned. Removing the thick layer of dust over the grille cured it.

Then I had one of those Really Good Ideas. You know, the ones that start with 'This will be brilliant' and later turn into 'What the hell was I thinking?' It seemed like a good idea to disassemble the computer and de-dustify it completely. I mean, the thing is seven years old and has been quietly cleaning the house by sucking all the dust into itself.

I have it all back together now and it seems to be working okay. I had forgotten how many wires were plugged into the back of it and how few of them could be plugged in before shoving it back into the restricted space it lives in. I freely admit to swearing like a toothy clown.

Right. Out with the booze, time to read the papers. That's something best not done sober.

Thursday 16 June 2011

Fishing? Best let the sandwich inspectors check your lunch.

Apologies for lack of interaction lately but the book I'm reading is really very good.

Anyway, I almost sprayed my whisky at this article. I held it in, this isn't the cheap stuff.

I like fishing. It's one of the dwindling number of pursuits you can still do while smoking at the same time. Fly fishing or ledgering (maggot or worm) for trout, mostly. Never could get the lengths and weights right for float fishing and there's almost no coarse fishing here at all. There was once a pond with pike, which was cheap to fish because the owner wanted the pike fished out so he could stock it with trout. I caught one with a wooden minnow spinner on a wire trace, the only time I've used that rig, and it was, shall we say, a little different from getting a hook out of a trout.

Anyway, I have read about bread balls and such things used in coarse fishing. Apparently, it turns out that modern bread is very bad for fish. It makes them bloated and gives them dodgy guts. If I was a fish, I'd be happy with that, compared to being hooked in the lip, dragged to the bank and then smacked across the head. Feeling a bit bloated doesn't sound so bad in that context.

But there is great concern for the fish. Aside from the comical claim that one fag-end can poison the Atlantic, it seems there is a more pressing concern for the health of the fish. This is what nearly sprayed my screen with a good malt -

This is the view of one fishery that has become the first in the country to outlaw it, insisting anglers cast out only wholemeal or granary bread.

...

Graham said: “There is not much nutritional content in the white bread compared to the brown.
“The fish tend to get lethargic and bloated. The salt and sugar levels in white and brown loaves are similar but in a typical white sliced loaf there is 3.5 grams of protein per slice compared to 5.6 grams in brown bread.”

The whole point of fishing is to catch and kill your dinner. Predators do not discuss dietary requirements with their prey. Also, the nutritional requirements of fish are not subject to the arbitrary rules laid down for humans. There really is nothing to suggest that the 'brown bread good' mantra applies to fish at all. In fact, since white bread has been used in those baits for centuries and brown bread hasn't, isn't it reasonable to suppose that brown bread makes a lousy bait?

So anglers will in future turn up with brown bread 'bait' and white bread sandwiches for 'lunch'.

Maggot sandwiches. Mmmmm.

Wednesday 15 June 2011

Death and reading.

Just quick ones at the moment. I am engrossed in a book (ignore the 'out of stock' and order it anyway, it'll turn up just the same).

So, floppy-hatted author Terry Pratchett has watched someone die and that's now the ultimate in reality TV. What's next? Convicted murderers on TV given the option of life in prison or a bullet to the head? Yes, my sick sense of humour did in fact picture the Countdown clock going while they decide. Admit it, so did yours.

Do-do, do-do, do-do-do-do, bang.

Justice will be fun when I'm dictator.

Suicide is a difficult thing to discuss. I've never tried it myself, despite nearly thirty years of urging by several people, but I've known a few who did - and no, I didn't cause any of them. Most were to do with money. I can't comprehend the depression that people need to sink into in order to decide that they'd rather be dead. As far as I'm aware, this is the only chance I get at life and even if reincarnation is true, what if I were to come back as someone in a tin hut in a shanty somewhere, or as a Miliband? I mean, however bad life gets, it could always be worse.

To me, it's unthinkable. I will never kill myself. If I end up old and mad (well, older) and consigned to one of God's waiting rooms, the staff will kill me. I'll drive them to it. I will not voluntarily die, in fact I am determined to hang on as long as possible because I know that when I die, I'll be a 'smoking related death' even if I get flattened by a falling piano or fall into the whirling blades of an electricity non-generating device. I refuse to be a notch on the Dreadful Arnott's dead smoker scorecard. Sheer bloodymindedness has kept me going so far and will keep me going for a lot longer.

It is a personal thing and every suicide case is different. I know not everyone thinks like me, which, on reflection, is probably a good thing overall. I would not, for example, make a very good diplomat. Nor could I ever be a waiter, a teacher, or anything involving being patient with idiots. Some people get so depressed that life has no meaning. I can honestly say that even when penniless and on the streets, I have never experienced such feelings. If things don't go my way, I go the way of the things until I'm back in control of my life. Some people can't, I've met them, I don't understand why they can't but that's just people-differences, I suppose.

Some people have terminal illnesses, but in the end we are all terminal. I wouldn't like to know how long I have left but if I did, I'd write faster and drink more. One last chance to drop something offensive into the world and then I'd be dead and they can't get me. Then again, being dead, I won't be able to enjoy it. No, on reflection, there are no upsides to being dead. Even pain is an experience, and death is the absence of all experience.

It's sold as 'the end of pain' and it is. It's also the end of everything else. The absolute end of all physical experience, and not something to be embraced at any cost. Certainly not voluntarily.

Others think of it in different terms. Anna Raccoon considers the effect on the family. Oldrightie is disgusted that something so private should be televised. Mummylonglegs wonders why simply dropping the old fogey off a cliff or holding a plastic bag over their heads isn't just the same.

Me, I simply cannot understand what sort of mental state is necessary to even consider killing myself, or letting someone else kill me. I'll die one day, we all will, but I don't worry about it because there is nothing I can do to avoid that day.

What I won't do is book an appointment with it.

And when the day comes, I want to be the one in the floppy hat.

Tuesday 14 June 2011

A load of coracles.

It seems Britannia no longer rules the waves. You remember all those jokes about the Canadian Navy? Well, now the Canadians tell the same jokes about the British Navy.

The Cleggeron Coagulation have the same attitude to the military as the Brown Gorgon and the Tiny Blur. Off you go to war lads. Nothing to worry about, you can't hurt yourselves because we haven't given you any weapons. Now you just go and give Johnny Foreigner a damn stern ticking-off. Just be careful not to raise your voice or call them any naughty names.

Cameron's forehead is evidently a facade, there's nothing behind it at all. He tells us we can't afford to properly equip our military but we can afford to give money to other countries (which they use to equip theirs).

Many, many years ago, the Welsh would paddle across to Ireland in coracles, little round open boats. They'd have a bit of a scrap with the Irish and then row home until the next weekend. That was the Welsh Navy - guys paddling little boats. Don't laugh, the UK might have to fall back on that soon. An aircraft carrier will be a coracle filled with paper planes. Nuclear ones will be those where the sailor has a watch with a luminous dial.

I'm sure Dopey Dave feels really, really good about handing over billions in aid to countries that are richer than us. He must feel great about being the most generous idiot in the world, more generous than all those countries who are far less skint that we are because their leaders are not total morons who just give it all away.

The world is not looking at you in awe while you pass out the money, Cameron.

They're just trying to keep a straight face until you put down the cash and leave the room.

Monday 13 June 2011

The University of Fantasia.

I think that's where most science comes from now, and it's performed by a big mouse who talks to a broom.

It's the only explanation for stories like this -

A booze company sponsors midwives to advise pregnant women not to get shitfaced every day and the British Medical Association aren't happy about it.

I think the whole initiative is a load of guff anyway and I'd just be happy that it was paid for by a company that can afford it, rather than wasting even more of those taxes the government steal from us all. Women know that when pregnant, excessive amounts of anything labelled 'bad for you' are not a great idea. They already know. It's built into the firmware.

Women who sink three bottles of vodka a day and continue to do so when pregnant are not going to produce any genetic heritage worth keeping. Harsh, but there it is. If you want the population to get smarter you don't need fancy eugenics ideas. The terminally useless are perfectly capable of taking themselves out of the gene pool and the only thing the rest of us need do is leave them alone.

How widespread is this problem of drunken pregnant women, reeling about the place like a barge that's broken its moorings? I cannot recall seeing 'mum-to-be' outings in the pubs, I don't remember ever seeing a pregnant woman face down in the gutter, rocking gently like a horizontal Weeble. I don't recall seeing any pregnant woman drunk and I've been to an awful lot of places where people get drunk.

That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, of course. But it does imply that it's not common. The figures in the article imply the exact opposite.

Figures from the 2005 Infant Feeding Survey showed that more than a third of mothers gave up drinking entirely during pregnancy.
But 4 per cent said they did not change their drinking habits, while 61 per cent drank less but did not cut out alcohol entirely.

Those figure only work as a shock-horror-probe if one hundred percent of women routinely drink themselves into a stupour. This is patent nonsense, I can think of three ladies in Dunfermline for a start. Let's play 'rip the numbers'.

...more than a third of mothers gave up drinking entirely during pregnancy

So they weren't alcoholics then. What were they drinking before pregnancy, a case of WKD a day or a sherry once a fortnight? We aren't told.

61 per cent drank less but did not cut out alcohol entirely

What did they cut down to, half a case of WKD a day or a sherry every other fortnight? We aren't told. And now the master stroke -

But 4 per cent said they did not change their drinking habits

The implication being that this four percent are merrily pickling their foetus in gin, so it'll be born with a red nose and a face like W.C. Fields. On the other hand, if you take a large group of women, what are the odds that four percent don't touch alcohol at all, and therefore 'no change' means they still didn't drink it when pregnant? Again we are not told what 'no change' really means.

The BMA and Don the Puritan are incensed that this idea of telling women what they already know is being paid for by a private company. They should be getting the money to do it. From us. Then they can enforce their 'no safe limit' mantra and threaten any woman who dares to sniff the gripe water with withdrawal of the State services they've paid for.

Don Shenker, of Alcohol Concern, said: ‘It is deeply worrying that alcohol education is being paid for by the drinks industry, as it is then unaccountable and not necessarily based on evidence or public-health guidance.’

Evidence, Don? Look up the meaning of words before you use them. Also look up 'unaccountable' and ask yourself where you are held to account? Diageo are giving the money to a charity. they aren't running the program themselves. Admit it, Don, what's eating you is that it's not your charity that's getting the cash. And why would they give it to you? You hate them, and us, and all forms of pleasure. You, Don, are the most 'deeply worrying' aspect here.

In other news, apparently some politicians have noticed that formaldehyde is dangerous. I am impressed, they have come to this realisation in under a century since the rest of us knew about it. Pretty good going for the few brain cells they possess. It's only dangerous when there's a lot of it but then their straining little brains have seized on 'no safe limit' and they can't hold longer sentences in their heads. Pity they haven't yet applied 'no safe limit' to politicians.

Funnily enough, even though it's in the list of trace chemicals on the side of scary tobacco packets, they aren't blaming formaldehyde on smoking this time. No, this time smoking gets the blame for... styrene.

The greatest exposure to styrene in the general population is through cigarette smoking, the report said.

Styrene? Tobacco is made of leaves, the filters are cellulose and the wrapping is paper. All plant material, all easily biodegradable despite the insane ramblings of the antismoker drones. Where's the plastic? And how can smoking be the biggest cause of exposure to anything in the general population? It's banned everywhere!

The American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry group, lashed out at the report, saying it was concerned that politics may have hijacked the scientific process.

Ya think? Where the hell have you people been for the last twenty years? Climate change, obesity, drinking, smoking, salt, fat, there is no science any more. It's ALL politics. Conclusions are written before the project even begins. The practice I'm getting in fiction writing will stand me in good stead if I should ever return to government-sponsored 'research' which consists of a boozy lunch with Daily Mail staff and a hungover write-up of whatever the sponsor wants to hear. Science 'might have been' hijacked by politics? Oh, do wake up.

I would say 'wake up and smell the coffee' but that's probably illegal by now.

The scaremongers are working really, really hard now. That's a good sign. They're getting panicky because fewer and fewer people are listening. Hardly surprising when they have passed deep into the realms of the absurd and are fast approaching the laugh horizon.

The cracks are getting bigger and the whole lunatic edifice is crumbling. Unfortunately, it looks like they are going to take scientific credibility, all of it, down with them.

The odd thing is, science doesn't seem to mind.

Sunday 12 June 2011

Land of Hopeless Tories.

Damian Green says he'll keep immigration under control.

Aww, bless, he actually thinks he has some say in this. Damey, I'm afraid you'd be better off trying stop a 700-ton runaway train with the wrong kind of leaves. The UKBA are only interested in stealing booze and fags and the EU dictate immigration policy. Hint: There isn't one. Your job is to act as receptionist for whoever the EU sends our way. Didn't you know? Ask your boss, he knows.

'Outside-EU immigration?' Ha! When those Libyans landed in Italy, what happened? the Italians gave them passports. As EU citizens, they were then legally entitled to move to France, where they wanted to be. Anyone appearing in any EU country will get citizenship because they'll say they want to move to another EU country, and the EU doesn't let any country send them back. Wait until Croatia and Turkey get into the game. The only people you'll be able to keep out of the UK will be the English.

Damey, you can have absolutely no control over immigration until a) we are out of the EU and b) the UKBA stops spending all its time mugging shoppers. Until then, you are pissing into the wind, dear boy.

So we are going to be more selective who we let in, eh, Damey?

So how's that working out for you then, eh?

Face it, Damey. You are in a non-job. You are as much use as a five-a-day coordinator, a smoking cessation officer or a diversity outreach consultant. You have been given a job which simply cannot be done and as your boss will tell you if he ever works up the courage, a job which the EU will never allow to be done.

You are useless. Accept that, shut up and claim your expenses.

Oh, and if you like playing with numbers, Constantly Furious has a very interesting statistic for you to look at.

So how many more are you paying to come here, Damey? And when is the Tory party going to admit it's actually just another subsidiary of Blair Inc.?

Most of all, when is our cretinous population going to see you all for what you really are?

The caring profession.

Even if you're a criminal, the NHS will not move you down the transplant waiting list. They will work to keep you alive. As long as you're not a smoking criminal, anyway.

If you complain when they screw up and you're not a criminal, well, they'll come after you.

So, what is it this profession is caring about, I wonder? I know it's not me.

Is it you?

Saturday 11 June 2011

Spoon the Underdog.

Please, ladies. Okay, I know, you have hair to wash and other priorities.

But seriously. I was looking for this in response to a comment when I came across this:



Seems there is a sort of meme building. It has nothing to do with me. I am inconsequential.

But if I can be a pawn in the game, I will.

Reading time.



I have three books to review and there's a film on the way. I don't get paid but I do get to keep the books and the DVD. So this weekend is read and review weekend.

One of the reviews will appear here, although I see Dick Puddlecote has already beaten me to the punch with his own review. Best get caught up.

This will mean little blogging activity over the weekend (I've said that before then descended into rage anyway). I will overlook the Leftie rage at Cameron telling the truth for once, and Ed 'Sweaty' Balls talking, well, balls as usual. I'll have to pass on the day-to-day life of a country Cameron wants to give even more money to, and skip the speculation on whether it's because he admires that sort of thing and wishes it was happening here. As for this, oh dear, the red mist is forming...

No, I have to read and review these books before that film shows up and the to-do pile gets even bigger.

Never mind, there'll be plenty more lunacy in the papers when I'm finished. The world has an inexhaustible supply. If we could harness the power of stupid, we wouldn't need any other energy source ever again.


Forgot to add: I also have to find suitable transit packaging for a few of these little babies. My little garden won't accomodate them all. The stems are still easily breakable but I'm sure there must be a way.

My, haven't they grown?