Tuesday 31 August 2010

Tormenting children for fun and profit.

Marmalade Sandwich has an interesting tale.

There was once a man who was arrested and charged with being a child-chasing pervert. He was convicted but didn't go to jail. So we might surmise that whatever he did wasn't considered all that serious. However, he was convicted in 2005, during the heyday of mad judges and insane Labour lawmaking when the more serious the offence, the more likely the perpetrator was to get a ticking off and compensation.

So we have no real idea of the seriousness of his original offence. Instead of jail he was given an order that forbade him from being anywhere near young girls. The trick cyclist in charge of his case said he was a low risk of re-offending. And, indeed, he hasn't.

He has gone to jail for 14 months because he now has a friend who has young sisters. He has done nothing at all to those girls, and is not accused of doing anything at all to any others. All he did was be in the same room as them. Not even alone.

Five years without reoffending is a pretty good stretch. It leads me to consider that the original offence was a one-off and that he is not a natural-born filthy pervert. However, the simple act of being within sight of a young girl has breached his court order and he is now in jail for 14 months for doing nothing more than disobeying orders.

When he committed a real offence, no jail. When he disobeyed orders without committing or attempting to commit any actual offence, or even showed evidence that he was conspiring to commit an offence, jail. Fair?

He disobeyed the State. He must suffer.

The State, on the other hand, is happy to use threats of tormenting your children to extort money from you.

Rab has a real-life example. I reproduce the letter he received without permission because it's late and he'll probably be a bit miffed if I turn up at his place and shout through the letterbox with a megaphone. People are funny that way.

Dear Parents/Carers,

Playtime For Pakistan

As you will know from media coverage millions of children in Pakistan have lost their homes and have no food or clean drinking water due to recent flooding. On the afternoon of Thursday 2 September we are offering an extra playtime to encourage our pupils to bring a donation for this appeal. Thank you for your support.

Regards

Blah Blah
Head Teacher


Let's play.


As you will know from media coverage millions of children in Pakistan have lost their homes and have no food or clean drinking water due to recent flooding.

Only children? I had the impression the adults were in a similar situation. Or was it only orphanages in that flood zone? This is emotive use of 'cheeeldren' in standard Righteous format. They know we adults will consider other adults capable of dealing with problems and they know their little charges will think the same way. In order to get the pupils to pressure their parents into paying up, they convey the impression that only children are affected and there are no adults out there doing a thing to help. It is a cynical and heartless ploy, but then that's what the Righteous are like.

On the afternoon of Thursday 2 September we are offering an extra playtime to encourage our pupils to bring a donation for this appeal.

Those who bring in money get an extra playtime. Those who don't? Well, they'll be in class but not learning anything. That might give them an unfair elitist advantage over their classmates and anyway, the lack of playtime is a punishment for not extorting money from their parents. It is not supposed to be pleasant.

Thank you for your support.

Sounds like something the Kray twins might sign off with. Pay up or your child gets stigmatised.

This is not encouraging charity. This is demanding money with menaces. Deep menaces because it's not just for one playtime. Children are vicious things and will treat non-conformism very roughly indeed. Especially with their new State-sponsored indoctrination.

Not contributing to Pakistan? Then you must be racist. You must be a Nazi. Those children will be tormented both by teachers and by other pupils over this. Never mind that Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country and we are currently up to our eyes in so much debt we aren't sure we'll be keeping our own weapons. No, that's not likely to feature in school-propagated 'knowledge'.

So, if you commit an offence and get sent away with orders, never commit the offence again but disobey your orders, you go to jail.

If you work for the State you can torment children to your heart's content and there will be no accountability to worry about.

This isn't Orwell's 1984. This is worse.

No reason...


... it just made me laugh like a drain. Picture found in possession of an offensive swimsuit here.

No oil, eh, Greens?

Greenpeace, the apparently tolerated new pirates on the high seas, have decided to perform another act of sabotage. Since they are acting in international waters under nobody's laws, and since they are deliberately attacking another vessel, I still don't understand why they escape charges of piracy and are not summarily sunk.

They claim that if they halt drilling for a short time, Cairn will struggle to meet the deadline to complete exploration before the winter conditions set in, forcing the company to abandon the search for oil off Greenland until next year.

That'll be because of the ice that doesn't exist any more due to global warming, right?

Sim McKenna, from the US, who is one of the climbers, said: ''We've got to keep the energy companies out of the Arctic and kick our addiction to oil, that's why we're going to stop this rig from drilling for as long as we can.

Kick our addiction to oil? So what does the Greenpeace ship run on? There's a picture of it with the article, and despite studying it closely I can see no sails, nor can I see where they'd put out oars. No solar panels and no wind turbines. It runs on fossil fuel and they use it a lot. We are to give up our use of oil but the Greens using it is just fine.

If they were truly Green, they'd have something like this. Ships like the Potosi sailed around the world carrying hundreds of tons of goods and guess how much fuel they used? None at all. The wind took them.

The reason we don't still use such ships routinely is that the wind can stop, leaving the ship stuck, and also that operating them was bloody hard work. Dangerous, too. A fouled line in a topsail meant some poor sod climbing right up there and risking his life. If he fell from that height, it wouldn't matter too much if he hit the deck or the sea.

Yet it was the purest form of Green transport. No oil, no coal, just the wind. Greenpeace don't use Green transport even though it has been available for a very, very long time. They use the oil they claim the rest of us are 'addicted' to.

Isn't it funny how that word 'addicted' has come to mean 'I don't like it so you can't have it' in so many Righteous arguments now? Whatever we like that they don't like, be it salt, fat, smoking, booze, anything, is defined as an addiction.

Oh, and if you object, you must be in the pay of big oil/big tobacco/the booze companies/the Russian salt miners or whichever industry they are trying to destroy today. I object to all of them. Where's my mansion?

Greenpeace want us all back in the Middle Ages, burning tallow candles in mud huts. Well, not all. They get to keep their oil-fuelled ship and their home comforts. They aren't the problem. The rest of us are the problem.

When the Greens live the way they want the rest of us to live, then maybe they'll get some respect. While they make use of artificial fibres made from oil, while they go home to their electrically-powered houses with their gas central heating, while they act as pirates in an oil-fuelled ship, they are hypocrites and should be derided.

They are also pirates and should be treated as such.

I would like to see an end to the dominance of oil. I would be delighted if solar power were viable as a replacement and I would be content to tolerate those windmills if they were any use. I would be happy to see cars run on plant oils but none of that is ready to completely replace oil, and won't be for a long time.

If Greenpeace expended as much energy in looking for alternatives as they do on their piratical jaunts, they might come up with something. They won't. That would be hard. Being violent is easy. For the same reason, they use oil-powered ships because it's comfortable and easy. They will never be seen under sail.

Violence is the only socialist answer to anything, no matter what colour flag the socialists gather beneath. 'Do what we want or else' is their core mantra. Oppression and control are their sole intentions.

There was a time when Tories took a different line.

So, what will the Coagulation do about this act of piracy? My money is on... nothing at all.

Monday 30 August 2010

Speculation. Probably.

All these bans are very specific and highly targeted. They are not the product of hysterical and stupid people (mostly) although hysterical and stupid people can be relied on to enact, support and enforce them.

The bans don't originate with bus stop antismoking harridans and checkout operators who won't sell booze to adults 'in case they give a sip to a baby'. Reminds me of the guy who used to pop up on Vic Reeves' Big Night Out carrying a doll. He'd ask if they had any booze for the baby, triggering one of the many catchphrases of the show - 'You can't give a baby booze!' I wonder if I could trigger the same words in an off licence? It has to be worth a try. In these humourless times, of course, it would more than likely trigger a call to the police. And then I'd be in clink while they tried to find the nonexistent baby I was trying to buy booze for. Fun is not allowed any more.

These bans start with people high up the scientific and medical hierarchy. So when you realise that they make little to no sense at all, you are forced to conclude that doctors are all like those portrayed in Carry On films, and all scientists are wild-haired Emmet Browns with a deep grasp of one specific subject but no idea of how it fits into the rest of reality.

They aren't all like that.

These are intelligent people, these ban originators. They know what they are doing, and what they are doing has little to nothing to do with your health.

What do nerve cells use as insulation? It's stuff called myelin. Look it up. It's made of fat. What are you to delete from your diet?

How do nerve cells communicate? The simple answer is 'electrical impulses' but there's more to it than that. The signal passes along the nerve fibre by pumping two metal ions into and out of the fibre, and that's what moves the signal. The ions are potassium and... sodium. Which you mostly get from salt. What are you to delete from your diet?

Deleting these things entirely from your diet will make you slow and stupid and quickly dead. Deleting them from a growing child's diet will produce a zombie incapable of thinking for itself, assuming the child even survives.

I know people who now try to eat an entirely fat-free diet. I have tried to persuade them that some fats are essential and that cholesterol should not be zero and that it's the artificial fats in their low-fat spreads they should be deleting, not the olive oil they used to use to fry things in. They respond with 'Oh, and have you had your cholesterol checked recently? What, you've never had it checked? Then what do you know about it?' These same people will soon eliminate salt from their diets.

I don't get my cholesterol or blood pressure checked because I'm not ill. I grew up in a time and place where nobody bothered the local GP unless there was something wrong with them. Nobody called the doctor for colds or flu or a dose of the squits, often not even for measles or chicken pox. They didn't have any cure for those things and still don't - so there was no point asking. Just get some calamine lotion or kaolin and morphine (is that still available?) and deal with it. Everyone knew that some things you just had to wait out.

The people with nothing wrong with them cost the NHS far more than smokers ever could.

Today was a bank holiday down south. I had forgotten and it took a while before I realised why nobody was answering their phone. So, since I couldn't progress the current project at all today, I watched some TV while working on that Dalek kit a friend sent me for my 50th birthday. He doesn't bother about all this 'conformity' bollocks either. He is one of those who can out-drink me, and he's fitter now than I have ever been.

The adverts were disturbing. Many are for mysterious pills that apparently everyone now needs just to get through the day. My medicine cabinet has aspirin and paracetamol in it and I think they're probably out of date. If I get heartburn, which is rare, I drink water. If I get a headache, also rare, I generally have a bit of a lie down, maybe a sleep, and it's gone. If I get chest pains I have a whisky or two and it's fixed. Those are rare too, ever since I left the nine-to-five world, the meetings, the admin and all the rest of the junk behind.

I smoke more, not less, than I did then, because my office is at home. Since I no longer have to be anywhere by 9 am, I can drink far more too. The chest pains are all but gone. The irritating bowel has calmed (partly due to daily consumption of the Stuff and partly to the removal of the stress that caused it). I am faster, stronger, fitter than when I was a wage slave, I relax more deeply and I sleep better because I now sleep when I'm tired, not when an employer dictates. I eat real butter, not plasticine. I add salt to salads. I ignore every word of so-called advice from the banners and I'm fifty and not dead. Not even ill.

Which is probably illegal.

I'm definitely an inconvenience. Fortunately I haven't been abroad in years so the government/EU (same thing) can't make use of their disappearance machine - the European Arrest Warrant - to vanish me. There are countries I will never visit, and those are the countries who make most use of this disappearance machine. I will never support the Greek tourist industry because there is a real risk of being hauled back there on unsubstantiated, even nonsensical, charges and there is nothing at all our government will do to protect me. The courts here don't even have the option to help.

But what about these bans? Why ban smoking in pubs completely? Many pubs were visited by mainly - in some cases only - smokers. Who was at risk there? The staff? All they need do is swap jobs with smoking bar staff in non-smoking pubs and problem solved.

Why are there stringent restrictions on smoking shelters? Why can they not be more than 50% protected from the elements? Who is at risk in there? Nobody but smokers will use them and the more enclosed they are, the less the risk to delicate nonsmokers passing by, surely? So why the rules?

What's the problem with drink? All we hear about is 'supermarkets sell it cheap' but they always have. Off-licences were cheaper than pubs, long before the supermarkets. We didn't have the same scale of violent boozer problems, although they have always existed, years ago. Off sales from anywhere were always cheaper than the pub. It's not the drink that's changed, it's the people but nobody wants to see that. Why?

Fat, salt, chips, processed foods - one of these is not in the sights. There is no call to ban highly processed foods, filled with chemicals and made from, well, you really don't want to know what 'recovered and reconstituted' means. Let's just say it's not the best cuts. Fats and salt are actually necessary to health so why refer to salt as 'white death'? (tipped by Rose in the comments).

The drinking problem was created, not by 24-hour licensing which I have never seen in practice, but by creating a culture of 'I can do what I want, innit?'. Labour accelerated it but it was on the way before that. The Cleggeron Coagulation will not change it. They aren't in charge of it, any more than Labour were.

The smoking ban destroyed the pub, that place of conversation and meeting. The rise of Smoky-Drinky, which the Righteous imagine is centrally organised somewhere because they can't think any other way, is to be combated by raising the price of supermarket booze. It won't work, price was not the reason we stopped going to pubs, but they will never see it.

Education is a farce. Supermarkets complain that the products of our education system are useless. Think about that for a moment. the UK education system produces people who are not capable of working in a supermarket. Yet we are expected to believe they can be trained as doctors and scientists and put in charge of nuclear weapons. The Coagulation are tinkering at the edges and ignoring the problem. Why?

Why target salt rather than processed foods? Why target fat when it's total calorie intake, not fat per se, that makes you fat? When you eat beef or pork fat, that's not human fat and is not directly laid down around your waist. It has to be metabolised like everything else before it's stored as human fat. If you don't eat more calories than you use, you don't get fat.

The medics and scientists know all this.

The smoking and drinking controls prevent meeting and discussion. The education, salt and fat eradication will create a population of dim drones. The 'It's me rights, innit?' culture will justify harsh policing. Smokers can be targeted without any reprisal because smokers don't matter. Fat people can be targeted because fat people don't matter. Something that the Scottish Labour health spokeslump might want to consider. Yes, it's complex but it has been a long time in preparation.

If you don't fit the Aryan ideal, you're expendable.

Nowadays, the Aryan ideal is defined by the BMA's Standard Human and if you're not it, you are out. Their legions of salt, fat, education and iodine deprived zombies will point and scream at you if you are outside defined limits.

When you put it all together, when that Rolf Harris painting is complete, you can see what it is.

It's eugenics. We are being cleansed. It's a less direct method than that used by the likes of Pol Pot but in the end, the result is the same.

Only the dull and unthinking will survive. If that's the future, I don't want it.

WASH

World Action on Salt and Health.

It is not a pisstake. It is real. Or it is both.

In a recent New Scientist article, one of their drones derided all salt deniers as being in the pay of the salt industry. No imagination, these Righteous. They even struggle to come up with different names for their fake charities. Their methods are always exactly the same.

Their only aim in this case is the eradication of salt from the diet, which will kill even more people than the NHS have managed. Oh, it doesn't matter to them. It's not about health. None of it ever was. It's about getting people to do as they are told. Even if it kills them.

How many more single-issue sociopaths do we have to pay for, and when will the Cleggeron Coagulation even notice?

I have a nasty feeling that the answer is all, and never.




(Thanks to microdave for pointing this one out)


UPDATE - I planned to go into more detail, but Devil's Knife has already done so.

Sunday 29 August 2010

Real life is about to take a break.

Sixty samples earlier than expected, six tests on each sample, three different test methods, two incubators groaning under the weight of Petri dishes and bucketfuls of crap-coated glassware to clear up. It's all done, all counted, all calculated, entered into a spreadsheet and sent to the only man in the country who knows which sample was which. I won't know before Monday what the results mean so tomorrow I have a day of rest, in which I will recuperate and recharge the rage.

Was it worth it? It cost me nearly a grand to set up for the first set, a couple of hundred to set up for the second set (most equipment can be re-used), and I charge these at £40 per sample. So yes, it's worth it.

It is, all the same, knackering. Tonight I have a bottle of the Penderyn, sent up by a friend in Wales, and a selection of DVDs to watch until I fall asleep. Normal service will resume tomorrow.

One thing I've noticed lately has been mutterings about blogrolls. There seems to be a perception that they are some kind of 'club'. A sort of elitist thing.

I hadn't thought of it that way. I use my blogroll as an easy navigator. Rather than bookmark them all and search through each one every day, the blogroll automatically brings any with new posts to the top. So I scroll down until I find one I know I've already read and work back up from there.

That's what the blogroll is to me. Other people's blogrolls are where I find new people with new points of view. The threads lead everywhere. It's like, oh, how could I describe it, like a sort of web that covers the whole world. A world wide web. That's a catchy title. I wonder if anyone's bagged it?

The blogroll stays, not because of any elitist or 'club' thing, but because I find it useful.

And now, it's recuperation time. I've ignored the whisky for so long it's threatened to file divorce proceedings, so it's time to make up.

Back tomorrow.

Saturday 28 August 2010

Drugs old and new.

Another long day at the lab (no I'm not just back, I've been browsing other blogs). 60 samples produces a hell of a lot of crap to clean up and a total (in this case) of 360 data points, half of which I picked up today and I'll get the other half tomorrow. The results and invoice will be in the appropriate persons' Emails on Monday morning.

Tonight I am not drinking, I only have half a bottle of brandy because I can't be fuzzy when I deal with the dangerous stuff tomorrow. Today was only coliforms and E. coli and the Stuff I now take every day will wipe them out easily. Tomorrow is Campylobacter and the Stuff is unproven against that one. So far.

So I have been thinking. Well, it's my job. I do it all the time which is why I can't sleep. This brain has no 'off' switch, even whisky won't shut it down. Tobacco and caffeine make it run faster, whisky makes it lose control of fingers (and often, social mores of which it has little grasp at the best of times), but nothing makes it shut up besides general knackeredness. Then it makes up stories and forces me to write them. Why can't I have a chav brain like most people have, that believes all the crap I tell them along with all the crap the Righteous tell them? Why can't I just sink into the torpor of Big Brother or Eastenders and worry about nothing more than whether my shell suit is on straight or my baseball cap is at the right angle? Why don't I care about cars or football or Page Three? Why do I have to critically analyse the Daily Mail instead of just accepting that some bimbo isn't pert and cellulite-free at 70?

Well, those aren't new thinkings. I am odd, I know that and have known for a long time, ever since the first drinking companion collapsed when we hadn't even reached half the bottle. I don't go to funerals because I will be the one to say something inappropriate such as ' You're sure he's dead, right, because it's really hot in there'. If I was mainstream and ordinary I might have more readers but I probably wouldn't like them.

No, what I have wondered at lately is the push to legalise drugs.

Tobacco is legal. Alcohol is legal. Ganja, smack and horse are not. I don't want those last three, personally, but I don't care if other people do. Sure, make them legal and let those who enjoy them be free from arrest and make the products quality controlled. But really, it's obvious what will happen next.

As with tobacco and alcohol, the drugs will be legal to buy but illegal to use anywhere. You will pay evil levels of duty on them (with VAT as a tax on the tax on top) but if the Coagulation Youth see you, they will steal them. You have no recourse to the law because you are filth. Conveniently, druggies have already been defined as such.

You can have them, you can pay exorbitant taxes on them but try to use them... oh, no.

As soon as they are legal, the No Snorting and No Injecting signs will go up.

This is how the game is played. We can't win if we don't play by the rules.


The other side recognises no rules. Game on.

Friday 27 August 2010

Too tired to think, so letting others do it for me.

Late home from another sixty-sample day and knackered. I'm going to look at other bloggers' stuff instead.

I see it's badge time again and confusingly, they've allocated the badge to the old blog. I'll tell them about it tomorrow. Too tired to care tonight.

JuliaM has the tale of the New Council Inquisition that no longer needs to prove a crime in order to fine you for it. All they need do is accuse you. No actual crime need be committed at all. Clever, eh?

Fuel Injected Moose peers into the mind of a smokophobe and finds it's like looking into a kaleidoscope filled with vomit. Really, there is nothing in these people but spite.

Stan is joining the smoky-drinky fraternity in style.

HandymanPhil is contacted by Gentleman Jim, who becomes enlightened as a result.

Ciggie Busters - a non-smoker can see where it's going. (via the Filthy Engineer).

Nothing to say other than - Google Searched. Well, it's time someone did.

Over at Anna Raccoon's, a socialist paradise is revealed. Interestingly, immigration is forbidden.

And as for drink controls, well it seems they are based on as much truth as smoking controls.

Finally, Old Holborn is in the news again, this time in the Grauniad! Oh, the humanity!

There are loads more out there. I can't list them all.


As for me, I'm too shattered to do any more than drink some whisky and smoke a few rollies. Tomorrow I'm back in the lab, counting bacteria. I won't know whether anything has worked yet because all I get are samples numbered 1-60 and I don't get told which are 'test' and which are 'control' until I hand over the numbers. That's how science should be done. Pay attention, Cleggeron. If they tell you the conclusions before they even get the funding, only a total moron would give them the funding. Yes, Cleggeron, that's you.

I have a really cool fluorescent growth medium for E. coli. It's even cooler than Eosin Methylene Blue agar, which makes them grow into metallic green colonies. It makes E. coli glow under UV so while testing, I get tanned fingers too. Hides the yellow bits.

So far I have not been able to eradicate Campylobacter from poultry but I'm working on it. I can reduce colibacillosis already, and that was just the first try. This lot came from chickens on a higher dose.

It needs some vitamin B3 in there, I think (look it up, smokophobes).

Seriously, I'm going to try the Stuff, when I get time, with added nicotinic acid. I have some, it won't cost me much because I have the lab and the equipment and most of the necessary media, all I need is some time.

If it boosts the effects I will give it to the company for free. Just so I can tell smokophobes 'there's nicotine in it so you won't be wanting any, now will you?' This is a not-for-profit vengeance. I will tell the company it's Vitamin B3 I've added, or the name given to it by the smokophobes (niacin), and you all know they will be none the wiser. Nor will their customers. Nor will anyone but the roughly 600-800 per day who visit here and let's be honest, globally, that's not very many at all.

If it works out I will contaminate every food product on the planet with nicotine and the smokophobes will have to eat each other to survive. The rest of us will be more resistant to gut disease than they are, which is a bonus.

No compromise, no mercy, no relief from the squits. You made me, Smokenstein.

Now, the monster needs to sleep.

But first, the monster needs just a tad more nicotine, alcohol and junk food. Tomorrow I will do some of my own thinking. Probably.

A few more of these knackering days and I'll be able to pay someone to do it for me.

Wednesday 25 August 2010

Woolpack packs in.

I remember Emmerdale when Seth the poacher was in it. That was back when Mother owned the TV and there were only four channels, so there were rarely arguments. Arguing with Mother was never a clever idea anyway. Nobody ever won.

Most of the show took place in the pub, a spit-and-sawdust affair called the Woolpack. I hadn't realised it was a real, actual pub. You would think that capitalising on years of TV fame and free advertising a couple of times a week would do wonders for such a place. All those soap addicts would love to be able to say they'd had a drink in there.

Apparently not. It is closing down.

Nichola McGrath, who ran the pub with her husband, said: "In summer, it’s very busy here but in winter it’s deadly quiet and the two just don’t make up for each other."

In a spectacular display of evading the obvious, commenters blame cheap supermarket booze for the closure of this and all pubs. Because, as everyone is aware, supermarkets only sell cheap booze in winter. In summer, pub prices are more attractive.

That must be the reason, surely. I mean, what other aspect of the pub trade could be affected so dramatically by the seasons?

In the words of Rolf Harris - "Can you see what it is yet?"

Sadly, our government cannot. Even when the last pub has closed, they still won't see it. Even when there's a Smoky-Drinky on every street, fuelled by imported, duty-free booze and tobacco (all legal and as long as we are in the EU, there is nothing the Puritans can do about it), they won't see it. Even when their tax take on booze and tobacco has gone, they won't understand why.

They can't stop us smoking and drinking. The EU won't let them. They can shut down the pubs and clubs but they cannot stop Smoky-Drinky no matter what they try. It doesn't even have a fixed location. If we leave the EU, there'll be no funding for those idiotic pressure groups so the government will finally have to leave us alone.

Either way, light up and raise a glass. We cannot lose.

Oh, and if any of those officials who like to know everything we do happens by, think about this. You can eavesdrop in a pub. You can infiltrate a club. You can't in a Smoky-Drinky. If you're not known to us and trusted, you won't get in.

So, now you can't know what we're discussing in there.

I don't know what it is about the new Nazis, but they can't seem to get anything right. They can't even make the trains run on time.

Time for a vote?


Should we be in the EU or out of it? If we are in, then minimum pricing for alcohol is illegal so it can't be done. If we are out, it could be done but there'd be no EU funding for the wasters and the Puritans so they couldn't push for it.

I wonder if the EU realise they are funding those who wish to break their laws? If Daphne is watching still, she might like to investigate.

I don't think we should be in. It is a colossal waste of money and does nothing but add new and ever more ridiculous laws to the statute books. The only ones who benefit are the politicians, who get elevated to Kinnochian status after they have proved themselves useless here. Others might disagree.

So let's put it to the vote. Why not, Europhiles? If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, you know.

Haveyoursay are touring the UK from September looking for petition signatures to attempt to persuade our politicians to listen. Good luck with that. The only thing they'll listen to is a subway train running under Parliament loaded with several tons of explosives and a dead burns victim in a Guy Fawkes mask. Nevertheless, it's worth one last try before we start loading up with bags of fertiliser and percussion caps. They are also looking to collect 10,000 blogosphere supporters.

This initiative has the backing of Nikki Sinclaire, an independent MEP. As I said, it's worth a try.

Go on, Cleggeron. Give us a vote. That would settle the matter once and for all. It would silence dissent forever. So why not put it to the vote?

Surely the Cleggeron Coagulation isn't scared they might lose?

Or, just maybe, they are certain they would.

Mystery Van Juicytits.

It sounds to me like Daphne from Scooby-Doo. Well, I don't speak Dutch. Today this blog had a visit from Ministerie van Justitie in Den Haag, Netherlands. There have been quite a few local councils in this country taking an interest too, especially since the Ciggie Buster episodes. Daphne was only here for a minute but Birmingham and Coventry councils hung around a while.

It seems I am a popular hideously deformed freak. Hello, official people. I do hope you all find something to say rather than simply lurking. If you're browsing in an unofficial capacity, watch out for your validation software. Birmingham council's browsing is coming through a tracking system. They're watching you harder than they're watching me.

This stats thing is a lot of fun. The numbers don't matter but the places people come from are amazing. All over the world. Even Cwmbran. It also tells me what people were searching for to find me. Daphne was searching for 'leg iron blog' which is logical.

Whoever it was who arrived here after searching for 'sex with a criple', you seriously need help, and not just with your spelling. You sick bastard.

Unless it was Kate Bush, in which case my phone number is...

Tuesday 24 August 2010

Saving the Pubs.

This weeks sixty-sample madness is to happen one day earlier than expected. That doesn't sound like much but it gives me one whole day less to prepare and since I'm the last-minute sort, it means panic. So it was with some relief that I received a couple of Emails asking me to mention some things. It saves me thinking.

First, this -



I would argue that pubs need customers, but then many of their customers were smokers. Twenty percent of the UK population are smokers but far more than twenty percent of pub regulars were smokers. Pubs have been forced, by law, to effectively exclude a large proportion of their traditional customer base. Those pious ones who said they would go to pubs once the filthy smokers were ejected were lying.

Because, you see, those that are vehemently against smoking are, in large part, also vehemently against drinking. Pub closures suit them. They never intended to go to the pubs. They wanted the pubs to die. Now they are after drinkers too.

There are still pubs that don't get it. There are pubs that don't like Electrofag because 'it looks like smoking' and really, if they cannot be bothered trying to keep our custom in any form, why try to help? Other pubs are happy with Electrofag. Some, like Ma Cameron's in Aberdeen, come highly recommended because they do their best to cater for smokers. The smoking area is on the roof, with seats, parasols with heaters inside, and very nice too. Away from the passing Righteous in the street and although it's too far for me to visit often (last time I was there was for a pint with Kynon and that was quite some time ago), it seems fairly fake-cough free.

Pubs, on the whole, don't want to exclude us but last winter was harsh and this summer has been wet and cold. We are not going outside, we are staying home. It has nothing to do with supermarket prices. We'd rather go to the pub, but we aren't allowed inside.

You can download A3 or A4 posters on this page. I'm not going to hand deliver them. I'll print A4 ones, the biggest I can print, and post them to every pub in the area. Anonymously, but with an explanatory note. A week later I'll have a bit of a wander and call in on those pubs. The ones worth working to save will have the poster up.

Those who don't want us back can stay non-smoking. Their premises, their choice. I don't mind. I just won't go there.

For those who want the choice to allow smokers back inside, I will fight.

Achtung! Rauchen!

Via The Filthy Engineer comes this long but very interesting article that demonstrates exactly where the likes of ASH came from, why antismokers think and behave as they do, why the medical profession really seeks to eliminate smokers and whose ideology they are following to the letter. It might come as a shock to a few antismokers. Not those in ASH, of course. It will come as no surprise at all to smokers.

What is coming next? Well, this time via Smoking Hot, we hear that smokers in an Irish football stadium must wear a smoker's wristband and go outside to smoke. This does not apply to the elite, who can smoke inside the stadium and their sycophants will declare it 'legal'.

At the moment, that wristband is like those stamps they used to put on your hand in nightclubs so you could go outside and get back in without paying again. At the moment.

Bearing in mind the origins of the methodology of smoking control, as described in the first link, making smokers wear a form of badge does not sit comfortably with me.

I am willing to bet that there are smokophobes reading this who are all for the idea. Aren't you?

And when it all comes crashing down, as it always does, those smokophobes will defend their firing of the ovens with the same excuse their kind have always used.

"I was only obeying orders."

Monday 23 August 2010

Did the last pin just fall?

Way back in the mists of time, the message was that smoking was bad for the smoker. Smoke, and you'll die in horrible pain.

When we stubbornly stayed alive, some to considerable old age, the smokophobes had a rethink. The smoker's argument - that it's our lives we risk, what's it to you? - was hard to refute. So they tried something else.

There was a whole series of adverts on 'if you smoke, you're all smelly and nasty and nobody likes you so there'. to which the smokers' response was 'Well, we have enough friends and we don't want you pompous asses in our gang anyway.' That didn't work either.

The 'smell' one was used to make those first inroads into non-smoking areas. Some people don't like the smell and we smokers thought, fair enough, give them a smoke-free place. Big mistake, as it turned out.

Since nothing they said to smokers had any effect, they changed tack. 'You are harming other people!' 'You are killing your friends!' 'You are harming the cheeeeldren!'

Smokers saw through it, mostly. Smokophobes didn't, or rather they didn't want to. This was the perfect way to enforce ever-harsher controls on people who just happened to like something they didn't like. It wasn't about health, it never was. It was always control. As for truth - what does truth have to do with anything? Personal preference trumps truth in every form of Righteous mind.

So we hear of the dangers of second-hand smoke, which nobody has ever died of, nor has anyone been proven to be affected by in the slightest. Then third-hand smoke, which isn't even smoke. Plans are afoot to 'prove' that third hand smoke causes open sores and skin problems - even though there have been no cases of this, nor even cases that could be tenuously linked to this, anywhere, ever. They will prove it nonetheless.

On cigarette packs, we have 'meth mouth' claiming to be the effects of smoking. We have a coalminer's lung pretending to be a smoker's. We have an old person's hands to illustrate 'premature ageing'. We have a corpse which proves only that everyone dies of something. We have a list of chemicals that are found in all forms of burning plant materials. We have claims that smoking causes impotence, and that it damages sperm. Yet look around the places where smoking is prevalent and count the children - if you can. There are loads of them and they aren't wheezing. The asthmatics are concentrated elsewhere, in those pristine, dust-free non-smoker show houses where they grew up with an immune system that had nothing to do but attack its own body.

All of it lies, and smokers all know it. We've been smoking the stuff for years. We have lungs that are deemed suitable for transplant. We have teeth. We don't age any faster than anyone else. We aren't dead. And we can still produce children, those of us who can stand the things. Who are these ridiculous images aimed at?

They are aimed at the smokophobes. They are ammunition. Those who don't like the smell can now pretend that smoking causes everything from dandruff to rabies and use that to justify their dislike.

Lie upon lie upon lie, told so often that many of the smokophobes genuinely believe it now. They will believe absolutely anything. I'll bet I can convince one of these drones that second-hand smoke carries rabies, imported in contaminated tobacco that was chewed by rabid bats. I'll have a go, next time one of them whines at me. In fact, I'll include a description of a tobacco plant which will resemble a huge Venus flytrap with a cough. If it eats bats, it can get rabies. Easy. Actually, it's sickeningly easy. These people think they know how smoking works but don't know the difference between a plant and a mammal. They call smokers 'idiots'. Well, that's doctor idiot to you, matey.

The 'health' part was dropped long ago even though the medics persist with it. The second and third hand smoke arguments are failing too. All they have left is their original complaint, the original reason for the first non-smoking areas.

They don't like the smell. That is it. That was the first pin put up and is the final pin to knock down.

So, smokers smell. We reek of tobacco smoke so that the Righteous cannot bear to be near us. In which case, I have a couple of questions.

Why do doctors ask you if you smoke? Surely it's obvious from the great green cloud of fumes exuding from every smoker as soon as they come through the door? So why ask? Do doctors have no sense of smell?

'Hey, my doc's got no nose.'

'No nose? How does he smell?'

'He doesn't. He has to ask.'

So, doctors can't smell us.

Why is there all this research into smoker testing with devices for determining cotinine levels (which salad-loving non-smokers will fail)? Why are they necessary? If we smell of smoke all the time, surely any Nazi-inclined employer can tell as soon as we walk through the door, and don gas masks and treat the room with formalin after dismissing us? Why do they need the test? Why does it have to be so sensitive? Why is that appalling reek suddenly so difficult and expensive to find?

The smoke smell is a lie. The 'I have to wash my clothes and hair' is the bleating of a five-year-old told to wash before supper. Smokers don't stink. That's why you can't identify us unless we are actively smoking. That's why we can disappear in a trice.

That's why doctors have to ask and that's why smokophobes need the tests. Smokophobes can only complain about the smell of smoke if they know the smoker has been smoking. If they don't know, they make no complaint because there isn't a real smell. Try it yourself. Announce you're going out for a cigarette and see the reaction when you come back in. Announce you're going somewhere else - anywhere - then go out for a smoke and see if the smokophobes notice.

The whole 'smell' issue only applies to active smoking. It can only apply to smoking in pubs/clubs/cafes, and there were already non-smoking parts of pubs and even entirely non-smoking pubs before the ban. We each had somewhere to go. It wasn't enough.

The smokophobes insist they have unimpeded access to absolutely everywhere, even to places they don't want to go, and that smokers are coralled and restricted and demonised and attacked. They must have everything and we must have nothing.

That makes us 'selfish' in their Dali-inspired thought processes.

Well, there can't be a lingering smell or they wouldn't need those CO meters or the saliva tests, and doctors wouldn't need to ask. They could just sniff.

The last pin has fallen. There is now no justification at all for this smoking ban. None.

It has been, from the start, an exercise in eugenics. And you, smokophobes, have been the willing Gestapo informants and enforcers for the biggest extension of Hitler's original plan ever seen (so far). You have been duped. You have been taken for fools and you have been lied to. You have been used by those to whom you are nothing but a convenient tool. You think it was your idea and have never questioned how so many had the same idea at the same time. You accepted without question the ridiculous assertions of death and disease that you have never seen evidence for - because there never was any and never will be. You have been suckered.

I have no sympathy. You enjoyed yourselves. You revelled in kicking the underdog, and you stood over him while he bled. You straddled the battered body and laughed. Well, the underdog is biting now.

Upwards.

The spud addicts are revealed.

A few posts back, someone sent this link. Sorry to those who've sent in links I haven't covered yet. there are so many it's hard to keep up!

These are charlatans looking to make money out of the smokophobia craze sweeping the world. So, let's play.

Nicotine is an alkaloid poison in tobacco

Nicotine is a precursor of vitamin B3. Hardly a poison. In concentrated form it can be dangerous (as can most vitamins) but in real life, it's as poisonous as caffeine. Which is also dangerous if you take too much.

and is approved by the FDA for use in insecticides.

It is a natural insecticide. It is poisonous to insects because it paralyses insect flight muscle. I don't know about you , but I don't have any of those. Caffeine is another natural insecticide which is why coffee grounds from my espresso machine go in the compost, along with the contents of ashtrays. If you like chocolate, remember that it kills dogs and other species that are far more closely related to you than is a bluebottle.

It has many deleterious effects on human body

Really? Vitamin B3 is bad for you? Oh, that is going to cause problems for nonsmokers. Tough.

and is a marker for cigarette smoking and other forms of tobacco use including pipe smoking, tobacco chewing and cigar smoking.

A marker? Can't you tell by the smell? Oh, that's right, it was another of those things. You know. What are they called? Ah, I remember. Lies.

Nicotine test kits measure cotinine, one of many metabolites or breakdown products of nicotine and is a good identifier of recent tobacco use.

It's also a good identifier of recent tomato or potato use. Hey, healthy non-smokers. You'll test positive too. You aren't worried, are you? They'll believe you. Sure they will.

This is where it turns from amusing little scam into the just plain vicious.

Nicotine test kits are sometimes used as part of pre-employment screening by some organizations and agencies that prefer non-smoking employees.

Change that around a bit.

Photos are demanded on CVs so that employers and agencies who prefer a particular skin colour can pre-screen candidates.

Questions on ethnicity, sexual preference, gender and religion are used as part of pre-employment screening by some organisations and agencies that prefer particular, Aryan, attributes.

How do those versions feel? How are you, non-smokers who might be black or Muslim or gay or female, feeling now?

What would you like to do about an organisation promoting such discrimination? Well, if that really happened you could call the police. There are laws to protect you.

Smokers feel the same way about the original wording. There are no laws to protect us. Just the opposite. We have no option to call the police. The police are happy to see us attacked in the street. No doubt they would then arrest us for bleeding on the pavement under littering laws.

We are to be tested for smoking because it's legal to deny a job to a smoker. Can't they tell by the smell? No, because that's all lies too. There is no test for crack cocaine because it's not legal to deny a job to an addict. It's not legal to deny a job based on religion or race or gender or sexual preference. It is legal to expel smokers. The smokophobes will rejoice.

Then they'll have a potato salad just before their job interview. And be rejected because they have cotinine in them.

Don't come crying to us, smokophobes. You are not one of us. You are, forever, the enemy.

You did this. Reap the rewards.

Sunday 22 August 2010

Weird science (as usual).

A little while ago, there was considerable distress when it emerged that non-smokers with knackered lungs were being given transplants from dead smokers. Let's, for the moment, gloss over the obvious - that these non-smokers had knackered lungs and the smokers didn't die of anything lung related, and consider something else.

Transplant surgeons considered the smokers' lungs suitable for transplant. They didn't have to wring a bucketful of tar out of them, they didn't steep them in nitric acid for 24 hours to remove - oh, what would it be? One and a half-hand smoke? No, the surgeons considered these smokers' lungs perfectly good enough to transplant into someone else.

These are the same surgeons who tell you that smokers' lungs are riddled with cancer, don't work properly and have enough tar in them to warrant an exploratory visit from BP.

So they are happy to rip our body parts out when we die and give them to the pious who follow their commands, but while we're alive, well have a look at this, which I found at the Big Yin's place :




Well made, isn't it? So let's rip it up into the segments that will no doubt be shown on TV at a time when films like 'A Clockwork Orange' would cause the professionally offended to wear the numbers off their phones.


First segment.

The old 'This is a healthy lung' ploy. No it isn't. It's dead, as is it's owner and that's about as unhealthy as you can get. There is no 'This is a smoker's lung' part because that wouldn't work. It would look the same. You think not? So why is there no such lung? There can surely be no shortage of dead smokers, can there? So why does the green-clad abattoir worker resort to pouring tar into this healthy dead lung? An amount we are to believe is equal to the tar inhaled by a smoker in a year.

In which case, how can they not find even one smoker's lung to show?

The tar goes in, sticks to phlegm and the tar comes out. It doesn't stay in there. Coal dust does. Diesel particulates do. The tiny particles in smoke don't. They are small enough for the natural mucus coating to deal with. You don't have to have a cough for this to work: everyone's lungs continually push mucus upwards. You swallow it without noticing. Smokers' lungs just do it faster.

Incidentally, by enhancing the flow of phlegm, smoking actually keeps those lungs flushed so infections find it harder to get a hold. But let's not hit these Righteous smokophobic morons too hard on the first go. They have more lies to tell us.


Second segment.

So, you can take a brain from a corpse and it has unclotted blood in it? They must have been quick to whip his head open. Isn't it lucky they found that blood clot precisely on the first slice? Couldn't be faked. No, surely not. Not like all those photos on the cigarette packets. Not like third hand smoke. Not like second hand smoke. Not like the piles of dead babies caused by those things, which incidentally don't exist. Surely, this time, they are telling the truth? Is there really anyone left who thinks they are?

We are to believe that this is the brain of a 38-year-old smoker when in fact it's impossible for us to tell if that's true. It could have come from a 90-year old Puritan who has never touched booze or cigarettes in his life. Strokes can hit anyone, any time.

When I was about 40, there was a spate of deaths in and around the place I worked. A head of a research station, moderate drinker, non smoker, bang - aneurysm. Dead at 40. Another, non-drinker, non-smoker, a little older than me - bang, dead of a heart attack. There was one of the heart attacks who didn't die.

He was a smoker. He's still alive.

More recently, someone I knew well and respected as a scientist passed away. He had cancer. He never smoked and gave up drinking entirely over twenty years ago. Not a miserable Puritan, he just didn't like those things so didn't indulge. He never passed judgement on those who did.

It is pot luck. You can live your life scared of shadows and you'll die anyway. Heart attacks and stroke can happen to teetotal, non-drinking vegetarians and so does cancer. You can't hide from the Reaper, no matter how miserable you make your life.

With no supporting evidence at all, the brain section is even more meaningless than the lung one.


Third segment.

Lungs again. Our lungs are rotten, apparently. Good enough for transplant and they couldn't find a picture of a rotten lung, remember. Just a normal one and a jar of gloop. The woman in that segment is likely to find her health damaged more by being forced to stand outside in the cold and the wet than by the cigarette she's smoking. But the smokophobes don't care. It's not about health. It never was.


Fourth segment.

Smoking is a major cause of irreversible blindness. It will be if I stub one out in your eye. Seriously, this is nonsense. There is no evidence at all for this assertion, it is entirely fabricated and has no basis in fact whatsoever. It does give me an idea though - what if one of those ciggie busters went for me and in the ensuing confusion, my cigarette accidentally...


Fifth segment.

Smoking makes you fat. Not so long ago, those fatty deposits were blamed on cholesterol. For now, they are blamed on smoking but don't get your hopes up if you're wider than average. You'll get that back when they've finished using it on us.

We are to believe that smoking fills your pipes with lard by the time you're 32. I'm 50 and my pipes work just fine, thanks. All of them. We are also to believe that they didn't preload that artery before filming, even though we didn't see them remove it and are given no clue as to the weight of the smoker involved. No, it's just smoking. Smoking magically creates fat in your arteries even though tobacco contains no fat at all. Can anyone honestly say they believe that?


Sixth segment.

This is beautiful. One man with a bit of leaf in paper, standing at a bus stop, watching a bus approach in a cloud of diesel fumes. But it's the cigarette that does the damage. Diesel fumes are good for you.

This is the biggie. Lung cancer. If you freeze the film at 2:21 you'll see lung cancer has a face, and it looks rather like Bill Gates. In which case, no worries, it'll run for a few days then slow down and crash. It won't start again until you close all your windows.

'One damaged cell is all it takes to start...' - well, that's true if you have no immune system at all. Cancer cells arise all the time, in everyone. Yes, non-smokers too. The immune system finds them and terminates them with extreme prejudice. Once in a while it doesn't work and a cancer takes hold. While I don't dispute that smoking could do that, I very definitely dispute that it is the only, or even the main cause. It could only be regarded as the main cause if we lived a pastoral Eloi existence with no burning fossil fuels and no sprays of any kind and nothing in the air but tobacco smoke.

We don't live like that. Smokers and non-smokers alike are subjected to carcinogen challenge every time we spray an underarm deodorant or a paint can or an air freshener or venture out into the street. Smoking is only one among a million possible causes - but all those other causes are ignored. Does that make you feel safe? It's all right for me. If I turn up with chest pains and say I smoke, they'll test everything. If you turn up with chest pains and say you don't smoke, they'll give you an aspirin and send you home. You can't have cancer unless you smoke. It's not possible. Ha ha ha.


Once again, the smokophobes rely on misinformation and lies to terrify smokers into stopping. Many will have been so terrified by that video they'll have smoked a whole pack just to calm themselves.

The antismoker harridans will lap it up and then they'll meet me and insist on spouting this 'science' at me. They are conditioned to believe what they are told, and I will tell them things. I will tell them tales of horror and gore that will make their eyes burst. Hmm, I might incorporate that for the next one. I will make them scared enough to cross the street whenever they see someone who looks as if they might once have stood within a hundred yards of a smoker. I will make them scared of the shadow of smoke. I will make them fear the very word.

They deserve no less.

No self control.

Sometimes I just can't help myself...



Picture found discarded here and duly picked up. Seems to have become distorted in transit somehow.

I wonder, does anyone have access to the cloakroom these coats are stored in at night?

The form of war.

I've been reading through the comments on the BMJ smokophobia blog. That's all there is, new comments. No new posts. Some long and interesting comments.

One mentioned that the war on smokers was like the war in Afghanistan. They aren't shooting at us yet although they are in training for that. What he meant was that the form of war was the same.

Obnoxio has often pointed out that his ideal society, close to but not quite anarchy, would not be as open to invasion as his critics claim. Rather than take down the generals and the seat of government, an invader would have to take the country house by house because there is no central command to target. That's pretty much the situation in Afghanistan. Taking out one rebel leader has little effect because they come from the ranks. Another one steps forward at once. Taking control of a town means nothing to those in the next town. Taking control of the government, such as it is, means nothing at all to the Taliban because they don't recognise the government.

That pretty much describes the smokers' position. If a smoker quits, we are not damaged. We don't even mind. Their choice - they choose to quit, that's no problem. The war on smokers is just like the war on drugs, the war on booze, the war on salt, all of them.

They are making war on an anarchic system. There is no 'smoker's council of Britain'. There is no 'chief smoking officer'. There are no generals and no politicians. There are a few well-known names but again, all the well-known names are just smokers. There is no industry backup. Take down all the tobacco companies and we'll just grow the stuff ourselves. Sure, you could make that illegal because that really worked with cannabis, didn't it?

When we organise, we do so in small and temporary groups. Trips abroad to stock up. Appeals for help for one of the smokophobes' victims. We come together for one specific task and when it's done, we disperse back into the crowd.

We have no uniforms. When we're not actually smoking, you can't tell who we are. Think for a moment, smokophobes. I know it's an alien concept but give it a go. If, as you assert, we smell of tobacco all the time, why does your doctor ask you if you smoke? Surely it's obvious as soon as you walk through the door? It isn't obvious, despite your best efforts to make us believe it is. No, unless we are actively smoking you cannot see us and that drives you people nuts.

Make us wear badges? We'll wear them while smoking and take them off when not smoking. Appear and disappear, just like that. You can't enforce the badges because you can't tell who we are.

Tobacco advertising is banned, but the likes of ASH keep smoking in the news every day. That's where the new smokers come from. Not the tobacco industry, which is unable to advertise and soon won't even be able to display their products in shops. Will that stop people smoking?

Man with a Van does not advertise and has no display. He doesn't even have a shop. He's doing okay. He does not sell to underage smokers because he is not immoral, but once the displays are gone, well, unscrupulous shops can easily pass a plain grey packet to a ten-year-old, wrapped in the Beano. Taking away the displays and the distinctive packaging will make underage smoking easier, not harder. There won't be a flash of gold or white or red to alert any adults to what that child has. Just a plain grey packet.

ASH create their own enemy by constantly promoting smoking, putting up signs about smoking in every enclosed space - even in churches, where previously smoking would be unlikely to cross anyone's mind. Now, every time they go in, there's that sign. Everyone who starts, does so as an individual. They don't 'join the club'. There is no club. They don't join some 'army of smokers'. There is no army. We don't answer to some Big Boss Smoker and we don't have any rules. There is no membership - start or stop smoking as you choose, we don't mind either way.

Nor do we have any hierarchy. No local organisation, no national organisation. No funding. There are Forest and Freedom-2-choose but if they were suddenly shut down, would the smokers in those groups stop smoking? Would those outside those groups stop smoking? No, they might form another group or they might disperse for a while but only the organisation is gone. The people remain.

There is nothing to attack. There is nothing to break other than the individual and when the smokophobes try to break one by force, the rest of us come out of the woodwork, deal with the matter and disappear again. We don't have marches or rallies, we have no flag and we don't wear badges.

Sometimes we do. Sometimes we have a flag, but the image on the flag is not fixed. We don't have any rules about that either. It can look any way you want it to look. I put the image on magnetic photo paper and stick it to metal surfaces - such as those outside ashtrays. When they vanish, I put up another one. Some use stickers, some use flyers, but the message is getting out. There are no prescribed formats for distribution, there is no central organisation drafting rules.

And there is only one item on the agenda.

ASH have rules. The BMA have rules. Government have rules. They all have organisations, they all have key people who, if discredited, would severely damage that organisation. Take the case of the New Nazi Youth in Medway. If that freak of a teacher were discredited, those children would not feel empowered to harass people in the street. If Rachael Noxious were out of a job, the teacher would not have had funding for her 'Achtung! Juden!' re-enactment. Within their NHS and council supporters are key figures, points open to attack which will bring their organisation tumbling down.

I don't mean physical attack. That would garner sympathy. No, I mean verbal attack. With facts. They hate facts. Discredit them, make them a laughing stock but do nothing that could be considered an assault. Leave the violence to them unless confronted by it.

Remember, the smokophobes organise. They love to have badges, they enjoy the thrill of Gestapo membership, they revel in the acclaim of their masters.

When they attack a smoker in the street, they cannot know how many of us are around them unless we are all, simultaneously, smoking - and that's rare. They also believe that all nonsmokers are antismokers, which is very far from true. Not all nonsmokers will support their actions. The smokophobes are nowhere near as numerous as they think they are, and they love to be noticed.

Smokers are more numerous than their figures show because we don't register when we buy from Man with a Van or overseas. We are invisible as soon as that little fire goes out. We don't organise, we deal with an issue as a group then disperse as individuals. You can't hide from us because you can't see us.

Ollie Gapper, the cameraman who put up the Ciggie Busters video and who listed among his hobbies 'calling smokers and chavs idiots', now knows what our form of war means. Rachael Noxious knows. Mangled Greymatter knows.

From these, we can trace a chain of command, so those who hide behind the frontline lunatics are not safe. They can't see us coming. We might already be there and they'd never notice.

We have no such chain of command. I take orders from nobody and I give orders to nobody, which is a situation that the smokophobes are incapable of comprehending. Because of that, they can't beat me because there is nothing to attack. They invent a chain of command - 'all blogging smokers are in the pay of the tobacco industry' - and attack that. They are fighting ghosts.

If they stop me blogging, if they stop all of us blogging, we'll be back with new blogs within the hour. We won't have meetings about it, we don't have to wait for instructions, we'll just do it. Individually. If they catch Man with a Van there'll be another one along to plug that gap in the market. If they attack one of us in the street, they will be unaware that the street might actually be full of smokers who are not smoking at that particular moment. There's no way to tell.

We'll pop up, light up, and then disappear.

Smokophobes, you brought this into open war. We're all around you and you can't see us.

This is your Vietnam.

All Presbyterians are smokophobes.

Using the causation=correlation rule of the enemy (and remember, they wrote the rules of engagement) we can only conclude that the smokophobe Dr. Ronald Crystal speaks for all Presbyterians everywhere, present, past and future.

Yes, in the real world we know that he is only interested in boosting money for his pretend research but we are not fighting in the real world. We are fighting in the Righteous world by Righteous rules.

Therefore all Presbyterians are the enemy. It's no good commenting 'I am Presbyterian and I am not an antismoker' because Dr. Crystal speaks for all of you. Correlation equals causation. Your rules, Righteous. If you are Presbyterian you are the enemy. No exceptions. No compromise. Dr. Crystal is one of you and you are homogenous. Again, your rules. Deal with it internally, it's not the smokers' problem. It's yours.

If you smoke and are Presbyterian it's time to choose. Stop smoking or find a Christian religion that doesn't regard you as filth. There are a few left. Anglicanism is pretty cool about most things and as a religion, they're pretty laid back. So far. Leave the diktats of Dr. Crystal and embrace a faith that is forgiving and genuine, without the fake science and extensions to the Bible that the Presbyterians sinfully encourage.

Dr. Crystal is extending the remit of the Bible and as any Christian knows, that is downright evil and will condemn him and all who follow him to the lowest depths of Hell. There is absolutely no mention of smoking in the Bible at all. Not a word. Yet Dr. Crystal has brought every Presbyterian into the clutches of Satan with his personal dislike of something that God has never mentioned at all. This is the same God who created tobacco, by the way.

Oh, Presbyterians, your time is up now. You have endorsed and paid for a man who has gone beyond the Bible's remit and you have encouraged his personal rewriting of what is right and what is wrong.

Let's hope you can all sleep at night now - because there's no sleep where you're going.

Hey, it's not all bad news. If you smoke, at least you'll get a light.

Saturday 21 August 2010

Spooky film night.

I have here a litre of Whyte and MacKay Glasgow Special and a DVD called 'Dead Silence' - a scary filum of the 'ventriloquist dummy' variety. Even adding in the entire cost of a 2 oz pack of baccy (which lasts almost a week) and the entire cost of the whisky (which won't) and the DVD which is now mine until I give it away, the evening will cost me less than £30.

I can pretend I'm at the pictures in the old days, with smoke and booze and film all at the same time.

In fact, if I could get hold of one of those ceiling mounted projector TVs, I could even have smoke in the beams.

All I need now is a wench in a short skirt with a tray of ice creams. And a git rustling a popcorn packet behind me. A few chattering children and an idiot with a red-rimmed torch flashing his way around...

Nah. This is better than the old days. I miss the wench with the tray of ices though.

Back later, hopefully wide-eyed and with hair on end.

I haven't forgotten the Smoke Wars. There are slogans to design for the other parties before the Holyrood elections and there is a certain Rachael Noxious to be dealt with. There is also the backing-down Righteous cameraman to pursue. No mercy, no prisoners, no compromise. Those are the rules of engagement. Their rules. We have to play by their rules, it's only fair.

First though, scary filum time.


UPDATE: Thumbs up for 'Dead Silence'. No happy ending and a policeman who does not believe in ghosties at all. The final twist is a beauty too. Best line is from the policeman - 'Don't make me chase you. I don't have a full tank of gas.'

It didn't scare the pants off me but it was a lot of fun. The scene with the dummy of Obo is excellent too. I hope he was paid for that.

Friday 20 August 2010

Holyrood campaign on behalf of the SNP.

There has been much ado about the release of someone called Mr. Mudguard from prison. Apparently Mr. Mudguard was convicted of the Lockerbie bombings - I'm not saying he was involved and I'm not saying he was made a scapegoat, I don't know either way. That's now beside the point.

Scottish law allows for 'compassionate release' of prisoners who are likely to die shortly. It saves having to clear up stinky corpses from the cells and stops other prisoners worrying about being haunted by the likes of 'Poker' MacRamrod and 'Crikey, that's a marrow' MacWhopper. Agree with it or otherwise, that's the law.

So when doctors said that Mr. Mudguard only had three months to live, the SNP government ordered his release. They didn't do it to spite Labour, they didn't do it to spite Barry O'Blimey, they did it because well, they didn't really have a choice. It's the law. Doctors said he was about to croak, the law says they have to let him go home.

Now, Scottish Labour (who actually promote nothing of the kind) insist the SNP issue an apology for following the law. Why? Because Mr. Mudguard didn't die as instructed by British doctors but was instead saved, and has maybe a couple more years in him, after seeing some Libyan doctors.

It seems to me that it might be worth talking to those Libyan doctors because they're better at treating terminal cancer cases than ours. They are keeping Mr. Mudguard alive long after ours had given up on him. Nobody has noticed that. They are all far too concerned that someone has lived beyond his legally-allocated time to wonder why that should be.

Al the Oily Fish should not, indeed must not apologise for working within the law. There are damn few instances of that in politics as it is. He should simply point out that MSPs are not in a position to predict the life expectancy of cancer patients and therefore they must rely on the expert testimony of the doctors. If the doctors screw up, they should apologise. Not the government.

Go on, Al. Just once. Let them demand that apology in Holyrood. Let them howl for it with impassioned lies and deep insincerity.

Then stand up, clear your throat and say 'Ach, awa' an' bile yer heid, ya wee bawbag'. Then take a swig of Buckfast and sit down. The reaction would be well worth seeing, don't you think?

And while doing that, you might want to consider how the smoking ban will affect my campaign on your behalf. Oh, I agree you have nothing to apologise for - indeed, in upholding the law to the letter, you have much to take pride in but then I'm a smoker and you have laws about me too. They don't include giving me three months without punishment, not even at the end. I also realise that few people have ever, or will ever hear this argument and even if they do it's not going to cut any ice with them.

This is Lockerbie we're talking about, Al. The town that terrorists crashed a plane into. Not quite the body count of 9/11 but for Scotland, it's pretty much an equivalent feeling. Let's face it. This was one time when you could have ignored the law and most people would have been on your side.

And don't forget, Oily Al, I'm a smoker. The lowest of the low. Filth of the sort you wouldn't scrape off your shoe - you'd throw those shoes away and buy new ones.

Also, don't forget why that is. You helped put me there. You're still helping. Your party is doing all it can to make me into the level of filth that if you stepped in it, you'd throw away every stitch you were wearing, scrub yourself in Dettol and buy a whole new wardrobe. Not just the clothes, the wardrobe too. This is where you helped to put me. This is where you are still kicking me and stamping me down harder.

So it should come as no surprise when I reveal my newest campaign slogan on behalf of the SNP.

"Vote SNP - set a terrorist free."

Catchy, isn't it? Very chantable, if I say so myself.

Hey, Oily Al, I did not choose to be your enemy. You chose that. I'm just trying to live up to your expectations.

How am I doing? Filthy and despicable enough yet, or should I try harder? It all depends on what your government does to me next.

Your move.

Coincidence.

Shattered tonight. Busy day today and the same again tomorrow. Even so, a chilling thing has happened to me (again). I don't believe in any of this telepathy or precognition stuff, but I cannot ignore this little coincidence.

A couple of days ago, I had a request for a full novel manuscript. A scary story set, as are many of my scary stories over the years, in the fictional town of Marchway. A town full of strange and distorted characters, many in positions of influence. The local people often don't even notice the bizarre creatures in their midst. That submission was the longest Marchway-based story I've ever sent anywhere.

Shortly after that request, this hit the news.

Then this.

And this.

And this.

All these unlikely tales of terror and despair are true. Not made-up. True. They all happened in a real place.

Called Medway.

I think I need a very stiff drink.

Thursday 19 August 2010

Is that tide about to turn?

Corrugated Soundbite points out that the cameraman responsible for the 'ciggie thugs' video has this listed as a hobby on his YouTube account:

'calling chavs and smokers idiots'

Interesting hobby. My latest hobby is 'scaring smokophobes to death with psychology' and I think it's a little more creative than just sneering and saying 'idiot'.

So he is happy to sneer at smokers and declare himself a superior being. Yet, on the posted video, faced with a few comments, he backs away and attempts to claim that all he did was film the event. Interesting how quickly the bullies back down, isn't it?

The thing is, if you read through the Emails posted at Fuel Injected Moose - copies of which have been sent to the relevant people - more information comes to light.

A local quango known as 'A Better Medway' (presumably they'll count it as 'better' when it is occupied only by the Aryan race) were involved, as were the council and local NHS. The camera equipment was provided.

So, the cameraman wasn't just a random observer. He was an integral part of it. Now he seems to be worried that it might affect his reputation as a photographer, he's trying to play it down. I note that he has no concerns about what this does to his reputation as a human being.

No compromise, smokophobe. Don't complain when we play your game by your rules.

Anyone overweight had better learn the rules too. In the Telegraph, some slaphead denounces fatty foods as the cause of all the world's ills.

There’s something about the dish known as bacon explosion that’s typically American. If you haven’t come across it, the recipe comprises Italian sausagemeat and syrupy barbecue sauce all bound up in a sort of roll with a lattice of fatty bacon, then smoked on a barbecue at a rate of one hour per inch. The whole thing contains about half a kilo of fat.

It is not a meal for one. That 'half kilo of fat' guess only applies if you eat the whole thing and those that could are rare indeed. Personally, I'd quite like a slice, but there's no way I could eat much more than that and certainly not every day. It's not the food, Mr. Extended Forehead. It's how much you eat.

And then there’s the obesity question.

Ah yes, the obesity question. It all depends on how you define 'obese', and if that definition is 'anyone fatter than me' then the world's your oyster. Unless you're the fattest man in the world in which case you're pretty much going to get the blame for everything. So that's the question. What's the answer?

The bacon explosion looks like the kind of dish that you need to be fat already in order to enjoy.

Only if you plan to eat all of it yourself at one sitting. I can enjoy a cream cake without getting fat because I don't eat many of them. See? It's not hard. You don't need to be fat to enjoy fatty food and you don't need to get fat if you eat it. Only if you eat a lot of it regularly.

Here’s a website – This is why you’re fat – which is entirely devoted to this special category of foodstuffs. If you can cope with this kind of menu item ... you’re liable to have a massive stomach in the first place. Truly, it’s no wonder the website carries the sub-heading “where dreams become heart attacks”.

The picture of 'nacho pizza cake' is not the reason anyone, anywhere is fat. It could be the reason someone spent all night throwing up but fat? No chance. Nobody could keep that down. As for tinned chicken, why is that particularly fattening? It doesn't look like a one-portion can to me, it just looks like a means of storing chicken long-term. Chicken isn't a very fatty food either.

It's made-up nonsense. It's fatophobes making up ridiculous food combinations in huge portions and convincing themselves that it's what fat people eat. It bears no resemblance to reality yet fatophobes everywhere will nod in sage agreement because it suits their particular bigotry. The idea that nobody but a fat person can eat fatty foods, the implication that anyone presented with an entire meatloaf will instantly devour it all, leads to the denormalisation and finally dehumanisation of fat people.

Listen to the smokers, fat people. We've seen the same methods. Soon they'll hide their children from you because they'll be convinced you'll eat them, and if you don't, they might catch obesity from you.

Eventually, you too will be attacked in the street by teacher-encouraged thugs while a cameraman films you and calls you 'idiot'. Probably the same one.

Turn on them now, fatties. Right now. Don't sit back and think 'well, perhaps they're right' because they're not. They aren't even bothering with the truth. What you are facing is pure, unreasoning hate. Turn on them, vent your anger at them, and when they harass you, harass them back. Ignore any attempt at compromise because they don't want compromise. They want it all. If you let up even for a moment they will surge forward again.

It's what we smokers should have done a long time ago. It took children attacking smokers in the street to really get the rage going. There have been smoker comments on smokophobes' articles for a long time but they were generally an attempt at reasoned debate. The smokophobes dismissed them all. They don't care about reasoned debate.

Then, that video changed the mood. Smokers and non-smokers raged at the YouTube posting and the smokophobe photographer backed off sharpish. He's been kicking the dog for a long time and all it did was yelp. Now it's barking and baring its teeth and he's looking for a way out. Well, there isn't one.

I considered contacting You Tube and reminding them of the 'happy slapping' craze they were blamed for. They are about to get blamed for another one. Then I thought no, leave it there. Let that craze happen. There are too many smokers who will just sit back and accept whatever is thrown at them. Let's see if they'll accept this.

Let's see who the police arrest when the inevitable happens and a smokophobe gets beaten to a pulp for attacking a smoker. Let's see how the press can spin that one. Let's make it public.

Many smokers are unaware of the conversations on the internet. They won't hear the arguments, they never know where the next restriction has come from, they will be surprised when some spotty youth snatches their cigarette and they will be enraged. Good.

It's about time.


UPDATE: The photographer has removed the video. That is a historic moment. it's the first time a smokophobe has backed down. However, the little Nazis have one of their own, and here it is -




I wonder if they'll back down too?

The night train to anywhere.

The overnight train from Barcelona to Milan had a surprise in store for its passengers. It took them to Zurich instead.

Now that's a pretty surreal experience. How can it happen?

The overnight Salvador Dalí train,

Ah, right.

Always check the train guard's watch. If it's melted, wait for the next train.

Training the New Blackshirts.



The comments below this video on YouTube are enlightening. Even the member who posted it, the cameraman who shot the film, attempts to distance himself from it. Only those in the film don't see any problem with what they are doing. Oh, and the local police don't have a problem with it either.

Via Dick Puddlecote, the source of this sorry tale of hate and spite is here. Fuel Injected Moose has the story too, along with the contact details for the female Fagin who runs this merry band of thieves.

What is interesting is that the police were informed, by Fagin herself, exactly what they planned to do and the police were fine with that. Filming in the street? Anyone else gets stopped under anti-tourist laws but if they are going to film assaults on smokers, no problem.

Happy slapping? Not allowed. Oh, your targets are smokers? Well that's all right then, you carry on.

Theft? That's against the law. Oh, you're going to steal from smokers? That's fine, they don't count.

Try it here, and the first cry of 'ciggie busters' will be met by a response of 'thief thumpers'. Sure, I'll end up in court for defending myself from a street mugging but that little bastard will spend time in hospital and I know just what he's likely to catch in there. Prison is more hygienic. And I'll be able to smoke in there. Sounds like a good deal to me. It'll save time anyway, we're bound to be rounded up and imprisoned soon enough.

The State sanctioning of violence against smokers has never been more clear. Schools are moving on from getting kids to harass their smoking parents to teaching them actual street-violence against a group of people. Yet the State whines that we aren't paying UK duty on our tobacco, we aren't supporting pubs, clubs and restaurants in the recession and that we are a drain on the NHS that we have more than paid for while being excluded from it.

I'm still sticking little magnets everywhere. I'll have to print more.

The smokophobia goes further. A game is now available that allows you to shoot smokers. There have already been assaults and deaths due to smokophobes attacking smokers in the street - where they have been thrown to get them out of the sight of the smokophobic Righteous. Now it seems it's okay to shoot at us. Oh, it's just a game. For now. Those children show where it's heading. With police support.

We should never have let them have that first non-smoking carriage on the train.

It is no longer a war of words. The smokophobes now use open violence. The police don't mind. The medics won't mind either, because they won't have to stitch us up afterwards. As smokers, they can just let us die unless we conform to their dictated lifestyle.

Watch for the first smoker in court for daring to defend themselves against the indoctrinated morons of the Gorgon Youth. Yes, Labour did this and what are the Coagulation going to do?

Nothing. They are too busy looking at ways to cull the pensioner population.

You can be arrested for looking at a Muslim in a funny way in this country, even if the Muslim isn't offended at all but some random stranger perceives your look to be offensive. Yet tell the police you plan to start mugging smokers in broad daylight and that is perfectly okay.

Cleggeron, just put up the damn swastika flag and get it over with, will you? Then you can give pretty armbands to all your nasty little Stasi and arm them with smoker-bashing sticks. You might as well hand out the drinker-thumping steel bars and the fat-people cattle prods at the same time. We know it's coming. Just do it. Maybe then we'll see a reaction. Maybe then all those smokers who just shrug and accept every new restriction will finally say 'Hang on...'

No wonder they wanted us disarmed.

No poofters.

The Catholic Church has rules.

Rule 1 - No poofters.

Rule 2 - Nobody is to molest the choirboys in any way at all - if there's anybody watching.

Rule 3 - No poofters.

And so on.

I think their rules and indeed their whole concept of having a Pope who is a direct line to a God who is omnipotent yet perpetually in need of money is just stupid. But I'm not a member of that club so its rules are irrelevant to me. They can choose whoever they want as members. They are very unlikely to choose me even though I'm not a poofter, because I have no interest at all in either choirs or boys and can't exercise the level of restraint in oratory which was exemplified by Ian Paisley.

Even so, I have no objection to the existence of the Catholic Church because it's none of my business. Their rules don't bind me. All I need do to avoid their rules is not go there. It's hardly onerous.

Yet the State doesn't see it that way. According to the State, a Catholic adoption agency funded by the Catholic church must fit with State rules, not the rules applied by their funders. They must allow gay couples to adopt even though their religion (and funding source) forbids it and even though gay couples have other sources of children who all look the same and are all equally repellent anyway.

I have no... interest in who adopts who. Really. Any home life has to be better than life in a home, surely? I have to admit to zero experience in this matter so I stand to be corrected.

Even so, I doubt the number of gay couples wanting to adopt is very high. So if one agency says 'no poofters', is that really a problem? There are others who don't have that rule.

This adoption agency has been forced to close because if they can't say 'No poofters' then their funding stops. We taxpayers save nothing because we're not paying. The Cath Club is paying.

So - all the children on their books. What happens to them now?

Are they destined to grow up in storage?