Sunday 6 March 2011

Drive-by blogging.

I have visitors in my house again. Obviously I am not yet sufficiently objectionable to everyone. They bribed their way in with a bottle of the Penderyn, so they get to stay for a few days.

This does hamper blogging slightly. So does the current spell of fine weather, which I have to take advantage of to get a fence painted. For the last few years, a bout of Spring pleasantness has been followed by a wash-out summer so when it's fine, I can't afford to risk leaving any outside job for another day. There might not be another dry one. Hence tonight's short miscellany.

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I noticed this in the Mail and thought "Chrome exhausts. That's what it needs. Oh, and painted flames." It would be the finishing touch for the Bling Train which already has that 'get out of the way' look. It's fast and it looks like it was built to ram something. Compared to ours, most of which look like a few carriages running around on their own, it looks great. Expensive to travel on, but then who wants to go inside? You can't see it from inside.

Ah, if only Stephenson, Watt and Brunel were alive to see this. They'd beat the crap out of our MPs for letting other countries make our railways look like backwater tramlines.

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Our local Tesco has a few boxes marked 'Last chance!' and filled with pricey 40-watt filament bulbs. Fortunately I stocked up on 60-watt ones when Tesco were selling them off for 7p each a few months back. There is also an interesting innovation - General Electric sell a bulb made from a plain halogen bulb soldered into a standard filament-bulb fitting. That won't last. Halogen bulbs will be banned soon and we'll all have to have those useless dim bulbs.

Best dig a big hole in the garden ready to dispose of them too, because the council won't pick them up. They're too dangerous for binmen to handle but perfectly safe for your child's bedroom. I hope everyone has been practicing that doublethink?

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Peter Hitchens is in full rant mode today. The only thing I'd take issue with is this part -

The link between cigarettes and lung cancer was first made by scientists in 1929.
A lot of people didn’t want it to be true, so it was ignored until millions had gone needlessly to early graves.
Now the evidence that cannabis is a danger to mental health grows clearer each week – the British Medical Journal has just published a powerful paper linking cannabis with psychosis.
Yet in the media and in the Government, the falsehood that this is a ‘soft’ and harmless drug continues.
Why? As with cigarettes, because people don’t want to admit the truth.

Despite the likes of Rug-face Flynn insisting that smoking is deadly and cannabis is harmless, cannabis is a form of smoking. There is no need for any government to take any action at all concerning cannabis, because cannabis is smoking and smoking is being progressively banned.

What cannabis does or doesn't do is no more relevant than what tobacco does or doesn't do. When the smoking ban reaches into your home, you'll be charged, not with possession of a drug but with smoking. Which will carry a far harsher penalty than cannabis ever did.

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Anyhow, time for sleep. Guests will expect to be entertained tomorrow.

13 comments:

JuliaM said...

"I noticed this in the Mail and thought "Chrome exhausts. That's what it needs. Oh, and painted flames.""

It did have a very retro 60s feel, didn't it? Like the Interceptor craft in 'UFO'.

Anonymous said...

Re nice trains.

Take a second-class train from A to B in Japan or Germany.

Now do the same in Britain.

Ignore the train - just tell me about your travelling companions.

Australia is another country whose railways are a new form of terror.

Snakey said...

Hitchens has said of his reputation: "I know a lot of people consider me to be disreputable or foaming at the mouth, but you have to learn not to care, or at least not to mind. I don't like being called 'bonkers' and I think to some extent it demeans people who use phrases like that. But I take comfort from the fact that most totalitarian regimes tend to classify their opponents as mentally disordered."

Quote from Wikipedia

Frank Davis said...

People have been saying that sort of thing about cannabis ever since "Reefer Madness" in the 1950s, if not beforehand.

The only difference now is that people will believe anything they're told.

Anonymous said...

"The link between cigarettes and lung cancer was first made by scientists in 1929."
Interesting that he got the date right. Journalists always used to give the date as 1950. I wonder if he's read Chris Snowdon's book?

Shame about the rest though.

Tony

Anonymous said...

"Reefer Madness" was 1930s I believe, not 1950s.

Anonymous said...

With regard to councils not picking up CFL bulbs as they are dangerous, why don't we start a campaign to send all of our dud bulbs to the EU or our MEP (whoever the hell that is). They made us have the things, they should clean up the mess for once.

Anonymous said...

LI - Would a paper shredder work for your baccy project?

Anonymous said...

@mister_choos

That seems like a fantastic idea in principle, but wouldn't the bits be a tad too big?

If it works, I'll be digging out the spare manual (winding handle type) shredder from under the stairs when my crop is ready!

Anonymous said...

@Anon
I don't know to be honest. It depends at what stage the shredding needs to be done. If it is when the leaves are wet, then they may shrink more afterwards.

There maybe specialist shredders that shred finer than the Argos type.

If not you can just by a bigger pipe1 :D

Leg-iron said...

JuliaM - That's it! I'd been through all the Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5 etc and the closest I'd got was Captain Scarlet's SPV. I knew it wasn't the one.

It does, indeed, look very like a UFO Interceptor with the huge rocket stuck to the front.

All the more reason to get out of the way...

Leg-iron said...

I've wondered about trying a peper shredder. They're cheap enough to risk wrecking one.

The shredder I use for paper doesn't cut fine enough for rollups, but would cut well enough for pipe baccy.

So I've bought some pipes ;)

Anonymous said...

You could also look here:

http://www.howtogrowtobacco.com/

or here

http://www.seedman.com/cutof.htm

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