The Coagulation become Time Lords.

Cameron is a Scottish name, and yet this particular Empty Forehead of Doom seems to want to do to Scotland what the Brown Gorgon did to England.

Well, why not? He only stands to lose about five votes anyway although Little Nick might lose a lot more. There is nothing he can do to Scotland that will affect his chances at the next election, just as the Brown Gorgon could kick the South of England in the teeth with no worries.

It's all about this clock-changing malarkey we have to go through twice a year. The Cleggeroid Coagulation want to put a stop to it. Well, it is a bit of a pain, especially with these new digital clocks. Moving forward an hour is easy but you can't move them back an hour. You have to move them forward twenty-three hours. If you miss it you have to go round again.

The thing is, he wants to keep them permanently one hour ahead of GMT to please (pause for deep breath) the French.

We have, in GMT, perfectly good Proper British Time and we don't want any of that greasy, garlic-laden French time over here thank you very much. If he's going to do away with all the clock-changing (I have a lot of clocks so I'd support stopping the changing. Everything comes with a clock on it these days) why not stick with GMT? Does this summer time thing have any advantage other than an extra hour in bed at the end of October? I mean, if it's time to get up and it's dark, turn a bloody light on. It's only one switch. Anyone can do it. Then go back to bed for half an hour while the EU-approved DimBulb warms up.

I wonder if the Green MP has thought of the extra energy burning in Scotland on those dark winter mornings? With any luck, trying to reconcile that with EU subservience will blow a gasket in her head and let some sense in.

The Coagulation have opened a big can of worms with this little idea. If they agree to bring us into EU time, they annoy the Scots which will please a lot of English. But then they are pandering to the EU and especially the French which will annoy a lot of English. If they keep GMT they will annoy the EU which will please a lot of English but they'll be pandering to the Scots... and there is no way out now.

Well, there is one way but I'd be surprised if it has even occurred to him.

Declare that we will stop changing clocks and we will be using Proper British Time permanently. The Scots will make some mutterings about losing summer time even though in summer it barely gets dark up here and the EU and the French will mutter about him not being subservient enough. He'll have annoyed both at once and his voters will be delighted. He's not going to do that. He doesn't have the guts to stand up to the EU and the Scots don't vote for him so chances are, we'll be on French time soon.

Watch out for stripy jumpers and onion-laden bicycles soon after. We can't have those pavement cafes here though. It's rained every single day for the past six weeks or more. You couldn't keep your Disc Bleue alight, and your etchings would be all streaky.

Still, there are tons of snails about.

Senile delinquents.

I have not done that many samples in one day for many years. Now I remember why. Will I do it again? At that price, yes. Although I wish I had charged more because I would probably have got it. One good thing about dealing with that amount of chicken crap is that you always get a seat to yourself on the bus. As for smokers having no sense of smell, well you should have seen my face when I opened that box. I wish it were true, sometimes.

Anyway, too tired to rant even at the Hell's Grannies. The senile deliquents are running riot, it seems, roaring around at eight miles an hour on their souped up Hardly Davison unclad Daleks, high on booze and drugs. Oh, I am so looking forward to being old. The police are going to deploy stingers and squad bicycles in hot pursuit. Well, they are sooo hard to catch and they tick the boxes so it's inevitable really. When I get one I want it to come with the full Davros styling. If it doesn't, I'll fit it myself. I'll have a Pope hat too and go around screaming "Ex-commun-icate"! Perhaps also a bald wig. "Ex-foli-ate". There's more, as Jimmy Cricket used to say, but I'll save them for later.

They now want to have driving tests for a mobility scooter that does eight miles an hour. Those Olympic sprinters had better watch out. They might have to have a licence for their legs soon.

Anyway, there is much to do tomorrow and the next day so it's sleep time. No booze yet, just a touch of brandy for medicinal purposes this evening. Maybe two touches.

I'll catch up next week.

If only there were time for a proper rant...

Tomorrow, or rather later today, the sixty pots of chicken crap arrive. They are said to be arriving 'by 1 pm'. I hope it's earlier than that. This is not a job to leave until lunchtime. I'll get there mid-morning, no need to be earlier because all 360 plates are already labelled and stacked. I just get the samples and start. Saturday will be the worst - all those confirmation tests on hundreds of colonies!

I also have two tip-offs in Email. Subrosa alerts me to the news of the new superbugs that infest those hospitals where we're not allowed to smoke in case someone might happen to catch something imaginary through a discredited mechanism called 'passive smoking'. Seems to me the best way to deal with a heart attack is aspirin, whisky and bloody-mindedness. Going into hospital is far too dangerous, especially if you're ill. Mark Wadsworth has some history on the subject. I have a rant too, along different lines, but it will have to wait.

John Walker (he has granted permission to use his name) pointed out that Westminster City Council has spent just shy of fifty grand persecuting their local smokers. Antismokers pay council tax too. That hate comes at a price, you know. Did you think it was free?

I'll answer Emails later. For now, I'd better get some sleep, and hope I don't dream of chickens with the runs.

Real Life gets in the way again.

I have sixty samples arriving on Thursday so posts will be short for a while. It's a long time since I did that many in a day but it's a fast-earning day. With preparation and reporting it's more than a day, naturally, but it will improve my reserve considerably.

No boozing either, so I only have a bottle of Gary the Bastard (Bastide de Garille 2007) tonight. It's only 13.5% so it's practically a soft drink.

I have to organise running this many samples in advance so I get through them as fast as possible. Otherwise I'll be in there all night. Mistakes are not an option - I know at least half of them are contaminated with Campylobacter but I don't know which half. So, no 'oops' moments are allowed. I know what Campylobacter can do and I really don't want it to do that to me.

For tonight then, I'll settle for dropping one into the battle over smoking pregnant women.

My mother has never smoked. I'm a runt. My brother is generally more human-shaped than me but prone to illness, and he's good at catching ones even I've never heard of. I think I have the better deal.

My auntie smoked like a chimney, always has and still does. Her three sons are bigger, fitter and stronger than average. One of them played for the Welsh Youth national team. I was even ejected from the school choir. They all smoke. They have children too. All perfectly healthy.

The only similarity between me and my cousins is that we all run our own businesses. And we all smoke. Both fathers smoke in these families too although mine has packed it in because it's just too much bother to go outside when you're over 70, especially at today's prices.

Those are what are known as FACTS, Dunkie Bannatyne. Real FACTS. Here's one more FACT for you. None of us are child abusers. You can tell that to the judge.

Antismokers like to try to make smokers feel guilty. They have never succeeded in my case. All they have ever managed to rouse in me is anger. They are getting better at that daily.

For tonight though, the fury will have to be on hold. I have a lot of sample sheets to get ready.

So I'll turn it down as low as it gets - fast simmer.

Don't work too hard.

What is it with socialists and databases? The EU now want a database of naughty people and you know they don't just mean the ones with guns and bombs. They don't mean criminals either. They mean everyone with a political opinion. That's me. And you. We are to be tracked. What a waste of time. They can find me any time they like through my IP address. Instead, they must have this information on a database and guess who's paying?

They have also decided that stealing tax money after it's passed through our own politicians is too inefficient. Well, they have a point - our politicians can't be trusted with money. Instead they plan to tax us directly. Will that lead to a reduction in the Government demanding money with menaces? Don't hold your breath.

If you get an education, graduate from university and subsequently become a highly productive member of the economy, Vinnie the Wire is going to punish you for it. Yes, you'll pay more tax than anyone else. For as long as you live. So the moment you have that degree in your hand, get out of the country quick. Vinnie, being a politician and therefore by definition an idiot, isn't expecting that to happen.

This is, of course, on top of the extra EU taxes and the Government's taxes and the 20% VAT coming up... better get some big pockets because there are a lot of hands going into them.

How can you persuade an entire country to accept all this? Well, here's one way.

The trouble is, all those graduates will leave, businesses will leave, and the loony Left will cheer as the ones who pay for their insanity close the door behind them. Then they'll tax the next tier harder until they leave too. Eventually they will have to do what East Germany did and stop any more people leaving, but by then it's too late. All they have left are the sheep.

There's no point being successful in this country. The government hates you if you try and will take more and more from you until you give up. Earn enough to live on and relax, or apply your intelligence to the benefits system where you can earn more for doing nothing and the Left will be happy with that. Try to build a business, try to innovate, to create wealth, and they will slap you down. The left still rail about 'Tories' but there are no Tories any more. It doesn't matter who you vote for because they just do as they are told by people you didn't vote for.

Until nobody is willing to lend us any more money because we are no longer earning any ourselves. Then, shouting abuse at bin men will be the least of it.

That EU database is going to become very, very large.

The cure for cancer - famine, penury and death.

Breast cancer is a nasty thing, nobody could argue otherwise. That's why we run routine checks for that condition, because if it's caught early it's much more likely to be fixable. It means that sometimes, women will have a lump spotted before it's reached any damaging size and it can then be removed without resorting to much more serious surgery.

In East Africa, with the best will in the world, it is impossible to run such a program. You can't screen everyone when people have no transport to get to the hospitals, can't spare the time away from the fields, can't leave livestock unattended, can't cross certain territories because of tribal fighting or can't risk travel because of roaming bandits. It's worse than Manchester. So it's not too surprising to find that...

Breast cancer rates are more than four times higher in the UK than in Eastern Africa, new figures show.

Scary, huh? Live like the East Africans or your boobs will go lumpy.

Some 87.9 per 100,000 British women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008, compared to just 19.3 women per 100,000 in Eastern Africa.

Note the quiet interjection of that word 'diagnosed'. It's the key to this finding. It's not talking about cancer rates, it's talking about cancer diagnoses. You can't diagnose people who don't come to the clinic.

Eastern Africa includes countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

And Somalia. Why leave that one out? Not much of a health service in Somalia at the moment. Anyway, here comes the extrapolation...

However, it warned that British lifestyles - including a high incidence of obesity, too much drinking and a lack of exercise - were contributing to high rates of breast cancer at home.

Well, at least they're not blaming this one on smoking. (Update: oh yes, they are) So what to do about the British cancer epidemic?

Women in Eastern Africa drink much less alcohol than British women and obesity is far less common. They are also much more likely to breastfeed - which lowers the rates of breast cancer even further.

They are doing none of it by choice. Obesity is bound to be far less common in places where food is far less common. Are they really advocating famine as a cure for cancer? The incidence of alcohol consumption is sure to be lower in places where much of the population is penniless. Is penury then the answer? As for breastfeeding, it would be nice to think they do it through choice, but in fact they breastfeed because there's nothing else for baby to eat. Remove all choice, all money and all food, and cure cancer!

Women - and men - in many East African countries also tend to die younger, through starvation, war, and disease. They are not being constantly checked for every possible illness as people are in the West. The longer you live, the greater chance you have of contracting any illness. Living longer doesn't give you cancer but it increases your chance of experiencing it.

Sure, being massively overweight is not good for you. Drinking copious amounts of alcohol every day is not good for you. Here, we have the choice. We can get fat or slim, we can be drunk or sober, women can breastfeed or buy formulated milk. On the whole, we are far better off than most of the people in East Africa because we live longer and rarely die of starvation or rampaging bandit gangs. We have a choice in all those things. Those people do not.

If we try to turn this society into East Africa, all sorts of cancers will decline because we won't be able to travel to the clinics to be diagnosed and we'll all die much earlier. East Africa is much warmer and sunnier than here, yet many, many people who live there want to live on this wet and grey island instead. They aren't coming for the climate.

They come because here, they can have money and food and shelter. Then they can have a choice.

Well, unless the WHO get their way. Then it'll be a real home from home, apart from the cold.

Frankenrighteous.

It's not just the Tiny Blur and the other undead former monsters who get police protection any more. Even the binmen have an escort now.

Fortnightly bin collections are bad enough, but when they refuse to take your bin because it doesn't fully close, then leave a note saying they'll be back in two weeks and expect the bin to be less full, well it's not surprising people get a bit miffed about it.

A bin full of waste - a black, heat-absorbing bin - sitting for four weeks in the summer can get pretty ripe. Even here where it's rarely touched 20C and there's been no sun for weeks. Plus you have two weeks with nowhere to put any new rubbish and you still have to take some out of that bin. If you have that fly-breeding box outside your house it is not going to put you in the best of moods.

Gloucester City Council, which operates a fortnightly collection, has since claimed that the policy has been around for a number of years.

Yes, and people have fumed quietly about it for all those years. It seems all that pent-up rage is starting to overspill the dam and you know why, Righteous? You know why they resort to violence?

It's because you, Righteous, told them it was okay. You told them that violence against smokers, drinkers, overweight people, any group you directed them to be enraged at is perfectly okay. You, Righteous, created this monster and you never for a moment imagined it would turn on you, did you?

The Righteous created an enraged army quite deliberately. Furious people, like vicious dogs, to be set on the enemies of Righteousness with a few made-up statistics, a scare story and of course 'the cheeldren'. The fortnightly collections, spying on them to check they are sending their children to the correct school, cameras that fine them for parking if they so much as stop moving for a second, all of it calculated to enrage people. No single thing was ever quite enough to pin all that rage on. It was an accumulation of little irritations. An unfocused fury.

Then the Righteous gave them somewhere to vent that fury. Smokers. Drinkers. Fat people. Whenever there was a new ban to be enforced, that random anger could be pointed in the right direction. All the Righteous needed to do was poke the nest and send the drones after their target.

There was only one flaw in the plan. The Righteous took their army of rage for granted. They refused to listen to concerns raised by their pets. It was all stick and no carrot. Why would they listen? Would you discuss with your goldfish whether he would prefer a square or round tank? That is how the Righteous regard people. Not as human but as pets. There to be trained and commanded.

The training worked. For a time. Now, Righteous, your attack dogs have started to define their own targets. They are no longer only biting on command. They are starting to see where their rage originates and while, at the moment, they vent that rage on minions, it is only a matter of time before they see who is really to blame. Your attack dogs are breaking loose, Righteous, and they are rabid.

They were never pets, Righteous. They were always people and while you can control people by instilling that mob mentality, you cannot control the mob forever. People have a nasty habit of thinking for themselves and while you have tried to eradicate that, you have failed. It simply can't be done. If you had not hidden history, you would have known.

It's all breaking down, Righteous. All falling apart. Again. Oh, it won't all collapse at once but the cracks are getting wider all the time. It will accelerate.

Brace yourselves, Righteous. Pitchfork Day is coming.

Iron those legs.

Before I give the link, a word of warning.

Ensure that your mouth and hands are empty and that you have a clear route to the bathroom or a handy bucket. Put anything you might be able to use to poke out your own eyes well out of reach. Check that your tray is in the stowed position, that the ashtrays are closed and your seat back is in the upright position. (I remember the days when the 'no smoking' lights used to go out, you know).

Ready? The image doesn't appear until the end, so you have time to brace yourselves. Okay. Go!

Brings a whole new image to the idea of a 'leg iron', doesn't it?

And now, the same image, after ironing.

Modern laundry technology is truly amazing.

Trust me, I'm a doctor.

If you went to your doctor and he prescribed slaughtering a chicken at midnight while chanting the words to the Sex Pistols' 'Anarchy in the UK' as a cure for your ailment, would you do it?

Or would you seek out another doctor? One who bases their medical practice on facts rather than on superstition?

Suppose you go to your doctor with a case of ringworm and he firmly declares that it is not ringworm but a reaction to butter, and makes up some figures on the spot to 'prove' that people who eat butter are 74.8% more likely to erupt in circular fungal infections than those who use plasticine (I can't call it margarine. It's not). What do you do? Ditch the butter or ditch the doctor?

I don't visit the doctor. Well, I'm not ill so there's no need but sometimes I damage myself, or catch something, and even then I don't visit the doctor. Why? It's simple.

I no longer trust the medical profession at all.

This is why. I now know that if I were to visit the doctor with a throat infection, he is going to tell me it's because of smoking. If I visit with a gut infection, that will be because of smoking and drinking and probably butter and salt too. Not because I've eaten something that wasn't quite dead. No, the medical profession is no longer interested in bacteria or viruses. They come out instead with superstitious nonsense with nothing to back it up at all. Like this:

I believe that parents who smoke in cars carrying small children are committing a form of child abuse; I suppose the same people also smoke at home in front of their children.

Telling perfectly healthy children that they are obese and going to die is child abuse. Telling children that because their father smokes, they are going to die, that's child abuse. Taking childrens' lunches away because you don't agree with their contents is child abuse. Using children as experimental subjects when giving them untested vaccines is severe child abuse. Medics approve of all these things. Yet when it comes to a little bit of leaf wrapped in paper, they call it child abuse.

And they think we should trust them?

Evidence from the US indicates that more young children are killed by parental smoking than by all unintentional injuries combined.

He is not 'mistaken'. He is lying. This is the man who expects you to trust him when he wants to ram a camera up your jacksi. He expects you to trust him when he injects you with something or gives you a little bottle of mysterious pills. He expects you to trust him, and take advice from him.

Yet here he is, blatantly and unashamedly lying. As Stewart points out, no child has ever died from this witchdoctor's curse called 'passive smoking'. None. Not one. Not ever. Not even when smoking prevalence was far, far higher than it is now. He is not mistaken, he is lying.

If it was one lie, we could maybe overlook it but...

Cot death, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, is also directly related to smoking.

No, it is not. There is no evidence for this at all. These 'caring professionals' use this lie to make grieving parents suffer more by instilling guilt. Caring? Ha!

Other causes of death include lung infections, burning to death as a result of fires caused by cigarettes and asthma.

All lung infections? Really? All caused by smoking and never by bacteria? Non-smokers rejoice, you cannot possibly ever get ill because the medical profession has banished all causes of disease. Now they need to explain why people still get sick. So they blame it all on smoking, drinking and eating.

Burning to death is caused by something called 'fire' and while it is possible to start a fire with a cigarette, it's not that easy. Most home furnishings are fire-retardant at least nowadays. Besides, if a smoker drops a lit cigarette, they tend to notice they've done it and take steps to ensure that it doesn't set fire to their home. When was the last time you heard about fire caused by cigarettes? When was the last time you heard about fire caused by something else?

As for asthma, it is my experience that asthmatics tend not to take up smoking. It really wouldn't be a good idea. It is also my experience that certain asthmatics of my acquaintance used to visit the pub often before the smoking ban and were untroubled by the smoke in the air. They don't visit now because none of their friends are there any more. People who were troubled by smoke in the air didn't go to those pubs before the ban - and they didn't go afterwards either. They are still outside those pubs and now they are complaining about smokers being out there too. If it bothers you, go inside the pub. We aren't allowed in there.

Asthma is not caused by smoking. It might be irritated by smoke, in severe cases, but smoking does not cause it. Think of the smokers you know, and have known. How many have developed asthma?

This empty suit with a 'medic' badge on it is just making up a load of nonsense on the spot. There are those who believe him because he is a doctor. There are doctors who believe this rubbish.

There are doctors who believe that if a patient smokes, all their ailments are caused by smoking. Doctors will repeat these lies to you, they will tell you that your dead child was your fault, they will tell you that the boil on your backside is smoking-related, they will tell you that your lung infection was caused by smoking - and if you protest that you have never smoked, they will call you a liar.

Frank Davis's solution sounds extreme but doctors have brought this on themselves.

Would you return to a mechanic who says that your car is beyond repair because your ashtray is full? Or would you take it home and change the oil yourself?

What would be the point of me visiting a doctor? He is not going to diagnose anything. All he will do is trot out the tired lies that no matter what is wrong with me, it's all down to smoking. He is not even going to try to find another cause because in his mind, smoking causes everything.

Oh, I know someone will be along soon to tell me I am killing the cheeeldren and that I am subhuman and worthless. Yawn. Heard it all before. Someone will come along and relate how they watched a smoker die and therefore all smokers will die the same way. My grandmother never smoked. She died. How can that happen?

Then there will be someone who works in medicine coming along to relate how they see sick people every day. Such a thing does not surprise Longrider and it doesn't surprise me.

GPs are not spoilsports. We genuinely want people to be able to live healthy, fulfilling and productive lives. But every day we are confronted with the harm caused by smoking, excessive alcohol consumption and obesity.

Plumbers are not spoilsports, but every day we are confronted by leaking pipes and blocked waste systems.

Mechanics are not spoilsports, but every day we see cars in desperate need of repair.

Do you see where this is going, doctors? Plumbers don't tend to get called to houses where the water stays in the pipes. Nobody takes a perfectly functioning car to a repair shop. People who are not sick do not go to the doctors.

You see sick people every day because you're the one people go to see when they are sick. Yes, they do expect you to fix them. That is your job. It is what you are paid to do.

It is not your job to control other people's lives. There were many in the past who have tried to do that and it did not end well for them.

I cannot entrust my health to people who tell me barefaced lies. I will not put myself in the hands of people whose stated intention is to control my life. As for hospitals, well, it's part of my job to fix those people you've handed out free infections to. So you won't get me in there conscious either, and don't get too settled with your machines and drugs because as soon as I wake up, I'm gone. You can infect your Puritan friends to your heart's content.

There was a time when medicine was based on superstition and random decisions created by each medic's personal prejudices. Then there was a time when it was based on logic and research and facts. Funny how things go in circles, isn't it?


More on this here and here.

And Dick Puddlecote has yet another arrogant arse nicely skewered.

Cement

Kitchen floor is coated with cement and I can't go there until the morning. Most of today has involved shard removal and delumpification of the floor. I have a bottle of whisky and a bed within range.

So I have to call 'knackered' on the night.

Tomorrow it will be sorted.