Certainly for North Norfolk District Council. They don't like the Unclothed on the walls, and have taken down an artist's work because of 'complaints'.
Those mysterious 'complaints' seem to crop up a lot, don't they? All it needs is one and the thoughts of the remaining population can be dismissed. One complaint and the politicians swing into action. Well, when it suits them. If it doesn't, then entire online petitions can be ignored. Yes, Little Nicky, I do mean you and your 'great repeal pretend consultation'.
Here's Norfolk's council spokesthing with the usual trite nonsense:
"Whilst respecting the fact that art, by its very nature, is open to subjective interpretation, on this occasion the council made the decision to remove the paintings from display.
Forgetting that the council had already agreed to the display and had seen samples and approved them.
"This is not a case of political correctness.
I think you'll find it is, you know. Just saying 'oh no it isn't' no longer works as an argument ender. Ask the Climatologists.
Rather, it is a balanced reaction to some members of staff finding the artwork offensive.
No, it is pure political correctness. Did those who were offended, those who liked the work and those who didn't much care either way get a chance to have a say? Or was it just 'Ooh, a complaint, ban them'?
Was there any point where the council officials might have said 'Oh grow up. It's not porn, it's art.'? I very much doubt that such a reaction would even have occurred to them.
"It should be noted that artwork has been removed from display for similar reasons in the past and clearly, with artwork being displayed in publicly accessible areas, if we receive complaints in the future, we may decide to take similar action again."
No doubt. As long as the complaint involves banning something and does not involve a complaint about a ban, you are all fine with that. Complaints that something has been banned unfairly are just sneered at, even if thousands complain. Complaints calling for further bans are supported fully, on the basis of just one complaint.
Pretty much how it works at all levels of government these days.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
Foamy coffee.
I never visit Starbuck's. They won't let me smoke with my coffee and even if they did, it is a silly place. When I feel like a coffee, most of the time I just want 'a coffee'. Often, I'll define it as an espresso (always a double), once in a while a cappuccino but the volume in those things is usually a bit much. Mostly, when I ask for 'coffee', that's all I want. Just coffee. No fancy names, no special cups, no logo and no frills. I don't even care if the mug is cracked as long as the coffee is hot and the mug doesn't leak.
So I would probably react in much the same way as a certain Professor Rosenthal, if faced with staff who insist I learn a language so local it only exists in their shop and if I don't, they won't sell me anything.
Not quite the same way. There would have been no need to call the police to get me to leave and promise never to return. That part would have been automatic. I don't want an espresso in a 'tall' cup, I refuse to regard a medium sized cup as 'grande' and I have no idea what 'venti' means. So I never visit Starbuck's. There is a small Italian deli in Aberdeen with outside tables and coffees named with Italian names - because the owners are Italian. Not because it 'sounds good'. Damn good espresso, too. They don't have 'venti' and they don't have corporate speak. They speak English to the customers and rage at each other in Italian.
I really should get around to learning Italian. Everyone speaking it sounds annoyed, all the time. No other language seems to express rage quite so well, in fact they can get so annoyed that they run out of words and have to extend the language into hand signals.
These modern chain cafes seem to be staffed with the obsequious and the insane. You have to speak their lingo or they'll ignore you, and it's unlike any language anyone learns in any school anywhere. I think they just make it up on the spot.
Well, it's their premises and if they want customers to learn Orcish before getting served, that's up to them. I don't like it so I won't go there. That's the full extent of my reaction, I don't want them pressured into letting customers relax, I just won't buy my coffee there. There's another place just around the corner.
Now I come to think of it, I haven't actually been to any cafes for a long time. Months of cold winter followed by a wet summer haven't left many days when I'd be willing to sit at an outside table - and I'm not allowed to smoke inside, so I wait until I'm home for my coffee.
If the fine weather returns, I'll stop off for a coffee somewhere. It won't be Starbuck's.
I'll let Foamy explain...
So I would probably react in much the same way as a certain Professor Rosenthal, if faced with staff who insist I learn a language so local it only exists in their shop and if I don't, they won't sell me anything.
Not quite the same way. There would have been no need to call the police to get me to leave and promise never to return. That part would have been automatic. I don't want an espresso in a 'tall' cup, I refuse to regard a medium sized cup as 'grande' and I have no idea what 'venti' means. So I never visit Starbuck's. There is a small Italian deli in Aberdeen with outside tables and coffees named with Italian names - because the owners are Italian. Not because it 'sounds good'. Damn good espresso, too. They don't have 'venti' and they don't have corporate speak. They speak English to the customers and rage at each other in Italian.
I really should get around to learning Italian. Everyone speaking it sounds annoyed, all the time. No other language seems to express rage quite so well, in fact they can get so annoyed that they run out of words and have to extend the language into hand signals.
These modern chain cafes seem to be staffed with the obsequious and the insane. You have to speak their lingo or they'll ignore you, and it's unlike any language anyone learns in any school anywhere. I think they just make it up on the spot.
Well, it's their premises and if they want customers to learn Orcish before getting served, that's up to them. I don't like it so I won't go there. That's the full extent of my reaction, I don't want them pressured into letting customers relax, I just won't buy my coffee there. There's another place just around the corner.
Now I come to think of it, I haven't actually been to any cafes for a long time. Months of cold winter followed by a wet summer haven't left many days when I'd be willing to sit at an outside table - and I'm not allowed to smoke inside, so I wait until I'm home for my coffee.
If the fine weather returns, I'll stop off for a coffee somewhere. It won't be Starbuck's.
I'll let Foamy explain...
Gonnae no' dae that?
With all the 3D movies around now, I suppose it was only a matter of time.
I won't be going to see it. You just know what's going to be swinging over the heads of the audience and poking you in the eye. No. Just... no.
Even so, I wonder at some of those porn stars. If they put enough blood into that thing to pump it up, how come they don't pass out?
It's almost an armful.
I won't be going to see it. You just know what's going to be swinging over the heads of the audience and poking you in the eye. No. Just... no.
Even so, I wonder at some of those porn stars. If they put enough blood into that thing to pump it up, how come they don't pass out?
It's almost an armful.
Timeslip
I started the smokophobia post last night but ran out of wakeyness, so I put up the theme tune and finished the other one tonight. That's why they are out of order and why the early mentions of 'today' should really read 'yesterday'.
And yes, I was at work all weekend. Sixty samples generates a hell of a lot of clearing up and the lab has to be ready to go again next week. I'm just thinking of the money...
And yes, I was at work all weekend. Sixty samples generates a hell of a lot of clearing up and the lab has to be ready to go again next week. I'm just thinking of the money...
Monday, 16 August 2010
Smokophobia.
(That 60-sample thing is going to happen again next week so I have to get as much out of my system as possible).
An interesting conversation at the bus stop today. One of those that isn't enclosed, just one panel up and a roof. They are illegally designated 'no smoking' because they are not enclosed.
The harridans normally fake some kind of lung seizure if they pass me smoking in the open air. Now they are becoming more bold, encouraged by the State-sanctioned abuse of anyone the State disapproves of. They expect smokers to cower when confronted, to tug the forelock and apologise for being offensive. This particular harridan met me.
I was under the shelter, next to the illegal 'no smoking' sign. It's only a matter of moving a yard to get out from under the shelter so it's no effort to avoid that sign, and the constant rain has finally stopped here. As a non-smoker once said when I explained this - "so you can't be in the shelter blowing smoke out, but it's fine to be outside the shelter blowing smoke in?" That's about the size of it, yes. This time the harridan started even before I had finished rolling a cigarette.
In her best 'I am Righteous' voice, she pronounced: "This is non-smoking, you know."
"Good thing nobody's smoking then," I said and licked the paper.
"That's a cigarette."
"Your powers of observation are impressive indeed. Do you work for MI6?"
She folded her arms. "Don't you get cocky with me. You can't smoke that in here."
"Actually, I can, but I wasn't planning to. In fact I had planned to move downwind of you before lighting it but I think the upwind side of the shelter is closer." A yard, that's all I had to move. No longer under the harridan's personally-declared dictatorship zone, I lit up.
"That's disgusting." She waved her hands around and wrinkled her face which gave her the appearance of a bulldog having a fit. "I don't want your cancer."
Now this one, I have practiced for, long and hard. So I can now deliver it deadpan.
"I don't have cancer. Smokers don't get it. The smoke has to be metabolised in the smoker's lungs before it becomes cancerous. Only the smoke coming out is dangerous and I'm blowing that away." Well, the Righteous have conditioned people to instantly believe any old tosh so why not make up some of my own?
"You're blowing it at me!"
"No, the wind is doing that. I'm just blowing it away from me because it's really dangerous."
The look on her face made it very difficult to hold my composure. It was somewhere between realisation and terror. "You're giving me cancer!"
"No, you're getting it yourself. I'm just blowing it away from me." Now, keeping a straight face was really hard. She was, genuinely, trying to dodge smoke. Harmless smoke that would blow right past her if she just let it alone. Smoke that, if she had left me alone, wouldn't even be heading in her direction. I'd have gone downwind of her out of general decency if only she had not taken it upon herself to accost me.
"Don't you care?" I think the last word was 'care'. It was delivered at a frequency that's at the very limit of my hearing range.
"No." I took another puff.
Still doing her little dodge-the-smoke dance, she came out with 'How can you do this to me?"
"Because you want me to. Because you consider me subhuman and inferior. Because you think it's fine to attack me when I have never done anything to you. Well, now I'm doing something. I'm acting like this because it's what you expect. It's what you wanted. Now you have it."
Her bus came at that point and my, she was sprightly when it came to boarding it. I didn't get the chance to point out that all I was doing was messing with her mind, that second-hand smoke has never done more than inconvenience anyone, that she really wasn't going to get cancer from the few molecules she might have inhaled as the wind took it past her.
Thinking back, I'm not even sure I would have. I might instead have expanded upon the various lingering deaths she could expect from that one picogram of tobacco smoke that might have stuck in her hair. Antismokers have had it all their own way and I'm not playing that game any more.
They deserve the stress and the fear. They deserve to worry themselves into psychosomatic illness. They believe that we can kill them with a breath, so let's do it. Compromise? We tried that. They refused and now there can be no compromise. Talking to Government? We tried that too. They deleted us.
All we are, are human beings who happen to smoke. Some people don't like the smell and that is the total of their reasoning for treating us as filth. There is nothing else. So act like filth. They expect us to be selfish, so be selfish. They expect us to give them a long and agonising death, so let's do that.
It's what they want from us. Give them what they want. Give them terror, give them high blood pressure, give them heart attacks and yes, give them cancer. None of it caused by smoking, all of it caused by their own terror of smoking. Smokophobia can kill. It's better than Kung Fu. You don't even have to touch them.
Practice is essential. Nobody can deliver those lines cold and keep a straight face when you see them believing it.
Oh, I am sure antismokers will be along to call me evil and twisted but again, that's what you expect from a smoker, isn't it? I'm only acting the way you want me to act. I'm only doing what you want. I don't want to disappoint.
You made me, antismokers, and every day you reinforce the monster you created. Every day you make me more twisted, more evil, nastier and less caring. So my made-up nonsense could make some of you ill and might manage to kill a few. Watch me not care. I will treat you as you treat me. With utter and absolute contempt.
You, antismokers, are subhuman and must be denormalised. No, don't get hysterical, I am not proposing to force smoking on anyone. Nonsmokers who are not antismokers are not the enemy. The harridans and the Righteous are the enemy and the fewer of them I have to contend with, the happier I will be. If that means scaring them to death well, so be it. I have no other recourse. The government has declared me an unperson. They will not listen. The councils will not listen. Even the pubs, places I used to be able to go, decry their losses while pretending that the absence of smoking customers has had no effect.
There is no alternative avenue open to me. No more options. Direct retaliation is all that is left and no, I am not going to resort to violence. I'm too old for that. All I have are words and words can cut deeper than any knife if wielded correctly. I did not condition these people to believe in utter rubbish but they are conditioned now and I will make use of that.
Today's stitch in the monster's skin comes with the news that a 70-year old woman has been fined for littering for dropping ash. Not a cigarette. Ash. Sterile fragments that disappear on the wind and are lost in a moment among the natural dust of the world. I put mine in the compost along with cigarette ends. It's good fertiliser and it contains a natural insecticide. Everything in a cigarette is of plant origin. It's vegetarian and biodegradable.
If it comes to court, Anna Raccoon plans a fund to pay her fine. I'll be donating.
I didn't start out as an enemy of antismokers. I didn't set out to start a war. I was happy with smoking and non-smoking segregation. I didn't demonise or denormalise anyone. I never considered anyone as subhuman and I never took it upon myself to decide anyone else's life choices for them.
You antismokers did that. You made me.
I hope you're happy with your creation.
UPDATE: Another stitch. Building a big monster, aren't you?
An interesting conversation at the bus stop today. One of those that isn't enclosed, just one panel up and a roof. They are illegally designated 'no smoking' because they are not enclosed.
The harridans normally fake some kind of lung seizure if they pass me smoking in the open air. Now they are becoming more bold, encouraged by the State-sanctioned abuse of anyone the State disapproves of. They expect smokers to cower when confronted, to tug the forelock and apologise for being offensive. This particular harridan met me.
I was under the shelter, next to the illegal 'no smoking' sign. It's only a matter of moving a yard to get out from under the shelter so it's no effort to avoid that sign, and the constant rain has finally stopped here. As a non-smoker once said when I explained this - "so you can't be in the shelter blowing smoke out, but it's fine to be outside the shelter blowing smoke in?" That's about the size of it, yes. This time the harridan started even before I had finished rolling a cigarette.
In her best 'I am Righteous' voice, she pronounced: "This is non-smoking, you know."
"Good thing nobody's smoking then," I said and licked the paper.
"That's a cigarette."
"Your powers of observation are impressive indeed. Do you work for MI6?"
She folded her arms. "Don't you get cocky with me. You can't smoke that in here."
"Actually, I can, but I wasn't planning to. In fact I had planned to move downwind of you before lighting it but I think the upwind side of the shelter is closer." A yard, that's all I had to move. No longer under the harridan's personally-declared dictatorship zone, I lit up.
"That's disgusting." She waved her hands around and wrinkled her face which gave her the appearance of a bulldog having a fit. "I don't want your cancer."
Now this one, I have practiced for, long and hard. So I can now deliver it deadpan.
"I don't have cancer. Smokers don't get it. The smoke has to be metabolised in the smoker's lungs before it becomes cancerous. Only the smoke coming out is dangerous and I'm blowing that away." Well, the Righteous have conditioned people to instantly believe any old tosh so why not make up some of my own?
"You're blowing it at me!"
"No, the wind is doing that. I'm just blowing it away from me because it's really dangerous."
The look on her face made it very difficult to hold my composure. It was somewhere between realisation and terror. "You're giving me cancer!"
"No, you're getting it yourself. I'm just blowing it away from me." Now, keeping a straight face was really hard. She was, genuinely, trying to dodge smoke. Harmless smoke that would blow right past her if she just let it alone. Smoke that, if she had left me alone, wouldn't even be heading in her direction. I'd have gone downwind of her out of general decency if only she had not taken it upon herself to accost me.
"Don't you care?" I think the last word was 'care'. It was delivered at a frequency that's at the very limit of my hearing range.
"No." I took another puff.
Still doing her little dodge-the-smoke dance, she came out with 'How can you do this to me?"
"Because you want me to. Because you consider me subhuman and inferior. Because you think it's fine to attack me when I have never done anything to you. Well, now I'm doing something. I'm acting like this because it's what you expect. It's what you wanted. Now you have it."
Her bus came at that point and my, she was sprightly when it came to boarding it. I didn't get the chance to point out that all I was doing was messing with her mind, that second-hand smoke has never done more than inconvenience anyone, that she really wasn't going to get cancer from the few molecules she might have inhaled as the wind took it past her.
Thinking back, I'm not even sure I would have. I might instead have expanded upon the various lingering deaths she could expect from that one picogram of tobacco smoke that might have stuck in her hair. Antismokers have had it all their own way and I'm not playing that game any more.
They deserve the stress and the fear. They deserve to worry themselves into psychosomatic illness. They believe that we can kill them with a breath, so let's do it. Compromise? We tried that. They refused and now there can be no compromise. Talking to Government? We tried that too. They deleted us.
All we are, are human beings who happen to smoke. Some people don't like the smell and that is the total of their reasoning for treating us as filth. There is nothing else. So act like filth. They expect us to be selfish, so be selfish. They expect us to give them a long and agonising death, so let's do that.
It's what they want from us. Give them what they want. Give them terror, give them high blood pressure, give them heart attacks and yes, give them cancer. None of it caused by smoking, all of it caused by their own terror of smoking. Smokophobia can kill. It's better than Kung Fu. You don't even have to touch them.
Practice is essential. Nobody can deliver those lines cold and keep a straight face when you see them believing it.
Oh, I am sure antismokers will be along to call me evil and twisted but again, that's what you expect from a smoker, isn't it? I'm only acting the way you want me to act. I'm only doing what you want. I don't want to disappoint.
You made me, antismokers, and every day you reinforce the monster you created. Every day you make me more twisted, more evil, nastier and less caring. So my made-up nonsense could make some of you ill and might manage to kill a few. Watch me not care. I will treat you as you treat me. With utter and absolute contempt.
You, antismokers, are subhuman and must be denormalised. No, don't get hysterical, I am not proposing to force smoking on anyone. Nonsmokers who are not antismokers are not the enemy. The harridans and the Righteous are the enemy and the fewer of them I have to contend with, the happier I will be. If that means scaring them to death well, so be it. I have no other recourse. The government has declared me an unperson. They will not listen. The councils will not listen. Even the pubs, places I used to be able to go, decry their losses while pretending that the absence of smoking customers has had no effect.
There is no alternative avenue open to me. No more options. Direct retaliation is all that is left and no, I am not going to resort to violence. I'm too old for that. All I have are words and words can cut deeper than any knife if wielded correctly. I did not condition these people to believe in utter rubbish but they are conditioned now and I will make use of that.
Today's stitch in the monster's skin comes with the news that a 70-year old woman has been fined for littering for dropping ash. Not a cigarette. Ash. Sterile fragments that disappear on the wind and are lost in a moment among the natural dust of the world. I put mine in the compost along with cigarette ends. It's good fertiliser and it contains a natural insecticide. Everything in a cigarette is of plant origin. It's vegetarian and biodegradable.
If it comes to court, Anna Raccoon plans a fund to pay her fine. I'll be donating.
I didn't start out as an enemy of antismokers. I didn't set out to start a war. I was happy with smoking and non-smoking segregation. I didn't demonise or denormalise anyone. I never considered anyone as subhuman and I never took it upon myself to decide anyone else's life choices for them.
You antismokers did that. You made me.
I hope you're happy with your creation.
UPDATE: Another stitch. Building a big monster, aren't you?
CAMRA: denormalisation beckons.
I've been to some beer festivals in the past. The one in Aberdeen about fifteen years ago wasn't very good. The most recent one (just outside Aberdeen) was so bad, with a poorer selection of beers than the average supermarket, all bottled and at vastly higher prices than the supermarkets, that we actually left and went to the pub instead. That was roughly five years ago and I haven't been to another one since.
Way back in the late seventies/early eighties, I visited the Bristol beer festival on two sucessive years. Beer there was in barrels and nobody could have sampled every one of them and survived. The entrance fee included a glass with the beer festival logo on it - a half pint glass so we weren't wasted too soon. Even so, half-pints of some of those beers were enough. They had been brewed to strengths thought impossible back then, when 'average' beer was around 2-3% and 5% was reserved for Stella Artois and other expensive beers.
Nowadays it's going the other way. I note that Gold Label barley wine has declined from 11% to 9% and the varieties of Chimay on offer no longer include the really strong ones. The price is still going up but the strength is going down.
I still have one of the Bristol glasses. The other met with an unfortunate accident involving a shelf I couldn't reach properly. Well, it was old.
Beer festivals seem to have gone downhill over the years. They used to make a real effort but that one with the bottled beer was the last straw for me. Morrisons has a better selection of bottled beers at a fraction of the price. Banana beer is an interesting experience. Rhubarb beer is something to try once too - but only buy one bottle. You might never open the second one.
In the days when I, as a smoker, was allowed in pubs, I enjoyed a pint of Caffrey's from the hand pump. The proper pump, not the electric thing. In the days when proper pumps were common, you could spot a barman/barmaid in the street because they had one huge right arm for pumping and a little left one for holding the glass. They looked a bit like hermit crabs. But I digress.
Caffrey's is available in cans with that widget thing that makes it explode if you haven't chilled it enough. It looks the same but it doesn't taste the same. The pub version is better and well worth the extra cost. The fact that I haven't been in a single pub this year has nothing to do with the price of beer.
With my tastes, I'd be a natural CAMRA supporter. I love the small-brewery beers. I have several of the Wychwood T-shirts. There's a Scottish beer called Fraoich, made with heather, that is wonderful. I've never seen it on a pump but if it is available I'd really like to try it. It's damn good even in a bottle.
I could have been a beer snob... but I like to smoke and therefore CAMRA despise me. They support my exclusion from the pubs, even the ones that have no real ales, they will be happy to see me banned from the beer gardens and they have accepted without question the lies of the antismokers. They are part of the enemy.
Even so, I did not derive pleasure from reading this.
I don't want the pubs to close faster. I want to be allowed back in there. That cannot happen if they all close. CAMRA, as far as I am concerned, can go to hell. They have chosen their side in this war and they cannot, and will not, change sides now.
Drinking is in the process of being denormalised and has been for some time. CAMRA don't see it, just as smokers didn't see it when one non-smoking carriage appeared on trains and smoking apartheid was first introduced on buses. Now we have parks where uniformed freaks can confiscate the bottle of wine you brought for your picnic and buses have, in addition to 'no smoking' signs, no drinking and no eating. Yes, you can't even have a sandwich on the bus any more.
Not that long ago, people would get on the bus with a can of beer to drink on the way home. They weren't driving, after all. In fact, I remember seeing folk doing that just last year. Now you can't drink anything, not even water, on the bus. Argue with the driver all you like. He's Polish and won't understand you.
It's early days for booze and earlier still for food, but it's the same technique. Even those pubs that have turned into restaurants will find that they still can't survive when drinking is banned. The levels of control on the food they serve will kill all but the big chains. Paying for one test that covers a hundred outlets is easy. Paying the same amount for the same test that covers one outlet is not.
You know, various smoker blogs have pointed out for a long time that the methods used on us are the same slow, methodical erosion of freedoms that is now being applied to all sorts of other aspects of life. All the antismokers ever saw was 'smoker' and their training took over. He smokes. He is an addict in denial. He is subhuman. Don't listen to him. It won't happen to you because you don't smoke.
CAMRA fell for that hook, line and sinker. Now it's happening to them. Exactly the same way.
Are you next?
Way back in the late seventies/early eighties, I visited the Bristol beer festival on two sucessive years. Beer there was in barrels and nobody could have sampled every one of them and survived. The entrance fee included a glass with the beer festival logo on it - a half pint glass so we weren't wasted too soon. Even so, half-pints of some of those beers were enough. They had been brewed to strengths thought impossible back then, when 'average' beer was around 2-3% and 5% was reserved for Stella Artois and other expensive beers.
Nowadays it's going the other way. I note that Gold Label barley wine has declined from 11% to 9% and the varieties of Chimay on offer no longer include the really strong ones. The price is still going up but the strength is going down.
I still have one of the Bristol glasses. The other met with an unfortunate accident involving a shelf I couldn't reach properly. Well, it was old.
Beer festivals seem to have gone downhill over the years. They used to make a real effort but that one with the bottled beer was the last straw for me. Morrisons has a better selection of bottled beers at a fraction of the price. Banana beer is an interesting experience. Rhubarb beer is something to try once too - but only buy one bottle. You might never open the second one.
In the days when I, as a smoker, was allowed in pubs, I enjoyed a pint of Caffrey's from the hand pump. The proper pump, not the electric thing. In the days when proper pumps were common, you could spot a barman/barmaid in the street because they had one huge right arm for pumping and a little left one for holding the glass. They looked a bit like hermit crabs. But I digress.
Caffrey's is available in cans with that widget thing that makes it explode if you haven't chilled it enough. It looks the same but it doesn't taste the same. The pub version is better and well worth the extra cost. The fact that I haven't been in a single pub this year has nothing to do with the price of beer.
With my tastes, I'd be a natural CAMRA supporter. I love the small-brewery beers. I have several of the Wychwood T-shirts. There's a Scottish beer called Fraoich, made with heather, that is wonderful. I've never seen it on a pump but if it is available I'd really like to try it. It's damn good even in a bottle.
I could have been a beer snob... but I like to smoke and therefore CAMRA despise me. They support my exclusion from the pubs, even the ones that have no real ales, they will be happy to see me banned from the beer gardens and they have accepted without question the lies of the antismokers. They are part of the enemy.
Even so, I did not derive pleasure from reading this.
I don't want the pubs to close faster. I want to be allowed back in there. That cannot happen if they all close. CAMRA, as far as I am concerned, can go to hell. They have chosen their side in this war and they cannot, and will not, change sides now.
Drinking is in the process of being denormalised and has been for some time. CAMRA don't see it, just as smokers didn't see it when one non-smoking carriage appeared on trains and smoking apartheid was first introduced on buses. Now we have parks where uniformed freaks can confiscate the bottle of wine you brought for your picnic and buses have, in addition to 'no smoking' signs, no drinking and no eating. Yes, you can't even have a sandwich on the bus any more.
Not that long ago, people would get on the bus with a can of beer to drink on the way home. They weren't driving, after all. In fact, I remember seeing folk doing that just last year. Now you can't drink anything, not even water, on the bus. Argue with the driver all you like. He's Polish and won't understand you.
It's early days for booze and earlier still for food, but it's the same technique. Even those pubs that have turned into restaurants will find that they still can't survive when drinking is banned. The levels of control on the food they serve will kill all but the big chains. Paying for one test that covers a hundred outlets is easy. Paying the same amount for the same test that covers one outlet is not.
You know, various smoker blogs have pointed out for a long time that the methods used on us are the same slow, methodical erosion of freedoms that is now being applied to all sorts of other aspects of life. All the antismokers ever saw was 'smoker' and their training took over. He smokes. He is an addict in denial. He is subhuman. Don't listen to him. It won't happen to you because you don't smoke.
CAMRA fell for that hook, line and sinker. Now it's happening to them. Exactly the same way.
Are you next?
Sunday, 15 August 2010
Prophecy fulfilled.
About forty years ago, this was just a song.
Now it's a serious contender for the UK National Anthem.
I will set you free
If you will vote for me
All you have to vote for
Are the things you'll never see
Hot Chocolate - prophets. They saw the Cleggeron Coagulation coming.
Free Sex for Cripples.
I considered other titles, such as 'Iron Leg Over', or 'At least the middle one works' but went for the least PC because it will annoy the most Righteous out there.
It's true, apparently. Certain councils are paying for prostitutes for the disabled. It's all about 'outcomes' they say, and they kept a straight face while saying it (which is more than I did while reading it. "Oh, what a marvellous outcome," he ejaculated). The 'outcome' is apparently to turn a sad and dejected disabled bloke into a happy disabled bloke, and the method by which this is achieved is of no consequence. The end justifies the means.
Not surprising, then, that they chose a method that turns any straight bloke of any body shape or mental capacity into a happier version of himself. There is no mention of whether gigolos are available for disabled women or whether the disabled gay is similarly catered for, or whether kosher or halal hookers are on their lists. I do hope they are not applying this lunacy in a discriminatory fashion. That would be wrong.
Why do they think this is in any way right?
Liz Sayce, chief executive of disability network Radar, said the desire for sexual relations was a matter of human rights, meaning cases involving payments should be carefully examined on a "case by case" basis.
So if you're disabled you have a human right to an occasional game of hide the sausage. If you're in full health with all body parts present and accounted for, you don't. If you're not disabled and you procure a business arrangement with a lady of the night, you will be frowned on by a wrinkled man in a wig who will bash a hammer on a table and pronounce 'gross diversion' as the label for the dog. Then he'll take your money so you can't do it again.
If you hack off a limb, you can get a quick poke courtesy of the council tax payer and the wrinkled man in the wig will smile fondly and call you 'pet'.
It makes me wonder if this particular wench of the evening might have turned down a council commission. Well, my brain makes odd connections sometimes. It's how I earn a living.
The whole business of sex in this country has become bizarre. Five-year-olds getting sex lessons while parents are routinely terrified with pictures of Gary Glitter. Women dressed ever more provocatively while men become more wary of saying 'hello' in case she screams 'Sexual Abuse!' Councils are happy to fork out so the disabled can use prostitutes while banning the prostitutes from prostitution and criminalising their non-disabled customers. Children suspected of being abused are taken into care and put in homes where they can learn what 'abuse' really means.
No wonder the birth rate is falling. We're not even sure it's legal any more. Do your danglies count as an offensive weapon yet? Women have used their baby buffets in criminal activities while the NHS is demanding they squirt the juice or starve the baby. Work it out. I can't. Fortunately I'm too old to bother.
No wonder cases of repetitive strain injury are on the rise. It's only a matter of time before it's renamed 'Wanker's Wrist'.
It's good being old enough to think back on conquests past (it doesn't take long) and not have to worry about it any more. It must be hell to be young and exploratory now. It's a minefield out there - the kids are taught about sex from an early age but as soon as they try it, they're done for.
Unless they succumb to being pets of the Righteous. Then they can get it courtesy of the taxpayer who isn't getting any.
Any prostitute refusing to bed a spaz can be easily banned, so they'll soon be pets too. I used to keep fish and breed them. If you're a pet of the Righteous, you'll eventually find you actually have no more human rights than those guppies and platys I used to keep in a tank. They are breeding you now. They will produce spastitutes for future control.
What happened to the Tories? Did their balls drop off? They used to be big fans of wild sex. David Mellor, whose face must surely count as a disability, had a sex scandal with a woman who wasn't even registered blind. Even Monochrome Man, 'Interesting' John Major, had a scandalous affair with one woman(ish) while blaming another.
Now we have a Tory world that is indistinguishable from the scowling Teletubbies sunrise that was the Brown Gorgon.
What we really have is an EU. Our government is of no relevance and neither are the councils. Unless we can get out of that, nothing will change for the better.
But hey, at least the cripples will be smiling.
It's true, apparently. Certain councils are paying for prostitutes for the disabled. It's all about 'outcomes' they say, and they kept a straight face while saying it (which is more than I did while reading it. "Oh, what a marvellous outcome," he ejaculated). The 'outcome' is apparently to turn a sad and dejected disabled bloke into a happy disabled bloke, and the method by which this is achieved is of no consequence. The end justifies the means.
Not surprising, then, that they chose a method that turns any straight bloke of any body shape or mental capacity into a happier version of himself. There is no mention of whether gigolos are available for disabled women or whether the disabled gay is similarly catered for, or whether kosher or halal hookers are on their lists. I do hope they are not applying this lunacy in a discriminatory fashion. That would be wrong.
Why do they think this is in any way right?
Liz Sayce, chief executive of disability network Radar, said the desire for sexual relations was a matter of human rights, meaning cases involving payments should be carefully examined on a "case by case" basis.
So if you're disabled you have a human right to an occasional game of hide the sausage. If you're in full health with all body parts present and accounted for, you don't. If you're not disabled and you procure a business arrangement with a lady of the night, you will be frowned on by a wrinkled man in a wig who will bash a hammer on a table and pronounce 'gross diversion' as the label for the dog. Then he'll take your money so you can't do it again.
If you hack off a limb, you can get a quick poke courtesy of the council tax payer and the wrinkled man in the wig will smile fondly and call you 'pet'.
It makes me wonder if this particular wench of the evening might have turned down a council commission. Well, my brain makes odd connections sometimes. It's how I earn a living.
The whole business of sex in this country has become bizarre. Five-year-olds getting sex lessons while parents are routinely terrified with pictures of Gary Glitter. Women dressed ever more provocatively while men become more wary of saying 'hello' in case she screams 'Sexual Abuse!' Councils are happy to fork out so the disabled can use prostitutes while banning the prostitutes from prostitution and criminalising their non-disabled customers. Children suspected of being abused are taken into care and put in homes where they can learn what 'abuse' really means.
No wonder the birth rate is falling. We're not even sure it's legal any more. Do your danglies count as an offensive weapon yet? Women have used their baby buffets in criminal activities while the NHS is demanding they squirt the juice or starve the baby. Work it out. I can't. Fortunately I'm too old to bother.
No wonder cases of repetitive strain injury are on the rise. It's only a matter of time before it's renamed 'Wanker's Wrist'.
It's good being old enough to think back on conquests past (it doesn't take long) and not have to worry about it any more. It must be hell to be young and exploratory now. It's a minefield out there - the kids are taught about sex from an early age but as soon as they try it, they're done for.
Unless they succumb to being pets of the Righteous. Then they can get it courtesy of the taxpayer who isn't getting any.
Any prostitute refusing to bed a spaz can be easily banned, so they'll soon be pets too. I used to keep fish and breed them. If you're a pet of the Righteous, you'll eventually find you actually have no more human rights than those guppies and platys I used to keep in a tank. They are breeding you now. They will produce spastitutes for future control.
What happened to the Tories? Did their balls drop off? They used to be big fans of wild sex. David Mellor, whose face must surely count as a disability, had a sex scandal with a woman who wasn't even registered blind. Even Monochrome Man, 'Interesting' John Major, had a scandalous affair with one woman(ish) while blaming another.
Now we have a Tory world that is indistinguishable from the scowling Teletubbies sunrise that was the Brown Gorgon.
What we really have is an EU. Our government is of no relevance and neither are the councils. Unless we can get out of that, nothing will change for the better.
But hey, at least the cripples will be smiling.
Saturday, 14 August 2010
Who are you?
A couple of days ago, an advert encouraging people to call the police if someone was behaving outside prescribed limits was banned. Longrider caught the story.
The police wanted to hear about anyone in your street who does not behave in exactly the way you do. In my street, from my point of view, that's all of them. They get up early and go to bed early, they drive, they have children, they socialise, they work with other people, they are often sober and many of them don't even smoke. Round them up, officers, they are all odd.
Of course, it's not my point of view that counts. I'm one of those the ad demonised. Even so, in this small dead end of a street there are few who would be immune to that advert. Opposite is a single man who runs a joinery business. He lives alone, goes out early and comes back late, doesn't smoke, rarely has visitors and is somewhat on the shy side. He keeps to himself and is working like a demon. His retirement nest egg must be of a size that would tilt the Earth on its axis if it was in coins.
Next there is a family who never open their curtains. They go to work in the early hours, long before it's time to open curtains, and when they come back they just leave them closed. I think they just like their privacy. Nice people, I see them once in a while. Then there is the night worker along the road. Hardly seen, he works most nights as a security guard and sleeps all day. Further, the gap-toothed boozy smoker (not me, another one) who had a reputation as a hellraiser in his youth and with whom I have spent an occasional evening smoking, drinking and talking rubbish. He knows Man with a Van too.
Next door on one side is another self-employed man with his family. They sometimes have late parties which don't bother me because I'm up late anyway but the police are there so often I wonder why they don't just send an invite to the station. We all know who complains.
On the other side are the prats. The ones who work nine to five for someone else and who believe the law should be what they say it is. The Righteous. When they first arrived, Pa Righteous smoked cigars. He went outside to smoke them. Long before the ban in pubs, he went outside his own house to smoke cigars. He stopped a few years ago. Ma Righteous evidently put the boot in. They have two proto-drones they call 'children' but if these are the future of the human race, I don't want to be there to see it. They are so dense they bend light.
They have a dog. We hear it but nobody has seen it. Mustering all their accumulated imagination, they call it 'Fido'.
Pa Righteous is, I gather, involved in health and safety. Say no more. Ma and Pa Righteous and Things 1 and 2 are Superior and don't talk to any of us odd ones. Since people are all different in reality, and don't conform to the British Standard Human as defined by the BMA, that makes everyone odd.
These are the people the ad was aimed at. These are the people who are expected to report their neighbours and these are the ones who will do it. For anything. Most of all, for spite. Tell them it's suspicious that their neighbour's curtains are closed, that people working odd hours might be hiding something, that people they don't like the look of might be terrorists and they'll wear the '9' off the phone.
For the record, those Righteous curtains are always closed but... not all the way. In all rooms, there is a gap in the curtains and a darkness beyond, from which Stasi eyes watch.
And yet, they are the ones on the database. I've met the local police because I took some photos in the street and the Righteous reported it. Their house and car are on Google Earth for all the world to see yet they think taking photos in the street is illegal. I once made some noise at noon and they reported that too. The police here are obliged to respond (not necessarily immediately) but they know these Righteous, they know the depths of stupidity they can reach so they come round for an amicable chat and I explain their latest petty annoyances. I've never been arrested. The police are always pleasant but then the EU insists they watch naughty bloggers and find out who they are - and I'm not hard to find. It is likely I am filed under 'potentially awkward bugger'.
The way things are going, nobody will be hard to find. In that last link, JuliaM recounts the surprise of officious idiots when she refused to give unnecessary details. It reminded me of something I read yesterday in the Telegraph.
It wasn't so much the demands for address and phone number (Maplin keep doing this even though I have been a customer for so long my customer number has five digits) nor the annoyance of every pompous ass who thinks we should hand over those same details the banks tell us to shred before putting in the bin. No, it was this -
By now the whole salon was staring at me and it was tempting to turn on my flip-flopped heel. However, I felt my position was reasonable and I wanted my hair cut.
It was a hairdresser asking for personal details. The only thing my barber needs to know is that I have hair, I want to have less of it and I want it to look vaguely human. Oh, and it would be nice to be able to see. A barber asking for a customer's address and phone number is absolutely ridiculous and yet the other customers were not annoyed at the hairdresser. They suspected nothing while handing over the same details they'd burn or shred before binning.
No, they suspected the one who did not conform. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. He's a hairdresser, not an identity thief. Thieves look different. They have tails and horns and acne, everyone knows that. His computer is secure, because hairdressers are experts on viruses and phishing and keyloggers. Still want to hand over your details?
This is the Stasi society. Do as everyone else does or you are Wrong. You thought smokers and drinkers were having a hard time? Try buying a DVD player in a supermarket without giving your name and address 'for TV licencisng purposes'. It's not a TV. It's a DVD player. It does not receive, it does not transmit, it just sends pictures down a little bit of wire. You don't need a licence to do that. Yet refuse to hand over your name and address and there's hell to pay. You must be planning to do something heinous with this thing, like ram it sideways up your local MP's backside and yes, that has occurred to me but DVD players don't have sharp enough corners.
Still, there's a derelict house in a nearby town which is host to all sorts of phantom electrical gear now. I expect there's a TV detector van permanently stationed outside. One night I'll put one in there just to brighten their day. I do have a battery-powered little analogue one somewhere that will be worthless soon.
If I get my hair cut, the barber has no need to know anything more than how much I want cut off. If I buy electrical goods that need a licence, getting the licence is my problem, not the seller's. If I buy electrical goods that don't need a licence then the seller has no business being even remotely interested in anything other than my ability to pay. It is not cause for suspicion to pay in cash. Nobody accepts cheques any more and every supermarket has a cashpoint outside. I don't want a crippling credit card debt so I don't spend what I don't have. Why is that weird?
If I am asked for my details by someone with authority to ask, my only options are to give the details or refuse. if I am asked by a till operator, I can lie with impunity. They have no authority to demand my identity so they won't get it. They'll get an identity, but they won't get mine.
If anyone ever buys that derelict house with a view to restoring it, they'll need to shovel away the tons of junk mail that must have piled up behind the door by now.
The police wanted to hear about anyone in your street who does not behave in exactly the way you do. In my street, from my point of view, that's all of them. They get up early and go to bed early, they drive, they have children, they socialise, they work with other people, they are often sober and many of them don't even smoke. Round them up, officers, they are all odd.
Of course, it's not my point of view that counts. I'm one of those the ad demonised. Even so, in this small dead end of a street there are few who would be immune to that advert. Opposite is a single man who runs a joinery business. He lives alone, goes out early and comes back late, doesn't smoke, rarely has visitors and is somewhat on the shy side. He keeps to himself and is working like a demon. His retirement nest egg must be of a size that would tilt the Earth on its axis if it was in coins.
Next there is a family who never open their curtains. They go to work in the early hours, long before it's time to open curtains, and when they come back they just leave them closed. I think they just like their privacy. Nice people, I see them once in a while. Then there is the night worker along the road. Hardly seen, he works most nights as a security guard and sleeps all day. Further, the gap-toothed boozy smoker (not me, another one) who had a reputation as a hellraiser in his youth and with whom I have spent an occasional evening smoking, drinking and talking rubbish. He knows Man with a Van too.
Next door on one side is another self-employed man with his family. They sometimes have late parties which don't bother me because I'm up late anyway but the police are there so often I wonder why they don't just send an invite to the station. We all know who complains.
On the other side are the prats. The ones who work nine to five for someone else and who believe the law should be what they say it is. The Righteous. When they first arrived, Pa Righteous smoked cigars. He went outside to smoke them. Long before the ban in pubs, he went outside his own house to smoke cigars. He stopped a few years ago. Ma Righteous evidently put the boot in. They have two proto-drones they call 'children' but if these are the future of the human race, I don't want to be there to see it. They are so dense they bend light.
They have a dog. We hear it but nobody has seen it. Mustering all their accumulated imagination, they call it 'Fido'.
Pa Righteous is, I gather, involved in health and safety. Say no more. Ma and Pa Righteous and Things 1 and 2 are Superior and don't talk to any of us odd ones. Since people are all different in reality, and don't conform to the British Standard Human as defined by the BMA, that makes everyone odd.
These are the people the ad was aimed at. These are the people who are expected to report their neighbours and these are the ones who will do it. For anything. Most of all, for spite. Tell them it's suspicious that their neighbour's curtains are closed, that people working odd hours might be hiding something, that people they don't like the look of might be terrorists and they'll wear the '9' off the phone.
For the record, those Righteous curtains are always closed but... not all the way. In all rooms, there is a gap in the curtains and a darkness beyond, from which Stasi eyes watch.
And yet, they are the ones on the database. I've met the local police because I took some photos in the street and the Righteous reported it. Their house and car are on Google Earth for all the world to see yet they think taking photos in the street is illegal. I once made some noise at noon and they reported that too. The police here are obliged to respond (not necessarily immediately) but they know these Righteous, they know the depths of stupidity they can reach so they come round for an amicable chat and I explain their latest petty annoyances. I've never been arrested. The police are always pleasant but then the EU insists they watch naughty bloggers and find out who they are - and I'm not hard to find. It is likely I am filed under 'potentially awkward bugger'.
The way things are going, nobody will be hard to find. In that last link, JuliaM recounts the surprise of officious idiots when she refused to give unnecessary details. It reminded me of something I read yesterday in the Telegraph.
It wasn't so much the demands for address and phone number (Maplin keep doing this even though I have been a customer for so long my customer number has five digits) nor the annoyance of every pompous ass who thinks we should hand over those same details the banks tell us to shred before putting in the bin. No, it was this -
By now the whole salon was staring at me and it was tempting to turn on my flip-flopped heel. However, I felt my position was reasonable and I wanted my hair cut.
It was a hairdresser asking for personal details. The only thing my barber needs to know is that I have hair, I want to have less of it and I want it to look vaguely human. Oh, and it would be nice to be able to see. A barber asking for a customer's address and phone number is absolutely ridiculous and yet the other customers were not annoyed at the hairdresser. They suspected nothing while handing over the same details they'd burn or shred before binning.
No, they suspected the one who did not conform. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. He's a hairdresser, not an identity thief. Thieves look different. They have tails and horns and acne, everyone knows that. His computer is secure, because hairdressers are experts on viruses and phishing and keyloggers. Still want to hand over your details?
This is the Stasi society. Do as everyone else does or you are Wrong. You thought smokers and drinkers were having a hard time? Try buying a DVD player in a supermarket without giving your name and address 'for TV licencisng purposes'. It's not a TV. It's a DVD player. It does not receive, it does not transmit, it just sends pictures down a little bit of wire. You don't need a licence to do that. Yet refuse to hand over your name and address and there's hell to pay. You must be planning to do something heinous with this thing, like ram it sideways up your local MP's backside and yes, that has occurred to me but DVD players don't have sharp enough corners.
Still, there's a derelict house in a nearby town which is host to all sorts of phantom electrical gear now. I expect there's a TV detector van permanently stationed outside. One night I'll put one in there just to brighten their day. I do have a battery-powered little analogue one somewhere that will be worthless soon.
If I get my hair cut, the barber has no need to know anything more than how much I want cut off. If I buy electrical goods that need a licence, getting the licence is my problem, not the seller's. If I buy electrical goods that don't need a licence then the seller has no business being even remotely interested in anything other than my ability to pay. It is not cause for suspicion to pay in cash. Nobody accepts cheques any more and every supermarket has a cashpoint outside. I don't want a crippling credit card debt so I don't spend what I don't have. Why is that weird?
If I am asked for my details by someone with authority to ask, my only options are to give the details or refuse. if I am asked by a till operator, I can lie with impunity. They have no authority to demand my identity so they won't get it. They'll get an identity, but they won't get mine.
If anyone ever buys that derelict house with a view to restoring it, they'll need to shovel away the tons of junk mail that must have piled up behind the door by now.
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