One sided lobbying

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I have the keys to my next abode. Since it’s not visible from the road so you can’t see it on Google Streetview, this is what you see when you emerge from the tree cover hiding my ‘in’ driveway –

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It goes back a long way. 13 rooms in all, a garage, well water, septic tank, fireplaces with wood burning stoves and a huge diesel generator which looks like it hasn’t been used in ages. If I can get that working I’m independent of power outages.

Two miles from the nearest streetlight, pavement or any real civilisation. There is a neighbouring house, you can see it in the distance from the back of this one. I’m still amazed that this place is costing me less than the four-room flat I have at the moment!

Just across the road is a river. A salmon river. I will investigate fishing permits for that, but it’s past salmon season for this year anyway so there’s no hurry.

The Triffid occupying the greenhouse turned out to be a grapevine. Yes, raw wine 🙂 I was going to erase it when I first saw it but now I’ll just trim it back. Make room for tomatoes. Tobacco will find plenty of space in one of the other gardens and I have a little bit of woodland where I can nurture a wild-growing strain…

I’ll probably have to get fresh seeds. Mine are a few years old now.

That’s the digression out of the way. Now I’ll get to the point.

The EU are being moaned at about lobbying transparency. Mostly the complaints are about food companies ‘blocking new sugar laws’.

We don’t need a law on sugar. It’s sugar. You buy it and eat it or don’t buy it and don’t eat it. Or you can plant some sugar beet and extract your own. Nobody needs a law telling them how much they can have and we really don’t need to start on food taxation. That way lies the starving poor.

It’s a two edged sword though. The EU will be under pressure to be totally transparent on lobbying from Big Food, Big Baccy, Big Other Stuff… but also under pressure to keep quiet about lobbying from Big Brother.

These sugar laws didn’t come from any government office. They came from lobbying by Big Nanny. The tax-funded lobby groups who want us all under the biggest thumb since Stalin’s.

If they want total lobbying transparency then ASH and the rest will have to declare how much they spend on lobbying governments, what they are saying and most of all… who’s paying for it.

Unlike private corporations, the ones paying for these nannying groups are… us.

Yes, you antismokers might be all pleased with ASH, you thinnies might be delighted with the sugar haters, you tea-total people might be rejoicing at the booze removers and well you might. You’re paying for them all. If all those groups didn’t exist you could be paying less tax. But hey, you love them all so much you don’t mind paying more income tax and more tax on your food on top of that.

I’m going to have a big garden. So far I have identified four apple trees and haven’t explored the wooded part much at all. There will be food grown there.

And tobacco.

Maybe sugar beet too.

Then… there’s the grapes… and you know what’s happening to them.

 

37 thoughts on “One sided lobbying”

  1. Don’t give up on your tobacco seeds too soon. Some few years ago now you very kindly sent me some of your tobacco seeds. They are still germinating prolifically.
    I have been spreading them around with the aid of an old BSA .22cal air rifle, wads of tissue paper placed fore and aft of the seeds. The seeds might not go very far but they certainly spread out. I’ve chosen the edges of woodland to spread the seeds upon and the one site I pass regularly seems to have had a good growth of third generation plants, now gone to (prolific) seed.
    I’ll go out this weekend, weather permitting, to some of the other sites I can remember and see if there’s the same level of success.

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  5. Looks like an ideal place for a gentleman to do his thing without disruption.

    Maybe there is a niche for a Non Nanny Party to spring up, gain huge support from libertarians and take back our freedoms? Well we can dream…

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  6. Apologies all round –

    First they came for the smokers, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a smoker.

    Then they came for the salt sprinklers, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a salt sprinkler.

    Then they came for the sugar eaters, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a sugar eater.

    Then they came for the fat people, and I did not speak out
    Because I was not a fat person.

    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
    Because I paid for all this shit.

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  7. That place sounds fabulous! Is there a downside? Internet access?

    Some people would complain that the government must ensure a regular bus service, a local supermarket, library, street lights, fast ambulance and police response, meals-on-wheels, speed bumps, traffic wardens, a community centre, and all those other human rights.

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  8. Along with the wine and cider, how about a spot of mead or even honeyjack? (I had no idea the latter existed until I read about it in the comments here some years ago – what an educational blog this is!

    A few hives, as well as supplementing your sugar-beet production, would have the advantage of ensuring good pollination for your apple trees/vine and a plentiful supply of ingredients in Autumn. Of course, the climate means that you’d probably need to go for a native British variety of bee rather than the more docile Italian hybrids and some of our home-grown ones can be spectacularly fierce.

    Still, bees with attitude might be rather appropriate to the setting…

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  9. Looks like you’ve got a gem there, LI. I look forward to seeing some photos of the interior. I think you’ll be very happy with that degree of solitude.

    I like being off the beaten track. The place I’m in used to be like that, but in the 13 years I’ve been here, a few houses and a hotel have sprung up uncomfortably close, so now I’m moving to my own place in a city 200 miles from here.

    Oddly, there is a good degree of anonymity when you live in a city, albeit of a different kind to being out in the wilds. Of course, my new place has the added appeal of being mine, so I don’t have to find €450 every month for the rent, which will be a relief.

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  11. It sounds really cool, I’m actually quite jealous. You’ve got more than enough room to breathe. You could take on a lodger if the finances needed it and you wouldn’t get on top of one another. You could have smokie, drinkie parties and no one would complain. You could put on horror writing workshops and no one would even know….

    Hell, you could have fun!

    :o)

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  12. I’d love to know the kw rating of your generator and the make of the diesel engine.

    Whilst in a less developed area of the world I had four of the things and the big one – 32 kilowatts (Hatz 4 cylinder, air-cooled, diesel engine) – used to go through about 1.5 gallons of fuel per hour. Getting four 50 gallon drums filled with diesel delivered, then having to pump that lot into the storage tank was a royal pain in more ways than one

    And they all needed their oil changed every 100 hours of run time. That’s only 4 days I know, but consider if you spent 100 hours at 60 mph under full load in a truck.

    Nice to have Leg’s and if it’s got a Lister engine it’ll be very easy to fire up using the crank handle (be firm and use the decompression lever to avoid breaking both wrists – they can kick back).

    Also you’ll need to make sure you don’t overload the genny. So check the rating of all the kit you’ll be using in your house before you switch over. (Kettle = 2kw, Immersion = 2 kw and so on).

    But boy was I delighted when I was moved outa that place!

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    • “:You could probably move in and I wouldn’t notice ;)”

      Heh, at 115 pounds soaking wet, I probably could!

      :> Michael

      On Sat, Oct 1, 2016 at 3:35 PM, underdogs bite upwards wrote:

      > smokingscot commented: “I’d love to know the kw rating of your generator > and the make of the diesel engine. Whilst in a less developed area of the > world I had four of the things and the big one – 32 kilowatts (Hatz 4 > cylinder, air-cooled, diesel engine) – used to go through a” >

      Liked by 1 person

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  15. It’s a mansion. You could name it ‘Charles Mansion’ with a suitable Adams fireplace and Addams family ambience as you lurch about the place. I am envious of all that space and land for growing your own. Get some pigs in for the stray fruits and any acorns, fatten them up for high days and holy days.

    Liked by 2 people

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