Ten years in exile

I used to like going to pubs. I’ve probably been there an average of maybe twice a year in the last ten years, but I was in a pub at least once a week before that. Usually midweek when it’s quiet. I liked the quiet and the pubs appreciated the midweek business. That was in the past.

Now it’s when we go there for a meal or a meeting. Yeah, we still hold meetings in pubs even though I can neither smoke nor drink in there (I have to drive home and under Scotland’s current Spiteful Nannying Puritan regime, one beer is too many). I genuinely can’t remember the last time I bought any kind of alcoholic drink in a pub but I remember the time when I wasn’t in so much of a hurry to get out of there.

The local pub here has an open fire, but smoking is not allowed to be allowed in there. Not the pub’s choice. They have to police the law whether they agree with it or not but nonetheless, it’s one of the most severely enforced laws. Almost as severely enforced as the law against saying bad words on the Internet.

Cutting people’s throats is also against the law but meh, the law has more important considerations these days. Murder is way down the list from hurt feelings.

Tomorrow marks ten years since I was forcibly evicted from all the pubs, clubs and pretty much every workplace in the country. The pubs are now moaning that the smokers deserted them and they are going out of business. We didn’t desert you. You threw us out.

Oh I know most publicans didn’t want the smoking ban. I do remember reading comments from a few who welcomed it. It meant they didn’t have to put up with ‘boring’ smokers any more.  Newsflash – you didn’t have to put up with us before the ban. You had the option of making your pub smoking or nonsmoking before the ban, but you didn’t, did you? You have no such option now.

I still laugh like a hyena with a nitrous oxide overdose at every business out there who claims to have a ‘no smoking policy’. No, you have no such policy. You do not have the choice in this matter, you are not allowed to decide. The Righteous have take that decision from you.

You do not decide your own policy. That is not your choice. The option resides with a higher power – your business is now their business. Just do as you are told and act as unpaid smoke police. Suck it up and get used to it, you don’t have the balls to fight it.

Next you will be unpaid booze, salt and sugar police. You don’t have the balls to fight that either. Just get used to it, your business has to pay to enforce it and it’ll ruin you eventually but who cares? Obviously not you.

I am self employed and work alone. I can do it with a whisky and a smoke and this desk I am typing at is my ‘place of work’. It has an ashtray (recently emptied) and a (was full) whisky glass on it. So, antismokers. Puritans, Righteous, basically, fuck you.

I’m a one man business and I say ‘fuck off’ to the Puritans. Just me, standing here alone. How about you big companies? Some of you could crush ASH with those same two words. None of you. Not one. Not even the tobacco companies. None of you have done what I have done alone. You feeble fucking suited eunuchs.

Oh just carry on bowing down to them. I’m disgusted and disappointed in you all. You think you are powerful and yet when the Puritans say ‘roll over’ you lie there with your tongues out waiting for them to rub your bellies. Pathetic.

Have you big businesses ever really looked at who is dictating your policies? Who is making you buy all those signs and making you employ petty enforcers? Have you looked?

Well take a good hard look. They are not Law Enforcement. They are not Government. They are not Business. They are petty little dictators who rely on tax funding. Yeah, you pay them to tell you what to do. And there you are in your Porsche and your expensive suit thinking you are powerful and in charge. I’m more in charge of my life than you will ever be and my little business makes peanuts. I can’t even pay my rent with it yet. But you, with your millions, are under the yoke and loving it. I won’t swap places with you. I ‘d rather struggle poor than live as someone else’s pet monkey. You like your life? Go with it. I like mine. I answer to nobody.

Ten years. A decade. Businesses have allowed the Dreadful Arnott to act as their dictator for ten years and not one of them has ever said ‘Hang on a minute…’ What a bunch of easily controlled pussies.

Vaper shops are not getting an easy ride either. Al the recent whines about ‘oh they are marketing to cheeeldren’ are total bollocks and yet nobody – NOBODY – has pointed out that Electrofags were marked as ‘not for sale to those under 18’ from the outset. Come ON! Get with the program here. The antis want you to forget the past. Don’t do it!

Before the real-shops you could only get Electrofags online. You had to use a credit card so by default you had to be at least 18. Most, maybe all, online retailers also declared they sold only to 18 and over too. It was never marketed at children and there was never any need for legislation but well, government is full of weaker people than big businesses so they caved in at once. Because government is full of people who are too lazy even to think. If they were capable of doing real jobs they wouldn’t be politicians.

Government lives on tax money. So do the Lords. They should all be forced to wear Burberry and say ‘Whassup, man?’ as a precursor to every question. Every party should have finger gang signs. Come on, you believe these are important people? They are tax sponging chavs with an average IQ below that of the local council tower block. They are not better than the average person on the street. They are worse. That’s why they won’t listen to us. Dumbos don’t want to hear from people smarter than them.

I don’t hate them. I don’t hate the Dreadful Arnott or any of the other idiots. I feel sorry for them.

I have a life. My own life that I live as I choose. They do not. They have nothing and they waste their lives trying to control others. It’s true of most modern politicians too. Businesses who accept the lunacy are just sad losers who want someone else to think for them. Yeah, they try to pretend they have a ‘no smoking policy’ so they can claim they still matter, but they don’t.

Ah, I pity you, drones. You could have had a life of your own but you gave it away. You have one life and this is all you get. You want to let someone else, someone with no imagination, shut down your one and only chance.

Well, okay, go for it. Live as directed and waste your only chance to be remembered.

I think I will take a different path.