Killing yourself to live

No competition this time. It’s a Black Sabbath song that should really be the theme song for the Extinction Rabble. They should play it at Davos every time the Doom Goblin takes the stage.

This planet is turning into a lake of toxic waste thanks to mining for the materials needed to make windmills and solar panels. All those trees lost to the wind farms and short-lived suncatchers… planting a few more isn’t going to bring them back.

(I cut out the original poster’s ID so they won’t get flak from the loonies)

I have even seen a ‘scientist’ declare that the phrase ‘CO2 is plant food’ is an ‘unsubstantiated claim’.

Really. That’s the level of intelligence running the show here. Biology so basic that no university lecturer feels the need to even mention it. If you didn’t learn that at school you really have no business in any biological science subject of any kind at all.

So they remove acre after acre of photosynthesising plants that are absorbing atmospheric CO2 and releasing oxygen, only to replace them with panels that absorb sunlight and turn it into electricity. Those panels neither remove CO2 nor produce oxygen. They only work in daytime, if they’re not dusty or covered in snow. After 20 years the panels, and all the toxic materials they contain, go into landfill. They cannot be recycled.

Neither can worn out blades from those windmills. They go into landfill too.

The windmills have a finite life. When they are scrapped, they leave behind several hundred tons of concrete in the ground. Well what did you think was holding them up? Those huge concrete blocks will be marvelled at by future archaeologists who will write papers entitled ‘How stupid were our ancestors?’

The windmills only work in the right amount of wind. Too little and they don’t move. Too much and they have to be stopped or they explode. If there’s no wind and it’s sunny, they use power to rotate them because differential heating can warp the blades. If the wind is perfect but nobody currently needs power it goes to battery storage. Hahaha! That last line is a lie. The windy millers get paid bucketloads of cash to shut them down when they aren’t needed.

We are told to panic over plastic straws and yes, I am absolutely in agreement that there is far too much plastic waste being dumped. But that is going to pale into insignificance against the toxins generated by the ‘green’ industry.

The Electric Spaceman, Elon Musk, is currently building a massive factory in Germany and is chopping down many, many trees to make room for it. I would have preferred he put it somewhere that was already treeless. In fact I would have thought that would make considerable economic sense. However, watching the ‘greens’ handwringing outrage over this, when they have destroyed massive tracts of forests for their silly lawn ornaments masquerading as ‘sustainable power’, is actually sickening.

The windmills kill birds. Certain styles of solar power, the ones that reflect sunlight to heat a central tower, have been filmed frying any flying wildlife that gets into the path of the beams.

Mass killing of wildlife is apparently okay when the Greens do it. Australia is about to kill thousands of wild camels because they give out the long-debunked ‘greenhouse gases’. Those camels, birds, all the animals that used to live in those forests, must be wondering who exactly the Greens are trying to save the planet for. It’s clearly not them.

It’s not the farm animals either. There is a big push on Veganosity this month, they call it Veganuary (also Dry January, Januhairy, and other things, all of which is childish silliness which I have ignored). Lots of nonsense about farm conditions (although some farms are shit and end up prosecuted, most are not).

Photos of pigs in restraining pens, with the story that they spend their entire lives in there. This is bollocks. The restraining pens are called ‘farrowing crates’ and the sow is in there so she doesn’t inadvertently lie on her piglets when they’re born. A full grown sow can reach 300 kg and she won’t even notice a 5 kg piglet under her arse when she takes a nap. The restraints give the piglets a fighting chance to get out of the way.

Once the piglets are weaned, the sow goes back to roaming around with the other sows. She isn’t in that pen forever.

‘Oh, but pigs wouldn’t do that to their own babies!’ I have personally rescued screaming piglets pinned against the side of a pen by an uncaring mother. She has so many at one time, she doesn’t worry about losing a few. Pigs are pretty smart but the adults are not cute. They are evil bastards, as a visiting electrician who left without a large chunk of his leg will attest. The Brick Top character in ‘Snatch’ wasn’t using fiction when describing what pigs can do to a human body. These buggers will eat you.

So, are you going to let them run wild? They can’t find food. They don’t know how. Food is brought to them every day. Even then they are not averse to taking a chunk out of you if they get the chance. Imagine a pack of them set loose. In a couple of days they’ll be really hungry. And they will eat absolutely anything.

Cows? Pretty placid most of the time. Take a dog near them – especially when they have calves – and well, your chances are not good at all. An angry cow is not something you want to be within a mile of.

So let’s suppose the whole of the UK went vegan tomorrow. What happens to the cows, chickens, pigs, sheep etc? They all get killed, butchered, frozen and shipped to other countries at bargain prices as farmers try to salvage what’s left of their lives. They are not going to be set free. They are all going to die.

You can argue that they don’t have a great life now, in most cases they actually do, but they have life. Vegans want to end that. Greens want to kill them all too because they fart the long-debunked ‘greenhouse gases’. At least we meat eaters let the animals have life before we kill and eat them. We don’t want them extinct.

Pets… dogs and cats are carnivores. They cannot survive on vegetarian, much less vegan diets. So they all die too.

Ah but we’d have loads of wildlife. Well, apart from the ones the solar and wind farms have displaced, minced or fried of course.

Large areas of this country are lousy for crop farming and I don’t mean the cities. There are huge areas that grow nothing but grass. Not even trees grow there. You can’t plant crops there. So, you need every square inch of arable land to have the slightest hope of feeding a vegan population and you cannot afford losses due to rabbits, crows, pheasant or anything else. They all have to go.

The Green idea of ‘saving the planet’ leads to a sterile world of no biodiversity at all. It leads to a deep-communist world where nothing that is not essential is allowed to survive. Where nobody can question the way of things and nobody wants to. It leads to Panoptica.

Where Panoptica leads is likely to become very clear by the end. It was 10538 Overture by ELO that started that story, but it was another, later, quasi-documentary that really brought it to life.

I’d better get back to it before it all comes true.

Panoptica Chapter 9

I’ve been distracted by a short story idea concerning Annunaki, Neanderthals and the ‘replacement of Europeans’. This will not take long and I’ll be back to Panoptica as soon as I have the other story drafted.

As for the news, I’m finding it hard to get worked up about any of it. The Labour leadership contest – meh. I’m not a member of any political party so won’t have a say and frankly, don’t give a damn. The candidate lineup looks like the starting line of a window licking competition. I don’t care which one they pick.

Apparently it’s ‘racism’ to criticise Meghan Markle, or Meghan Windsor as she is now. This is playing a full deck of race cards all at once, and what for? What does it matter if a minor royal decides he doesn’t want to be royal any more? He won’t be the first to abdicate his royalness. There are no examples of racism in any of the criticism I’ve seen and I don’t care enough about another family’s issues to comment myself. This is for Mrs. Queen and Wrinkled Phil to sort out. Not my business.

I’ve given up arguing with global warmers. There’s no point and it’s too late anyway. Climate change has arrived and is killing people in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan because they aren’t used to experiencing that much cold. Countries all over the world are seeing cold records fall every day – and the Church of Climatology focuses on arsonist-set fires in Australia. Even though much of Australia is also recording record low temperatures in what, for them, is summer. When I say ‘low’ I mean low for Australia, so pretty much British summer temperatures. They aren’t under glaciers and probably won’t be. There’s too much sea between Antarctica and the next land for effective glacier formation. The North doesn’t have that buffer. Maybe Australia will eventually have low enough temperatures for normal people to visit without having to wear stillsuits and a Meccano framework of fans and ice.

We have several years’ worth of firewood, we have well water and septic tank sewage. I just need to get a generator, ideally steam powered because the idiots are likely to push fuel prices into daft levels soon. I doubt they exist but I’m sure a petrol one could be modified with maybe an old railway tank engine to drive it. Yes, I am looking for an excuse to get one. Let the warmers keep pretending it’s getting hotter, and that CO2 is the only thing that matters. The game is over. They’re just hiding in that global warming jungle, pretending the war is still going on. I’m happy to leave them there.

Brexit – will it happen? I’m not going to hold my breath. Boris might actually come through on this or he might be a jolly Santa-like version of Jackboots May. We’ll get a better idea on the 31st January but we won’t know for sure until December. Either way, there’s sod all I can do about it so I’m not going to worry about it.

Enough gloom – I’m obviously spending far too much time with Gloom Dog lately – and on with the jolly tale of Panoptica. This’ll cheer you up. Comparatively.

Panoptica: Chapter 9

46110. 46826. 46053. The onesie patterns were unmistakable. 10538 stopped moving when he saw the unit marked as 93224. This rail station was under heavy security. Ghosthunters and a Coalition advisor? Something important must be happening, so what was he doing here? Surely he didn’t merit such a high-ranking sendoff party?

“Something wrong? Why have you stopped?” 18823 nudged him forward.

10538 took hesitant steps. “There are very important units here. A lot of security. What’s that for?”

“Have you ever been to a train station before?” 18823 moved in front of 10538, smiling.

“Well… no. I only ever needed the bus.”

“Trains are for longer journeys. The higher ranks need to get to distant places quickly. They’ll be waiting for trains going to their own destinations.” 18823 took 10538’s arm. “Come on. The train to Pensionville is already here. It has to clear the platform before other trains can arrive.”

10538 looked around. There was a concrete floor, a thing like a little room with a door, the concrete floor seemed to fall away on either side of the little room. Baffled, he turned to 18823. “I don’t know what a train looks like. Is it around here?”

18823 laughed. “Of course. I’ve never ridden in one but I’ve brought others here. So I know how it works. Let me show you.” He led 10538 to the edge of the concrete floor, just beside the little room, “Look down there.”

10538 peered cautiously over the edge. About a metre or so down lay steel bars, linked together at intervals, that ran under the room and off into the distance.

“Those are rails.” 18823 pointed into the distance. “They lead to Pensionville. This—” he indicated the little room “—runs on those rails so it can’t ever take a wrong turn. You sit inside and it will take you to Pensionville safely. That’s all there is to it. You just sit inside and wait. You don’t have to do anything.”

“Just like the bus?” 10538 looked over the little room. It had no visible windows, just the door.

“Even better. Because it’s on rails it can’t go the wrong way. It’s a lot faster too.” 18823 patted 10538’s back. “Come on, let’s get you on board.”

They stood before the door to the little room 18823 had called a ‘train’. There was a hiss and the door moved forwards, then sideways along the side of the train. 10538 was aware of movement around him – the ghosthunters had tensed, the advisor took a step back. He glanced at 18823, whose smile was tight and who appeared to not be breathing.

10538 stepped through the door. Someone sat in there, someone who looked up at him with one raised eyebrow. The onesie identified them as 71556. 10538 raised his hand in greeting to show his designation. 71556 snorted and looked away.

10538 turned to 18823. “Seems I’m not travelling alone.”

“Anyone you know?” 18823 spoke through gritted teeth.

10538 felt a little taken aback. It felt as though there was another overlay to this whole situation but he just could not grasp it. “No,” he said. “Never seen this unit before.”

18823 blew a long breath, as though relieved about something. He raised his hand. “Well, 10538, this is goodbye. I hope to join you in Pensionville one day but until then, be compliant, be comfortable, and conform.”

“I will. Be happy in your important job.” 10538 raised his hand in response until the door hissed closed. Once it had, he took a seat opposite 71556 and wondered if he should start a conversation. It seemed presumptuous to insist on conversation with a higher rank so instead, he stared out of the window.

The empty platform slid away as the train pulled out of the station.

More madness

I am frantically writing ‘Panoptica’ before it comes true. I have long suspected it might but in these last few days it has transpired that the ‘genderless society’ is well on track. A transgender man has given birth to a baby, with his/her/its non-binary partner, using a donation of female sperm.

That’s a real headline. Give it five more years of this and the first politician to suggest scrapping all gender altogether will win by a landslide. No more differentiation. Everyone the same, perfect equality enforced with neonatal surgery. Although I doubt they’ll tell you that last bit right away 😉

By then they will have transgendered so many children they’ll all be permanently sterile anyway. Worker drones, like ants or bees. Only the elite reproduce. Far-fetched? I thought so too but not any more.

The Church of Climatology is now claiming the world is warming when it isn’t. Nothing new there, they’ve been claiming humans affect the climate for about a century and yet the climate does what the hell it likes with no regard to humanity. Catastrophic warming is ten years away. As usual.

In India, houses have no heating. Not even new ones. The winter temperatures there are normally around 10 C while the summer heat is appalling, so houses are designed to dissipate heat, not retain it. Currently, large swathes of India are at 2 C. People are freezing to death. Okay, 2 C is, to me, quite mild weather but I live in the north of Scotland. Minus 10 C is a perfectly normal winter temperature here. For people whose environment never goes that low, 2 C is absolutely freezing. And with no heat source it can kill those people.

America is recording record low temperatures this winter, all over the place. All those reports of ‘record high temperatures’ have been proven false. Every one of them. They can doctor data, but people are finding old newspaper reports on very hot weather that contradict the doctored data. This scam should be falling apart. It’s getting stronger.

I think it genuinely started with scientists trying to boost their grant income but it has now been hijacked by communism. It’s not about climate any more, if it ever was. It’s about control.

We are told we must all go vegan to save the planet and we are told that massive crop failures are imminent due to climate change. So if we are all vegan, won’t we starve to death? Well duh, that’s the idea. Massive population reduction is no secret and hasn’t been for a long time. Make everyone vegan then crash the food source, having first killed off all the animal sources.

The BBC recently flew to meet Gritty Thunderbird in Sweden. They apologised like penitents at the altar of a vengeful god for their sinful use of planes and then they interviewed her.

In the snow.

You cannot get through to these people. Any of them. I’m not trying to warn them any more, I’ll just document their decline into total servitude. Panoptica will happen. Nothing can stop it now. So I am writing as fast as I can, before we hit the next book-burning phase when there won’t be anyone left to read it.

It’s going to be a busy New Year. I have to combine the last three anthologies into one omnibus edition. I have also decided to combine ‘Fears of the Old and the New’ and ‘Dark Thoughts and Demons’ into one book, as long as I can make it cheaper than the separate books. I’m thinking about trying it with ‘Jessica’s Trap’, ‘Samuel’s Girl’ and ‘Norman’s House’ but that might turn out to be a vast tome. Then there are a couple of other books that have been on hold over the Christmas period.

Panoptica has to be a priority now. It’s coming faster than I had anticipated. I can see the panic in the Church of Climatology – the Grand Solar Minimum is about to blow that game right out of the water in just a few years. If they are going to get control they have to get it soon.

People point at George Soros and while I think he’s definitely a wrong ‘un he isn’t doing all this alone. Incidentally, I saw a recent tweet claiming Soros was a holocaust survivor. He survived it totally. He joined the Nazis. He’s never made a secret of it.

I don’t know if there is some secret elite running this show. Maybe there is. Lots of people claim there is but nobody can point at them. I don’t think it’s necessary.

Lots of little crazy pressure groups like Antifa, BLM, the Climatologists, so many more, just need a few radical infiltrators and the lunacy is ingrained. There are many, many, gullible people out there who can be convinced of pretty much anything in a matter of minutes. Heck, I’ve played with antismokers I’ve met and left some of them believing that all grey dust is tobacco ash. That was easy, their ‘handlers’ had already convinced them it never degrades so all I had to do was mention 400 years of smoking and… bingo.

But I was doing it for a bit of malicious fun. I wasn’t trying to take control of an entire population. Just mess with the heads of those who hate me.

There are now many groups trying to take control. If we’re lucky, they work individually and will end up fighting each other. There are some signs that that is happening. If they are co-ordinated, we’re doomed.

I don’t mind if you want to believe I’ve joined the tinfoil-hatters. I don’t mind if you want to believe the world is warming while you protest in the snow. I don’t mind if you buy listening devices and cameras linked to the internet and install them in your home. I don’t mind if you’re happy to get that contactless card chip or the chip that opens your house installed in your hand. All that and more is entirely up to you.

I don’t know about the chemtrails thing. I’m looking into it but I’m so far not convinced. I don’t see how you can reliably target an aerosol attack from 30,000 feet and hope it lands where you want it to land.

I once thought Common Purpose was just a conspiracy theory. It’s not. It’s a useful-idiot training facility and you can recognise them by their exaggerated body language. Really, it’s like bloody semaphore! Yet they are placed in positions where their stupidity can do a lot of damage. I suspect their flamboyantly-waving hand is in the current claim that the Lake District is racist because a lot of white people go there.

I’ve been there. It’s very nice in summer. I’ve also driven through it at night. It’s total darkness because at night, and especially in winter, nobody wants to live there. It can get pretty bleak. It’s located in the north of England so you would expect the visitors to be largely the indigenous population. Complaining it’s too white is like complaining Mecca is too Muslim. And yet the person in charge of it is now demanding diversity. Expect to see busloads of non-whites turning up and being forced to enjoy the bleakness at gunpoint.

It’s ‘elitist’ because only able-bodied people can truly enjoy the mountain walks. Well I’m able to do the mountain walks. I’ve done a few. I’ll save you the bother. There is bugger all at the top. I’m not doing them again.

Maybe they should use the mountains to fill in the lakes and bulldoze it all flat. Then we can all bask in the comfortable compliant conformity of it all. The CCC of life in Panoptica.

Yes, CCC…Panoptica is quite deliberate 😉

Anyway, I’ll let you get back to watching the insanity of modern life and the collapse of civilisation while I write your future.

If I can get it done before it comes true.

Bicycle Repair Man

Back in the 1960s, the great prophet Monty of Python (peas be upon ham) wrote a little sketch. In this sketch, everyone was Superman. Or Superwoman. There was no representation of SuperNeuter or SuperCreatureOfIndeterminateGenderOrEvenSpecies so the prophecy wasn’t perfect but it was close.

There were no cars. Supermen don’t need cars. They travelled everywhere by bicycle. There are moves to force that part of the prophecy into truth.

Everyone was equal. Everyone was super intelligent and super strong and everyone had a bicycle to call their own.

There was only one problem in this Utopian dream. No tradesmen. If your bike broke, nobody knew how to fix it. Everyone had degrees in super-something but nobody had bothered to learn anything practical.

Except one man. Seeing a flat tyre or slipped chain, one man would change out of his Superman costume into overalls and flat cap and appear with his box of spanners. I can’t find the original, only this one with a song voiceover.

Biicycle Repair Man was the superhero in this story and oh, how we all laughed.

A world where everyone is classed as Super and nobody can fix a bicycle. Can it happen?

It’s already started. Local garages are closing down because they can’t get apprentice mechanics. Nobody wants to be a plumber or a plasterer or an electrician, they all want degrees in yogurt weaving and smartphone typing and Wiccan veganosity. I am astonished at how many young people not only cannot start a fire using a flint and tinder, but are actually terrified of fire! One generation is all it took. We had at least one fireplace blazing away in every house not so long ago, and now houses are built without chimneys and nobody seems to have noticed.

We used to wake up cold – and I’m not exactly ancient yet – with frost on the inside of the windows and breath condensing in the air until someone lit the fire (after cleaning out the previous day’s ashes) and started warming the house. One generation later, they set the timer on the heating to come on before they get up so their double-glazed house is warm. They cannot cope with cold.

If nobody is taking practical courses, who is going to fix that heating when it breaks? Who is going to service your heating boiler when it breaks down between Christmas and New Year as happened to us here last year?

Fortunately our landlord had a spare heating pump and a box of spanners, and it soon got going again but while it was down we were very glad of our chimney and fireplace.

This house is at least 250 years old and made of granite. Thick walls of it. Once you get those walls warmed up with a fire they are like huge storage radiators. If I owned this place I’d be looking to get those sealed over fireplaces reopened. There are three open ones (one is capped) and six sealed ones. Two of the open ones, including the one we routinely use, are the old style huge openings with a swinging iron bar to hang pots over. How could you not want to use that?

Sure, move with the times and all that crap but forgetting the ‘old ways’ – and I’m talking 1960s and 70s ways here, not neanderthal times – is not a good idea. What if the new-fangled way doesn’t work out?

We have the disposable society now. I used to routinely repair my old Ford Cortina MkII with a few tools and a bit of time. I changed the head gasket on an Austin Princess and drove it from Wales to Scotland. I had to strip down the pedal linkages to a Commer van once, and replaced a wheel bearing and steering rack boots on a Vauxhall Astra.

Now? I look under the bonnet of this Toyota RAV4 and I see nothing recognisable. No coil, no distributor, just a lump of plastic on top of a lump of metal. Lucky for me it’s reliable, because I would have no idea where to start to fix it.

Just down the road, someone had an Austin Seven for sale a few months back. I was sorely tempted. It has mechanics I can understand. Now you have to link the car to a computer to get any idea of what’s wrong with it.

There used to be TV repairmen. Now you just buy a new one and dump the old one. There were cobblers to fix your worn shoes. Throw them away, supermarkets will sell you a new pair for next to nothing. They’ll last about a month so don’t bother with shoe polish.

As for darning socks… I bet nobody under 30 has even heard the term. Socks are incredibly cheap now.

Incidentally, if you are ever tempted to give clothes to one of those charities that collect for the homeless (the real ones, not the fake bastards who stock their second hand shops with donations) then a pack of unused socks would be really appreciated. Especially at this time of year. They’re cheap, but there’s no such thing as ‘cheap’ when you have no money at all.

Nobody fixes anything any more. It breaks, you throw it away and buy another. In this age of the microchip, itf it’s not the battery or a connector or switch then it can’t be economically repaired. Ah, the old days, when you turned on a broken valve radio you’d picked up for a few pennies, noted which valves didn’t light up, replaced them for about a quid and then sold it fully working…

I should have kept one really. The sound quality was so much better than modern crap. But then, they wouldn’t pick up digital radio.

This winter, I have to peen the ditch blade on my scythe. It’s taken a few dings. The grass blade just needs sharpening since it doesn’t hit the stumps and rocks in the wooded part of the garden. Does anyone know what I’m talking about? I’m not Amish, these things are still in use. And yet who out there knows how to use and maintain one? Who even bothers sharpening the blades on their mower? Nah, scrap it, get a new one.

Need to replace a light switch or fitting? Need an extra outlet on a spur from the ring main? Can you do it? Do you even know what I’m talking about? EU regulations mean you are required to get a qualified electrician to do jobs we all used to do ourselves. That’s because they’ve dumbed down education to the point where modern kids don’t even realise there are wires in the wall behind those electrical outlets. They are magic holes in the wall.

The problem is, qualified electricians are getting thin on the ground. Just like good chimney sweeps. It’s time to call the one I use and I know he’s going to be busy. There are so few of them now.

Ring main and spurs. Wiring a plug. Airlocks in plumbing. Changing a tap washer, tap, installing a sink. Sharpening any kind of blade. Safely lighting an indoor fire. These were not specialist subjects in my youth and to me, they aren’t now. And yet, in a very few years, they have become the domain of a dwindling number of specialists. The principle behind the ring main was once taught in physics classes. I bet it isn’t now.

I was taught to use a forge, brazing, welding, casting, a shaper and lathe in metalwork class. I bet those are mostly banned by the modern fearful-of-lawsuit brigade. Especially the shaper. If you nodded off while using it, it would have caved in your skull.

I do have an O level in metalwork. It’s a little out of place among the rest of my qualifications but I did enjoy the subject. I could have been a blacksmith and very likely would have enjoyed it – but it’s a competitive field because there is limited call for blacksmith skills now. Lots of fire and hammering. I think I would have fitted right in there.

Now we have youth wailing about disposables while carrying bottled water. I used to go camping. We had bottled water – in refillable metal water bottles. Disposable plastic ones are a recent thing. They howl about the capitalist system throught their iPhones and then demand new ones because last year’s model is no longer good enough.

It’s going to collapse. It’s designed to do just that. These ecowarriors are the useful idiots of the new communism but don’t tell them, they won’t believe you. They are all going to die before they get much older and who will be left?

Those who know how to light a fire to stay warm. Those who can skin and gut a rabbit – those who can catch one without retching in horror. Those who understand seasons and planting and that avocados are not essential to life, and don’t grow here anyway.

The patient ones. The ones who watch it all burn and are ready to carry on after the canned-goods riots.

The idiots who think themselves superior want massive population reduction, to a level they can easily control. They have not considered the obvious.

The ones who will survive are the ones who take no notice of their propaganda, and who cannot be controlled. Their drones are going to follow their directions into the abyss. Make all the rules you want. Demand veganism and insect-eating and nonsmoking and nondrinking until you have killed off every single compliant drone. Make them all utterly dependent and useless at looking after themselves.

I’ll still be here.

Fixing things.

The Wood and the Trees

Well, the silliness has ramped up. Bozza has ducked out of being interviewed by Andrew Neil, which I think was a bad idea. Okay, Mr. Neil has a reputation as a hard interviewer and he did wipe the floor with Nicky the Fish and Jerry Cordite. No doubt he’d do the same to Bozza. It would be embarrassing.

However, running away is never a good look for someone who wants to be the leader of a country.

On the other hand, his and Smoky Nige’s decision to snub the Church of Climatology’s debate was the right one. It was just a circle jerk of ‘I’m greener than you’ daft sods, hosted by the propaganda channel for Extinction Rebellion. The ice blocks were the winners in that debate.

Jo Swindles said she doesn’t think her five-year-old has ever seen a hedgehog. Hedgehogs are nocturnal and hibernate in winter. Not too many five year olds get to stay up late enough in summer to even see the sunset. So he probably hasn’t seen any bats or owls either, since he’d be asleep when they were active.

Jerry Cordite plans to plant something like 150 trees a minute for 20 years. Estimates vary.

Well, he clearly hasn’t considered the total land area of this country since he plans to use as much land as Wales, with no regard to towns or cities. Nor indeed, farms. Incidentally, he also promises to build 100,000 new council houses every year. Presumably they will be tree houses.

There are large areas of the UK where almost nobody lives. Drive through the very north of England at night and you’ll experience total blackness. Not so much as a porch light. For miles. Large chunks of central Wales are the same. Drive through them in daylight and you’ll see why those areas are unoccupied. It’s because they are horrible places to live.

Mountains, steep sides, nothing but grass and gorse. Not even trees. Picturesque to look at but mostly inaccessible and really not much fun in winter.

Why no trees? Can’t Jerry plant all his trees there?

Nope. For the same reason nobody cultivates crops on those lands. They are basically rock with a thin layer of topsoil. Tree roots can’t get deep enough to hold up the tree. The soil supports grass and not much else. They are grazing lands for sure-footed sheep and really not much use for anything else.

This is one of the reasons turning the country vegan is a bad idea. You can’t just kill all the sheep and cattle and grow crops instead. An awful lot of UK land only grows grass – and even if the soil could support crops, good luck ploughing and harvesting a 45-degree slope!

I’d open a scrapyard at the bottom of it and wait for the battered tractors to come rolling in…

Those billion trees aren’t going to be planted on the wide open spaces. They’ll take farmland because that’s the only place they’ll grow. No more crops.

This trees idea is as daft as Boris reinstating the entire rail network for the price of a medium sized garden railway. I’m exaggerating? There is a G scale Coronation class engine on eBay, live steam, for £6,700. That will need coaching stock and track and that’s just one train. Yes, some people spend millions on their model railways. I would too, if I ever had millions.

I haven’t heard a single realistic promise yet. Come December 12th, it’s not going to be a case of which party to vote for.

We’re going to have to decide which fantasy we want to see fail.

Running to Teacher

I didn’t watch the so-called ‘leader’s debate’ because it was pointless. It always is. They just spout nonsense at each other and then both sides claim it as a win. That’s because both sides’ leaders are saying what each side wants to hear. Well I’m sick of listening to any of them.

I’d watch it if it was decided in a fist fight. ‘In the red corner, Jezza the Jam-maker. In the blue corner, Bozza the Clown. Seconds out, round one.’ I think that would really pull in the ratings.

The Left Out Kids went whining to teacher. Jo Swindles and Nicky the Fish weren’t invited so off they went to the High Court with ‘Please sir, they won’t let us play’. Fortunately, this time the court saw sense and told them to stop being silly and get on with their homework. ITV stands for ‘independent television’. It’s not State owned like the BBC, it’s a private company and they are allowed to decide who they invite into the Shouty Room Show.

Strange though. These same courts have castigated private businesses, bakers and bed-and-breakfast alike, for attempting to decide who they want as customers. Seems not all private businesses are equal in the eyes of the law.

It’s not the first time politics has been decided by the courts. The Left Out Kids took Bozza to court because he closed Parliament a few days early. They made him open it again, they all marched back in and… did bugger all. It was a complete waste of money and of the court’s time. But hey, at least they got to claim more expenses.

London courts are busy places, what with all the stabbings and shootings since guns and knives were banned. The mini-Mayor in charge has a plan though, he plans to pretend it’s not happening unless white people say bad words. Then, oh then he turns into the MicroHulk and sets his dogs on them.

Our politicians have a plan too,. They plan to ban guns and knives harder. Because that worked so well the first time. Bozza wants to let the police search people for banned things, including (I kid you not) those people the police know have a history of carrying weaponry around with them. You know, the ones they haven’t bothered arresting so far.

I hear the ex-Squeaker, Tyrion Bercow, is to appear on a TV show. Since many people watch TV on their phones now, I suppose they have to pick people who will fit on the screen. I won’t watch it. I haven’t watched TV for a long time. I used to like Dr. Who, and to be honest I wasn’t too bothered with the (admittedly rather forced) change to a woman Doctor. They picked a good actress. I thought she might do a good job. However, the political correctness and the silly lecture at the end of each show stopped me before the end of the series.

It was the giant spider one that finished it for me. This ‘kind’ doctor locked all the spiders in a room and left them there. With no food. They would eat each other until the last one grew so big it would be unable to breathe. Then she wanted to let the ‘mother’ spider asphyxiate rather than let the arse of a hotel owner shoot it. That was not the actions of someone who has thousands of years of life experience.

Still, I do not run to the courts and cry that they won’t let me play. I just stopped watching the show. As I did way back when Sylveste McCoy wore the Riddler outfit and shut down the show for decades.

There are businesses out there that don’t want my custom because I like to smoke. I’m not going to do sad-face in the Daily Mail and go to court over it. There are plenty of other businesses who do want my custom. Besides, why would I patronise an antismoker business? Let them have their smug superiority. Someone else will have my money.

I don’t get it. I really don’t. I cannot recall any past election where the minor parties demanded equal time. Are we going to see the one Green MP, Cascading Mucus, demand equal time too? How about Platitudes Cymru or the DUP and the Ever Changing Name Party We Just Made Up going for it too?

To go to court over it though. To try to use the law to force a private business to do as they are told. That would be shocking if it hadn’t already been used so many times before.

The gay men who deliberately tried to book into a devoutly Christian B&B so they could get in the Daily Mail and then sue. The gay men who travelled past so very many bakeries to demand a gay wedding cake from a devoutly Christian baker. Funny, they never try this with any other religion. They were successful in their targeting.

The girlie-man who identified as a woman and wanted a waxing parlour to de-hair his girl-balls. At least he/she/it didn’t win that one.

All I see in the world now is utter, utter desperation. Anti-Tories are trying to set up Jerry Cordite as serious competition. I mean, really? I don’t trust Bozza the Clown but at least he doesn’t have the economic grasp and general appearance of Worzel Gummidge without his thinking head on. He walks like a Morlock and talks like a Spitting Image puppet but of the two main options I still think he’s the least bad.

As for Jo Swindles, or Nicky the Fish, or all the rest of them, I’d still rather have Bozza. All I can say about him is he’s the least bad option. We don’t have a good option.

Desperation. The EU is falling apart. Guy Thermostat has been bad mouthing Viktor Orban, and also the ruling Polish party, openly on Twitter. This is not a cohesive organisation. We’re better to jump this ship before it sinks.

France is fucked. The yellow vests have been protesting every weekend for over a year and it’s getting bigger, not smaller. Nobody in power seems to care. The MSM have only just noticed it.

Germany is collapsing under the weight of migrants. Even Chancer Merkin has admitted it. What will she do about it? Nothing at all.

Spain is imprisoning political opponents. Italy is about to explode in rage. The EU is all but over.

And they all blame Russia. Russia doesn’t have to lift a finger to destroy Europe. The EU is doing a fine job of it all on its own. Putin just needs a good popcorn supply.

And then there’s the Church of Climatology. Prince Harry, the ultimate product of centuries of inbreeding. has stated that every family needs a Greta Thunberg. A school-dodging, expensive entitled teenager with delusions of having her childhood destroyed. Sure, we should all have one. All while pushing that Green agenda that has children half her age digging for the required minerals in the Congo and in China, and producing lakes of toxic waste in the process. But hey, she has been forced to sail on fancy expensive boats made of petroleum products so she’s the one suffering here.

In America, the Democrats claim the people can’t be trusted not to vote for Donnie Trumpton so they have to remove him. Sounds very like Jerry Cordite’s attempt to take over the UK government without an election. Desperation.

I have a feeling things are going to get very nasty soon. All over Europe and the USA and in a lot of other places too. It’s going to be… interesting.

Once the real winter hits, the Grand Solar Minimum which isn’t in the future but is already here, then the fan will have an awful lot of shit to shift. Winter isn’t coming. It’s here and it’s not factored into anyone’s plans.

This time there is no teacher to run to.

Hunger strikes and internet

The final round of visitors for the year have left. Nobody else is likely to want to visit now – it’s cold and wet and it’s dark by 4 pm. We’ve had our first icy patches, a taste of the coming winter, and the days have not yet finished shortening. Peace at last. Just to be sure, I will be circulating rumours about demons prowling the grounds in winter.

My mother has suggested we turn this place into a bed and breakfast. We’ve had a taste of what that would be like this year and it’s an absolute ‘no’ from both of us. See, neither of us actually like people very much and we don’t like getting up early. We don’t like the extra laundry generated by rapid changes of bedding and possibly most important of all, we only have one bathroom.

Add to that the absence of heating in the upstairs rooms and it would take some serious building work to make this place habitable for more than just a few people.

Anyway, the visits are over until at least late March, when the weather usually starts to become a bit less horrible, and that means lots of writing and publishing. I have a short story collection by the somewhat eccentric Gastradamus and editing is under way on the submissions so far received for the Christmas anthology. It’s going to be a big one and submissions are still open.

I have been trying to catch up with the news. Apparently Donnie Trumpton is now to be impeached because of something to do with Ukraine, but I can’t pay too much attention to other countries’ politics. Ours is in such a shambles it’s all anyone can do to keep up with it all.

Boris the Spider has promised to restore 5000 miles of railway and all the stations associated with it for 500 million shiny British pounds. We’ve all had a laugh at Diane Abbot’s flimsy grasp of real life costs, but Boris seems to be no better. 500 million would lay about a mile of track after they’ve paid for and demolished all the buildings that now exist on the old track beds. Most of the old bridges are gone, the ones left won’t be safe after half a century of neglect, and many of the tunnels have been filled in. 500 million? Hahaha.

The Keith and Dufftown Railway is a privately owned preserved line. It runs from the old Keith Town station, through a couple of wayside halts, to the old Dufftown station. It’s a favourite trip for me because it runs the old diesel multiple units I loved travelling on in the Welsh Valleys – the ones where you can sit right behind the driver and get a view through the front window.

Also because Keith is the home of Chivas Regal’s distillery and Dufftown has the Glenfiddich and Balvenie distilleries. It’s where the exceptionally smooth Singleton of Dufftown comes from. If you like ancient buildings, the ruin of Balvenie castle is also worth a visit. It’s very close to Glenfiddich’s distillery.

Now, just for once, there is a point to this digression. The old Keith Town station, now privately owned, is not too far from the main Keith station that is still operated as part of the national network. There is no longer any track between them, but the track bed is intact. The private railway would dearly love to reconnect to the main line but it costs far too much. If they could do it they would be able to provide the distilleries in Dufftown with a rail link to the main line. Yeah, there would be considerable profit, allowing the private line to actually pay the volunteers who run it now, and it would also reduce the numbers of huge trucks leaving those really big distilleries to transport whisky along the terrible roads in the area.

Boris, that might be a good place to start.

Jerry Cordite has promised free broadband for all. Yeah, right. We are still on copper-wire phone lines on posts out here. I don’t think he’s costed the more remote areas, you know. I actually get faster internet using the phone on 4G as a hotspot – but that only works in the right parts of this place because mobile reception is shit too.

Besides, as several commenters on Twitter have pointed out, if you’re going to make something free, why not water? Or electricity or gas? You know, stuff everyone needs. Not everyone uses the internet, even now, yet everyone will have to pay outrageous taxes so Jerry can give out his freebies. The taxes wouldn’t seem quite so bad if they were covering something as basic as a reliable water supply.

Ah, but it’s not really about free broadband. You’ll never see that. The first stage in making the internet ‘free’ is, of course, for government to take total control of it. Then they won’t make it ‘free’ in any sense. The government once owned British Telecom, the railways and the postal service. Was any of that ever free? Once they own something, they profit from it. You pay the costs, they take the profit. That’s socialism.

The internet under government control will be censored, monitored, and, as has just happened in Iran, switched off when the population cause the government problems.

Don’t imagine the Tories are any different. Tessie Maybe salivated at the prospect of internet control for many years, and tried to get it more than once. Government control of the internet is a terrible idea, no matter who is in charge.

I see Extinction Rebellion have rebranded as Election Rebellion, which is no surprise. They were always obviously communists using any pretext to force their ridiculous and deadly world view on us all.

They are now going on hunger strike for a week for some reason or other, I don’t know what they hope to achieve and don’t care. A week? They’ll be in Pret as soon as the sun goes down on day one. They cannot go 24 hours without their avocado toast and gingerbread lattes.

A week. I am singularly unimpressed. Muslims do this every year and they do it for a month. So the feeble watermelon warriors are going to try it for a week, once, and I bet not a single one of them makes it to Wednesday.

I once co-supervised an Indonesian student through his M.Sc. Brilliant guy, we ended up with a very good paper on ruminant microbiology from his eight weeks with us. Needless to say, he passed easily.

He was Muslim. This was back in the 1990s when we weren’t assailed with Islam this and Islam that from all sides. We thought nothing of it. He was a devout Muslim but he never mentioned it. Never tried to convert anyone. Never threatened anyone. Never demanded a prayer room or any kind of special treatment. His religion was personal to him, as it should be. And he was a very nice guy in general.

It was Ramadan, in June, in Scotland. The sun was up before 5 am and still there at 10 pm. He wasn’t eating or drinking anything during daylight hours. The poor bugger nearly passed out before we figured this out. And yet he produced work of a quality good enough to publish. While slowly starving to death.

The Watermelon Warriors, the ones who haven’t given up by Tuesday, will, on Wednesday, be on Twatter and Farcebok telling the world how they are suffering for their cause. I’ll tweet them pictures of plates piled high with food to help them cope.

Still, I suppose they’ll be well practiced for their dreamed-of Socialist future under Corbyn.

Then they’ll finally find out what ‘hunger’ really means.