Wales, the next target of the New Puritans

The Welsh Assemblage of Useless Authoritarian Wasters has introduced minimum pricing for alcohol. What a total and utter waste of time, as much of a waste of time as the Assemblage itself.

You know, when the Blair Witch decided to go ahead with devolution, Scotland’s vote was pretty decisive. They wanted their own parliament who are now hitting them hard for smoking and drinking and eating – and taxing them more to pay for more control over them. Still, that’s what they wanted. They voted for it.

The vote in Wales returned a resounding ‘don’t care’ because that is the Welsh way. The Welsh have never cared who is in charge, for the most part, because they aren’t going to pay any attention to who is in charge anyway. Plaid Cymru do well not because of their policies but because they have a Welsh party name. They can get into positions of power but have never grasped that the bulk of Wales doesn’t give a shit.

There is a place called Treherbert. I went there once. I spent most of my early life living mere miles from it and went there only once. It was enough  A tiny place at the end of the railway line, it is nestled in a deep valley between high mountains and sees very little of that strange yellow circle in the sky, even in summer. If you are ever looking for the legendary Caer Colur (the gloomy enclosure) I’d recommend starting there.

Some years ago there was a news story about Treherbert. The name got my attention at once. Something newsworthy happened in Treherbert? What could it be? Dalek invasion? Secret lair of Blofeld? Someone dropped a spoon?

A guy in a council house was making his own vodka when his still exploded in a most spectacular fashion. Apparently – and this came as a surprise – he wasn’t breaking any laws because it was all for his own use. He did not intend to sell any.

Hmm. I live on a farm that grows barley specifically intended for the whisky industry. I could probably buy a tonne at cost price. But let’s not get distracted by my hobbies.

The point is, even years ago there were home stills when cheap supermarket booze was available. In the 1979-1982 years of my first degree there were dedicated homebrew shops everywhere. They started reappearing in Scotland (not dedicated shops but homebrew sections in other small shops) even before the minimum pricing nonsense started here.

In my early teens you could buy homebrew kits in supermarkets and since they had no alcohol in them as sold, they were not subject to age restrictions. It was just syrupy malt and a packet of yeast. I see those making a big comeback soon.

I have a friend in Wales who will care nothing for this minimum pricing nonsense. He has a large garden full of fruit trees and they all get turned into wine. His blackcurrant wine is particularly good. So he doesn’t actually buy much commercial booze.

Look at other countries. Iran has a total booze ban for religious reasons. You are not even allowed an alcohol based mouthwash. So what happens? Stories of weddings ruined because of dodgy black market booze poisoning everyone.

Norway has horrific alcohol pricing and you can only get a limited amount from State booze stores. The result? Alcohol purchases in Norway have plummeted. Success? Sales of raw sugar have soared. What do you imagine is happening there?

Alcohol is really easy to make. Making it safe to drink is not quite so easy. Promoting an unregulated black market is never a good idea. But then, when was the last time any politician had a good idea?

Scotland’s minimum pricing might have worked maybe 20 years ago. It’s a long way from Aberdeen to the border and I’m north of Aberdeen. Driving down for a case of whisky is not cost-effective and would be a tough one to do in one day. Scotland is narrow but pretty damn long. But hey, we have internet now so I can order booze from English suppliers and it’s not subject to minimum pricing.

Today I was at the dentist for my half-year teeth count. Nothing wrong with me, she even took X-rays in a desperate attempt to find something wrong with this smoky-drinking curmudgeon. Little side observation – are all dentists small women now? I’m not objecting, I don’t mind at all, it’s just that there seem to be no male members of staff at all in that place.

Afterwards I passed the whisky shop, so I called in and treated myself to a bottle of Shackleton. I hadn’t seen it before. A malt blend based on the whisky taken on the 1907 Antarctic expedition. The whisky shop is never cheap, the more common ones are much cheaper in the supermarket but this place is where you find the unusual ones. It’s a great shop. When I win the lottery I’m going to try the high shelves with the ‘Oh fucking hell’ prices.

Wales is, frankly, tiny. It’s also vertically narrow with the English border on the east side so none of it is very far from a day-trip over the border. Get a few friends together, hire a minibus and stock up. Easy. It’s going to happen. So who will this new law damage? Well, corner shops mostly, small businesses, a small effect on the likes of Aldi and Lidl but alkies? Nah. It will be of great benefit to the English economy to the detriment of both Wales and Scotland. You know, guys, you voted in some utter fuckheads to run your devolved administrations – but then, who but an utter fuckhead wants a job that’s all about controlling their own countrymen and making their lives harder and more miserable?

What will also happen is homebrew and also criminal gangs filling the gap for those who can’t afford van hire or homebrew equipment. All of it totally unregulated and all of it free of any care about age limits. What a great idea, eh? No wonder government buildings have so many big windows.They need room for everyone to get a lick.

You know, more and more often these days, I’m thinking November 5th should be a day of national rejoicing in the UK. We should not be burning Guy Fawkes in effigy. We should be hailing him. He had the right idea.

At least he tried.

 

The Genderless Society

One of the main sticking points in writing ‘Panoptica’ is trying to think like a drone who is content in his utterly oppressed world. I don’t mean he tolerates it, he actually sees it as the ideal way to live. Under total control.

I had also envisaged it as genderless (there are mechanics involved that have not come true yet although there are signs it is on the way) but there are no males or females. I have it set up like ant or bee society: the ones at the top do all the breeding (again, there are mechanics to this that would be spoilers) but the general plebs are neutered drones. Why keep them alive at all? Oh the answer to that is very nasty indeed. As you would expect  😉

The thing about fiction is it has to make sense. Real life doesn’t have to and rarely does, but fiction has to make sense. I had to find a way to arrive at all the restrictions on life I had placed on ‘Panoptica’ – and how do you get to the point where people accept being neutered drones? The history of this future horror had to be logical.

While writing this I have set out a few ‘on the way’ scenarios, here and here. The former story is now in ‘The Good, the Bad and Santa‘, the fourth Underdog Anthology. The latter is just a draft on the blog so far.

Panoptica’s main character is called 10538 because the idea was first inspired by the Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘10538 Overture‘. A long, long time ago. I had listened to that song for years and always thought ‘This is the overture. Where’s the rest of it?’ Eventually I decided to write the rest of it myself.

The genderless society idea now has a history. Thanks to the Militant Transency, or what an online acquaintance likes to call the Rainbow Reich, there are now more ‘genders’ than anyone can remember. You can also define yourself ‘otherkin’ and be a blue pansexual platypus if you like.There are even white people who identify as black now. You are white. Clean the damn mirror once in a while.

It’s insane and it’s perfect for the progression of history in this fictional story that’s rapidly coming true.

I had expected the first signs in California or maybe Scotland where the idiots in charge fall for any old crap and make it law. I missed something. A place where they delight in controlling and tormenting their population with idiotic legislation.

Australia. We used to send our convicts and loonies there so it’s probably historically our fault but even so…

Queensland, Australia, has decided that driver ID (the driving licence in the UK) will no longer carry discriminatory descriptions such as gender, height, hair and eye colour. The link is to a Quora answer which includes a screenshot of the report but not a direct link.

Well it’ll be cheaper to make the IDs because everyone will have the same card. Nobody will have a gender though. If you never learn to drive, no bother, borrow your wife’s licence. You might be 6 feet tall, your wife 5 feet, you might be ginger while she is blonde, doesn’t matter. The ID card fits you as well as it does her.

The important part is the loss of gender. As 81-Mohammed explains in the second story I linked to, people will delight in the removal of the 57 varieties of gender that blight reality now. They will welcome the genderless society.

Will they neuter their children? Oh please. They are lining up to have them transgendered already, even kids that have just learned to speak. It’s the ‘in thing’ now. Neutered until they are old enough to choose a gender? They will beat down the hospital doors to be the first. And those who aren’t keen to comply will be shamed with the new ‘transphobia’ nonsense.

Of course, once neutered they will never be able to reproduce, no matter what later surgery they have. They won’t have the parts any more. In one generation you have eradicated the family unit. Marx would be so proud.

Where it goes from there, well, I have it sketched out and planned it.

Just need to write it down. Preferably before it happens.

 

Competing with California

Indiana has moved into the Game of Stupid with a proposed new law that would render smokers into official non-human chattel,

Yes indeed. The Cult of Antismoking has now reached the point where they intend to deny smokers employment. Then deny them housing and all other services everyone takes for granted. There will be some very old Jewish people nodding their heads out there. They’ve seen this game in action before.

I’m self employed so if I lived and did business in Indiana I would not be affected, and I know the ‘law’ is only at the proposal stage. Even so, I would be relocating right now.

If I was a smoker in a good job I would be looking for a new one outside Indiana right now.

Why? Isn’t it just a proposal? It might fail.

If it does fail it’ll come back. They never give up. They’ll repropose it in increments attached to other laws. Oh they will keep at it until every smoker in Indiana is unemployed and homeless, for the crime of using a perfectly legal and highly taxed product. It’s nothing to do with health. It’s hate, that’s all it ever was. Oh, and money.

Surely everyone has noticed that these antismoking cultists have never tried to simply ban tobacco? Wouldn’t that be the quick and easy solution? Ah but then what do they do? How will they live? Their tax funded cushy hate-fest will end. And they have grown into a very big and expensive cult indeed.

Vapers, don’t get smug. The proposed law involves testing for nicotine metabolites. It can’t tell the difference between smoking and vaping and those doing this don’t care about the difference anyway. Switching to vaping won’t save you – and most likely, switching to patches and gum won’t save you either. You test positive, you’re a smoker. End of discussion – and end of career.

You can say I’m exaggerating if you like. Just as smokers exaggerated the effect of the smoking ban on pubs, clubs and bingo halls. Just as we exaggerated when we said the same thing would be applied to alcohol and non-approved foods and other lifestyle choices.

Just as we exaggerated when we said vapers were fools for siding with the antismoking cult. Remember how we said they’d come for you too? Oh how you laughed at our ridiculous tinfoil-hattery!

Smokers of Indiana, if you are at all able, get the hell out now. This proposal isn’t just an idle threat. It’s an early warning. If they can’t change the law to criminalise use of a legal product right away, they’ll change it bit by bit. Rest assured, they will get there. They will make you unemployable in Indiana and once you have ‘fired’ on your work resume, it’s going to be hard to find another job elsewhere. Much better to do it before the axe falls. Basically… run.

Think another employer in another state will just laugh off ‘fired for smoking a cigarette’? I’m sure they would – if that’s what the report said. It won’t. It will say ‘fired for drug use’ and if that is on your record you are fucked.

These people are vicious and relentless. They do not care about your health. They do not care about your family and they do not care about your children. They hate you and if your family is on the streets because you liked a quick smoke after work, that’s just collateral damage to them. You are the target and they will stop at nothing to destroy you.

Because you smoke. They live on the inflated taxes you pay on tobacco and they will kill you without a second thought. You don’t matter. They are busy indoctrinating children with the ‘smoking is cool and rebellious’ message to keep their parasitic lifestyles going. They can’t parasitise on vapers so well… yet. Until they have ramped up the pretend harm and linked vaping to diseases it couldn’t possibly cause (remember middle ear infections caused by second hand smoke?) they need vaping dead in the water. They need those kids to ditch the Electrofags and light up the real, taxed thing.

Philip Morris have said they are moving from tobacco into Electrofags. The antismokers are dead set against this – not for the reasons they give but for a much simpler reason. If all the tobacco companies switched to Electrofags and real tobacco use were to fade away, where do they get their funding? Who pays them to solve a problem that no longer exists? They can’t let the tobacco companies move away from tobacco. They need that eternal enemy to secure their own jobs.

As I said, I’m self employed. So why would I be running out of Indiana if I lived there? I’m hardly going to fire myself.

It’s not going to stop with employed smokers. It never stops. There is no end point to this game. The antismoking cult wins some ground, they immediately move on to the next phase. The smoking self-employed will not get a free pass. Contractors will drug test you too. There will be claims the books I sell are infused with second hand smoke even though they are printed hundreds or thousands of miles away from me and do not pass through my hands on the way to you.

Think they would balk at claiming you can get SHS from eBooks? Look at the claims they have made so far and think again.

The antismoking cult claims that their end game is an entirely smokefree world by (insert far away date). There is no endgame. These parasites depend on a steady flow of new smokers which is why they advertise smoking to children so hard. They keep saying the tobacco companies ‘target children’ but a) children are not allowed to buy tobacco and b) the tobacco companies are not allowed to advertise at all. To anyone. In the UK you can’t even see the packs on shelves any more.

Who is advertising to children? The parasitic antismoking cult.

The thing is, in Indiana they are shooting themselves in the foot. If every smoker is unemployable in Indiana, the kids they have pushed onto smoking will never get a job. They won’t be able to afford to smoke. Anyone sensible will get a job outside the state and pay taxes elsewhere.

Still, let Indiana join California as a basket case economy. I think I know what their solution will be.

They’ll test for traces of alcohol.

The face of Death

It’s going to be a popular look if Public Health England get their way.

As the definition of obesity gets ever narrower, to the point where you’ll soon be classed as obese if the medics can’t check for broken bones by holding you up to a light, so the evil of Public Health expands its war on all living things by forcing us towards photosynthesis as our only means of nutrition.

I’m surprised they haven’t tried that yet. Maybe it comes next. ‘Eat a Vegan diet and you’ll absorb enough chlorophyll so that soon you won’t need to eat at all’. I hope they don’t get upset at me for revealing their 2020 dietary plan too soon.

So far, they only want you to restrict your calorie intake to somewhere close to anorexia. It’s a slow death, but they’ll accelerate it later, I’m sure. When we all look like Death I’ll have the last laugh – I already have a black hooded robe and a scythe.

How am I supposed to survive on 1600 calories a day? That’s not even one bottle of whisky! In Scotland’s winter you can shiver away 1600 calories a day. I’ve never actually counted my calorie intake but it’s a lot higher than the currently recommended 2500 a day – and I’m not getting fat. I’m out every other day chopping wood for the fire and in summer, I’ll burn off a few thousand just cutting the lawns. That’s before I even start on the plant beds and the nettles in the woods. Which is what the scythe was originally for.

I’ll also have to rebuild a wall in spring. Part of the wall between Lawn 4 and Greenhouse 2 collapsed. Six feet tall and made of granite blocks. There are still piles of leaves on one of the driveways and the other has been on-and-off a glacier this winter. There are fruit trees to prune and other trees to trim. And I’ll need to rebuild the wood supply for next winter. I’ve run it down a bit this year.

If I pay any attention at all to this 1600 calories bollocks I’ll look like those photos of the Holocaust by next summer. So I have no intention of paying any attention at all to any of it.

That won’t surprise anyone. I’ve paid no attention to the five-a-week veggie thing nor the 21 units a day alcohol ‘limit’ and the antismokers might as well shout at my fallen wall. I hear they have now reduced their alcohol intake limit. I haven’t.

But then, they don’t expect anyone to pay attention to this new nonsense. That’s not what it’s for. As Christopher Snowdon observes…

The idea of having ‘limits’ for individual meals is entirely new and I suspect that there is an agenda at work here. The 400-600-600 ‘rule’ will allow PHE and its army of scolds to name and shame every restaurant portion, takeaway and ready meal that contains more than the government-approved quantity of calories.

It’s a new way into a tax on takeaways. Tax which will fund more nannying and deeper control. Followed by more taxes.

Start learning to photosynthesise. That’s where they’re heading…

Christmas time, silliness and lies…

The Black Friday silliness is nearly over and I have spent… nothing at all. I have ignored it completely and feel much better for it. I haven’t even watched the videos of people squabbling over last year’s technology so the shops get space for Christmas stock of this year’s stuff. Which I also will not buy. It’s going to be a difficult Christmas for those who want to buy me presents because beyond whisky and tobacco, there is nothing left that I want.

I have, however, watched the day’s silliness off and on. There is a lot of it now. The BBC is horrified to find that mince pies contain traces of alcohol. That’s not the silliest part of the article though – that prize goes to Asda’s checkout staff for demanding ID for the sale of a box of mince pies. What goes through their minds? Not much…

Upping the silliness a notch (oh this is just getting started), a mother has called for ‘Sleeping Beauty’ to be age restricted so younger kids can’t read it. Why? Because the sleeping princess does not give consent to be kissed. That, apparently, is what causes men to become rapists in later life.Therefore Hansel and Gretel turns old ladies into cannibals and children into murderers while Goldilocks encourages home invasion, food theft and  bed-hopping in young girls.

The comments on the article are worth reading. In particular, the book about a God who impregnates a virgin while she sleeps – without her consent. They haven’t banned the Bible yet, but it’s coming.

Although there might not be any need. The Church of Sweden is no longer referring to the ‘Lord’ God because that assumes he is male. Well, all through the Bible, references to God refer to ‘he’ or ‘him’ and not ‘xe, xim’ or any other recently made up pronoun. The Bible also makes the gender issue very clear indeed. Man and woman. There is no Book of Genders – and you’d need a whole damn book these days, with daily updates as the loonies think up new things to call themselves.

One thing’s for sure, I’m not leaving any pet of mine alone with someone calling themselves ‘pansexual’. There is now even pressure to recognise paedos as a legitimate sexual orientation. That’s going to be a ‘no’ from me on that one.

You know, I think if God was being ‘misgendered’ (now a sacking offence in many places) all this time, xe’d have said something. I also think we might soon see some evidence for the existence of God when the Church of Sweden gets obliterated by multiple, simultaneous lightning strikes. If you believe in the existence of a deity as powerful as that, one thing you definitely avoid doing is pissing him off.

Well it’s Sweden. God could just let Islam finish destroying it. I picture him turning to Allah and saying ‘You can have that place, mate. I don’t want it any more.’ Maybe he already has…

Oh, wait until the Politically Correct start insisting Allah might be transgender. That would be a day to remember.

Meanwhile Brexit continues to not happen. The EU’s latest bargaining chip is to deny the UK an entry into the European City of Culture self-congratulatory waste of time and money. If I were sat at that negotiating table, my response would have been an eyeroll, a sarcasm-drenched ‘Oh I am quaking’ and a request that they go away and find some adults we can negotiate with. Which, I suppose, is why I’ll never be called into the field of diplomacy.

I hope they eject us from the Eurovision terrible song contest too. Nobody will dare vote for us after Brexit anyway. Except maybe Poland, Hungary etc. They might give us top marks just to poke their EU dictators in the eye.

Who the hell cares about getting a City of Culture in 2023? It doesn’t mean a damn thing and there’s a good chance there’ll be no EU by then anyway. It’s falling apart like rice-paper in the rain.

It’s not the only thing that’s falling apart. The anti-vapers are on increasingly shaky ground and the Church of Climatology is on thinner ice than even they predicted. The previously robust LGBT movement has now fragmented into a thousand different groups because of the ridiculous proliferation of imaginary genders. There are gender identities that have one person in them now.

There are men pretending to be women but who want to keep their danglies. It’s as if pantomime season has escaped onto the streets. Widow Twanky wants to use the same changing rooms as teenage girls and we’re supposed to regard that as normal. These dames have even labelled actual transsexuals as ‘transcum’ because they underwent the horrors of surgery to prove they were serious, and weren’t just trying to ogle young girls in underwear.

The Pope welcomes the invasion of radical Islam even though he is number one on their list of people to behead. What the hell is in those incense burners now?

The EU is dictating to Austria about the form its new government should take. Austria looks like giving them a resounding ‘git tae fuck’ (every government needs a Glaswegian spokesman) as does Hungary etc. over the EU insistence they fill their countries with people who hate them.

There are people on Twitter shouting ‘Kill all white people’ and some of the ones shouting are white. Turkeys demanding an extra Christmas every year.  Or maybe an extra Thanksgiving, but that is now racist, as is the poppy of Remembrance Day. I bought two this year because of that and because anti-white racism is now so blatant that even Government departments can post job adverts with ‘no whites’ on them. Try posting any job ad with ‘no blacks’ on it and see what happens.

I haven’t bothered with Facebook much for a long time. It’s rapidly becoming a dictatorship and Twitter is going the same way. Some ‘endorsed’ members (the blue tick is an endorsement of their views by Twitter now, not just a verified identity, because they are taking that verification away from people they don’t agree with) preach violence and death and if they are anti-white, that’s fine.

I’ve now set up an account on gab.ai  ready for the day Twitter feels I am ‘threatening their safe space’ or some such crap. Anyone can join there, anyone at all. It’s in its infancy but it’s how Twitter used to be, with no sides taken and nobody banned just for disagreeing. If it eventually turns into another Totalitarian Twitter there will be a new one to follow it.

I still have to fill out my tax return and I really don’t want to. I’ll have to give them money this time and when I see what they do with it, I honestly don’t want to feel responsible for rte shit they produce. Tessie Maybe was a crap Home Secretary and is an appallingly weak Prime Monster. She only won because the alternative was so much worse.

I’d rather have John Major back. Yeah, she’s that bad.

Well, times are going to get interesting and somewhat violent in the near future. I heard today that in Sweden, they have set fire to nine immigrant housing places but I can’t be sure if that’s true yet. I don’t know of any completely reliable news source any more. The backlash, if it hasn’t started already, is inevitable though.

Only the politicians and the politically correct will be surprised. The rest of us will just shrug and say ‘Yeah. Told you.’

MUPpets in control of Wales

Minimum unit pricing for alcohol has returned, this time it’s the ridiculous morons in the Welsh ‘parliament’ doing it. I notice they have now reduced your alcohol allowance to 14 units a week with no reasoning nor justification. Hah! 14 units? I never start writing until I’m well past that.

As the comments below the article point out, the Welsh will simply go to England to buy booze, and those on or close to the border will probably just do their weekly shopping over there too. Nice dent in the Welsh economy there, added to this latest slapdown on the tourist trade.

There’s another aspect though. Alcohol is incredibly easy to make. You can make beer or (especially) wine out of just about anything. As long as it contains sugar, it will ferment. No controls, no regulations, no limit on ABV beyond what your yeast can tolerate – and yeast can be gradually selected for the most alcohol tolerant variety so will produce stronger booze with successive use.

Okay, I have an unfair advantage here, being a microbiologist who has worked with all kinds of fermentations and with a lab full of fermentation equipment but trust me, you can do it with plastic buckets and demijohns.

Banana wine is very nice and really potent. As bananas ripen, the starch in them breaks down into sugars so they get sweeter and also easier to ferment. What you want are the really ripe ones where the skin is blackening and you know you’ll get those at a heavy discount in pretty much any shop that sells bananas.

The fermenting stuff looks horrible but once it’s finished and cleared it’s a yellowish whisky-like colour. It looks and tastes lovely and it should be approached with caution. It turns out very potent indeed. Regulations? Control? Units? Nobody cares.

I have a bottle of banana wine. Some friends of mine made it. They live in Wales and they make wine out of pretty much anything at all. They have demijohns and bottles galore and they’ve given away some but never thought of selling it. The new anti-drink laws could turn out profitable for them and others like them. Including the unscrupulous who will just add rubbing alcohol to fruit juices with no concern as to the horrible consequences on their customers. Remember, when you are blind and getting your stomach pumped, Public Health Puritanism made that happen.

Of course, with supermarkets selling booze ‘cheaper than water’ (this has never actually happened outside the demented heads of the Public Health Puritans) few people will bother going to all that trouble. They’d rather just get a few cans in to watch a film on a Friday night.

Put up the price though, and suddenly homebrew isn’t too much bother at all. It’s already started in Scotland, where the Spiteful Nannying Puritans have been in power for some time. I see demijohns appear in second hand shops at £8 a pop and they don’t hang around long.

I don’t need them of course, I have a lab full of 5-litre conical flasks…

Out here in the countryside I have access to wild raspberries and blackberries, slashing back the garden has revealed, so far, three apple trees and three crabapple trees. Several large elder trees. I have gooseberries and strawberries and… two well established grapevines in a greenhouse, ready for harvesting. A third vine might start producing next year.

Raw materials needn’t cost a penny. I have all the equipment, and none of it needs to be complex. I do have four continuous culture vessels that could be turned into continuous beer/wine producers with a little adjustment. That won’t be hard since I built them from scratch anyway.

None of it is regulated by anyone other than me. None of the bottles will have any information concerning units or alcohol content or the ‘no fat birds’ sticker. I might put ‘please drink irresponsibly’ on them for fun. Why not? I live in Brewdog country here. Sorry, not sorry.

As for beer, well I live on a farm that grows barley. I’m sure I could get a couple of shovelfuls for washing the farmer’s car or something similar. I just need to plant some hops, I have room for a small malting house (it’s not as complex as you’d think) and then the beer is free too. It’s also totally devoid of any limits on ABV, other than what I can train the yeast to tolerate.

I made beer in the 1980s as a student. I supplied a barrel at a party and heard slurred complaints and talk of ‘rocket fuel’ and ‘what the hell have you made?’. That wasn’t even the nettle beer incident (which happened only once) where I used nettles that had grown a bit too much. You’re only supposed to use the very young ones that haven’t yet developed stinging cells. It tasted good although it took a day or so to get the feeling back in your tongue.

Then there was tea wine which was awful but freeze-distilled into tea brandy was actually pretty good. Never bothered to do it again, it wasn’t that fantastic.

In the 1980s there were specialised homebrew shops. Supermarkets sold homebrew kits. Then they all vanished. Now there are shops selling homebrew stuff again. Only a matter of time before the specialist shops reappear.

Beyond that is the random homebrew. Booze made from anything that ferments. It’s happened before and it’s making a big comeback now.

No regulations, no limits. Thanks to the idiots in charge. At least I can honestly say I didn’t vote for them. Can you?

More importantly, will you vote for them next time?

 

Antifat demands more money

Not a misspelling. The anti-obesity Puritans now say that ‘junk’ food companies have far bigger advertising budgets than they have. Therefore they cannot compete. Well, boo hoo.

First of all, they are not supposed to be competing with private companies. They, like most modern ‘charities’, are funded by Government to give Government new ways to be oppressive, totalitarian bastards.

Secondly, I do not care how much money any private company spends on advertising. It’s not my money, never was and never will be. It’s not being paid for by squeezing taxes out of the rest of us. If you buy their products then you’re adding to their profits but that is entirely your choice.

Nobody is forced to buy any of those products. They do not come round and force-feed you chicken nuggets and canned spaghetti hoops then rifle through your pockets for money. They simply make products available for those who want them. Advertising is their way of telling us all that the product is available. You can ignore ads, you know. Only a gullible idiot would consider advertising as any kind of ‘forcing’.

Antifat, on the other hand, get their money from Government which takes it from us by force. If you don’t hand over a chunk of the money you worked for to a bunch of self-important entitled suits in Wastemonster, they will put you in jail and take the money anyway,

That is why I do not care at all about the £143 million spent by food companies on advertising. They aren’t making me contribute a penny towards it. I care a hell of a lot about the £5.2 million wasted on keeping jumped-up prodnoses in a cushy job because I am forced to contribute to that.

It annoys me immensely and I’m not even overweight. It annoys me because it’s another arm of the Smoker Hate and Booze Hate that I’ve also been forced into contributing to.

There are already strict rules on advertising food ‘to children’ (who have limited to zero means of buying any of it) and yet it’s never enough, is it? As with all the other Puritans we pay for, there’s always another increment, another slice of the salami. And now they will tie in nicely with Tessie Maybe’s long-held desire to control the Internet harder than China does.

All this crap has to go. We’d pay less tax and the NHS would have more funds if all this shit were swept away.

And we could have a bag of chips without watching out for the prodnoses.