Entertainment time – The Macbeth Trio

It has been some time since I last posted fiction (excluding all references to the Daily Mail). This one is a first draft. It might change, it might not, it depends whether I still like it tomorrow. One day though it will be in a collection.

It is fiction. Purely made up with no suggestion that it might be even remotely connected to reality. It was written in a few hours tonight and is not intended to be take seriously.

I have to say that part before I admit it was inspired by this, sent to me by   @Raven80504432 on Twitter.

I haven’t mentioned to Raven that I have had a large plastic raven flying in my house since last October. Synchronicity could raise its head here.

Anyway. To the story. Remember, it’s fiction. I just made it up. It’s probably not real.

Keep the tinfoil handy, just in case.

 

The Macbeth Trio

“Scrofula!” Doc Armitage banged the table. “That’s the next one.”

Doctor West pursed his lips. Turning to Doctor Smythe, he twirled his index finger beside his head.

“I’m serious.” Armitage rested his hands on the table and leaned forward. “It’s a not-so-deadly form of tuberculosis and we did that one a few years back. So we already have a vaccine that will probably work.” He straightened. “We can use the variant, Mycobacterium scrofulaceum, to claim we have to develop a new vaccine and even if we do have to, it’ll be a piece of piss.”

Smythe rubbed his finger alongside his nose. “I like it. We’re running out of diseases to make vaccines for. This one is rare but we can work with it.”

“Okay.” West steepled his fingers. “Let’s, for the moment, assume you both aren’t totally bonkers.” He held up his hand to forestall Armitage’s protests. “It’s a long shot, but let’s assume it anyway. How the hell do we get the population scared of a disease none of them have even heard of?”

“No problem.” Armitage folded his arms. “It’s related to tuberculosis, often caused by the same bacterium. We blame it on the immigrants, as usual, and show pictures of the few immunocompromised patients who have had it fairly recently.”

“Without, of course, mentioning the severely immunocompromised part.” Smythe winked at West.

“Of course.” West rubbed his temples. “It’s starting to sound good, or maybe I’m just going as crazy as you two.” He looked up. “Same procedure?”

“Yes indeed.” Armitage nodded. “We start up with stats showing this long forgotten disease has begun to make a resurgence. We use percentages so nobody catches on that our four cases became six to give us a 50% increase. Like we did with necrotising fasciitis. Then we start talking about the possibility of 100 new cases in the next century and as with mad cow disease, hardly anyone will notice that’s one case a year.”

“There’s one thing though.” West took a deep breath. “People don’t know scrofula. They’ll look it up. They’ll find out how rare it is. We don’t have the control we had with our own inventions – BSE and necrotising fasciitis and AIDS and so on. They’ll see through this one fast.”

“You’re right.” Smythe tapped his pen on his notepad. “We’ll need some ground work first. Edit Wikipedia and lock it with our version, get our own sites written and up to the top of every search. Get the official NHS and other medical sites on board too. We can afford it. We just need to get our versions in before we mention scrofula to the public. Then when they look it up, they’ll see what we want them to see.”

West shook his head. “We can’t edit every medical textbook.”

“Nobody reads the print ones any more anyway.” Armitage grinned. “And you’re wrong, you know. Most of those books are online or available as eBooks and we can edit them easily. They’ll even update the ones already downloaded onto every device out there. Let the print books carry the truth under a layer of dust. We can edit history and nobody will notice.”

West sat in silence for long minutes. He started to speak a few times but lapsed into thought again. The other two watched him, silent too. West was the one with the final say on this idea.

“It can work.” West said.

Smythe and Armitage high-fived each other.

“Okay.” West reached for the coffee pot and refilled his cup. “This one is going to take a lot of setting up. Smythe, get started on those disinformation sites right away. Armitage, start getting your lab ready for the volunteers. We say nothing about this outside this room until all mention of scrofula on the web is ours. Okay?”

Both nodded assent. Smythe scribbled notes on his pad.

“Then we claim scrofula is on the rise and as before, we blame it on immigrants.” West ducked his head to hide his smirk. “Poor buggers. The socialists invite them in and we capitalise on them. If only they knew.”

“The socialists have a narrow view of life.” Armitage raised his eyebrows. “They are easily manipulated, that’s why socialism uses them. Their leaders will never realise that all they’ve done is point out who can be manipulated.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re not here for politics. This is far more important, it’s about money.” West waved his hand. “Next, Armitage, you call for volunteers as usual. You’re looking for carriers, of course, asymptomatic infectors, as always. The ones who get sick, cure them, send them home with a fat wad of cash. The ones who don’t but who are infectious, you ‘cure’ with a placebo and let them loose. The big payoff means you’ll get volunteers from all over the country so you get the best spread.”

“Works every time.” Smythe looked up from his notes. “It spreads, maybe a dozen or more get infected and then millions come looking for a vaccine.”

“All helped by the hysterical press. What would we do without them?” Armitage clasped his hands.

West laughed before speaking. “The tinfoil hat lot will be on about population reduction and saving the planet from humanity again. Every time. They can’t seem to grasp that we don’t give a shit about any of that. We just want the money.”

“It’s almost too easy. We use the same techniques over and over and nobody notices,” Armitage said. “But then antismokers, antibooze, anti salt, sugar, all of them use the same methods and nobody’s noticed that either.”

“People are dim.” West leaned back in his chair. “Most just want an easy life, no challenges, no hard parts. Offer to take the hard parts away and they’ll come running.” He stood. “Well, I think we have a new project. Let’s get moving and call this meeting closed.”

Smythe looked up from his notes. “When’s the next one?”

Armitage laughed aloud. “I think you mean, ‘when shall we three meet again?’ eh?”

______________________

 

If you don’t get the reference in the last line, I have to say ‘Macbeth’ to you…

 

The Pen is mightier than the Sword

…but it seems Le Pen is not as mighty as a Macaroon.

France has a pro-EU, Brussels puppet as its leader. Well, it’s what they voted for. I don’t know how much real power the French President has – don’t his pronouncements have to go through Parliament? I’ve no idea, perhaps one of the France-occupying readers can tell us. Not our problem, since the UK is now on a no-going-back route out of the EU. We’ve even been deleted from their propaganda leaflets.

At least there aren’t likely to be riots, at least not by the French. It seems clear in modern politics that one side always accepts losing a vote while the other side scream about voting being non-democratic because they didn’t get what they wanted. Then they have protests to overturn the vote in the name of democracy. These are usually violent.

It’s always the same sides too.

It’s rather like the Church of Climatology’s thought process. It gets a little warmer, that’s global warming. It gets unusually cold, ‘weather is not climate’. In the same way, Socialism only recognises democracy if they win the vote.

This kind of doublethink is endemic now.

I bought New Scientist this week. First time for ages. There is a feature article about air pollution. Apparently, at least in the West, it’s not so bad. China, India, Bangladesh… well they are effectively going through their industrial revolution phase and that’s always messy. The cities in those countries get smog like London used to get. Pretty pointless pushing to ban smoking there – but they do anyway.

The article carries a chart showing causes of death. Predictably, smoking is near the top. What’s interesting is that nowadays, nobody just dies any more. Everyone dies of something that could have been prevented if only the NHS could force them to live pure lives. It seems based on the premise that if we remove all risks from life, nobody will ever die again. Except… of boredom.

While the article shows a rapid fall in air pollution in the UK, the editorial laments the UK government’s failure to tackle air pollution. It’s headed with a picture of a smoggy street which is quite clearly not in the UK. The cars are on the wrong side of the road and the no-parking lines are red, not yellow.  They didn’t even bother to spend five minutes with Photoshop to make it half-convincing. What really hurts is that PhD level scientists will read that crap and not question it.

The editorial calls for some kind of legally-enforced action from the government while the article claims all major atmospheric pollutants are in decline in the UK’s air.

I don’t mean the smoke from half a gram of burning leaves. I mean properly toxic stuff. The UK’s air is getting cleaner. Remember that when the new anti-motorist regulations come into force so that the Green Men can breathe pure air in the cities. I’m glad I don’t live in one.

We now have the latest big push from antismoking to classify vaping as smoking. It’s clearly not smoking. For one thing there’s no smoke. No tobacco either. It’s getting to where rechargeable batteries and USB connectors are likely to be classified as tobacco products – and politicians all over the world can’t seem to understand why they are now openly ridiculed. If there is one thing more likely to see you more universally despised than being a smoker, it’s becoming a politician.

The antismokers say they want us to stop smoking but only using their approved methods. You know, the ones they get paid to push. Not some independent method that’s been shown to work for an awful lot of people, oh no, can’t have that.

“Nicotine is ‘addictive and deadly’. To help you escape its clutches we’ll sell you patches and gum loaded with… nicotine.”

What they really want is to get you ‘addicted’ to their own nicotine delivery method, so they can cash in.

Warnings on cigarettes, warnings about the alleged addictiveness of nicotine on vaping gear… seen any warnings on the patches and gum? Of course not. Seen any public shouting about people under 18 getting hold of patches and gum? Neither have I.

Approved nicotine is magically safe to prescribe. Non-approved nicotine is deadly and will kill you along with everyone in a 100-metre radius. Every time a smoker lights up in public we are like slow motion suicide bombers. That is what modern medicine, and our Governments, actually believe.

Really. They genuinely believe it. In the old days, schools used to teach chemistry and anyone from those days will have no trouble finding the chemical structure of nicotine. It’s a simple molecule. The nicotine in patches is the same as the nicotine in tobacco. The same as the nicotine in vape steam.

I’m still amazed no doctor has been charged with attempted murder for prescribing nicotine patches after telling us it’s deadly and addictive. Why hasn’t that happened? It’s wide open, that goal.

You know, some vapers don’t even have nicotine in their steam. Some have found that it’s the action of smoking they like. The taste, blowing smoke rings, all that stuff. The nicotine isn’t really necessary. I’ve tried it in my own Electrofags. Nicotine isn’t the biggest part of smoking, it’s the taste and the action that matters. That’s why Electrofag has worked for so many people. Not for me, not yet. The strange flavours are a lot of fun but I haven’t found a tobacco flavour that tastes just right. Maybe one day.

It must be difficult to keep a war on smokers and a war on motorists going at the same time. A war on all forms of transport, in fact, other than electric Noddy cars and trains made by Hornby. They have to ramp up the same pretend risks for both wars without anyone questioning how you can die twice. They seem to be managing this quite well because the general public have failed to notice.

There have been several Dalek and other alien invasions of Earth. Remember those? Nobody does, and in subsequent episodes the Doctor puts it down to the human ability to blot out anything that doesn’t fit their worldview.

He’s right. Humanity is easily controlled. Has been easily controlled for a very long time. It’s a herd. The oft-used sheep analogy is not misplaced. Those of us who won’t run with the herd are treated as anomalies and freaks – and perhaps we are. We like it that way.

Some of us will always refuse to obey. Some of us will snarl back at the sheepdogs. Some of us will remember and write it down for the future’s annoying buggers to know they are not alone.

The pen is, still, mightier than the sword.

Just watch out for macaroons…

Size matters

Today is 370 years since the opening paragraph of Jessica’s Trap. That story started on April 30th, 1647, the eve of Beltane. I have to find out what’s going on with that book, the contract with the publisher expired over a year ago and I’m still not sure whether it’s been taken off sale. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes not. It’s going to come back under Leg Iron Books.

But to get to the point, this one is about sugar. Specifically, the sneaky lies around the subject. Also about the bollocks we get now, in general.

Today the Daily Fibber states that some ready meals have more sugar than a doughnut. Do they mean pro-rata? No, they mean in absolute terms. Basically, they are saying that you are better to feed your kids a single doughnut for lunch rather than a pasta bake or a curry with rice.

Among the worst culprits is Kirsty’s Kids’ Kitchen Chicken Korma With Brown Rice. It is promoted as a ‘nutritionally balanced’ meal with ‘no added sugar’.

But the small print reveals it has a total sugar content of 14.8g, almost four teaspoons, more than twice the 6.2g found in a McDonald’s Sugar Donut.

If you were to compare the sugar content as sugar per 100g of product, the doughnut would win hands down. If you were to compare actual nutritional content, the curry would win every time. However, that does not allow you to pretend that all ready meal companies are subsidiaries of Big Sugar, charged with shifting as much of the stuff into kids as possible.

The whole article is utter bollocks, but then it is the Daily Mail so we’re used to that. Even so, this kind of shit is what politicians believe, because they have no minds of their own and have to have signs on their headboards so they can find their way out of bed in the mornings.

Honey, fruit juices and agave syrup are high in sugar but are not labelled as such.

That’s because they are made of sugar. I wouldn’t expect to see ‘high in sugar’ on a bag of Tate and Lyle’s best granulated sucrose. I fully expect that bag to contain 100% sugar.

It is claimed that we eat more sugar than we used to. I don’t think that’s true at all. Sugar sandwiches were a staple of my youth. Pancakes were coated in golden syrup and sugar. Syrup on toast was a favourite. Sugar mice were mouse shaped blocks of sugar with a hint of food colouring and a bit of string for a tail. You can still get them – a sweet shop in a nearby town sells them.

Yes, a sweet shop. It’s called ‘The sweet shop’. They sell sweets. Nothing else. Just sweets – including ice cream in cones that have been dipped in chocolate and sugar sprinkles. It’s the anti-sugar brigade’s equivalent of a tobacconist or an off-licence. I’m sure they get palpitations even knowing it exists. They’ll go into full meltdown if they find out that, just along the road, is another shop called ‘The chocolate bar’ which sells only chocolate. You wouldn’t burn the calories in a single cube of chocolate fudge by walking between those two shops – and there’s a pub in between in case you get peckish on the way.

There were many sweet shops when I was a kid. All within easy reach of school. We didn’t get fat – well some kids did but really, only a few. Like now. Look at the feral little groin-fruit scampering out when school closes. There are a few fat ones, some chubby ones (who will lose it all when they hit the growth spurt of puberty) and a lot of scrawny little urchins.

They are probably, on average, a bit heavier than my generation but we didn’t have computers and Xboxes, we did most of our playing outside. Then again, we did have Scalextric and train sets and toy cars and soldiers and a lot of really good board games so we did a lot of sitting around too. Especially in lousy weather, which we get a lot of in the UK.

People have been getting larger as generations progress. Look at those antique dining chairs. They are far too small to be useful now. So this generation being a tad larger and heavier than my generation is not an anomaly. It’s normal.

If modern kids are getting fatter it has nothing to do with sugar. It has more to do with mollycoddling. They aren’t allowed to climb trees. They can’t wander off in the woods in case Gary’s Gang is lurking. Even the toys are no fun any more.

I had a chemistry set. It included magnesium ribbon among other dangerous things. Of course I burnt the magnesium. Who wouldn’t?

I bought my son a chemistry set when he was young. It was the most boring, God-awful waste of time I have ever seen. It had safety glasses! Mine didn’t have those. Safety glasses in a set that was based entirely on the safest experiments you can imagine. Growing copper sulphate crystals is fun the first time but the novelty soon wears off. Where’s the stuff that burns and/or goes bang? Not in the set? Then what the hell are the safety glasses for? He wasn’t much interested and when I looked it over, I saw no reason to push it.

Plastic test tubes and pipettes. I had glass ones. I bought more in the local chemist. I learned how to draw out a pipette into a flexible capillary long before getting chemistry lessons in school. I think I still have a piece of one in my thumb. It only twinges occasionally as a reminder not to do it again.

That set would never kindle anyone’s interest in science. It makes it look extraordinarily tedious.

All this dumbing down in the name of ‘the cheeldren’ is too easy to laugh at. It’s really very dangerous. Making children super-slim means they have no energy reserves for that massive growth spurt at puberty. A lot of us looked like bean bags at 11 years old and like panel pins at 14. No intervention was necessary. It was nature.

I’m still wondering whether the introduction of spectacles when I had blurry distance vision at 11 was a bad idea. I was in that growth spurt time. Things were changing and not all at once. My eyes might have been short-sighted because the eye sockets were growing at a different rate to the eyes in them. It might have corrected itself.

When (if) it did, it adjusted to give me correct vision without realising I had glass lenses in the way. Now I have to wear them – not all the time, only when I have to look at things.

My close-up vision has definitely deteriorated with age though. I could see things clearly less than 10 cm in front of my eyes which is why I could paint the eyes onto 1/72 scale figures. Can’t do that now without a magnifier, but that’s normal. My closest clear focus is now 25 cm without any lenses between.

Yet I wonder, would my long vision have corrected itself if my growing body wasn’t looking through those lenses? I suppose I’ll never know.

I used to laugh at the daft pronouncements and at the anenecephalic politicians who just lapped it all up. That was before I realised how deadly it actually was.

There are people claiming that vaping is as dangerous as smoking. It’s steam! I have seen, recently, claims that there is antifreeze in vape. No, antifreeze is ethylene glycol. Vape contains propylene glycol, a harmless food grade thickening agent found in yogurt and many other things. Including asthma inhalers, in case you want to jump up with ‘Breathing is not the same as eating’.

Smoking has risks. They are vastly overplayed, the risk to others is so comical I could never skip the chance to terrify an antismoker. But yes, there are risks. There were risks in my first chemistry set, my first airgun, my first forays (untrained) into meddling with electricity and explosives and I accepted the risk and did it anyway. That will never change for me. ‘Perfectly safe’ is no fun at all.

Perfectly safe is what the idiots in the pressure groups claim to want. What their aims will achieve is the extinction of the human race and in some cases, of all life on the planet.

Bill (wee fookin’ bawbag) Gates has stated that he wants to reduce atmospheric CO2 to zero. Really. Zero. I have thought up a way that it could be done but I will die before I tell a single soul. If atmospheric CO2 was zero, every single plant and alga on this planet is dead within days.

When they die, nothing is producing oxygen. We breathe oxygen, as do the rest of the animals around us. We exhale CO2. My device mops it all up.

The oxygen will run out. ‘Bye. Well, some anaerobic bacteria will be around so the planet can start again. Makes me wonder if that happened before…

That is Bill Gates, multi-millionaire who thinks money makes him clever. He’s not alone. George Soros thinks money makes him superior. So do the Virgin Beard Guy and the rich tart he’s funding (can’t be bothered looking them up, it’s late) to make us vote for what they want, not what we want. Politicians think they are superior because they have money even though they only have money because they extort it from the rest of us in taxes. They produce fuck all. No wonder they support benefit spongers. Kindred spirits.

They want to tax Electrofag. They have paid shills pretending it’s dangerous. Smoking is nowhere near as dangerous as they claim. By comparison, vaping is harmless. Well, mostly harmless. I mean, come on. If you believe breathing smoke is deadly then surely people breathing steam is a better thing?

All the politicians look for are tax opportunities. They would love to tax food and the fat, sugar and salt Puritans are glad to give them enough lies to let them do it. The general public…

…are mostly gullible idiots. I speak from personal experience. I have convinced people of utterly nonsensical things for fun. Tax the rich? They’ll vote for it without realising that as they have a job, they ARE the rich! The really rich don’t pay taxes, they collect them,

I digress, as usual.

Zero salt will kill you. Zero sugar will kill you faster. Zero smoking will kill ASH, which is why they pretend Big Tobacco controls Electrofag even though Electrofag would be the greatest thing ASH could hope for if they really wanted what they say they want.

Too much of anything will kill you too. Eat and drink and smoke whatever you want, if it starts to hurt, slow down.

Oh, I remember when you only saw doctors when you were ill and they fixed you without judging your life…

…and now you have to fit the standard. Be the right size or be shunned.

 

Stupidity

I was listening to a kindred spirit, Foamy the Squirrel, this evening and he had a rant about stupid people. It was the usual totally over-the-top rant but he did have a point. I’m not sure he really made it though.

Here’s the rant for those who can take his wildness.

His point was that protecting stupid people with laws enforcing safety is dumbing down the entire race. We should let Darwin’s Natural Selection operate as intended. Well, we used to do that and while it was messy, idiots only did idiotic things once.

However, I’d go further.

My car has four wheel drive. Not all the time and (to my disappointment) it does not have a big lever to engage four wheel drive. The car does it all on its own. If the front wheels start to slip, it engages the back wheel drive all on its own.

It also has an automatic gearbox which I’ve decided is an idiotic machine. It changes up the gears far later than I would. Every time, I have gritted teeth as the engine revs climb and I’m thinking ‘change up, you bastard’.

I have only once tried to teach someone to drive. She paid for lessons instead.. You either learn it in the first five minutes or I give up teaching. I can teach you microbiology and I know it can take time because there’s a lot of it and some of it is hard, but a car only has a few buttons, pedals and switches. that matter. Mine has some I might never press… and it’s automatic, you don’t even need to learn gear changes.

The sunroof button (yes, the buggers make those electric too now) isn’t likely to get a lot of use in Scotland.

But I digress.

The car has all kinds of safety features that were once only found on Volvos. It means I can drive like a dick and know I have a better than average chance of walking away from a crash that will write off the car. I don’t drive like a dick because I blew my entire car budget on this one and can’t buy another one. But I could.

When I was driving my first car, a MkII Ford Cortina I bought for £75, it had no safety features. It barely had a dashboard. The steering was so loose I’d start turning the wheel a few metres before the corner. I took all the rubber plugs out of the floor to stop the leaks filling it with water and often drove it with only the driver’s seat installed. Sometimes it was even bolted to the floor.

It was a shit heap. So I drove very carefully indeed. If that car was totalled in a crash it was very likely to total me too.

Well okay, I did make the passengers jump now and then but the Cortina had corners you could see. Not like the modern ones where you can’t see where the front or back ends are. This was a rectangle when viewed from above and the driver had sight of every corner. I drove that thing through gaps with a quarter of an inch to spare each side. I wouldn’t do that with a modern car. The wavy lines look good but you’re never sure exactly how wide or long it is.

Nowadays I am older and a much more sedate driver (CStM will not mention TruckGate at this or any other point. It happened once and it was perfectly safe!).

I once drove a Ford Focus Estate for six months with nothing but the odometer functioning on the dashboard. I drove my Commer van in the same state for rather longer. Safety? Who needs it?

But to attempt to get back to the point, Foamy’s real argument goes beyond protecting stupid people. All this safety makes the rest of us complacent. Drivers who would have been careful drivers now think ‘well, I have seatbelts, air bags, side impact bars, I’m basically in a tank and I can take risks I wouldn’t normally even consider’.

It’s not just the idiots who crash any more.

It’s the same with tools. I have an electric sander (two, now, since I got a belt sander from my parents for my birthday) and they are festooned with things to stop me sanding my fingers off. I also have old style planes and saws that I am much more careful with because they have sharp edges and no safety features. I am much more likely to damage myself with the tools that have ‘safety’ features because the safety features should protect me – but they don’t always work.

Making safety a law was a bad idea. People expect to be safe all the time now. Even the ones who bang on about being ‘close to nature’. Nature is not safe. Nature is deadly. If you really want to be close to nature, try fending off an enraged badger naked and bare-handed. You have no chance. If you get stitched back together after that one, try a grizzly bear or a tiger – although if you are being all natural, no stitches.

Those are extremes. Total danger and total safety. Not so long ago, the human race had something in between. We called it common sense.

We didn’t go out in T-shirt and shorts when it was -10C and windchill took it down to -20C. We didn’t fight tigers naked. We didn’t drive with the belief the car was going to protect us with its safety features. We treated sharp tools – workshop and kitchen – with respect. We knew how to use weapons without bemusing the enemy by killing ourselves before they had a chance to.

For the upcoming generation, all that is gone.

Now, your personal safety is someone else’s problem and you can sue them for not doing it. Eventually, people will stop selling you anything you might hurt yourself with unless you sign a disclaimer first. Many of the new generation will refuse to sign so they’ll be carving the Sunday microwave roast with a spoon.

That assumes they still have roasts, what with acrylamide and the deadly bacteria imagined to be in everything. I think they can dish out boiled cockroach with a spoon safely.

There are books about the fall of ancient civilisations. They have a common theme. They died because they went soft. Scared of change, scared of anything that might hurt them, scared of death but waiting to die.

Even in fiction, it’s how great civilisations fall. Self hatred kills every one of them.

So did you think our Western civilisation would last forever? The Victorians thought the Empire was eternal and now we have British people wanting to apologise for it! I don’t hear those people demanding the Muslims apologise for the Ottoman empire nor for anyone else’s. That’s by the by, doesn’t matter. As the Brunnen G said, we deserve to die. They believe it as much as our Lefties, the difference is that our lefties don’t think it applies to therm.

This civilisation has run its course. Oh there will be another to follow, also believing itself eternal but it will die in time too. The Soviet Union, Rome, Etrusca, Greece, Egypt at the time of the Pharaohs, all were eternal and all are gone now. Time to move on.

I’m not scared by this. We will have a few fighters left, every time. There will always be those who rise against tyranny just as there will always be tyranny. They might lose but they will always try and there will always be more coming up the line.

Everyone is human. We are the same animal. We are a pack animal with a leader who is bigger and stronger than the rest. Somehow we got to the stage where the leader is more of a total twat than the rest but it won’t last. It never does.

The times, as Bob Dylan said. they are a-changing. For the better? Hahaha! As before they are changing to get to the same.

But there will always be that rebellious streak. Always.

If there is hope, it really does lie in the proles.

 

The laws that aren’t

Many people regard the saying ‘the customer is always right’ as if it’s a law. It’s not. It’s company policy at Marks and Spencer. It applies to no other business, anywhere, unless the business chooses to implement it.

I wouldn’t recommend it. It attracts the most arrogant, self-righteous, pompous bastards to your shop where they know they can behave like spoiled brats and be pandered to. It also wrecks staff morale because if the customer is always right, then by extension the staff member they are arguing with is always wrong. High staff turnover and eternal training costs are the natural consequence.

It’s not a law, no matter how many people think it is. Any other shop can tell you to piss off and never return and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

Via @Dick_Puddlecote on Twitter, it seems there is a non-law that says nonsmokers can’t be sold Electrofags. Oh, some bunch of self-important Public Health arseholes spent a lot of time and taxpayer’s money ‘secret shopping’ in vape shops. Will they sell it to us if we don’t smoke?

We appreciate your support @ASHWalesCymru pic.twitter.com/55aiz8iHDi

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) 10 April 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

It’s a vape shop. The only customers who go inside are ones who want to buy an Electrofag. So the shopkeeper doesn’t ask if they already smoke. Indeed, they are not allowed to sell Electrofag as a stop-smoking aid so asking if the customer smokes could be seen as a violation of that rule. They are only required to check the customer is over 18. Electrofag sellers have always done that. There was never any need to force them to do it.

This ridiculous farce is no different to a vegan group secret shopping in a butcher’s and then getting all uppity because the butcher will sell meat to vegans. The butcher will sell meat to anyone who wants it. It’s a meat shop. If you don’t want meat, don’t go in there.

I’ve never been inside a New Look shop. They sell women’s clothes. I don’t want any. Should I go in and buy something then call the newspapers because they sold a bra to a man? It’s really no different to what Public Health have just done.

In all the years I’ve been smoking, I have never once been asked if I’m a smoker or non-smoker when buying baccy. Can we expect ASH and Public Health to raid Tesco and Morrison’s next, because they went in and asked for a pack of cigarettes and the retailer neglected to ask if they smoked? I think the retail response would be ‘if they don’t want to smoke them, why did they want to buy them?’

Every smoker once bought his or her first pack of cigarettes (in my case it was cigars) and every vaper once bought their first Electrofag. So now some people want to skip the smoking part and go straight to Electrofag. Well why not? Would Public Health really prefer them to start on tobacco and then switch to steam?

Honestly. Politicians listen to what these people say, you know. Unquestioningly. It’s seriously time to apply a minimum IQ to anyone wanting to stand for election because we are being led by utter cretins.

As for the medics, well, I have no faith at all in modern medicine. They used to employ intelligent medics but no longer, it seems. Now all you need to become a medic is the ability to absorb indoctrination and to shut down the analytical part of your mind in order to qualify. Where we once had medics, we now have drones. They just think what they are told to think and they diagnose based on personal prejudice rather than medicine.

If only the medics and politicians could see all the parasites stuck to them. ASH serves no purpose beyond being a new Smoker Inquisition. All the lifestyle dictators in the NHS are the reason it’s always short of medical staff and medicines. Get the parasites out, get proper doctors and nurses in, and we’ll have a damn good health service again.

Physicians, heal thyselves.

Now we are told that crisps are evil. Full of deadly things like fat and salt and… acrylamide.

Oh there’s no law on acrylamide content. There are guidelines but not a law. As for crisps, well, is there anyone out there who thinks crisps are health food? They are a snack. A small snack, a fraction of a potato in a bag. There might be a lot of fat and salt and other crap as a proportion of the weight of crisps in a bag, but the total weight really isn’t very much. Diluted by one human body, even a small one, it amounts to bugger all.

This is the same game as ‘there are 600 deadly chemicals in a cigarette’. A typical cigarette contains 0.6g of tobacco. Ignore the fact that most of it is cellulose (it’s made of leaves, I feel I have to point that out considering the level of intelligence we have to deal with in government and medicine these days) and let’s pretend it’s 0.6g of just the deadly chemicals.

Let’s also pretend there is no ash residue and nothing at all comes off as smoke.

That gives us 0.006g of each deadly chemical. The reality is far, far smaller than that. Scared? I’m not. I’m more scared of diesel fumes on a busy street – and I’m not that scared of those either. Okay, that’s partly because I live on a farm at least 11 miles from a town of any size, but I don’t feel the need to cover my face when visiting the town.

I don’t often eat crisps but when I do, I don;t worry about the salt and fat content. I’m not going to worry about acrylamide in crisps because I like the crispy bits on the outside of roast meat. I know there will be many daft sods out there who will be scared. Including every single politician and medic.

The crisp story doesn’t scare me at all because when you change the percentages into real quantities eaten, they amount to… bugger all. Just like the deadly stuff in smoke. Just like the evil thickening agent (no, idiots, it’s NOT antifreeze) that’s food grade and found in yogurts and loads of other things.

Yet again, the news is up in arms over the breaking of a law that isn’t. The idea behind it all, of course, is to make it law. The general zombie population won’t even notice because they already thought it was a law.

And, once vape shops have to check if you’re a smoker before they sell you Electrofag, Tesco will have to check if you’re a smoker before they sell you any tobacco. Having watched how these evil bastards work for decades, their next logical step isn’t hard to work out.

Then you won’t be able to buy drink unless you can prove you’re a drinker… and so on. They can’t stop us so they’ll kill us off by attrition. Nonsmokers will never be able to take up smoking or vaping, nondrinkers will never be able to buy booze. I know, I can feel the shrugs now. If you don’t smoke and/or drink now, why would you?

I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about those currently growing up who might be looking forward to turning 18 so they can try these things. In the future the only way they’ll get to try them will be to buy totally unregulated stuff from criminal gangs.

Won’t happen? Public Health and ASH and the rest of the nannies will tell you it won’t happen.

Like it didn’t happen when heroin and cocaine were made illegal…

Basically, in the future, all your kids are fucked. You think the Righteous care?

They’re doing it on purpose.

Going Large? The price is your children

Well, one more day to meet the unreasonable self-imposed deadline to get Longrider’s book out. It’s still possible. I’ve sent the first draft covers and as long as they are OK, we’re good to go. I have all day tomorrow to make changes because the pelmet lies dead at my feet after a two-day battle. It’s intact, I can re-use it but it’s off the wall at last.

I didn’t even have to bleed for this one. Result! It has surrendered for the glory of the Sontaran empire. Oops. Did I say that aloud?

 

Anyway. The modern world despises those of generous waistline as much as it despises smokers and anyone who likes a glass of sherry once a week. I’m okay on the last one, I rarely drink sherry.

Obesity, the Department of the Bleeding Obvious has finally discovered, is at least partly genetic.

Parents account for about 20% of the total fatness of their kids. The idiot reporting this says this means that each parent contribute one-fifth of their kids’ future BMI measure. They didn’t listen in school.

Bollocks. Parents each contribute 50% of the rancid little monsters’ genes and if one has the ‘conserve food as fat in case you don’t get any more’ gene, the kid has a 50% chance of being a fat one. If both parents have it then the kid has the gene for sure.

The actual science would be that around 20% of chubby children are genetically made that way. It isn’t something that applies to every family.

Yet it’s enough to have the Righteous in a tizzy. They don’t like this idea that the thing they want to control can’t be controlled. Who will pay them if that is the case?

Oh, ‘intervention’ is still needed. Fancy word for ‘control’ but that’s all it is. It also means that the righteous can claim that every – EVERY – parent is responsible for a fifth of their kids’ fatness and therefore take them all. It’s a lie, but aren’t we used to that by now?

Some people retain energy better than others and that means they can get fat. It has always been so. In times of plenty, those people do indeed get fat but when times are hard, they are most likely to survive a time of famine.

It’s how the human race has survived. By having people who are different. Crops like bananas and chocolate and wheat are clones. All the same. A disease that kills one will kill them all. They have no differentiation so they cannot get past a killing stroke.

Humans come in different types. That’s what keeps the race going. Some of us are immune to certain diseases, some are susceptible. Some of us are not affected by heavy drinking and smoking, some are killed by it. We’re different and that’s what keeps us going through tough times.

The medics want to make us all the same. Kill the deviant. Make the British Standard Human.

When they’ve done that, one small virus will kill the entire human race. If one is affected, all are affected.

Don’t be wheat.

 

Why is this news?

Apparently, warning children that snacks are going to make them fat just makes them want the snack more.

Surely every parent already knows this, starting with the very first parents right at the dawn of humanity? Tell a child they can’t have something and their brain immediately defaults to ‘You’re keeping the good stuff for yourself!’

They have to try it, to find out why it’s not allowed. Tell them not to touch fire and they’ll touch it to find out why. In that case only once, but tell them not to eat chocolate and they’ll test that assertion over and over.

The antismoking crusade is what drives children to smoking. It’s bad, it’s evil, you can’t have it… so they have to try it and find out for themselves. Some won’t like it, some will. The same goes for alcohol, sugar, salt… That’s because children are people, and people are all individuals with different likes and dislikes. Something modern medicine can’t seem to grasp.

Children aren’t stupid. Repellent, unhygienic and despicable yes, but not stupid.

Children want to be grown up. They want to try grown up stuff. Okay, when we grow up we realise we were far better off being children, but what child knows this apart from those of us who never really grew up?

So, tell them they can’t have it and it’s grown-up stuff. It exists therefore someone has it. It must be the grown-ups. They want it for themselves. Why can’t we have it?

The concept of ‘one day you’ll be a grown-up’ is entirely lost on children. On most adults too. They cannot envisage the future, only the past – and for children it’s often just the ‘now’. That’s why children don’t see consequences, and why most adults don’t see them either. They cannot think ahead. They don’t know how.

I’ll soon be 57. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Most people follow a path through life. Not me. I just bumble through and most of it (barring a few utter disasters) seems to work out. I’m alive, and eternally broke, but I can pay the rent and buy food and put petrol in the car so everything is good. I don’t want to be rich. There is nothing I need that much money for.

I remember being a child. I had a Dalek suit made of PVC. It was floppy and didn’t hold the Dalek shape but it was fun. Armed with a sink plunger and a whisk. I had a Scammel tank transporter steel toy and a tank (can’t remember which) to put on the back. I melted many, many toy soldiers on the coal fire.

I had Action Man toys, Batman’s Batmobile with plastic flame from the exhaust, Joe 90’s car, Bond’s Aston Martin, many many more. These would all be worth a fortune now if I had thought ahead. Kept them pristine and in their boxes. All are gone.

But I was a child. Joe 90 died in a mid-air collision with Thunderbird 2. Batman and Bond failed in their missions in spectacular style, involving a screwdriver and deadly curiosity. I took things apart to see how they worked. I was not thinking of the future. There wasn’t one. There was only ‘now’. The future happens after sleep and it’ll be the same as today.

Yeah, I was told not to touch the drinks cabinet. So obviously I had a go at the sherry, the easiest one to open. I was strangely uninterested in my dad’s cigarettes but then he never told me not to try them. Either he assumed I couldn’t light them, or that I wouldn’t be interested, or that it was so obvious he didn’t need to tell me. Whatever the reason, they weren’t on the banned list so weren’t interesting.

I have stuck a knife in the toaster and I have run with scissors. I’m still here. The scissors were closed and held point down and I unplugged the toaster before digging out the stuck crumpet. They don’t tell you that part. Just the overall ‘it’s dangerous’, not the way to make it not dangerous.

Snacks won’t make you fat unless you eat a lot of them and don’t move much. That is not the warning that’s ever given. There is no safe level of biscuits or crisps – that is the warning and it’s patently ridiculous.

Children see it. Medics and pressure groups don’t. Can you?