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…

Dominoes

No, it’s not about pizza.

Today I was blocked again on Twitter. It’s what the indoctrinated and the one-track-minded would love to do in real life: just silence any alternative viewpoint. Except… it doesn’t silence anyone. It just stops the blocker’s involvement in the conversation.

So I guess the one who blocked me won’t see this. Should I start to care, I’ll be sure to post an update. I’ve given up on these people. They cannot bear to consider any other view and I long ago tired of talking to walls.

His argument was that cattle produce methane, methane causes global warming, so if people eat less beef there’ll be less cattle and thereby save the planet.

I pointed out that if he wants less cattle then he must also restrict all milk products. I mentioned falling dominoes. Twitter’s limitations did not allow me to elaborate the difference between beef and dairy herds and I doubt he’d be interested anyway. Nor would he be interested in hearing about all the other ruminant species out there. I’m blocked now but well, I’m not involved in education any more. The wilfully ignorant are not my problem. He’ll see it one day, when his personal domino falls, but I’m not here to save him. I’m here to save me, and anyone else who will listen.

My background is in intestinal microbiology. My PhD was on the metabolism in the gut of ruminant animals. So yes, I know what I’m talking about here.

I saw the bandwagon of methane reduction when it started. I worked in labs that jumped on that bandwagon. Some actually believed it would make a difference but most saw a good way to keep the department funded. Sadly, that part of science is necessary: experiments don’t pay for themselves. So, many labs run high-profile projects for funding and do the interesting stuff behind the scenes. You only get to hear about the interesting stuff when it finally does something impressive.

The interesting stuff won’t get any funding as speculation, it has to prove itself first. It does that on the back of bandwagon grants.

Methane is trivial as a greenhouse gas. It was long ago shown that water vapour is the major greenhouse effector but you can’t take exhalations and you can’t tax the sun on the ocean. Therefore, carbon dioxide and methane, extraordinarily tiny components of the air, have to be continuously blamed. There’s no money in steam.

If there was that much methane in the air then every time I lit a cigarette, the flare would be visible in Edinburgh. Methane isn’t inert, there are soil bacteria that use if for growth so it does get used up. It isn’t the final end product, it’s part of a cycle. I worked on methane oxidising bacteria as one of those Interesting Things at the back of another project. Didn’t get too far but I did get a paper out of it.

You cannot isolate one single reaction and claim you have the answer to the global ecosystem. It’s a very complex ecosystem. Change one part of it and all the rest will change to adapt to it. Like rabbits or cane toads in Australia – meddle with an ecosystem and all hell can break loose. One change is like toppling that first domino. It’s hard to stop the chain reaction once it starts.

The Green God’s religion does not recognise dominoes. To them, every scientific result is to be taken in isolation and then applied to the entire planet as Gospel. Unquestionable. ‘The science is settled’. Yeah, well, if it’s unquestionable then it’s not science. It’s a cult. They can’t grasp that.

The also can’t grasp that cows are not the only source of methane – in fact they aren’t even the major source. Mud flats, peat bogs, any swamp anywhere is pumping out methane all the time (I spent three years working on bacteria in estuarine mud flats too). And we won’t even start on what happens when a subsea methane clathrate collapses. The ice worms that live in them are cute though.

Cows don’t produce methane. No mammal does, not directly. Bacteria in their guts produce methane and those bacteria are not specific to the gut. They live in swampy ground and anywhere it’s wet and there’s no or very little oxygen. Including deep water. Cows are a small part of the whole ecosystem and yet they are to be wiped out to save the planet? Total extinction will have no measurable effect on methane production at all.

That’s not why they are being wiped out. They are to be removed so we don’t eat meat. There’s a reason for that.

I remember when butter was suddenly deemed a Terrible Thing. Spread butter on your toast and a heart attack was only hours away. It’s been shown to be bollocks now but it persisted for decades. It coincided with the rise of margarine, then the pretend-butter spreads I refer to as plasticine. Butter, it turns out, is healthier than the synthetics but it took a long time to get the truth past the censors.

Doesn’t matter if the cows are to be eradicated. All we’ll have left are the synthetics. Synthetic milk already exists. It’s horrible but it exists.

Sugar is suddenly evil. Well not really suddenly, it’s been sneered at for a long time. That started with the introduction of artificial sweeteners and has become harsher and more desperate recently as people are rejecting the synthetics in favour of actual sugar.

Today’s new product is insect protein. A whole industry is trying to get off the ground. Faced with the choice, would you pick the burger made from beef or the one made from cockroaches? Yeah, it’s not a hard choice.

So it has to be made a hard choice. Push up the price of meat with ‘greenhouse tax’ and ‘fat tax’ and boost the guilt trips and soon the roachburger is all you can afford. The drones fall for it every time.

I have seen Twitter drones insist that Electrofag is designed by the tobacco companies to keep us smoking. I don’t engage in conversation with that level of stupid, it’s so concentrated it might be contagious. There’s no point.

Electrofag is the biggest threat the tobacco companies have ever faced.  I have several and I like them – although I still like the real ones too. Many have switched away from the real ones to Electrofag, and many new ‘smokers’ became new vapers instead. Isn’t that what those who hate tobacco companies wanted? A big dent in their profits?

It’s not what those who live on other people’s earnings want. Tobacco taxes account for an enormous amount of revenue and Electrofag is denting that too. This should give anti-tobacco governments a problem. Their drones will want to cheer on the demise of tobacco but those at the top can’t allow it to happen. What happens to their funding, their very reason for existence, if we all switch to vaping?

Fortunately the drone mind is easy to manipulate. Just tell them it’s another kind of tobacco, tobacco companies sell it, and all vapers turn into smokers. Those are all total lies, none of them ever happened, but the drones need no evidence. They will believe what they are told and block anyone who tries to tell them anything different.

Twitter is perfect for drone control. They’ll block any reasonable voice and end up talking amongst themselves, just reinforcing the indoctrination they’ve been exposed to until the Cult of the Green God is ready to launch its own jihad on we filthy heretics.

It’s not new. Many cults have used the same techniques to produce blindly-believing followers. This one pretends to use science. Its pronouncements come from academics.

I’ve met an awful lot of academics. Some are at genius level, most are merely clever but some make you wonder how they got in there. I can think of two PhD’s I’ve met who made me wonder if the qualification was really worth anything at all.

Yes, there are idiot academics. They make up for their uselessness by fast-talking and sounding convincing. The cunning ones build a following and the really devious get the press on side. It’s hard to sack someone when the press has built them up to hero status.

Personally I avoid any contact with the press. I talked to one once, was totally misrepresented and had phone calls from genuine scientists wondering what the hell I was up to. Now, I have no comment for any reporter anywhere. Read the journal papers, wait for the data to be published. I’m not talking until that’s done. At the moment I work as a consultant for commercial companies so can’t say much of anything anyway.

I’ve never blocked anyone on Twitter and never been blocked for abusive language. I’ve been blocked twice for agreeing with people, once for sympathising, and a few times for trying to tell them the truth. They don’t want the truth, they want their beliefs.

Let them have their beliefs. I work in science. Everything I do can be questioned and sometimes, those questions reveal to me something I’ve missed. I do not silence dissent. I encourage it. It’s a source of new information. I have no time to play with those who believe ‘the science is settled’.

That’s a religion. I do not have time for religion.

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.

We’re going to need a bigger van…

…for those trips to Europe.

Cigarettes are to rise in price again and there is now a system in place whereby no pack of cigarettes can cost less than £7.24. You can get a pack for less than half that in any other country in Europe.

Assuming we do eventually leave the EU, there will be a limit imposed on how many cigarettes we can bring back per person. There is no limit on how many you can bring back for your own use at the moment due to the EU’s free movement of goods rules but if you have loads, expect to have them stolen by border control anyway. So the imposition of a limit isn’t any reason to stay in the EU.

If the limit is, say, 300 (15 packs) then if you have a weekend in Europe you’ll save about £54 per person by stocking up while there.

The tobacco story is an old one. I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t cheaper everywhere outside the UK. Even as a child, if we went to France or Spain my dad would take the limit home and so would my mum (who never smoked). Lately my parents often went to Portugal and brought me home five 50g packs of rolling baccy. At the time it was a gift worth at least £75 at UK prices. They paid half that. Unfortunately they are getting too old for those trips.

Oh yes, my parents are still alive. My father, a lifelong smoker and my mother, a lifelong passive smoker, are both still alive. Neither have experienced cancer. It’s not just me who defies NHS statistics. It’s the whole family.

Alcohol is also a lot cheaper in most EU countries. I noticed, in Germany, that whiskies like Famous Grouse were the same price in little corner shops as they are in big supermarkets here. I also noticed that only the idiots in charge of the UK have fallen for hiding tobacco behind doors and putting them in plain packs. Nobody else has fallen for this one.

Nobody else will fall for the utterly cretinous notion of putting all booze, including fine malt whiskies, into plain packs and hiding them behind shutters. Oh it’s coming. Plain packs for ‘non-approved’ foods is already being talked about as the Next Logical Step in the bullying of the entire nation. These thugs are never satisfied. Never. When they have total control they will start telling you how many steps you have to take every day – oh wait, that one’s already out there.

Now we have a tax on sugar. Initially on sugary drinks but if you think it will end there you really haven’t been paying attention at all. Imagine a world where Coke and Pepsi are in the same olive drab packaging with photos of meth mouth and Cyril Smith on every bottle. The company name relegated to 10-point Times New Roman. It’s all behind doors and you have to ask for it. Imagine it well because if you are under 50 you’ll see it in your lifetime.

Fancy a burger? You’ll get it with MACDONALDS on the olive green box in 10-point Times New Roman with a picture of someone syringing lard through an artery on the top. Actually not hard to copy. I like liver and it often has a large artery or two going through it.

Fancy fish and chips? It’ll be a lot smaller and cost more, not least because the chip shop has to buy olive green wrapping paper with pictures of Bernard Manning nude and a warning that all fish are so full of mercury that they will roll off the table if left unattended.

Oh I know. You’re scoffing. You don’t believe it can happen.

Go back to 2004 and tell the pub customers that soon they will be banned from smoking in there. Tell them they will buy cigarettes in drab green packs from behind doors and they will pay £7.24 for the cheapest brand. Listen to them scoff at you.

You’re going to need a van for a lot more than tobacco on future visits abroad. If you fly it will very likely be well worth paying an excess baggage charge.

As for smugglers, they’re likely to steal Mr. MacDonald’s favourite line.

‘I’m lovin’ it’.

The Science of the Obvious

Or maybe the ‘oblivious’. It’s New Science. Never let the facts get in the way of a profitable conclusion.

Scientists (and I use the term in the loosest possible sense) have discovered that people like to socialise in pubs. What a pity then, that ‘science’ also declares that drinking is evil and there is ‘no safe level of alcohol’.

The article states its reasons for the decline of pubs…

In recent years, the lure of cheap booze from supermarkets and tougher drink-drive laws have resulted in many becoming restaurants or even closing.

No mention of the smoking ban? No recognition that booze has always been cheaper in supermarkets and even before them, in off-licences? No mention that the tougher drink-drive laws only happened in Scotland? The two reasons they give for the closure of so many pubs are not reasons at all. The one they miss out is the primary reason. Oh, and they don’t allow vaping either, because it ‘looks like smoking’.

Yet Science, that new version of it that doesn’t bother with any actual science, declares we must all go to pubs and be sociable and friendly – but no smoking, no drinking and soon no talking.

The commenters include a few utterly moronic drones who declare that pubs only serve to put out drunks into the community at closing time. Really, they believe that’s all pubs do (or rather did, before they shut down). They must have watched too many zombie apocalypse films and the limited space in their brains has caused a crossover between Dawn of the Dead and Last Orders.

There are, however, an increasing number of comments pointing out the real reason regular pub visitors like me suddenly became non-pub-visitors. The smoking ban. There is some intelligence out there still. Just not in any politician’s head.

I doubt anyone in government will ever manage to make the connection.

Fat boy slimming

In this modern world, we all have to fit a standard size, shape and lifestyle because, idiots believe, that will mean we never get sick and the NHS can spend all day drinking tea while the cleaners sit around playing Call of Dirty.

Slim people get sick too you know, and nonsmokers can get cancer. Making everyone the same won’t change that. Yet the Righteous insist on demanding we live as they direct. Length of life is all that matters. Whether you enjoy it or not is irrelevant. You are not men, you are economic units and you will do as your owners decree.

“Harder hitting campaigns, similar to those for anti-smoking, are required.”

Well, the smokers can tell you where that one is going.

‘You can’t be fat in here, matey, go and be fat outside.’

‘This employer operates a strict no-fatness policy.’

It will be illegal to sell or give sweets or cakes to a child under 18.

If the till operator suspects you are overweight, you will have to be weighed before they decide whether or not to sell you that chocolate bar.

Fantasy? Really? Go back just 15 years in time and tell everyone that soon, smoking will not be allowed in pubs or any business common room. Tell them there will be no smoking on railway and bus stations or at bus stops.

They will laugh at you the same way you are now laughing at me.

The National Obesity Forum is just following the template. The usual control freaks are involved. I think we should abbreviate the National Obesity part of the name and call them NObs.

I was going to suggest making them look ridiculous but they are doing a fine job of that on their own.

‘Obesity will cause 700,000 new cancer cases by 2035‘. Not ‘could’ or ‘might’. ‘Will’. It’s a definite and precise amount. They Have Seen Your Future, and it’s not only wobbly, it’s lumpy too. Science? Hahahaha! When have these people ever bothered about science?

Hey, fat boy, step away from cancer. That all belongs to smokers now. It’s ours. We are the only ones who get tested for it. The slim nonsmoker can never get cancer. It’s medically impossible so no doctor will test for it. If they wanted to cull the population, they are going the right way about it in my book  😉

By 2025, 20% of the human race will be obese. Of course they will. The Righteous have been steadily reducing the threshold for obesity so there need be no change at all in real body weight. You can stay the same weight, they’ll lower the obesity bar until they get you over it.

The BMI nonsense does not distinguish between fat and muscle. Some years back, I weighed the same as a friend who had been weight training since he was 13. We’re about the same height. I looked like a version of him that had melted. Yet we would have had the same BMI even though he looked like the Hulk and I looked like the Blob.

Don’t get too muscled up. They only go by weight and height. If you look like The Terminator, you’re obese now.

The UK is being exhorted to start a full-on War on Chubbiness. It’ll be the same as the War on Smoking that soon became the War against the Smokers. Yeah, if you’re a bit curvy now, watch out. Smokers can hide when they aren’t actually smoking. You well rounded people don’t have that option.

They talk about ‘leadership from government’ but they don’t want leadership. They want what these scumbags always want. Money and control. Ideally, money they don’t have to work for. They want your tax money so they can tax you more and get even more money.

And they get a serious orgasm about telling people what to do and watching them do it. These people are deranged and dangerous. They are sick and perverted. And Government is still listening to them. Because our Government is full of fucking morons.

Sugar tax. France has one. Mexico has one. Do they work? Of course not. It’s not sugar that’s making you fat.

Avoiding sugar is making your babies fat. Yes, real science is starting to fight back. I’ve always avoided aspartame because it gives me the shits something fierce. I use real sugar and real butter – and I’m not fat because I don’t use too much of them. It’s not that difficult. Yet it now seems that avoiding sugar and going for artificial alternatives is causing you to put on weight – so the Righteous response is to tax sugar. I wonder how much funding they get from aspartame manufacturers?

Further, it seems that inhaling polluted air can lead to obesity, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. This one is somewhat compromised by the fact that the most polluted air is in cities, where more people lead sedentary lives and where food is more easily available. Even so, it is a link that should be considered before diving in there with a sugar tax.

But then, nobody cared about air pollution when lung cancer increased. That was all blamed on smoking so I expect this study will be quietly shelved too.

Soon we will have a nation of slim, muscle-free drones afraid to put on a gram of weight in case they get too much mass and gravity smears them into the ground. Afraid to touch a drop of alcohol in case they die of alcoholism within the hour. Afraid of steam.

These people will be ruled by fat smoky pissheads with the money to pay the taxes, even though they won’t have to pay the taxes because they will be subsidised by the taxes they take from the skinny zombies.

Don’t let it happen. Resistance is never futile.