All good things...

Including what I have written on Orphans of Liberty, this is my 1000th published post. Some were good, some were pants and some caused a stir. I've clocked nearly a quarter million page views and over 5000 comments from a range of people crazy enough to read my rantings.

My first post was on 25th May 2010 so it's been more than two years of happy blogging. Before that the internet was for ebay and porn. It wasn't until I accidentally discovered Nanny Knows best, and from there, Dick Puddlecote that I was introduced to the world of blogging and wanted to be a part of it.

But what has happened since then? I didn't expect this blog to change anything on it's own but I did expect change. I expected things to get better. I expected a Conservative government to behave like conservatives and put a stop to the nanny state, the welfare state and the hideous levels of taxation we are forced to pay.

Naivety? Obviously.

Things have only got worse. All the pre election promises have been broken.

The war on the smoker has continued with gusto. The tobacco display ban was brought in and soon we will have plain packaging. The taxes have continued to rise.

The war on the motorist has continued with gusto. Petty rules and fines continue. Taxes continue to rise.

The war on personal choice is worse than it ever was. Minimum alcohol pricing is soon to be introduced. Taxes on certain foods will follow, as will plain packaging for both booze and food.

The war on the British citizen continues unabated. Surveillance, anti terror laws, jobsworths, thousands of new laws and stautes.

The government is much too big and way out of control, but it's not only the government we are fighting, it's the people.

People call for these new laws, people demand protection and insist the state dictate the lives of those around them. People demand security at the complete expense of freedom. Most people don't even have the imagination to take advantage of freedom, to use it and to enjoy it. They fear freedom. People acting under their own free will frighten the general populace and they demand freedom be taken away.

And they hate the rich and successful. Most folk have no idea how to make something of their lives. They have no idea where they are going or how to control it. Because they will never have anything, they become jealous of those that do. They demand their right to a piece of pie when they never contributed to the baking.

The people demand that freedom be taken away and everyone else be snapped down to the lowest common denominator. The government are only to happy to oblige.

How do you fight that? You can't. It can only end with a massive shift in the way people think. Even a revolution would not solve the problem. If the people revolted it would be for the wrong reasons and would take us in the wrong direction. A revolution would be about confiscating the assets of the rich and redistributing the wealth. Why? Because that's whet the majority of people want.

I and others like me are in such a tiny minority, all we can do is make noise and be humoured by the masses like some funny pet.

Answers? When I started this blog I thought I had them. Now I have none. That's not the right way around is it?

It's time for me to blend in with the sheep. Rather than reading the ePapers over my cornflakes, looking for a blog story, I need to be watching an episode of Friends.

Rather than boiling my piss day in and day out, getting annoyed about the latest stupidity of the sheep, I need to find something productive to do with my time.

I need to get out of the 9 to 5 existence I have become trapped in since the socialist bastards closed all the pubs and put an end to my career.

It's in that endeavour that I need to be focusing my energy now, not trying to fight the tides. There's no point fighting the unwinnable fight. And to be honest I'm out of ideas.

I'll still be around and still available for protests and bacci trips - buckothemoose@gail.com

For now I'm falling back on the old 'disgraced polotician' excuse - To spend more time with my family. And more time on me and my options. A skint guy in a 9-5 with a passion for crappy cars can't do much anyway.

It's been emotional folks...and remember...

...be excellent to each other!

Lite bites

NHS 'brand' could be sold abroad to generate income, says government

Hospitals are to be encouraged by the government to sell their services abroad, setting up clinics with the famous NHS brand to pull in much-needed cash for the health service from overseas.

The famous NHS brand? I spilled my cornflakes reading that this morning.

If the NHS were a brand named pair of jeans for example, the material would be frayed, the seams would be splitting, the pockets too deep, the legs too tight and the arse too big. (Having said that, I bet some kids would pay £100 per pair for those)

The NHS brand is a bottomless money pit, top heavy management, not enough doctors and nurses, waste and filth borne disease. It's also about discrimination of people who actually want to use the service they have paid for if their ailments can be blamed on lifestyle choice.

I seriously doubt anyone on the world market would be interested in buying the NHS 'brand'.

Did Trabant try to compete with Ford and Vauxhall?

Plain packs will not make this worse?

East Lancashire a ‘hot spot’ for illegal tobacco

ILLICIT tobacco sales have become an ‘acute problem’ in East Lancashire, according to consumer watchdogs.
Seventeen traders have been prosecuted so far this year and there have been 12 court cases since April.

You think it's bad now, just wait untill we get plain packs.

She said the counterfeit, duty-free and ‘black market’ brands like Jin Lings were often sold at half the price of legitimate cigarettes, providing unfair competition to other traders and cheating the taxman.

That's what you get with excessive taxation. You make fags unaffordable and the black market steps in to help out.

Each pack sold cheated customs out of around £5.83 for a packet of cigarettes and £10.81 for a 50g pouch of tobacco, she said.

That's how much we pay to the government every time we buy a pack of fags or bacci. And a good portion of that is used to buy big sticks to whack us round the head with.

Throw plain packs into the mix, making cigarettes even easier to counterfeit and what will we get? The same problem but much bigger. An obese black market maybe?

More fake fags on the street at even cheaper prices. Will that stop the kiddies smoking? Will it bugger, it will make it even cheaper and easier for them to start. Smoking will be cool again.

Of course there is a huge industry that has a large interest in recruiting the next generation of young smokers. Do you know who they are?

That's right, it's the Tobacco Control Industry.

They need new smokers. If everyone quit, the gravy train would end.

What do you have to do to go to prison these days?

Burnley thug left two injured after chair attack

A THUG who attacked two innocent men in a takeaway and left one with a broken arm, kept his freedom.

A violent attack leaving one guy with a broken arm and he keeps his freedom. So just what do you have to do to get sent down these days?

Burnley Crown Court heard how Christopher Hoyle, 27, had been drinking when he set about the two victims with a metal chair in the early hours.

A violent, drunken attack and he keeps his freedom. Maybe it was his first offence?

Hoyle, a self-employed joiner, of Boundary Street, Burnley, who has three previous convictions, admitted two counts of assault causing actual bodily harm. He received eight months in jail, suspended for 18 months, with 100 hours unpaid work and must pay £600 compensation.

A violent, drunken attack that left one man with a broken arm and he's been convicted three times in the past. Just what do you have to do to get sent down these days? Maybe he was provoked?

Michael Wallbank, prosecuting, said the victims were in the Dixie Chicken, Burnley. The defendant, for no apparent reason picked up a metal chair and struck one of them. The victim’s friend stood up to help but he was hit on the forehead with the chair. The first victim suffered a broken arm, his friend received a cut hand and bruises.

Oh. Well maybe he admitted guilt at the earliest opportunity and cooperated fully with the police?

He was arrested and questioned after the ‘mindless violence’ but made no comment.

A violent, drunken attack that left one man with a broken arm. Previous form. Unprovoked and no cooperation with the police. So just what do you have to do to get sent down these days?

Ahhh. Annoy someone on Twitter.

The jails must be reserved for thought criminlas these days.

One for the Quiet Man

The Quiet Man often reports on how a certain protected ethnic group gets more favourable treatment than the rest of us.

I spotted two stories back to back in my local paper that highlight just such inequality.

The first is about a school teacher who was accused of assaulting an unruly pupil who he was trying to restrain. He was fortunately found not guilty in court yet is still suspended from his job:

http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/9881659.Great_Harwood_teacher_remains_suspended_despite_assault_acquittal/

A TEACHER who was found not guilty of slapping an ‘out of control’ pupil remains suspended from his Great Harwood school.
He will remain suspended from the Ash Street school until September and may be facing another internal investigation once term restarts.  

He has the full support of the parents. But not the school, they have rules to follow you see:

“Every parent was just really aghast that it came to that and I think it could have been dealt with internally.”
A spokesman from the children’s and young people’s department at Lancashire County Council said that because allegations had been made, the school had to start its own investigation.
He said: “When the school reconvenes, then they will have to make a decision on how to proceed.

The second story is about another teacher who was found guilty of a horrible catalogue of abuse including assault and bullying.

 http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/9881663.Mosque_teacher_gets_community_service_for_assaults_on_pupils/

The boys testified that if they struggled to recite the text perfectly, they would be subjected to name callings, beatings, and made to sit in “stress positions”.
Don Green, prosecuting, told the court one victim said: “He hits people when they do not learn. He uses his fists and slaps them on their body, anywhere.

Teacher number one who was acquitted has no support from the school and remains suspended pending internal enquiries.

Teacher number two has the full support of the school:

He was supported in court by seven members of the mosque committee,

He was given 270 hours of community service and made to pay compensation of £150 to two pupils. I wonder what his punishment would have been if he was not part of that protected minority group?

Lite bites

When campaigners want us to view something they don't like as 'Bad', it is often customary to compare it to tobacco and smoking.

That's because tobacco is one of the most dangerous things in the world. It even kills innocent children.
Just to put this danger into context, maybe there's something we could compare tobacco to?

THE NSW government is hiding behind fund managers to shirk its responsibility not to invest in tobacco companies and other unethical businesses, public health groups say.
The ACT has announced it will no longer invest in companies that make cigarettes, cluster bombs or land mines,

Of course! Cluster bombs and Land mines. Those are almost as deadly as second hand smoke.