While I was gone...

Hello

Hello?

It's been a pretty while since I've been around these parts. Moose Meadows has been deserted for quite some time. I thought I might pop back, remove the dust sheets, clean the place up a bit and see about opening for business again.

It's been a couple of years since I've been off the blog, but there have been some recent happenings that have made me miss the place and think about settling back in.

Not that I haven't done that before. I've had a couple of attempts at getting back into the old bloggy thingy, but without much success. Maybe this time will be different? Maybe not. There's only one way to find out...

I've always been knocking around, even though I've not been blogging. I'm still reading everyone else's blogs and commenting here and there, but recently there has been a new innovation in blogging. Frank Davis opened the Smokey Drinkey Bar.

If you haven't seen it, it's a video chat room where people can log on and talk to each other face to face, about whatever takes their fancy.
The conversation is usually about smoking and the effects, both personal and worldwide, of the smoking ban / smoking bans. There have been some rather wacky conversations about all kinds of crap though. There have been people from all over the world dropping by for a pint and a chat. I've found myself logging on at about 7pm UK time and talking to people in England and staying on right through to 3am and talking to New Zealand and the USA.

I had to knock that on the head though. I was rough as arseholes the day after my first eight hour session. Now I just tend to pop in for a few hours.

The Smokey Drinkey bar can be found here . It's a very friendly place and I would recommend dropping by for a few scoops.

I think it was the Smokey Drinkey bar that made me realise how much I miss blogging (although I don't know if it will actually help me get my mojo back and start writing stuff worth actually reading again. I quit originally due to a serious case of bloggy lethargy.)

I don't know if it was for similar reasons or not, but Nisakiman has also started blogging. You all know Nisakiman, he has been commenting on blogs regularly for years, but this is his first time on the other side of the screen. Should be something to look forward to.

(I must be really out of practise. I've so far put two links in this post and I had to go on google to remember how to do it)

So what's been happening while I was away?

I walked away from The Meadows almost five years ago. At the time I said that all the crap we were force to put up with was only getting worse and I predicted that it would continue to do so. I've not been disappointed. Every comment I made on that final post is more true today that it was even then.

Bollocks!

The war on the smoker? Rubbish! Smoking in cars with bin lids present has been outlawed while I was away. As if we need a law for that. Fortunately I never have the little snot gobbling noise machines in my vehicle anyway
The tenth anniversary of the smoking ban passed with ever more fabulous claims about the millions of lives it's saved
On a lighter note, some of the smaller tax sponging anti-smoker organisations have been defunded and the damage caused by the ban was quite widely reported, to my surprise.
I actually got some comments of mine in the Guardian over the anniversary, as did Frank Davis. That was a surprise, as a more smoker hating newspaper you will not normally see

The war on the motorist? Bloody rubbish! Petty rules and the fines that accompany them, continue with gusto. Driving while using a mobile phone was already illegal when I quit blogging, as if the current laws about dangerous or careless driving were not enough, but they have since vastly increased the penalties for being caught doing so. GM Police even confirmed that the law covers using your phone to 'Apple Pay' for your burgers in a McDonalds drive through restaurant if you have the engine running.
We live in a country where we need a law that heavily penalises people for sitting in a drive through and paying for their food in a non-state approved manner.

The war on personal choice? Absolute rubbish! That non-existant slippery slope can only be likened to something you would need a white water raft to negotiate.
Minimum alcohol pricing is only just being held at bay in Scotland by the 'evil' alcohol industry. The sugar tax is already with us, brought in by a Conservative Government of all things and salt, fat, flavour of any kind and every low brow food outlet you can buy it in, is being targeted with glee by any prodnosed busybody organisation that was a little too late to the Tobacco Control party.

And what's new in the past five years?
Racism. Anything you do or say is racist. Just being white is racist. You can't be racist if you're not white though; you can say the most hideously abominably racist things and think the most hateful disgusting garbage, but as long as you don't have white skin, well that's ok then
LGBTQCASSWHAT. What a load of laughable nonsense. There must be about fifty different genders now, and if you disagree and think that maybe science says there's only two, you're a hateful transphobic bigot
Prison. You're alright if all you've done is beaten up a white lad down the pub, but if you've transgressed in any of the racist, Islamophobic, homophobic, Transphobic made up gibberish that is political correctness these days, it's off to prison for you. Particularly if you did it on Twitter. Law enforcement have pretty much given up on crime in the real world; hurty feelz on the Internet is where it's all at now

We got Brexit though! That's one in the eye. Now we just have to sit around for a few years and watch the Conservatives fuck it all up. The Great Repeal Bill? That's newspeak if I ever heard it. Repeal my arse, enshrine all EU law into English law is what they're actually doing. Do you remember a time when a Government repealed a law? Ever?

And our Government had another brain fart yesterday, what was it? Oh yes. They are going to ban cars. Well they can kiss my arse with that one

Just because some lunatic green organisation called 'Client Earth' decide to take them to court over some EU targets, which won't matter to us after Brexit anyway, the Government decide the best course of action is to ban all petrol and diesel cars. Who the actual fucking fuck do these people think they are anyway!?

Electric vehicle technology is not yet good enough to take over. In time, it will improve. Some people are already turning to electric vehicles because it's the right choice for them. At least two taxi firms in my home town have converted completely to electric or hybrid.
We don't need the Government to make that choice for us. In fact, once the Government makes that choice, it's simply going to fuck everything up

The technology isn't yet good enough to supplant petrol and diesel cars. If electric and hybrid vehicle manufacturers want to increase sales, they will continue to improve the technology. As that happens and more people buy electric cars, other manufacturers will move into producing them. The technology will improve and the price will drop, as happens with all new technology

Now the Government has announced it will totally ban petrol and diesel cars by 2040. There's no longer any need to spend money on research and development. There's no longer any need to try and lower the costs of the technology. By 2040, everyone who wants a car will have to buy an electric car, no matter the cost and no matter the quality of what's on offer

If the Government had just kept it's beak out of the market, eventually most cars on the road would be electric or hybrid anyway, and the petrol and diesels that were left would be too few to cause an environmental impact anyway

That's how markets work and that's how Governments screw up markets and make peoples lives more miserable than they need to be

Anyway. Enough of that. Let's not get angry on the first post of the new tour
I think I'll waffle for a while about what I've been doing personally, while I've been away.

I said I wanted to focus on getting out of the 9-5 job, but it seems I didn't focus hard enough, as I'm still in it. As jobs go though, it's not so bad. A company similar to ours went bust at the beginning of the year and our managing director walked in and negotiated for all their contracts. It's been arses and elbows since that happened. Things are only just beginning to calm down again
Mrs Bucko is doing alright. She got a job as a forklift truck driver. I'm now married to a hairy arsed fork lift truck driver who earns more money than me. It's not a bad life

The Ford Probe died and went to the great scrapyard in the sky. I replaced it with a Volvo which died and then another Volvo which also died. Out of desperation I bought a Primera for £150. That didn't die, but then fourteen months later, it did
I bought a proper car after that though. The picture of a Nissan Navara has been on my sidebar as long as I've had the blog and I've wanted to own one ever since I first saw one.
I've not quite bought a Navara, but I did find a nice Mitsubishi L200 for a reasonable price. I've never been able to afford anything similar before, but the price range finally dropped to something I was alright with (Mrs Buckos wage also helped)
So now I can do some car blogs about fixing up a Mitzy

I've been on holiday too. Well a few times, it's been a while. Cyprus, Corfu, Corfu, Nashville, Serbia. I'll tell you all about Nashville and Serbia at sometime. Totally different places but both excellent

Anyway, enough about me. So how've you been?