214 days ago
There was a recent survey showing that those, like myself, living in the rain sodden post industrial second world nation of Wales were among the most depressed in the world and one of the reasons cited was the rollout of 20 MPH speed limits. They are absolutely everywhere. The overpaid political midgets in the Senedd left it to the discretion of local councils as to where to apply the new limits and the power-hungry non-entities who run local councils across this once fine land could not wait to impose the limits everywhere they could.
1284 days ago
This is an acid test for the poseur Boris Johnson and his faux Tory regime: a trade deal with Australia has been negotiated and appears to allow high quality Aussie meat and other foodstuffs to enter the UK tariff-free. This has sparked a row within the Tories which would have greatly entertained my Grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, once the senior civil servant at MAFF, so a man who knew about farming, an anti EEC campaigner in 1975 and a staunch political soulmate of his pal Tony Benn. This is a real test for Boris.
2382 days ago
I suspect that Ocado (OCDO) is even more overvalued after today's share price surge on the Kroger deal - it goes to show the dangers of shorting anything other than an outright fraud in the current climate. I look at the FOBT news - Nanny State gets more and more bossy every day. I look also at Mothercare (MTC), Foxtons (FOXT) and WH Ireland (WHI)
2453 days ago
As a libertarian I really do believe that you should be allowed to spend your money on whatever you want - it is your pocket book and your body. Drugs, guns, sex, nicotine, even books written by crooked Hillary Clinton it is all fine by me and so too is spending your own cash on a Fixed Odds Betting Terminal (FOBT) at William Hill (WMH). But the Government plans to slash the maximum you can wager on a FBOT from £100 a pop to as little as £2 because it wants tgo hbelp problem gamblers. It is nanny state. I should oppose HMG. But a BBC Radio 5 interview with Hill's spokesman Ciaran O'Brien has made me think - O'Brien really is the scum of the earth.
2825 days ago
Perhaps it explains why I have picked up such a sweet tooth later in life but, in my early years at Butterwell farm Byfield, chocolate was a real rarity and sweets were just non existent. This was my mother at work.
2874 days ago
The left would tell you that the lower life expectancy of poor folks is down to poverty forcing them into unhealthy lifestyle choices. I will gloss over the fact that more poorer folks smoke or drink heavily than the affluent although no-one forces them to do so and just focus on food. Junk food is expensive. Healthy food can be far cheaper.
When in Shipston, staying with my father, I bought two pheasants from the butcher, pre plucked at £5.99. I saw many folks in the local Co-Op who were happily loading their baskets with more expensive pre-prepared junk meals.
For the past two nights
2972 days ago
It is now just under eight months since I quit smoking and although I have put on a few pounds I feel much healthier and am determined not to go back. I am delighted to see that the percentage of adult Britons who now smoke is at a modern era low of 17% and it is falling. That is a good thing in that death from smoking related illnesses tend to be ghastly and I'd wish that on no-one.
4022 days ago
David Cameron came into power promising to roll back the State. Yesterday he announced what has to be the most Nanny State measure in history. I concerns my wife, your wife and pornography. It shows Call Me Dave at his very meddling worst.
As ever with a politician seeking to allow the state to intrude into your private lives, Call Me Dave comes up with a claim that he is fighting an evil so wicked that anyone who opposes him is by definition evil themselves. In this case the evil Call Me Dave is fighting is not terrorism but paedophiles.
Stage one of Call Me Dave’s fight against online nonces is to get Google and other providers to remove certain search terms from their web engines. Stage two is that from late 2014 anyone wishing to access adult content via an ISP will have to opt in to do so. In other words, according to Call Me Dave, you will have to ask the Mrs if she minds you downloading porn.
Of course this is all spurious.
4274 days ago
Last week was International wimmins day, next week is International smelly, bearded, jobless and selfish cyclists day and today is National No Smoking Day. The common thread: it is the State (or State’s getting together) telling you what to do and who to idolise and who to demonise. I regard the whole exercise as a costly piece of thought control and would scrap all these days. If we have to have them how about “Hard working taxpayer’s day,” “International never claimed a cent in welfare day”, “National entrepreneurs, job and wealth creators day.”
Sorry big brother you were right all along. I will learn what I should put into my body and shall lambast myself for being a heterosexual, hard working, tax paying and generating white male. I am ashamed of all of the above.
Smoking is a filthy habit. I will quit one day. But I shall do so when I want to not when a state that discourages me only slightly from drinking does not discourage me at all from smoking pot, runs limited campaigns pointing out the dire health implications of having unprotected anal sex in bathhouses bashes me yet again ( with taxpayers cash) about the fact that I smoke cigarettes. This is the one day of the year that you can guarantee that I shall not quit smoking.
In solidarity, all non-smokers should scrounge a fag off a smoker today to have just one drag. It won’t kill you but it is the suitable two fingers to nanny state. I could go on but I am off for a cigarette.
4338 days ago
Britain is getting fatter. The strain of treating a stack of lardbuckets like myself for diabetes (my issue), heart attacks, etc is a very real financial burden. All of that is a given. But calls to ban Frosties ( Labour health spokesman Andy Burnham) and Fried Chicken shops ( general lefty fruitcake and a bit of a lardbucket herself, Dianne Abbot) do not address the problem. Prohibition never works. It fails with drugs, it failed with alcohol in 1920s Chicago and it will fail with Frosties.
4382 days ago
Alcohol awareness week is one of those dreadful waste of taxpayers’ money campaigns dreamt up by the nanny state to justify more money being pissed away by the nanny state to no great effect whatsoever. The facts are that alcohol consumption in the UK is about average by European standards and that we are, as a nation, drinking far less than we used to. On the other hand mentions of how much we are drinking in the press and at sleaze central Westminster have gone through the roof. Cue demands for an ever larger state to spend more money tackling the problem.
I am by nature, as Charles Kennedy once said of himself, a moderate drinker. I imbibe well under the recommended 21 units a week and probably do not drink at all for most days. But alcohol awareness week is different – it is my moral duty to have at least one unit a day. I almost forgot to do my duty on Saturday until I saw a late night tweet from the excellent Christopher Snowdon of the Velvet Glove Iron Fist blog reminding me that this annual farce ends tomorrow. A small glass of port and my duty is done.
For the raw data on what a total Nanny State waste of space this week is I refer you to an article by Snowdon HERE
THis is the sort of idiocy covered in my new e-book published yesterday on the increasingly authoritarian state of the UK today. It really is very funny and makes a good point or two. “Letters from the Chestnut Tree Cafe, Though crime in Britain and Greece, 1984 is finally here“ and can be ordered direct from publisher Harriman House HERE.
