FREEDOOMED

In my mind I seem to hear the clink of slave chains getting near...............

At first sight it seems absurd that the Coalition Government, of which I approve, should throw out mountains of the useless legislation which Labour introduced every three quarters of an hour, yet pass into law the Equality Act which is the most absurd of all.

There is an explanation. At the heart of government lies a rejection of the principle of liberty,equality and fraternity. Slavery makes government easier.

Take the recent major legislation on smoking. It is admittedly more pleasant to live in a smoke-free area but the freedom comes with a terrible price ticket: closing down one our more pleasant places of refuge over the centuries, the country pub. It is sad to witness the pathetic huddles at pub doors, guiltily sneaking a crafty fag. It is a great benefit, we are told. It isn't. Two eminent scientists of international reputation spent forty years trying to prove that passive smoking is harmful. They failed. The mighty World Health Organisation picked their tattered banner out of the dust and ran with it for a further five years but had to admit in the end there is no evidence that passive smoking is harmful.

The lawmakers needed to prove they could force us to adopt a curtailing of freedom that other generations would have rejected out of hand.

We must spend £50 billion on aircraft carriers. Not because they will be any use but, if we have them, our politicians will be able to sit at a big table, even if no-one takes any notice of us. We must spend a fortune on wind turbines, which we know are useless, and what little energy they produce will be vastly more costly, but we will be doing as the EU wishes.
Global warming. More recent science suggests that far from warming, the earth is cooling.

In the Fifties the government wanted to end capital punishment so they instituted a moratorium on the practice to prove that hanging was not a deterrent. I discovered that an instruction had gone out to judges that all murder trials should be reduced to manslaughter. The murder statistics were not based on violent deaths but on convictions so, inevitably, they proved their case, even though violent deaths had increased. At Chester Assizes it was a rare calendar which held more than one murder charge. During the moratorium there were eight, all reduced to manslaughter.

I am still trying to find out why, in turn, we were told not to eat eggs, bacon ribs, imported cheese, oxtails and porterhouse steaks. I ate all of them the moment they got the black spot.

I also ignored the Government guidelines on the number of units of alcohol I could drink - which was just as well because it later admitted the figures were picked out of a hat, although I notice they are still used.

Surveillance cameras on roads are taken away and the number of accidents drops. The statistics which had us believing drink driving kills are not based on the number of killer drunk drivers. They are calculated on the number of accidents in which drink plays a part; most the fault of drunken pedestrians.

A Labour Party Inquiry in 1949 seeking to ban fox hunting was forced to conclude it was the most humane way to kill foxes. Forty years later it was banned.

Now we have the Jonathon Wild Charter where to grass is greener. If we even overhear a remark which offends us we must report it to our employer. If the employer ignores us he faces a heavy fine. Wild, that old thief taker, would be in his element.

My friend Father Brian had the best "anti" Catholic jokes, my Jewish friends glory in "anti" Jewish jokes. WHY? Because they know they do no harm. Our legislators do not appreciate it but these sorts of jokes are like the remarks we make about the oddities of family and friends. Rough affection. Making fun is also a way of love making. When I was an Englishman in Wales I used to get very exercised at the number of anti- English jokes to which I was forced to listen. Welshmen in England have similar qualms. Yet the fault lies not in our jokes but in ourselves. We are over-sensitive.

Now, alas, I won't be able to say any more that they should rename Anne Robinson's TV quiz "The weakest WINK", so bizarre are the facial contortions with which she ends each programme. .By the same token, Stephen Fry will have to give up his nauseating single entendre rectum references; Jonathan Miller won't be able to say Gilbert and Sullivan operas are drivel.

The bad news is that Les Dawson and the legion of superb comics he represented would be out of a job were they living now. How long before blogging is illegal and we are singing "Screw Britannia, Britannia won't waive the rules, Britons ever, ever shall be slaves."

My only consolation is that I won't live long enough to suffer under another Labour government.


PEACE IN OUR TIME
If you were to ask people when World War One ended, you would most likely receive the answer, "11th November, 1918". While that would be correct - the armistice was famously signed on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day on the eleventh month - this century-defining conflict reached its conclusion in another sense on this very day. With the arrival of 3rd October 2010, the hefty reparations payments imposed upon Germany after the war have finally finished; the final instalment has been paid and the German people are no longer deep in the debt left over from 92 years ago.


: World War One Ends Today http://www.suite101.com/content/world-war-one-ends-today-a292851#ixzz11NQmh9gz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uaUdPs1fo0&feature=player_embedded

FOOT-IN-MOUTH NOTE

In the row over family allowances we are asked to sympathise with families who will lose their allowances if they earn more than £44,000 a year. I find it difficult to work up sympathy for anyone who earns the thick end of a thousand pounds a week,and I see nothing wrong with the princip-le thar if you annot aford a child, do not hav one

The late Mo Mowlam when she was a Minister of State was having an audience with the Queen. Mowlam's Blackberry rang and, rudely, she answered it. When she had finished and switched off, the Queen, who had waited patiently, said quietly, "Was it anyone important?"

And I will take odds that Mowlam never realised it was a put down.