Passive Thinking…

We knew it would happen. Satire is truly done for.

Reproducing Dick Puddlecote’s work in full.

Hello Passive Drinking – Global And Official

Minimum alcohol pricing? Pah! It’s a mere speck in comparison with what’s to come.

WHO launches worldwide war on booze

I once suggested to some beardy tossbag from CAMRA that he should throw his weight behind objecting to tobacco prohibition because his vice was next. He piffled that drinkers were too numerous to be subject to the same denormalisation.

May God rot his middle class pompous paunch if he doesn’t now realise that he was disastrously wrong.

Marvel in the new righteous front, backed up with the full force of the World Health Organisation.

HUMANITY’s relationship with alcohol has never been easy. Now it is about to undergo as great a change as our attitude to tobacco, which has seen smoking plummet from the height of cool to the lowest of unpleasant habits.

That at least is the hope of the World Health Organization, which, between now and January, will be honing its draft of the first global strategy on reducing health damage from alcohol abuse, the fifth leading cause of premature death and disability worldwide.

Unveiled last week in Geneva, Switzerland, the document is the culmination of talks between representatives from the WHO’s 193 member states. "It is a landmark document," says Peter Anderson, a health consultant and adviser on alcohol to the WHO and the European Union.

Hmmm. Such wild triumphalism rings a bell.

The similarities don’t end there, either.

Sally Casswell of Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand, who helped produce the WHO document says a focus on passive drinking is key to winning public acceptance for more stringent alcohol legislation. "It challenges the neoliberal ideology which promotes the drinker’s freedom to choose his or her own behaviour," she says.

And the lines are drawn against the nay-sayers too.

Others are sceptical of the [drinks] industry’s contribution to the debate. Robin Room of the University of Melbourne, Australia, who studies the legislation on recreational drugs, fears that some parts of the WHO document may already have been watered down to appease the industry, especially those seeking to restrict marketing.

How very dare they defend their evil drug!

I’ll say it again. You simply cannot pick and choose which freedoms you like and which you don’t. You either stand up to all of the dictatorial bullying, or you will inevitably become a target.

The drinks industry had better get those screens ready, the anti-alcohol steamroller is on its way.
Now, cast your mind back … when was the last time you voted for the WHO, exactly?

WTF is wrong with this world?

AJ

Nanny Alcohol Blocker…

Seen in my browser, while using my 3G stick…

What, you may ask, was the filthy degraded bestial autopsy scat-muncher’s porn site I was trying to get to?

www.veuve-clicquot.com

FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF YOU CUNTS

AJ

Guilt Complex…

Via Obo…

Nothing we didn’t know already, but a decent read nonetheless…

At a time of diminishing employment opportunities, there’s a sector of the British economy that continues to expand. For the right type of applicant, it often offers above-average remuneration with attractive perks, notably an assumption of moral superiority.

You won’t find it listed in the "sits vac" columns, as such. That’s because this booming business embraces many organisations, across a range of activities: charities, social work, local and national politics, even journalism.

It is the Guilt Industry. No, not the gilt industry (though that too is flourishing, thanks to the Government’s borrowing binge). The Guilt Industry is completely different; it provides a living for those with an eagerness to demonise fellow citizens who spurn "progressive" values.

The Guilt Industry’s target market is largely, but not exclusively, Britain’s middle classes, those to whom Benedict Brogan referred to in his column yesterday as "pilloried, taxed, stripped of their privileges, bound by red tape and lined up for fiscal execution".

If you have a private-sector job, pay your bills, service your mortgage, invest in your property, commit no crime, save for old age (and that of your parents) and seek the best education for your children, then you have probably experienced an onslaught from the Guilt Industry’s sales force.

Read on…

AJ

Freedom…

Prompted by a couple of posts by Jackart…

AJ

You are not a grown-up…

Unwilling to succumb to this cold that’s been annoying me for the last few days, I just popped into the chemist’s for some Sudafed and a bottle of Night Nurse.

Of course, I should expect this by now, and the initial line of interrogation I faced from the 16 year old Saturday girl was unsurprising. “Are these for yourself?” (damn your reflexive pronouns, child) “Are you taking any other medication?” (None of your damned business).

What blew me away was when she held up the bottle of Night Nurse and said, “You do realise that this can cause drowsyness?”

Clearly this girl wasn’t deserving of the response I’d have liked to given, so I remained polite.

At the direction of the state, I’m to be hectored, constrained and checked up on. By a 16 year old.

JUST FUCK OFF YOU CUNTS.

It’s not new, this infantilisation, but it still fucking pisses me right off. Read Big Babies by Michael Bywater.

AJ

Thames Waster…

The other day, on a train, I picked up a cast-off Evening Standard and had a flick through. There was a full page ‘advert’ from the water board, it wielded the admonishment that staying in the shower ‘for one minute more than necessary’, ‘wastes’ 9 litres of water.

Now, quite aside from the fact that Thames Water loses around 800 MILLION LITRES OF WATER A DAY through its fucked infrastructure(the equivalent of 88,888,889 people staying in the shower for an extra minute each day), who the blithering fuck are these cunts to spend water rate payers’ money on full page spreads to tell us all off for having a fucking wash?

First it was “don’t have a bath, it’s wasteful. Have a shower.”

Now it’s “you’re showering for too long.”

What next? “If it’s raining, why not take some shampoo and shower outside, to save waste? (don’t forget to use ecologically friendly shampoo)”

As it goes, anyone who does any exercise is likely to shower twice a day, or more. Perhaps cutting exercise down to 2 days a week would help to save water? And what about all the water that’s ‘wasted’ in cleaning the bath? And the floors?

Well, guess what, you fucking distended ringpieces. I pay for what I use. I pay at the water meter and I pay at the fucking gas meter.

I choose to have a bath, and a shower, every day. I reckon this alone costs me in the region of £400-£500 a year.

I made that fucking choice and I pay for the cunt. I’m happy with it. Am I still allowed to make that adult judgement about how I allocate the money I have earned and payed ball-squeezing levels of tax on????

Where will it fucking end?

In a bathtub, with a bottle of gin and a razor blade, the way this fucking place is going, because I’m sick to fucking death of it all.

The only way to remain happy and calm is to put fingers in ears and sing “la la la not listening..” repeatedly. Perhaps read a magazine about how we should all have a six pack and an orange girlfriend with a brain the size of a walnut. Watch X Factor. Buy Coldplay CDs. Go to the football. Buy the sunglasses Beckham is wearing. Give up smoking. And drinking. And thinking. And generally fucking BEING.

Or you can be heavily medicated, like me.

AJ

UPDATE: It turns out Neo-hypocrite Boris is behind this shit… http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=23418

A common response…

Over at DK’s place, the Filthy Smoker has nicely summed up my response to news that ‘unhealthy men may lose 10 years’

"’We’ve shown that men at age 50 who smoke, have high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels can expect to survive to 74 years of age, while those who have none of these risk factors can expect to live until 83."

Fuck me, but is this really what it all comes down to? The endless public health scare stories. The fascist smoking legislation. The rapacious tax rises. The fake charities. The obesity ‘epidemic’. Ian bastard Gilmore. It all comes down to the risk of dying at the age of 74? And I can eat what I want and smoke tabs as well? 

This is the least scary scare story I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen Troll 2.

Doctors, if you’re reading this:  74 years is more than enough time for me to do all the things I plan to do in this life. I’ll leave all that senility, dribbling and pissing myself to someone else, if it’s all the same to you. 

Risk very much accepted, now fuck off and leave me alone. Don’t worry about those taxes I’ve been paying. To be honest, I never expected to see that money again anyway. Use it to buy a catheter for an 83 year old non-smoking vegetarian. I’m off out.

Nothing really to add to that, other than to enquire what I may do to bring that figure down to, say, 70.

AJ

And thanks for the advice…

 

Just what would we do without some Yorkshire wisdom to keep us on the straight and narrow?

AJ

More Child Protection Ludicrousness…

What do you get when you cross tatty socialist dogma, incompetence, political correctness and bureaucratic detachment?

That’s right. Haringey Council Child Protection Services.

Via OH, some shit that genuinely beggars belief… and one to get the knuckle-scraping BNP voters out in force.

Haringey. Yet. Again

"Muslim children can only be placed with people of the same faith and the need to find foster parents could mean that corners were cut in the vetting process."

Erm…The council at the centre of the Baby P scandal sent a foster child to live with the ringleader of the airline bomb plotters, the Standard can reveal.

Read on…

Why don’t they just accept that they can do no right and fuck all the way off? That Shoesmith cunt should peeled and rolled in salt for the consequences her time running that show and the legacy she’s left behind. And to this day, that fucking bitch thinks she’s the victim in all that’s happened.

It’s about time someone got busy on her with an angle-grinder and a rasp.

AJ

UPDATE: On second inspection, and to change the subject slightly, The Standard’s story contains something very smelly indeed.

Ali’s wife has also been charged under anti-terror laws for allegedly failing to inform authorities of the plot. However, she strongly asserts her innocence.

I’ll watch with interest. I don’t know how the fuck they’ll make that stick. Irrespective of what her husband has done, I’ll give this woman the benefit of the doubt until I know more.

Anyway, I thought one couldn’t be compelled to incriminate one’s spouse in English law?

Total news blackout…

The other day, I was warming to the idea of the coming winter bringing with it political turmoil and schadenfreuderous giggles.

Today, however, while perusing Mr Puddlecote’s splendid blog, I wondered if I really do want to dive back into all that fucking shit.

You And Your Family Will Die Horribly – Soon

Another Day, Another Witless Attack On Alcohol

Be On Your Way, This Is Our Territory

Onward Puritan Soldiers

Now, while DP writes very well and provides thoughtful and informed comment, there’s no getting away from the message of relentless and depressing attacks on our liberty and adulthood that we are sustaining on a daily basis at the hands of these socialist, ideologue, control-freak fuckheads who run the show.

I’ve not seen TV news now for months. I’ve not picked up a newspaper or gone beyond the front page of a news website for months.

And it has been absolutely fucking joyous.

It seems impossible to remain happy while keeping abreast of the latest ways in which the bullying, thieving state intends to encroach upon our autonomy and humanity, while pissing all of our money up the cunting wall.

So I’m going to have to find something else to write about this winter. Certainly, as you’ll have already seen, my bile will be focussed away from flogging the dead horse that’s in power now and towards Davy Spameron, who is, without a shadow of a doubt, going to usher in at least 5 more years of the same fucking shit.

Fuck the lot of them. Fuck Labour. Fuck the Tories. Fuck News International. Fuck the Daily Mail. Fuck the unions. Fuck the health & safety executive. Fuck lawyers. Fuck local councils. Fuck teachers. Fuck Trevor Phillips. Motherfuck the BBC.

And breathe…

AJ

If you’re not depressed now…

You will be, once you’ve read John Demetriou’s post about what has happened to this country.

Can people not see what is happening here? The State has the upper hand. We are all being made into their bitches. Why? Because, by virtue of us being the law abiding citizens who want to get along and get by without fuss, we are easy meat. We pay up when told to pay up, we get into our hutches and eat and drink what we’re told, and when. We are told what and how to consume, what is acceptable and what is not, and what is safe and what isn’t.

Read the whole thing. And weep. Or rant. Or go put a rocket up your MP’s arse (a NASA colonoscopy as I call that at work).

AJ

Watching the bansturbators and the pub-killers…

Excellent work from The Filthy Smoker over at DKs place.

From The Scotsman:

The economic hangover of the smoking ban and the effects of the recession have both been blamed for fewer people going to pubs, but it is clear the supermarkets and a growing culture of drinking at home are the real cause for the decline.

Oh, for the love of…

Alright then, one more time. There is not a growing culture of drinking at home because the supermarkets are selling more alcohol. There is a growing culture of drinking at home because of the smoking ban which, in turn, has led to the supermarkets selling more alcohol. People who drink at home tend to buy their alcohol from supermarkets. Not pubs. Supermarkets not pubs. Horse then cart. Do you see how that works?

Do click through and read the rest of this most splendid taking apart of the righteous.

AJ

Where’s Al Jahom?

Can you see me in this charming vignette?

I’m already a dedicated recycler anyway:

And look what becomes of your recyclables. Complete waste of time effort and money, as well as turning half the fucking population into unpaid part-time bin-men. Wankers.

AJ

In Loco Idiotus

 

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’  Ronald Reagan

From Ambush Predator, another reminder of what happens when they decide to play mummy & daddy…

Man’s Social Service’s Inhumanity To Man…

A dying woman whose children are in foster care has been told that her contact with them will be cut to 90 minutes a fortnight because of her failing health.

Doesn’t that give you a warm feeling inside? It does me.

Of rage, mind you…

Her son and daughter were taken into care because of an allegation — dismissed after an investigation — that a friend had sexually abused one of them.

So why are they still in care?

Mrs Brown’s large and supportive family have made numerous attempts to bring the children back into their care.

Her father, George, 72, a former BBC executive, was judged too old to look after the children, although he has regularly taken them on holidays. Anne offered to buy a bigger house to accommodate them, but was told that her job as a journalist would make it impossible for her to parent them.

Mrs Brown’s son Sam, who is 23, was assessed as not having a sufficiently stable relationship with his girlfriend.

Oh, where to start..?

It seems that having taken the children, they are now pulling excuses out of their collective arse in order to hang onto them. Too old at 72? Journalism not an ‘approved’ job?

And not having a ‘sufficiently stable’ relationship? Are you kidding me? Since when have the SS worried about that?

Pretty nearly all their recent screw-ups have involved the kind of ‘families’ where an attempt to chart the relationships would look like a drunken spider had gotten into someone’s Etch-A-Sketch…

Then in March 2006 Mrs Brown arrived at the children’s school to find that they had been taken into care. Louise had told her teacher that a friend of her mother had abused her.
Mrs Brown recalled packing her children’s clothes as they waited outside in the social worker’s car. They left that afternoon.

After a police investigation and medical examination, the allegation was dismissed.

Louise retracted her statement to the family. But social services became concerned about Mrs Brown’s ability to protect her children.

“The social workers say they have got new families. But we are their family,” Anne said. “When they’re 16 social services won’t want to know them.”

Quite. They’ll be turned out onto the street, along with all the other young people irrevocably damaged by being condemned to the ‘care’ of the State.

Which, as always, isn’t exactly bucking the trend in this case:

On the brink of adolescence, the children are not likely candidates for adoption and the family says their behaviour has deteriorated significantly. Both hover on the edge of exclusion from school. Their family concedes that they are now difficult to handle together.

Their grandfather believes that this is because of the disruptions: “They have been knocked off a normal way of life with their mother and among family and they have been isolated and pitched into an alien atmosphere.”

Which is not to say that such deterioration is inevitable. But it’d take a very, very strong character to survive such upheaval and uncertainty.

In 2007 a judge emphasised the importance of retaining the children’s strong family bonds. Anne believes that depriving a dying woman of her children goes against this direction. As her relatives spoke, Mrs Brown faintly echoed their feelings. “Angry,” she muttered. “Angry and sad.”

There’s nothing more to add, really, is there?

Not really, no.

AJ

Who is this Paul Henderson cunt?

 

I’m not linking to it, but the erudite destroyer of anti-smoking brimstone, Dick Puddlecote, puts the pillock in his place. Read the whole thing, but be spurred on the by the denouement:

Just my opinion, and all that, but you sir, are a rancid, shallow fucktard who deserves to be fisted up the ringpiece with a sandpaper and broken glass-encrusted glove for using sick kids to justify your selfish and puerile dislikes. Just stick to talking about overpaid men in shorts in future, eh?

Seems fair.

On a related note, I became the proud owner of one of these the other day:

I commend it to thee.

AJ

Excellent Speech…

My first knowledge of Rush Limbaugh was via Bill Hicks, who never held Mr Limbaugh in particularly high esteem. So, it’s somewhat surprising to find myself uttering words of respect for this speech he gave to the Conservative Political Action Committee.

I think it sums up much that conservatives and many libertarians are concerned about just now on both sides of the Atlantic.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

H/T Stephanie Gutmann at the Tellywelly.

AJ

Sweet nectar…

From The Salted Slug in full:

What’s good for the goose….

Via Tom Paine: Lady Irony bullseyes another one.

Tom Riall, the chief executive of Britain’s largest speed camera firm, has been arrested for driving at more than 100mph in Norwich.

Apparently, he was ‘unaware of how fast he was driving’. No doubt; and I also doubt he thought he was driving in an unsafe manner, it being a clear and open A-road and all. Almost as if the rule being broken was completely arbitrary, with no objective basis whatsoever. If one was of the cynical mindset, one might think that these cameras aren’t about stopping accidents and making the roads ’safer’ at all, sited as they are on clear roads where drivers are more likely to drive fast. DK has a decent screed on the matter.

The nannying is unrelenting. Why can’t any prospective government realise that they would be cementing themselves in the good books of many voters by just binning the fucking lot?

I hope he gets rectum-rot in the cells…..

AJ

Psychology of driving…

I’ve been pounding the motorways like a good’un in the last few months as part of my job, so I’ve had a lot of time to watch and think. People’s approach, attitude and aptitude to driving is a subject I’ve log been interested in. As it happens, one particular strand is what cars are likely to be driven in certain ways.

For example, it’s easy to see why Volvo drivers have the reputation they have, for being safety obsessed middle-class pillocks who wear hats while driving, play a lot of golf, and are completely oblivious to the progress anyone else might wish to make. One wonders if their mirrors are all pointing directly back at them rather than the road behind.

Similarly, as I pointed out previously, a Honda CR-V is a sure sign of a drudge.

I don’t think I’ve ever thought of the roads in poltical terms – except when I sit in a traffic jam caused ultimately by the absence of one of the many road-building projects that was canned by Labour ten years ago. At such points, I think of that as just another way they’ve peeled away more of my happiness, freedom and productivity.

Anyway, to the point. Mr Demetriou at B&D has written a most excellent article about the relative merits, in terms of political philosophy, of traffic lights and roundabouts. It’s a superbly thoughtout (and written) article, which I commend to you.

Traffic Lights are authoritarian, Roundabouts are libertarian

Roundabouts allow the people to manage themselves.

This is of course a key, fundamental Libertarian tenet. Freedom to act on instinct and common sense, free of the interference of an outside, bossy and incompetent force (traffic lights).

When traffic is light, these work because they don’t stop directions of traffic needlessly, because motorists can sort themselves out. When traffic is heavy, they still work, because the traffic simply feeds in and the system, like our bodily systems of breathing and digestion, just work.

Roundabouts produce consistent, fluid motion, whilst at the same time allowing heavier routes to gain dominance, thereby creating fair outcomes. Traffic lights are hardly ever as sophisticated, and they bossily dictate who has right of way.

…

Roundabouts are great, because they allow the dominant, responsibility-taking driver to capitalise, and this exploitation by the dominant driver is helpful to the driver to his or her right, because it gives them a chance to go also, and so on. Everyone wins, but the one with the balls gets to go first.

This, for me, demonstrates the natural order of the world and is a perfect symbol of the free market which I embrace. roundabouts encourage independent thought, common sense and responsibility.

Traffic lights are the exact opposite. They are a very communist function to our cities, towns and villages. They may have been a good idea in 1911, when drivers had no license, very little fucking clue about what was going on, and all the horse and carts sort of fucked it all up.

Now, they remind me of China and the New Statesman. And that really pisses me off.

eh?

 

Anyway – excellent work, and I urge you to click through and read the whole thing.

AJ

UPDATE: in the comments, Dick Puddlecote points to a similar analysis by Raedwald last month:

Zebras are Tory, Pelicans are Labour

A zebra crossing is about as Conservative as a street furniture feature can get. It’s extremely economic to build and operate – a couple of light bulbs to go in the orange globes, and a few square metres of white thermoplastic road paint – but this is not its main virtue. It’s primarily extremely efficient because it allows pedestrians and motorists to ‘negotiate’ directly for road space; cars only stop if there’s someone actually crossing, and as soon as they’re within hopping distance of the opposite kerb, off they go again. It builds social capital as pedestrians acknowledge directly the courtesy of drivers in stopping, by a nod, smile or wave. It encourages self-reliance and requires no external intervention. It is quintessentially Tory.

The Pelican crossing, on the other hand, could have been developed by Stalin. With a complex and expensive system of lights, indicators and cattle barriers to prevent disobedience, the State exercises control over both pedestrians and vehicles – no direct negotiation is permitted. Any disruptive child can press the button in passing and create a queue of vehicles stopped at an empty crossing, or the queue of vehicles can remain halted long after a solitary pedestrian has crossed. Citizens are not trusted to interact with one another; the State intervenes to impose an inefficient and totalitarian control over road space. It encourages dependency and is socially divisive. The Pelican is essentially Labour.

Read the rest…

Excellent stuff..

Dept of Health seeks volunteers for public abuse and beatings

This is just fucking amazing… via Ambush Predator:

‘Snoops’ to nag their friends to live healthier lives

Public health "mentors" will be enlisted by the NHS to offer ‘on the spot’ advice in their local neighbourhood when they see people smoking, eating or drinking too much.

The Government hopes that the volunteers will help to get across its messages on healthy living in a new and influential way but the plans have been criticised as evidence of the creeping ‘nanny state’.

You berks – this isn’t a ‘creeping nanny state’ it’s a ‘rampaging bully state’.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said that it was hoped that mentors would spread the word among "people they come in contact with on a daily basis, including their friends and neighbours, and also be able to point them to NHS services, such as smoking cessation services".

Ministers are concerned that some people are turned off by its traditional methods of advising on public health, including large-scale advertising drives such as the recent £75 million Change4Life campaign.

But critics warned that the public was increasingly being "nannied" over their health. The latest example of this was a nursery in Essex where toddlers were told to badger their parents to stop smoking.

And this is amazing too:

The same NHS trust has also been accused of using taxpayers’ money to bribe pregnant women into giving up cigarettes, offering them £100 if they stop smoking.

And here comes the smug righteous cunt from the fake charity dedicated to shaving a little of our independence and contentment away every single day.

Martin Dockerell, from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the anti-smoking charity, said: "If you get the mentoring scheme right and if you manage to turn things around so it seems that healthy behaviour is not abnormal then that can be very powerful.

And head of post, Al Jolson:

Mr Johnson said that while employers could offer incentives to help people be more active "there will always be some people who will be immune to these opportunities, because they don’t see exercise as something they do, or because the messages they get from their peers are more influential".

Immune? Is that what you call us? Well I suppose it’s better than medicalising us with ODD.

I’m off work next week and intended to spend the majority of the time on my bicycle or on the golf course. INstead, I’m going to get a hundred-weight of sausages from Costco and stay in until I’ve eaten them all. After every sausage, I will smoke 10 cigarettes and drink a half bottle of gin.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. To Blair, Brown, Johnson, Harman, Jowell, Squirrel, Cameron, Fletcher-Dervish, Lansley and all the rest of the cunts:

JUST FUCK OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE YOU CHIPPY AUTHORITARIAN SPUNK GUZZLERS

AJ

Advisory speed limits to be lowered

There’s a piece in today’s Sunday Times, which goes as follows:

Road speed limit cut to 50mph

THE government is to cut the national speed limit from 60mph to 50mph on most of Britain’s roads, enforced by a new generation of average speed cameras.

Now, first of all, let me dispense with the necessary pedantry by saying that the National Speed Limit is 70MPH. The NSL specific to single carriageways (no central refuge) is 60MPH. Anyway, on with the show.

Devil’s Kitchen deals with the whole thing quite nicely, with supporting material from The Englishman.

I’ve talked previously about the advisory nature of speed limits. Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the blind obedience of fools (Douglas Bader).

My perspective allows me to see a couple of benefits to these plans.

Let us assume, first of all, that these all singing and all dancing cameras are sometimes some or all of:

(i) dummies (due to cost)
(ii) malfunctioning (due to vandalism or maintenance fail)
(iii) impaired by poor weather (which they are)
(iv) baffled by improperly spaced number plates (they rely on OCR)
(v) incorrectly positioned (pointing to the sky)
(vi) illegally placed (kerching for Nick Freeman)
(vii) delayed for years due to technology fail (couldn’t happen here – could it?)

This immediately cuts down their usefulness, which is good news. Nonetheless, Joe Numpty will just do what he does now in the SPECS covered areas of the motorway network – sit with his speedo 1MPH below the posted limit (effectively 10% below it).

I know there’s at least one benefit of this. Many counties have unilaterally reduced many roads from 60MPH to 50 or 40 over the last 10 communist muesli-munching years. The result is this: Overtaking is easier. Unless you have a very fast car, a muppet tootling along at 56 in a 60 is more difficult to overtake quickly and safely than one doing 46 on the same road.

A thought, though, on the coming ‘consultation process’ from DK:

The 50mph proposal will be laid out in a consultation document to be published in the early summer.

Oh, right. Yes, I think that we know what kind fucking consultation document that will be, don’t we? Yes, it will be like the recent smoking one, highlighted by my colleague, in which the opinions of those who oppose the proposals will disappear into thin air whilst the responses that will count will be those of fake charities—such as Brake (£70,991 from taxpayers) and Living Streets (67% state-funded)—who support the government proposals.

AJ