Tuesday 21 October 2008

No friends

Not making any friends here, but, hello: you're the problem. No-one, presented with the information about the dangers of smoking and taking a rational decision would say "uh, yeah, give me some of that emphysema, I really want a mild buzz and a desperate craving for an expensive habit that doesn't only kill me in a variety of creatively painful ways, it at best makes me smell awful and at worst kills the people around me too. Yes, let me sign right on that dotted line". No-one.

If you're a smoker, it's probably because you started as a kid because you thought it was cool (or at least grown-up) and you weren't really adult enough to make the decision, or if not, then at least because someone else you know smokes and you got peer-pressured into it, or got a bit drunk and decided to have a couple of fags since they were going. And then y'all got addicted. For life.

Honestly, if you want to sling a bunch of money into HMG's coffers and then die early before you need 30 years of respite care, go ahead, I don't give a toss, but it's purely because YOU smoke that other people start. If no-one smoked in the UK, and knowing what we know about it now, no-one would start because it's so retarded. That's why I'm angry, and that's why I'm happy that smoking is stigmatized as a filthy habit.

Kill yourself, I don't give a fuck. But don't take anyone else with you.

No smoke

Dear Smokers,

You're a bunch of fucking idiots. By banning smoking we're trying to help you break your addiction to a drug that kills 30-50% of people who use it. Stop whining.

------

Or, in a longer form:

OMG SMOKERS NOW STAY AT HOME AND DON'T CREATE JOBS IN PUBS - well, jobs aren't intrinsically valuable, are they? I mean, no-one actually wants a job, right? That's why it's called "work". If people wanted to do it, it would be called "fun" and they wouldn't pay you to do it.

No-one complains now about how we're not all subsistence farmers doing 12-hour days of backbreaking labour to put food on the table, instead we rejoice that automation has saved people from a life of drudgery.

OMG SMOKERS BUY CHEAP BEER FROM THE SUPERMARKETS - how terrible. You mean they're getting a substitute product for substantially less money? Well, that's good. Efficient. It means that they can spend the fucking money they saved on something else, like a Sky subscription or a flatscreen TV. Guess what? That's keeping people in jobs, innit?

OMG BANNING SMOKING STOPS ME DOING WHAT I WANT - what you want is idiotic. Stop it. Look, if you must be physiologically addicted to a drug, at least try something that's a bit less crap than nicotine. At least coke gives you a rush!

OMG BAR STAFF SIGN UP FOR PASSIVE SMOKING - fuck off. Who checks the box that says "yes please, I'd like an early death due to other people who can't stop themselves being disgusting"? It might come as news to you but bar staff make minimum wage. How many of them actually have a real choice, between "taking this job and feeding my kids" and "not", hmm?

Tuesday 14 October 2008

Smarts

Chandila's first email to the party is knacker-kickingly awful. I sympathize with the guy, who is clearly trying to shake things up, but someone who is leading on rebranding the party who can't even get his headings the same colour is clearly not the person for the job.

The text itself is not very high quality, the sentence structure and punctuation is odd at the best of times. Basically Chandila comes off as an Apprentice runner-up, and I don't mean that in a nice way. Sorry mate, I think you raise some valid points and hopefully these will be taken up by the membership, but you don't strike me as smart enough to actually do the job of president.

Wednesday 1 October 2008

Memewatch

First in an occasional series (knowing me, *very* occasional) tracking once-good phrases as they are abused in modern language.

Today Nick Clegg said that "We are in the eye of an economic storm".

The eye of a storm features mostly calm weather, as any fool knows. I don't think the Dow sliding 5% and the FTSE circling 4800 really counts as "calm", more like "terrifying". Even if you don't believe in the "financial crisis" it must still be at least "a bit worrying".

See also "more heat than light", desperately overused by Lib Dem bloggers this year. Anyone have any other nominations?