The estimable Sir Liam Donaldson spurts forth on yet another major health hazard.
(h/t again Mr Eugenides)
4 days ago
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Salient quotations
"If I see one more politician who voted for the smoking ban crying crocodile tears about the state of the pub industry, I may throw up." (Christopher Snowdon)
"The era of big, bossy, state interference, top-down lever pulling is coming to an end." (David Cameron, 2008)
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." (H. L. Mencken)
"The final nails have now been hammered into the coffin of the freedom to smoke in enclosed public places. This piece of legislation must be one of the most restrictive, spiteful and socially divisive imposed by any British Government." (Lord Stoddart of Swindon)
"Raising taxes on alcohol to prevent problem drinking is akin to raising the price of gasoline to prevent people from speeding." (Edward Peter Stringham)
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." (C. S. Lewis)
"People who deal only in 'craft' beer do not care about some dirty old pub and the dirty old people who are in it and the dirty old community that it holds together." (Boozy Procrastinator)
"The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies." (Robert Conquest)
"A Puritan is someone who lives in mortal fear that somewhere, sometime, someone is enjoying himself." (H. L. Mencken)
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!" (Hunter S. Thompson)
"No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare." (Kingsley Amis)
"When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves,
For you will have lost the last of England." (Hilaire Belloc)
My other blogs
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The Lad in the Lane - The Lad in the Lane, Erdington, Birmingham A distinctive half-timbered pub situated on the Outer Ring Road on the north-eastern side of the city. It cla...
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The Cross Keys - *The Cross Keys, Penkridge, Staffordshire ST19 5HJ* An old pub standing by the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal to the south-east of the village cen...
5 months ago
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A Martin Scriblerus Blog
What's this all about?
See here for some background information on the thinking behind this blog.
Samples of beer and cider and review copies of relevant books will be gratefully received – e-mail me for address details.
To contact me directly, please send me an e-mail.
You can also follow me on Twitter at @oldmudgie.
Any proposals of marriage will be given serious consideration - there must be some cash-strapped drunk cat ladies out there!
If you have a blog that links to this, and is at least vaguely on a political or beer-related theme, drop me a line and I'll add it to my blog list, even if I don't agree with you on everything.
Fellow Curmudgeons
Blog Archive
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2009
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March
(35)
- Strange bedfellows
- Wetherspoon’s
- Sunday, Sunday
- Nottingham
- Minimum price, maximum confusion
- Baby and bathwater
- Cutting off your nose?
- How much is too much?
- The Good Tramp Fuel Guide
- Give that man a big hand!
- Other people's eyes
- The thin end of the wedge
- Welcome to your local speakeasy
- Less drink, more hysteria
- Sir Liam debunked
- Time for sober reflection
- The premium pint
- Minimum pricing poll
- English drinkers to be fleeced too
- No laughing matter
- On the bench
- Tim tells it straight
- Matching ties
- Then they came for the chocolate-lovers
- Back on the shelf
- Contrasting cats
- Smoking ban poll
- Use it or lose it?
- Taxing the Sinners
- Have that drink, girls
- The full mash
- Stronger Pedigree
- Nanny at the checkout
- Making it the minimum
- Creatures of habit
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March
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Links
- Alliance of British Drivers
- Beer and Pubs Forum
- Big Brother Watch
- British Beer and Pub Association
- British Weights and Measures Association
- Campaign for Real Ale
- Countryside Alliance
- Cyclops - beer tasting notes
- Daily Mash
- Directory of Draught Bass outlets
- Drinks Retailing News
- Dugs'n'Pubs
- FairFuel UK
- Fleurets - licensed trade estate agents
- Independent Family Brewers of Britain
- List of Wetherspoon Pubs
- Map of Samuel Smith's pub locations
- Morning Advertiser
- National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors
- Pub Cats
- Pub Curmudgeon website
- Pub Trails
- Pubs Galore
- R U Pissed?
- Sense on Drink-Driving
- Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood
- Society of Independent Brewers
- Sp!ked
- Stockport & South Manchester CAMRA
- Straight Statistics
- TaxPayers' Alliance
- The Conservative Woman
- The Country Squire
- The Free Society
- What Pub?
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