A jaundiced view of life from the darkest recess of the saloon bar...
Seen in today’s Sunday Times “Atticus” column by Roland White, not at present online:
Walking past a red phone box in my village last week, I noticed for the first time that it contains no actual telephone but a large sign which insists “No smoking”. So the phone box no longer does what it was designed for, and is now just bossy and annoying.
It should be Grade I listed as an outstanding monument to modern government.
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"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)
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Out of all the things that came out of the smoking ban, the worst was the requirement for a sign.
ReplyDeleteWhen was the last time you saw somebody smoking in a doctors waiting room? or a pie shop? or many other places we already take for granted that it was unacceptable to smoke? A pub that had successfully introduced a smoking ban already still had to comply. Balmy.
It's a wonder the law isn't changed to state that you should display a sign saying you must not murder in a pub. We know the law, you stupid law making idiots.
I wonder how long it will be before phone boxes disappear completely due to mobile phones?
Isn't 10 Downing St a workplace? Why isn't there a no smoking sign on the door? Law breaking surely?
ReplyDeleteOr Crown Exemption.