Roller Trainers.

A boy was badly injured his morning because he shot in front of a car on his wheeled trainers. Questions are being asked. A&E doctors talk of the injuries kids receive whilst using these things: busted bones and cuts and grazes. Health and Safety commissars demand that children wear protective gear and, of course, there is talk of a ban.

Hang on.

Now, as mentioned here in the comments, must parents bubble-wrap their children? Which would they prefer, an active child who risks a busted elbow and the remote possibility of death, or the fat slob slouched in front of his X-Box who’ll need his jaw wired shut or stomach stapled and risks snuffing it from a heart attack before he’s thirty?

Also, if you bubble-wrap your children they’ll never learn to handle the real world, you know, the one where hammers are made out of steel and not rubber, where knives cut, concrete is not layered with foam rubber, cars smash your bones if you step in front of them and where sticking your hand into the wrong part of the machine on the factory floor results in your arm disappearing into the cogs. Yeah, there’s the compensation claims, but they ain’t going to sew your arm back on.

Warm January.

On Monday when I walked outside to get on my bike, it was like a spring morning. Today, despite the frost outside, the temperature is set to rise to 14 degrees Celsius, which is almost T-shirt weather. As well as snow drops blooming, other later flowers like daffodils are coming up. Farmers are happy with the prices for their crops rising by a third – mainly because of their use in biofuels – and with the fact that their animals have been able to graze throughout the winter because the grass hasn’t stopped growing. Whilst the enviro-we-all-need-to-be-poor-and-grow-cabbages-greenies march down the street with their The End is Nigh placards, everyone else turns down the central heating and enjoys the benefits.

Car Tax.

Apparently there’s a million cars on Britain’s roads without road tax discs, which usually means they are without insurance or MOTs. Some puzzlement is expressed about this, especially when the penalty for getting caught is to have you car taken to the crusher. It’s the fucking economy stupid! You can buy a car that runs, for less than £250. That’s about the lower end of the price for just the insurance. Add onto that £40 for an MOT, excluding repairs that might need to be made, and over £100 road tax and … ah do the sums yourselves. Just remember that if someone drives such a car for more than a year they’ll certainly be in profit even if it is taken to the crusher. Message to government (again): Are you surprised by this? You shouldn’t be, you made these people. You screw them for every last red cent and then go, “Oh dear, why are you breaking the law?” They’re breaking the law because they take one look at you and think, Why the hell shouldn’t I take the piss, you lot are.

NHS Come Dancing.

Oh bloody hell. It now seems the porkers of Britain will be able to get dance lessons on the NHS. After spending £2.5 million on ‘Local Exercise Action Pilot’ schemes, this sort of crap is what our Public Health Minister Caroline Flint has come up with. Well, excuse me, people are porky because they eat too much of the wrong food and don’t exercise enough. You didn’t need to spend £2.5 million to find that out or to find out what couch potatoes need to do to be more healthy. And spending money on giving these people dance lessons when others are dying in this country because there isn’t enough money to pay for the drugs they need (though of course this doesn’t apply to Scotland and Wales) is a travesty!

MP's Pay Rise.

Every now and again I’ll read something, blink, read it again, then listen for the theme music from The Twilight Zone playing in the background. I’d like to say that what I’ve just read beggars belief, but it doesn’t, it seems par for the course for the 646 twits in Parliament pretending to run this country. It’s just the normal ‘I’m sitting at the top of the heap so fuck you’ attitude of these lying, cheating, grasping, slobbering Orwellian swine.
These rancid turds claimed a total of £86,700,000 in expenses and office allowances last year, which averages £134,000 each. These 646 septic shitbags each cost us £726,000 a year for which they actually work (if it can be called that) for less than half a year. Their pay has risen by 37% since 1997. They get a £40,000 a year inflation-proof pension

AND NOW THEY WANT THEIR BASIC SALARY TO RISE FROM £60,277 BY 66% TO £100,000!!!

They are on £625 a day before expenses! With expenses they are on £1250! Will the expenses go down? Will they buggery. If they get their way these sodden lumps of fecal matter floating at the top of the parasitic public sector will be on £1500 a day – that’s just about the weekly minimum wage per hour!
Shit! Where is Guy Fawkes when we need him most!

Control Freaks

To these words add one of the phrases below: ‘If something is not done catastrophe will ensue, so I am going to make lots of new rules, regulations and laws that you must obey, because’

you are too fat,
you smoke too much,
the planet is warming,
you drink too much,
you drive too fast,
you produce too much waste,
you are racist,
you are homophobic ,
the terrorist threat is growing,
you might hurt yourself,
you smack your children,
you’ve got a job and others haven’t,
you’re too rich,
an Ice Age is coming,
the oil is running out,

Then, after adding your chosen phrase, now add these words: ‘and you are going to pay and pay and pay until your bum-hole squeaks.’ These particular words can also be added to the phrases below:

I want a cushy number in Brussels
I want to rescue the children of Africa
I want a fat pension,
I want another pay rise,
I want my son/daughter/wife/husband/aromatherapist to have a cushy number in Brussels
I want all people to be equal, whether or not that’s true
I want my party financier to have this contract

It’s easy enough to think of many more…

Hah!

It was amusing, shortly after publicising this blog, to receive an email containing this from another SF writer:

“A sci-fi writer admitting he’s a conservative? If I had the balls (or a big enough audience as of yet), I’d come out of that closet myself.”

Conservative is probably about correct since I believe in conserving what is good and what works and not in destroying it on the basis of some misconceived ideology, though perhaps the term libertarian might be better and no label at all even better than that. It wasn’t really too much of a risk admitting to my views since anyone who has read my comments on various message boards will have figured them out anyway. It’s interesting that the writer should admit to caution about doing the same. I also find it interesting reading new SF writers banging the lefthand drum in the belief they are being radical, when in truth they are only joining the establishment.