When is a little Fascism acceptable?

In this day and age of ever increasing legislation into our private spaces I’m going to start this post with an imaginary situation…
I’m writing in my study. I’m on my own and so I smoke my pipe, happily as it happens. Of course I have to stop smoking as soon as anybody else comes into [...]

Read Full Post »

Rule 303 and Your Freedom’s Up…

Apart from a couple of quick personal asides this ones about freedom and what it means when we loose it.
This evening I’m off to stand outside an emerging church cafe evening because it’s about faith and politics – as a smoker I can no longer just go on in and if segregation isn’t political I [...]

Read Full Post »

Awhile ago we had a bit of a celebratory week

and one of the things we did was go to visit Bridgnorth at the end of an old fashioned steam railway.
Not only did the peculiar angle of the keep hold interest but the views from ‘High Town’ are quite spectacular.
One of the other things I found a bit of a treat was ‘Gerry’s Sweet Shop’ [...]

Read Full Post »

Is it reasonable?

There’s a story that was under the ‘World Bulletin’ column of the Telegraph yesterday – the full ’story’ as such can be found here…
Apparently one country which has gone down the health fascist regulations re smoking has decided that folk are to be allowed to have their businesses not threatened by the ban. Not to [...]

Read Full Post »

They are coming for you, now – Drinkers

There is an article in today’s Telegraph about drinking and the cost that it makes on the NHS – there is no doubt that alcohol is being increasingly abused and that got me thinking [something folk have tried to disabuse me of] about why that might be…
As I sit at home drinking gin at a [...]

Read Full Post »

Well, for what it’s worth here’s The List

of products produced by British American Tobacco – which from my earlier post I’d request folk who smoke choose other products…
First, mostly because I’m not going to mind this as I smoke a pipe, The Cigarettes;
Kent, Pall Mall, Dunhill, Lucky Strike, Vogue, Viceroy, Rothman’s, Kool, Benson & Hedges, State Express 555, Peter Stuyvesant, John Player [...]

Read Full Post »

With a heavy heart

I write this post, as I smoke my pipe and drink coffee and sip a small gin – you may think it’s a bit early but then I’ve just watched This World; Bannatyne Takes On Tobacco which documents Duncan Bannatyne’s hard look at British American Tobacco practice in Africa.
I watched it with notepad to hand [...]

Read Full Post »

Trapped

is how I feel when I’m within a pub. Now I used to feel quite at home in the dark, low ceilinged bars which had shafts of swirling smoke as light shone in from without – with a low grind of music in the background or just plain silent except for the ongoing hushed conversations…
Of [...]

Read Full Post »

This will be a little more erratic

than I, or you, may have expected.
Take yesterday for example – I had planned to not only watch the episode of ‘Angel’ I slept through with the wife the night before but also that I would, at last, be able to do a post on my old blog… Unfortunately, as these things went neither of [...]

Read Full Post »

The Thought Police want to Charge

the over taxed smokers who are so ungracious as to still choose to smoke…
The government agency ‘Health England’ has come up with a truly Orwellian idea – a ‘license’ to buy tobacco products at a proposed annual cost of £10.00. This is purely – according to them – to try to help folk to quite [...]

Read Full Post »