Scribblings III: Star Wars, flags, skateboarding, free speech and not blaming smoking

Worse than smoking!

We begin with the weird as Grandad encounters reports of the Star Wars obsessive - this my friends is in a space beyond geekdom or nerdism:

daoku began watching star wars at different playback rates in order to do this but again it only lasted a while.
He then purchased the exact cinema seats that were there in 1977 and placed them in his living room.He purchased 40 shop floor dummies, dressed them in 1970's clothes, placed them on the seats and watched star wars until the small hours.

That is just the tiniest of flavours...

It is good to know that, when you need one, you can find someone who has fine details of flag history and etiquette at his fingertip. James Higham is one such:

The ship is right, the three masts are right and the artist may well have been right in 1776 on the flags, though it seems not.

And, as anyone who has been to Parkhead will tell you, getting the flags (and songs right) is important!

Meanwhile Raedwald, from his eyrie in the Alps, comments on risk (and skateboarding):

Some years ago, skateboarders old enough to buy cheap airfares would gather informally in small groups, take postbuses to the high places and board down the mostly empty mountain roads. Much fun. In the UK, the official reaction would be one of horror; the bansturbationists would emerge in force, the Chief Constable would appear on TV, MPs would demand new laws to ban boarders and local councils would deploy wardens to patrol all the steep roads with powers to seize boards. After all, the UK is a nation where it is now forbidden to roll a round cheese down a grass hill because of 'elf-n-safety.

Here's a couple of those skateboarders.

Among all this frivolity there is seriousness. And nothing is more serious that protecting free speech. The Churchmouse reminds us that there appears to be something of an inconsistency in attacks on speech:

Despite recently supporting a European Commission code promising to take down online hate speech within 24-hours of posting, Facebook has failed remove a group titled “I Want to F**king Kill Donald Trump” to the ire of his supporters.

The group was created on May 14 with a post reading “Donald Trumps Hair Looks Like A Bleached Mop – Gordon Ramsey 2016.” The most recent post is, “What Is Your Weapon Of Choice?” Asking what weapon people would use to kill Trump if given the chance.

Me, I liked Facebook and Twitter better when they defended free speech rather than allowing government and the progressive mob to beat them into submission.

Finally - for this week - Leg iron asked where it all went wrong:

As a smoker, I’m feeling neglected. All the things we used to cause have moved on. We were the Grim Reapers who brought death and decay everywhere we went. Every disease, every illness was our doing. I was having fun with that.

As our intrepid freethinker observes - the fussbuckets are now obsessed with food.

There's still hope - as this outcry reminds us.

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Scribblings II: On pubs, smoking bans, perdigree dogs, political donations and Brexit

We're back with another dose of great writing from Martin Scriblerus bloggers. I did get called out for calling it 'scribblings' - but what else could I choose! Well here we go:

There are a lot of beer bloggers who talk about beer. Old Mudgie talks about pubs and his blog is a paean to their wonders, a wistful look at the memories of pubs gone and a poke at those who get too precious about beer. Here's he looks at why old pubs just sit empty:

Assuming the building has no future as a pub, it is going to cost money to convert it to anything else, and that will need both someone willing to take it on, and planning permission. In many cases, the owners are probably hanging on to get planning permission to demolish the building and redevelop the site for something else, typically housing.

Up and down the country, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of derelict pubs that have been in that state for years, many of which are featured on my Closed Pubs blog. Fortunately there aren’t too many in Stockport, but two exceptions are the Royal Mortar on Higher Hillgate and the Bow Garrett on Brinksway, both of which must have been closed for over ten years.

Dick Puddlecote, when not running some sort of transport business, writes passionately about the fussbuckets - charmless, judgemental folk who hate us having pleasure. Here he cites a fellow 'jewel robber' (and he calls those challenging the anti-smoking, temperance and diet fanatics) and comments that:

This is what happens when you have a colossal state-funded machine which views life solely through the lens of health. Other pleasures and benefits in consuming the products in question are completely ignored, therefore the prohibitionists simply cannot comprehend the huge social and financial damage their rancid policies are causing ...

Julia has been a loud, uncompromising and essentially conservative voice in the blogging world for a long while. Here's a typical sample of her blogging as she comments of a story about a lefty who bought a pedigree dog - first the quote from the story:

"...Colleagues and friends have accused me of abandoning my longstanding centre-left principles in favour of eugenics, arrivisme and trying to suck up to the ruling classes..."

Then...bang:

Might I suggest you find new colleagues and friends? It should be quite easy, now you have a puppy!

Brilliant!

Mark Wadsworth is best known for writing about land value tax but he's not a one-trick pony and here's a cracking post about donations to political parties (that may or may not be a good idea):

...it has been suggested that parties should either be funded out of taxation or there should be a cap on the amount each donor can give.

I don’t think either of those two are satisfactory, and would like to suggest another alternative. Legislated anonymous donations.

Anyone wishing to donate above say £500, would have to send their cheque to the Electoral Commission nominating to whom it should go. Once a year, those donations would be passed on to the relevant party aggregated and without the names of the donors.

Raedwald's another blogger who takes few prisoners and doesn't bow to political correctness. Here he compares a map of 7th century East Anglia to the devastating effect of ice caps melting on the region:

The Indie prints a map of how East Anglia could look if the giant ice sheet did melt; it's exactly the same as the historic Anglian coastline in the 7th century.

Finally -for this week - Frank Davis compares the experience of Remain voters after Independence Day with the shock smokers like Frank got on 1 July 2007 when they were banned from pubs:

But for those who voted to remain, their experience that day was probably one of shock and dismay and disbelief. They are probably feeling something very like what we smokers experienced on 1 July 2007. For they also had just been expelled from a club in which they had come to believe that they were full members – just like smokers and their pubs. They had become exiles. Their world had been turned upside down. They are probably filled with the same disbelief and rage as many smokers were on 1 July 2007.

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