How did we manage this?

We have the honour of running the world's most important sporting event. We've managed to make it into something that now seems more like a quadrennial party for police, security guards and lawyers in which they get to run free without any restraints imposed by reason or common sense. How did that happen?

Let's blow them all sky high

Dungeekin, on the subject of the Twitter Joke Trial:

I believe, in fact, that the people I'd like to blow sky-high the most right now are in the Crown Prosecution Service. I'd also like to set fire to the humourless fuckwits in Greater Manchester Police who even put a file forward to the CPS, and I have special plans involving boiling oil and a half-dozen rabid weasels for the moron so-called Judge who upheld the 'conviction' today.

Damn right. I am so angry.  So this is the result of Labour's anti-terror laws, put in place to protect us?  Dangerous terrorists have to be let out of jail, Abu Hamza has to stay here and cannot be deported, but Paul Chambers is guilty?

The Great Repeal Bill is getting urgent

Hat tip @paulwaugh, citing the British Journal of Photography:

A photojournalist, Jules Mattsson was detained under anti-terrorism laws after he took images of an Armed Forces Day parade in Romford's city centre

Yes, that will help the armed forces' PR efforts bear fruit. What a wonderful sideshow that must have made to the parade. [/sarcasm]

I really must get out with my camera more often. This rubbish has to be challenged.

Smoke, Fish, and Football

I don't like smoking.

No, I'll rephrase that. I really detest smoking. It is, to my mind, a disgusting habit. The act itself produces a noxious smoke that (literally) turns my stomach. The after-effects of the act leave a pall over wherever it is done. The walls are left greasy, sticky, and brown, the air is left fetid, and many of the smokers are left yellow in tooth and claw, prone to belching out yet more of their malodorous effluent on the thankfully rare occasions on which they manage to summon the lung capacity necessary to breathe deeply. I can hardly believe that they enjoy it. I simply cannot understand why they pursue this habit.

So, obviously, I am wholly and utterly opposed to the smoking ban.

No, you read that right. I am opposed to the ban. The reason is quite simple; I have my own very excellent means of protecting myself from the (alleged) effects of second-hand smoke. I keep this means with me at all times. Indeed, you could say that it and I are joined at the hip.

Literally, joined at the hip; it consists of a pair of legs. Light up next to me, and I walk off. I leave. I take myself somewhere that the air is clear. I use my own personal freedom in order to allow others their own personal freedom. I have no more right to dictate their behaviour in public than they do mine. So no thanks, Nanny, I neither need nor want your protection from their smoke.

Why? The alert amongst you will have seen the reason already: I do not understand why they pursue this habit. Therefore, they must know something that I do not. It is quite possible that I am wrong and that they are right. Given that they are causing me no harm that I cannot reasonably avoid, it is wrong that I and others should prevent them.

Then, there are the inevitable side-effects of the ban, most of which you find being discussed over at Leg-Iron's place. Like all legal measures that are at heart wrong, the smoking ban needs a range of intrusive rules and has a range of undesirable consequences. As an example of the rules, take my office. It is non-smoking; it always has been. If anyone in the office were to light up, they would find themselves being ejected in short order. It therefore has an elegant brass sign on the front entrance; it bears the usual no-smoking sign, and is fitted neatly into the door frame. It is accompanied by a second no-smoking sign mandated by the legislation; large, white, obvious, and as ugly as it is unnecessary, I hate it. There because our old sign is slightly too small to comply with Nanny's rules, it stands there as a reminder to me that our own efforts do not count; they are are of no consequence. Only Nanny in Whitehall knows what sort of sign is adequate to stop people from smoking in my office.

Then, the side-effects. So many Brits go to the pub for a drink and a smoke. Now, they cannot. Did New Labour really think that they would obediently go the the pub for just a drink? If so, why? Everyone else knew that they would buy a drink from the off-licence and drink at home. So the pubs have shut. Well done, Nanny; you have been very effective in protecting me and the bar staff from second-hand smoke - I cannot go to the pub and they no longer have a job. Nice one.

Meanwhile, the smokers are at home. With their children, if they have sufficient fertility left. Oooh, that was clever - the bar staff who had a choice are protected, but the children who do not have a choice are not.

More seriously, there are plenty of other things that I find irritating. Football, for instance. Why, really, does it matter whether eleven men who you have never met and who did not grow up near the place where you probably weren't born managed to kick a ball into a net more often than eleven other similar men. Why? Why does it excite such passion, such excitement, such willingness to pay over the odds for brightly-coloured shirts that were never going to fit someone as unfit and overweight as the person who is usually wearing it?

Or fishing. The opportunity to spend all day sitting by a river waiting to inflict pain on an innocent fish. Sitting there, outdoors, in a peaceful enclave of English countryside, away from nagging wives and rowdy children ... oh, ok, fishing I can understand, but you get my point. There are plenty of things that I do not want to do and which I find annoying, but that is no reason to ban them - even if they hurt the people that do them.

If you don't agree with me, then take a good hard look at yourself and what you enjoy. Is there no-one that finds some aspect of your life annoying? If you can honestly answer that question with a "yes", then you either need to learn a little more self-criticism, or you need to get out more.