Day 9: Weir Green to Upper Framilode

Fortunately in the UK

On July 4, something remarkable happened that we in the UK take for granted: power changed hands from one party to another. No one died, no one even argued about the process, and control changed peacefully…it just happened.

What astonishes me is that at least one-third of the country just shrugged and failed to vote. They can have no appreciation of how lucky they are to live in a country at peace with established democratic processes, a free press, honest courts and free speech. These non-voters must be plain ignorant as to the quantity of blood that has been shed over centuries to elevate our magnificent country to where it is today. Perhaps they think that the way we are is normal, that all that has happened over the centuries is that the tooth fairy just waived her little wand and bingo! The country provides index linked pensions and an NHS, free education, endless football, and free beer all produced by magic. All they have to do is live on benefits   – which are a right not a privilege – eat pizza, deep fried Mars Bars and whine for an even easier life, all without even bothering to vote.

I think that, in time, they are in for quite a shock.

Tobacco Bastards

Neither of my parents lived to see eight of their grandchildren. They were both killed courtesy of British American Tobacco.

Today, we know that smoking is all too often an early death sentence. So, with horror, I’ve watched the antics of the tobacco companies as they try to lure our grandchildren into taking up the habit that killed their grandparents.

These semi-crooks are spending millions of pounds on research to discredit the idea that vaping is harmful to children. Now you can see an eight-year-old slurping on a cherry-flavoured nicotine bomb – while hoping that someone gives her a Snoopy-shaped e-cigarette holder for her birthday.

Philip Morris International is funding a company that runs pro-vaping “cessation sessions” for hundreds of UK doctors. They are trying to get children hooked on vapes in the hope they will get addicted to nicotine – and then after shelling out hard-earned cash on full-blown ciggies, just shut up and die like the smokers of previous generations! These are the bastards who are selling kids cheap and disposable fruity flavoured vapes with twee names like “Gummy Bear”, “Cotton Candy” or “Strawberry Milkshake” to entice them onto the hard stuff.

Top Your Day with Marlboro!

That’s a slogan from 1968. And indeed, before cigarette advertising was illegal, our fathers were persuaded that smoking would turn them into rugged cowboys or airline pilots, and ordinary women were conned into believing they would morph into hot chicks with a chance to lay “real men”. 

These tobacco conmen pretended that ciggies were a cure for cancer, asthma and other respiratory ailments, and they used their vast profits to promote plain vanilla lies like, “More doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette,” and “You’re never alone with a Strand”. And then they did all they could to bribe doctors to hide the links to cancer, heart disease, strokes, birth defects and all the other unspeakable horrors we now know are caused by tobacco. These creeps are still with us, as are the fat-arsed accountants, lawyers and advertising folk who support them.

My parents must have believed the lies. I recall clearly, when I was 14 – not a good age to lose a father – seeing my handsome Dad, who had fought in both world wars, dying by nicotine-stained degrees of heart disease. He realised too late that smoking was a death sentence and tried to dissuade us from ever taking up the habit. My mother was a courageous and talented scriptwriter who had endured a lot of hardship. Forty years on, I can still see her coughing up her guts against a backdrop of the ghastly paraphernalia of the dying.  By then, she had shrunk to six stone and was addicted to morphine.

Countless others have suffered the same misery, their beloved family members poisoned by these mega-crooks. Direct advertising may have been banned, but this doesn’t stop the conmen from weaselling out loopholes in the legislation with the hope they can add our grandchildren’s names to their tar-blackened butcher’s list. 

A Little List

ZANE supporters know that the chattering classes are routinely disparaging about our empire. A recent book about Churchill describes how India was removed from the “clutches” of Britain. I suppose “clutches” is one way of describing our contribution. Why are we daft enough to expect gratitude for what Britain has done for so many countries? Recall the bleak saying, “If you want gratitude in Washington, get a dog,” and then the Spanish, “Why do you dislike me so much, what favours have I ever done you?” Just watch how they work out today.

In the 1979 film The Life of Brian, John Cleese asks, “What did the Romans ever do for us?” – only to be told, “Education, medicines, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, fresh water and public health!”

It’s a forlorn hope, but before cosying up to the Russians, India might recall a little list of what Britain brought to them: Railways, mass education, irrigation projects, law and order, English as its first lingua franca, democracy, universities, newspapers, standard units of exchange, telegraphic communications, an incorruptible legal system, medical advances and the widespread abolition of the practice of burning widows alive on their husband’s funeral pyres.