Fags, Papers and Fag Papers

A few light thoughts to get us through into what promises to be a wet, subdued weekend.

I want to pen a few cognitive whirrings on two tangibly similar but intellectually opposite products: Newspapers and cigarettes.

Tabs

I have one vice left in this world, since junking things like gambling and booze - smoking.

I do love me tabs. They get me through a day's hard work, they help me chill the fuck out and they also induce a sense of the sublime, giving me pause to think and wistfully muse over things during enforced breaks from the hubbub of life.

The down sides are obvious, but I tend not to think about that too much. I know I'll give up (probably quite easily, as I have done many times before) and I know it's not an unaffordable habit of mine.

I tend to equate my smoking experience with that of the hypothetical man who seeks out sexual experiences from paid prostitutes outside of his long term relationship. The man goes to this cheap street hooker (Pall Mall, Mayfair) and that brothel (Richmond Superkings, B&H Silver), but ultimately, he knows he can never get elsewhere what he gets at home with the strong, reliable and dependable girlfriend. When dawn breaks, and the money has run out, he'll always trudge on home to 'old dependable'.

That's me and cigarettes. I get itchy, fed up, try different brands, like smoking them for about 4 or 5 tabs, then get very bored and restless before going back to the shop to pick up my long term, dependable favourites.

Marlboro Gold.

What has added to my satisfaction of being a Marlboro Light smoker is, and this is totally weird and irrational, the fact that they have totally redesigned the pack. After all these years of Marlboro having the packs with the thickly cast, multi sided coloured 'arrows' pointing upwards (red for strong, yellow for light), it's all change. And I really like the new design. So much so, that my smoking experience has actually improved because of it.

Now that's actually quite scary. Because Phillip Morris will probably sort of know it does that. Good on 'em!

Firstly, the new pack has a raised, slightly embossed effect across most of the front, and it is just much more aesthetic than the older one. Which looked a bit musty and outdated. The newer one has a fresher, more alluring feel. The look is 'light' and professional. These guys, somehow, must have done some market research before launching this. I don't know how or where, because our ludicrous fascist country just about barely lets these people trade, never mind speak to their customers.

But my saga with Marlboro does not end here.

If you are a smoker and you keep an eye on what tobacco products are out there, you might have noticed this addition to the Marly Family pop up on the market over the last 6 months or so...

Marlboro Bright Leaf

OK, what is the deal here? Why are these 50p or so cheaper than Red or Lights? I just don't get it. There's nothing wrong with the quality. They smoke nicely. Strong, sure, very strong. But they are definitely not remotely budget.

I wonder whether it's just a marketing strategy, and they are cheaper in order to somehow catch the market's attention and shoe horn in there. Once a market has become established, they may well rise in price and catch up with the sisters in the Morris family.

Given how dear cigarettes are now, these are well worth a look if you still want the Marly quality but do not want to whore out to the scummy brands.

I say that, but of course, I know deep down full well that there still, still, is no substitute for the king of tabs - Marly Shite.

Tab Papers

I am also a fan of smoking rolling tobacco. When I run out of specialist, imported handrolling tobacco which I procure from Shervingtons in Chancery Lane on visits to London (highly recommended tobacco specialists), I am partial to a bit of the old 'Amber Leaf'. A sturdy, decent and very smokable rolling brand, devoid of the sickly sweetness of Golden Virginia and the grubby, tarry bitterness of brands like Drum and Cutters Choice.

When it comes to rolling tobacco, I am particularly fussy about the type and weight of rolling papers I use. Fundamentally, I will not enjoy a rollie smoke at all, and I will refuse a rollie, unless it is used with blue Rizla. I am weird like that. I don't like the super thin Silver Rizla, because for me that leads to an over-emphasis of the pure tobacco taste.

Green or red Rizla, or any other cheaper or free rolling paper, ruins the experience, because the smoke is over-shadowed by the taste of the paper rather than the tobacco. The perfect compromise comes with the reasonably thin Blue paper.

Further to that, even, I will never smoke a rollie using a roach. I will have to use Swan filters, as it creates a proper balance in the taste and inhalation of the smoke.

Does anyone else have smoking peccadilloes like this? I wonder.

Tabs (papers), no, not rolling papers, or cigarettes...Tabloid newspapers and other rags

Being tight, and busy, I tend to read all my news online for free.

The world of journalism has shifted quite a bit over recent months, and many readers of ours may have noticed this too.

Of course, we had the 2010 General Election, and the lead up to that and aftermath saw some shifts in allegiances. The result also saw the Guardian shift further to the left, and there will be a number of reasons for that. One factor will be the fact that the Guardian took a lot of much needed revenues from public sector New Labour promoted and often funded job ads. So they have vested reasons for opposing the liberal coalition, leading to them casting them as a right wing coalition. Which they clearly fucking aren't.

The G has therefore gone 'out there', and must be taken even less seriously than ever before. It has simply lost the plot. Which is amusing seeing as they backed the Lib Dems in the election. Hey, maybe that's another factor. Who knows the whole reason. All I know, is they have gone all 1970s and are hurtling towards Tony Benn territory with added obsession over Islam and immigration issues.

The Independent continues to trumpet an odd form of social democracy, which seems ever more outdated now that Labour's experiment with that politics has proven to have been such an abject failure.

The Times has decided to make readers pay for online content. Which is hilarious, because virtually no-one does. So they have essentially fucked themselves. The paper was going downhill from a quality journalism point of view before hand, so God knows what that rag has in store for the future.

And of course, there's the ever curious, ever deranged and potty Daily Mail. Which, as the Daily Mash T-Shirt suggests, is like spending 20 minutes in a mental hospital.

Does Dacre really have no idea what his online editor is doing with that paper? It is absolutely astonishing how they get away with it without being totally ripped and discredited by anyone with a passing interest in news and current affairs.

It has turned into a rabid, hyper-hypocritical, super-salacious version of the National Enquirer. Every day they publish a new tranche of stories about young girls or old, supposedly washed up celebs, bearing flesh. It is unabashed in its attempt to titillate. Which wouldn't be a problem, if the Mail did not market itself as a staunchly moral and conservative, serious paper.

The other day they had two pieces, side by side, in the online front page. One was a very concerning piece about 'Kim Kardashian's' 14 year old sister, and a set of racy, saucy photos of her posing in a bikini. The comments have to be read to be believed. Yes, I'll say that again - she is 14 years old. And the piece was basically a 'cor, phroar, what a corker!' piece.

And the adjacent story was about how an Emmerdale episode was deeply shocking and offensive because in the backdrop of one particular scene, there was a blackboard with inappropriate writing on it. The writing was a shopping list, which included the words 'pile cream' and 'jam rags'.

Now, even if this was offensive to someone, they'd have had to have possessed a keen eye to see the offence. Secondly, the offence was obviously worsened by the fact the Mail published the piece...and the stills from the episode. And the killer one - this outrageous filth which obviously had the Mail rattled, was sat next to the indecent pictures of a minor. Which the Mail bought, published and promoted in a prominent place online.

They didn't need to do any of that, and the two issues are clearly juxtaposed in a way that shrieks Daily fucking bullshit Mail hypocrisy.

It is definitely getting worse. The Mail online has a staggering number of readers per day now, probably among the highest ratings for any paper on the internet in Britain, and probably most other countries. I saw the figure the other day, but cannot locate it, but it naturally runs into the many millions.

I think this is deeply worrying for those interested in seeing proper news and journalism at work and it does not do any favours for the national psyche. If we want to become a country that moves away from dodgy journalism and the ill-education of the masses, and if we want to move on from the depressing Big Brother, reality TV, celeb culture we have here, the Mail's success is a hindrance to this unlikely dream.

Anyway, I'm off for a tab. Feel free to comment.

Yours
JD

Some Random Thoughts

Some things that I have noticed that don't really fit a normal B&D post, so I thought I'd do a quick light relief piece this monring. Ah, that's better. Now, on with what I was saying.

100 million Facebook users details released

I fail to see the issue here. You join a site that is clearly one evil point short of a Microsoft and give it all your details in a slightly deranged bid to get people you don't know to 'poke you' and become your 'friend'. Then some nutter publishes all those details on a different site.

Then people moan about it. Oh no, people I do actually know might find me on the world's biggest social networking shitfest and 'poke me'. 

Plankton decline

Apparently reported as a fact by the BBC headline, it is only when you raed through the article you notice the gaping holes. The headline suggests, and the researchers say maybe at a guess possibly, that the world's waters are warming and the plankton are dying out. Problem there is that as fishing has increased the zooplankton they eat would go up, meaning the phytoplankton would go down. So the answer could very clearly actaully be the massive increased in fishing.

Very random - the Disaronno adverts

Yes, I'm thinking too much about this, but are these the most pointless things ever? Why not try Disaronno and coke? Okay, tell me mr voice over, how do I make that? 'One measure of Disaronno, ice, coke'.

No shit!

Reapeat the same fucking advert but change coke to orange or whatever other mixer you care for. Sad thing is you know there are people out there thinking 'Ah, so that's how you make it'.

The Mail, you have to laugh

The Mash have a rather funny dig at the Mail here. The odd thing I read recently is that apparently Dacre has now lost it with Boris Johnson to such an extent taht the paper is banned from mentioning him, even when they had the scoop on the bonking. Dacre even rang the desk from the airport to pull a front page that was going out.

And of course he is in no way fucked off with not getting that lordship with Gordon. Total lunatic.

Scouting for enemies

I want to, as clearly as possible, and as quickly and cleanly as possibly, set across my grievances with the libertarian blogging world and many of the antagonists within that sphere.

This follows on from Mr Boatang's recent article entitled 'The Blogging Paradigm'.

Our grievances are essentially two-fold.

1 - Since we started blogging 3 years ago, we slowly became acquainted with the libertarian blogging scene and we noticed that it was very closed, cliquey, incestuous, intolerant of dissent and sycophantic.

Many libertarian bloggers, particularly the right wing libertarian ones, are on the extreme anarcho-capitalist wing, and they despise anything that remotely smacks of a differing view, even if that view is libertarian (to them, it's social democracy dressed up). They close ranks when someone comes along to query certain people and ideas.

2 - (linked with grievance 1) - We are staunchly libertarian and passionate in our beliefs. But we represent a fairly contrary form of politics, and our overall position is minarchist and moderate. This means we believe in a much smaller state, and civil and political rights which are not wholly and entirely dependent upon the whims of private property owners. We are not dogmatic and extreme.

Our politics, and our presence on the libertarian blogger scene, has caused ruptures and disquiet. Instead of engaging us and instead of tolerating us, many libertarian bloggers have sought to discredit us using sly, uncivil and underhand tactics so that visitors to our sites all arrive with a ready-made, pre-boxed preconception of who we are, what we think, what we are like online and what our motivations are.

That, in as best a nut shell as I can harvest from the tree of truth, sums up what the problem is between this blog, and a wide variety of political websites hailing from these shores (with a certain ex pat blogger from a nearby country included).

Here is a list of the attacks against us that we regular see pop up on here and elsewhere. I will offer my responses under each type of attack.

You pick fights for hits

We never have, and never will, pick a fight or start an argument online with other bloggers or writers in order to generate blog traffic, raise awareness of ourselves or in any way garner attention. We genuinely do not care about such considerations. If, via our blogging behaviour, we saw our stats reduced down to one visitor a day, or rise to 10,000,000 per day, it would not make a difference. If we raise contention with others, it is for one reason and one reason only: we actually have a point in what we are trying to say. That is it.

You are jealous of more successful bloggers

Some say that we spit anger and bitterness, and this is out of jealousy. Jealousy of what? Of whom? We have varied, busy lives. We do not dwell online all day every day, with green ink in hand and a green eye on others, angry because other sites are more popular. If we observe bloggers, who happen to be popular, like Guido or Dale, carrying on in such a way that we believe warrants criticism, we will criticise. Jealousy? Sorry, try again, because it is not true.

You think you are ever so more libertarian than yeeeaow / The Keepers of the One True Libertarianism TM

This is one of Devil's Kitchen's and Obo's favourites. They think that, because we posit views and put the tag 'libertarian' on them and us, that must mean we consider ourselves the sole proprietors of the entire political philosophy and how it should be advanced in wider political discourse.

By this logic, anyone out there who has a view, on anything at all, is guilty of trying to monopolise debate and ownership of the truth. We never have and never will attempt to do this. It is preposterous.

We write. We promote our political position. We attack others and criticise others for holding different views. But we have said from the start that we use facts and logic in our arguments, and that just because we say 'x' does not mean all others and thinkers of 'y' are fundamentally and intrinsically wrong.

If people out there have decided we have implied a monopoly of libertarianism, then it will probably be down to the deliberate misrepresentation of our position and the twisting of one of our occasional jokes where we swagger about a bit and claim to be gods.

We trust readers to kind of get that we are not, and that we are just two cunts with a computer each who happen to have a brain, political ideas and some spare time. Our detractors have decided to deliberately pick up on our bollock-swinging tongue-in-cheekness and hold it up as a beacon to how intellectually bankrupt we are - which is patently unfair.

You are the most unpleasant people on the internet

Sentiments like that, coming from the likes of Devils Kitchen and Obo and others, are not ones worth taking seriously, when one studies their own antecedents and modus operandi. We do aim to shock and we can be harsh, but hear this: we take as good as we give. And the moment we stop doing that, you're perfectly at liberty to tear us apart for being thin skinned hypocrites.

Cognitive Dissonance

Tired, and perhaps suspicious of the value inherent in the older forms of smear, there are one or two opponents of ours who seek to cast aspersions on our mental health.

One blogger (a certain bitch, who shall remain nameless, the poor little martyr) began, I believe, the tagline 'Boring and Demented' to describe us (Boatang and Demetriou).

Then came the flood of pseudo-psychiatry and mental health assessments from people who are no better qualified to comment in this regard as a neurolinguist is to remark on the merits of weight lifting to Hollywood action stunt men.

More recently, we had 'cognitive dissonance' from Obnoxio the Clown. A series of articles appeared on his site over recent months, entitled with either the aforementioned term, which is used in the circles of psychology, or a bastardisation of the term - 'mongnitive dissonance'. Presumably meaning to imply that we are both mad and disabled. Nice.

Here is the wikipedia definition of 'cognitive dissonance'. I have had a look through, and from what I can deduce, the term applies to people who hold contradictory desires and thoughts, and where the holder of those desires realises he or she cannot attain something they want, and so they mentally distort their desires in order to convince themselves they never wanted the object of their desire in the first instance.

What did our critic mean to imply? That we secretly want to be part of the libertarian blogger world, but because we cannot attain whatever it is we secretly want to obtain, we violently eschew it, pretending to ourselves we never wanted it all along?

No matter what way I look at it, I can only, objectively, come to the same conclusion: it is a load of presumptuous bollocks. Spoken by people ill-equipped and ill-qualified to make these assertions.

We speak what we want, how we want, and we question everything and everyone, knowing that it will likely piss people off. It was never, ever part of our intention or desire (we know, we speak to each other a lot) to blog in order to get in with people and get the linky love going.

What more can I say? The cognitive dissonance accusation is a lie.

You, going on about all this, are boring and I'm sick of reading about it

This is like a bringing of the whole matter full circle, as though a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. Look, we have to argue back at the accusations. You would not like this stuff to be said about you and your site, and we don't either. We defend and justify. We counter attacks and nonsense.

I appreciate it does not make great reading, and there is a sort of 'collateral damage' involved (our enemies war against us, we react, and lose 'men' (readers) in the process), but it has to be done every now and then. This article here, for example, has to be done. Otherwise casually passing third parties will visit these sites and listen to the bullshitters. We cannot tolerate this.

Your blog is shit and you have no readers

Fair enough. If that's your view, then either do not come here (and thereby miss out on our quality blogging) or actually state, with reasons and facts, why we are shit and wrong. Then, we might get somewhere. Otherwise, what is the point? If not to simply parrot preconceptions based on third party poison?

You have written this very article to generate hits

If this is your view, then read closely: if you are a blogger, then we demand that you take us off your blogroll. Now. Immediately, please. We are sick of these lies. So, to prove we do not want or care about fucking hits (which is surely the argument of someone projecting their own values) we ask you to remove all trace and reference of us from your own domain.

Can I say any fairer than that?

Much of the firestorm that started all this off was because we left the LPUK (Libertarian Party UK) and levied some criticisms over that party's direction and manifesto, and the lack of the development and democratic discussion of the manifesto. Amongst other reasons.

This is the sad thing about it all. There are valid reasons behind our points, but amongst all the fire storming and nonsense spouted by people, it gets lost in the ether.

So, we want an end to it. We are sick and tired of constantly trying to remind people what actually happened when, who actually said what, and why we were and are angry. The line must be drawn. And so we respectfully ask that all those people who do not like us, and think we are bullshitting regarding the above, remove us from their blogrolls and just fuck off.

One more thing...

Blogrolls

You will notice we do not have one. Haven't for ages. We realised, well, 'why?' Why bother? Some people have them because they are genuinely into their politics and want to provide a 'resource'. Right, Longrider?

Fair enough. I consider such individuals to be in the minority. I think Mr B had it right about blogrolls and why people have them.

I personally think blogrolls are like cub scout badges. You know, those cute little icons of honour you had sewn on your sleeve by mummy to show off something new you've acquired. Like the ability to do reef knot.

"Dib Dib Dib! Dob Ob Obo!"

Imagine if we all went around wearing badges on our sleeves with the names of all our friends.

"Hey look! Jimmy knows Tommy, he's got him under Janey!"

This is the modern, blogging equivalent of fucking blogrolls. A big old status thing, to show off to everyone who you are like, who you read, and who probably knows you too.

"This is my club!"

Whoop-de-mother-fucketty-doo. Here's a curly-wurly. First prize to you.

Why else would everyone have these things? Most libertarian bloggers are 'fuck the world, I don't give a shit, get off my back, you are all cunts' types. Do they really want to provide a valuable public resource and service? Or is the cub scout analogy fairer than many would dare admit?

We genuinely find it all rather irritating. We do not like chumminess, schmoozing, back-scratching, hypocrisy, sliminess, sneakiness and we don't like it of politicians and we don't like it from you, either.

These are traits we loathe, in fact. Hence why we rip the shit out of it. If it bores you, good.

I hope this helps to straighten things out a little. It will be the last time I comprehensively address the matter, and I re-state here and now: if you are amongst the Country Club of wankers we are addressing, stop talking about us, stop linking us, take us down from your cub scout Hall of Fame, and fuck off and die.

Kindest Regards

John Demetriou

Rape Charge Anonymity

This was dropped yesterday as a non-manifesto policy, instead 'pressure' will be put onto the inept Press Complaints Commission to have its members not name those accused of rape.

An interesting comment was made by Women Against Rape, who seemed to think that the anonymity was a bad thing, but in a slightly odd context: "Why should men accused of rape have special protection not offered to those facing charges of murder, terrorism or child abuse? People are no more likely to be falsely accused of rape than of other crimes. Why this attempt to further discredit and discriminate against rape survivors?"

Well, why indeed?

Labour have been ranting and raving about this with a heavy dose of irony - it was the 1976 Labour government that introduced anonymity in the first place and the 1988 Tory one that repealed it.

First of all though, why protect the identity of those people, often men, accused of rape? Well I would have though that was obvious to be honest and the WAR stance is somewhat stunted. Rape clearly has a very serious, shall we say, image problem in wider society and the trails are concerned with highly embarrassing details needed to prove one's innocence often humiliating a person's family and ruin their lives.

Murder and so is no picnic of course, and child abuse is far from a happy camp. But I'll come onto that.

The last part of that statement is pathetic, "Why this attempt to further discredit and discriminate against rape survivors?". How is this so? I fully believe that the accuser should be anonymous as well, which is the case. So, why should the victim of a rape be treated any differently to that of any other crime?

Opponents believe it will scare victims into not coming forward. How? You make a charge, a very serious charge, against someone and no one knows your name and nobody knows their name, unless convicted. Why does that stop them coming forward?

Harry Harmen speaks of this in her own unique way, "To single out rape defendants sends a very powerful message to juries in rape cases that the rape victim is not to be believed" How? How does it result in anything of the kind?

Much of this goes further and to my mind it is easily argued that all defendants should have their identities protected until convicted. A very simple rule is that you are innocent until shown to be otherwise. In the case of many crimes, child abuse, rape and so on the very accusation is enough to destroy that persons life, even after being declared innocent of all charges.

This country operates a system that if you are guilty then it must be proved to be the case before a judge and jury of your peers. If it cannot be then you are not guilty, if you are not guilty then why should your name be common knowledge where you live for the rest of your life as the one who 'was up for that crime, they said he didn't do it, but...' and so on? How is that any sort of justice? Say, you are falsely accused of abusing your child and shown to be innocent, those looks are never going to stop from the moral brigade.

The solution of effectively gagging the media is then absurd in the context of the above. The state won't introduce a law to protect those that are innocent from either false charges or unprovable ones, but it does expect the media to hold back.

That is a tacit acceptance not only of an accused's right to be free from vilification, but also the role the modern media play in totally destroying a person in the quest for sales. The quick soundbite front page on a random event such as a rape allegation that has been picked up on the wire, the campaign against a suspect that would lead to a charge of contempt of court in any other era.

So rather than the state guiding the media in such a way and then removing any right to anonymity, why not just introduce anonymity for all defendants and victims until found guilty?

The Blogging Paradigm

par·a·digm 
–noun
1. Grammar
a. a set of forms all of which contain a particular element, esp. the set of all inflected forms based on a single stem or theme.
b. a display in fixed arrangement of such a set, as boy, boy's, boys, boys'.
2. an example serving as a model; pattern.
 
The blogosphere conforms in many relevant ways, namely through being a framework containing a common theme, that of individuals airing opinion. In political blogging the case is more so, the form taken by political blogs is often very similar: person or persons have a site that launches opinion based upon, usually, a particular stream of thought into the ether to be debated and argued over. An addition is then the use of a blogroll to display support and mutual backslapping for others of a similar label, who then do likewise.
 
Please glance right and notice the lack of such.
 
This model, as a whole, has separate schools of thought. We have the Left, the Right. We then have the Liberal Left and the Libertarian Right. As a whole we have recently witnessed a paradigm shift.
 
The 'big' blogs have now become, largely, Left and Liberal. Guido was recently knocked off his number 2 Wikio mutual wanking ranking and the Right has slowly drifted. In particular the Libertarian Right. This is something we predicted here some time ago would occur as a result of the election and a general shift towards the Right at a state level. Where the Right was the reaction against the Labour years, a now Tory - no matter how liberal in reality - government has resulted in the opposite.
 
What we have in the 'Libertarian' blogosphere, however, is a paradigm paralysis: the inability or refusal to see beyond the current models of thinking.
 
Here is an example. Make a comment such as 'I think A is the right answer' on a variety of sites and see the reaction. The key word here is think. On the whole I have found that on the Left the response will be along the lines of 'How dare you think A is right, B is clearly right and A is total shit. You shit' et cetera, et cetera. Ask this on a 'Libertarian' site and you will get 'How dare you say A is right, who the fuck are you to say A is right, you cunt. You probably really think B is right, but who are you to say what is right'.
 
Please note the difference. Or la difference, as I believe they say in parts of Paris.
 
And this is where I get sick and fucking tired of this fucking bullshit spouted by fucking pricks.
 
Here at B&D we spout a lot of shit, but that is our wont. A lot of what we say, in our view and indeed many others, is entirely sensible and has a number of valid points. Even if you disagree, that is fine. Do so. In fact, we welcome your disagreement provided you can accept the fallout. We may well call you a variety of names, depending on your delivery, and we are most likely to argue until very blue in the boat. We also say things that piss people off, we have no desire for 'friends' and 'allies' while do this, we do it for other reasons. In fact we do it for a genuine reason - to get shit off of our chests.
 
What we won't do is tell you that you are a fucking cunting lefty social democratic piece of shit for daring to come here and tell us that you think you are fucking right and we are fucking wrong you cunt.
 
We will also not proceed to a site know as Twitter and twatter away to others who share our own world view and slander the living shit out of you without you even knowing, forming a nice little gang that will all start saying the exact same thing. We will not use such sites as Twatter and call you an authoritarian statist social democratic thug, simply because you have the temerity to have a different point of view.
 
Should you keep up the pretence of disagreement, which must surely be because you crave attention and need traffic to your site because why else would you blog an opinion, then you will not find B&D telling anyone who will listen that you believe yourself divine and absolutely correct. We would not say such a thing,  simply because of the glaring fucking fact that you have never fucking said it.
 
The blogging paradigm is indeed shifting. A general alteration of perspective has occurred amongst the politically vocal toward the Left. In particular, the Liberal Left. However, the previously popular sector of 'Libertarian' Right has fallen away as a result of paralysis.
 
The desperate craving for attention, the addiction to hits and traffic that will result in any number of cards being played. Rampant slander is a favourite, as is flinging yourself into the reality of political life feeling like Zeus unto the Cosmos, only to realise that you are more Elmer Fudd. Destroyed by being ignored, or even better, by being taken to pieces by a professional on national television and then crying like a little girl in order to save your job. Other favourites include 'Pity me I'm dying', and the classic, our pick of the hit parade, the one and only 'I'm not blogging anymore, I quit....I'm back'. Oh yes, that one really is The Shit.
 
These things have manifested themselves into a raison d'etre. There is nothing else, let alone debate and genuine independent opinion.
 
I have, for the last few paragraphs, being using the word Libertarian with single quotes.This is because of the intrinsic hypocrisy of the those that portray themselves as such. And yes, I am well aware the allegations that will follow. And no, I do not consider myself as the oracle of libertarianism, merely that John and I appear at times to be the only ones that realise it is a spectrum of many colours.
 
This rank hypocrisy amuses me no end. We can witness the demand for revolution and the fall of state, and in the same breath a call for the Rule of Law. The law that then needs implementing. We then see the wish for a tiny state and no tax, followed by the desire for roads, schools, police, an army.... A great example of this is the farce that is the LPUK manifesto and the reality of opinion voiced by anyone who drafted it.
 
There is to be a free market, which apparently means zero regulation of any kind no matter the dangers to health, or the rampant criminal activity that would follow and destroy that market, or even one giant monopoly. However, a whole trenche is dedicated to forcing the entire financial system of the UK to be something that was last used in the dark ages and for, possible joke of the year here, banks to be about customers and not their shareholders. Quite how this will be enforced, let alone maintained, with zero regulation and no state is one of those great magic tricks.
 
However, literally for writing the above, I am now a social democrat. My simple acceptance of the hypocrisy and total fucking bullshit voiced by the tiny minority that occupy the extreme of place on the web that I find myself, the voicing not only of that opinion, but the bollocks to say it, makes me a leftist statist thuggist cunt.
 
My death by a thousand twats on Twitter is assured. How fucking dare I. Who the fucking hell do I think I am. How dare I, in stating an opinion, declare myself the Lord of Libertarianism. What a piece of shit. What a wanker. Because, as well we all know, it's only a matter of degrees.
 
Many facets of the blogosphere are eating themselves. None more so then those occupying the 'libertarian' farcical wing. That merry band of fuckers.
 
So, more shit will now commence. But let's make one thing quite clear, the rampant mis-representation of our position, the pathetic denial of 'Nah Miss, I dunno 'im 'onest', the frankly disgraceful slandering of our views, our opinions and the constant quoting of things we have simply never said, says more about those who do so than us.
 
Most of all it is the repetition of judging us by the standards held by others that reveals all people need to know about that fragment of the blogosphere now caught in a state of flux.
 
Times they are achangin', for us as much as anyone else and we certainly aren't immune to it. But those it seems to be changing the most are those that have used this paradigm for nothing more than a sad desire for 'attention' and 'popularity' and a deluded launchpad to some star studded life.