This is a rather excessive reaction to a few isolated incidents:

How is this going to stop any attacks? All it will mean is that the gangs of hoodies and the like will just change their choice of weapons from samurai swords [if, of course, they don't already own them] to something else. Such as large kitchen knives.

Unless they want to ban any and all bladed implements that could be used to attack or threaten anyone with, this is an utterly pointless law that is nothing more than bansturbation.

It is already illegal carry to swords and knives in public, so why don't they try and enforce this law - which will accomplish their aims alone - before they start introducing new laws which won't go anywhere towards preventing the in the future the sort of incidents that have caused them to create it.

Well, at least those from vending machines:

How can it be justified to ban cigarette vending machines just because one in six child smokers use them to buy their cigarettes. That is absolutely ridiculous. Smoking has recently been banned in all enclosed public spaces, and the smoking age raised to 18. It certainly appears that smokers are the favourite whipping-boys of this government.

Banning the sale of cigarettes from vending machines won't prevent under-aged people from smoking - after all, only one in six get their cigarettes from them! So five out of six don't. It really is a case of bansturbation.

If you tell a joke about gay people, you could sent to prison for seven years under measures in the Criminal Justice Bill currently passing through Parliament. The Bill, intended to stamp out homophobic behaviour, has been criticised by the comedian Rowan Atkinson, who points out that it has

Indeed it does, especially when the penalty is so high.

When it comes down to it, you can't "stamp out" homophobia. It's not something that can be forced out of people. It is best just to ridicule the idiots who feel that way for their narrow-mindedness and get on with our lives.

Also, being a homophobe is not illegal, and nor should it be. The expression of this and an incitement to hatred of gays is and should be - but that does not need this new law. Nor should any group - whether they be able to be defined by age, gender, race, religion, sexuality or anything else - should be "protected" like this. All it would result in is an ostracisation of that group since any remark that could possibly be interpreted in an "illegal" way could lead to excessive punishment, such as seven years in prison. It would cause an apartheid rather than prevent discrimination.

This sort of law are utterly unnecessary and, really, prevent full and complete social inclusion of any "minority" group rather than facilitate it.

Source: The Telegraph

Regular readers will know that I don't normally swear [mainly because I just could never match the peerless swearblogging of Devil's Kitchen or Mr Eugenides as you can see here], but this warrants a good number of swear words.

Oh, for fuck's sake. What is it with this stupid fucking government that makes them think that making delinquents stay in school for two years longer will actually help them in any way? I mean, the kids who leave school at sixteen tend to be the same little shits who hold everyone else back by mucking around in class. They're the non-academically gifted kids who just don't want to stay in school for longer, but want to go and do something useful to them and their future.

This idea is a fucking stupid one, thought up by a bunch of statist cunts who think two more years of compulsory schooling will make up for their failings in their last eleven. Bollocks will it. All it will do is hold back those who do want to work, as the twats who piss around in class will still be there disrupting everyone else. When those bastards left after GCSEs, school became far better as those who were left had chosen to do so, and so put in more work and pissed around in class less.

Frankly, there are no benefits to making kids stay in school until they are eighteen. At all. All it will do is cause mass truancy, and then criminalise those truants for having the gall to decide what is best for them!

But ah you say, "under the plans pupils would not have to continue with academic lessons but would be required to receive training." But who the fuck going to provide this training? What is it going to be in? What purpose is it to have? How are you going to make them attend? The practical problems in this are fucking immense - and I certainly wouldn't trust any government - and certainly not this bunch of cunts - to implement such a scheme with any real thought to the practical considerations.

Apprenticeships and training for school-leavers already exist. Companies take on apprentices and train them up already. The difference is that the apprentices they have have chosen - at least to a far greater degree - to go into this trade. Thus, those who want to stay in school already can and do - after all, it's free unlike university. And those who want to get into a trade can and do so as well. And the ones who don't will just be a distraction to those in school and just lower the educational standard on the country or just be useless little shits if forced into an apprenticeship.

When it comes down to it, not everyone can do a skilled job anyway. It simply isn't possible. Someone needs to clean the streets and the toilets, stock the supermarket shelves, and wait tables, etc. after all. Every single job has to be done by someone. The best way to get 16-18 year-olds to get off their fat lazy arses and either get a job or stay in school is to cut their dole. Say they can only get half or even not a single fucking penny until they are 18.

Conscripting 16-18 year-olds into longer educational is a seriously fucking stupid idea. Instead of pumping money into educating them when they don't want to learn anything, put it into adult education for when they have decided that they're fed up of doing a shit job and do want to learn. When it comes down to it, you can't physically make every 16-18 year-old stay in school. it's not possible, and is just absurd to even suggest, yet alone include in the Queen's Speech!

So, Blinky Balls and Cyclops Brown, and the other authoritarian statist cunts in the government - fuck off. Just fuck right off.

For more on this subject, visit the group blog Educational Conscription.

The oppressive law that comes into force in England on July 1st will face a campaign of civil disobedience on its first day in force. Landlords of up to 200 pubs are planning to hold a "day of defiance" when the legislation comes into force, by allowing smoking inside their premises on 1st July - and beyond if that is what their customers want. This comes as the absolute ban on smoking in virtually all public places is facing three high court challenges.

A figurehead of the resistance to the ban, Nick Hogan of The Swan pub in Bolton, Lancashire, said:

"This protest is growing and we are still a month away. It is a -protest against dictatorship. It is not about being pro-smoking. It is about the freedom to choose."

That is precisely the point. The way that the smoking ban is universal in all enclosed public areas, irrespective of any other factors, is wrong. If the act held any way by which a pub could continue to allow smoking, such as be the granting of a licence, the requirement of a certain level of ventilation, and the declaration of its smoking status at the entrance, then I would support it.

Thus, I support this traditional form of British resistance to a badly made law. I dislike smoking, but I can, and do, enact my right and ability to go and drink elsewhere. It is the compulsory nature of the law that make it unacceptable.

Source: The Telegraph

Under a new government plan, alcoholic drinks are to carry health warning labels under a "voluntary code". Under the code, manufacturers will label their products with the number of units in each bottle or can, plus details of "government safe drinking limits".

Of course this is not enough for some state interventionist, such as Labour peer Lord Mitchell, who had previously tried to introduce a Bill to force manufacturers to label their products with advice to pregnant women not to drink. He said, predictably, that: "Anything is better than nothing, but I think it is a bit wishy-washy, I would have preferred something stronger than a voluntary code."

What is the point of this? People who drink aren't going to look at a label that says something like 'Warning: Alcohol can cause liver damage' or 'Alcohol can kill' or 'Don't drink too much' and then do anything more than ignore it and carry on as before. Everyone with even half a brain knows that alcohol can cause problems - just like everything else can if taken in excess.

I'm especially sure that the "government safe drinking limits" will be ridiculously puritanical, which will cause little more than derision cast in their direction.

Education is the only way to cause people to cut down on excessive drinking, in the same way as it has been for smoking. Instead of telling people what they should do, tell them what could happen if they over-indulge. The basest instinct is the will to survive, so threatening the health or life of excessive drinkers through the problems which could arise is the best, and probably only, way to cause a modification in drinking habits.

Source: The Telegraph