Driven To Rebel

This is an essay I wrote for those great friends of mine, the Lawful Rebels, and it continues to be read, over a year later. I thought that newer readers here might want to take a look at it.

It is still topical, apart from the first and second paragraphs. I have since lost one of my two cats, and now over 7950 pubs have been lost forever.

Otherwise, it may still be worth a read. Let me know what you think.

"First things first: I am an ordinary bloke. An Average Joe, by anyone’s standards. I have a family, a reasonable lifestyle, low-ish debt, two dogs and two cats. Like all other ordinary people, I merely wanted to provide for my family, be an upstanding member of my community, obey the law, get on with my life and to be left in peace. Is that too much to ask?

It would seem so.

For the last twenty years or so, things have changed. I mean radically changed. I was fine with the changes because I am a dynamic human being and I know that change usually means progress, and who doesn’t want that? My work involves cutting-edge technology and I know the benefits it brings to billions of fellow planeteers. No dinosaur me. I love gadgets. I love innovation. I love new inventions. I love labour saving devices. It frees up my time to do something else. Unfortunately, five years ago I was rudely awoken from my blissful ignorance. Readers of my blog will know that it was the smoking ban here in Scotland that jolted me awake. I knew instantly and intuitively that this was a quantum shift. This was huge. The Scottish Executive decided, on a whim, (it really was, do the research), to kick smokers out of pubs and clubs. I thought that if they could get the legislation through, and change a way of life for 1.2 million people overnight, then more bad stuff was right behind it. Non-smokers were smiling from ear to ear, little knowing that they were being punished as well. “Finally!”, they said, “Smoke free pubs & clubs! How fantastic!”. Except that it wasn’t. And if you don’t believe me, just ask any one of the 2756 landlords & landladies that lost their pubs in 2009. Or ask any one of the 45,000 ex-pub workers who have now joined the dole queue. They might have a different slant on things. Statistically, 75% of those laid off were non-smokers. I wonder if they prefer unemployment to a little harmless smoke?

Worse was to come. We discovered that politicians suffer deafness 1 nanosecond after winning your vote. It is axiomatic. Power received = instant deafness. Over 4 million of us signed a petition to 10 Downing Street in which we begged them not to close our post offices. We were ignored, and the slaughter began. I now have an 18 mile round trip to my nearest post office. For some it is much, much worse. We watched, as our government piled stupidity on top of ineptitude and smothered the whole mess with greed. They just love our money. They can’t get enough of it. When they get caught with their sticky fingers in the till what do we hear? “I was just following the rules”. Nice. One story that blew my mind concerned a young mum who applied to the Social Fund for a single bed for her daughter. After jumping through more hoops than a circus dog she was told that she qualified for a bed, but that she would have to provide the mattress herself. Her wee girl slept on coats piled on the bare springs. Meanwhile, thousands of £££’s were happily shovelled towards an MP whose moat needed dredging.

The killer blow, however, arrived in early October when the Irish vote on the Lisbon Treaty was delivered. I got that same sinking feeling that I experienced back in December 2005 when Jack McConnell (then First Minister) returned from his 2 hour visit to a Dublin pub and announced his ridiculous smoking ban for Scotland. I was awash with desperation because I knew, somehow, that the promises made by the Labour, Conservative and LibDem parties would all disappear like a snowflake in a camp-fire. It was all over. We had lost a nation. A nation that has taken us, and our forebears, more than nine thousand years to build. We gave it away to an unelected commission that refuses, point blank, to provide financial reports on their nefarious machinations. They have consistently refused to tell us how our money is wasted for 14 years straight. Corruption in the EU is endemic. At last our (now useless) MPs get to gorge themselves at a different, overflowing trough. Everyone’s a winner. Except us. The proles, the voters, the electorate, the controlled, the tagged, the vaccinated and the monumentally stupid. We were robbed, in broad daylight and the shameful thing is this: we did nothing. To do nothing is dishonourable. The theft we witnessed was embarrassing. We watched them take our rights away. We gave up habeas corpus, we gave up the right to a jury trial, we gave up innocent until proven guilty and, alarmingly, we allowed the death penalty to be accepted as a footnote in the Treaty.

I could go on and on.

I could tell you that the £ is destined for the dustbin. I could tell you that European Cops (brutal thugs, more like) armed to the teeth, will appear on our streets. Our coppers will end up on their streets, somewhere in Europeville, because psychiatrists have discovered that cops don’t really like shooting their own, but they are not averse to shooting other nationalities. I could tell you that our monarch signed her own redundancy notice when she (traitorously) signed off on the legislation. I could tell you that the 646 numpties in parliament signed their own redundancy notices as well. I could tell you that your nation is now split into nine regions, each of which will be governed by a Common Purpose graduate. I could tell you all sorts, but the proof of the pudding, is always in the eating. We have to see the 7^th level of Dante’s delightful little palace before we will erupt and react. This will take time. We are about to suffer the death of a thousand cuts. It will be painful, but bearable, until it isn’t. That, my friends, will become Freedom Day. I long for it to arrive.

Until that day, what can we do?

We can have some fun, that’s what. We can all open our eyes, at least a crack, and realise that we are human beings. We were always human beings but we have been brainwashed for decades to forget who and what we are. We can make life uncomfortable for the powers that strive to be. We can be awkward. We can say no. We can return their silly tax demands. We can return their silly parking tickets, and we can refuse to pay their inane council tax. We can walk away from as many, or as few, statutes as we like. They are legion, and they are meaningless and they are unwanted and unneeded. We can take control, as Freemen and Freewomen, (if you need a label, I only just found out that I don’t), and we can become human again. We can live our lives unfettered, unhindered, the way it was meant to be lived. We were meant to enjoy life, dammit! We weren’t meant to be enslaved from the day were born until the day we died. We are not here as their playthings. We are not their slaves, or mere useless cash generators for the greedy and the inept. There is so much to see and do that two lifetimes aren’t enough to fit it all in. There are people to meet, to laugh with, to drink with, and to love with. There are cultures without number that we need to experience to say that yes! We have lived, and while we did we had fun, and we learned something. To go to your grave knowing only that you worked all your life, and struggled at times to provide for your family or yourself because you were being robbed every month by successive governments who had no idea how to spend (or save) wisely, is surely a wasted life.

My intention was never to be a rebel and yet I find myself driven to it by the unhealthy, unwholesome, unlawful and quite frankly seedy conditions that now exist in what was once a great nation. We are spied on endlessly, they want to know our every mouse-click, they want to store and read all our emails, and they want transcripts of all our calls, and they feel the need to capture us on CCTV cameras hundreds of times a day. “It’s for your own good” they say, “It’s to stop crime!” Except that it doesn’t. Only one criminal is caught per thousand cameras. This figure comes from the Home Office website. Even they cannot justify the existence and operation of 4.2 million cameras in the UK. The UK suddenly became Cuba, China and Russia all rolled into one. The only difference is that the Cubans, the Chinese and the Russians had no desire to know what our politicians and our other apparatchiks demand to know. They use excuses all the time: The War On Terror, The War On Drugs, The War On Drink, The War On Smokers, and lately, The War On Fatties. It is endless. It is mindless. It is needless. It is useless.

So when I eventually said “Enough!”, I genuinely meant it. I had to step away from the madness, the control, the falsely permeated fear and the outrageous greed of government, politicians, NGO’s and the 7 or 8 hundred thousand fake charities that suckle at the withering teat.

Initially, I was lost. Who to believe? Where to go for real, unbiased and balanced news? Who to trust? Was it the law? My MP? The judiciary? The police? No, no, no and no. The deception is total. The charade has been played out over hundreds of years and the more you dig, the more corpses you find. The cadavers I found buried in shallow graves were Lady Justice, once a great lady now treated with disdain and disgust, Sir Robert Peel, screaming for an eternity at the bastardisation of his policing model, and a good few politicians that would never have stood by and watched Britain first turn into a police state, then give itself away to the most corrupt mandarins on the face of the earth.

For good or ill, lawful rebellion was the only tool I had left. I have other options of course. I could STFU, as the modern kids would say. I could carry on regardless and leave the mess for my children or their children to clean up. I could sit and watch the propaganda unit in the corner of my living room and pretend that my living room was my world, and that what happened beyond was none of my affair.

Knowing that something is badly out of kilter won’t allow me that luxury. Having a conscience that constantly tells me to do something doesn’t help. Knowing the difference between right and wrong, and finding the motivation to play my part comes easy to me. Fortunately, there is lots of help at hand. This very site offers salvation for those prepared to learn, comprehend, and act. Other sites, although infected with naysayers, and the terminally terrified, (or government plants, perhaps?), also offer real nuggets of information that you can and should use. Distance yourself from the mayhem and lots of pennies drop. Create some peace and quiet for you and yours, and be determined to hang on to money you earned, money that you created. This lot in government will not only keep taking it away from you, but they will demand more, and more, and more.

They will bleed you dry.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to choke off their money supply. Just say no. It really is very easy. Once you have done so, the serenity that settles around you is out of this world. The relief is enormous, and the benefits are tangible.

The first move is up to you. It always was.

Make the change. Be the change. There are no heroes waiting around the corner on white steeds. The hero you need looks back at you from the mirror.

There is hope. There is always hope.

The hope only burns as long as you fan the flames."

CR