Transmission Ends....

I know, I know. We've been here before.

I am going off-air.

Although I (deliberately) missed the jubilee celebrations, everywhere I looked I saw/heard/read about fawning Brits (foreigners don't know any better) throwing love, adoration and respect at an 86 year old lady who has neglected to do what fate decreed she must, and that which she swore an oath to do, for several decades now.

It made me realise that people will politely listen to me, nod sagely, then rush out to organise a tea party in Mrs Windsors honour.

I don't care, particularly, how hard she works. How many events she attends. How many badges and medals she pins on people. How much she does, or does not cost us.

I only care that she does the job she was entrusted by the people to do. She let us all down. She dropped the ball, frankly. Her defenders say that it wasn't/isn't her fault. "She was badly advised", they shriek.

Well, I happen to know that Mrs Windsor, 86 or not, has a brain. She also knows right from wrong. She knows lawful from unlawful. She knew what she was getting into. Despite all that, she still signed off on that damned ECA 1972. And later, she signed off on seven treaties that firmly lashed us to a bandwagon destined to go over a cliff. Sooner, rather than later, some of us hope.

She did not act alone, but the buck stops with her. (That does not mean that the others are free from guilt):

Image courtesy of TPUC









And to this list we can now add Duffer Brown, his understudy-in-chief David Cameron, and Team Lickspittle.

You, me, Uncle Tom Cobley and all do not get away with anything either. We are governed by consent, and, make no mistake, we consented to it all.

We consented because we did nothing to stop them. No mass marches. No parades. No riots. Our weapon of choice, (but only when we are uber-miffed), is to write stern letters. Even then, we failed, as a nation, to reach for our pens.

The common excuse is that we were brainwashed. That we had 13 years of Labour (that same party we kept in power for those same 13 years) and that they did all the damage. We conveniently forget (if the right-coloured ties are in office) that the rot started with that bastard Heath. Oh, we moaned. We moaned like Olympians. We moaned in the pubs. We moaned in the working-mens clubs. We moaned down the caff. We moaned in the bingo halls. So to stop us moaning they emptied the pubs with a piece of insane, inane, selfish legislation. What was this master-stroke, you may ask? The smoker ban. It only affected 12-15 million people and we were so well trained, a goodly number of those 12-15 million people simply said, "Thank you". They still do to this day. Thank you for dehumanising me. Thank you for making me a pariah. Thank you for throwing me out in the rain, the sleet and the snow to smoke, while my friends, the good robots, were safe indoors, warm & dry & snug. Thank you for that, oh blessed government, thank you for the smoker ban.

With that legislation enacted, the government (of the day, and all others that followed/will follow) knew that anything was possible. So they kept on doing exactly as they wished. 650 men and women, addicted to power, kept vomiting out legislation. As I keep saying, they had a vomit-fest and spewed 4,116 new rules and regulations out in 2011 alone. As the quality of the MPs drops, the volume of legislation spikes. Only the terminally deranged can possibly imagine that more rules means better government. They, collectively, are devoid of integrity, devoid of pride, and totally devoid of honour.

And yet, we fall for it. We say nothing. We do nothing. We listen to their manifesto promises knowing, absolutely knowing, that they are lying and still we trot down to the booths like good little robots and make our mark for the cleverest robot in town. We then look mystified when the clever robot turns out to be defective after all. Just to prove how stupid we are, we repeat this insanity every five years. They remain in power, and we remain mystified. They remain the robbers, and we remain the robbed. They take our money and they take our freedoms. Still, we do nothing.

Anyhoo, I am rabbiting on. Time to stop.

Time to say thank you.

The figures speak for themselves. No matter how well we have done, and please be assured that this was a team-game, we are now in extra time. We are in the dying seconds. The game is all but lost. As hopeful as I am, as optimistic as I am, it is going to take far too long to get everyone, or at least a majority of Britons, to finally understand how bad things are.

They have enough to worry about, so there is no point adding a new worry to the pile.

The numbers:

May 2008-September 2012

Posts- 1,095

Comments- 16,668

Unique visitors- 554,561 (not counting feeds)

Page-views- 857,890

Some left- and right-wing blogs have more impressive stats for a month. The trick, I think, is to keep on shitting out popular stuff. It doesn't have to mean anything, as long as you don't frighten people too much they will return, lemming-like, to read utter bilge. And so the game is played.

I dared to be a little different. I tried a few amendments to the rules.

In 2008 I declared myself a Freeman. I informed the government, and they ignored me.

In 2009 I declared myself a Lawful Rebel. I informed the monarch, and she ignored me.

In 2010, 2011, and 2012 I picked fights with as many government agencies as I thought manageable. There is still a lot of work to do, but it takes time. Mostly, when trying to rebel peacefully, it is like watching wood warp. Which is to say, it takes a bloody long time. I was naive. I thought that writing clever Notices to various agencies would stir them up. I thought they would react. Mostly, they don't. Mostly, they ignore me. The last time I ignored them, they sent two thugs to my door.

That didn't stop me. And I am not stopping now. I have won more battles than I have lost and this gives me the encouragement I need to continue.

I am done with the cheer-leading. Others do it far better than I. I never set out to be a leader of anything. I merely wanted to chart my course and tell you about it along the way. I just didn't think it would take this long.

Here it is in a nutshell: first they ignore you, then they send the heavies, then they shaft you. Game, set and match. It doesn't matter how right you are. They have force. They took away our guns whilst ensuring they can still use theirs. The dice are loaded. The game is rigged. It doesn't matter how free you think you are, they will beat it out of you.

But before they do that, the great British public will ignore you even more. They have a reality and they don't want that reality being fucked with. The law is fair, the queen is doing her job, the police do treat you with respect, taxes of 30-80% are more than fair, petrol should cost £1.40p a litre, dozens of agencies should have the right to enter your home, or look at your personal data (or lose it on the 8:15 to Dulwich), it is absolutely okay for those same agencies to log every call you make, every text or email you send or every Tweet you write. Those 5 million cameras are There For Our Own Good because they do protect us from the Taliban.

A swift glance at the numbers above should explain this whole post, and the reason I am not writing about it daily, weekly, or monthly anymore. A swift calculation should tell you that if I/we have only managed to reach half a million people in over 4 years, it is going to take around 60 years to reach them all.

I do not have that long to live. I do not have the stamina to repeat the story for another 60 years.

So, just before I start getting ever-more desperate to attract an audience, I am going to say adios amigos, and thanks for all the fish.

It has mostly been a pleasure, and my adventure doesn't stop here. I will keep going, because I cannot unsee what I have seen. I cannot unread what I have read, and I really cannot unknow what I know.

I may swing by from time to time with an update. I like to write. I just get tired of writing the same thing. In the meantime, if you want top quality blogging, visit each and every one of those unsung heroes on the right hand side. Geniuses, all of them. I am proud to list them here. They inspire me. Let them inspire you.

Unlike my previous good-byes, this one was not sponsored by the grain or the grape.

Thanks again for tagging along.

Captain James Xavier Ranty (Ret'd).