Passing Observations 247

June 6, 2024 by Doctor Vernon Coleman

1. So, Britain’s Labour Party is going to allow 16-year-olds to vote. They’re presumably doing this because they know that all children opt to support communist parties when given the opportunity to choose. Later, as they become a little more educated (and intelligent) they grow out of this silliness. Actually, of course, it would make as much sense to allow 4-year-olds to vote. And indeed, for all I know, that may soon be Labour Party policy. Maybe pregnant women will get two votes. Who knows? I fear that I find it difficult to give a damn, my dear.

2. By one of those strange coincidences which occur from time to time, the number of Britons who want the Government to raise taxes and increase State spending is almost exactly the same as the number of Britons who live on benefits or sick pay and don’t pay any taxes.

3. Having destroyed millions of children by introducing pointless, unnecessary and predictably dangerous lockdowns (and by unnecessarily closing schools) the UK Government is now introducing national service to repair the damage they’ve done. Why not just shoot the poor, permanently troubled and damaged souls and put them out of their misery? It would be quicker and cheaper.

4. The UK has fallen down the list of countries which are considered clean and free of corruption. Now outside the top twenty, the UK now has the lowest score it has ever achieved. In other words, Britain can now be considered a corrupt country – pretty much on a par with one of those little African countries which we used to regard with quiet contempt.

5. In the 19th century when horse drawn fire engines went out on emergency calls, a man sat beside the driver and shouted out very loudly to clear the way. He was known as the `Hi Hi’ man. And then the fire engine bell was invented and the poor chap was made redundant because the driver could ding the bell while in charge of the horses. Progress can be a real bummer.

6. The first plane wasn’t flown by the Wright brothers in America. It was flown in England by Sir Hiram Maxim in 1894. Maxim also invented the machine gun.

7. According to the EU there are 504 different types of biscuit. I wonder how many highly paid bureaucrats spent their days working that out. And did they miss out the biscuits which Antoinette makes from her own recipe? If they did then there are 505 different types of biscuit and the EU has screwed up again. And is the delicious `Melting Moment’ biscuit on the EU’s approved list? And do broken biscuits count as a separate variety? My mum always used to buy bags of `broken biscuits’ when I was a kid in post war rationing Britain.

8. We have three cars and none of them is under the five metres in length which is being set as the new arbitrary limit for car parking spaces. The common purpose run car parking gestapo in England are planning to fine motorists whose cars are longer than five metres. Our longest vehicle, which is 67-years-old, is just under 18 feet from front bumper to rear bumper (I have no idea what that is in the silly metric nonsense the councils now seem to be using, in yet another act of betrayal, but I suspect that it is probably more than five metres) and I shall continue to park (when I can find a space) and be damned to the self-righteous car hating nutters who want us all to spend our lives sitting in our cardboard flats watching television. Please buy my books so that I can pay the damned fines.

9. As we age we collect many possessions which have no financial value but which are precious to us and too valuable to throw away. What a quandary.

10. America has given Ukraine permission to use its weapons to attack Russian land and property and people. Have you got your iodine tablets ready?

11. Because it has retained most of the EU’s mad rules, and added a pile of its own, Britain now has more rules, regulations and laws than any other country on earth. And it has a more complicated tax code too. Not even tax inspectors understand the tax code.

12. If you want to know the truth about climate change I suggest you read `Greta’s Homework’ by Zina Cohen. It’s available on Amazon and exposes the climate change for the nonsense it is.

13. I see that it is now possible to obtain a GCSE certificate in skate boarding. How wonderful. So much more useful than being able to read and write or spell `skateboard’. Why isn’t it possible to obtain a GCSE for sitting in a pub getting smashed? Oh, it will be next year? Jolly good. Walter Wallkarpet’s survey has revealed that 97% of under 20-year-olds cannot add two and two without using a calculator or an electronic till or asking for help from a pensioner standing nearby.

14. Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is probably the most under-estimated medical condition there is. It causes terrible pain and distress and destroys lives. For anyone who needs help, my book `Relief from IBS’ is available from the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com

15. Several celebrities have recently complained that they have been abused on social media platforms. They seem to think this is an infringement of their rights. But they chose to be on social media sites and they were allowed to be there. I am banned from all the social media sites I know. People on these sites can and do write libellous and abusive things about me and they can set up fake sites and pretend to be me. They even make abusive videos and put them on YouTube. But I’m not allowed to go onto those sites to defend myself. And that’s real censorship. (YouTube, which appears to be run by vindictive, spiteful people, even removed videos which were made decades ago and which appeared on old TV programmes. This made no sense unless you assume that they did this in an attempt to remove my name from the internet.)

16. When will the entire staff members of YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, BBC, Daily Mail, Facebook et al be arrested and imprisoned for conspiring with Bad People to betray the human race? It will come. But when? Why are we waiting?

17. Is it remotely conceivable that the conspirators want to see an end to a regular mail service so that we are all forced to do everything online?

18. Junior doctors in the UK (some of whom are 40-years-old and earning £60,000 a year plus but most of whom are still in training) are going on strike just before the election. What an amazing coincidence. There is obviously no political reason for the timing of their latest greedy and pointless strike. (They have just had a 9% pay rise). I suspect that doctors have never sunk so low nor been so widely reviled by the public. Today, they’re down there with estate agents, politicians and people who park their cars across two spaces in crowded car parks.

19. Antoinette and I talked about needing a new greenhouse since the lovely wooden one we bought not long ago is already falling apart. Neither of us has used the internet to look for greenhouses. But some electronic device must have been switched on and we have since been bombarded with online ads for greenhouses. What an amazing coincidence. Take note. I bet this happens to you, too.

20. I realised the other day that I don’t actually know anyone who believes the climate change myth. All intelligent, thinking people know that it’s a lot of dangerous, self-serving nonsense promoted by liars, cheats, fraudsters and the gullible and simple minded.

21. A Labour MP has been suspended by the Labour Party after a complaint was made about them. The MP (about whom I know nothing whatsoever) cannot stand in the coming general election because of the complaint. Apparently it will take more than four weeks to check the complaint. So the MP loses his job because he is assumed to be guilty until proven innocent. If 650 people wrote similar letters of complaint then all MPs would be disqualified.

22. I wonder how millennials are coping with the fact that they are now middle aged?

23. `Behind every great fortune there is a crime.’ – Balzac

24. `Seat belts have been compulsory in the UK for some while but were first introduced in the 1960s in the USA when it was compulsory for cars to be fitted with seat belts and padded dashboards. The aim, of course, was to improve road safety and, as intended, there were fewer road deaths per accident. But because cars were safer, people drove more recklessly and had more accidents. The end result was that having seat belts made no damned difference. This isn’t the only instance of a law backfiring, changing behaviour and ending up doing no good. When the window tax was introduced in England, owners of large houses bricked up lots of windows so that they paid less tax. The end result was that the Government was no better off and people lived in the dark. In the 1990s, around a dozen European countries introduced wealth taxes. Most of them gave up when people either left the country or just worked less. In France the wealth tax brought in only half of the tax that was lost because people were emigrating. Rent controls always have a negative effect too. Rent controls which limit the prices landlords can charge for property result in landlords giving up being landlords. And the result of that is a shortage of properties to rent. And the result of that is that rents go up. Nothing changes and politicians never learn.’ – Taken from the book `Old Man in an Old Car’ by Vernon Coleman. (The book is available in a hardcover edition from www.vernoncoleman.com )