Pigdogfucker

The decision to only allow one super-casino was a moronic one in the first place. Subject to rules on not allowing drunkards to gamble, not providing credit, and not cheating, we should have casinos wherever anyone wants to open one.

As with drugs and alcohol, gambling causes absolutely no harm to anybody: rather, as well as providing harmless entertainment to most people, it provides an outlet for people with self-destructive tendencies to destroy themselves. The idea of stopping the latter by restricting the supply of ways to destroy oneself, although appealing to generations of nannyists, Fabians and similar idiots, is simply rubbish, for obvious reasons (should you be an idiot nannyist, the obvious reason is that we can’t fucking ban everything. If would-be addicts can’t get hold of heroin, they’ll sniff glue, which is more dangerous. If they can’t gamble they’ll beat people up for fun, or gamble in illegal dens run by crooks, which is worse).

Stopping the self-destructive from self-destruction can only be achieved at the demand end not at the supply end, as demonstrated by the miserable failure to improve life of every supply-side initiative ever (see: pub opening hours. Are any of the daft cunts who opposed the relaxation of restrictions going to put their hands up and say ‘I was an idiot, it didn’t do any harm and now I can get a drink after work if I’m stuck on a project until midnight’, or are they all too stupid to have jobs in the first place?)

Therefore, the Lords’ decision to veto the government’s casino plans is the kind of moronic crap which makes me want to support the concept of throwing the daft fuckers out onto the street, despite the obvious importance of having a second chamber to eject legislation on those (far more frequent) occasions when the government isn’t trying to make life a bit less restricted and a bit more fun.

There’s an excellent piece by Matt Frei on the contradictions at the heart of Iran (key take out: not bloodthirsty backward place ruled by mentalists, and only a fucktard would believe it was).

If you’re as sick as me of the brain-dead knee-jerk demonisation of both the country and the regime, then you’ll enjoy it. If you aren’t, that suggests you’ve got no fucking clue about what’s going on there, and so you need to read it even more.

Also, re sailors: as long as they aren’t being tortured, which they aren’t, and will be released as soon as our government has made some concessions (broadly, easing up in the whole ‘demonising them and opposing their understandable attempt to defend themselves from Israel’s nukes’ business), which they will, bothered.