A word in your Shell

It would seem that the eco- and enviro-mentalists, who believe that the only creature of any significance on the planet are polar bears, truly are mental.

And Cicero is raging that these poor deluded people who have been duped into thinking and believing that our wonky weather is man-made, now have childrens’ play time in their sights with Lego bricks now being used as the latest weapon by these mentalists to save the planet…supposedly.

Pathetic.

For it has been brought to Cicero’s attention that Lego has recently ended a 50 year partnership with Shell which was designed to put Lego bricks into the hands of kiddiwinkles across the land and encouraging play, stimulating creativity, generating imagination, all good qualities one would have thought.

And Cicero believes we should be doing more to encourage these very fine qualities if we are to remain a land of invention and innovation and entrepreneurship.

But such qualities do not cut much ice with the mentalists if it threatens polar bears. And seemingly it does. But only if you have the warped and disturbed mind of a mentalist.

Now you may be wondering what Lego has done or is doing wrong in the eyes of the mentalists. And the answer…nothing apart from being best mates with Shell who have been drilling among the polar bears so that we can keep the lights on, our homes heated and our factories working that we might all enjoy a 21^st century lifestyle and not one more akin to Stone Age dwellers.

But the mentalists don’t like this and so have bullied and blackmailed Lego and targeted the play time of our kiddies.  The mentalists have even turned up at Legoland no doubt to scare the next generation and to brain wash them into believing that our planet is seconds away from expiry.

Now Cicero may have missed something but oil is a totally legal product and Shell is a truly legitimate company and drilling for oil is a legitimate business concern. Surely the Two Caesars have not prohibited such activities. Mr Nick does come up with cranky ideas from time to time but Posh Dave is there to stop such nonsense ever getting anywhere near the legislative process. Has he failed this time? Has he taken leave of his senses?

No it would seem not. This is yet another example of the mentalists imposing their distorted logic onto the lives of Cicero, the wider society, and onto the innocent and undisturbed minds of our kiddies.

And why have the Board and Management of Lego not shown more backbone? Why did they feel it necessary to cave into the craven blackmail of the mentalists? Surely they should have done more to protect the innocence of children playing with their bricks? And defended the legitimate right of us all to free speech and to have the temerity to express a contrary view about polar bears, wonky weather and melting ice caps?

Maybe they should have borrowed the stiff and unyielding backbone of their Lego men and women.

For how much longer are we going to tolerate the mentalists imposing their views? Cicero says to these disturbed people-‘seek help, leave us alone, especially the kids, and get back in your shells’.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

A fishy tale

Sometimes you come across something that you couldn’t make up. This is one such time.

In deepest darkest Derbyshire they are currently spending vast sums of taxpayer largesse to widen the Via to reduce congestion. No doubt the driving population there can’t wait to get to where they are going without snarl ups and hold ups. 

No doubt too the roadworks are adding to aforesaid snarl ups and hold ups. And everyone will be pleased to see the back of the diggers, cones and men standing around leaning on spades that typify building works on the viae, no matter in what part of the country you live. It is the price we pay for a smooth travel experience by chariot.

However it now appears that this multi-million pound socially useful scheme has been held up because the navvies have found….wait for it….a colony of…….are you sitting down?......crayfish. Well admittedly White Clawed Crayfish as if that makes a difference.

And because of this all digging and standing-around-leaning-on-shovels work has ground to a halt while the eco-mentalists celebrate this find as if we had just opened Tutankhamun's tomb.

To the drivers of Derbyshire, Cicero feels your pain. To everyone else, you really could not make this sort of stuff up.

It surely is not beyond the wit of man, who after all can send rockets into outer space to arrange in short order the technology to lift and transfer said fish from the roadworks to some other stretch of H2O nearby. It is not as if Derbyshire is short of H20.

And nor is the technology all that complex. When Cicero was a lad he used regularly to transfer goldfish from the fair to home. And some were even still managing to swim around by the time home was reached.

Cicero estimates that this could be done in half an hour at the outside. The cost impact would be minimal.

But once again we are in thrall of the eco- and enviro-mentalists who no doubt believe that in their warped logic the destruction of this crayfish habitat will no doubt lead to more wonky weather and the demise of the polar bear.

Cicero often does wonder who and when these greenie sandal wearing bearded vegans (Bill Oddie is pictured in the article Cicero read on this narrowly averted ecological disaster which proves the point) were given the power and responsibility to hold up, delay and even postpone anything they like just because they think a tadpole is going to be crushed. Did you vote for these people? No. Neither did Cicero. So where does this power without accountability come from?

So bag up the fish and let’s get back to work and get the via finished. Can you imagine Thomas Telford or John Macadam or Isambard Kingdom Brunel stopping work because there was a little fishie in the way? Mercifully they didn’t.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Bag it

I hope you enjoyed my long awaited return to the blogosphere last week. And by joining Twitter (Cicero really is down dere with da kids, as they say) I am reaching new audiences with my observations on life. If you want to twitter along with Cicero you can find him here @cicero_speaks.  I look forward to seeing you there.

And so to this week’s wry comment.

A few years back I have some vague recollection of a film in which a band of aliens came down and took over the bodies of humans. I think this is what has happened to the Two Caesars and their Acolytes. I think that the bodies they used to inhabit have been reduced to husks of their previous selves and they have been taken over in the latest move by the eco-mental global conspiracy.

How else do you explain their slavish devotion to the wind farms that are now breeding like rabbits on our hillsides and around our coasts? Is there any other explanation for their so far lack of full support for and commitment to fracking? And why we don’t seem able to build nuclear and even gas power stations in sufficient numbers before the lights go out.

And we do this even though all the scientific evidence that global warming in past 10 years has stopped and seem to be coming to my line of reasoning that it has nothing to do with so-called global warming but just Wonky Weather.

But still the eco-and enviro-mentalists would if they get their way, and they might given they now seem to inhabit the Two Caesars and even Li’le Ed too, take us back to the Stone Age with their eco-mentalist energy policies.

And now we have the latest eco-mentalist initiative-the Bag Tax.

If it wasn’t so serious you would have to laugh at such errant and wanton nonsense as being taxed for the right to take home the food we have bought.

Why do some people, well a lot of people, think that the solution to any problem must be State driven and must involve a tax? The State has much better things to do than take an interest in people’s plastic bag habits. Especially at a time when our hospitals are in chaos, our education system is a mess and we can’t even decide whether or not we should fire off a few rockets in the vague direction of Syria. But instead the eco-mentalists who are controlling the Two Caesars have decided that it would be a good idea for management time to be dedicated to taxing plastic bags. Revolutions in Europe where Jonny Foreigner resides have been started for less.

And has anyone stopped to ask what difference a Bag Tax would make?

Plastic bags make up less than 1% of the volume of waste sent to landfill. And no that is not a misprint, less than 1%. In other words bugger all. If eco-mentalism was serious about waste it would be better targeting other aspects of the waste industry.

It is also worth recognising that many plastic bags are used more than once. Cicero uses his plastic bags to cart his morning swimming gear around after his early morning dip. So it is not as if these bags are carelessly discarded after every use.

And while the eco-mentalists have allies in the Animal Lovers worried about the impact of discarded plastic bags on the fishies and the birdies, it is worth pointing out that the fishies and the birdies are highly prone to being made deceased at a faster rate by lots of other factors-like fishing nets, sharks and the butcher. Are we going to make these illegal too?

We should instead keep the State well away from this. And instead focus on our efforts at point-of-sale on changing behaviour as some retailers are already successfully doing. Or if the State has to be involved it could support R&D into more eco-mentalist friendly yet feasible packing.

In other words this is yet another cynical, gimmicky piece of green wash. Rather than innovation and technology delivering ecological progress, it looks to heavy-handed state intervention to punish consumers. And it contradicts the claims of the Government that they are seeking to reduce red tape and ease the burden on those already struggling to make ends meet.

Now do you see why I think the Two Caesars’ bodies, minds and souls have been hijacked?

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus. Semper.

Lightbulb moment

Is it only me...but I now know why I am making a spectacle of myself these days.

For years and years I had perfect eyesight and while other people were squinting to read things at distance this was never a problem for me.
‘Can you read that?’ many people would say to me with incredulity and surprise.

And my ability to read things whether close up or long distance was done unaided. No spectacles, contact lenses or monocles for me.

It was a gift.

But in recent years my eyesight has rapidly dimmed and reading anything, unless in the biggest of prints, is now only possible with lenses of some sort. This is annoying and inconvenient. A faff and a hassle.

No longer can I just pick something up and read it or quickly skim a piece of paper thrust under my nose. Glasses have to be located now before any reading takes place. And no matter how small the confined space, spectacles have the habit of making themselves scarce when wanted as much as the TV remote does.

For months I put my vision loss down to age. After all my eyes are almost as old as the rest of my body. But now I think I have found the real reason. Last week I had an epiphany, a Eureka, a lighbulb moment. I was wrong.

Now maybe it’s only me but I think my vision loss can be squarely blamed on the enviro-mentalists.

In their drive to save some polar bear on some ice floe somewhere these madmen (and no doubt mad women) cloaked by spurious scientific fundamentalism have deemed it necessary that we all have too much light.
And as a consequence it is now illegal, and yes I do mean illegal, to have light in our homes, offices and factories, which is bright, clear and healthy. Instead we have a kind of neo-light which is dim, grey and unhealthy. But it is low energy, low emitting light so that should put an end to our Wonky Weather-and if you believe that you will believe anything.
You might even believe that the eco-mentalist fundamentalists are right.

And because I do a lot of reading and because in this country there are many times when it is not possible to read by natural light, I am obliged to read by unnatural neo-light which is causing untold damage to my eyes. My eyesight is therefore being sacrificed to save a polar bear. I hope it’s grateful.

Given that the Health and Safety Gauleiters have made more noise about far less, I can assume that at some point they will take a close interest in neo-light before as a nation we run out of cute golden Labradors. For once we can live in hope that these Jobsworths might do something useful. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

In the meantime have a great week and should you be interested in reading what you should study to get ahead in business, check out ‘A question of degree’ at The Marketing Comic (www.themarketingcomic.blogspot.com).

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.