Closures and Losses

Sometimes, it seems to me that someone must have come along and cut British men's balls off.

I heard, a few weeks ago that the tobacconist called Shervington's (formerly John Brumfitt) at Holborn Bars had closed.

Now I learn that another tobacconist, S Weingott & Son, at 3 Fleet Street (founded in 1859) has gone too and, presumably, all the wonderful old signage will go with it; just in time for the dictatorship's intended ban on tobacco advertizing. Yo!

Moreover, the former Wig and Pen Club with its cartoons in the window and air of mystery (originally founded to enable a mix of barristers and journalists to beat the afternoon licensing laws), has been turned into a Thai restaurant: how very inclusive - well for someone anyway, even if not inclusive of me.

Mercifully, G Smith & Sons is still (for the time being) at 74 Charring Cross Road but, presumably, when Cameron, the other little guy and their supporting plastic politicians have done their further dirty work (and banned all display of tobacco products), it will need to lose its identity in the road and be presented to the world anonymously, with frosted glass, as an old time Soho porn shop, and smokers will be seen shuffling in and out with their collars turned up and hats pulled down over their eyes (I suppose that the up-side is that the hat trade might benefit from a resurgence). This is happening in an age which tolerates all manner of sexual deviance and 'civil partnership' is sanctifying behaviour that, sixty years ago, would have resulted in imprisonment. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for people doing what they like in private (as long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses) but still it seems a queer state of affairs that men can now perfectly lawfully do some of the things that they do but they are prohibited from smoking together in a public house or in a club which was founded partly to enable them to do just that, and continued by private subscription.

The tobacconists are closing down because some self-righteous numbskulls have spoken and dictated that smoking (and smokers) shall be crushed; even those who enjoy an occasional cigarette, cigar or pipe. Jobs are consequently being lost at a time when boosting real employment in real private sector industry needs to be an aim of government (instead of having armies chasing around desert places in pursuit of the Osama bin Ladens and Colonel Gadaffis of this world). We have already seen that pubs have closed as a result of the 'smoking ban'. Whole businesses and the jobs that they sustained have been lost there too. Fox hunting seems to have survived and the professional huntsmen's jobs with it - and the hounds did not need to be slaughtered en masse after all. But it is no thanks to our Idiot Politicians (voted for by the Idiot People, who are the product of  a couple of a generations' neglect of the state education system). All the little sweet shops are closing down too but they are going, thanks to the Idiot People's preference for one-stop-shopping in the 'supermarkets'. The consequence of this is that towns are losing the character of individual businesses and the buildings that they were in, as the plastic shop fronts go up and the mobile 'phone and sports' gear plonkers move in.

No, I tell you, it is time for a benign dictatorship, along the lines of Plato's Guardians, to restore the liberties that the modern interpretation of 'great western democracy' (in the hands of Thatcher, Major, Blair, Broom and Cameron) has torn from our grasp. It is time for revolution.

But we will keep Her Majesty and Phil The Greek.