If I'd have known, I'd have tried harder

In at number 2. How very apt.

Maybe so, but Obo fails, despite his obvious intelligence, to rise above the monotony of schoolyard potty-mouth. A constant reminder that life was so much better before the internet.

Micropoem

It fucks you up, insomnia.
It may not mean to, but it does.
It aggravates the fears you had
And adds some extra, just because

(Just because I didn't want to lose it.)

Administrivia

I've added a new "What real bloggers are saying" section because I think the old one was full. I couldn't get it to save any changes, so I've deleted it.

I've also added a new "Culture Vultures" blogroll, since this is becoming an increasingly important part of my life.

You fucking cunts!

I'm gutted. I'm only at number 10, despite my desperate attempts not to blog for the whole year. Plus, I wrote a load of shit.

So actually, thank you!

Currying Favour

If you haven't already voted for me at the Total Politics Blog doohickey, please do.

And if you haven't voted for me at the House of Twats HoT 200, please do.

Reggae Blegging

I am mindful that my life lacks reggae. However, most of the compilations I can buy are filled with dreary pap. I have Natty Dread and Legend by Bob Marley, Bass Culture and Forces of Victory by Linton Kwesi Johnson and I have enough UB40 to be getting along with. Shamefully. I also have a decent ska collection, so I don't need any more of that.

I'm not desperate to buy vast swathes of albums, but I'm looking for interesting individual songs, I suspect that stuff from the early 70's to the mid 80's is probably a sweet spot.

As clues, I quite like Sinsemilla by Black Uhuru, Heads High by Mr Vegas, You don't love me by Dawn Penn and Montego Bay by Freddie Notes and the Rudies apart from the aforementioned bands.

I'm looking for stuff with a good beat and some kind of "hook".

Can anybody recommend their favourite reggae tracks?

Can I really face it though?

I can feel it. I'm getting sucked back into the world of trying to explain to people that we don't need a government with a gun to our heads to make us all get along.

I can see the endless, circular arguments because people are so terrified of not having someone to mollycoddle them.

Do I really want to get back into this?

Stairs

Blogging, like tweeting, should never be attempted while drunk.

Firstly I'd like to thank all the people who made sympathetic or helpful comments online, offline and elsewhere, as well as those who made slightly less sympathetic comments.

My post was not ultra clear, I accept. The key point that I was trying to make was about addiction, rather than about anything else. I've always suspected that I would be susceptible to dependency, which is why, as much as anything, I've lived a much more teetotal life than most people.

The reasons why people get on to that staircase of dependency vary from person to person. But once you're on it, it's fantastically seductive.

Anybody who has known me for a while would be amazed at the amount of alcohol I consume, and equally amazed at how tempted I am to start the day off with another glass of wine, rather than my patented arse-kicking, bowel-emptying coffee. If it's safe to do so, sometimes I do.

I'm still managing to balance the seduction of dependency with my legal responsibilities and the rest of my life, so maybe I'm not really addicted at all, maybe I'm in no position to opine.

But the truth of the matter is that whereas I used to be unable to understand how someone like Winehouse or any other intelligent person with talent and success and other good things in their life could succumb to that destructive spiral and throw it all away, when I look at it now, I can now see how perfectly sensible, desirable and indeed inevitable it seems.

I've looked at the "quick and easy" option, and it's way too hard and scary. This is just one small step at a time, a Fabian process to easing your pain, if you will.

I guess I'm right at the top of the stairs at the moment, so I can be a bit more objective. But when it comes to people who "have everything" and "throw it all away", I've certainly become a lot less judgmental.

Torn

I know it's Amy Winehouse who's dead and not Natalie Imbruglia. But I do feel torn, because part of me feels that we all have responsibility for our own lives, while part of me understands very fucking well indeed what it's like to lose control of your life and everything spirals out of your reach and to reach for something that will take the pain away, even if it's for a while.

I don't mind mentalist jokes and abuse, indeed, absolutely nothing matters to me any more, and I suspect Amy felt the same. Yes, it's sad for those left behind, but they were unable to feel Amy's pain and there was nothing they could do to help her.

It's a shit crumb of comfort to take away, if you actually knew Amy, but at least she has peace now.

I can't tell you how much I crave that myself. Peace. No more pain. No more despair.

But equally, if she was anything like me, I don't expect or want some well-meaning, better-knowing cuntwaft to come in and sort it out for me. It can't be done. The damage is all inside me, nothing outside can touch it, let alone heal it.

I'm standing at the top of the same staircase she was. I've take a few tentative steps down in to the comforting darkness. I'm on my own. No-one can hold my hand and lead me out. The damage is done and the only person who can decide which way I'm going to go, every day, is me. All the love, all the pills, all the money in the world can't drag me up again.

It's all in my head.

Either I escape, or eventually, the pain gets too much and I get my peace.

Either way you win.

My Moral Compass

My Political Views
I am a far-right social libertarian
Right: 9.69, Libertarian: 8.48

Political Spectrum Quiz


My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -6.49

Political Spectrum Quiz


My Culture War Stance
Score: -3.63

Political Spectrum Quiz


Just moved this from the sidebar to tidy up my blog.

Historical awards

Lest I forget:

First Month Awards (2008):

Top 100 Right Wing Blogs: 81

2009:

Top 100 Right Wing Blogs: 13

Top 20 Libertarian Blogs: 4

Top 20 Political Blogs: unknown

2010:

Top 100 Right Wing Blogs: 13

Top 30 Libertarian Blogs: 4

Top 50 Political Bloggers: 25

HOT 200 Political Twats: 4

100 Worst Political Blogs: 5

2011:

Top 10 Libertarian Blogs: 10

Top 10 Libertarian Bloggers: 8

Blogroll update

The charmless nurk blogs occasionally but amusingly.

It was the cunt wot won it!

Best tweet to Ed Mili's open conversation on Twitter this afternoon - @obotheclown: 'Have you sacked the cunt who had this idea yet?'

-- Sun Politics

Also mentioned in the Spectator

Remember, remember, the 5th of November

So, all the libertarian blogosphere is marching on Wastemonster again, hoping to draw attention to the plight of liberty and freedom.

I, on the other hand, am at the other end of the country, rogering a delightful young lady senseless in front of a log fire, followed by her feeding me champagne and nibbles.

Where are my priorities?

Why I left blogging (for @hangbitch , @john_demetriou and others)

Well, all the reasons I gave here are true. I am working my cunt off. I have got a life, out of nowhere, too. The Cuntalition is more nimble at being cuntish. And I am still writing elsewhere.

But a brief outing in the comments section at Cuntishness is Free yesterday just reinforced the thing that really stops me the most: it's become so tedious to re-hash the same arguments over and over and over to an audience of people who don't appreciate the stupidity of their own "logic". And even when you "engage" with someone and they genuinely try to understand my point of view, they are all so blinkered that they might as well not bother.

It really is like banging your head on a brick wall. Every new statist I talk to brings out the same set of "killer" arguments that seem so self-evident that they've never bothered to question them. And when you question them, even as they trip themselves up they fail to see the inherent internal conflict of their point of view.

I don't want to pick on anyone in particular, but let's grab this one:

OK, Mr Devil, let's take a case in point. 'Socialised' health care, the NHS, which uses taxation, which by definition must be 'coercive', to provide health care for the many. I am assuming that the libertarian principle would be to abolish the NHS because it depends on coercive taxation and presumably a libertarian government would take steps to do just that.

However it is clear that the vast majority of people in the UK support the principle of 'socialised health care' even if there are differences on how the NHS should be organised. So how does the a libertarian government square undoing a policy with coercive law that the vast majority accept? To use your own parlance, How can it threaten 'violence' to undo something that you oppose but the majority do not.

A libertarian government could only occur if it won sufficient votes to actually form a government. This would mean that a significant percentage of people would have to sign up to the libertarian model and actually, you know, vote for us. So we would have the same democratic legitimacy as any statist party. So why would this even be an issue?

And on a practical point, how on earth would a libertarian government ever come to power unless most people become magically transformed into libertarians?

Fuck me. This cunt is a genius or something. But actually, he also just goes on to highlight how shit his understanding of democracy is. Only about a third of the British population is required to become Libertarian in order for us to have outright control over the political agenda for five years. If we had 10% of the population, we could probably start moving the goalposts away from the default statist agenda.

But it does rather point out another major flaw in this cretin's thinking: one third of the population can get to set the way 100% of the population has to live, and yet he's comfortable with that, as long as no-one moves his particular cheese.

That was just one comment. It's all just far too much like hard work fisking people one by one, especially when you've done the exact same fisk or a 95% match a dozen times before. Even when people are seriously trying to discuss things, there are certain places their minds just refuse to go and they just run back into the arms of the state, crying like the little bitches they are.

And the people on the left who are suddenly crying for my voice to be raised against the civil liberty violations were fucking happy to grin and bear that shit while "their lot" were in power, so they're just shallow tribalists looking for another voice to cause trouble for the coalition, they don't actually care about liberty. All they want is for their team of statist cunts to be in charge again. So fuck them.

I'm no more happy about the political direction of this country than I was under Labour, primarily because the policies are indistinguishable and the state is still grown and the cuts are nothing of the sort and taxes are still shooting up.

But people aren't interested in learning about a truly different way of solving problems. People aren't interested in re-thinking their politics, even if they wind up in the exact same place.

So no, fuck it. The way I feel right now is that blogging isn't fun.

Update: As if by magic...

Fuck off you cunts

It's funny, I never thought I'd ever write this post. But here we are.

I have all the usual excuses: work is busier than I can ever remember.

My inspiration to blog issues from a libertarian angle has waned. There's only so many times you can reduce things to first principles and argue the case and get the same stupid, meaningless counterarguments.

The Cuntalition is not as astoundingly infuriating as the Labour Party were. They're just as fucking inept, thieving, misguided and bossy, but they're much nicer about it. So that's fine.

I'm tired of trying to explain the concept of anarchism as something natural and workable to people who are happy to mindlessly defend extortion with menaces.

I'm bored with the vacuity of British politics and the stupidity and apathy of the electorate.

To my fellow bloggers, you have inspired me, amused me, provoked me, annoyed me and provided me with ammunition and targets. Thank you.

I'm struggling to keep up with the huge swathes of blogging that pour in, though. It's great writing, but it has become a chore to keep up with people, rather than a pleasure. I can't read hundreds of blog posts every day AND write.

But mostly, I've found something else to direct my creativity into, something that strangely rewards me even more that the challenge of trying to create a compelling argument. It may not pan out and I may come skulking back here. I hope it does work out, though.

I can't even pretend that I will never, ever blog here again. My life may change again. I have no intention of deleting the blog, and I would be flattered to think that someone, somewhere may still find some of my writing interesting or inspiring.

It's been an interesting journey for me, from social democracy to minarchism to anarchism and I'm pleased I made the effort. I'm pleased to have had ideas challenged and I've been hugely amused by the trolls, commentards and window-lickers here.

I always did write for myself, but I can't deny that it's been gratifying to see upwards of 10,000 absolute uniques month after month, and it's still climbing. I hope that you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. Probably best that I bugger off leaving you cunts wanting more, too!

I must address the inevitable triumphalism of John Demetriou, who will feel that he finally won the great contest, proving that a) he is a better blogger and b) his libertarianism is better than mine.

So all I can say John is: well done. I hope you enjoy your victory.

All that remains is to say goodbye to you all.

Nah.

Fuck off you cunts!

Nope!

It's still all fucked.

Feel free to abuse me.

Overworked again

Up to my eyeballs in document review for something else I know fuck-all about.

I may complain later.

On the fucking road, etc.

Fuck my life.

On the cunting road again

A day of cuntage and ball-sucking beckons.

Fuck.