Passing Observations 138
Dr Vernon Coleman
1. The drug companies are now making the world’s first vaccine for honey bees. The stuff has been approved for use in the US. All they have to do now is find a few idiots prepared to do the vaccinating.
2. Twelve men have played both football and cricket for England. They are (in order of appearance): Lyttleton, Gunn, Gay, Foster, Fry, Sharp, Makepeace, Hardinge, Ducat, Arnold, Watson and Milton. Vastly under-rewarded heroes one and all. Can you imagine the fuss that would be made if a modern sportsmen won caps for both football and cricket? The last double international was Arthur Milton. He spent his last decades delivering mail, and then delivering free newspapers in Bristol.
3. Don’t confuse action with accomplishment.
4. The old-fashioned term for a sneak is `common informer’. Very appropriate.
5. When I was a GP, family doctors had the power to section people under the 1953 Mental Health Act. I sometimes fantasised about being in court and sectioning the judge before he could sentence me.
6. The intelligence services have for decades routinely ruined the careers of professional people regarded as `dangerous’. They have smeared reputations and destroyed people’s lives. These days they just use the fake encyclopaedia known as Wikipedia and the search engine known as Google (which, ironically, used to boast its motto was something to do with not doing evil).
7. A town becomes a village when it no longer has one of each of the following: a Post Office, a greengrocer, a food shop, a bank, a newsagent, a cobbler and an ironmonger. Many places still calling themselves towns are now no more than villages.
8. Obligations lead to resentment. Resentment leads to guilt. Guilt leads to rejection. And rejection leads to anger.
9. Twenty years ago the Daily Mirror (encouraged and aided and abetted by a major cancer charity linked with the drug industry) attacked a special (free) website on which I had suggested that strengthening the human body’s immune system was the way to fight cancer most effectively. Today, that same cancer charity talks incessantly about the importance of the immune system.
10. For years in the 20th century, when I was noisily campaigning against animal experimentation, I was followed around by two policemen. One carried a video camera. The other carried a stills camera. They stopped it when I photographed them and published the pictures in a Sunday newspaper for which I was writing a column.
11. After the authorities decided that it was illegal to say that the holocaust hadn’t existed (or had been exaggerated) censorship simply became a question of `what shall we allow people to say?’ I have no views about the holocaust but damning authors such as David Irving heralded the start of the war on freedom of speech.
12. Because the conspirators control mainstream media, it is no surprise that Brexit is blamed for everything that goes wrong. For example, it was because of Brexit that Sunak didn’t have his seat belt fastened recently.
13. In 1902, an England cricket team toured New Zealand and included 12 men plus J.N.Tonge, a former member of the Kent team who was described as travelling for his health. He took with him a man called Potter, described as his servant.
14. Our central heating went into terminal decline 9 months ago and it’s so cold in our house that I am writing this wearing two jackets a scarf and a hat. The dishwasher hose in the kitchen has frozen. Brrrr. I’m becoming very good at shivering. Where is global warming when you need it.
15. Eel blood is one of the most lethal substances known to man. I blame Brexit.
16. When people say nasty things about you, what matters is not so much what they say but who they are.
17. Online abuse is largely a result of the policy of allowing users to post comments anonymously and from the security of their bedroom in their parents’ home. The same people are largely responsible for writing the fake encyclopaedia known as Wikipedia (though they are supplemented by operatives from the CIA and the 77th Brigade who, for all I know, also operate from their bedrooms in their parents’ homes.)
18. A psychiatrist who shot one of his patients was afterwards heard to shout: `No one cares about ME.’
19. Birthdays which end in 0 are often said to be a time for reassessment. After the age of 70 the first day of every month is a time for reassessment.
20. It has been decided (I know not by whom) that to pronounce someone’s name incorrectly is racist. No, it’s not. It is sometimes difficult to pronounce a foreign name correctly but that has nothing to do with racism and to suggest that it is, is insulting to everyone concerned and to the very concept of racism.
Vernon Coleman has written three volumes of autobiography. The books, titled Memories 1, Memories 2 and Memories 3 are available from the bookshops on www.vernoncoleman.org and www.vernoncoleman.com
Copyright Vernon Coleman February 2023
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