FICTION! – How Bikes Got Banned

[Teflon-Mike]

FICTION - this is not real.... but a little thought how easily it COULD happen!
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“What’s that Grandad?” I looked down at the three year old toddler; like all toddlers, getting under your feet, getting into everything, and tiring you with endless questions. What’s that? What’s this? Why’s that? What does this do? Over and over and over again!
Thought I’d got past all this thirty years ago, but no. It echoes through the generations, and here it is again. “Can you watch Gilly for me today, Dad? His Gran’s got to go to the Doctors”
Why don’t they SLEEP. I’m SURE mine used to SLEEP!
Stick them on the floor with a few toys; then give them something to eat; watch a Thomas the Tank engine video…. VIDEO! Oh boy! Another string of never ending questions, ‘What’s that, Granddad?” pushing the remote control into the Video-Recorder slot!
“It’s a Motor-Bike, Gilly”
“Mow-tow-byk?” Gilly echoes…. “Can I sit on it?” he squeaks scrambling up onto the foot-peg, jamming toes between side panel gaps to get on the saddle! “Mayk-it-GO!, Gramps, Mayk-GoW”
“No, Gilly, its not a toy, and it doesn’t go any-more. Sorry”
Oh no…. Please, No! NO!
Big clear, round eyes, getting larger, eye-brows getting higher, hairline moving up, with a hint of ridging in flubby baby skin, not quite creasing into a frown….. I can see it coming….. yup, here it comes… there’s going to be a…..
“WHY? Granddad, WHY?”
Yup, there it is! Oh boy!
“It’s too old, Gilly. Like Gramps.”
“Cant you get a New-One, Gramps?”
“No Gilly, I cant. They don’t make them any more. They aren’t allowed.”
“Not ‘lowed?” the frown, its bubbling “Why?”
Why in deed.
“Before you were born Gilly; people got killed by them. So they banned them. Come on, lets go find an Olly-Orca game for you to play, see if you can save the whales before your four”
“OllyyorKA! Yay… cummon gramps!”
Oh my…. Its worse than Tweenies and Peppa pig put together. Geez. First you have to build your wind-farm, then use the solar array to charge up the Dolphin-Dodger, then make your way across the great marsh without bumping into the eel traps, and catch the renegade fishermen using under size herring nets… and if the little squirt goes into the cormorant reservation, and lets the pig loose, and I have to listen to that twenty minute bludy speech by the stupid snotty woman, telling us all about the extinction of the Dodo A-fucking-gain!
And I used to think that endless ‘Tweenies’ was bad enough! Oh boy!

Hmmm…… Why aren’t they allowed? Geez, its almost enough to make me want to go fire the old dog up and go for a blast. Bollox to-em. If it wasn’t for the chuffing auto-stingers might even be worth it, if I thought I could get more than a mile out of town! Where DID it all go wrong?

Poor Prince Harry. Well that didn’t help, I guess. But there was also that ruddy Jason Carmichael….. Oh yes. Jay-See, the extreme-exposure guy, and his partner in crime, ‘Sling-Shot’ Simon Davis.

Carmichael was a tabloid press photographer, running around trying to ‘scoop’ celebrity scandal footage. Davis, a London Despatch rider, he hired to get him about the town quickly on his motorbike. Two became quite a duo…. Ought to have been hung drawn and quartered for high treason when poor Prince H was killed! But it was that that really got them in the lime-light; their fifteen minutes of infamy.

Davis; when they were bored and waiting for a scoop, had taken to doing stunts and tricks for Carmichael’s camera, and Carmichael was starting to get quite a You-Tube following for the ‘Sling-Shot-Stunts’ he was putting up clips of. Of course, Jay-See had got him self a fancy helmet camera and his own bike to film some of Sling-Shot’s antics, and not just Sling-Shot; going out to the meets over the Summer of 2013, they were grabbing quite a lot of footage egging on other riders into Show-Boating for the Blogg-Spot. The British Ghost-Rider. Was all over the internet.

Jay-See and Sling-Shot copycats on every forum; you tube links of ever more risky stunts all over the place. Probably the most famous, was the 140mph lane-splitting wheelie between two articulated lorries.

Apparently Jay-See got quite a little crew of thrill seeking idiots together; But it was the one of the 3am M25 Grand-Prix, August Bank-Holiday that caused such a stir, when they ‘revealed’ that one of the riders was Prince Harry.

All the official sources denied it of course, and who could tell; one leather clad loon in a full face helmet looks much like another; but media was full of it.

Then Harry was killed, May Bank-Holiday weekend, 2014.

Any-one who hadn’t been paying attention before, certainly was after that! ‘Just like His Mum’ they said. And blamed the Papperatsi.

Then Jay-Cee’s flat was raided, and News at Ten showed police-men carrying all the computer and camera gear, bits of bikes and bike gear out and loading it in a van, while people went over all the same shit in ever more minute detail.

Jay-Cee had been there of course; camera rolling; so was Sling-Shot, and half a dozen others; whole thing must have been cought by at least fifty different cameras between the ones Carmichael had set up along the side of the road; the ones on every-one’s helmets, or strapped to the bikes, all the security cameras along the road, and all the ‘spectators’! Experts were having a field day, analysing it all, hypothesising on what had happened.

It was pretty much agreed Jay-Cee and his little gang of rebel-road-racers, had planned another 3am M25 Grand-Prix, and had set up cameras around the route to catch static footage, while the riders all got on-board video of each other, that he’d collect later and cut together.

How many ‘Racers’ there no-one knows; there were about a dozen arrested, but word of the event had leaked on the net, and there were loads of people out, who claimed to just be bystanders.

The Palace claimed that Harry and the two other Cavalry Officers riding with him, were not part of the ‘Jay-Cee’s Motorway-Grand-Prix’, but few accept suggestion he was just out for a ride with a couple of ‘mates’ at 3am and just happened to be on the same route as Jay-Cee by pure co-incidence.

Captain James St John was killed in the same collision as the poor prince, but Lieutenant Reynolds, survived, and admitted at the inquest that the three ‘knew’ of the Jay-Cee GP’s. The Royal Coroner’s statement was that it seemed common knowledge amongst the motorcycling community, that these illegal events were being staged, when and where, and it was alarming that the attendees were so often otherwise respectable professional people who ‘ought to know better’.

The conclusion of the inquest ought to have been that Harry’s death was a tragic accident; But, allegations that Jay-Cee had committed manslaughter, if not plain murder, in order to gain sensationalist video footage persisted.

What happened? Well, Harry rode into a motorway bridge, rather quickly, basically. Not good for your health that. How, and why, all rather less clear cut.

He was in amongst a huddle of perhaps five or six other bikes, one of them was doing a wheelie, when another slightly in front, braked hard lifting the rear wheel, possibly because of some road debris or ‘something’ but just as likely as a stunt, but that rider went down, and the ‘pack’ split to avoid the fallen rider. One bike clearly didn’t miss, and crashed over the top. Then from various helmet cams and the surveillance camera’s a couple of bikes bumped into each other, and what the coroner described as a ‘Domino Effect’ saw two more bikes go down, one sliding across the front of Harry’s machine.

Helmet Cam footage then suggests that while Harry was trying to avoid the bike sliding in front of him, he was ‘bumped’ by, probably, Captain St John’s machine, while travelling, they estimated at over a hundred and twenty miles an hour, the two bikes both going into high-speed wobbles, neither rider could recover, while veering towards the left of the road, and ultimately striking the concrete wall of a bridge support. Expert estimates suggesting an impact speed of something over ninety miles an hour.

They reckoned that the Prince probably died instantly on impact. Traffic monitoring cameras, suggesting that he struck the wall almost directly head on, while St John, was hanging off his bike, and struck the wall and the Princes bike slightly obliquely, and died three days later of his injuries, having never regained consciousness.

If it had been any-one else, of course, the coroner would have simply recorded it as ‘Death by Misadventure’. But this involved third in line to the throne of England, and a journalist.

People blamed the media; said their apatite for sensationalist gossip had gone too far. Others criticised the royals; blaming their privileges and abuses of them. Others blamed the police, for not cracking down on the rebel-road-racers, but EVERY-ONE blamed the BIKES! Only damn thing that couldn’t answer back; perfect scape goat!

No-One needs 200 mile an hour crotch rockets to get to work, was a common cry. Why were ANY of the people involved allowed such machines in the first place?

Of course, the Bearded Friendly Men; the more conservative spokesmen for motorcycling, did nothing to defend the bike, or their riders. Well, OK, they said that they had been saying ‘something’ like this was bound to happen for years, and trying to pass it off, that it was only a ‘small minority’ of riders who rode high-powered sports-bikes, and an even smaller minority of them who used them irresponsibly, trying to claim that most motorcyclists were just like them, and rode ‘sensible’ touring or commuter bikes, responsibly; suggesting that people only took notice of the more ‘remarkable’ antics of the small minority, magnifying their presumed propensity.

I remember watching a News-Night Special. Jeremy Paxton, chewed that argument to shreds in seconds. He lifted a sheet of paper off his clip-board and quoted UK motorcycle registration figures. The blustering bearded fellow opposite him, tried to challenge the suggestion that four fifths % of UK motorcycles could exceed twice the national speed limit, by saying that the same could probably be said of cars; before Paxton took him to task over his suggestion that ‘most’ motorcyclists rode 90bhp BMW twins or Barn-Door faired Pan-Europeans. I think the poor duffer realised he had lost, when Paxton put up a picture of a Honda CBR1100XX ‘Super-Black-Bird’ on the screen besides them and said “So you are trying to tell me that THIS!” pointing at the sleek, fully faired 180mph motorcycle in the picture, “Almost two hundred mile an hour motorcycle, the catalogue bumph says was designed for optimum performance in a wind tunnel, and which is electronically restricted, to just under a hundred and eighty miles an hour…… A motorcycle magazines claim to be the fastest production bike in the world? A motorcycle as fast as the fastest Grand-Prix racing machinery ridden by the worlds most elite riders… your saying, THIS! Pointing at the screen again for added emphasis, “is a ‘sensible’ touring machine, to take the wife away on holiday?” I think the poor chap might have squeeked a pathetic ‘yes’, but I’m not sure. He certainly was looking like he hoped that the seat would swallow him.

Top-Gear was a little more sympathetic. Jezza reckoned that it was all the more reason to implement his policy and put snipers on roof-tops to shoot speeding bikers; James May stammered “But what you don’t realise” a lot, being cut off repeatedly by Jezza, while Hammond tried interjecting to help support May’s defence of the motorcycle… but just shrugged, because he couldn’t find one, other than “Yes, but IF they ban bikes…. Will that mean they then turn their attention to cars?” And they went off to do something moronic with an old Renault on an airfield.

I came out of a shop, that summer, once to find ‘You killed the Prince!” scrawled in marker pen across my bike.

Other riders had their bikes pushed over in parking spots, some even reported their bikes being deliberately run over by women in 4x4’s, more than one saying that the woman yelled “That’s for Prince Harry, you hooligan!” at him, before driving off!

The Mad Angry Greasers, had a bit more spine in the bike’s defence; they painted a far more realistic and sympathetic picture of the typical motorcyclist; but unfortunately, the argument that so many motorcycles were simply NOT used as everyday essential means of transport, or responsibly for recreation; and such a high proportion of motorcycles, such a small proportion of all road transport were sold purely as leisure equipment, recreational sporting goods, and so closely related to pure racing machines, designed to do little apart from go very very fast, and ridden by riders who did little but try and use them as they were designed, treating the public roads as a an open, never ending race track; was a very difficult battle to win.

Especially when every time it was mentioned; there were hundreds if not thousands of more or less salacious video footage on the internet to show just how wreckless and irresponsible ‘bikers’ were.

Media debate raged for months; Industry spokesmen talked about the economic impact, and how more restriction on motorcycles would hinder the already slumped economy, though it was pointed out, with most motorcycles made in Japan or China, it wouldn’t really effect the UK economy that much.

Of course, the government, were quite happy for the controversy to rage. They slipped in two more petrol price hikes, another benefits cut, a revised VAT system, and a general election that maintained the Lib-Tory Co-elision for another term, during the periods the topic was most hotly debated!

But when the ‘end’ came.. it came quick. They let the campaigners rage, until the debate died down in the media. But the legislation that ‘banned the bike’? That was slipped in, in a Bill to revise the Road-Traffic-act, notionally to reduce exhaust noise and emissions limits, and introduce a new set of standards for ‘pedestrian friendliness’ and crumple zone energy absorption limits.

It was sneaky; It was passed in a late night session, by a very small number of MP’s, and two months later, a ‘Police-Crack-Down’ saw the new legislation used to pull over anything with two wheels and lam the rider with a seizure notice if their machine was over the new CO or Decibel limits. The new limits were made ‘retrospective’ and applied to all bikes, not just new ones. Hundreds of bikes were seized as ‘Un-Road-Worthy’ in a matter of a month. Dealers stopped selling new bikes. Nothing in their show-rooms net the new Construction & Use regulations.

The media storm was stoked back up. Test cases went into the Court system. And bikers stopped riding, awaiting the outcome, worried that their bikes would be taken from them if they showed their helmet! Bike use fell to almost nothing in less than a year.

Some test cases were ‘won’ but they were a hollow victory. The blanket noise and emission limits were upheld, and while the energy absorbsion requirements for car crumple zones were deemed ‘ridiculous’ for motorcycles, and debate raged over what was and was not a ‘reasonable’ was to improve motorcycle safety, the argument was onto a looser. With no bikes legally on the road, motorcycle accident rates dropped to almost zero.

The arguments that suggested so many motorcycles were used not as practical transport, but almost exclusively as recreational leisure equipment, and represented such a disproportional cause of death or injury for the miles travelled, gained ever ore relevance.

And the ‘end’… was sealed when it was simply accepted that the Construction & Use regulations should make no provision for ‘Powered Two Wheelers’. Manufacturers would have to cease making them, for road use, and those still in existence could continue to be ridden only as long as they met the new stringent noise and emission regulations. There were protest rides, and more bikes seized by yet more police clamp-downs.

Track-Day popularity increased. Van-Rental companies started advertising in Motor-Cycle-News, track-day transport offers. Web-Forums saw people organising van-shares and the likes. The Kart-Track pit bike and mini-bike clubs started offering classes for full size lightweights. And off-road clubs re-introduced old-fashioned ‘Scrambles’ for road-based bikes. But was not long before environmental health started turning up to events with noise meters and CO2 level testers.

It was a protracted ‘end’…. But still, it was an end. And with few ‘new’ bikes, numbers fell, and interest diminished.

A few still go out on the week-ends. Trials is still quite popular; its one of the few sports the bikes could be made to meet noise and smoke controls; but the courses are a lot less challenging., and road-racing? Moto Gymkhana is about all they do, other than ‘economy’ racing.

Most, like me, are left looking at bikes in the garage on stands, hoping for a day when things are different..........
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We are VERY sure it seems that they will 'NEVER' ban bikes.......

I am not so sure. At the moment? Yes, there is a certain degree of tolerance. There are policy makers that see an outright 'ban' as the ultimate solution, and who do have some VERY tangible arguments to support one.

Bikes DO represent an unacceptable level of road accidents and road deaths in relation to the road-miles they cover, while general usage trends are less and less fulfilling 'essential' road transport needs.

Politically, the suggestion banning bikes would harm the ecconomy, and hurt jobs, is a joke. The market in the UK is so small that the numbers of people involved in making them, selling them or supporting thier use, is insignificant..... face it... If the government can let the old BL Longbridge factory go 'Bump' and the employees of the Tower Group' all reporting to Solihull or Sheldon Dole-Offices on the same day..... are they REALLY going to be worried by about the few hundred people effected by banning bikes?

At the moment, I believe that they are following a policy of simply 'discouraging' motorcycle use; they are hammering teh road-user with punative taxes accross the board, if that damps peoples enthusiasm to ride a bike, all to the good. If not, then making it harder to get a licence or a licence that lets you have a more 'interesting' bike is going to be another useful damper.... but beyond that, they are just maintaining the status-que and letting things dribble along.

BUT.... the precedents are there. they rail-roaded through the 1982 125 Learner-Laws in a late night session. They implimented the latest 3rd Directive laws by 'stealth'...

Then there are the two rounds of gun-control, rushed through in 'knee-jerk' in response to Hungerford or Dumblain, and other legislation reflex reacted to media outcry, and popular campaigning.

The 'status-quo' is a very fragile thing...... I have 'suggested' a public hue and cry raised by some notorious You-Tube sensation maker, and overt scoffal-law, and compounded that by a a royal 'tragedy' bringing biking under the spot-light....

It wouldn't take MUCH more than something like that, if even that much!

And we ought to be a lot more acutely aware that probably the biggest single reason we havent yet been banned is SIMPLY that there has been nothing to drag the media spotlight on us, and bring us into popular controversy! Yet oh so easy that could happen!

And, when that spot-light falls? Yeah, the BMF and MAG are going to have a heck of a time trying to fight our corner, in the face of all the arguments against us.

Yet, we will expect them to, and we will grumble at them whenever they loose....... yet who here has actually done ANYTHING to support them?

And how many can truly, hand on heart say they haven't given the anti's ammunition to use against them?

Just fiction, isn't it.... silly story for Christmas holidays...... NEVER HAPPEN!...... or could it?
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My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[lukamon]

https://images.wikia.com/creepypasta/images/8/8d/WALL_OF_TEXT.jpg
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killa wrote: Im an ass man myself

[thepuma]

Please tell me that was cut and pasted Tef..
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YBR125 (SOLD) - CBR250R(SOLD) - CBR650F(SOLD) Current - Street Triple
765 RS

[highwayrider]

Very interesting read. You're right in your analogy about bikes and gun control. All it takes is one incident to become popularized and the dictators will try and pass all kinds of knee jerk laws.

It reminds me of that Russian biker who posted a video of himself filtering through stationary traffic at well over a ton.

[Aff]

Can someone do a TL;DR?
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Current Bikes:Honda 929RR Fireblade, Honda CD200 Benly (Project), Stomp Z2 140
Electric Bike Project

[CaNsA]

[J.M.]

Fun read but you have way too much time on your hands Tef

[highwayrider]

[Knightsy]

[thepuma]

[highwayrider]

[highwayrider]

I love how this one says it is done with the cooperation with the police, then half way through it has a caption reading "fuck the police"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBT-QQKtU7M

[scarborough_lad]

Probably the best post I've ever read on here!
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'96 Suzuki GS500

[Teflon-Mike]

I have to keep reminding myself that some of you are younger than the internet!
Once upon a time, when the internet was still the preserve of geeks, gamers and crusty old men in accademia..... we didn't have "forums", they grew out of 'Bulatin Boards'... did much the same thing only more slowly, and we had to compose a 'post' as an e-mail or text-file then 'send' it to the message board, as they were merely a veiwer.
They were often text only; you couldn't view pictures or video's and they frequently didn't have 'on-line' entry boxes to compose a post 'on board'.... and with 'expensive' and slow dial up connections, you'd do everything off-line and 'connect' in five or ten minute bursts.
Anyway... Short-Stories were a much more common bit of content; We used to also play 'The Story Game' where one member would post, the start of a story, and others then had to add the next installement...... some could run for months...... Planet bike I seem to recal had a board dedicated to 'on-line fiction'.....
anyhow... was my Bath-Time muse a week or so back, and I started the compesition, (you probably dont want the image in your head, but what the heck!) as I sat in my bath-robe after! Its kept me entertained at least!

Proposition: Could the BAN the BIKE?
If so; ]What would it take for them to do so?
And if they did? How would it happen?

Just my imagination pondering those suggestions.... think about it, can you NOT POSSIBLY imagine they could do it, EVER?
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My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[P.]

[Dave-the-rave]

They could do it but I doubt they would. I find it easier to imagine they would/will restrict power. which has already started (Germany had 100ps max power restriction 20 years ago) and restrict top speeds. I can also imagine petrol combustion engines on bikes becoming extinct. Diesel engines, electric and other alternative fuels could be the future of bikes.

I still don't see bikes being totally banned or made totally redundant by ever restrictive legislation on account of economies. There are without doubt some people around in power who would like to see bikes off the road based on whatever personal grievances or objections, but economies are fragile and every market is needed and relied upon.

Fuck with bikes and legislation in every way possible yes, but only if there is revenue to be made from it.

Fuck it's like suggesting they may even try closing down the illegal drugs trade. Think of the revenue lost if they ever did that.

[N cee thirty]

Anything can be banned as long as the people that follow it are a minority

fox hunting, smoking, drugs taking etc
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'00 Aprilia RS50 > '92 Honda CG > '99 Yamaha Fazer > '91 Yamaha RXS > '79 Suzuki X5 > 01' Honda Cg > 07' Honda Cg > 82' Kawasaki Z200 > suzuki gsxr 400 gk73a > honda vfr 400 NC30 Mod 2 Passed 09/06/2011

Jewlio Iglesias wrote: I actually did vote BNP once

[Rogerborg]

<tl;dr>The Prince Harry dies on a bike, bikes get banned</tl;dr>

I've actually had similar ponderings myself.

I think it's more likely that Brussels will do for us first though, if only by forcing prices up until sales become so low that the industry can't afford to "lobby" as lavishly as the Greens and Greys.
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Biking is 1/20th as dangerous as horse riding.
GONE: HN125-8, LF-250B, GPz 305, GPZ 500S, Burgman 400 // RIDING: F650GS (800 twin), Royal Enfield Bullet Electra 500 AVL, Ninja 250R because racebike

[Benno]

Well I actually read that, and sad to say, that's how politics works in this country.

Someone dies, they are either famous or their death is just blown into a shitstorm by the media, mums rage on the internet, daily mail gets a fiery spiked vibrating dildo rammed up its arse, government bans said object.

If I beat someone to death with a tampon, think they'll ban tampons? That would show those internet mums But they're the ones who control the government these days, along with the corporations and the banks.

And this phrase grates me above all
"You don't NEED this, so you shouldn't have it, I'm taking it from you"

I don't need it, BUT I F*CKING WANT IT AND IT ISN'T DOING ANYTHING TO YOU, SO F*CK OFF, I THOUGHT THIS COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE PROFESSED TO BE SUPPORTERS OF FREEDOM

F*ck I'm angry.

See image's description of democracy. "Your neighbours decide how your life is run" basically.
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I'm autistic. That means I'm smarter than you.

[LordShaftesbu...]

[Walloper]

Tefers M8, do you not ever think of 'gettin' it oan' wi that lovely young wumin of yours?

It would keep you occupied.
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W-ireless A-rtificial L-ifeform L-imited to O-bservation P-eacekeeping and E-fficient R-epair

[scarborough_lad]

[Teflon-Mike]

[TheSmiler]

The opinion of motorcycles has already changed due to Hollywood in my opinion, motorbikes used to be cool, look at the amount of movie that used to contain bikes comparing to the amount made today, only popular movie around bikes I can think of is Ghostider.
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CB125>CG125>GN125>ER5>K100RS>R1100RS>K100RS
A2 completed 23/07/15 Ready for the Golden Crisp Packet

[keggyhander]

Good yarn tef.

First they came for the guns,
Then they stopped me having a cosy fag with my pint.

Tef's nightmare could happen if a Lab/lib "right-on" coalition got in. The tories are our safest bet.