Here are the first one hundred items in our great ...
List of Things We Could Do Thirty Years Ago,
and Now Can't
In no particular order (we'll sort them out a bit later) …..
• You can't call yourself a Yid. If you are one, that is.
• Or, according to Tottenham Hotspur FC, you can't call yourself a Yid if you aren't one.
• You can't carry celery when attending a Chelsea match.
• You can't send your child to university if you went to one yourself. I mean, be fair. You had your turn.
• You can't lie in the sun in your garden or the park or at the beach without being lectured about Global Warming.
• You can't lie in the sun in your garden or the park or at the beach without being moved on by some local council jobsworth armed with a £50 fixed penalty notice.
• You can't lie in the sun in your garden or the park or at the beach without being told to wear Factor 1,000 in case you burn.
• You can't lie in the sun in your garden or the park or at the beach without being harangued because it offends Islam.
• You can't lie in the sun in your garden or the park or at the beach without being suspected of child abuse.
• You can't drop a (completely bio-degradable, in my case) fag end in the gutter.
• You can't call anyone a black bastard, because that's racist.
• You can't tell anyone about someone else calling people black bastards, because that's racist too.
• You can't tell anyone about someone else telling someone else about calling people black bastards, because that's racist2.
• You can't stand up and cheer when your team score.
• You can't drive with your eyes on the road rather than the speedometer.
• You can't do, write or say anything without looking over your shoulder in case someone doesn't like it.
• You can't send out of the country people who've come here illegally or come as our guests and then commit crimes or plot to kill us.
• You can't fly without being made to feel guilty.
• You can't drive without being made to feel guilty.
• You can't smoke without being made to feel guilty.
• You can't eat without being made to feel guilty.
• You can't have sex with a woman without being made to feel guilty because she isn't a man.
• You can't drive a nice big car without some woman in dungarees giving you a hard time.
• You can't refer to someone as a cream-puff without being arrested.
• You can't have a bonfire and fireworks without some tosser from elfin safety knocking on your door and telling you (a) how to do it, and/or (b) not to do it.
• You can't ogle a barmaid without being accused of sexual harassment.
• You can't find it a bit odd and slightly distasteful when men fiddle around with each other's privates.
• You can't work with, around or close to children without being branded a potential pervert.
• You can't ask a builder to get rid of the rubbish he's created while working on your house, because unless he has a special licence to do so, he'll be fined £5,000.
• You can't have an impromptu sing-song with a couple of musicians in a pub.
• You can't make fun of silly people who believe in fairies, devil-worship, UFOs, acupuncture, herbal therapy, man-made global warming, centuries-old prophets with towels round their heads or some old man with a beard who lives in the sky (no, not Richard Branson. The other one).
• You can't carry a pen-knife.
• You can't save up and buy a nice house to leave to your kids (because the bloody government will steal it when you die).
• You can't get through September, October and November without being bombarded with stuff about Christmas, which, let's make no mistake about it, doesn't happen until almost the end of December. That's December, all right?
• You can't expect any scientist to talk sense at any time. Actually, they never have, have they? In 1970 some scientists told us "in ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish".
• You can't expect anyone at all to talk any sense if the topic under discussion is Global Warming. Here's just one example. In the Stern Report there was much mention of "irreversible melting of ice". Quite a lot of scientists know that water freezes again when it gets cold enough. So not completely irreversible, then?
• You can't pay a lady to have sex with you. If she's happy and you're happy, why the hell not?
• You can't spot and arrest a criminal if they're disguised as a masked Muslim woman, if the case of PC Sharon Beshenivsky is anything to go by.
• You can't fight back if someone decides to mug you in the street.
• You can't chase a burglar you caught with his hands in your wife's knicker-drawer.
• You can't chase a burglar you caught with his hands in your wife's knickers.
• You can't , if you're a 14-year-old schoolboy in Hertfordshire, go after the thugs who've been bullying your little brother, and knock them down.
• You can't advertise on prime-time television the following: Marmite, Flora Lite, cheese, bran flakes, instant hot oat cereal, reduced calorie mayonnaise, multi-grain hoop cereal, creme fraiche, potato waffles, Greek yoghurt, ham, sausages, bacon, low-fat spreads, peanuts, cashew nuts, pistachio nuts, peanut butter, raisins, sultanas, currants, low-fat potato crisps, olive oil, butter, mother's milk (but Diet Coke, on the other hand, is fine).
• You can't drink more than four glasses of red wine (three if you're a woman) without being accused of binge-drinking.
• You can't feed chips to seagulls, as 14-year-old Jack Double of Ipswich found. Or bread-crumbs to pigeons in the case of Nottingham pensioner Beryl Withers.
• You can't get a passport. You know, a plain and simple little booklet with your name and address and a photo in it, that you show to people when you go on holiday in France or Majorca. A simple little booklet that doesn't involve betraying your entire life-history, giving samples of every bodily fluid you excrete, prints of every digit, slivers of finger-nail, lock of hair, eye of toad and wing of bat etc.
• You can't use a hose on your garden. Wasting water is the water companies' job, and they're very good at it. They don't need any help from you.
• You can't decide how much to feed your own dog without fear of help, advice, supervision and interference from the RSPCA.
• You can't assume that just because you've lived in this country for 42 years, had two British husbands, four British children and eleven British grandchildren, you'll be allowed back in when you pop across to visit your old Dad in America. Dawn Woodcock wasn't.
• You can't hunt foxes with dogs.
• You can't offer a reward for the return of your property if someone steals it.
• You can't have something go wrong without it being "someone's fault". Train breaks down? You trip over a paving-stone? You slip on a shiny floor? You venture too far onto the rocks and get swept away by a wave? Someone has to be blamed. Not you, of course.
• Pretty soon you won't be able to drive on the roads you paid for without being charged again for the privilege.
• You can't, when speeding down the road at 90mph, expect to be pulled up by a policeman on a motorbike or in a car. Instead, expect to be prosecuted by a yellow box for doing 31mph in a built-up area at 3 o'clock in the morning.
• You can't send your children to school to receive something you would recognise as an education. Instead, they'll be brainwashed into believing that gay sex is the right-on way to go, that the heat-death of the universe is going to happen in five years' time and that Divali and Ramadan are important.
• You can't, when flying, sit next to a child. Because, of course, you're an abuser. Well, you might be. It pays to be on the safe side - after all, instances of child-abuse on aeroplanes are commonplace …. aren't they? And if it ever did happen, someone would sue the airline, naturally, for allowing it.
• You can't drive to work in your own car, apparently, if you're called Stephen Booth from Bolton. Police stopped him, confiscated his completely legal, taxed, tested and insured car, refused to give it back and then crushed it because their computer made a mistake and they didn't have (a) the humility and (b) the imagination to admit that they'd made a mistake.
• You can't sign a petition with the hope that anyone might take any notice. Millions of people signed a petition about road pricing, but long before the closing date the government had announced that they had no intention of paying any attention.
• You can't buy a holiday home in Prince Charles's new development, Surfbury in Cornwall. It's OK for you to earn loads of dosh, but you mustn't spend it.
• You can't use, if you're a health-care worker in Scotland, words like 'mum', 'dad', 'husband', 'wife' or 'marriage' when talking to patients and their … er … people who are with them. They might be lesbians, gays or bisexuals and take offence. Which doesn't say much for the intelligence of lesbians, gays and bisexuals.
• You can't call an ambulance with any hope that it will arrive in time to be useful.
• You can't stay in hospital one minute longer than absolutely necessary, especially if it's 1.45 in the morning and you're an 84-year-old heart patient in Ipswich who has just been given the all-clear. You'll be in a taxi home before you can say "Look, I paid for this f*cking Health Service …."
• You can't decide that if you're terminally ill, in pain, depressed and shorn of all remaining hope, you would prefer to end it all. Whatever happened to "Thou shalt not kill; but need not strive officiously to keep alive ..."?
• You can't drive down Whitehall in a lorry with "Blair, don't send our young prince to your catastrophic illegal war to make it look plausible" written on the side. Not even if you're Chris Eubank.
• You can't , if you're a poor African, exploit the coal and oil and other natural resources of your own country to make your own life better.
• You can't do anything in a school, according to the Muslim Council of Britain, that conflicts with the teachings of Islam - dancing, swimming, wearing normal British clothing, holding exams during Ramadan …
• You can't safeguard your own privacy. For instance, during the council tax revaluation in Wales in 2005, people were warned that if they did not fill in detailed questionnaires about their houses, they could face forcible entry from officials.
• You can't enhance your own home with your own money. If you do, you will be spied upon (from helicopters if necessary) by the local council, and punished by having your Council Tax Band increased.
• You can't have a drink and then drive. All right, fair enough, but ….
• You can't not have a drink and then drive. The government has authorised police to undertake random breath-testing.
• You can't expect to be "innocent until proven guilty", not in Gloucester, anyway. If council inspectors think you've dropped litter in the town centre, or if they think you haven't but you might, or if they just don't like your ugly face, they'll put your photo on their website and brand you a "litter criminal".
• You can't flush more than six litres down your loo. It's the law, apparently.
• You can't buy Thawpit Spot-Remover. In case you drink it, presumably, because you are, after all, terminally stupid.
• You can't store more than a thimbleful of petrol for your lawn-mower/outboard motor in the garage. In case you set fire to yourself, presumably, because you are, after all, terminally stupid.
• You can't throw away a nearly-empty paint tin anywhere in the entire county of Suffolk.
• Very soon, you won't be able to buy an ordinary light-bulb. Instead, pay five times as much for one that gives half the light.
• You can't take a photograph in a public place.
• You can't take a photograph of your own child when he's playing in a football match, running at sports day, acting in a school play etc.
• You can't smack a naughty child.
• You can't give a thick ear to a youth who has been throwing snowballs at your house for the last three hours.
• You can't "take the law into your own hands". Whose law is it, exactly? It's ours, isn't it? We may pay the judges and lawyers and police to administer it, but it's our law.
• You can't expect any public servant to deal with you fairly and impartially. For instance, tax inspectors are on commission these days. Everyone has an axe to grind.
• You can't talk about "childhood" any more: the days of Enid Blyton are long gone. In one year weapons confiscated from children included guns, air pistols, swords and a flame-thrower while 10-year-olds were charged with serious sexual offences, robbery, actual bodily harm and assaulting a police officer.
• You can't remove the chip from your wheelie-bin. The council put their bin on your property, demand that you use it as they command and fit it with spyware to record your habits, but they'll prosecute if you object.
• You can't deny man-made Global Warming despite all the evidence. One Canadian scientist who did, received death threats from five different people.
• You can't trust the law. In the last twenty years dozens of men have been convicted of rape or child-abuse on the evidence of just one accuser years after the alleged event. Family Courts remove children permanently from alleged child-abusing parents with no requirement to actually prove anything, and several women have been convicted of murder on the silliest of expert evidence. One, Sally Clarke, recently died.
• Before long, you won't be able to leave school at 16. You can have sex, or even get married, but not leave school.
• You can't escape. Twenty-five percent of the world's CCTV cameras are in the UK - we are being watched by over four million cameras.
• You can't buy more than 16 Paracetamol tablets at a time. Before you can kill yourself you have to spend the entire day flitting from one chemist to another. Such a nuisance.
• You can't permanently switch off the autoformat feature in Microsoft Word.
• You can't be allowed to forget the vapid, simpering Princess Diana, surely the most irritating woman this century.
• You can't cope with snow. Half an inch and the entire country grinds to a halt and the police forbid us to leave our homes. We understand it makes people from Canada wet themselves laughing.
• You can't be treated like sensible adults. For instance, you can't get near a river, lake, dock or cliff-top without being confronted by a forest of signs warning us "Danger! Cliffs!" We know they're cliffs. We can see they're cliffs. We know if you fall off a cliff you'll be killed. We know. Shut up! We KNOW!
• You can't elect the government you want. All governments in this country are minority governments, with more people voting against them than voted for them. The highest percentage of the vote any government has achieved since the war is still less than 50%. We are at all times ruled by the very people we said we didn't want to be ruled by.
• You can't put your rubbish in the bin at a railway station, because there isn't one. They took it away in case a terrorist put a bomb in it.
• You can't call a railway station by its proper name, "railway station". We seem to have adopted the American "train station".
• You can't get out of jail free. If they send you to prison for something you didn't do, and then later on you are cleared and released, they send you a bill!
• You can't fight a proper war any more. Any soldier who is careless enough to kill one of the enemy is likely to find himself on a murder charge. Very odd - in WW1 they shot you if you didn't kill the enemy properly.
• You can't be ill just any old how. These days there are some illnesses the NHS will treat, and others it can't be bothered with. You've got to have the right sort of illness. And if you are lucky enough to be accepted into hospital, they'll give you a free gift - MRSA.
• You can't smoke in a public building. Your lungs aren't your own. And if passive smoking is so dangerous, how come only a quarter of the people who die from cancer are smokers? They don't just happen to breathe a bit of smoke in by accident, they suck it down by the lungfull dozens of times a day!
Don't forget to send us your suggestions for this list. We think we can get it up to 500 if we really try. Send them either by posting them in the Guest Book, or by emailing The GOS direct at list@grumpyoldsod.com.
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