This page is place for people looking to get around current legislation or else interested in knowing what it is. I didn't know what pages were for when I created it. That original satirical essay about the Plants Varieties and Seeds Act 1964 is as follows....
Manifesto of "The Tomato Liberation Army"
Preface
The name of the TLA might conjure up images of balaclava wearing activists li
berating tomatoes from a battery greenhouse in Cheshire at 2am and subsequently being prosecuted like common thieves but the truth about our struggle is far more bizarre and hard to credit. Our clandestine organisation was originally formed to fight for equal rights for the Spanish Globe (a variety of tomato). Spanish Globe is just one of countless thousands of varieties of fruit, vegetables and herbs banned from sale in the UK. In order to bring the government to it's knees, we intended establishing a nationwide network of safe houses where these illegal tomatoes could lie low. We would disguise them so no one recognises their true non aryan genetic origins and then release them back into society at car boot sales. We know these tomatoes better than the government. We know they pose no real threat to society. Where we give them a chance will just be eaten and enjoyed like other tomatoes. They have been surviving in hiding since the introduction of the Plant Varieties and Seeds Act (1964). Only varieties of fruit and veg on the European common catalogue or else on the UK list (maintained by DEFRA) are legal to sell in the UK. The terrifying thing about our organisation is that the implausible nature of our struggle is actually real (not made up). There are actually hundreds of underground movements just like us hiding and helping outlawed fruit and vegatables which are being repressed at the tax payer's expense. In the past we have all been disjointed. Pea plant emancipators haven't cared about the plight of the tomatoes and there has been vicous factional wars between us. We should join together and not settle until the government refrains from interfering in the supply of any fruit, vegetable or herb except where we the people can be genuinely convinced there is some actual genuine point to the ban other than screwing companies for a pathetic little bit of extra stealth tax. There are 62million people living in this country and if they can't produce one person out of such a large population killed or even slightly bruised by one of these deadly fruit then I for one consider the risk posed as being a risk I am prepared to take. Certainly it is a risk I don't want to pay to be protected from. The persecution faced by tomato enthusiasts. The government is so busy persecuting other contra cultures that there are not the prison places or police time for tomato growers (yet). Only the dealers are being targeted at the moment. They are the ones who are actively spreading this cancer and endangering whatever it is our leaders think these tomatoes are threatening to destroy. The tomatoes themselves face extermination. This is to help varieties which are deemed to be new and genuinely an improvement on varieties already allowed (according to the government). On the whole, us human simpathisers can evade legal retribution by utilising legal loop holes. The only case I know of where someone has been prosecuted is where a jealous competitor pointed out the infringement of the law to the authorities. This resulted in a £7500 fine and more than £7600 in court costs. That individual had his life destroyed in order to protect the few varieties which the government wishes to have a monopoly in the UK. One person was sacrificed in order to protect the monopoly of a few overly powerful families of tomato plants. That individual was too obvious about what he was doing and was dealing in them instead of giving them away as free gifts with some worthless thing he was selling or else running lots of little £1 raffles where there is only one ticket holder. We can only suffer this fate if we are caught actually dealing in them. They are not interested in users because there are not enough prison places. Join this struggle and you might get away without being prosecuted. We now have such a bewildering array of ridiculous laws in England that the place is beginning to become more free. We are getting away with stuff because no one knows all the laws. No police officer will realise these are illegal tomatoes unless you bump into a fruit and veg enthusiast. They will fall into the trap of thinking their government couldn't be so arrogant as to think they can pick which tomatoes we are allowed access to. Or maybe they will assume the UK public aren't dumb enough to put up with this nonesence. Everyone I approach with my cause has to be convinced that these laws are real. Everyone first assumes I am insane for thinking my tomatoes are illegal. Then I show them the legislation and prove I'm not the one who's nuts. A plausible explanation for why these tomatoes are illegal
It's a great opportunity for yet another stealth tax hidden in the price of our food. Someone has to stump up money to get a variety made legal. Thus almost every variety of fruit and veg is banned here. Not because they are poisonous. Just because no one has paid the ransom demanded by the UK government. The ransom is just under £1,000 to start with and then they want another £185 per year or else they need to ban it once more (in order to protect the public). If these things are dangerous, I don't think we should be exposed to the risk just because the government got £185. Nothing about this law sounds like it is for our benefit. It might not seem like a stealth tax worth bothering with until you consider how many varieties of plant this is happening with. Also consider how many other ludicrous stealth taxes are also at work making tomatoes so expensive. For example Gangmaster's licenses for the agents who supply foriegn labour (not a made up tax); Worker registration Scheme fee (£90 per year) for each Polish picker. It is against EU law to charge citizens of other member states for the right to work in your country but I guess £90 is OK. They also pay national insurance while not being entitled to any of the things which it supposedly entitles you to. I can't help thinking National Insurance is a way of splitting one really big outragious tax bill into two smaller outragious tax bills to make it seem smaller to the gullible amongst us. We should not blame the supermarkets or producers. They are the ones who the government is trying to extort the money out of. You are being conned into believing that politicians are the puppets of businessmen when it is the opposite way around. Politicians are responsible. They make the laws. They are the ones demanding the money. The businessmen are the ones having it demanded off them. We are the ones ultimately paying for all this interference when we buy our fruit and veg. Here's a few of my suggested plans...
Plan A: We sell bits of paper to people for a pound and then always give them some "free" tomatoes as an extra free gift. Plan B We simply ignore what the government thinks is good for us and deal in controlled substances amongst ourselves. The problem with plan B is that is what we have been doing for years and it means anytime anyone is jealous of anyone else for buying a car they will inform on them for any fine related crimes they are aware of. Plan B allows the government yet another stealth tax. One part of government can raid houses and steal all the criminal's money while another part of government is left to foot the much larger bill for imprisoning these people. Plan C: Everytime politicians appear in public, we throw banned vegetables at the politicians. This might not help banned peas much but they would sure as hell legalise turnips in a hurry. Other aims
In a bid to broaden our support, we have decided to join forces with various other factions and adopt the principal that all tomatoes (not just the Spanish Globe) have an equal right to exist. Our organisation only has one member so far - me. But when the plight of the Spanish Globe is more widely understood, I expect many of my countrymen to swell the ranks of this popular movement.
..especially now I'm recognising other banned varieties such as White Princess. At first sight, most commentators see no safe way of legalising this fruit. It is very large and fragile and has a very fragile fine skin. Most experts regard it as the CEMTEX of the fruit and vegetable world. One anarchist in the crowd with one of these and it isn't merely the politicians who have something to fear. These have a blast range four times that of a rotten egg and are a lot easier to see in TV footage. Another problem (equally intransigent) with this fruit is it tastes too tomatoey. One way of dealing with this might be for the government to involve "Little Chef" somehow. They have a track record for overcoming the same problem in other varieties. Ways we could rehabillitate criminal fruit, vegetables and herbs. Clearly we can't simply un ban everything. This would lead to the same dangerous chaos that existed before tomatoes, cannabis and other varieties of fruit, veg and herbs were banned. The world was a much more dangerous place back then. Most people think of all the wars, plagues and persecution - they forget the great harm people suffered at the hands of out of control fruit and veg. Without these laws we face the prospect of criminals being beyond the arm of the law because of one tiny legal loop hole: stuff not being illegal. Rather than leave this injustice unpunished, I propose we replace the old restricted substance type laws with one universal offense of "don't like the look of your face". We have only been able to survive thus far without my proposed "look of your face" law because fruit, veg and herb law (particularly canabis) has been filling that breach (getting used in its stead). Another innovative strand to my plan is that we employ the police to investigate (rather than commit) the crime of breaking into people's houses and stealing all their dope and money. This is how it works in lots of other countries (where governments are less repressive). A new universal law to replace all these hard to remember laws. The number of laws banning stuff are growing and we are all starting to lose track of which things are still legal. A new law was passed in 2010 which enables substances to be banned without an act of parliament anymore. The reason given was that it avoids delays caused by waiting on the results of scientific testing. That's the real actual reason - not a joke. From now on some guy in Whitehall can just ban stuff without wasting time brainwashing gullible politicians into voting for it. If you think about it instead of just accepting it surely you can see the fatal flaw in that kind of logic. I think one new law would sort out all others. We need to ban governments from being able to charge money for crime. People should be punished without the government being rewarded. At the moment laws are made with a view to how much money they will take off us as a stealth tax. Legislation would be very different if there was no way of making money out of it. The government don't understand economics and believe they are making money and wealth when a speed camera asks you for £70. They don't understand that really they are stopping you spending that money on something useful and necessary. They are intercepting £70 which would have otherwise gone to a useful member of society instead of them. They are replacing the production or provision of something such as food or clothing with the more useless service of fining people. They name their own price so there is no need for efficiency and the whole exercise causes vast amounts of money to be squandered with companies who know how to rescue their money from this country better than the rest of us do. They turn us against each other calling everyone scroungers when all they do is ask us for money that we don't owe them. Surely that is scrounging? No actually because they punish those who don't pay it actually doesn't count as scrounging. Drive down any road at night and all the old registration cars are being pulled over by police investigating "fine related crime". Shiny new police cars attend beat up old Corsas like blue bottles on dog muck. The police don't do this stuff to us because they want to. Maybe some of them do but I'm sure many just want to protect the public from genuine real actual crime rather than looking for excuses to fine us. Contact Details
My identity needs to be kept secret. For that reason these contact details need to be either written in code or else hidden somewhere no one will ever look (e.g. in the spines of books or on my page). [email protected]
