I don't make jokes. I just observe the government and report the facts.
Will Rogers.
The Saltshaker Wars
‘Back, back, get back!’ Commander Thompson screamed at the top of his voice. He was barely able to hear himself over the roar of the crowd advancing towards them, and he was unsure that his men could hear him either. The bricks and petrol bombs that had been raining down on them, had if anything increased in the last few minutes and with half the men down they were finding it hard to maintain position.
Normally when facing a mob of this size they would have been reinforced or would have long ago retired to a fortified position to the rear. But they were the last of the troops on the ground and there was no reinforcements or fortified position to fall back on. The town like so many others had done in the past, was about to fall to the rioters and they were the rearguard, left behind to hold back the mob. The rest of what was left of the army had withdrawn, hopefully to fight another day.
The Commander screamed again for his men to move back and this time he was heard. The men began to back up one step at a time and slowly the gap between the thin kaki line and the rioters, opened up. But not for long, the braying crowd surged forward as one, and the troops knowing that they could not hold them, broke and ran. Not that it did them any good; they were clubbed to the ground and kicked to death where they lay.
As the commander lay dying he cursed the nameless official that brought it all about. Who would believe that a saltshaker would be the final straw the turned ordinary peace loving citizens into ravening mobs, bent on throwing off the yoke of both local and national government.
The saltshakers might have sparked the riots off, but the causes of unrest within the population went back a lot further. Back in fact to the time when people belatedly began to think that Orwell’s vision of an all-observing, totalitarian government, portrayed in his book ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ was looking not so much a piece of fiction, but more of a miss timed prophesy.
This was confirmed when streets formerly free to park in, were planted with bandits on poles that had be fed with hard cash and were policed by yellow capped vultures that descended on the tardy motorist to strip his or her pockets to the bone. And if they should escape the vultures they would have their vehicle immobilised or towed and held to ransom by licensed pirates. If this wasn’t bad enough spying CCTV cameras were erected on street corners and speed camera were built at the sides of the roads. The people were told that they were there to keep them safe, but doubted this explanation, as crime figures continued to rise and they saw the speed cameras being placed in many cases not in accident black spots, but on roads that would garner the most loot for central government.
Next came the smoking ban to be followed by the drinking ban, to be followed by the chewing gum ban and by the picking your nose ban. These were followed by hundreds of petty restrictions introduced by the nanny state. Admittedly the first two were bad for people’s health, the third was hard to remove from pavements and the last one was pretty disgusting. But the rest were an abomination and the ordinary folks began to wonder just what had happened to their freedom of choice. They also had a horrible nagging feeling at the back of their minds that maybe breathing would be rationed, along with the amount of space they were allowed to use in the dustbins.
But the breaking point came when the powers that must be obeyed decided that the masses were using too much salt and it had to be stopped. They removed all the seventeen holed saltshakers from the kebab houses and chip shops and replaced them with five-holed, versions. But the people weren’t having that and began to take the tops off the shakers to get enough salt. Determine that this illegal activity should be stamped out, the salt police made the mistake of installing cameras in the shops and sending in snatch squads to arrest offenders. This sparked the first of the riots and the fight for freedom began.
