On our street when I was growing up there was a middle-aged widow, famous for wielding a wooden spoon threateningly at us footballers on the street outside her home. If we were unfortunate enough to punt the ball into her garden, the game ended because she kept the ball. There wasn't one of us brave enough to knock and ask for it back.

Now I stress that no window was ever broken in anyone's home by one of our footballs. It appears that the bitch was simply taking no chances and for ten and eleven years olds, she was an awesome giant regardless of her motivation for anger. Looking back now, she kind of took the fun out of the street leagues in those days and pretty soon we stopped altogether. 

Then today on the radio I heard that the annual motor-test, the NCT, was refused to a woman because her car smelled of dog. I kid you not! The compulsory test to determine if your car is roadworthy was denied due to the canine odor within. Now I have encountered many of those mute monkeys employed at the test centers and they are about as personable as the average drive-tester you get when you go for your license. But it didn't end there. A supervisor from one of those places was on to defend the decision. He made the ordinary smell of a dog sound like some sort of life-threatening danger. That'd be the smell of a dog now, not the dripping twitching fangs fully exposed in anger.

What in God's name is going on? Where is this crazy intolerance of others coming from? What kind of lunacy prevails when the subjective sense of smell of one person can put another off the road? But the guy defending this stupidity was adamant and even cited an occasion where one of his team had to go home after detecting the scent of a dog from a another car. I really and truly despair!  And all of this intolerance is justified then on the grounds of some kind of victim status. The mealy-mouthed fucker even called it a health and safety issue – can you credit that? Him and his dopey buddies were supposedly in some kind of danger.

When we smokers were banished from the pub we were told by our Health Minister that there was no problem with smoking outside as it didn't affect anyone else. Then the whiners and moaners began to mouth that they had to negotiate the smokers outside before they could get inside. My view then, (and now), is that smokers are not outside from choice and the moaners cheered the move. But not content with that, the moaners began to demand that we stand several feet from the entrance. Then a new branch of whinging n'er do wells began to whisper that the mere sight of someone smoking had a corrupting effect on their offspring. Now, the sight of me at a distance, enjoying a thoughtful smoke alone is apparently is sending decent people into some kind loathing and panic that they can hardly control. If so then there's nothing decent about those pricks. 

And the topic of the smelly car at the NCT was never going to be complete until the mouthpiece of that intolerant workforce pointed out by way of example that, "You wouldn't expect us to work in a car that smelled of tobacco smoke?" He made it sound like exposure to Caesium 40. Truly the intolerance culture is getting completely out of control. Then another guy came on the show to tell us his crock failed the NCT because one of his indicators …………. you're never going to believe this, one of his indicators WASN'T YELLOW ENOUGH. WHAaaaaaaaaa ?  How is that measured? Were his brake lights deemed red enough? Soon perhaps you could fail because your driver's seat isn't comfy enough for the tester. Perhaps your dashboard layout is offending his sense of style and he'll have to have a few days to get over that too? For fuck's sake!!!  Is the modern NCT tester some kind of old bitch with a wooden spoon, noisily passing judgement on all that she doesn't like? Does your car get a whack on the boot if it fails? What are we turning into? 

If I ever become a dictator in this country then those useless whiners better watch out. I'd transfer those NCT guys to sewerage maintenance in a flash, giving each of them a toothbrush to clean the pipes and tanks and if they aren't gleaming afterwards, they don't get paid. A month or two of that and I dare say, they'd lick a dog's arse for a few bob. What ever happened to getting on with it? Where is the 'grin & bear it' spirit? Indeed, where has common cop-on gone to? If each of us put our mind to it, I daresay we could all find something to bitch about but if we all pushed that as far as we dared then society would screech to a halt. Do these people care about nothing but their own over-developed sensibilities?

Could you imagine showing up at the NCT centre in their peculiar frame of mind and upon spotting the allotted tester, demanding to sniff his armpits? We could really have fun with the shoe on the other foot. "He stinks to the high heaven and he's not going anywhere near my precious car." So they sigh and get another bloke. "Yuch, a mustache! Not on your life! There's things living in that disgusting thing." At this point we might be pushing their resource limitation. So a grey-haired overall approaches tentatively. "He's too elderly. Old people smell because they're all incontinent. Haven't you got a clean-shaven tester, below fifty-five and with clean and short brown hair. Oh! And he has to be a Libra. And hurry up too because I'm late for work." 

And don't touch my expensive car air-freshener. It's Eau-de-Fido and it costs a fucking fortune, so if you waste a single mist of the stuff I'll sue the overalls off the fucking lot of you."