Dunce?

I must admit that I was not all that bright at school. Although rebellious and frequently 'absent' from lessons I still managed to come out of my formative years  being able to read, write and do the basics of adding up numbers, any more complicated number crunching left me cold and to this day I still shy away from anything that involves complicated subtraction, devision or fractions.

I have gotten through life with minimal difficulty despite my proclivities towards disliking these three staples of education that will help you me go through life with a greater degree of understanding but I still think of myself as the 'dunce' amongst experts. Experts like Chris Snowden, Rich White, Michael J McFadden and M Siegel.

I am a simple man who likes a drink, a smoke and the odd comfort food then, I find, these days, that what I do now and what I have done in the past makes me a pariah amongst so called 'polite society'.

Where I felt safe in my own country I now feel as though I am being sought out for culling because of my lifestyle choices,  I no longer feel safe as Dick Puddlecote can testify due to the amount of hate comments posted on sites where smoking is mentioned.

So I have a lot to learn and learn I will, no matter how long it takes and the first thing I must learn is how to make FOI requests and, thankfully, this site makes it a lot easier.

I think I'll make Stirling University's reluctance to 'give up' certain info to a tobacco company my first intro into FOI requests? Or I could ask why the 'fire safe' cigarette was introduced without a whimper from the MSM and I could ask the relevant people that presume to rule our lives....

It's a minefield, a minefield that I must cross for my sanity.