I have to admit I’m disappointed. There I was, in Gipsy Rose Lee’s tent, having crossed her palm with silver, baring my innermost secrets, of having heard the voices again, you know, the voices that said “gird up your loins, my child! Gird up your loins, and go forth! And bring me an ounce of shag while you’re about it!”.
And there she was, fondling her crystal ball suggestively, her lustrous brown gaze penetrating my very soul, her earrings jangling, making sure that I got a good eyeful inside her size 44-G Rigby and Pellers, advising me in sultry contralto tones that on no account should I buy that dishwasher, you know, the one I’ve had my eye on for a while in Bennetts’ window, with the extra eco-settings and the egg-laying attachment, not unless the Age of Aquarius was halfway round Uranus’ passage or I gave her another tenner, whichever came first, if I knew what was good for me, even though my current dishwasher is irreparably broken.
That I’m now protected against such brazen charlatanry is no comfort. You see, new consumer protection regulations that came into force in the UK yesterday now require astrologers to print disclaimers that their services are purely for entertainment only.
Astrologers, mystics, clairvoyants, tarot readers and faith healers are up in arms, as one would expect.
- I think astrology is a profound system for understanding both human behavior and the interconnectedness of all things,
said one;
- But apparently lawmakers have such narrow tunnel-vision that they can only see up their yin-yangs.
Whether a cabal of clairvoyants has gathered themselves together in a cave, removing eyes from newts and tongues from dogs, sighing to one another over the chicken soup and matzo balls that they just knew this was coming, is not recorded.
The implications of the new regulations, though, go far wider, affecting everything from hard-selling double-glazing salesmen to activities intended for children.
Religion, naturally, will already has come under scrutiny. I wonder what my community elders would say? Probably that religion is already entertaining; that there’s nothing new under the sun; and that one probably shouldn’t take these things too seriously; and would I like to buy a ticket for this year’s bring-and-buy and virgin-ravish (first prize – a DVD of Monty Python’s Life of Brian)?
Anyway, now they tell me that the only thing Gipsy Rose Lee can say without a disclaimer is “sooth”. I wish I’d known that then. I mean, one expects traders to know what they’re doing, doesn’t one? That when the train company says that the train will arrive when the timetable says it will, then it will? That you can invest your cash in a reputable bank secure in the knowledge that the directors haven’t been punting your life savings on sub-prime mortgages so risky that one would sooner put money on a toddler with ADHD sent out after breakfast to play in the traffic with a kilo of crack, a loaded uzi and a live hand grenade living long enough to enjoy a bedtime story? Dang it.
Had the regulations been retrospective, I could’ve sued her. My old dishwasher is still broken, and I’m now forced to wash up using a dead hamster with a pencil shoved up its arse.
Ben Goldacre also discussed this particularly useful bit of legislation here
Funny you should say that, Heather. No sooner had I posted this entry than I got all covered in ectoplasm and the voices emerged from somewhere in the region of my left armpit said you’d write in mentioning Ben’s piece. You see? It works.
Any voices about science fiction writers?
Just trying to do the community a service by bringing in extra links. You’ll be happy to learn that the Australian government is also trying to protect hapless British citizens stranded down under.
SF writers. In what way? There is a view that the job of SF writers is to predict the future, but I disagree. I think that SF us less about prognostication (though that might come into it) than about projecting our current concerns against the greater canvas offered by the future, thus exaggerating them to make a pouint. SF is all about throwing shapes. This SF in the 1940s and 1950s was heavily influenced by the Bomb and featured several great works of post-holocaut apocalypse. These days people write about ‘post-humanity’, influenced both by gnetics and nanotechnology.
the Australian government is also trying to protect hapless British citizens stranded down under.
Someone should warn Richard. Or warn the Australian government. Not sure which.
Now some of these fortune tellers are the real deal. A friend of mine once had an extremely uncanny experience with a fortune teller in Newcastle. The soothsayer in question had set up shop right by the main train station a couple of days before Christmas, and made a stunningly accurate prediction to my Scottish-accented, backpack-carrying friend: “You will soon be going on a journey. I think – yes – to the North”.