Labour 'charity' donations on your behalf

I'm sure other bloggers will be frantically venting spleens about the incredible neck that Labour MP Frank Cook must have had to attempt claiming a fiver church donation on his expenses.

Labour MP Frank Cook claimed on expenses for a £5 church donation he made at a Battle of Britain memorial service, the Sunday Telegraph reports.

The MP for Stockton-on-Tees submitted the 2006 claim with a handwritten note, but it was later rejected by the Commons Fees Office, the paper says.

Mr Cook said he did not recall the claim and described it as "a mistake".

He is undoubtedly a tight fucker to even consider such a claim, but at least the target of Cook's donation was a worthy one. It's good to support charities which look after our war veterans. It's just a shame Mr Cook didn't think of them when he voted for the smoking ban that kicked such people out into the street if they wanted a cigarette in the country which they risked their lives to defend. Against overbearing authoritarianism, ironically.

Like Cook, Labour have been very comfortable about throwing our taxes around on charities. £3.26bn at the last count. Poor old Frank may well endure moths flying out of his wallet, but his paltry claim is small beer compared to the colossal stealing of our taxes that his party have nodded through to dubious causes, with the enthusiastic approval of their never-ending quangoes and civil servants.

If you haven't read about the extent of the fraud being perpetrated on you, the taxpayer, you might like to have a perusal of fakecharities.org - I'm sure you will be ecstatic to know that £191,000 of your money was funnelled into ASH and £515,000 into Alcohol Concern last year, amongst other businesses posing as charitable, who like to spend your money in lobbying the government to do exactly what the government wants to do anyway.

Cook has described his attempt at using £5 our taxes for a charity as 'a mistake'. We will eagerly await (no doubt, in vain) the day when his parliamentary colleagues admit the same about the other billions of our money that they are using to pay their righteous bretheren to sanctimoniously harangue us.

Tax free, natch.

Tell the Lib Dem leader what you think about their stance on prohibition

Remember the Lib Dems and their overwhelming backing of the Health Act which marginalised 22% of the voting public?

You must surely recall those 'Liberal' guys, 95% of whom decided that there should be no exemption whatsoever to the smoking ban?

Well, their leader Nick Clegg has a blog. Why not tell him what you think of their liberal policies?

Just click here and post a comment. As a politician, he should be very happy to read your views.

I'd be quick though, if I were you, censorship moderation will no doubt come soon once the disgust becomes publicy noticeable.

H/T Old Holborn

Hiding tobacco displays in Scotland, Part 3.

This is the third video of the Health & Sports committee Scotland evidential hearings on hiding 'point of sale' tobacco products under the counter in all convenience stores and specialist tobacco shops throughout Scotland. In the same video the H&S committee also hear 'evidence?' on banning cigarette machines outright; totally wiping out an industry that has the temerity to sell a legal product to adults in adult surroundings like pubs and bingo halls.

You will hear so called charities like ASH Scotland's (spit) Sheila Duffy pleading for these laws to come into effect 'for the children' then explain how her organisation receives nigh on 1 million pounds of taxpayers, and smokers, money. Evidence is even taken from Scotland's Youth Parliament who has carried out dubious research on the children's behalf.

Make no mistake, this is NOT about saving the children from tobacco; it's about the further denormalisation of adult smokers!

And the same laws ARE coming to England!

Click To Play

Our (F2C) main website says more about ASH (spit) than I ever can:

Special Interest Groups

ASH, The Anti Smoking Hate group is very questionably registered as a charity yet this neo political lobby group has driven a hate campaign against smokers in the UK for the past three decades.

Long before the passive smoke harm myths were invented, this group were calling for smoking bans. They pay themselves huge salaries from donations intended for cancer and heart research, they dismiss real science in favour of pharmaceutical driven statistical nonsense and they accuse anyone who even remotely disagrees of being stooges for the tobacco industry. They may well choose to hide behind the health scare industry today but their real reasons remain the same as they always were; - the total and obsessive hatred of smokers and their goal of total prohibition coupled with the complete removal of smokers from society simply because they don't like it. The more we give in to these interfering groups and the hate they incite, the more freedoms we will lose.

Allowing the pharmaceutical giants to use special interest groups such as these to promote scare mongering junk science for the purpose of selling anti smoking drugs that don't work is a very dangerous precedent; what should we expect next? - Pharmaceutical Beer containing "therapeutic" alcohol, or maybe our local chemists will be promoting Cheeseburger Replacement Therapy.

Scientists who suggest that anything other than smoke is responsible for cancer or other so called "smoking related diseases" are instantly ridiculed and discredited by the highly funded anti smoking groups. This in turn has resulted in very little research being done on those other causes leading to potentially millions of unnecessary deaths.

To Hull and back.

I was intrigued by Guido's blog this morning about the Hull Daily Mail's campaign to save local businesses from catastrophe so I popped over for a quiet read. As I don't live a million miles away from Hull, Middlesbrough; I thought I ought to keep up with all things newsworthy in my region.

The paper proudly postulates:

In short, Bounce Back is about celebrating everything we all love about Hull and the East Riding.

laudable sentiments but no matter how worthy the Mail's cause is, it's doomed to fail. Why? Well, no less than Gordon 'The Hun' Broon publically endorses the campaign:

“We all have a part to play in helping our communities survive this difficult period and I am pleased to see the Mail galvanising support around local businesses with the launch of the Bounce Back campaign.

“The 350,000 small businesses in the region are the lifeblood of the area’s economy.”

Yeah, as if you care Gordy! For it was you and your ilk that slit the wrists of the hospitality industry.

Research carried out by the Hull and East Yorkshire branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) shows there are currently 32 pubs in the area standing empty, 17 of which closed during 2008.

Or as one gasping Hull real ale enthusiast put it:



To all you people who've lost your jobs in the hospitality industry, both in Hull and UK wide, here is one of the sponsors of your financial ruin:




Now these Labour business assassins want to bring in a Soviet Scotland style tobacco display ban, putting further jobs in jeopordy as well as killing off the tobacco vending machine industry by making it illegal for them to trade in a legal product.

With 40 pub closures a week here in the UK due to the anti business Smoking Ban Experiment the Hull Daily Mail's headline should be: BOUNCE THESE TROUGHING LIARS OUT OF OFFICE AND SAVE YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES!

H/T Guido Fawkes Master blogger.

Say NO to the nanny state!

Sign the petition.

H/T The Free Society

Jackboot Jacqui's barmy army and her policing policy.

It's official, we are now living in a Hitlerian, (not to say Orwellian,) nightmare! Not content having local councils recruit school children to inform on their parents, (Hitlerain) or have CCTV cameras watch our every move, (Orwellian,) Jackboot Jacqui Smith is now turning park wardens, dog wardens, car park attendants and shopping centre guards into snoopers with wide ranging powers! One of our (F2C's) eagle eyed net trawlers, Jenny Hunter, who is a regular at Freedom2Choose's North of England meetings,* found laws were being sneaked in by Herr (sic) Jacqui

Their powers include issuing £60 fines for truancy and dropping litter, and being able to demand a person's name and address on the street.

Under the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme, the number of civilians wearing a special badge, and a uniform approved by the local chief constable, has rocketed by almost 30 per cent in a year and there are now 1,406.

The civilians are known as Accredited Persons, but they have been nicknamed 'Jacqui Smith's Irregulars'. The only significant difference between them and PCSOs is that they do not have the power to detain a suspect. Instead, they have to summon police.

Councils and other public sector organisations must pay between £300 and £315 to be accredited to the scheme, and between £35 to £90 per employee.

Of course the Police Service just love Jacqui (Jackboot) Smith:

Police forces are struggling to find funds to maintain the current level of around 142,000 fully-trained officers, and efforts to recruit more PCSOs - nicknamed 'Blunkett's Bobbies' - have also stalled due to a lack of funds.

In 2005 and 2006, the number of civilians given powers under the scheme was static at 945. But they increased to 1,102 in 2007, before last year's big rise.

So much so that:

Simon Reed, vice chairman of the rank-and-file Police Federation, said the scheme was a 'con' on the public by giving the impression of more law enforcers on the street.

'The public are being hoodwinked if they think the streets are any safer, and they would be shocked if they knew what powers Accredited Persons are being given,' he said.

'It is policing on the cheap. These people are given cursory background checks and minimal training. We are concerned about some of the people who are slipping through the net.'

So, good people of Stalag UK, you see a man, woman or child in a nice, crisp new shiny uniform and wonder "where have I seen that face before?" It might just be your neighbour or their offspring!

*The Excutive of F2C have decided that there will be no reference on F2C's website about where, and when, local meetings take place. F2C North of England hold regular monthly meetings where many guest speakers have have attended. The North Of England meetings will continue as long as this draconian smoking ban is foisted on 12 million voters. Anyone intersted in our meetings, no matter your political persuation, contact me for details.

The animals queued up two by two*

Contrary to the public opinion encouraged by pharma-funded anti-smoking loons, Freedom2Choose is a pro-choice organisation (the clue is in the name), not just pro-smoking.

As such, F2C is in the same corner as The Free Society, and the Adam Smith Institute, in defending personal choice for each individual in our country.

Unfortunately, there are those who wish to ride roughshod over the rights of the individual on all issues at all times, in their relentless march towards bland righteous conformity. F2C have long warned that the smoking ban was just a salami slice towards total abandonment of the concept of personal choice, as Rod Liddle at the Spectator alluded to a couple of months ago.

The smoking ban was always going to be the thin end of the wedge

Rod Liddle is appalled by Sir Liam Donaldson’s deployment of statistics in the hope of making it harder to have a drink. A surrealist would struggle to keep up with such campaigns against our human pleasures

Well, Oldham Council, an unholy alliance of Labour and Liberal Socialist Democrats are duly proving F2C to be very prescient.

If you are in agreement with the righteous, please bid the time-honoured tradition of buying a round a nostalgic farewell on the way.

Drinkers in Oldham will have to queue at bars and buy no more than two beers at a time in an attempt to curb violence and binge-drinking.

Customers will be encouraged to stand behind rope barriers similar to those used in banks and post offices as they wait to be served, while drinking in the queue will also be discouraged, under new proposals.

Derek Heffernan, a Liberal Democrat councillor, said: "There would have to be some form of barrier so people couldn't push past, either a rope or perhaps something stronger.

"It would be the end of buying a round but we have to do something to calm things down. There have been fights and stabbings and it's not right that people going out for the evening have to worry about being attacked."

As usual, common sense flies out of the window with these idiots. Collective punishment rules yet again. A few rotten apples cause trouble** and the evening entertainment of the whole has to suffer. No exceptions for the well-behaved - guilty until proven innocent.

The fact that laws already exist to punish those who behave badly seems to have totally escaped the notice of Oldham Councillors.

I shouldn't laugh at the BBPA objecting like a limp lettuce to this latest attack on their trade, but it wasn't unexpected by those who were forward-thinking. The BBPA's previous approach with regard to freedom of choice issues has been supine appeasement. One wonders if they might be slowly waking up to the threat that this type of righteous knee-jerking poses to their members, but they and CAMRA have spectacularly failed to do so thus far, so don't hold your breath.

It won't bother the righteous too much ... they wouldn't have more than one friend to buy a round for anyway.

* Obscure Noah's Ark reference

** Funny how MPs bleat that we shouldn't judge the majority on the actions of a minority who steal from us, but all of us have to suffer greatly because of the actions of a negligible minority when the righteous choose.

H/T Devil's Kitchen

Coming to a country near you (The Tobacco Control Taliban in Scotland!)

Phase one:

Click To Play

Lawmakers in Scotland want smokers blood, don't give it to them!

Phase two is here: http://freedom-2-choose.blogspot.com/2009/05/theres-something-rotten-in-state-of.html

Some astute observers will notice that the same words, by the same people, are saying, word for word, what they have said on videos one and two. These people have brought exactly nothing to this sorry episode of a travesty, they hate tobacco, pure and simple.

Bank Holiday blues...banished!

It's bank holiday Monday here in the UK and I'm bored out of my brains! The usual tripe is on the television and I feel like topping myself, (what? You too???)

Before I do I thought I'd revisit our sponsors, Terry and the Gang, while I wait for the obligatory "stop smoking" adverts that appear constantly on my 'bought and paid for' telly (with my bought and paid for T.V. license, which costs a fucking fortune, by the way) in my own bloody home!

Take it away Terry:



No anti smokers were hurt in the making of this video? Why not?!?

Scotland culls tobacco related jobs (Audio)

A spurious committee meeting to ban cigarette gantries in shops that 'advertise' tobacco products. The fact that Scotland are considering this creases me up!

Click To Play

These bastards speak for themselves!

There's something rotten in the state of Scotland! The Scottish inquisition.

Once again New Caledonia** seems to have a need to persecute smokers, and their legal suppliers, into extinction, no matter the destruction this will cause in terms of lost businesses, lost jobs in the midst of a recession, real people with real lives and mortgages to pay, kids to feed and, in some cases single parents who have gotten up off their arses and provided for their kin! With one stroke of pen, without any shred of evidence, (actually that's not true, the evidence from Canada Is proof possitive that hiding tobacco displays in shops has no effect at all in curbing underage smoking and purchasing of tobacco products but has resulted in tobacco outlets closing at an unprecedented rate!) What? You need proof??? Well just ask the people at the sharp end of this moronic legislation in the making?

Tobacco ban attacked by expert

"Similar move in Canada led to shops closing and jobs being lost, says store boss."

And if you doubt the effects this legislation will have on people and businesses:

The association said 23 corner shops closed every week in Ontario and 12 in Quebec after the display ban.

And:

Association president Dave Bryans said: “This new evidence shows the dire effect a ban on tobacco displays has had on corner shops in Canada. It is inevitable that the same move by the Scottish government to ban displays will have a similar detrimental effect on the livelihood of retailers across Scotland.”

And:

He added: “The purpose of the legislation in Canada, as it is now in Scotland, was to reduce youth smoking rates.

“Yet youth smoking rates in Canada have remained flat since 2006. So retailers have lost their jobs and their livelihoods for nothing.

Ahh, do they mean the likes of ASH?* (spit)

“MSPs need to look at all the data, not just the selective statistics which some groups have highlighted.”

Of course there are groups in Scotland, not to say the UK, that have serious doubts about the control freeks that are subserviant dogs to their prejuiced paymasters which this committee's ethics, and their dissregard for the people that rule them, pay no heed to, they are omnipotent you see, they are your betters and must be obeyed, under the threat of death, financially that is, or derogation!

One such group that will question tobacco control and their paymasters, big pharmaseutical companies, who have a vested interests in us plebs stopping smoking, via their useless patches and inhalers, is Freedom To Choose UK but in this particular instance Freedom To Choose (Scotland) lead the field against the Nazi mentality that Scotland is now embracing.

F2C Scotland have told the committee and all other committees under the jackboot of tobacco control that there is a sensible, non distructive way of combating underage tobacco consumption, and they (F2C) can prove this, but they would not listen to F2C, their hatred of tobacco consumption, a legal product, is so ingrained in their simple minds that they deem smokers as a sub class and an evil product of drug barons, yet I have still to see one pensioner, one muggee that said, "he robbed and beat me up for my pension money to buy fags!" Never seen either the headline that the public are being beaten up for the price of a pint but I have seen the above being done over a bag of cocain...how dare these fuckers compare a legitimate product as the same as an illegitimate one? How dare these puritans pass judgement on a legal product and it's users? I'll tell you why, because they hate tobacco, so don't listen to the realities of life and death, only to their petty hatreds! I'll ask a question of a smoker, would you rather have a tobacco produce, be it a cigar, cigarette, pipe, snuff, e-cigarette or would you rather take a needle to your arm and look for an 'easy target' for money to get hooked up?

Watch these fuckers,they try to rule your fucking lives on their own warped hatreds! they hate tobacco, pure and simple!

Before you look at the nearly four hour video of our paymasters in Scotland deciding on the future of a buisness, Freedom To Choose will have their say:

Vice Chair, Eddie Douthwaite, (F2C Scotland) states:


"It is now time for an independent review of the quality and scientific basis of evidence produced in support of tobacco control legislation in it's entirety, the whole reason for this erroneous quango is nothing to do with the health and the wellbeing of our young Scottish citizens, but more to do with Freedom To Choose, which this committee is against, rather than the health of our children, It has it's own (hidden) agenda against smokers.

If they were truely concerned about child safety they would banish child poverty, which they have failed dismally to do."

The Vice Chair of F2C Scotland goes on to say:

The Scottish Goverment seem to have a ludite mentality and refuse to accept that new technology exists that could deal with the perceived problems of underage smoking prevelance, as they did with the Scottish Smoking ban and the cheap technology that exists to let smokers and non smokers co-exist in harmony, but tobacco haters don't want us both to co-exist, do they?

OK, now watch your betters decide who rules your lives or business, this video is but nearly three hours off your life, if you can't suffer three hours then there is no hope for you in the years to come.

This committee is coming to a town near you, you better believe it!

Click To Play

This is video two and video 1 and 3 will be made available to me shortly, video three, where ASH (spit) have their say in this farce of a round table, will be put on this blog ASAP!


** I say New Caledonia because I don't recognise Scotland anymore, Scotland is the bastard child of the EU!

We can but hope

From Let Fly The Pigs Of War, good news regarding the Right Horrendous Member for Luton South.

Tom Bradby from ITN asks Brown:

Does Brown back Margaret Moran (the Luton MP who claimed around £20,000 for dry rot in a home many miles from her constituency)?

Brown says:

That Moran's behaviour was "totally unacceptable". He says that she should be investigated by the parliamentary commissioner for standards before a decision is taken. (We didn't know that case had gone to the commissioner.) It sounds likes he's just terminated Moran's career.

Now wouldn't that be nice payback, on behalf of 22% of the adult population, for a disgusting, self-righteous bully.

Again, what goes around ...

The old and the new.

Were this the 1770’s I would be a traitor to my sovereign King George III, my government and my people.

The very phrase NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION would see me swing from a gibbet, cut down and the entrails and heart cut from me while I watch, my remains hacked asunder and sent to the four corners of my country.

That one phrase heralded the democratic constitution of the United States of America, any red blooded American will proudly tell what it says, and what it means to them as a nation. They will tell you of a war to end tyranny, of freedom and equality for all, the very same things that I as a British citizen also believe in.

Even here we know of the Boston tea party, the Continental Congress, George Washington, the minutemen and of the Founding Fathers of what is now the United States of America. In the centuries that have passed our nations have enjoyed a bond that is unique in the world.

What does this have to do with the world in 2006 is the frustrated cry from the populous!

It is this; the principles of democracy enshrined in the U.S.Constitution, that all people are born equal, that all people have the right to freedom and the pursuit of happiness are still valid, under both British and American law we share those rights.

Today those rights have been removed from us, if you smoke, if you are overweight, if you drink too much on a night out, you are no longer considered to be equal. If you smoke you are considered a killer, a pariah an outcast from decent society!

If you are overweight you are considered to take up too much room on transport, to be unsightly, snide comments made about your size and aroma, it is claimed that like smokers and drinkers you are a drain on the health services. It does not matter to them that you too pay for them it is WHAT THEY WANT!

If you drink too much, even if you go quietly home you are declared a binge drinker, a criminal like smokers who wish to smoke in a pub, if you break the law while drunk you may rightly expect prosecution to the full extent of the law, I have no quarrel with that, it is as it should be, and the laws are in place to deal with that problem they are simply not enforced so why the need for persecution? Why not just enforce the law?

If you smoke you are bombarded with cries of you stink, die slowly smoker, you are a walking health hazard, you are restricted as to where you may indulge in a legal activity, herded into shelters unfit for a pig never mind human beings it is reaching the point where animals are better protected by law than smokers, drinkers and the obese, where is the equality? Where is the freedom, what has happened to our pursuit of happiness?

I do not suggest that we toss bales of tobacco into the Thames, neither do I suggest that we load up ‘Ole Brown Bess’ then run down Rotten Row screaming the Redcoats are coming! I do suggest that NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION still exists in both our countries, Neither Tobacco companies or smokers groups, or even individual smokers were allowed representation when the recommendations for these bills were enabled ASH demanded this to be, they said that the tobacco companies would win concessions if they did, they got their way, ASH demanded that we herded in to shelters, it is so, ASH demands that cigarettes be hidden from display, it will be so!

JUST WHO IS RUNNING OUR COUNTRIES? Is it ASH, AN UNELECTED CHARITY or is it our ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES?

You the people yes YOU! The same ‘WE THE PEOPLE’ in the U.S.Constitution, the same citizens of the United Kingdom who pay tax on tobacco, and because you pay tax you have a right to representation, demand your rights, if they will not give you your rights vote them out of office, if the next lot won’t vote them out too, repeat until you get a government that represents you! Democracy, the law, and our respective constitutions tell us WE HAVE THAT RIGHT, GO FORTH AND CLAIM YOUR RIGHTS as they did in 1776.

Written by John Watson.

Their time is at an end.

I and all at Freedom To Choose have long been a fan of Hairychestnuts. Here he warns the troughing bastards in government that their game is up!



Dick Puddlecote posted this video first but I make no apologies for duplicating the video here and hope every blogger in the land will do the same.

Another day, more selfish troughing bigots

As if further proof were needed of the selfish nature of anti-smokers, a couple more holier-than-thou Labour smoker-bashers were exposed today as greedy money-grubbers.

The aptly-named George Mudie has been snuffling around trousering as much as he could get away with.

George Mudie, a Labour MP who has been one of Gordon Brown’s key attack dogs over the profligacy of bankers, claimed £62,000 in expenses for his London flat in four years, while having a mortgage of just £26,000.

He was a bit light on what he could claim for mortgage interest seeing as he is lucky enough to only have a £105 per month bill. So why not just kit out his lavish pad with top-of-the-range gear at our expense instead?

£7,000 for a Moben kitchen
£650 for carpets
£580 on repainting
£929 on tile work
£50 parking ticket for his builder
£249 for sofa covers
£299 for an LCD television set
£169.99 for a DVD player
£1,274 for a dining table and four chairs
£1,750 for a bedroom suite
£249 for an LCD television set (yes, another one)
£546 for a settee and chairs
£325 for a leather armchair

To be fair, he did say he will pay back the £50 parking ticket, so that's all right then.

Pub owners will be interested to know that Georgie-boy was quite happy to contribute to their hardship and the death of over 3,000 pubs while he was living the high life at their expense.

Then we have Ben Chapman, another who voted enthusiastically for the smoking ban. And also another Labour MP being, ahem, creative with his mortgage claims.

Documents seen by the Telegraph suggest that between December 2002 and October 2003, Mr Chapman deliberately over-claimed for interest on the mortgage of his London house by about £15,000.

He's not going to pay it back, either.

However, when asked whether he would repay the money, he said: “The answer is no. It’s all something that was agreed a long time ago.”

These people are selfish to the core. They are the final leg baton-carriers of a tobacco control movement which is purely motivated by getting what they, personally, want.

No amount of pleading as to the harsh financial and social realities a blanket ban would bring was ever going to sway them. They want the world on a stick and are solely motivated by self-interest and greed. A trumped up 'health' trojan horse was exactly what their confirmation bias craved to be able to ensure that every pub, club, bingo hall and hotel in the country would be agreeable to them. Fuck everyone else, they got what they wanted and that is all that interests them.

If anyone ever uses the words smokers and selfish in the same sentence to you again, just point them in the direction of hideous porkers like this louche pair.

No pity (2): More faux righteous Labour troughers

It is often said, of smokers who argue against the overly harsh nature of the smoking ban in pubs and clubs, that they are selfish. The premise appears to be that non-smokers should be exclusively entitled to all establishments on their preferred terms, whether they use them or not. The business owner who wishes to offer a smoking environment, and the customers who wish to avail themselves of it, are anti-social to object.

Nothing selfish at all in that stance, is there?

Isn't it funny, then, that arguably the three worst Labour offenders in the expenses debacle just happen to be vehemently rancid anti-smokers.

We've already mentioned the disgusting Elliot Morley creature, who voted to kill off thousands of pubs up and down the country on the back of his not-at-all selfish prejudices, and was also in no way selfish when ripping us off to the tune of £16,000. Hopefully he will continue to not be selfish in his soon-to-be new home, by not acting coy when it comes to picking up that dropped soap in the mornings.

Following him into the righteous wing of Parkhurst should, if natural justice is our friend, be David Chaytor, the fine upstanding member (that's a euphemism, think about it) for Bury North. He was right behind the ripping away of freedoms for pub owners and their customers, too. Not only that, but the ban couldn't come quick enough for this self-righteous maggot, as he exhibited in 2003

Written answers
Friday, 14 March 2003

Health
Smoking

David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make it his policy to support legislation against smoking in the workplace.

With ne'er a thought for those who would be adversely affected by his bigotry, he unselfishly did everything he could to marginalise 10 million smokers and traders reliant on them.

He then showed further incredible selflessness by claiming £13,000 on a mortgage which didn't exist.

A Labour MP has been suspended for claiming £13,000 on a mortgage which had already been paid off.

MP David Chaytor was suspended by Downing Street this morning after it was revealed he continued to submit monthly claims for £1,175 at the taxpayers’ expense, long after the loan was paid off.

I knew Labour were a shower of shit, but I didn't realise how very generous they were in stumbling over each other to offer a shit-packing in the shower.

Then we have the incredibly arrogant Margaret Moran, Labour MP for Luton South, who is beyond the pale. This woman stole £22,000 off us for refurbishing her holiday home (not selfish at all, is it?). She not only voted for the smoking ban, but also threatened a local CIU steward for having the temerity to write to his local newspaper to raise grievances. Public bullying, she called it.

As MPs we are elected to weigh in the balance the greater good for our constituents, and it is for this reason that I wholly support the current policy. No amount of public bullying of the sort you indulge in will change my position.

I also understand that the constitution for working men's clubs mandates that they are not party political. I therefore understand that your public statements have been referred to the relevant governing bodies.

Remarkably, though, this hideous affront to humanity is not only a selfish cunt of the highest order, but also unaware of the irony inherent in throwing accusations of bullying around, when she is a disgusting bully herself.

Neighbours of Ms Moran’s £200,000 farmhouse at Carataunas, south of Granada, have accused her of trying to intimidate them into keeping off her land by pinning hand-written notes bearing the House of Commons Portcullis logo to trees and gateposts.

Not content with this being against parliamentary rules, she even fucking claimed £900 from us in an attempt to stop the evidence being presented!

Commons rules state that its stationery cannot be used for ‘personal, business or commercial correspondence.’

Oh yeah, and she is also a lying bitch.

‘In relation to allegations about misuse of House of Commons notepaper, my client denies any wrongdoing and has decided to make a voluntary referral to the Parliamentary Commissioner so that this matter can be independently resolved.’

Three high-profile anti-smoking bullies who possess more power than those they subjugate = three abhorrent, self-advancing, ignorant pigs.

Now, who are the 'selfish' again?

Disclaimer: The Freedom2Choose blog is opinions of members only and not necessarily condoned by F2C. Language and accusations are mine entirely. So sue me, you fuckers.

Pubco's, the smokers enemy

Once again the bullies are out to stub the drinking smoker into the ground.

Landlady's smoking bid abandoned

It was with great annoyance that I found out that the landlady who defied the smoking ban experiment by creating a "smoking research room" to stave off being bankrupted by the thieving, lying shitbag politicians who brought in the legislation that has 39 pubs closing every week based on a lie, had to abandon the idea.

Now we find out that it was not the council that thwarted her idea of staying solvent, oh no, that would be too easy, but instead it was the Pubco, Punch Taverns, that told her that they would take her pub off her if she didn't obey. No doubt under pressure from the local council tinpot Hitlers who would like to put their hands up and shout, "it wasn't me guv!"

While they have their hands up...shoot the bastards!

Stunning hypocrisy of the day

Even for the congenital liars at ASH Scotland, this, from Sheila Duffy, is hypocrisy of stellar proportion.

Figures for Scotland show that smoking-related diseases kill six times as many people as accidents – including traffic accidents, homicide, suicide, falls, and poisoning put together.

Then, after wibbling on about "small health organisations with tiny resources" (if you ever see one, please call the Fortean Times).

It is organisations like ours that will continue to argue against the misinformation and the scaremongering

No pots or kettles there then, obviously.

No pity

Elliot Morley decided that pubs should die a slow, poverty-stricken death.

Then, once he had wiped his hands of us dirty smokers, he began thieving from us for 18 months on a mortgage he had already paid off.

Elliot Morley, the former agriculture minister, continued claiming for the mortgage interest on his constituency home for more than 18 months after the loan had been repaid.

Lawyers last night said that the claims could constitute a criminal offence under the 2006 Fraud Act and the 1968 Theft Act.

How does it feel to be treated like a stain on society, Elliot? Not nice, is it?

Hopefully you'll soon be sharing a cell with a chain-smoking, sexually-starved psychopath. What goes around etc.

Euphemistically speaking

The Association of Convenience Stores is vowing to continue fighting against the tobacco display ban, despite defeat in the Lords last week. The bill was passed after Lord Darzi inaccurately reported the cost of conversion to be around £120 instead of the true minimum of £1,850. The realistic figure had been communicated to Darzi well before the vote but he ... err ... forgot to pass the information on.

Interesting terminology here.

"It is disappointing that the cost of the ban has been so inaccurately and confusingly communicated to peers and MPs over recent months," said CEO James Lowman. "It is important in the next phase of debate there is greater clarity about the costs."

Or, boiled down into a euphemism-free statement. Lord Darzi is a lying shit.

Back to the future

Referencing newspeak in the title, The Heresiarch has written an interesting piece on the rapid advancement of the destruction of our freedoms. It's worth a read in its entirety, but here is a taster.

The Sunday Times yesterday carried an interview with the historian Richard Overy, whose book on the Thirties (The Morbid Age) suggests parallels with our own fractious era. I was particularly struck by this paragraph:

Overy left the Labour party in 1997, when Blair was elected prime minister, and now describes himself as a nonaligned member of the (nonexistent) sceptical party. His central political position — which is not really right or left — is that we need to resist the overweening claims of the state. “We are rapidly moving towards a society that is dominated by people in uniform. The state’s claims are increasingly absolute. That’s happened in a very, very brief period of time. We are in danger of creating a worse situation than the one we are fearful about.”

A brief period of time. That's not something we hear very much. The usual language for the coming of the surveillance state - which most now recognise, and which some still welcome, though opposition is steadily increasing - is gradualist. The erosion of liberty. The salami-slicing of freedoms. A frog placed in lukewarm water that is slowly brought to the boil (Shami Chakrabarti's favourite metaphor). Function creep. Sleepwalking into a dystopian future of total state oversight. And so forth.

But it's not really that slow and gradual, if you think about it.

I think we at F2C can attest to that.

Remember, though, that we were warning others prior to our guinea pigdom, that they would also fall foul of the state-funded righteous lobby.

We were correct, of course, and now the new targets are ... err ... just about anyone who enjoys life. Not survives it. Lives it.

Starved as the country has been, by equality legislation (and there is nothing wrong with that), of groups to arbitrarily hate, the natural human urge to condescend and deride a minority has been directed towards those who were previously just, well, average Joes.

It is ochlocracy (mob rule) writ large and proscribed by government. The unclean are valid targets of ridicule and marginalisation.

The 'denormalised' have never been so 'unclean'. Minorities are now off-limits unless they are bon-viveurs, in which case, anything goes.

And, as The Hersiarch says, this hasn't happened slice by slice. It hasn't happened since 1997 when Labour, the instigators, were elected. It has happened suddenly over the past 3 years. A rumbling from Labour became a rancid fucking crusade. A charge against anyone who disagrees with the life that Labour have dicated should be lived. The life that the organisations which our runaway Department of Health have decided, in partnership with their chums in the highly-funded pharmaceutical industry, should be the norm.

It's not done for our benefit. It is done for profit, pure and simple.

And coupled with the profit, is the control it also affords our leaders. Control that they are too irresponsible to handle. Their solution is to watch our every move, to scare us when we don't want to be scared, to belittle us when they weren't elected for that purpose, and to do everything in their power to make sure that we don't walk up to the front gates of parliament and black their eyes with a heavy object.

It used to be the salami slice, but has turned into the mad chopping of a power-crazy administration drunk on power and influence.

It's time the stampede was halted. There are similarities with righteous bandwagon jumping 70 years ago, and it's time it was stopped and even, dare we say it, rolled back. Read Heresy Corner for the lowdown.

And this is science?

This is one to spread far and wide. Gawain Towler of UKIP calmly nails the current anti-smoker lies.

E-mail it to your friends, and while you're at it, ask them if they can any more be certain that what they read in the papers hasn't been manipulated, and that biased and non-scientific methods aren't being used in other areas of their lives.

Let's wake some sheep up.

Broken Promises? Yes, We Can

Straying across the pond for a moment, how about this sleight of hand from Barack Obama?

Barack Obama made no secret of his feelings for "Washington lobbyists" during the campaign and vowed that they wouldn't be staffing his White House.

Then he appointed some.

* Melody Barnes, lobbyist for American Civil Liberties Union, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the American Constitution Society and the Center for Reproductive Rights.
* William Corr, lobbyist for Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids,
* Patrick Gaspard, lobbyist for Service Employees International Union.
* David Hayes, lobby San Diego Gas & Electric.
* Eric Holder, attorney general nominee, lobbyist for bankrupt Global Crossing telecommications.
* Ron Klain, lobbyist for Asbestos Resolution, U.S. Airways, Airborne Express and drug-maker ImClone.
* William Lynn, lobbyist for Raytheon.
* Cecilia Munoz, lobbyist for National Council of La Raza
* Mark Patterson, lobbyist for Goldman Sachs.
* Mona Sutphen, lobbyist for Angliss International.
* Michael Strautmanis, lobbied for the American Association of Justice.
* Tom Vilsack, lobbyist for NEA.

The latest signing has attracted the attention of the New York Times.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says lobbyists won't run his administration, but he picked an antitobacco lobbyist with ties to the pharmaceutical industry as the No. 2 official at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The nomination of William Corr -- former executive director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, where he was a registered lobbyist until September -- highlights the murkiness of Mr. Obama's antilobbyist policy.

Mr. Obama requires employees to sign a pledge stating they will not "participate in any particular matter on which I lobbied within the two years before the date of my appointment." Those rules prohibit Mr. Corr from working on tobacco issues, the White House says.

So what will he be advising on?

Mr. Corr has spent a career working on health-care policy at HHS and on Capitol Hill, including a stint with former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. At a confirmation hearing Thursday, senators called Mr. Corr an old friend and didn't ask about his ties to the drug industry. The Senate is expected to confirm his nomination this week.

At the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, one of Mr. Corr's jobs was pushing legislation to give HHS the authority to regulate tobacco. A measure to do so passed the House and will be considered by the Senate this year.

In the past five years, the drug industry has contributed $3.3 million, amounting to 3.2% of the Campaign's funding, said spokesman Vince Willmore.

Most of the money was donated by GlaxoSmithKline PLC, which has contributed nearly $3 million since 2004, according to Campaign records. Pfizer Inc. donated $385,000 since 2007 and Johnson & Johnson gave $50,000 for an award in 2008 and 2009.

Well, I guess it will be exactly what he has been paid for.

I think we know where this is going, don't we? Big pharma exercising their muscles once the inconvenient voters have been soft-soaped into believing a barrowload of lies.

Yet still these illiberal morons continue to push the hypothesis that it's only tobacco companies who are evil, domineering porkie-tellers.

When anyone counters anti-tobacco lies, they are deemed to be in the pay of tobacco (I've even been accused myself) to dilute their argument. Yet, if they are paid by pharma, they are given a nice office, a pair of comfy slippers, and a guiding hand on the tiller of the country.

Fuck the electorate. Fuck what was promised before the election. Socialism relies on lies or else it doesn't hold water.

Good luck with the chosen one, America. I don't know how to soften the blow here but ... you've been screwed up the 'arris with a broken bottle.

Once the BBC have come down from the huge collective climax they experienced in November, they might report this, you never know.

Lord Adonis slams 'some' railway station facilities

Lord Adonis recently embarked on a whistle stop tour of the UK's railway facilities and came to the conclusion that they were pretty poor. Not earth-shatteringly surprising to those of us who use them, but one barometer which Adonis deemed significant was the lack of facilities for indulging in a cup of tea.

In a daily blog for Times Online written during his tour, Lord Adonis described his frustration at being unable to buy a cup of tea at 8pm at Southampton station, which is used by 5.5 million passengers a year.

I take it that the right honourable gent isn't a smoker (he voted for the smoking ban, after all), or else he may have noticed that there are bugger all facilities for having a cigarette anywhere in the entire UK rail network. Not just after 8pm either seeing as it is banned on every platform, despite no study ever even hinting that smoking in the open air can possibly be harmful (mostly because there's no point spending money on studies which have no chance of proving something so laughable).

When smokers have mentioned the inconvenience of this in the past, the reply tends to be a sneering condemnation of their lack of fortitude in abstaining for the duration of their journey, or that they should step outside the station.

Well, Lord Adonis puts the first one to bed with his irritation at not being afforded a cup of tea. He is obviously a weak individual if he can't forgo his cuppa for a little while, n'est-ce pas? Perhaps he should step outside the station and buy his hot drink at another outlet. He might miss his train, but if he wants one that badly ... (as we are are often told).

For example. The journey from Euston to Bolton is nigh on 3 hours with a mere 5 minute change at Stockport. Previously, smokers were able to step off the train and partake in a cigarette before continuing their journey, but since 2007, that isn't possible, so tough titty.

I know it's taboo to even mention such things these days, but perhaps Lord Adonis might like to consider facilities which are denied for a quarter of adult train travellers thanks to an illberal and nonsensical railways bye-law as well, not just options he, personally, may wish to enjoy. To put it in perspective for him, it's like having no chance of a cup of tea either at the station or on the train, at whatever time of day he travels, and on whichever class ticket.

From Lands End to John O'Groats.

County officials demand more smoking for the good of the economy

Not over here, silly. In China.

Officials in a county in central China have been told to smoke nearly a quarter million packs of locally made cigarettes annually to boost their economy or risk being fined.
The Gong'an county government in Hubei province has ordered its staff to puff their way through 230,000 packs of Hubei-produced cigarette brands a year, the Global Times said.

Departments that fail to meet their targets will be fined, according to the report.

China has recently been attempting to appear more like the West in tackling smoking, but it looks like they have their work cut out if their local officials' ... err ... innovative method of boosting industry is anything to go by.

More than half of all male doctors in China smoke, but the government is now trying harder to get them to kick the habit in order to set an example for others, state media reported recently.

Yeah, right. Good luck with that, I reckon you might need it.

Good Days, Bad Days

When one decides to challenge the collective wisdom of those who consider the BBC to be an impartial news source (post David Kelly), and decide that something must surely be done to halt the terrifying march of those who seek to inflict misery on our freedoms for purely selfish and intolerant interests (paid for by Labour out of our taxes), there are good days and bad days.

Bad days can make us sick to the stomach of the lies and audacity therein, feeling helpless in the face of relentless professionals who are funded beyond the wildest dreams of those who possess common sense. Good days though, for the underdog, will always be sweeter than that of the collective experience of any number of paid-for government cock-gobblers.

Bad days make one want to give up the fight, good days make one glad to be alive and kicking against the righteous.

If you are reading here, you have probably suffered some bad days. Times when you ask yourself if it is worth bashing your head against the brick wall of a government who couldn't care whether you lived or died as long as they get their dream of a utopian society where none shall dissent.

When you feel that way, read this article, published in Australia of course, not over here, and remember that whatever they can throw at you, you are not wrong.

Hal G. P. Colebatch April 21, 2009
Article from: The Australian

BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.
There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.

Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal tasks was "to alter people's actual psychology". Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people's psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.

The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the "global baggage of empire" was linked to soccer violence by "racist and xenophobic white males". He claimed the English "propensity for violence" was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were "potentially very aggressive".

In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.

Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government's anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: "If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you." Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: "If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings." It took him five years to clear his name.

Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher's first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: "It's racist, you're going to get done by the police!" Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge. The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: "An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form."

A 10-year-old child was arrested and brought before a judge, for having allegedly called an 11-year-old boya "Paki" and "bin Laden" during a playground argument at a primary school (the other boy had called him a skunk and a Teletubby). When it reached the court the case had cost taxpayers pound stg. 25,000. The accused was so distressed that he had stopped attending school. The judge, Jonathan Finestein, said: "Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? There are major crimes out there and the police don't bother to prosecute. This is nonsense."

Finestein was fiercely attacked by teaching union leaders, as in those witch-hunt trials where any who spoke in defence of an accused or pointed to defects in the prosecution were immediately targeted as witches and candidates for burning.

Hate-crime police investigated Basil Brush, a puppet fox on children's television, who had made a joke about Gypsies. The BBC confessed that Brush had behaved inappropriately and assured police that the episode would be banned.

A bishop was warned by the police for not having done enough to "celebrate diversity", the enforcing of which is now apparently a police function. A Christian home for retired clergy and religious workers lost a grant because it would not reveal to official snoopers how many of the residents were homosexual. That they had never been asked was taken as evidence of homophobia.

Muslim parents who objected to young children being given books advocating same-sex marriage and adoption at one school last year had their wishes respected and the offending material withdrawn. This year, Muslim and Christian parents at another school objecting to the same material have not only had their objections ignored but have been threatened with prosecution if they withdraw their children.

There have been innumerable cases in recent months of people in schools, hospitals and other institutions losing their jobs because of various religious scruples, often, as in the East Germany of yore, not shouted fanatically from the rooftops but betrayed in private conversations and reported to authorities. The crime of one nurse was to offer to pray for a patient, who did not complain but merely mentioned the matter to another nurse. A primary school receptionist, Jennie Cain, whose five-year-old daughter was told off for talking about Jesus in class, faces the sack for seeking support from her church. A private email from her to other members of the church asking for prayers fell into the hands of school authorities.

Permissiveness as well as draconianism can be deployed to destroy socially accepted norms and values. The Royal Navy, for instance, has installed a satanist chapel in a warship to accommodate the proclivities of a satanist crew member. "What would Nelson have said?" is a British newspaper cliche about navy scandals, but in this case seems a legitimate question. Satanist paraphernalia is also supplied to prison inmates who need it.

This campaign seems to come from unelected or quasi-governmental bodies controlling various institutions, which are more or less unanswerable to electors, more than it does directly from the Government, although the Government helps drive it and condones it in a fudged and deniable manner.

Any one of these incidents might be dismissed as an aberration, but taken together - and I have only mentioned a tiny sample; more are reported almost every day - they add up to a pretty clear picture.

Hal G. P. Colebatch's Blair's Britain was chosen as a book of the year by The Spectator in 1999.

Your country is having the rug pulled out from under it on a daily basis. Your freedom to choose how you live your life is being taken away from you. What's more, no-one in your government is doing anything to stop it.

The UK press are indolent. The BBC complicit. And your purportedly democratically-elected government are ignoring everything you say. Even your MP writes back to say he/she hasn't time to listen to you as he has a righteous photo-shoot to attend with people who he considers superior to you.

Here's a suggestion for those bad days. Print off the above from Old Holborn's blog and re-read it whenever you feel inclined to give up. Get angry, and then make a pact with yourself that you will make someone else more angry than you feel when you read it.

Write more letters, badger more MPs, tell others that you know how they are being lied to by those they presume to be looking after their interests.

This will lead to more good days. And good days are nectar for us who are unpaid. The ones who truly care about the future freedom of all of us, rather than the narrow righteous view of life as proposed by those selfish few who care about their paycheck and nothing of the restrictions on liberty they are employed to force on others.

Go on, re-read it right now and be staggered once again how we have allowed our country to be destroyed like this. It's potent, isn't it? Remember this article every time you have doubts.

It works for me.