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The opinions expressed by the authors on this blog and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of the Freedom2Choose organisation or any member thereof. Freedom2Choose is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the blog Authors.

Wednesday 29 June 2011

Turn of the screw from the deranged

There was a man, a lonely man” or so the song goes but in this case you can add sad and pathetic in the same sentence.

The sad and pathetic person I'm talking about is Alderman Paul Bartlett who’s on Stony Stratford Town Council (no, I’ve never heard of it either).

Paul Bartlett picks up cigarette butts in Stony Stratford
He wants to ban smoking in the streets.
MKWEB proudly gives us the headline:

No ifs, no butts – town asked to outlaw ciggies.
A town could soon become non-smoking as one councillor bids to ban the butts.
Alderman Paul Bartlett (left), who sits on Stony Stratford Town Council, is calling for a street smoking ban in an effort to stop litter louts from throwing cigarette butts on to the streets of the historic town, and to ‘make the environment cleaner’.
I mean wtf? Why is he not campaigning to get smokers back in pubs, clubs and bingo halls like our Chairman or the people behind the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign? That would go some way to getting the  ‘butt’ litter off our streets and into ashtrays, after all that is what ashtrays were designed for. And of course he does not mention the mountain of half eaten garbage in plastic, non bio-degradable cartons thrown in the street by night time revellers. 

So is the Alderman an eco warrior, determined to clean up our streets of garbage? Or is he one of them, you know, a smoker hater and denormalizer?
He said: “Why should people have the freedom to smoke in my face, pass on diseases and spoil the environment?
“When you walk through the high street in any town smoke is in your face and harming you and any children there.
Yep, he’s a smoker hater and denormalizer! What gave it away? Was it the old ‘think of the children’ gambit? If he’d thought about it children stand way below an adult smoker, who’s smoke goes upwards but a child stands not far above an exhaust pipe in towns and practically everywhere else...or am I just being pedantic here? 

And another thing, do us smokers smoke in other peoples faces? I surely don’t and when smoking in town I make sure my cigarette does not go near a child in case they run into my hand and get burnt, you know what children are like.
“Smokers then get their butt, which is full of saliva, and chuck it on the floor.
Can’t smoke in pubs, clubs, bingo halls, cafeterias, restaurants or anywhere where you can relax inside private business properties and are forced outside to smoke…when finished you look around for a bin with an ashtray on top and…sweet FA. But when you could smoke inside these buildings they provided, yes, you guessed it, ASHTRAYS!

And what’s the “full of saliva” quip all about? So all smokers walk about with a communicable disease just waiting to pounce and kill an innocent non smoking bystander?

And you just gorra, gorra think of the cost to clean up the butts, not other discarded rubbish that there are anti litter laws in place to counter, just smokers rubbish.
“It costs millions to clear street rubbish, and goodness knows what a child could pick up from them.”
Millions? For a small town like old Stony? I’d be checking my council tax bill if I lived there and wonder if the refuse company is getting huge kickbacks from those that award the contracts…oh, wait, that would be the local politicians that run the town, wouldn’t it. Wait, did the good Alderman just mention the childreeen again? Smokers are sooo anti children and need laws to curb their infanticide tendencies, don’t they?

But I wont be too harsh on the good Alderman, after all he wants to create jobs for plastic plod (CSO’s).
He said the ban, if enforced, could be policed by community support officers, traffic wardens and even members of the public.
Yep, get the anti smoking public to vent their hatred of smokers, that’ll work, won’t it?

I wonder where the good Alderman got his anti smoking ideas from? Oh f***…
In May the Mayor of New York banned smoking in the city’s parks and on its beaches, and Cllr Bartlett, who is not a smoker himself, believes if it can work there it can work in Stony Stratford, and feels it could attract business to the town.
We smokers are doomed, doomed I tell you! If it happens in yanky doodle land then it’s not long before it happens to a town near you.
Please read the full article about this shining light, this paragon of virtue that is named Alderman Paul Bartlett.

As an addendum you’ll get no prizes if you notice all that is not right with the picture of this numpty above and I’m sure you’ll add words to encapsulate what an anus he really is.

Hat Tip to Chas from the f2c forum.

Tuesday 28 June 2011

Let’s beat up smokers and feel good!

From  an obscure (to us in the UK) local rag called the Charleston Daily Fail Mail in the USA comes this piece from their columnist and blogger Don Surber. A piece which I cant fathom whether it is tongue in cheek, ironic (yeah, I know, the Americans can’t do irony) or just downright incitement to hatred and violence toward the much maligned and humble smoker. I cannot take the piece to seriously but for the fact that there is much that is truthful in it.
Well, 80 percent of the adult population in America does not smoke and that makes us feel better about ourselves.
Every society has a caste system of some sort. And there is always somebody at the bottom who the rest of us dump on.
We chose smokers.
Well he got that right, we smokers, as consumers who prop up the economy of every country in the world, can smell the stench of that dump on our heads. He goes on to say:
Television networks weaned themselves from tobacco ads over the next seven years, and eventually magazines did as well.
Gradually smokers became the most reviled group in America. We pushed them outdoors, in the rain, to smoke.
To be sure, the anti-smoking effort was the biggest and most successful public health initiative since the polio vaccine.
The population has doubled, but the number of smoking-related deaths continues to be around 450,000 people a year. (My emphasis.)
Besides, beating up smokers is fun sport.
Looking through the rest of Surbers text I’m slowly getting the idea that he is slating the anti smoker movement but he does like any other ‘journalist’ does when writing about this subject, he quotes from the anti smokers mantra about 450,000 smokers dying through smoking related diseases without querying those figures?

He says that the American population has doubled and the anti smoking fraternity say their anti smoking laws have seen a significant drop in smoking prevalence??? The last link is from 2007 but I have to assume that tobacco control advocates will say today that smoking prevalence is still dropping and their work is nearly done, now on to the next stage! Well they would say that, wouldn’t they!

That said Surber gets to the reason why he wrote the above, the imminent diktat from the Obama government that stronger fake pictures will be forced on the American smoker to ‘nudge’ them into the submission of tobacco control.
The Food and Drug Administration just ordered tobacco companies to put ghoulish images on their cigarette packs as a warning to smokers of the dire consequences that are possible if you smoke.
This seems to be more about humiliating a group of people than getting anyone to quit.
So why does the FDA not simply ban smoking? Smokers have had two generations to rid themselves of the habit. (My emphasis.)
That last paragraph says it all. One or two of F2C’rs on the forum have suggested that we demand that our government bans the sale of tobacco outright knowing full well that they, the government of the day, don’t have the balls and would rather take the easy route of demonising the smoker, even to the extent of violence against them. 

Watch the black and white, and silent,  CCTV footage of the latest shooting which left one smoker dead and another smoker in hospital with a 50/50 survival rate.


Besides, society needs smokers, because they pay hefty taxes to the government.
Smokers are cash cows.
Please also read page two of this article, it’s well worth reading.
H/T to jredheadgirl.

Thursday 23 June 2011

FAKE!

Yup, the one thing us unintelligent smokers didn’t have a clue about was that the graphic pictures on tobacco products were fake, pictures that tobacco companies are forced to print or face punitive fines if they refuse.

Of course we have had these pictures here in the UK for some time now but the US of A will be ‘nudged’ into quitting when faced with similar pics from next year. But the American smoker has one small advantage, one of the Washington Times' columnists, Charles Hurt,  has spoken to a reliable source at the Department of Health and Human Services, and been told that the sordid pictures are fakes. In the words of Charles Hurt:
For decades, the federal government has accused tobacco companies of running a campaign of relentless deception in order to sell cigarettes and convince customers that their product will make you sexy, skinny, cool or whatever.
On Tuesday, the government unveiled its latest salvo in its campaign against these companies…
…One warning shows a cadaver lying on a steel table, chest zipped closed by giant staples…
data
Fake!
…Another, a pair of nastily corroded lungs.
fags_1926947c
Fake!
In one startling image, a man is puffing on a cigarette with wisps of smoke escaping a tracheotomy hole in the center of his throat.
 Fake!
Smoking through pregnancy
Fake!
The contact at the Department of Health and Human Services admitted:
The dead man with the zipped-up chest? “It’s not a dead body,” the spokesman assured me. “It’s an actor. It’s supposed to be a cadaver after an autopsy.”
The man with the wispy smoke coming out of the hole in his throat? “That’s a Photoshopped illustration.”

The baby in an incubator is a creepy drawing.
There will be nine pictures in all, all of them doctored to attempt to frighten the public into submission and quit smoking, and as we know here in the UK it works, doesn’t it? We know that the Tobacco Control part of the government would never stoop to doctoring pictures like the Americans, it’s just not British.

Other US fake pictures on packs include:

3ce36-nosmoking1
Baby

scare_packs--300x300

SHS and non smokers


Hat Tip to Jredheadgirl via Lawson Narse on Facebook.

Tuesday 21 June 2011

The smoking ban review that never was - The Bauld Report

An F2c Triblogology-part 1

The objective of this tri part series of blogs is to take a critical look at the recent ‘evidence review’ on the impact of smokefree legislation in England authored by Professor Linda Bauld for Her Majesty's Government.

Web-copy-of-Prof-Lisa-BauldLinda Bauld, The UK Government's scientific adviser on tobacco control and Vice-chair of Cancer Research UK's Tobacco Advisory Group who wrote the ‘evidence’ report.
The main part of the review focused on bars and bar workers. The review, according to its author, set out to examine the following:
  • How air quality and bar workers’ SHS exposure changed over time;  
  • Whether bar workers experienced any improvements in their respiratory health following introduction of the restrictions;
  • The impact of smokefree legislation on the Hospitality Industry. (*This will be covered in the third part of this blog series).


Exposure of bar workers to Second Hand Smoke (SHS).

A small sample of bar workers from 46 bars in England had lung function and saliva tests taken at the start of the legislation (phase 1), then after two months (phase 2) and finally at one year after the legislation (phase 3).

Not surprisingly, SHS exposure decreased at phase 2 because the Health Act 2006 expressly prohibited smoking inside public venues and work premises. As far as smoke is concerned, even to the layman, it dropped from a level that the Health and Safety Executive deemed to be acceptable to almost zero, that is assuming the law was enforced rigidly since no one should be smoking there.

However the level of exposure to SHS increased between phase 2 and phase 3. No explanation was given in the review.

It is surprising that standard saliva tests for cotinine were used. It is well known in scientific circles that such tests can be prejudiced simply by eating a cheese and tomato roll, or chips as both tomatoes and potatoes contain cotinine - a fact omitted in this report and which casts doubt on the review findings.


 Changes in respiratory health of bar workers since the smokefree legislation.

With regard to whether bar workers have experienced changes in their respiratory health, it appears that any evidence is inconclusive. The ‘study’ on the health of the bar workers consisted of just 178 people being given a questionnaire to ‘self report’ their respiratory and other symptoms over the same 3 phases .

All the data was ‘self reported’ through all three phases, an extremely unreliable method of data-collection in an industry where staff turnover is so high. Very few of the subjects actually completed each phase so there is little or no consistency in the data.

Whether bar workers experienced any improvements in their respiratory health following introduction of the restrictions is a matter for conjecture as the figures quoted could be open to interpretation that there was either a dramatic deterioration in bar workers' health following the ban, or that their health slightly improved!

The review states that 178 people ‘self-reported’ at phase 1 of the study, with 119 of them reporting respiratory and other symptoms.

One year later, at phase 3, just 63 people were left in the study and we are not told whether these were the bar workers who had reported respiratory symptoms at phase 1 or the ones who had been lost to the study at this final phase.

We are told that 40% of the remaining 63 bar workers ‘self-reported’ respiratory and other symptoms at phase 3 of the study; again we are not told if these 25 bar workers were self-reporting respiratory and other symptoms at the beginning of the study.

If 40% of bar-workers still ‘self-reporting’ respiratory and other symptoms one year after the ban in their workplace then this must throw grave doubts on 'second hand smoke' being a cause of respiratory or any other symptoms, in the first place.  Outside pollutants have a massive bearing on our respiratory system. Britain's air pollution contributes to 50.000 deaths every year.

It appears that the ‘health of bar workers’ was deemed to have improved based solely on the self-reports of just a handful of people.


As of the time of writing, the English Health of Bar Workers study is still not publicly available, despite having been paid for by public money.

Children's Exposure to 'second-hand smoke'.

Another section of the review reports on children’s exposure to SHS, but is severely hampered by incomplete data. This review [the Bauld report] claims that fewer children are exposed to SHS, which implies that fewer people are smoking at home. They are certainly not smoking in pubs, but they are smoking somewhere and the only permissible indoor place is the home.

Despite the claims of ever growing numbers of ‘quitters’ the tobacco industry continues to thrive and prosper as any legitimate business should, even without those who legitimately buy their tobacco abroad and those who buy on the black market. Both areas are thriving due to excessive taxation on tobacco products - so just where are all these smokers smoking?  This review does not enlighten us.

The review also states that 'SHS' exposure in the home had decreased by 70% (since 1996) up to the start of smokefree legislation.  This trend is analysed in some depth - mainly, we suspect, because the authors were stuck for something meaningful to say about the post-ban period and its impact on childhood exposure to tobacco smoke.  With only six months' worth of post-ban data,  most of it showing a flattening trend, what could they say? 

Instead,  Bauld moves outside the remit of this review. By highlighting the correlation between high-pressure,  anti-smoking publicity (pre-ban) and the (pre-ban) fall in childhood exposure, she cleverly forces another Lansley U-turn. 

This 'Evidence' Review is based on nothing of the kind and serves only to justify the continued erosion of our adult leisure pursuits by Public Health.

*To be continued…

Tuesday 14 June 2011

The clock is ticking.


Interlocked_rings_(JPEG)

There has been a massive response to F2C’s Call to Arms where Phil Johnson, chairman of Freedom2Choose, and a delegation of F2C’ers will put their case about the dire consequences of the ill thought out smoking ban here in the UK. Below you will see a list* of Working Men's Clubs and Shisha Bar owners who have returned the forms requesting Freedom2Choose represent their interests at the HoC reception but you will notice however that the North of England is poorly represented so it is vital that more of you good people download a copy of the letter and form and contact your nearest pub, club or bingo hall, not to mention any shisha bars you may know of, and get them to send the completed form to Phil asap. His contact details are on the letter.


F2ClogoEquality

Dutch Courage trumps ASH (Holland).

When it comes to spending on health and healthcare budgets a lot of governments around the western world have amassed great financial deficits, and as our readers know the UK government is no slouch when it comes to pissing the taxpayers money against the wall, the Dutch are no different.

Where they are different however is when it comes to doing something about it and the Dutch have decided to take a big stick to the healthcare budget and give it a great big whack!
The cabinet on Friday agreed with proposals to cut a further €1bn from spending on health services from next year.
The plans, which leaked out earlier this week, include scrapping help to people who want to stop smoking and improve their diet. (TBY’s emphasis)
And you can bet a pound to a pack of cigarettes the Dutch anti smoking SS don’t like it, not one little bit:
Anti smoking organisations have already urged the government to reconsider its decision to remove help for people who want to stop smoking, saying it will be more expensive in the long run.
It’ll be more expensive in the long run? Says who?? How much does the Dutch smoker contribute in tobacco taxes towards healthcare, one wonders? If the UK tobacco taxes are anything to go by, £10bn raised and £2.7bn spent on so called "smoking related diseases", the former downgraded and the latter upgraded by Tobacco Control and their cohorts. Anyway you can read more on this here and an excellent piece by Belinda here.

keepupthefight

*West End WMC, Braunstone Avenue, Leicester. LE3 1LD -Liz Kendall (Lab)
Thornton WMC, 231, Main Street, Thornton, Leics. LE67 1AH-Andrew Bridgen (C)
The Aberdale Public House, Shackerdale Road, Leicester. LE2 6HT. Jon Ashworth MP.(Lab)
Nottingham Oddfellows Cub, 89, Humberstone Gate, Leicester. LE1 1WB. Jon Ashworth (Lab)
5-Enderby & District Social Club Ltd, 22-24 Coleridge Drive, Enderby, Leicester. LE19 4QF-Andrew Robathan (C)
Eyres Monsell WMC, LittleJohn Road, Leicester. LE2 9BT-Jon Ashworth (Lab)
New Parks Social Club, Battersbee Rd, Leicester.LE3 9LD-Liz Kendall (Lab)+Liz Kendall (Lab)
Braunstone & District WMC, 2, Braunstone Close, Leicester. LE3 2GE-Liz Kendall (Lab)
Hinckley WMC, Stockwell Head, Hinckley, Leics. LE10 1RE.-David Tredinnick (C)
10-Leicester Railwaymans Club & Institute, Leicester Street, East park Rd, leics. LE5 4FS -Jon Ashworth (Lab)
Broadwaters Inn, 168, Stourbridge Rd, Kidderminster, Worcs. DY10 2UL-Mark Garnier (C)
Newfoundpool WMC, 55 Beatrice Road, Leicester. LE3 9FJ-Liz Kendall (L)
Saffron Lane WMC, 429 Saffron lane, Leicester. LE2 6UJ-Jon Ashworth (L)
(Thurmaston Progressive WMC, 805 Melton Road, Thurmaston, Leicester. LE4 8EC-has responded NO to every option but unfortunately Mr Polkey {club secretary] absolutely hates smoking so his club gets no say!)
15-Stoney Stanton Social Club, Hinckley Road, Stoney Stanton, Leics. LE9 4LJ-Andrew Robathan (C)
Cheylesmore Social Club, Quinton Park, Cheylesmore, Coventry. CV3 5PZ-Jim Cunningham (Lab)
1852 Brewery Co, Station Rd, Wigston , LE18 2DH -Edward Garnier (C)
Marhaba Shisha bar, 171, Evington Rd, leicester. LE2 1QL-Jon Ashworth (Lab)

Monks road WMC, 247, Monks Road, Lincoln. LN2 5JT- Karl McCartney (C)
Unicorn Social Club, Holbrook Lane, Coventry. CV6 4DE-Geoffrey Robinson (Lab)
Wyken WMC, 219, Ansty Road, Wyken, Coventry. CV2 3FL-Bob Ainsworth (Lab)
The Clarendon Public House, 7-9, West Avenue, Leicester. LE2 1TS - Jon Ashworth (Lab)



Keep them coming, you know it makes sense.

Friday 10 June 2011

Newsletter–June 2011

With past newsletters sent to me from F2C I felt compelled to post them as seen, formatting and all. This became a bind as Blogger had other ideas about formatting. So this month I’ve just added some of the juicy bits but you can find the full newsletter here.

With this months newsletter, and every subsequent newsletter, I will start with the chairman’s message, as no matter how many supinely indifferent people he meets or reads about he still charges forwards with vigour and is always upbeat in his messages, I always look forward to them.

Chairman's Message

We have great news folks, for the 29th June sees me leading a deputation of dedicated f2c members to a very important function in the Terrace Pavillion of the House of Commons.


Arranged by the Save Our Pubs And Clubs (SOPAC,) campaign and hosted by Greg Knight (Con), Roger Godsiff (Lab) and John Hemming (Lib Dem), this is a wonderful opportunity for all readers to write to their MPs, inviting them to attend. It is also a chance for your local licensees to let their views be known.

Support for the relaxing of the Smoking Ban is growing and this is a wonderful opportunity for you to make your voice heard.
Get writing folks!
Phil Johnson
----------------------------------------------------------
Barely 5 weeks after the enactment of yet another anti-tobacco law, ASH Scotland already has proof that everyone just loves it. 
Cigarette vending machines will be a thing of the past from October, after a challenge to the ruling was overturned by the Court of Sessions….
F2CScotland blogspot
----------------------------------------------------
Smoking in a public place makes it to the top 20 list of laws that Britons will regularly break…
----------------------------------------------------
The Champix scandal just keeps on rolling along.  It seems that Pfizer has been less than open about the extent of severe side-effects associated with its stop-smoking drug….
----------------------------------------------------
A busy month for anti-smoking activists in the Middle East.

May 31st saw the voluntary boycotting of tobacco sales by many supermarkets, petrol stations and night-spots across Dubai, (UAE) in honour of World No Tobacco Day….

There’s much, much more to read in this month’s newsletter here and well worth a read if you want to know what is going on in the world of Tobacco Control worldwide.

I will leave you with a very funny cartoon, to be found on the newsletter link above, about the vagaries of a mass murderer (need I say you have to 'click' on the cartoon to enlarge?)

image

Wednesday 8 June 2011

Welsh Rarebit

Pre the 1st of July 2007 I’d never heard of Tobacco Control! I know now that in every major western country, and more than a few eastern ones, Tobacco Control has spread like the imaginary cancer that they say comes from SHS (Second Hand Smoke) and invades the bodies of non smokers. Tobacco Control sucks at the teat of taxpayers money until the host becomes weak and defenceless…just ripe for the final kill. And as the body becomes weak to near exhaustion the natural defences to TC melt away like butter in a hot frying pan.

You would have thought, wouldn’t you, that the tobacco companies would have been leading the charge against these parasites, who’s only goal in life is to rid the world of their (BT) legal product that gives comfort to billions around the globe.

Of course we all knew that once the four countries that make up the UK brought in the smoking ban on the back of a pack of lies that they would not stop there, as we are finding out now with tobacco display bans and the destruction of the cigarette machine industry imminent.

What…WHAT?

I suppose the fight back started with Phillip Morris in Australia:
BIG Tobacco is trying to turn smokers into a political force with an under-the-radar campaign encouraging protests against high taxes and bans on smoking in public.
Whinges Australia's TC dickheads.

Now Imperial Tobacco has waded in as the Welsh Assembly kicks off it’s draft action plan on Tobacco Control, and they don’t pull their punches:
The attack on free adult choice.
Under the banner of “public health policy” many adult lifestyle freedoms and choices including where to smoke, how much to drink and what to eat have been unjustifiably attacked. The underlying philosophy appears to be that, left to ourselves, we will inevitably make bad choices and that encouragement is less effective than controlling behaviour through regulation. The Nanny State has become the Bully State. Nudge has rapidly turned to shove.
I would whoop and holler in agreement if it were not for the fact that freedom2choose has been saying this loud and clear to anyone who would listen and sometimes felt that we were pissing against the wind, but hey, it’s never too late to have some backup eh. But anyway, their (Imperials) response to the Welsh gets more robust:
…Is not founded on an understanding of the factors that cause people to start smoking or to continue to smoke…
An understanding of these factors must be central to achieving effective policy aims.
They are well researched and widely known. Almost all academic studies conducted on smoking begin with at least an attempt to assess these factors. Their omission here betrays an approach that is more anti-smoker than it is pro-public health – ‘denormalising’ smoking as an activity is clear evidence of this. As a result, policy is not led by empirical evidence but by pressure from anti-smoker lobby groups.
Once again we see words that F2C have been espousing since before we became an organisation but it is so good to hear (read, in this case) it from those who owe their livelihood to committed smokers, not addicts, I hasten to add.

I’ll have to check my membership files to see if Mr Adam Cleave, UK Public Policy Manager and the author of this response is a paid up member of F2C as we, and our affiliate, Freedom2Choose (Scotland) have written these words many a time before and sent them to the relevant government departments:
The Ugly
The Government’s reliance on anti-tobacco charities displays a concerning undue influence on policy…
The Plan contains multiple references to unelected anti-smoker groups, indicating an alarming level of undue influence on policy formulation and implementation. For example, ASH Wales are featured no less than 39 times in the 45-page Plan. Such levels of influence from vested interest groups invariably lead to unrealistic, unachievable and ineffective policies.
Imperial Tobacco questions why ASH Wales appear to be directly involved in at least 23 of the 59 actions contained in the Plan – some 39% of the total. The facts suggest that, rather than tobacco manufacturers having an undue influence over policy, it is the anti-smoking lobbying industry and other vested commercial interests that are having a disproportionate impact on policy, with manufacturers unfairly excluded from debate.
To address such concerns about influence on policy, transparency should also apply equally to NGOs and to the pharmaceutical companies that are prominent in shaping the tobacco cessation agenda. This will ensure proper accountability for the expenditure of public money and dispel any suspicion of public policy being steered by sectional or commercial interests.
Freedom2Choose is as committed as ever to have this terrible ban amended or overturned, an uphill struggle I know, and we are receiving many responses to the blog piece Blots on the landscape so do keep them coming.

Dick Puddlecote wrote about this riposte from Imperial only this morning and doubts if anyone in the Welsh Assembly Tobacco Control group will even read it but at least we know tobacco companies will be silent no longer. And I must hat tip Simon Clarke over at Taking Liberties for the original link to the document.

The extracts above from Imperial Tobacco’s response to the Welsh TC are from a ten page document. I have put the whole ten pages into YuDu below, please click on the "Enlarge this document in a new window" to get a better read.

Enlarge this document in a new window
Self Publishing with YUDU

Tuesday 7 June 2011

WOW!

Pat Nurse, campaigner for smokers rights.

Pat Nurse, politician, writer and smokers rights campaigner gave up her Tea and Cigarettes blog at the weekend. It has now been revived by her friend and mine Dick Puddlecote for it's archive potential as Pat wrote masses of posts over the years and they should not be lost to the ether.

It's not in 'our Pat's' nature to go out with a wimper, oh no, she decided to go out with an almighty bang on radio, challenging a prodnose (Anna May Mangen) who wants non smokers and smoke haters alike to challenge pregnant smokers in the street with accusations of afflicting cruelty on the unborn baby in the womb by mothers-to-be smoking a cigarette.

Pat, a mother herself, let rip and put the prodnose in her place with a well placed salvo, showing the smoke hating prodnose up for what she was, a smoke bigot.

I have recorded Pats radio broadcast below as the link to the BBC will vanish in a few days and our readers from abroad cannot listen to it.

Up and at 'em Pat.


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