Fight club is fighting the good fight but there's not enough of us yet!

What does it take for the humble smoker and his/her non smoking friends to wake up and smell the smoke encased in mirrors that is the UK smoking ban? The ban that has brought the humble pub, club and bingo hall to it's knees.

We apathetic smokers and non smokers alike need a hero to defend our freedoms, and indeed our freedom2choose, like never before as the anti smoking template encroaches into every fabric of our choices in life. We need more hero's.

 

Hero's like AWT.

I bought your kitchen knives AWT so you owe me one!

I am no fan of e-petitions after the last coagulation debacle where the boy Cleggy (Nick Clegg) from Last of the Summer Whine from the ilLiberal Condemn Party who put hanging together with the smoking ban when talking to mothers from mumsnet. This from a man who is a smoker himself! This man is a danger to us all with his illiberal way of thinking.

Another call to arms

Simon Clark (a non smoker I might add) from his Taking Liberties blog has upped the anti to garner suport for AWT's e-petition by having 50,000 cards printed and needs our help.

As promised, we have printed 50,000 cards to promote Antony Worrall Thompson's e-petition to review the smoking ban.

They are available in boxes of 100 and we are looking for volunteers to distribute them to smokers outside pubs, clubs, offices and cafes – anywhere, in fact, where adults are smoking.

I urge everyone to visit his blog and ask to be sent 100 of these cards and distribute them in your local area, full details here.

In these anti smoking/smoker times I leave you with this from comedian David Mitchell...well, you gotta laugh or you would cry before committing suicide, don't you?

How do you kill a mocking bird that refuses to stop smoking?

Well poison us off of course! And oh boy, are the anti smoking and the 'never smoked in my life but I hate those that do' brigade pulling out all the stops to do just that, poison off what they see as an offense to their snooty noses!

You see, these anti smoking prohibition days they have all the power and influence to rule your enjoyment of a smoke of tabacco addiction and put you down, down as something smaller than a sewer rat that some body of influence, somewhere, will try and convince our sterile government that the ferile rat is an endangered species, and that the culling should cease, they should be savoured and enjoyed as part of our habitat, they may be disease ridden but they are animals after all and we should cope with it, no matter the consequences.

Not so with smokers, of course. Today the smoker is seen as sub human, someone to mock, just like they did with the black man, just what they did with the Jew. We are talking about human beings here but anyone that smokes is assumed to be 'disease ridden' either not now but in the future and sub human, which is a blatant lie perpetuated by the anti smoking industry to further their cause! Do you see a comaparison here? If you don't I will point a few comparisons to the reader.

Anyway, hot on the heels of that other posion to smokers that want to quit, Champix (Zyban) and LIP they have produced another product called Tabex which you also can use as a stop smoking aid, for only a few pence, another poison for the [made to feel] guilty smoker Yeah, fucking ritght.

Do you think us smokers are fucking stupid....  obviously you think we are! When will this pill be forced upon us by an EU dictat!  A dictat that our leaders, that we voted for, follow and when we fight back they will say, " I was only following EU orders!"

I am no politician but the EU fucking stinks.

Are RIP (Reduced Ignition Propensity) cigarettes necessary?

 Picture thief taken from Pat Nurse MA

Apart from the fact that these bastardised cigarettes make people ill, as I pointed out on Saturday, will these chemically treated cigs actually save lives? We have had regulations here in the UK regarding fire retardant soft furnishings since 1988 and many amendments since, some amendments as recent as 2005/6, which has caused much controversy throughout the hotel and bed & breakfast industry.

It would appear that the majority of house fires are in the winter months says an insurance company, who should know such statistics, and they list five contributory factors and smoking comes in at number 4:

• Faulty Christmas lighting and decorations are major reasons why December has more fires in the home than any other month.
• The popularity and use of candles and oil burners around the home as an aesthetic design feature.
• Heaters and open fires being left unattended as temperatures drop.
• People smoking indoors due to colder and wetter weather.
• Faulty or misused household appliances such as electric heaters, electric blankets and cookware used more commonly in the winter.

No surprises there as far as I can see as most of our household appliances and decorations, those things that make our lives a bit easier and bearable, are capable of killing us in a house fire. Technology has greatly reduced those appliances ability to harm us but still we get house fires that maim and kill, why is that? There are only two reasons I can see and the one uppermost in my mind is the terminally STUPID, I mean, who would smoke in bed? Most people these days do not smoke in bed but there is always one that has the stupid gene. Do you regulate by law for the terminally stupid? If you did would that stop them from being stupid?

The other reason I can see is accidental. With the greatest will in the world you will never stop accidents from happening, oh yes, you can greatly reduce the prevelance of accidents but how far into the realms of fantasy does governments and lobbyists have to go because they have a bee in their bonnet about something they do not do, but want you to stop doing it. But where do most accidents occur domestically, and why?

Well I was surprised to find out it was not the bathroom as I was prevously led to believe:

Accidents are classified into various categories, which are generally determined by the cause and the persons or things involved in the occurrence. Some of the most common types of accidents are:
- Home accidents
- Highway accidents involving vehicles
- Workplace accidents

Here we will consentrate on number one, home accidents, as the bansterbators who pushed for the RIP bands in our cigarettes use home fire accidents to push for the poisoning of smokers so they can go to bed at night and self flagellate while having an orgasm over their triumph.

Most home accidents occur in living or dining rooms. These are the places where children spend most of their time. On the other hand, the kitchen is also a common place for accidents at home because of sharp objects and hot surfaces. Slipping cases typically occur on stairs.

So most home accidents take place where an adult rules and works, most typically mothers/women, and have a duty of care towards anyone who enters their abode, adult or child, (and why does it take an act of some countries parliaments to make an adult comply with their very own intuition?) So, thinking of the children, do we ban cookers? Do we ban knives and forks? Do we make, by an act of parliament, objects that are sharp round, like tables? Or do we make gas cooking a thing of the past and use electric rings that are so low in heat outage that touching a hob would warm your hands on a cold winters day?

But I have digressed long enough away from the subject of the impending (in the case of that testbed of new legislation, Scotland, it has now arrived, well, you gotta have a guinea pig I suppose,) RIP act (yes, I can see the bansterbatory joke at us smokers) passed by our sovereign masters in Brussels and our dutiful masters, pupets of the EU elected politicians in Whitehall will implement it with vigour on the 17th of November. Actually some of you should be aware that your cigs are not the same because by that date there, by dictat, will be no 'ordinary' cigs on the shelves as this is a rolling process that must, again by dictat from the EU, be completed by the 17th of next month.

Testing, 1,2,3, testing.

The department of the deputy prime minister has done some testing on the fire safe cigarette against the 'ordinary' cigarette not doctored by RIP chemicals. They sum up their intentions at the beginning of the report thus:

Comparisons of the propensity of firesafe cigarettes and conventional cigarettes to ignite textile materials used in a domestic environment

 As I have stated above the UK government in the past made laws forcing manufacturers of soft furnishings, like settees, bedding, carpets, curtains etc to be treated with fire retardant chemicals so households these days are made much more fire safe due to legislation than they once were. So I am assuming that everything I have around me in the soft furnishing department is low risk to my accidental dropping of a cigarette onto said furnishings. But I do realise that prolonged 'red' or 'white' heat will combust anything near to it, no matter what chemicals are put on them, but that would take an awefull lot of heat and domestic premisis do not have that level of energy.

The purpose of this programme of work was to undertake comparative cigarette ignition tests on a range of textile and related materials used in domestic furnishing that is available at the lower price end of the UK market. Each test sample was subjected to one type of UK typical mass market, “low cost” cigarette and two types of USA Fire Safe Cigarettes, claimed to be of Reduced Ignition Potential (RIP). By incorporating repeat testing a statistically based comparison of the likelihood of ignition of the chosen test samples by each of the three types of cigarette was determined.

The test materials were selected from new materials available at the low price end of the UK market. The selection was divided into different groups of materials as follows.

These were textile furnishing materials that are used alone or in contact with other furnishing materials. They were chosen so as to contain at least a significant proportion of cellulose fibre (usually cotton) so that there was a likelihood of combustion with
current UK cigarettes.

These materials were representative of bed sheets/blankets, throws, scatter cushion covers and mattress covers.

As I said in my last post called Dunce! I have no head for all this statistical analyst gobbledegook so I have included the full report in my post below and await your interpretation of it in the comments.

Talk, enjoy and educate me ffs because I am lost in a mire of misdirection.

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Dunce?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 'fire safe' cigarette is forced upon the hapless smoker!

I chanced upon the tail end of a BBC piece this morning about fire safe cigarettes. I had read about so called fire safe cigarettes before and new that some states in the USA had made them mandatory, like, where else, New York and a few other countries outside Europe. I knew back in '07' that there were bansterbatory groups out there urging our government to implement such a law forcing fire safe cigarettes upon UK smokers, making sure you have no choice!

Of course our political system goes too slowly for these odious people so they went over the political heads of our disemboweled MPs here and went to that font of all wisdom the EU. And as a consequence:

A new safety standard for cigarettes has been agreed in the European Commission and is expected to come into force across Europe in November 2011. London Fire Brigade campaigned for this change, which should reduce the number of fires started by smoking materials.

The London Fire Brigade, amongst others have been pushing so hard they have got their way and as from November this year *ALL cigarettes will be 'fire safe'.

Some people may be scratching their heads at this point and asking "what are "fire safe cigarettes"?


As usual, when it comes to all things tobacco, the altruistic nature of these bastards people shine through like a beacon and the idea that they and anti tobacco groups want to make smokers ill to frighten them off tobacco is just a figment of this smokers imagination...or is it?

It will come as no surprise that these FS cigarettes started In Bloomberg's New York in 2004, that haven for your poor, huddled masses. Since then numerous states have adopted them and since then there have been much sickness amongst smokers who have no choice in whether to smoke them or not. The consequence in the USA, because not all states implement the law, there are tobacco tourists visiting neighbouring states who do not have that law. There are many more stories of people falling ill, just read these google links.

*Oh, did I fail to mention that the new directive from our EU benefactors is voluntary and the tobacco companies need not comply? Good of them eh...well no:

Although this is a voluntary standard, manufacturers have a strong incentive to comply, as the standard will provide a ‘presumption of safety’ for cigarettes manufactured within it. If a cigarette does not comply with the standard, member state authorities (in the UK, this would be Trading Standards) would be able to take action - such as withdrawing it from the market.

 You have been warned!

Outdoor smoking bans? Relax, don't do it!

I believe this has been written about before by some anti ban bloggers but it's worth looking at again.

In the video below New Yorkers are having a hard time having the outdoor ban in parks and beaches policed. Another anti smoking ban that is unrealistic and unworkable.

Gross National Happiness - Guest post by Kin_Free From the F2C forum

Will Gross National Ignorance result in Gross National Happiness ?

(But not in Bhutan!)

“Anyone in Bhutan selling tobacco or found with cigarettes that have not been declared to customs has committed a non-bailable offence that carries a maximum five-year prison sentence.”

 Chris Snowdon described the dire situation in Bhutan in January this year. Since then, the young Buddhist monk mentioned by Chris, is now serving 3 years. Only the other day, another two offenders were sentenced to 3 years and 1.5 years respectively and apparently, there are nearly 70 others who have been arrested for breaches of prohibition laws, presumably, as these are ‘non-bailable’ offences, languishing in jail awaiting their fate.

Bhutan’s ‘Gross National Happiness’ apparently involves prohibition and incarcerating people for possessing non-state approved tobacco together with a number of other proscribed behaviours? Since when has state oppression produced happiness in anyone other than control freaks, religious nutters and bigots?

Without freedom there can be no true happiness - individual freedom is a basic tenet of individual and collective happiness!

What makes this worse, is that the present assault on individual freedoms is based on anti-tobacco deception to further a political agenda; ie the contradiction in terms of 'smoke free', or more accurately, the elimination of smokers from society. The same agenda is also now being utilized against drinkers, the overweight and more. ie. Those considered to be 'undesirables' by the new puritan revivalists.
One thing is constant in relation to almost anything associated with the tobacco control industry; disinformation, 'spin', and/or propaganda, that is becoming increasingly obvious to more and more independent observers. Take this comment from ‘the Independent’ article;

"A survey in 2009 funded by international anti-tobacco groups found that just 2.8 percent of people smoked in Bhutan, compared to 31.4 percent in China.
But after dark in the capital, Bhutanese of all ages can be found defying "No Smoking" signs in the back-street bars of the capital."

Only the most gullible will be unable to identify the contradictions in those two sentences! Of course, the first sentence is an 'estimate' from an anti-smoker source that attempts to create a false sense of isolation in individual smokers and the second, probably a factual observation. It is probably more accurate to say that only 2.8% of Bhutanese smokers are silly enough to risk adverse attention by state law enforcement and admit to their smoking pleasures!

Digressing from Bhutan, the 31.4% figure for China HIDES the fact that around 60% of Chinese males smoke, while only around 3% of females do. These figures have hardly changed for decades. Yet there is relatively little difference in cancer prevalence between sexes!! (almost two thirds the incidence - M205 / F130 per 100K) There is no doubt that cancer has recently been rising in China but the rise is almost certainly NOT due to smoking. Even taking into consideration China’s large population, how can smoking be responsible when;

“One third of the world’s new female lung cancers occur in China” (32.8%) (Pfizer: Cancer burden in Asia; 2008) - YET only 3 - 4% are smokers??

Is this the reason? - a reason that western public health ‘experts’ avoid and ignore. The pollution that westerners are exposed to daily may not be as clearly defined as in this Chinese article but it is just as relevant and our pollution has been around much longer than in China, but the response from authority is so uncomfortably similar;

“At the village clinic, Doctor Zhang Jianyou said he has noticed an increase in cancer cases among the 3,000 residents. "The pollution has definitely had an impact," he said. "I have been here 43 years. In the past, cancer was not obvious, but in recent years it has become a very evident problem. Last year alone, we had five cancer cases.”
“When locals tried to protest, Zhang said they were blocked by the authorities because the chemical factories contribute to the local economy”.

It is also known that smoke related disease in China, in percentage terms, is about half that in western developed countries where smoking prevalence is around half that of the Chinese.
eg. All cancers male (age adjusted);

USA - 407 per 100K
China - 205 per 100K

The contrast is even more stark in the heaviest smoking (over 60%) Asian countries;
all cancer male (age adjusted);
Laos :110 per 100K or;
Indonesia with a male smoking rate of nearly 70% has an all cancer incidence rate of only 95 per 100K .

Less than one quarter the rate in USA where smoking rates are one third of Indonesia! (stats relate to 2005 from Pfizer Cancer burden in Asia; 2008.)

These are clear incompatible correlations - (for ‘tobacco control’ that is) - that challenge anti-tobacco rhetoric - AND they know it! In fact it is invariably true that heavier smoking countries have less ‘smoke related’ disease than those with the least smokers, but these tend also to be less industrialised too.
In addition, it has now been admitted that cancers are rapidly increasing worldwide despite the reduction in smokers;

“THE number of cases of cancer worldwide has increased by a fifth in just six years, with fears that rates will soar further with disease caused by unhealthy lifestyles, experts have warned.”
Figures estimated that there were more than 12.6 million cancer cases diagnosed around the globe in 2008 - up from about ten million in 2002. The figure is expected to rise to 21 million by 2030.
The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) said it believed that 2.8 million cases of cancer are linked to poor diet, lack of exercise and being overweight”

However, as you can see, it is not admitted that this is clear and obvious evidence of failure of the anti-smoker campaign; that the substantial reduction in smoking/smokers has NOT resulted in ANY reductions in ‘smoke related’ illness, but evidence to be used to restrict even more individual freedoms relating to alcohol, obesity and other individual lifestyle choices! It has been published purely to influence delegates in the forthcoming United Nations summit on non-communicable diseases . concentrating on developing countries.

This public media admission ‘coincidentally’ aligns nicely with the UN summit’s goals; to increase/consolidate the power of the UN through the WHO (paras 5,10 & 39) : To ‘educate’ heads of state and government representatives as disciples in ‘healthianity’ propaganda in order to ‘spread the word’ to other gullible people (paras 21, 26 & 34); to encourage the imposition of ever more restrictions on individual choice (paras 44 and 47); divert attention away from the hard-to-deal-with real serious causes by ignoring them (paras 38 - 43). While environment, pollution and poverty are briefly mentioned in passing, according to this ‘Draft outcome document’, apparently lifestyle choices are the only risk factors for non-communicable (non-infectious) diseases but this is a gross misrepresentation of the truth! ‘Best buys’ is a term used to justify this stance - they don’t intend to discuss the relevant details let alone tackle the real causes. They are fixing the dripping tap in the kitchen, using the sticking plaster they bought from the pound shop, while water gushes down the walls from the burst water pipe in the attic.

If these heads of state etc allow themselves to be influenced, allow real causes of cancers to be sidelined, and research for cures to be starved of funding to feed a public diversionary agenda, (a new variation of Marx's ‘opium of the masses’ ?) the health of smokers and non-smokers alike will continue to suffer!

There is an old adage that states ‘Ignorance is bliss’, so maybe ignorance can be ‘gross national happiness’. Maybe this whole lifestyle religion is tuned to promoting this ignorance, producing nations of Stepford wives (and husbands) who are gullibley led to believe that they are masters of their own mortality, that there are no causes of non-communicable disease other than their bad lifestyle choices. If they work conscientiously Monday to Friday, don’t smoke, eat what they are told to eat; drink what they are told to drink; wash the car on Saturday and do the 5 mile jog on Sunday - they will be superior people, can live forever and be happy happy happy!! - unless of course, they deviate from the designated program! GROSS!
Kin_Free

Know thine enemy

I was intrigued when I got an email saying that:

rachael noxon @MedwayBreathes is now following you (@Freedom2Choose). 

Rachael is not the only anti smoking/tobacco hater to follow Freedom2Choose on Twitter, she's up there with a number of ASH clones from around the world, ASH New Zealand amongst them.

Who is this new name amongst the quagmire of prodnoses who believe that a wisp of tobacco smoke is a killer, a killer, according to them, akin to dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined?

 

Remember Ciggy Buster's anyone? No?  Let me remind you:

 

 

Yep, that's our latest follower on Twitter, lovely, aint she?

Well she was until she went from this:

To this:
But hey, I don't want to be too harsh, after all she may be just a concerned citizen and worried about her fellow citizen's health and wellbeing? Yeah, bloody rigtht she is! After all she has a top job in tobacco control in Medway. And you pay for it!

Medway Public Health Team outlined the need for engagement not only with the general public and young people, but also with stakeholders through a workshop to spark (oh stop it ffs!)the beginnings of a Tobacco Control Alliance across a number of professionals!

The overriding objective of the project was:'To understand resident's attitudes and behaviours towards tobacco control so that we can develop a local tobacco control action plan that will add value to the national strategy and action plan.'

Medway Public Health Team were also keen to know more about its citizen's attitudes towards:

- Smokefree homes and cars ( this is what they seek, this is what they want, this is what they, the tobacco control freeks will do, unless you stop them!)
- The purchase of cheap tobacco products through illicit trade (which tobacco control zealots started in the first place with their their punitive ban! )

- The ban on smoking in public places and if smokefree zones should be created elsewhere (now your pissing me off, how far will your hatred of me, go?
- Potential actions and/or activities that citizens would be prepared to take to help with local tobacco control measures...

Why has the likes of Rachael got it in for me? Ill tell you one thing, the harder you kick me the harder I'll punch! Read more about Medway and it's desire to control and about Rachael on page three here (larfs out loud).

Why do people like Rachael hate me, and my ilk, so much?

Civilisation, progress or decline?

A guest post by John Watson.

From the very first mankind has held the belief that it is superior to the animal kingdom. Mankind learned from nature how to hunt, how to survive and lived within the rules of nature.  Mankind utilised his mind making many discoveries about the world he lives in, some like fire were a mixed blessing others like dwelling in caves were a boon,  somewhere along the way mankind learned how to kill each other for a myriad of reasons, he also learned that by doing so he would in time destroy himself  so a mutually acceptable frame was slowly drawn up to prevent this from happening, it became known as civilisation.

Civilisation was never perfect, nor will it ever be, human nature does not permit this to happen.  What civilisation did do was to provide a framework of tolerance, a code of behaviour that denied the worst excesses of humanity.

Civilisation came in many forms, it had its good points and it had its bad points, from the ancients of Egypt, Greece and Rome, from where we drew most of our early thoughts of law and democracy, through the great religions from where we drew up a code of conduct for our daily lives which, while again was  not perfect  as the transition from multi-deities to mono-deities, showed only to well, even among the great religions that there was a degree of in-fighting despite the similarities of their religions.

There are those among  the Jews, the Muslims  and the Christians, those who not only believe but practice tolerance as learned from their holy books, and those who do not, yet these religions survive, they survived the crusades, they survived the infighting of the Christian churches, even the persistent troubles of  Judaic- Christian conflict and Judaic-Islamic-Christian infighting. Indeed civilisation flourished until the mid 20^th century and the rise of National Socialism where not only religious tolerance but tolerance for anyone who disagreed with the all powerful minority that controlled Germany were subjected to Nacht and Nebel (night and fog), to prejudiced justice, and the infamous concentration camps where over 6.000.000 died simply because of their lifestyle , their religion or that they merely held a different opinion to the state.

It took six years of war involving most of the world, cost around 50.000.000 dead to put right the intolerance of a minority and it was hoped that such a minority would never exist again. In fact it was with this in mind that the United Nations was formed, and, in part, it's offshoot, The World Health Organisation (WHO) was borne.

Today the WHO have abandoned the ideals with which they were founded ,  instead of helping civilisation protect its most vulnerable this un-elected  group have seen fit to interfere in National Sovereignty, to deny the freedom of speech to legitimate business’s  producing legitimate products , and encourage the persecution of  billions of  the world’s citizens worldwide who have committed no crime except to buy and use a legitimate product.

Governments too are not exempt from blame, they appear to have forgotten the very concepts of democracy by which they hold their positions, they seem to believe that they are elected to rule, they are not, they are elected to govern and represent the people, it is with the people that true democratic power lies, it is the people who decide how long or short political careers are, it is the will of the people that they are there to uphold  and not charities like ASH, the BHF or Cancer UK. Neither are they there to uphold the interests of big businesses including  both the Pharmaceutical and Tobacco companies to the extent that as a nation we cannot even defend our own shores yet trot off to fight in any corner of the world that will inflate the ego of the politicians. 

Despite numerous representations by the people to remove us from the EU, despite numerous representations by the people to amend the Health Acts which has contributed so highly to unemployment with the expense that entails, which has encouraged a lack of tolerance among a minority of people led by ASH and other charities, most of whom are very heavily funded by the taxpayer, making them think tanks, not true charities at all.

 The media has abandoned all pretence of  neutrality and equality which was once the hallmark of the BBC in favour of representing political bias.

Worse still its effects on justice have reduced our legal system to a par with the National Socialist Peoples Courts whose judges were executed for their crimes at Nuremberg. 

As a people we have a right to justice that is not influenced by Europe, By the WHO or even our own politicians, as a people we have a right to buy legitimate products without fear or prejudice,  we have the right to see them on display , the right to choose  to buy identifiable brands of legitimate products.

We do not have the right to dictate anyone’s lifestyle Choices, and we do not have the right to persecute those who buy and use legitimate products just as we do not have the right to persecute  those who  live an alternative lifestyle  or on religious grounds , deny the rights of one of those groups then the rights of all of them are in grave danger. Indeed those who support the removal of those rights  are no better than  those who peddle hatred toward the gay community, who peddle religious hatred, who peddle racial hatred.

I remind you all that "Democracy is the power of the people, for the people, by the people" and that politicians should learn what the common denominator in that statement is and that intolerance has no place in a civilised society. 

 The truth will out.

John Watson.

New York, New York, so good they named it twice.

Me and the Mrs had just came home from an afternoons shopping and, bag laden, I managed to press the remote control button for the TV and went about the business of unpacking the goods we had bought. It was six pm UK time and as I unpacked my eye cought the TV screen and I assumed what I saw was a disaster movie and carried on unpacking. It soon became apparent that it was no movie, this was a real life tragedy unfolding in front of my very eyes. The date was the 11th of September 2001.

I am no fan of America because of it's many tentacles that reach far and wide away from it's shores, influencing other erstwhile sovereignties around the globe to follow their command or dictat. But yet I love that country, it has enriched lives on a global scale that even Britain, in it's glory days, would love to aspire to. The USA gave us an embarrassment of riches that are so diverse it is hard to imagine. From Thomas Edison to Elvis, Scott Joplin and Frank Sinatra to Einstein and the first moon landing...I could go on and on.

But this post is not about America's acheivements, this post is about death and destruction, this post is about hatred of another culture, this post is about creeps that pervade our world (like Bin Laden) and get others to do their bidding to the point of death, no matter how many lives they take with them.

Why did the hard core Muslim fanatics do it? Was it really for the untold number of women they would be able to copulate with in the afterlife? Or was it that they were dupes in a political war against America?

And then, you fanatics, subverting our youth with your distorted view when reading the Quran came to these shores and kill more inocent people who have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with life and living. You disgust me so much that I want to kill YOU! But I wouldn't countenance it, killing for a political cause is not appealing and morally wrong. No, when death comes to me I will revel in the fact it came naturally, not from some fanitical airhead with a father/mother complex who follows the teachings of the likes of Bin Laden who says, yes, kill yourselves in the name of Alah and when you get to the pearly gates tell them I sent you there, all for Islam, of course.

But this blog is not about you Islamist hard core that laugh at death and destruction, this blog is about those that you assigned to death, destruction of buildings is not an issue, the death of those people in the twin towers is:

Gordon M. Aamoth, Jr.
Edelmiro Abad
Maria Rose Abad
Andrew Anthony Abate
Vincent Abate
Laurence Christopher Abel
William F. Abrahamson
Richard Anthony Aceto
Jesus Acevedo Rescand
Heinrich Bernhard Ackermann
Paul Acquaviva
Donald LaRoy Adams
Patrick Adams
Shannon Lewis Adams
Stephen George Adams
Ignatius Udo Adanga
Christy A. Addamo
Terence E. Adderley, Jr.
Sophia Buruwad Addo
Lee Allan Adler
Daniel Thomas Afflitto
Emmanuel Akwasi Afuakwah
Alok Agarwal
Mukul Kumar Agarwala
Joseph Agnello
 David Scott Agnes
Brian G. Ahearn
Jeremiah Joseph Ahern
Joanne Marie Ahladiotis
Shabbir Ahmed
Terrance Andre Aiken
Godwin Ajala
Gertrude M. Alagero
Andrew Alameno
Margaret Ann Alario
Gary M. Albero
Jon Leslie Albert
Peter Alderman
Jacquelyn Delaine Aldridge
David D. Alger
Sarah Ali-Escarcega
Ernest Alikakos
Edward L. Allegretto
Eric Allen
Joseph Ryan Allen
Richard Dennis Allen
Richard Lanard Allen
Christopher E. Allingham
Janet M. Alonso
Arturo Alva-Moreno
Anthony Alvarado
Antonio Javier Alvarez
Victoria Alvarez-Brito
Telmo E. Alvear
Cesar Amoranto Alviar
Tariq Amanullah
Angelo Amaranto
James M. Amato Joseph Amatuccio
Christopher Charles Amoroso
Kazuhiro Anai
Calixto Anaya, Jr.
Joseph Anchundia
Kermit Charles Anderson
Yvette Constance Anderson
John Andreacchio
Michael Rourke Andrews
Jean Ann Andrucki
Siew-Nya Ang
Joseph Angelini, Jr.
Joseph Angelini, Sr.
Laura Angilletta
Doreen J. Angrisani
Lorraine Antigua
Peter Paul Apollo
Faustino Apostol, Jr.
Frank Thomas Aquilino
Patrick Michael Aranyos
David Arce
Michael George Arczynski
Louis Arena
Adam P. Arias
Michael Armstrong
Jack Charles Aron
Joshua Aron
Richard Avery Aronow
Japhet Jesse Aryee
Patrick Asante
Carl Asaro
Michael Asciak
Michael Edward Asher
Janice Marie Ashley
Thomas J. Ashton
Manuel O. Asitimbay
Gregg Arthur Atlas
Gerald T. Atwood
James Audiffred
Louis Frank Aversano, Jr.
Ezra Aviles
Sandy Ayala
Arlene T. Babakitis
Eustace P. Bacchus
John J. Badagliacca
Jane Ellen Baeszler
Robert J. Baierwalter
Andrew J. Bailey
Brett T. Bailey
Tatyana Bakalinskaya
Michael S. Baksh
Sharon M. Balkcom
Michael Andrew Bane
Katherine Bantis
Gerard Baptiste
Walter Baran
Gerard A. Barbara
Paul Vincent Barbaro
James William Barbella
Ivan Kyrillos F. Barbosa
Victor Daniel Barbosa
Colleen Ann Barkow
David Michael Barkway
Matthew Barnes
Sheila Patricia Barnes
Evan J. Baron
Renee Barrett-Arjune
Nathaly Barrios La Cruz
Arthur Thaddeus Barry
Diane G. Barry
Maurice Vincent Barry
Scott D. Bart
Carlton W. Bartels
Guy Barzvi
Inna B. Basina
Alysia Basmajia...

I have no room to post everyone that died in New York that day, and the death toll keeps rising in the aftermath of the destruction of the twin towers through ill health due to the fall out from their destruction by fanatical despots. You can read of the others that died here as I cannot fit them all into this blog.

The memory of that attrocity that occured on the 11th of September 2001 and the amount of people who died for some Islamic cause will be forever imprinted on my mind until the day I die, naturally, of course. Their cause has already been removed from my mind.

I will not forget!

Indiana wants me...

...but I can't go back there! And they definitely don't want smokers in Muncie, Indiana. Or at least Donald Dunnuck, attorney for the local board of health does not.

Dunnuck is trying to block a lawsuit by lawyers representing affected parties like tavern owners and 'others who oppose the ban'.

The judge in the smoking ban lawsuit has set a Friday hearing, and attorneys for the county and the tavern owners and others who oppose the ban -- which went into effect Aug. 11 -- are preparing for it.

 The 'others' are not insignificant as they encompass 'fraternal organisations' and tobacco shops but I can see the anti smoking movement in Indiana honing in on the tobacco shops and ascertaining that they, and the bars, are crying wolf and point to some ASHUSA foot soldier who will claim the opposite and then produce some cherry picked statistics for his/her boss.

Bruce Munson, representing the tavern owners, fraternal organizations and tobacco shops that want the ban overturned, said Friday he will "challenge some of the long-standing assumptions" about the dangers of second-hand smoke and argue that public health does not get a boost from a smoking ban.

Get in there Bruce! At last there's a lawyer out there that is not an ambulance chaser and is willing to test the 'assumption' that second hand smoke is a 'monumental' killer of the first degree. Because in the minds of some non smokers and smokers alike that lie assumption has been so hyped by the anti smoking media that even the most libertarian of non smoker would cower in the shadow of mister and misses average walking down the street puffing their heads off. After all, there's no smoke without fire, right?

Dunnuck does not agree however, well, it is his paycheck on the chopping block, isn't it.

Donald Dunnuck, attorney for the local board of health and one of three county commissioners who voted on June 6 to approve the ban, said Munson's arguments aren't valid and plans to show that similar smoking bans have been legally upheld in other communities.

 Because smoking bans have been 'legally upheld' in other communities does not make them right. And I have to ask questions about the American system, a system that UK yankophiles want to bring to this country, which is a helluva lot older than yours, with a helluva lot of 'citizens' laws far superior to your constitution and, alas, the Magna Carta is going the way of your constitution, it is being torn to shreds in front of your our very eyes by vested interests, I thought your constitution was above all that, seems not, and we in the UK are following suit.

The modern day anti smoking zealotry started in the US and, through lies and deceptions, smoking bans came to these shores but contrary to the anti smoker the debate is far from over and I wish the 'taverns' in the UK had banded together and bought a lawyer to fight their corner, this did not happen, to my great sadness and seeing some of my friends lose their business due to the ban was a downer in the first degree.

The full story is here.

I will be watching Muncie, Indiana with interest.

There's a moose loose about this freehoose

PUBS have taken a real hammering in the past decade.

Says the first sentence. But the cure to the "smoking ban problem" is out of this world:

Erica Dobie and Adam Whittaker might have the answer to this dilemma. They are running a project called Stars and Stuff which has just been awarded a £24,000 grant by the Adult and Community Practical Learning Fund to deliver practical astronomy education in Darwen to adults and families ‘disengaged from traditional science institutions such as museums and universities.’ The idea is that they will deliver a nine-month course in a place where people feel comfortable and relaxed – like a pub.

I can't describe my feelings on this pish but I know a man who can, The Moose, aka Bucko.

Think of the chiiildren...take them off of fat parents?

Over at Puddlecote Towers DP was extolling the virtues of Sir Terry Wogan who said to his listeners:

"[...] what is certain is that nobody, however qualified, has the right to tell anybody else what they should be eating. Or drinking. President Sarkozy of France, a great man for jumping on a bandwagon, is proposing a tax on fizzy drinks. What about human rights? The idea that tax should be levied on “wrong” food and drinks smacks too closely of dictatorship. It is the inalienable right of every man and woman in a free society to go to hell in their own handcart, as long as nobody else gets hurt."

Sentiments most of us would agree with but would have the health Nazis baying for Sir Terry to be stripped of his knighthood.

I suspect those very Nazis will be standing and cheering as a loving family have their children taken off them and adopted by a more rabid health zealot who, one supposes, do not have children of their own to bully into conformity and puritanism.

You will obey or suffer the consequences

Dundee's so-called "fat family" - who had two of their children taken away from them because they were so overweight - have denied in an exclusive interview with STV News that they ever "physically or mentally abused their children".

In a bid to mask their true reasons the social workers at Dundee council said they were taking the family's kids away because of  physical and mental cruelty, which the parents deny:

"The kids have their disagreements like brothers and sisters do and they have a wee kick or hit at each other.The social workers said that's not acceptable behaviour.
"The people I know who I have asked if their kids fight - they all say yes too."

I've still got scars from when me and my brother had a little disagreement, most of my pals on our street did.

Of course, Dundee council said:

A spokesman for Dundee City Council said: "We cannot comment on individual cases."

Nothing new there then. Read and watch a video with the family concerned here.

Some people may ask "Why talk about the problems of fat people and not smokers?" Well, as most of us bloggers that have a libertarian bent and call for the amendment of the smoking ban, and the removal of all future threats to smokers and their freedom2choose our priority, we cannot sit on our hands while overeaters and social drinkers are being giving the 'smokers blueprint' treatment by the bansterbators. I wish the drinkers and overweight people had fought for the rights of smokers but F2C, and many of the readers of this blog, are not vindictive and spiteful like the high and mighty that try to make us mend our ways, we are bigger than that.

And don't forget that taking kids away from smoking parents is on the cards, indeed they have made many inroads into that territory and the child abuse lie is emotively bandied about like confetti and labeling you as a child abuser is sound reason for these bastards to split up families by taking your kids away.