Outdoor smoking ban mooted in Inverclyde Parks

Does anyone remember the April Fool's Day following the introduction of the smoking ban back in 2006? Headline was that Inverclyde had unilaterally overturned the smoking ban. It hit the internet with a thump and some of my sleepy English friends demanded to know where I was and had I got in touch with the Mayor of Inverclyde (largely imagined to be an island off the West Coast rather than a region within sight of Glasgow, or  Dunbartonshire at any rate). At that time we might well have been hopeful of a quicker and more satisfactory outcome.

Sadly this light-heartedness has been taken off the internet. I can't find it anyway. And Inverclyde Council (which may not have been amused in the first place) has just agreed that children should be protected from smoking adult role models and, as a pilot project, has banned adults from smoking in play parks. The argument has progressed from secondary smoking to role models.

As readers point out, it may be that children lose out, if adults use the play parks less. If so their parents would no doubt be blamed. This further example of denormalisation (let's not see adults enjoying themselves smoking in the fresh air, especially with children about) rightly irritates these readers:

As an ex-smoker I think this is taking things too far, if parents are taking their children to the park they will stand aside to have a cigerette while watching the children, now they most likely won't take them to the park because if they were going to have a cigerette they will have to leave thus upsetting the child as they would take them with them not just stand aside and look on. I agree with the previous comment children would get no fresh air and the parks will fall into disrepair or dare I say dens for drink and drug users....So keep parks family friendly for smokers and non-smokers alike!!!!

Anti-smokers happily throw people on the street when they want to be in the pub, yet when they want to be outside, find a reason that this should not be allowed either. Ways and means are found to inconvenience and pressurise smokers. How anyone can get away with calling this persecution beats me.

Who will speak up for me?

Yesterday a man spoke up for me on a radio program in Scotland, that man was Eddie Douthwaite, Chairman of Freedom2Choose (Scotland.)

                                      
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Eddie Douthwaite on Radio Leith FM

Anatomy of a smoker

I have lifted this from Frank Davis.  This speaks volumes to me, a proud smoker.

Spontaneously Lighting Up

By

Frank Davis

Perhaps the most telling event of my visit to Spain took place shortly after I'd got back to England. I'd met up with a friend of mine for a dinner at a restaurant, and at the end of it he pulled out a packet of cigarettes and fingered one, saying how he'd like a smoke. And I said that if he was in Spain, he could smoke one, and no-one would bat an eyelid. And I started rolling a cigarette to take outside. Next thing I knew my friend had stood up and was waving his arms around frantically. It took me a few seconds to figure out why: once I'd rolled the cigarette, I'd simply put it in my mouth and lit it, in the middle of a crowded Indian restaurant. I just did what came naturally. I hadn't planned on doing it. If he hadn't drawn my attention to it, I probably wouldn't have noticed for a minute or two.

That wouldn't have happened a week ago. And it showed how easily two and a half years of conditioning under Britain's draconian anti-smoking regime was erased by just five days in Spain. It takes an effort to not smoke. A smoker has to keep on telling himself, "No, I mustn't smoke". It requires constant self-denial to not smoke. It's much easier to just light a cigarette. And that means that smoking is the default activity, the natural activity for smokers. It's what they will do, left to themselves. If the pressure to not smoke ever relaxes, smokers will go back to smoking. It takes a really big effort by smokers to not smoke. And they'll give up making the effort given half a chance. Or a few days in Spain.

It's a rather strange thought, but the British smoking ban only works because British smokers make it work. They work very hard at making it work, saying No to themselves all day. And two and a half years into the ban, they have to work just as hard as they did on day one of the ban. It doesn't get any easier.

If antismokers hoped that, after several years of restraining themselves, smokers would find that not smoking came naturally, they're profoundly mistaken. Smoking remains the default, natural activity for smokers. And it takes a continual effort on their part to not smoke. Non-smoking doesn't come at all naturally. And that means that smoking bans are very fragile things, that can all too easily come apart. Smoking bans are sandcastles: they look solid, but from the moment they're constructed they're starting to fall down. They require a continual effort of repair to prevent them reverting to the natural state of sand.

Why do Britain's smokers go on doing restraining themselves? Well, because it's against the law, mostly. But also because they half believe that passive smoking really does kill people. And if it doesn't kill anyone, it's because they have been told that it's an antisocial pastime. And it's also because they feel they really should give up smoking, like so many people they know have done. And it's because they're convinced that the future will non-smoking, and smoking will soon be as much a thing of the past as spitting or keeping pet dogs. And it's also because they're ashamed to be smokers.

So while Britain's smokers believe all this nonsense, they'll carry on restraining themselves, and carry on telling themselves No a couple of hundred times a day. And it really is all nonsense. Passive smoking doesn't kill anybody: even the lousy antismoking studies say so. Nor is it that smoking is an antisocial pastime: it's the antismokers who are the real antisocial killjoys. And would smokers feel any need to give up smoking, if they were to find out that the research into active smoking is so much junk science as well? And why should they admire anyone who has given up smoking, if giving up smoking simply entails saying No to yourself for the rest of your life. And why on earth should they believe that the future is non-smoking, when all the historical evidence is that smoking bans fail whenever they're tried? And why should they be ashamed of being smokers, when so many of their illustrious forebears were smokers? Like Winston Churchill. Pablo Picasso. Albert Einstein. And tens of thousands of others. Millions of them.

Smokers carry around all these illusions about smoking. But they're really the victims of a gigantic confidence trick. One that's been perpetrated by the medical establishment and anti-smoking organisations over many decades using sophisticated propaganda techniques. It's taken a colossal effort to fool smokers into restraining themselves from smoking. And if that effort ever eases up, if the propaganda ever ceases, smokers will rapidly revert to doing what comes naturally - smoking.

Bans fail because the effort needed to maintain the illusion becomes too great. Smokers know perfectly well that their smoke harms no-one. They also know that it doesn't even harm them (they wouldn't smoke if they believed it did). And they know that smoking is a socially inclusive practice, as smokers are bound together in an enveloping mantle of smoke. And smokers don't really admire people who've given up smoking: they don't want to be naysayers forbidding themselves from every pleasure in life. And it takes an enormous barrage of unrelenting propaganda for smokers to be made to forget all these things they know, and to erase their personal knowledge. And that personal knowledge is always eating away at the false, artificial, propaganda-induced 'knowledge' that has usurped their true knowledge, their natural common sense. Switch off the propaganda, and that common sense will gradually come to the fore again, and will prevail over manufactured knowledge.

Most likely the smoking ban will fail when smokers cease to believe the lies they've been told. And they are always ceasing to believe those lies. It takes a constant rain of propaganda lies to keep them from reverting to their natural state. And once smokers cease to believe the lies they've been told, at the same time they cease to have any incentive to restrain themselves from smoking. And when they cease restraining themselves, they'll start to spontaneously light up, just like I lit up in that Indian restaurant last night. And when they see people no longer restraining themselves from smoking, other smokers will cease to restrain themselves as well. Whole pubs will suddenly start smoking overnight. And other nearby pubs will rapidly catch the bug.

At a pub earlier in the evening I got talking about smoking to one of the drinkers. He agreed that the research showed there was little or no threat from passive smoking. He said pubs should be allowed to choose to be smoking or non-smoking. But he said that while he liked smoking, he didn't like being a smoker. It wasn't a good thing to be these days. So here was a smoker who was ashamed of being a smoker. And he also said that things would only get worse. So here was another smoker who could see the future with 20-20 foresight, and the future was non-smoking. He'd broken through one or two illusions, but he remained entangled by the rest of them. If he could have become a proud smoker again, and dispensed with the imaginary smokefree future which held him spellbound, he'd have been at the point of spontaneously lighting up.

I think I'm going to start constructing a new future. It'll be one in which everyone smokes. Children too. And it'll be a future in which the antismokers have had all their lies exposed, and they've all been rounded up and shot. Or maybe not shot. Just hanged. And everyone will wonder why they went along with the madness for so long.

Bravo Frank, bravo.

Why UK smokers should fear the Lisbon Treaty

Here is a chilling quote via the Telegraph:

'Lisbon Treaty should mean single EU seat on IMF board'

Simon Johnson, a former IMF chief economist, said that the passing of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, should accelerate moves towards a common European position in international economic institutions.

He said: “People say that the EU is not a country and only countries can have IMF seats, but that doesn’t really stand now that you’ve got Lisbon. The treaty makes the EU as much a single federal entity as some other IMF members.”

So soon? The disenfranchisement of the UK government has begun already. A mere three days after Vaclav Klaus signed away the last resistance to a Europe-wide legislature, and before the Lisbon Treaty goes 'live' on December 1st.

Talk of the EU as a single body dealing exclusively with the affairs of member states, without recourse to national parliaments, should be a worrying development for smokers considering the transparent EU stance on tobacco.

Put quite simply, they hate you, and would like you banned from everywhere.

Markos Kyprianou has called for an EU-wide ban on smoking in public places.

“It is time to bring the debate to the EU level”, the EU health commissioner said as he launched a consultation on policy options to tackle passive smoking.

But Dick, I hear you cry, what's the difference? We UK smokers are banned everywhere already. It's not as if there is anyone at Westminster who is willing to listen to us ... they are only interested in filling their pockets, and we haven't got any money to throw at them.

Yes, you'd be correct. On all counts. But, the EU have bigger plans which, until Lisbon, you had a chance to take up with your elected representative.

Brussels chiefs want to outlaw beer garden ciggie areas - and even extend the ban to open air concerts like this weekend's Glastonbury festival.

The European Commission says the current bar on smoking in enclosed public places does not go far enough. It says non-smokers in outdoor areas are still in danger from passive smoking.

It comes after a World Health Organisation report said workers such as waiters and door staff are exposed to dangerous levels of smoke outside pubs and restaurants. And the smoke can waft back inside buildings through open doors, windows and vents.

Note the words in bold above. The European Commission. The unelected European Commission.

Prior to Lisbon, you, business owners, and anyone else concerned about the loss of liberties when there is no valid reason for their being stripped away, could complain like crazy to their MP. They might not listen, but if they didn't, you had the option of voting against them at the next election.

There is no such luxury with the European Commission, as they are appointed, not elected. They are above democracy, rendering you irrelevant.

With the first moves in erasing the idea of a British nation, as a separate entity within Europe, already surfacing at the IMF, it's not going to be long before the steamroller of EU dictatorship fires up its engine and embarks on the flattening of the freedoms they have been planning on crushing for quite a long while.

And, legally, there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

Collective Madness 2

Collective Madness 2

By Frank Davis

The most excellent Christopher Snowdon, of whose book I am a proud possessor, was prompted by my post on Collective Madness to write:

It was an inevitable and intended consequence of denormalisation that nonsmokers would become less tolerant of smokers. Less anticipated, perhaps, was the fact that this would also work in reverse. The result has been the creation of another little pocket of hate in the world.

Well, this is quite true. I now have a ferocious hatred of antismokers. It borders on homicidal.

But in my post I was pointing to general decline on my part in tolerance for a whole range of people, many of whom may not be particularly antismoking at all. In trying to describe who they were, I ended up classing them all as 'irrational'. I might equally have ended up simply calling them the 'post-war generation', of which culture I have been a member for most of my life, and with which I have become progressively disenchanted, most notably over the past couple of years.

I don't hate them. I am instead simply thoroughly disenchanted and disappointed with them. I complain about the Lib Dems not being liberal, but I could equally make the same complaint about far too many people I know. Like that friend of mine who declared some years ago that he was glad that there was to be a smoking ban, because it would help him give up smoking (it didn't). Or that other friend who said last Christmas that he wasn't bothered about the effect of the smoking ban on smokers, because a ban was what he wanted. That's just two people for whom my esteem has plummeted.

This is not just a incipient war between smokers and antismokers, but the appearance of a patina of cracks and rifts and divisions across the whole of society.

Of course, anyone is free to point out that I am universalising my personal experience in suggesting this, and that this is illegitimate. And that's true. I am in many ways a fringe member of society, living entirely alone in the depths of the Devon countryside, a hundred miles from most of my friends. The principal effect of the smoking ban upon me has been to evict me from my local Devon pub, and have me sitting beside the river that flows nearby. That's not a catastrophe. What alarms me is the extraordinary and progressive effect that the ban is having on my whole sense of connectedness to this society, and to those many friends I have built up over several decades. There is, it seems to me, to be a hideous divisive logic to it. And it is a logic to which I cannot see anyone can be immune. First tiny cracks appear, then slight rifts, and finally widening chasms. And it seems to me that the same must be happening, with greater or less rapidity, across the whole of Britain. And, worse still, is happening wherever smoking bans are imposed, and smokers denormalised.

Human societies are fragile things. Throughout history, previously peaceful societies have regularly erupted into civil war, neighbour murdering neighbour, friend killing friend. We still have the example of Nazi Germany fresh in memory, where what was arguably the most advanced country in Europe, replete with great scientists and artists and philosophers, turned into a hideous murder machine. And which began to do so by setting out to marginalise and exclude some of its most productive members, using a distorted racial pseudo-science. The parallels with the present denormalisation and deepening exclusion of smokers is obvious to anyone who cares to look. But who does look? Hardly anybody. We suppose ourselves to far too 'civilised' to ever permit such a thing to happen here. And yet it is happening in front of our noses.

I genuinely fear that we are all sleepwalking towards the most hideous convulsion. And one that will engulf not just Britain, but the whole world, because it is across the whole world that the antismokers have been stalking, and setting up their divisive bans, setting people against each other.

I would almost like to believe that the global war on smoking that has been launched by the well-organised and well-funded forces of antismoking is being run by people who know exactly what they are doing, and are fully aware of the hideous forces that they are unleashing. But there is precious little sign of it. The antismokers are, it seems, without exception blinkered zealots whose sole aim is to coerce people into stopping smoking, and who demonstrate not the faintest awareness of the effects of their campaign upon individuals, and upon the nexus of relationships that goes to make up a human society. They don't appear to know what they are doing.

I can almost hear the chorus of voices of the lost friends that I am losing, as they say; "It's only a smoking ban. It's a tiny, tiny new regulation. It's not that big a deal. You're making a mountain out a molehill." I wish they were right. But unfortunately I do not believe that they are.

500 years ago, here in Devon, an army of Cornishmen came marching up the Fosse Way that passes barely a mile from where I live. A mile or two down that road, they fought the first bloody battle in a short but brutal civil war. What were they so outraged about? They'd been forbidden by the English crown from attending the ancient Latin Catholic mass, which had been replaced by the new rites of the Book of Common Prayer. I don't have a shadow of doubt that, back then, their uncomprehending friends were also telling them, "It's only a tiny new regulation. It's no big deal. You're making a mountain out of a molehill." Yet the divide between Catholics and Protestants in British society that arose in that time endures to this very day.

Rip van Weasels wake up

Sniff.

Is that the aroma of an imminently reconvening parliament I can smell, as the anti-tobacco crazies brew their wake up coffee in preparation for another term of propaganda peddling?

This one has been accurately fisked by England Expects, but why not shine some more light on the shifty machinations of one of the government's paid-for stooges, eh?

MPs urged to help put cigs out of sight

PEOPLE in North East England are calling on the region's MPs to vote in favour of putting cigarettes out of sight in shops.

Err ... no, PEOPLE are not. Ailsa Rutter, who sorts out her mortgage on the back of taxpayer-funded Department of Health grants, IS.

Ailsa Rutter, director of Fresh – Smoke Free North East, said: "This is not about penalising smokers."

Summer must have been good to Ailsa, she's cracking jokes now.

"This is about protecting them, not about restricting the rights of those smokers who don't want to quit."

To translate: This is about the fact that I've just come back from a lovely holiday in Antigua that you all paid for, and now I need to con MPs and the public before the upcoming commons third reading (just as ASH did to the Lords), so that I can book that fortnight in Hawaii for next year ... for which you are also stumping up. I've bought the grass skirt and everything.

Meanwhile, others have been performing some incredibly important, and in no way pre-determined, 'research'.

THE health burden from smoking is costing the Welsh NHS more than £7m a week, a report reveals today.

Oh. My. God. That's awful!

All those people smoking and destroying the NHS without ever contributing a penny in tobacco duty, income taxes, NI contributions, VAT, or anything. How on earth can they live with themselves?

Burning at the stake is too good for them.

The findings commissioned by anti-smoking group ASH Wales and British Heart Foundation Cymru, are being presented at an international tobacco control conference in Cardiff.

In other news, BP reported that gas powered cars cause all accidents in the UK, and Ryanair revealed new research showing that three kids riding tricycles in the park are more environmentally damaging than a dozen Boeings landing at Stansted.

Actually, I've had another sniff and I think my olfactory senses were misled. It's not the recall of parliament I can smell, but an avalanche of shrill, hysterical, tobacco control bullshit.

If Gordon wants NHS savings, here are a few examples which won't threaten 'frontline services'

Look at the savings you could make, Gordon.

HOSPITAL bosses have performed an amazing U-turn on Great Western Hospital’s no smoking policy – all in the name of staff safety.

It's a policy now, not a ban.

That could be because Freedom2Choose pointed out to all NHS trusts in the country that their bans were nothing of the sort. The Health Act 2006 contained no provision whatsoever for banning smoking in the open air, and for a very good reason. Even by the hysterical standards of the anti-tobacco dullards, there is not even a germination of an inkling of an idea that outdoor smoking is remotely dangerous. The presence of cars on the roads where smokers are herded would tend to show that notion up as quite laughable.

We are talking about rather backward lunatics here, though, so I suppose some slack must be cut for their cerebral inadequacy.

Of course, any purported 'ban' is nothing of the sort as it is entirely unenforceable in law.

It is the quite giggleworthy 'voluntary ban'. Something that you aren't allowed to do ... except that you are. By law.

You see, these people are consumed with hatred for smokers. They don't care as we are deemed de-normal. We are outcasts and a danger to polite society (except for their friends though as, just like the most digusting of racists, they will all say that they have a 'smoking friend', who quite agrees, to exempt themselves from being single-mindedly hateful bigots).

Oh, I see. You think I'm exaggerating here, yes? Well, not really seeing as they don't seem to be able to distinguish between normal people enjoying a legal product and an unsightly outbreak of cockroach infestation.

Mr Bagnall confessed that feedback from visitors also suggests that the sight of smokers at GWH’s entrance is damaging the hospital’s reputation.

He said: “Naturally we are concerned about how people outside of GWH perceive the hospital and with little else outside the main entrance other than a group of smokers, it doesn’t give the right impression.”

The BNP would argue that a few 'pakis' hanging around their town is 'giving the wrong impression' too. The fact that Bagnall is insulting his staff and his patients by even entertaining such baseless complaints is quite telling.

And Bagnall, haven't you got better things to be busying yourself with on our taxes than this? I dunno, I just thought that the people who are dying from MRSA, C-diff and appalling healthcare might be more deserving of your time than the views of a few anonymous, prejudiced cranks. Just a thought.

Still, at least this hospital have decided that allowing smokers to die is a bit too far, unlike other 'health professionals' I could mention.

But with more staff trekking out to the outskirts of the site at all hours to get their nicotine fix, Carillion managers are concerned that it might not just be their health they are putting at risk.

Mark Bagnall, Carillion’s director of estates and facilities management, said: “Anecdotally we have heard that Wiltshire police have approached staff standing alongside the road and asked them to move further back onto the hospital site for safety reasons.

“We are, of course, constantly reviewing staff and patient safety and don’t want anyone being put at risk from passing vehicles”

So the ban which wasn't a ban is being relaxed, but only in somewhere a long hike away from the rest of those nice, civilised, non-smokers.

“For this reason we have decided to re-erect two smoking shelters toward the boundary area of the hospital site,” he said.

And it still isn't law that you have to restrict yourself to them. Remember that. So therefore no need for smoking wardens.

Don't be silly.

... hospital management is looking into possible adjustments to the roles of its two smoking officers who monitor smokers on site.

Here's a suggestion of an adjustment you could make, Bagnall. How about making them redundant? It won't cost much, they've been around so briefly that it's no more than a week's wages according to redundancy rules. I mean, what else are they going to do? Walk around the grounds pretending to be Bodie and Doyle?

We are in a recession, remember, and money in the public sector must be squeezed, or did you not notice as you were spunking our taxes up the wall of the out patients block?

You want savings in the health service, Gordon? You could start with handing P45s to two irrelevant smoking wardens, and times that by the number of hospitals which still cling to this illegal restriction of perfectly normal activity.

If you could see your way to cutting spending £43m pa on adverts that no-one is interested in watching too, you might start on the long road to being welcomed back by 22% of the voting population as well.

Or you could continue being a dangerous national laughing stock and upcoming general election also-ran. Your choice.

Anti-smokers need to find a new argument, concludes top statistician

Renowned statistical crap-buster, Michael Blastland, has again been pulling fraudulent healthist propaganda to pieces on the BBC web-site (they'll be gagging him soon, no doubt). Arguing against the oft-repeated myth surrounding the cost of smoking to the NHS, he points out ...

Treating smokers costs the NHS in England £2.7bn a year, compared with £1.7bn a decade ago, it was said recently.

Except that there's strong evidence that the best financial value to the nation is if smokers really go for it, feed the Inland Revenue's coffers with excise duty, get lung cancer and die quickly at 65 before they cost us a packet in social care in old age.

Indeed. Tobacco duty alone dwarfs even the mightiest manipulations by tobacco control freaks, £8.1bn according to a recent House of Lords question to parliamentary treasury secretary Lord Myners, and that figure doesn't include notional savings in palliative care. You know, those costs which won't be incurred because all us smokers die so very young as the anti-smoking loons tell us on a daily basis.

This outbreak of common sense is becoming a bit of a summer theme with regards the economics of alternative lifestyles, after former government health adviser Julian LeGrand admitted the same just a fortnight ago.

"It is true that, on the whole, healthy people cost the National Health Service, and indeed the pensions sector, rather more than unhealthy people." [mp3 sound file below]

See, this is the problem when a product is disproportionately taxed over a long period of time. No matter how many so-called costs are lumped onto the debit side of the smoking equation, they are always going to be outweighed by the credit side, in the form of punitive sin taxes which the righteous have inflicted for decades.

Likewise, if ASH and their colleagues produce statistics exaggerating the early deaths of smokers, a statistician is quite within his rights to use the same figures to assess cost savings to the NHS as a result.

Hoist by one's own petard, I believe it is termed.

Blastland comes to a conclusion which is eminently sensible.

Does that mean we should encourage smoking? Hardly. But it might mean we should get another argument, for example that a smoking habit can be smelly and dirty, that other people don't like it, that it's about the worst thing you can do for your health short of running under a bus, and that maybe other people who love you care about you not killing yourself early and you should think about their interests too.

Which, of course, are the real reasons behind the irrational and hysterical hatred towards smokers. We know this, they know this, it's just that such arguments aren't very compelling when it comes to encouraging the bullying of smokers by the general public.

And that really is the sum of it. Rather than produce truthful data, the hugely pharma-funded tobacco control lobby would prefer to use junk science, fraudulent statistics, bullying, and threats to promote their agenda, rather than hold an honest and inclusive debate.

All we freedom-lovers can do is keep highlighting the propaganda, emotive brow-beating, and downright lies, because however shrill the righteous doom-laden voice becomes, the truth is always on our side, as is the moral high ground.

Apparently, we now 'choose' to smoke outside

Yes, she is irritatingly and falsely self-righteous, has abused a system which lends itself to such, and really should be given a slap.

A woman who fell over in stilettos on a night out has won £18,000 in compensation. Selena Gilder, who had been drinking, broke a leg outside a pub when her heel became caught in a crack in the ground.

The 40-year-old took legal action against the pub's insurers, who settled out of court. Miss Gilder was on a girls' night out with four friends in October 2007 when the accident happened.

She had gone into the courtyard of The Albion pub in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, to smoke when her three-inch heel became stuck in a gap in some concrete.

Yes, a bona fide dickhead. We smokers would tend to agree. And why not when the abandonment of personal responsibility as a general rule of life is more than partly a contributory factor for the lack of sanity involved in smoking bans.

The one accusation you cannot possibly level at this annoying berk is that she 'chose' to be outside with her cigarette. But check the comments appended to the article for those who do.

Isn't it odd that the idea of freedom of choice only comes into play as a stick to beat smokers, and only when it suits a completely different argument.

Were those applying such logic advocating personal responsibility and self-determination before the government took away any such option with a law which wasn't democratically tested? What do you reckon?

The UK Smoking Ban Experiment, two years on.

We here at Freedom2Choose just knew there would be a plethora of 'news' stories from fake charities and their obedient mouthpieces [the media] with some dubious, not to say fraudulent, surveys, polls, unscientific studies extolling the vertues of the hugely popular Smoking Ban Experiment now that it is two years old. And they do not pull their lying punches:

Smoking ban supported by 80% of people

The Shields Gazette proudly boasts.

THE smoking ban is still supported by the majority of people in the region, two years after it was introduced, according to new research.

Oh chit, another bloody survey...by whom, I wonder?

In a national YouGov survey, 80 per cent of people in North East England say they support the smoke-free legislation.

If the ban is so universally popular why then do these gobshites have to press the issue?

Oh, a YouGove surv....WAIT A BLOODY MINUTE, I live in the North East of England! Nobody asked me, or anybody I meet on the wild, wild streets of Middlesbrough, the people I meet and talk to, smokers and non smokers alike, have never been approached for their opinion on such a contentious subject, let alone know what the hell YouGov is? Anybody that represents a body with the word Gov in it would see middlesbroughonians scurrying to the nearest hardware store enquiring about the price of rope then looking for the nearest lampost!

But I digress.

The mortality rate in the borough due to smoking-related illnesses, such as heart disease, stroke and lung cancer, is 202 per 100,000.

Yawn... Let me see if ASH (spit) have some truthful insights into the ban two years on?

Two years on from the changes in the smoking law, a national survey shows that banning cigarettes in public places has been a popular move.

Ohhhh FFS! Who told you this pile of horse poo?

The 2009 national YouGov survey of 13,000 people, broken down by region, found that in the North-East:

* 80 per cent of people in the region say they support the smokefree law, with just 15 per cent opposing;

* 90 per cent of people say the law is good for the health of workers;

* 82 per cent of people say the law is good for their own health...

God give me strength, bloody YouGov again! You mean to say, out of the near on one million pounds you receive from taxpayers money you couldn't come up with your own pidgeon poo on your car windscreen type of survey?

I've had enough of this nonsense so I'll eagerly await the next aniversary with baited breath but meanwhile lets see how some smokers, publicans and the public celebrated last years joy at having a killer smoking ban being foisted on us.
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On the 29th of June 08 I took my video camera with me to witness a small rebellion in a small part of Yorkshire known as Westgate and the pubs we went into are known locally as part of the Westgate Run.



More from the Westgate Run:



Photo heading by an F2C forum member called Visigoth.

Nails, coffin, EU, British Pubs and the smoker: The next generation!

As if your Pubs & Clubs don't have enough to contend with these days, what with the [failed] Smoking Ban Experiment and beer tax hikes not to mention the [minimal] effects of the so called credit crunch (don't forget that pubs and clubs have always thrived during crisis and economic downturns until, that is, they imposed a smoking ban on them and us.) Our treacherous [all parties] MPs, in cahoots with the anti British EU, have come up with a plan to further denormalise smokers and their watering holes. A smoking ban in beer gardens, outside offices and even open air concerts!

EU zealots will this week demand a ban on smoking OUTSIDE pubs and offices.

No mincing words there then, is there. They DEMAND!

Brussels chiefs want to outlaw beer garden ciggie areas - and even extend the ban to open air concerts like this weekend's Glastonbury festival.

The European Commission says the current bar on smoking in enclosed public places does not go far enough. It says non-smokers in outdoor areas are still in danger from passive smoking.

It comes after a World Health Organisation report said workers such as waiters and door staff are exposed to dangerous levels of smoke outside pubs and restaurants. And the smoke can waft back inside buildings through open doors, windows and vents.

Brussels Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou is expected to announce plans on Tuesday. Her spokesman said: "We want to encourage EU member states to enforce the WHO convention as at the moment it is not binding." The government banned smoking in enclosed public spaces in the UK two years ago.

You see, according to the healthist nutters in Brussels coming within a mile of a smoker is a killer and our own, home grown, healthist nut jobs believe the above crap, hook, line and sinker. I will outline later some facts about SHS, aka Second Hand Smoke and other truths by two respected authors and readers of the F2C forum, Michael J. McFadden, author of Dissecting Anti Smokers' Brains and Christopher Snowdon's much acclaimed book, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist, which has just been launched at a FOREST bash.

Out of all this over in the land of sprouts one lone voice coins another phrase that can sit comfortably beside "Nanny State."

The Bully State

The UK Independence Party blasted the plan. Euro MP Godfrey Bloom said: "It's beyond the nanny state. It's the bully state. Do they want to close down the English country pub?"

Some real facts, one) the chemistry and two) the history, by the two authors I mentioned above. First Michael J. McFadden on the myths treated as facts by our anti smoking bullies.



One. The Chemistry of Secondary Smoke by M. J. McFadden

As noted earlier in the chapter on Language, about 90% of secondary smoke is composed of water and ordinary air with a slight excess of carbon dioxide. Another 4% is carbon monoxide, a gas that can act as a poison when in sufficient quantity by reducing the amount of oxygen your red blood cells can carry. The last 6% contains the rest of the 4,000 or so chemicals supposedly to be found in smoke… but found, obviously, in very small quantities (1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 80).

Most of these chemicals can only be found in quantities measured in nanograms, picograms and femtograms. Many cannot even be detected in these amounts: their presence is simply theorized rather than measured. To bring those quantities into a real world perspective, take a saltshaker and shake out a few grains of salt. A single grain of that salt will weigh in the ballpark of 100 million picograms! (Allen Blackman. Chemistry Magazine 10/08/01).

To refer back to our earlier example of arsenic, a nonsmoker would have to work with a smoker 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, for well over a hundred years to be exposed to a quantity of arsenic equal to one grain of salt. While a lot of waitresses and bartenders may feel as if they’ve worked a hundred years at their jobs, there really aren’t too many who actually have.

And, again as noted earlier, far from all 4,000 of those chemicals are normally labeled as toxic in the first place, with the 1989 Surgeon Generals’ Report only noting that “some” are… without reference to how many or to what amounts would be considered toxic. One of the most basic principles of scientific toxicology is that “The Dose Makes The Poison.”… a fact always ignored by Crusaders.

When speaking of secondary smoke many Antismokers will also refer to the “40 carcinogenic compounds” it supposedly contains. In reality only six of those have in fact been classified as “known human carcinogens” (1989 Report of the Surgeon General. pgs. 86-87). Most of the rest of the 40 compounds have shown insufficient evidence of being human carcinogens and many are commonly found in foods, coffee, and the general environment (Science, 258: 261-265 (1992). The exposure of nonsmokers to the six actual human carcinogens is usually so minuscule as to be almost imaginary in nature and is sometimes far less than other everyday environmental exposures.

Secondary smoke is the mix of all of the smoke that enters the air in a room where someone is smoking, both the smoke exhaled by the smoker and the smoke coming off the tip of the cigarette. You’ve heard the claim that secondary smoke is twice as bad as what the smoker gets? In a way this is true: if you held your nose a quarter inch above the burning end of a cigarette and inhaled a slow deep breath through your nostrils you’d be getting a concentration of smoke and its chemicals twice as great as what the smoker is pulling into his or her mouth.

In the real world no one does that. Even the most hardened of smokers would generally be reduced to paroxysms of coughing from such concentrated inhalation. The secondary smoke that a nonsmoker comes in contact with is usually an extremely diluted mixture of exhaled smoke and the smoke produced directly from the cigarette’s tip.

Something that’s usually forgotten in the rush of concern about the nonsmoker is that the smoker is also breathing all the secondary smoke produced, and, given the closer proximity to the source, the smoker is inhaling it in far greater quantities and concentrations than most nonsmokers ever would! If the concerns about the dangers of secondary smoke were really true it would make perfect sense for a smoker with a smoking guest to insist that the guest go outside to smoke even if they were both smoking at the same time. Indeed, smokers would want to rush outside themselves out of fear of their own secondary smoke!

The exact chemical composition of secondary smoke depends largely upon how many seconds it’s been in the air. Just as happens in the case of most combustion products, the chemicals change and break down very quickly, and some elements will tend to settle toward the floor or deposit themselves on walls or curtains. In pursuit of some arguments Antismokers want to assume from the start that secondary smoke is carcinogenic: this is when they will claim that it’s chemically very similar to mainstream smoke. However, when they want to argue that comparing secondary smoke exposure to “cigarette equivalents” is unfair (This method generally produces very low measures of exposure… sometimes as low as six cigarettes per year even for bartenders), they will claim that it’s chemically very different than mainstream smoke and can’t be compared in that way!

No, I am not kidding… this is an example of the type of doublethink that I call the “Catch 22” argument later on. It’s very useful as an argumentation technique unless the opponent both notices it and has the time available to fully show how both sides of the street are being straddled by the shape-shifting opponent. The later chapter on Fallacious Argumentation looks at this verbal scamming tool in more detail.

In examining what risk there could be to a nonsmoker we need to develop and accept an estimate as to how much smoke a nonsmoker is likely to inhale when around one or more smokers. Rather than go into mathematical detail here, the supporting figures are presented in Appendix B. Those figures will show that, in most reasonably ventilated situations, whether a private home with one or two smokers, or a bar with dozens or hundreds of them, a nonsmoker will usually be exposed to the equivalent of about a thousandth of a cigarette or less per hour.

It could well be argued that anyone concerned at all about secondary smoke shouldn’t be in such a Free-Choice bar or restaurant to begin with, since there are many venues that have already banned smoking on their own; but Crusading activists generally insist that even if 95 out of 100 businesses are “smoke-free” that smokers should not have the right to keep those last five places to themselves and their friends. This is not in any sense an exaggeration or misrepresentation: Antismokers call it “leveling the playing field” and it has served as the basis for many legislated universal bans.

The need for such leveling arises because, despite Crusaders’ claims to the contrary, restaurants and bars that accommodate both smokers and nonsmokers almost invariably do better business than ones with total bans. Nonsmokers want an atmosphere that is comfortable, clean, and well ventilated: they are usually quite happy to accompany their smoking friends to establishments that meet those criteria while allowing those friends to smoke without being forced outside. The only exceptions to this rule occur when an establishment is truly one of the few in its geographic/economic niche that has such a ban: in that case there can often be enough of a specialty demand to make up for other losses.

To return to the chemistry of smoke, let us look at the 6 elements in tobacco smoke that IARC (The International Agency for Research on Cancer) classifies as Class A (Human) carcinogens. One of those is arsenic, which we looked at earlier. You’ll remember that you’d have to sit in a room with a smoker smoking 165,000 cigarettes to be exposed to as much arsenic as you would get from a large glass of water.

What about the other five carcinogens though? Are nonsmokers likely to be exposed to enough of those to have them correctly perceived as threats? While most of them occur in even smaller quantities than arsenic (naphthylamine, aminobi-phenyl, vinyl chloride and chromium average only about fifteen nanograms apiece), let’s look at the one with the largest quantity present so as to clearly make the case that is least favorable to our own argument. This is benzene: a human carcinogen that cigarettes produce in quantities not measured in picograms nor even in nanograms, but in micrograms, a unit that is one million times larger than a picogram, but still only one one-millionth of a single gram (1989 Report of the Surgeon General. p.87)

The average cigarette produces roughly 300 micrograms of benzene (1986 Report of the Surgeon General. p.130). If the estimates of smoke exposure for the average nonsmoker in Appendix B hold true, then such exposure would equal roughly three tenths of a microgram per hour of sharing a space with a reasonable number of smokers in a decently ventilated public indoor setting.

Benzene is normally found in fruits, fish, vegetables, nuts, dairy products, beverages, and eggs. The National Cancer Institute estimates that an individual may safely ingest up to 250 micrograms in their food per day, every single day of the year. Thus, the “safe” exposure to benzene from one day of a normal diet is roughly equal to the exposure experienced by a nonsmoker sharing an airspace with smokers for over 750 hours. Another way of looking at it would be to compare it to the normal work exposure of a waiter in a decently ventilated Free-Choice restaurant: the waiter would have to work there for four months to receive the equivalent benzene dosage ingested in one day of a “safe” diet.

In 1994, the Air Resources Board of California estimated that California vehicles emitted close to 50 million pounds (i.e. about 23 billion grams) of benzene per year into the atmosphere of California. At 300 micrograms per cigarette, it would take 70 trillion cigarettes to produce what California\'s vehicles produce in a single year. Try to imagine all the smokers of the entire world, with each and every one of them smoking well over two hundred cigarettes a day, and all crowded into California, and you’ll have a rough comparison to California’s normal vehicle emissions.

During the course of New York and Philadelphia City Council hearings on vastly enlarging existing smoking bans, Crusaders trotted out the claim that the recently enacted smoking bans in California had reduced the lung cancer rate there by 14%. The claim seemed impressive unless one realized several things. First of all, smoking related lung cancer generally has a time lag of between 20 and 40 years, while the total indoor bans in California were only in place about three years when the claims were being made. Secondly, California has led the country in the past thirty years in reducing vehicle emissions and correcting its air pollution problems. And thirdly, the age composition and immigration patterns for the state have changed enormously over the past few decades.

By picking one particular statistic however, and ignoring all the background variables, confounders, and other scientific factors, testifying Crusaders were able to mount a convincing and seemingly powerful argument to City Councilors in both cities. Of course they also helped their case by not mentioning that they got the figure from a study that ended two years before California’s universal smoking ban was enacted! (Master Plan For a Smoke-Free California: www.dhs.cahwnet.gov/tobacco /documents/ TobaccoMasterPlan2003.pdf)

The other four human carcinogens in the smoke from a cigarette, all added together, equal less than a single microgram, thus contributing to an exposure for the average nonsmoker in a smoking environment of roughly one nanogram or one one-billionth of a gram per hour (1986 Report of the Surgeon General p. 130, 1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 87, and Appendix B). Such a level of contact would never be considered as a “risk” for any substance not associated with tobacco smoke.

It’s not just carcinogens that Antismokers worry about though. There’s now a push to put a label on packs that will warn folks that “cigarettes contain formaldehyde, used in preserving corpses.” Now isn’t that a pleasant thought? Of course the Crusaders never want to mention the amount of formaldehyde produced (less than one third of a single thousandth of a gram) or the fact that cooking a healthy vegetarian dinner at a gas stove puts roughly 100 times this amount into the air for your family to breathe (Huber et al. \"Smoke and Mirrors.\" Regulation 16:3:44. 1993).

The situation is the same for almost all the compounds in smoke that the Antismokers point their fingers at. Upon examining the amounts of the substances involved and checking the values of OSHA and EPA safe concentrations for them, you would find that you’d have to be locked up in a small unventilated bar with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of smokers before even approaching levels thought to be unsafe by actual government standards. Appendix B presents a number of examples in a well-formatted table. You’ll note that in the real world significant concentrations of any of the supposedly dangerous elements in secondary smoke would never actually occur.

A lot to take in, I know but very educational none the less.

Two. Christopher Snowden's Velvet Glove, Iron Fist



A unique case?

It is the summer of 2007. A humble council meeting in the Californian town of Belmont has attracted a degree of attention from the world's press to which this quiet suburban community is wholly unaccustomed. Extra security has been ordered after several councillors received death threats. On the internet, a photo of the mayor is being circulated with the image doctored to show her in full Nazi regalia.


Inside the town hall, local politicians debate a bill which, if passed, will ban smoking on every street, park and sidewalk in Belmont, as well as in all apartments and many private homes. Only detached houses will be exempt. Even nonsmokers face possible prosecution; it will be illegal for any citizen to fail to report an infringement to the police.


The debate is heated. The mayor, Coralin Feierbach, raises her voice and waves her arms as she makes her case:


"I'm thinking of the children, that's the most important thing. Not necessarily the restaurants, not necessarily the condos, but the children in the community."


Warming to her theme, she bangs her fist on the table three times as she shouts:


"Children! Children! Children!"(1)


This being California, it goes without saying that it is already illegal to smoke in offices, bars and restaurants. For years, the 'Golden State' has built a reputation for being tough on smoking but even ardent nonsmokers are beginning to wonder whether the anti-smoking campaign has crossed the line between protecting public health and intruding on personal freedom. "I don't know where the boundaries of a truly legally defensible ordinance are," concedes Councillor Dave Warden, a keen supporter of the bill, "I really believe that we're so close to the line that no one can really tell."(2)


As the press gathers in Belmont, the town's councillors are contemplating the most far-reaching anti-smoking law of modern times, but it will not be long before a more extreme ordinance is passed in some other part of the world and the media will move on. Smokers and civil libertarians will continue to complain of discrimination and the public health lobby will continue to devise new ways to stamp out the smoking habit.


None of this is new. The English Puritans who settled in Massachusetts and Connecticut banned smoking in the street in the 17th century. In Russia, Turkey, China and elsewhere smokers were punished with mutilation, torture and death. For five centuries tobacco was besieged on the basis of religious conviction, public morality, fire safety, racial superiority, political doctrine and often - but never exclusively - health. The fascists of Germany viewed smoking as a Communist habit just as the socialists regarded it as suspiciously bourgeois. For Christians, it was a pagan custom; for Muslims, it was a Christian invention. The anti-Semites associated it with the Jews, the teetotallers linked it to the drunks and the chaste linked it to the debauched. Wherever there was a popular cause, there were bands of anti-tobacconists ready to attach themselves to it.


Time and again the anti-smokers gathered momentum only to overreach themselves and tumble into obscurity. The political ideologies with which they allied themselves would fall out of favour, their charismatic leaders would die, their followers would come to be seen as cranks and the myriad diseases they blamed on the hated herb - infertility, blindness, hysteria, herpes and insanity, to name but a few - would be exposed as the products of fevered imaginations.


And then, in the mid-20th century, solid evidence finally surfaced which showed that the latest and most popular tobacco product - the cigarette - did indeed cause some serious diseases and all of a sudden the cranks and the moralists disappeared. No longer did anyone oppose tobacco because it led to drink or debauchery. No longer did anyone condemn it as irreligious. No one fretted about cigarettes causing fires and no one insisted - as they had only a few years earlier - that their consumption would infect the gene pool and wipe out the white race. For the first time since Columbus's first encounter with the weed, the zealots and fanatics of the anti-tobacco leagues simply vanished. In their place came a host of new organisations whose agenda was strikingly similar to that of the tobacco-haters of bygone days but whose members declared themselves to be motivated only by concern for the public health.


By now, however, the smoking public had grown used to ignoring the shrill voices that for generations had fed them tall tales about the devilish herb and so there was an urgent need to educate them about this genuine peril. It started with a warning label. In the 1960s, governments around the world ordered the tobacco industry to label each pack of their extraordinarily lucrative product with a cautionary note to its customers. Soon afterwards, the government brought the curtain down on televised cigarette commercials.


The industry complained that its right to free speech was being trampled on. In the United States, where the right to free expression was enshrined in the Constitution, they may have had a case but it was hard to deny that, as a legal product, cigarettes were unusually dangerous. American politicians remained reluctant to over-regulate business, curtail free speech or challenge the public's right to smoke, but they banned broadcast advertising all the same because cigarettes posed a "unique danger" which required unique policies.


Around the world, taxes on tobacco rose, the warnings became stronger, tobacco advertising was banned in all its forms and the number of places in which smokers could engage in their habit dwindled. Some complained that smokers were being persecuted by joyless puritans set on the outright criminalisation of tobacco. Others warned that the anti-smoking endeavour represented the thin end of a wedge that would ultimately lead to the state dictating what people ate, drank, how much they should exercise and what they should spend their money on. "Today it's cigarettes," announced one cigarette company in 1994, "Will high-fat foods be next?"(3) Such warnings fell on deaf ears, particularly when they came from the discredited tobacco industry. Those who warned that society was sliding down a slippery slope of government intrusion were accused of indulging in hyperbole bordering on paranoia. The cigarette, it was said again, was a unique case - a product that could kill when used as the manufacturer intended - and it was ludicrous to compare eating a steak or drinking a glass of wine with smoking a pack of cigarettes.


The educational campaign against smoking inspired millions of smokers to kick their habit but millions more persisted and, much to the surprise of the anti-smoking groups, millions more took up the habit in full knowledge of the hazards. For those who sought tobacco's destruction, the well of government measures that could be deployed to dissuade individuals from risking their own health was running dry and so a new theory emerged.


The evidence that tobacco smoke was still dangerous at vastly diluted levels in the form of secondhand smoke was scant but the idea was invaluable to those who wanted the anti-smoking campaign to shift up a few gears. With it, the hated, stinking smoke became a menace to all and could be prohibited as a threat to the lives of others. Smokers stubbornly continued to puff away in streets, doorways and in their homes but the end, it seemed, was nigh.


By the time the councillors of Belmont were debating the merits of banning smoking in people's own homes, the battlers for public health had long since expanded their horizons beyond cigarettes and were campaigning for legislation against products which were neither unique nor necessarily dangerous. This, too, began with a warning label. Today, the spokesmen and spokeswomen of the health organisations demand warnings be placed on wine bottles, food packaging, cars, gambling machines, aeroplanes, bottled water and large-sized clothes. Activists of all kinds wrestle with one another for the prize of having their cause seen as "the new smoking."


As before, the warnings serve to identify certain products and forms of behaviour as socially undesirable and, also as before, they are merely a prelude to fresh bans and further legislation. Advertising executives now accept that the days of promoting alcoholic drinks on television are numbered. Commercials for hamburgers, chips, cheese and full-fat milk have begun to disappear from the airwaves in Britain and elsewhere. Politicians are regularly advised to slap 'sin taxes' on food and drink, to issue their citizens with pedometers, to limit the number of drinks that can be served in bars, to deny medical treatment to the overweight, to compel restauranteurs to put warnings on their menus, to ban smokers from adopting children and to prohibit perfume, aftershave and other supposed 'toxins' in the workplace.


Are these pragmatic measures to protect the public health or unwarranted intrusions into private behaviour? Do these new laws represent the next logical step or the slippery slope? These are questions that have been asked for generations. We have been here many times before. To give but one example, the American temperance movement of the 19th century began by condemning heavy drinking and hard liquor. Temperance - as its name suggests - meant moderation, not abolition, but within a few decades the anti-saloon activists were calling for the complete criminalisation of the production and consumption of all forms of alcohol.


Prohibition was achieved in 1919 and one newspaper compared the ranks of victorious teetotallers to "a soldier of fortune after the peace is signed."(4) Suddenly redundant, but with no intention of disbanding, it took the moral crusaders only a matter of weeks before they had set their sights on banning tobacco and were rallying round the banner of 'Nicotine Next.' Seventy-five years later, the vice-president of the country's foremost anti-smoking group, Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, was asked what she would do if tobacco should miraculously disappear. Her candid answer was that she would "simply move on to other causes."(5)


This is the story of just one cause, a cause that for many years seemed doomed but which ultimately set the template for the public health campaigns of the present-day. It is a story populated by characters who had little in common beyond a mutual hatred of tobacco, and it is a story that began long before any of the elements that colour our perception of the smoking issue today existed. When Columbus explored the New World there was no tobacco industry and no advertising industry. The link between smoking and cancer was unknown. There was no concept of passive smoking, let alone 'passive drinking' or 'secondhand obesity.' The battle against smoking began without any of this and yet it began all the same, almost from the moment the Spanish lit their first pipes, and it rarely let up in the five hundred years that followed.

As far as this country is concerned I ask only one question. When will the worm turn?

Pat Karney: Righteous idiot. And your taxes pay for him

Any citizen of Manchester will be well aware of the illiberal state-sponsored cock-gobbler, Pat Karney, but he is exceeding even his own high standards of self-righteous, priggish bigotry since a renowned artist suggested law-abiding citizens, enjoying a legal product, be part of a parade.

Coun Karney told the M.E.N.: "It's a family event and there's going to be thousands of children and young people there.

"Featuring smokers makes a mockery of the millions that has been spent on smoking cessation programmes."

No, Pat, what makes a mockery of the millions spent on smoking cessation programmes is the fact that no cessation of smoking has occurred as a result of your spunking taxes up the puritan wall.

Smoking ban fails to curb the habit: Figures reveal men are smoking MORE

The ban on smoking in public has failed to increase the number of people quitting, a report revealed yesterday.

The proportion of men who smoke has actually risen since the ban in July last year while there was no change at all among women.

The figures, coming after years of declining smoking rates, are a massive blow to Labour's public heath policy.

Manchester might be better served by a trained chimp rather than Karney. Remember that he is Director of 'Smokefree Manchester', who collude with other mutual bansturbators to spend 43 million fucking pounds of our taxes every year (and growing) on their pet prejudice.

He's not good at irony, either.

"There's no doubt that kids do see smoking everywhere and that it's a free society but to spend public money in this way would be a complete disgrace and bring shame on Manchester."

Kids do, indeed, see smoking everywhere. Never more so than after the smoking ban which Karney was abso-fucking-lutely ecstatic about.

So, Pat, you tedious helmet, let's get this straight. Your argument is that you wish kids to be shielded from the sight of people smoking ... yet you are fully behind a law which forcibly thrusts smokers into the gaze of minors, against their will? You also object to horrendous waste of public money, yet at the same time, piss it away like water on ill-conceived schemes which result in no benefit whatsoever?

You're a right card, you.

Just a thought, you hideous prick, but wouldn't it be better if you were consistent and advocated smoking pub-goers being kept inside for the sake of the chiiildren? That way, your stance against perfectly upstanding members of the public being paraded in this way might actually hold some water.

And if you truly object to public money being wasted, how about fitting Smokefree Manchester's cheque book with a common sense lock, only to be picked by people who are sensible and reasoned. People unlike yourself, for example.

Pat, just stick to what you do best ... like inviting the re-decorators in on behalf of your fellow Mancunians, cos you thought it was a good idea at the time.


Pat Karney is brought to you courtesy of the Labour Party.

AIDAN KEHOE -BLACKPOOL NHS TRUST GOES BOLLYWOOD - By B7

They have used Flannel, they have not replied, they are stalling for time they are doing everything they can to avoid telling you that it is perfectly legal to smoke on open public ground.

They are not sure who owns public open space, they are sure they know, they know that they know but are undecided because they will not admit it is perfectly legal to smoke on open public grounds.

Aidan Kehoe of the grandly named Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre Hospital trust freely admits that smokefree legislation does not extend to hospital grounds but he is stretching every sinew and adding the spin to stop you smoking on grounds that you own.



Today we bring you a movie clip, even Aidan gets a mention in "Blackpool Trust Goes Bollywood".

Click on the image to view or follow the link at:-

http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/v2/play.php?id=131432

Happy smoking and send a link to your friends especially if they work for Blackpool NHS trust.

Health & Sports Committee (Scotland) - Warning! May contain nuts.

The video below is the final 'evidential?' hearing from stage 1 into passing a law in Scotland that would see "point of sale" tobacco gantries removed from behind counters in shops and supermarkets; in fact any structure that sells these products, like ice cream vans etc, and put under the counter so that adult smokers will have to get their cigarettes and other tobacco products furtively, as though they should be ashamed for even asking for this legal product. But it's all to save the bairns from a life of dependency you see, isn't it? Yeah right!

The first part has a representative from ACPO (the Association of Chief Police Officers,) Andrew Barker, Assistant Chief Constable from the Fife constabulary debating which system is best to keep tobacco vendors on a leash, a national register or a licencing system. Oh the angst they go through in deciding how best to criminalise the hard working businessman/woman!

The second part is the usual crock of shit from MSEP's & MP's as they wax lyrical with so called facts and figures.

The committee will now ponder on all the evidence from Stage 1 and write up their findings, to be published around September this year.

Watch but have a bucket to hand because your bound to want to wretch.

Click To Play

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.