Writer's block[ed]!

This is just right up Dick Puddlcote's street as another barmy council goes apeshit over smoking.

Lynn Barber, a noted writer, journalist and interviewer pulled out of Novembers Book Now festival because Richmond Council, Surrey, refused to accept the publicity photo she supplied because it shows her smoking a cigarette.

A spokesman for Richmond council defended the decision. He said: “We don’t like to use images of people smoking in our promotional material. As a local authority we are responsible for encouraging good health habits in the area, and to be seen to be endorsing smoking, no matter how unintentional, doesn’t complement this.

Naturally Lynn declined and promptly pulled out of the festival.  She sent an email to the organisors saying:

“I have always wanted to be a Smoking Martyr and obviously this is my opportunity. I hereby withdraw from the Festival. Best wishes, Lynn Barber.”

She later joked:

“If a pic of me smoking is such a threat to the good burghers of Richmond, imagine what my presence would do.” In a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph, Ms Barber cheerfully admitted: “I am 65 and I smoke and drink like a fish.”

 How can you not like this woman?

Her publicist from penguin had few choice words to say about all this hullabloo and Ms. Barber's audacity in supplying 'that' photo:

The black and white shot was supplied by Penguin, Ms Barber’s publisher, and has been used countless times over the years without controversy. Amelia Fairney, publicity director at Penguin, said the council’s decision was absurd.

Absurdity is nothing new with councils like Richmonds, they thrive on it.  Even the organisors are left exasperated:

“I was absolutely flabbergasted when I realised what was going on. It’s a great picture which has never posed a problem until now. It wasn’t a problem for the festival organisers either - I think they were quite frustrated. It was the council’s decision and it’s just ridiculous.”

Oh I think I'm in love with Miss Fairney, she points out everything that has gone rotten in this country of ours, even though her tongue was firmly in her cheek:

With tongue firmly in cheek, Miss Fairney sent a note to organisers which read: “I do hope the finished brochure contains no photos of fat people (promoting obesity), or thin people (promoting eating disorders), white people (promoting cultural imperalism), black people (tokenism), women wearing make-up (promoting an unhealthy obsession with idealised female beauty) or children’s authors who do not have the correct CRB clearance.”

There's more I could have said about all this crap eminating from councils like Richmond but I'm in need of a fag!

Update: I've just found out Dick Puddlecote had written about this on the 24th of August...Boy, is that man on the ball!

At least the Queen doesn't lecture us

It's interesting to note that the never-ending supply of public money is being liberally tapped by those who seem to believe they know better than the public how to spend it.

Health officials to spend £30 million on Twitter and Facebook marketing campaign

Health officials could spend up to £30 million on advertising campaigns that will include networking on Twitter and Facebook, prompting criticism that the money could be better used in frontline services.

The budget, which will be spent over three years, has been set aside by the NHS in the North West.

It will help 50 organisations raise public awareness on such issues as healthy eating, the dangers of alcohol, and sexual health.

Up to eight public relations companies are being hired to devise suitable campaigns.

We have MRSA and C.Diff in our hospitals, there is a huge shortage in nursing staff according to the Nursing Times, yet this is considered a good way of spunking our money up the wall utlising public funds.

Not that there will be much value gained from such knob-jockey initiatives, of course, just a bit more righteous back-slapping in the offices of NHS admin clock-watchers the length and breadth of the country. Oh, and can we have a big pay rise and a taxpayer-funded party at Christmas too?

Strangely enough, this story came but a day after an insightful lad pointed out to the business world that Twitter was a bit of an irrelevance to youngsters, the health lobby's usual preferred reasoning for dicking our taxes on hare-brained schemes.

Twitter is for old people, work experience whiz-kid tells bankers

Today he is the talk of Tokyo, Wall Street and the City. Fund managers, CEOs and analysts are poring over his report, How Teenagers Consume Media, which he wrote last week while on work experience at Morgan Stanley.

In it he laid out the world according to the teenager: a confusing place where the PC is a radio, the games console is a telephone, the mobile telephone is a stereo and text-message machine, the DVDs are pirate copies and no one uses Twitter.

As for Facebook, the NHS office dickwads seem to have blithely ignored health concerns about the medium, in their drive to convince us that their daily dalliances on networking sites, at our expense, are somehow health-related.

Facebook is to blame for 'friendship addiction' and is fuelling insecurity in users

and ...

'Social Networking Sites Pose Health Risk'

Still, it's only a small amount of wasted funds, as highlighted by the unnamed NHS apologist.

It works out at around £150,000 per year, per organisation, which is around £1.07 per year per head of population.

Why, that's OK then. Just over a quid each for an initiative which will do fuck all for anyone but those who gain out of working out ways to divert attention to their being paid to flick rubber bands at each other at our expense.

By the same token, that makes the Royal Family quite cheap at only 69p per taxpayer, considering the Queen and the palaces we pay for have a distinct benefit in attracting tourism.

The Queen and the Royal Family cost the taxpayer 69p per person last year - an increase of 3p, Buckingham Palace accounts showed today.

The total cost of keeping the monarchy increased by £1.5 million to £41.5 million during the 2008-09 financial year.

Doing the maths, it works out that a bunch of thumb-twiddling overheads cost us each 9p less, with no corresponding income stream to compensate for their draining the health service of badly-needed frontline funds.

And the Queen keeps her nose out of our personal choices too, God bless her Union Flag embroidered socks.

The health service forgetting its remit to cure us first and foremost, and to keep the hell out of wasteful and judgemental idiocy? I should coco.

You couldn't make it up, could you?

All sensible people know that researchers and their "research" agenda is set in stone by their paymasters, none more so than the myriad of researchers in the pay of anti tobacco.

It was with great amusement to me that I came across this little gem of shite, (I know, I shouldn't laugh,) from Dr Guy Eslick, an international fellow of the International Union Against Cancer & Marielle Eslick? A relative perhaps? (Well why not, everybody else is dabbling in nepotism, aren't they?)

They both were paid, god knows how much of taxpayers/smokers money, to "research" and "analyse" how many instances of smoking and smoking related episodes, all 400, of the first 18 seasons of the Simpsons.

These esteemed "researchers" pointed out that:

They found a whopping 795 instances of smoking or references to smoking.

They went on to say that:

More than half involved male characters, a fifth female characters, and about 16 per cent non-gender characters such as animals.

(They don't mix their metaphors, do they?)

Oh chit, here we go, quoting statistics again, just too much for my humble brain but I'll try: you take half of a whole then a fifth from somewhere else and you devide it by 16 percent? Don't you??? (When they mentioned "non-gender" characters my mind went somewhere else entirely before I saw it in it's full context.)

Now this next quote tells me something which negates the whole "research" and one wonders what the fuss is all about?

Smoking was mostly portrayed in a neutral way, but in 35% of cases it had negative connotations and 2% of the time it was shown to be positive.

"Smoking was mostly portrayed in a neutral way" So it doesn't sway the viewer one way or the other, that's what I read.

"But in 35% of cases it had negative connotations" Eh, that's what the anti tobacco industry, for it is an industry; have you seen the money they get from taxes, your taxes and more importantly, smoker's taxes!

From these daft statistics smoking was portrayed in a neutral way, as should ALL "research" and 35% of this "research?" had 'negative' connotations and only 2% had shown to be positive!

Given this show has a world wide audence I think that 2% positivity has the smoking ban fraternity quacking in their boots; in other words they don't believe a bloody word your 'research' says!

I'll leave you, the reader, with one more quote from these dubious pair of anti tobacco fanatics:

While the researchers acknowledged the move may have been intended as satirical, they said that even when smoking is portrayed in a negative way, it can still influence young people's behaviour.

Now, ladies and gents, when, in the last few years, did you see smoking being portrayed in a possitive way? (In the light of all the 'denormalisation' of smokers?)

To paraphrase "know your enemy" because they lie to you!



What a great way to make a living, watching cartoons all day. Geesa job!

Many thanks to Emiliano Zapata, a F2C member, for bringing this to light and contributions from John Watson.