When politicians had balls and ASH were, well, the same as now

How things change. Back in 1990, parliamentarians frowned sternly on corrupt practices by ASH. Here is a video which illustrates it perfectly.



So what has changed? Well, nowadays government pays ASH, and nowadays their claims are left unquestioned.

Oh yeah, and nowadays our politicians don't possess the same spine as they did in 1990.

Unthinking Westminster Machines

Baroness Murphy, on the Lords of the Blog, today reports on the return of the Health Bill to the Lords on November 9th.

The issue on tobacco vending machines, which many of us would like to see banned from places where children can access them easily, is also more complex following an amendment tabled in the Commons by Ian MacCartney, a former Labour Minister. There will be much debate about how damaging a ban would be to small shopkeepers and how much these machines are used by children.

One would hope so too, Baroness, seeing as you are being sold a big fat porkie.

Ian MacCartney (who absolutely does not sport a fetching wig, at all, so please put that idea out of your mind entirely) is the odious Labour moron who decided that cigarette vending machines should be banned despite the fact there were better alternatives to stopping underage purchases, thereby consigning hundreds of honest, tax-paying businesses to oblivion.

Quite an obnoxious (Scottish, natch) idiot, I think you'll agree.

More of an idiot, though, was Lib Dem Sandra Gidley (who really needs to look up the word 'liberal') in vacantly repeating this demonstrably untrue anti-tobacco lobby fallacy to the House on the day of the Health Bill's third reading.

A significant proportion of children buy their cigarettes from vending machines, and here the Government have again been very timid. No other age-related products can be sold in the same way

Considering that the vending industry contributes a pathetic 0.8% of total tobacco sales in the UK, whereby 20% of tobacco consumption is estimated to come from tobacco smuggling, and 30% of under 18s, according to the BBC, admit to buying illicit tobacco, the proportion that Gidley talks about is anything but significant.

Additionally, the claim that "no other age-related products can be sold in the same way" makes one wonder which country this dozy mare is paid to serve.

Alcohol (which, last I checked, was an age-related product) is, indeed, sold in this way at Travelodges, and other venues, up and down the country. It isn't difficult to find such information.

We are specialists in alcohol vending and the chosen partner of Interbrew, owners of the Stella Artois brand.

Yep. Wife-beater, no less. Yet Sandra, bless her naïve authoritarian cotton socks, took £92,344 in staff costs from us poor saps in 2007/8, and presumably pays around the same for her current 'researchers', yet not one of them pointed out that she was about to stand up and talk bollocks. Or maybe they did, but why let the truth get in the way of breathtaking mendacity, eh?

It might also surprise Sandra, the fearless defender of liberal values, that vibrating cock rings are also available to kids with a few bob in their pockets, at about half the price of a packet of B&H, and with the added security of being squirrelled away in the bogs.

I suppose it's too much to ask that the feather-nesters in the Lords will actually throw this back at the snuffling troughers in the Commons, if only on the basis that they all need to have their collective sanity examined. At least some serious questions should be asked as to how this garbage reached such an advanced stage.

However, by the jolly tone of the Baroness's article, one can only assume that it will be a further talking shop before everyone retires to the bar for a bottle of Heidsieck, a mutual back-slapping, and an intense discussion of how very wonderful they all are.

While nigh on 200 businesses tear up their self-assessment forms and pencil in a trip to the jobcentre the very next day.

Usually, I'd use the plural of the 'c' word here, but it's not mi casa, see?

Yep, it's still missing

As I mentioned here, there is a supposedly miraculous Labour achievement which is missing from Gordon Brown's list of his government's brilliant highlights. D'you reckon he might be a bit afraid it will come back and bite his depressed arse?

Can you guess which "single biggest improvement in public health for a generation" was not mentioned?

Clue: It's not the cuddly toy.



H/T GOT

How Labour in parliament work: Gillian Merron

This exchange in Westminster exhibits both the best and the worst of our elected representatives.

In answer to a friendly question by Ann Coffey (Labour, Stockport), the Minister of State, Gillian Merron (Labour, Lincoln) exhibits some incredible arrogance to a two-pronged spearing from more knowledgeable MPs.

Note the difference in tone, and attitude.

In response to Coffey.

My hon. Friend is a great champion for quitting smoking. I am delighted ... and I congratulate her ...

Compare and contrast the reply to Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley), who cares about ALL his constituents (as he has shown before), not just some.

Davies: There is nothing to suggest that the ban on tobacco displays will reduce the number of young people taking up smoking; that ban is merely another triumph for the nanny state and for this Government, who are obsessed with headline-grabbing but pointless initiatives. Will the Minister reconsider this decision, given the negative impact that it will have on small shops, which are already struggling through the recession?

Merron: The simple answer is no, and the reason why is that removing tobacco displays is not going to close shops, no matter how much the hon. Gentleman and others in the House spread myths.

Myths? Such as a documented 23 shops closing every week in Ontario, and 12 in Quebec, due to the same unnecessary measure over the Atlantic, for example?

Then, fresh from the launch of amendthesmokingban.com, David Clelland, a fellow Labour MP, challenged her loose grasp of reality too.

Clelland: But if the display of tobacco products encourages young people to take up smoking, what influence do the crowds of people whom we see on the streets outside pubs and clubs have on young people? Would it not be better for these smokers to be hidden away—inside the building in a controlled environment, rather than on the streets, where children can see them?

He's got a point, you know.

Merron can't see it though. Unfortunately, she had her fingers in her ears and was singing la-la-la at the time.

Merron: My hon. Friend is, as always, very inventive in making his point.

Apparently, logic and common sense is now classed as 'inventive' by New Labour.

Could this be why no fucker in their right mind votes for them anymore? Just a thought.

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.