We need YOU to help YOURSELVES

I don't know exactly how he has done it but he has! Simon Clark (FOREST) was adamant that the petition we needed to promote was his friend and fellow campaigner Anthony Worrall Thompson's petition. Not that it is worded any more or less brilliantly that the original petition by Daniel Connolly, it's not, but the point is that 'AWT' is a "NAME", a celebrity, a household name AND a well known face of TV fame. Simon Clark states:

If we hit 100,000 signatures – enough to possibly generate a debate in the House of Commons – I hereby promise that Forest will organise a party at The Greyhound to mark the achievement! For the moment our goal is rather more modest: I want to get AWT's petition into the top 20 and keep it there for next twelve months. In the short term that means a minimum of 5,000 signatures."

Antony Worrall Thompson, chef and anti smoking ban champion

New government rules state that e-petitions that gain 100,000 signatures may well force debate in the House of Commons We already know that we now have many friendly MPs and we know that number is growing steadily as prohibition finds its enemies along its thorny path.
We need every single member to sign this petition.

But not only am I asking you to sign the petition, I am asking you to then email 7, yes 7 other people asking them to sign the petition-and then ask them to do the same. it is vitally important that we get at least 100,000 signatures.
I have always said that it is people power that will see this despicable ban amended, well here is the chance for people power to shine through.

It is also rather a bonus that AWT has first hand experience of the pub trade and therefore exactly what the smoke ban has done to the trade for he runs The Greyhound in Rotherfield Peppard (near Henley). Although I have never actually asked 'AWT', I'm sure that he expounds his views of the smoking ban just as we do - vehemently!

The Greyhound

On his blog Simon states " If we hit 100,000 signatures-enough to possibly generate a debate in the House of Commons-I hereby promise that FOREST will organise a party at The Greyhound to mark the achievement. For the moment our goal is rather more modest: I want to get AWT's petition into the top 20 and keep it there for the next twelve months. In the short term that means 5,000 signatures."
Fair play to that Simon, highly commendable indeed but I'm afraid that we differ slightly here my friend. I believe that this is the golden opportunity to bring pressure to bear, especially with other things going on at present, in the future etc so I am of the mindset that we promote this petition for all its worth and keep it in the top 5 !

I know that apathy rules this land, especially as far as the majority of licensees are concerned, but the smoking ban has wreaked so much damage-and has the potential to wreak so much more-that it is imperative that all licensees who know that CHOICE is the only answer, let their digits do the talking and sign the petition.

We now know that there are millions of non smokers out there (Simon & myself included) that know the smoking ban is morally, ethically &  financially wrong yet we have a small minority allowed such a large say in the matter. ASH were set up by the 'RCP' in an advisory capacity-for God's sake, they are now virtually dictating health policies to a government too weak to even look into the fantastic claims made by these anti smoking zealots!

Have not the latest figures proved what a complete waste of time and money smoking bans are? Do the latest 'quit' figures from Worcestershire, where it has averaged out that we spent £2,009 per quitter, not show you the vast amounts wasted? With 12million smokers in this country, can we afford £2,009 per quitter?

CHOICE is the only answer and European Air Quality Standards can easily be met. Sign this petition, get friends to sign this petition, and let our MPs take this valuable 'voice of the people' to Parliament for debate. We now have the truth of what lays behind smoking bans - they wish they had truth on their side!
Reminder, petition here! 

Iron men? Do me a favour

Those Aussies have been teasing us for years about our weakness in comparison to their machismo. They're all Crocodile Dundee types, we're just whinging poms who couldn't win an arm wrestle with their Sheilas, apparently.

It appears it was all a sham. There is no bravery in upside down land, merely bravado.

These days they're just a bunch of Walter the Softys who run for their fragile lives at sight of a wisp of smoke in an open street.

Frankston City Council is preparing to impose blanket bans along three busy open-air shopping strips, including opposite the train station.

Lighting up in the designated exclusion zones during the planned six-month trial could cost defiant smokers fines up to $110.

An Australian male, pictured yesterday

It takes a Brit in their bubble-wrapped country to rail against such laughable bansturbation (a great article, but if you're Australian, don't read it as the language will shock your sensitive soul).

No wonder the poor weak things went home without The Ashes this summer ... they were no doubt terrified the urn might spill and harm them, as well as messing up the crease in their jeans.

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.

Frank Davis - Man of the (smoking) people

As most of you may already know Frank Davis Is a blog writer of distinction amongst his fellow bloggers. His writings are erudite, heartfelt, heartwarming, mellow in parts but uplifting too.  He makes fellow smokers feel that little bit less disinfranchised.

I have asked Frank if he would allow me to add him as a Guest Author and and he said yes with a large dose of humility.

He has kindly let me repost his writings if I feel that they are of any value? They are more than that so I have reposted one of his pieces here, which will be in two parts, for the delectation of our readers.

Collective Madness

By Frank Davis

Part 1

I think that I've changed my mind about more things over the past couple of years than I did over the previous 20 years. And all because of the smoking ban. I'm beginning to think that there was the person that I used to be before the smoking ban, and the person I became after it.

Let's see. Before the ban I was a left-leaning liberal, and a Lib Dem voter. And I vaguely looked upon Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and the green movement and environmentalism in a friendly, approving sort of way. And although I didn't do it myself, I really wasn't bothered if friends of mine stopped smoking, and started eating organic vegetarian food and going to yoga classes and Buddhist retreats. I was tolerant to the point of super-tolerance. Lesbians, are you? Pleased to meet you.

That's all over now. It all ended around about 1 July 2007. After nearly all the Lib Dem MPs voted for a complete smoking ban, and I realised that they weren't really liberals at all, I could never vote for them again. I was quite astonished at the way my esteem for them simply fell through the floor. I feel rather ill when I see Nick Clegg these days.

But I've also changed my mind about Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and the green movement and environmentalism and organic food and yoga and Buddhism. I've shifted from being mildly approving or at least tolerant of them to detesting the whole damn lot of them. That's harder to explain. I think that a large part of it is that, now that smokers like me are no longer tolerated, I don't see why I should continue to be as tolerant as I used to be. You can only tolerate other people, I've learned, if you are yourself tolerated. It's a bit like buying rounds in a pub: people will only buy you rounds if you buy them rounds. It's a two-way thing. And once one partner pulls out of the tacit deal, the other one pulls out too.

And, when it all comes down to dust, I've never had any time at all for organic food or vegetarianism or yoga or Feng Shui or Buddhism or the latest health scare. Maybe there's something in Buddhism, but the rest of it is all baloney. It's all irrational nonsense from start to finish. And so is Gaia-worshipping, human-hating, tree-hugging, global-warming environmentalism. And the man-hating wimmin's movement. And astrology and homeopathy and crystals and Glastonbury and ley lines and Arthurian legends and UFOs and crop circles. I heard today that Andy Williams is going to top the bill at Glastonbury next year, and felt like writing to him to say: "Don't go!"

Now when I see people eating vegetarian food I see people who will, when there are enough of them, one day ban the consumption of meat in restaurants, and the next day ban it in people's own homes. They'll be the kind of people who want to be able to go into any restaurant anywhere in the world and not have to put up with the stench of roast beef and fried bacon. And they'll justify it on spurious health grounds which will barely conceal their real motivation. And they'll do it without a second thought. And without the slightest trace of compunction.

And, apart from the fact that they both voted for the smoking ban, one of the reasons I don't like Kerry McCarthy and Paul Flynn is because he's a druid and she's a vegan. And that means that they're both profoundly irrational people, who also happen to be MPs, unfortunately. They may as well be worshippers of Cybele or Osiris or some alien American god.

A few months ago I met up with one of my profoundly irrational vegan-type friends, and she started to tell me how she'd begun to think that Neil Armstrong had never actually walked on the moon, and it had all been shot on a movie set somewhere. And I was silently screaming Please Stop, I Don't Want to Hear. Nor do I want to hear any more 9/11 conspiracy theories. Or about the mystery shooter on the Grassy Knoll in Dealey Plaza. I'm tired of conspiracy theories. They're all profoundly irrational. They're all deeply insane.

I've actually been swimming steadily away from irrationality for a long time. Sometime back in the 1970s I got sick of New Age mysticism, and started to re-acquaint myself with physics and mathematics and cold reason. For the 1960s was a revolt against reason.  People get sick of cold disenchanted reason after a while. And the 1950s was a dull, disenchanted, measured, rational time. And there was nothing rational about the sex and drugs and rock'n'roll that followed. It's most enchanting. But I fairly rapidly got sick of the syrupy, foggy, idealistic mysticism that came with it. The multitudinous Indian gurus. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius. The weird little twisted cults that sprung up like weeds. L Ron Hubbard's dianetics. The Rev Jim Jones in Jonestown.

Back the 1960s, the mysticism was contained within a largely rational, liberal, secular society which had exorcised most of its demons. But these days, 40 years later, that mysticism has grown and burst the vessel that contained it, and has infected everything with its brand of magical thinking. We live in a new age of unreason, and all the bad news these days is about the advance of irrationality, as one mad law or other is enacted, or some new insult to reason articulated. In some ways, when Tony Blair became a Roman Catholic, it marked a point where mysticism and credulity and superstition captured the highest office in the land. Antismoking is a religion. Global warming is a religion. Europe is a religion.

It's said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. And I got mugged. The smoking ban was a mugging that stripped me of an ancient freedom, the freedom to sit in a pub with my friends, and drink beer and smoke cigarettes. And it was my own government that mugged me, not some footpad on a dark road. Which makes it all the worse. Have I become a conservative? I have no idea.

It'll all swing back the other way one day. People will get as sick of mysticism as they once got sick of cold reason. When reason becomes intolerable, people turn towards madness. But sooner or later madness in turn becomes intolerable, and people turn back to reason. It's probably a regular 100-year cycle that swings from collective rationality to collective madness, and back again. And we're now somewhere near the height of collective madness, as windmills march across the land, and people sniff for tobacco smoke and carbon dioxide, and adults can't be left alone with children.

Jane DeVille-Almond: Health professional?!? Revisited.

As the original video by HairyChestnuts was taken of Youtube at the insistance of the health psychopath er, profesional concerned I thought it was timely to bring it back.

The Nutty Professor-Saint or Oracle?

Once again the humble smoker is accused of infanticide due to their insistance on lighting up in front of the kiddies, this time it's in your pride and joy, your car.

The President, of the Royal College of Paediatrics, Professor Terence Stephenson is widely reported on the BBC as saying:

Why on earth would you light up in your car whilst your children are sitting quite happily in the back?

On the assumption that you wouldn't pass the packet round and invite the kids to light up, why make them breathe tobacco smoke at all?

Well you wouldn't, would you? Instead make them sit in a tin box, with windows closed, and inhale that lovely coctail while you do the school run.

Diesel exhaust is more carcinogenic than cigarette smoke, but isn't regulated like smoking. Rather, our tax system encourages more diesel use in our cities. So where's the 'Quit' campaign against dirty diesel?

Of course you wont hear the good professor losing sleep over this, nor ASH et al:

Health effects of diesel exhaust

* Coughs and phlegm
* Lightheadedness, nausea
* Increased susceptibility to allergens like dust or pollen
* Irritation of eyes, nose, throat and lungs
* Inflammation of lungs, and increased asthma attacks
* Respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
* Lowered resistance to respiratory infection
* Macrophages overwhelmed by particles result in immune reactions that cause inflammation and 'sticky' blood, increasing risk of clots and both heart and lung disease
* Mutations in chromosomes and damage to DNA
* For people exposed chronically to 1µg/m3 of diesel exhaust, a rate of lung cancer in the range of 34 to 650 people per million
* Possible cause of multiple chemical sensitisation, leading to changes in red and white blood cells, bleeding, liver damage, and degeneration of the nervous system.

There are two things about diesel exhaust that affect our health: one is the particles and their size; the other is what the particles are made of. Particles are made whenever something is burned – whether wood, petrol, tobacco, gas or diesel. Diesel is popular for fuel economy, but the size, number and composition of the particles in its exhaust make it more toxic than other fuels.

Burning diesel creates fine particles of oily carbon, ash, sulphates, and sulphuric acid that are ejected out the exhaust pipe and into the air. Diesel exhaust is thickest when the engine is old, working hard, or badly tuned, and the fuel has impurities.

While only 10 per cent of cars and trucks run on diesel, they're responsible for around 80 per cent of fine particles from vehicles. Along with road grit, bits of brake lining, tyre rubber, and exhaust from other fuels, they form mostly invisible dust storms in the concrete canyons and suburban savannas of our cities.

The high hazard zone for health is considered to be 150 metres either side of busy roads – particularly within 50 metres. Depending on the number of vehicles trailing plumes of particles in their wake, levels here can be two, three, up to 10 times higher than the usual city background – which is already unhealthily high.

As particle concentrations in the air rise, so do death rates, from a variety of causes. And the impacts add up over a lifetime. At greatest risk are children, with their developing lungs; the elderly, on top of a lifetime of exposure; and people with emphysema, asthma, and chronic heart and lung disease.

Now hear the man say his piece, for the sake of the kiddies of course.

Click To Play

Just a thought, could the fact that the good professor has just been appointed the new head of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health have something to do with his machinations, well...a professor has to get his name up in lights somehow and smoking + children is a guaranteed light flicker to Joe Public, or am I just being a cynical old codger?

Update: Kids ‘at higher risk from traffic pollution particles than previously thought’ TBY

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.

FOOTBALL IS BIG PHARMA THE REFEREE B7

A few weeks ago Chelsea fans were left scratching their heads after their team were robbed of a place in the Champions league final, by the Norwegian referee Tom Henning Ovrebo.

The old Shed enders were aggrieved, shouting, swearing but in the face of adversity failed to even spark up a Mayfair light or even a pre rolled old Holborn, the invisible referee was at work.

Referee Tom Ovrebo had denied them victory but who were the invisible referees who had red carded their smoking pleasure, a few clues to start from the football league.

• 
  Walsall FC stand is sponsored by NHS Txt 6446 are they going to let you smoke and upset their sponsors, like f*u* are they.


• 
  Oh and NHS Walsall sponsor Walsall shirts are they going to let you smoke and upset their sponsors, bo*lo*ks are they.


• 
  Preston North End has a stand two-thirds of the stand’s interior is for the use by Preston NHS PCT, are they going to let you smoke and upset the PCT my a*s* will they.

Before reading on lets remind ourselves the stands at the vast majority of Stadiums are not 50 % enclosed and therefore smoking is perfectly within the law, so there are other forces are at work.

• 
  Quite interestingly the Chairman of the football Leagues working party, Tim Davies of Leicester City seems to be lacking in mathematical skills.Out of a survey of 43,000 football league fans only 50% wanted a total outright ban , yet Tim Davies proudly announced that fans around the country were clearly in favour of going smoke free, since when was 50% a clear mandate for any policy.
  
• 
  And interestingly nearly 80% of smoking and non smoking fans in the survey were quite happy with some form of smoke free policy ie separate smoking and non smoking areas or a compromise.

You are probably following the plot, you pay your NI contributions, the government gives it to the NHS, they spend your money on football related projects, football clubs do not want to upset their NHS backers so a*se holes to you. No smoking they have delivered a yellow card.

You have waited patiently who is chief referee delivering the red card in the football league its none other than Nicotinell who are official Nicotine replacement Therapy of the football league.

It gives a whole new meaning to playing on your own patch so go support your local non league team.

And now for something completely different-Paul Kearns

Paul is just one of many talented people who have joined Freedom To Choose, musicians, writers, poets and plebs like myself, so lets hear it for Paul!

If all else fails, ignore

I don't know much about epidemics of swine flu in Scotland, a few cases of an over-inflated scare story, which doesn't appear more dangerous than the flu we already have, isn't too inspiring to be honest.

There does seem to be an alarming epidemic of righteous fuckwititus north of the border though.

Scotland is first with many of the loony initiatives which gravitate south, and it seems there is no let up as the term 'public service' up there is fast proving to be an oxymoron.

The method usually works. Create a scare not backed by any science; issue a 'public' consultation which is hidden from the public; if those who do disagree find it, airbrush out their responses; if caught out, lie.

NHS Grampian must have done something drastically wrong then. Their consultation on banning smoking in all NHS grounds came up with entirely the wrong conclusion, as detailed in their report. Here are a few snippets.

Nearly 500 responses were received during the consultation period, with just over half from staff and nearly three quarters of respondents stating they were non-smokers.

87% of respondents thought there would be problems going completely smoke free. The most commonly cited were:

- Smoking going “underground” leading to a fire risk
- Non-compliance with the ban
- Infringement of human rights/ personal choice
- Rise in aggression, abuse and increase in levels of stress
- Difficulties in enforcing and policing the ban

The most frequently suggested way to deal with potential problems of implementation was to have a designated area for smoking away from hospital entrances.

Well, that seems eminently fair, does it not?

Agreement with the plan was 46%, so there is considerable doubt as to its wisdom. Maybe a middle ground could be trodden?

Or maybe not.

Smoking to be banned at hospitals

NHS Grampian decision comes despite opposition claims that rule will be difficult to enforce

NHS Grampian’s director of public health Dr Lesley Wilkie said: “I am totally in favour of a smoke-free NHS. We should show some leadership on this.

“We want to introduce policies that work and we will look at how to make this work, but we are a health organisation and we need to set an example.”

Leadership? The scottish government has shown leadership and there ain't nothing about smoking in the open air in the already ridiculous Health Bill of 2005. Grampian's 'ban' is entirely unenforceable, as their report acknowledges. As for setting an example - such incredible arrogance by Grampian. They are public servants, no more. Paid for by the public. The public have said no.

Grampian NHS have spent bucketloads of cash on this unenforceable 'ban' (so therefore voluntary) on the whims of Dr Wilkie and a few of his holier-than-thou friends. When the responses, three quarters of which are from non-smokers, show dissent, this public sector organisation simply ignore the public ...

... and the unions too!

[Unison] warned: “It is unrealistic to expect fair and consistent enforcement of a more stringent restriction.”

Taxpayers pay for the wages of these self-important, idealistic, delusional fucknuts, but Grampian NHS have, as is increasingly apparent in the oxymoronic 'public' sector, brushed aside the views of those who pay for their service in favour of their own bigoted and unworkable crusade.

Now, Derby NHS Trust are much more enlightened. They are acutely aware that they are accountable to the taxpayer. Same dreary result, though.

Smoking costs the NHS around £1.5billion a year. As a public service, funded entirely by the tax payer, we cannot condone smoking in our hospital grounds.

If the taxpayer also gives Derby a big thumbs down, do you think they will reconsider? We know the answer to that one, don't we?

So the last word must be left for the Grampian report.

A few respondents commented on the consultation itself, feeling that it was a “done deal” and NHS Grampian was conducting a “paper exercise”.

Now, considering no-one asked for this voluntary 'ban'. That a 'public' consultation provided ample evidence that the public were uneasy with it, that there was a consensus which agreed there were better alternatives, and that the proposals were unenforceable in law, yet they passed it anyway ... perhaps those who commented as such had a very valid point.

There is nothing public about the public sector when it comes to the NHS, merely a cabal who spend our money without recourse to listening to opposing views. And, with the health system currently operated by an authoritarian Department of Health, there are numerous ways for a few righteous morons to inflict their personal preferences on end users, whilst merely paying a passing lip service to public consultation. And if all those methods fail, they can simply stick their fingers in their ears and ignore ... as they tend to do.

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.