Wasting your money

Via Taking Liberties, the Taxpayers Alliance are highlighting the huge waste by the EU in a series of cinema adverts.



And what are they spending all this money on? Well, quite a lot of it goes towards stamping down hard on freedom of choice all over Europe.

The smoking ban in Greece is not effective, according to Greek officials, who said that they will launch a review of the law that was passed earlier this year, following complaints from non-smokers at home and pressure from the European Union.

The full article illustrates the dictatorial nature of the EU. The Greek people have delivered an overwhelming rejection of the EU-led anti-tobacco crusade, so the answer from Brussels is not to respect the will of the people ... but to crush it with all means at their disposal.

Remember that you pay for this.

What you didn't read about smoking stats yesterday

Yesterday's released statistics on current smoking trends were highly-trailed all day on Comrade Beeb media outlets, naturally, but one wonders why, when they were largely conspicuous only in illustrating the ineffectiveness of post-ban anti-tobacco hectoring.

The big revelation was that there are now a million less smokers since the smoking ban. Except that was apparent from last year's stats too. It was noted by an 'expert' on the BBC web-site, for example.

Dr Jennifer Mindell from the Faculty of Public Health said the drop in the numbers wanting to quit showed 2007 was "basically a blip".

"It's more or less what we would have expected. The smoking ban was a good trigger for some people but many people quickly realised they could carry on smoking."

Well of course people could carry on smoking. What else did she expect? Wasn't this ban not actually about making people stop smoking, but the health of the bar staff? Or were there incredible porkies flying around?

It would seem so, and the responses to the ONS survey show that, even with millions upon millions spent on convincing the public of the lie of second hand smoke, it is still not the preferred excuse for intolerant individuals to dislike the practice (click to enlarge).


Yep. The smell and the clothes having to be washed trump such concerns yet again.

Remember that the ban was brought in to protect bar workers? It was a workplace ban after all. Well, click here and you can search the PDF file yourself. I tried "bar staff" and "bar workers" but there were no matches. Likewise "pub staff" and "pub workers". So, dispensing with the description of the premises might have a chance, eh? Not so. There is no occurrence of the words 'staff' or 'workers' in the entire 127 page document.

Doesn't that appear strange?

Well, not really. We are all well aware that it was never about protecting bar staff, and this document merely emphasises that. The fact that no measure of bar workers' health since July 1st 2007 has been conducted, merely an exercise in extolling the virtue of the ban via quit figures, puts paid to the sham behind its introduction, whilst simultaneously proving the Department of Health as a bunch of liars.

This is what they said in December.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: 'Smokefree laws were introduced to protect employees and the public from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke. The legislation was never intended to be a measure to reduce smoking prevalence.'

In which case, why are you not measuring the effects on employees along with the prevalence of smokers? And why is this all over the BBC when the legislation was argued, in parliament, for one reason and one reason only?

MPs should hang their heads in shame at being conned so very comprehensively, but they won't. They could, however, partly right the wrong by lending their weight to a redress in the form of an amendment which would allow some form of choice for the 11 million smokers identified in the ONS document. Like this one, for example.


Mark Easton at the Beeb is one of the few who has interpreted these figures properly.

But the 11 million remaining are a steadfast band - banished from offices, pubs and restaurants, you will see them huddled in doorways, sheltering from wind and rain as they light up.

Within this al fresco routine, a camaraderie often develops; a spirit of solidarity and doggedness with undertones of rebellion. Loyalty grows, to each other and perhaps to the weed which unites them.

Today's attitudes survey from the Office for National Statistics finds that among Britain's smokers, there is a larger proportion who smoke heavily - up from 24% to 29%.

Steadfast band indeed. And government need to understand that they have well exceeded the limits of what is value for money spending under Pareto's principle.

In economics terms, there is diminishing marginal benefit. This is related to the law of diminishing returns: each additional hour of effort, each extra worker is adding less “oomph” to the final result. By the end, you are spending lots of time on the minor details.

Unfortunately, despite the conclusions of this study, no matter how clear it is that further expenditure is throwing good money after bad in a vain cause which is doing nothing but calcifying resistance, economics will be roundly ignored in favour of blind, wasteful idiocy by bansturbating morons.

Taxes are an ever-running tap to the unthinking public sector, and smoking is a never-ending avenue for wasteful spending however little the returns are proven to be.

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.

Taxpayers pay for the NHS, but administrators 'own' the premises

If you pay national insurance contributions, you might want to read the document below.

Blackpool NHS

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As you can see, Blackpool Fylde and Wyre NHS trust are well aware that banning smoking on their grounds is entirely unenforceable by law. They admit that smoking in the open air is legal and that there are no plans by government to change that.

Instead, they have taken to enforcing their own made-up laws on the basis that taxpayers are NOT entitled to set foot on property for which they have paid handsomely.

They threaten legal action if their self-important, righteous rules are contravened. And the reason that they feel this is justified should stagger anyone who has ever believed that the NHS are a service, that we are the ones who pay them for that service, and that therefore we should have some say in the matter.

This is because as the legal owner/occupier of the hospital site the Trust is allowed to impose conditions on the use of its premises.

The legal owners are not those who pay for it, according to the NHS.

They take our money, at pain of fines and imprisonment, and then say that those premises are not legally ours. Instead, an unelected body of administrators have installed themselves as legal 'owners' and are dictating what can or cannot be allowed on property which has been built, maintained, staffed, and equipped with our taxes.

They then go further and state that treatment will be withdrawn from those who disobey.

A patient who refuses to stop smoking outside can be advised that they could be asked to leave the hospital; this would be carried out in accordance with the Trust’s policy on withholding/withdrawing treatment from difficult patients.

See, you thought that by paying national insurance contributions, you were entitled to healthcare. After all, Gordon Brown is always saying that the NHS is free to everyone at the point of delivery.

But you were wrong, it seems. The premises your taxes pay for are not property of the taxpayer, and the treatment you have paid towards for all of your life can be withdrawn on the whim of NHS bureaucrats, without any law saying that what you were doing is illegal.

This is just one of the many ridiculous, wriggling replies that NHS trusts up and down the country have been coming out with to justify making illegal what is perfectly legal under law laid down by government.

It was always assumed that by paying NI contributions (along with those paid by your employer), you were entitled to avail yourself of free healthcare when you need it. Not so. According to this document, your local NHS trust can wipe out your years of contributions and the entitlement which that should entail, for whatever reason they deem fit.

No-one voted these people in, yet they are making up laws that go beyond the ones from parliament. We pay their wages yet they ignore us when we don't like what they are doing. We pay for treatment yet they, unelected, have decreed themselves able to deny us what we have paid for. They revel in spreading vile hatred on national radio too.



If you ever thought that you, the taxpayer, had rights in this country. Think again.