Life, the universe, and, err, smoking

Crikey! And you thought the UK anti-smoking lobby had some money to throw around. Check out this offering from les ranteurs hystériques de France.



One could never accuse them of over-exaggeration, eh?

That great big thing with tusks and a trunk which mustn't be discussed

Mythical myth-busting (aka ASH bullshit):

Myth: House fires will increase as people will stay at home to smoke

Preceding the smoking ban, claims were made that the legislation was going to cause people to stay at home and smoke instead of going out to a pub or club and this would result in a greater number of house fires.

Reality: There have not been any reports to suggest that smoking related fires have increased. Further evidence that like-for-like sales in pubs have not been affected suggests that smokers have continued to visit pubs.

Source of the claim: Direct line

Reality:

"The number of people killed in house fires caused by smokers has risen dramatically since smoking was banned in public places.

The grim rise bears out fears that more people are now drinking at home due to the smoking ban implemented in March 2006 and recent moves to end cheap alcohol offers in pubs and bars. The ban was hailed as a step forward for health but at the time critics warned it would lead to an increase in house fires as well as costing jobs and infringing human rights."

Scottish Mail, September 2009

Great big pachyderm tramping around the room:

Scots are twice as likely to die in a fire than people elsewhere in the UK thanks to their fatty diet and higher rates of smoking and excessive drinking, a new report has found.

Scottish ministers ordered the investigation following a 62 per cent rise in the number of people killed in fires north of the Border between 2006-07 and 2007-08.

The study made 37 recommendations to reduce the number of deaths, including each blaze being investigated by the authorities in the same way as drugs fatalities.

Surely you can guess which recommendation didn't rear it's inconvenient head?

Go read the report yourself, all 67 pages of it, here [pdf]

All that guff, signed off by Brian Sweeney, chief officer of Strathclyde Fire and Rescue, and not even a passing mention of the smoking ban. Plenty of proposals for further restrictions on legal practices, though.

Mind the elephant on your way out, Brian.

Incredibly biased authoritarian twat honoured

Oh look. An Australian anti-smoking obsessive has won an award.

An international award has been given to the University of Adelaide's Professor Konrad Jamrozik, who has spent the past 30 years campaigning against smoking and helping smokers to kick the habit.

He's quite a guy, this Jamrozik.

Since the mid 1980s, Professor Jamrozik has combined his academic and clinical work with his passion for tobacco control as a "part-time activist but full-time advocate".

One would assume from this that if he were to conduct a 'scientific' study, it would only come to one conclusion. You would attach about as much significance to it as you would a study by British American Tobacco claiming that smoking turns you into Usain Bolt.

Wouldn't you?

Not so the BBC.

Passive smoking kills more than 11,000 a year in the UK - much higher than previously thought, a study shows.

Report author Konrad Jamrozik said: "It is clear that adoption of smoke free policies in all workplaces in the UK might prevent several hundred premature deaths each year."

Also, not so if you are nice-but-dim British MP.

His work on deaths attributable to passive smoking was cited at least nine times in the Westminster Parliamentary debate that led to the adoption of smoke-free legislation.

And was the study flawed, innumerate, and ... well, there's no nice way of putting it ... shit?

Of course it was. What else could one expect?

In other news, an Israeli has produced a study that 'proves' Palestinians are descended from the Devil, and Pepsi have conclusive evidence that Coca Cola is the prime cause of dementia.

Yeah, I reckon the Beeb will swallow that too, and MPs will scuttle around passing retarded legislation on the back of it.

What a ridiculous country we live in.

Are transplant doctors blind?

What sort of blithering idiot are we paying to perform transplant operations in our country?

An Iraq war veteran died after a hospital transplant gave him a pair of cancerous lungs donated by a smoker.

Matthew Millington, 31, a corporal in the Queen's Royal Lancers, had the operation to save him from an incurable lung condition.

But the donated organs - from someone who smoked 30 to 50 roll-up cigarettes a day - gave him cancer.

Ths surgeon who performed the operation should be sacked with immediate effect! After all, EVERYONE knows that cancerous smoker lungs are pitted, dry and black. This is what they look like.


How on earth was this not spotted prior to the operation?

Or could it be that the picture you see on fag packets is a weapons grade lie?

I think we now know the definitive answer, don't we?

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.

Official: Nurses are allowed to advocate death for smokers

The verdict is in.

Health professionals calling for smokers to die is perfectly acceptable.

In June, Jane DeVille-Almond, a nurse consultant to the NHS, said this on BBC radio.



After hearing such staggering lack of care for humanity from a nurse, a non-smoking but suitably shocked phone-in participant from Southend immediately reacted by asserting, quite correctly, "You should be struck off!"

Not surprising, then, that her sick proposal attracted complaints to the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

According to the NMC's code of conduct, all registered nurses are advised:

•You must treat people as individuals and respect their dignity
•You must not discriminate in any way against those in your care
•You must treat people kindly and considerately

One would assume that calling for smokers to be allowed to die contravenes all three of the above guidelines.

There is no dignity in being allowed to die by a prejudiced health professional. There is nothing kind and considerate in broadcasting to the nation, on a major radio channel, that smokers should be left to die because one disagrees with their personal choices.

And Jane DeVille-Almond, without shadow of a doubt, was actively encouraging discrimination towards her smoking employers (unless she declines smoker money, which of course she wouldn't).

However, the case was heard on Friday and promptly dismissed.

The investigating committee panel has considered this referral and has decided there is no case to answer.

The panel’s reasons for this decision are:

The panel considered all the information before it and concluded that there was no information which would lead it to believe that there was a real prospect of a
finding of current impairment of fitness to practise by a Conduct and Competence Committee.

So there you have it. Hatred of smokers is perfectly acceptable in the nursing community. You can even broadcast that hate to the nation and promote the death of those whom you deem less worthy than you.

Best not tell them then. You can never know what these disgusting people will be sharpening behind your back.

Scared yet?

Minette Marrin: Strange deluded person

Some may have noticed that this blog was recently voted 14th in the top libertarian blogs category at Total Politics. Very proud we are too.

However, it would seem that we must be misunderstanding the term 'libertarian' if Times columnist Minette Marrin is to be believed.

In a Radio 4 debate today, Minette professed herself to be a right raving libertarian. So much so that she considers John Stuart Mill her 'hero'.

Such a committed libertarian is she, that she advocated the following:

- Forcing people to pay for their healthcare if they indulge in unhealthy lifestyles
- Forcing supermarkets to change the layout of their shops
- Using compulsion instead of information as the Change4Life campaign is not working
- Implementing a sugar tax to stop people eating foods they would like to
- Harassing flat-dwellers into not smoking in their own homes
- Banning people from eating food in the street

This in less than an hour, amongst a panel of two other experts, interspersed with phone-in contributors, news updates and trails for future programming.

And to top off a world class performance of exactly why she is anything but a libertarian, she finished with this exceptionally laughable denouement.

"I understand that people don't like compulsion, nor do I"

Really, Minette? You could have fooled us. I think that instead of 'libertarian', the description you were looking for is 'authoritarian' or perhaps even 'totalitarian'.

It's obviously an easy mistake to make. Just ask Alan "We need more nannying" Maryon-Davies, another who professes to be libertarian.

We at Freedom2Choose are well aware of what libertarianism means. We advocate it on a daily basis. It's why we gained that pretty badge on this page after only a few months of operation. We, strangely enough, believe in the right of the individual to choose how they wish to live their life.

That's what libertarianism is, and why you, Minette, have no bloody clue.

How very dare they?

Where does one start with this crap from the Sunday Sun? Might as well have a look at the beginning and see how it goes from there.

'Devious' tobacco bosses slammed

TOBACCO bosses have been slammed for “marketing death” by using beautiful young women dressed in orange satin jump suits to sell their product in busy bars.

Young women, carrying trays reminiscent of those used by ice cream vendors at cinemas, have been going into pubs selling cigarettes.

The pubs involved, which include the Centurion bar in Newcastle city centre, allow the girls into the bar in return for a small amount in commission for each packet sold.

One can only assume that the deviousness referred to is that of selling a legal product, to those who are legally permitted to buy it, on premises where the legal owner has given his/her assent.

How very dare they?

There's not really much to object to, but I'm sure some righteous bint will be along soon to tell us exactly what to think (it's not like we're allowed to make decisions for ourselves or anything like that).

Lo and behold.

The sales tactic was blasted by Ailsa Rutter, Director of Fresh – the campaign for a smoke-free North East.

She said: “What this is doing is glamorising the most lethal consumer product known.

“The last thing we need is the blatant promotion of cigarettes, which are the region’s biggest killer.

“There needs to be more regulation of an industry which is basically marketing death.”

There is so much wrong with this (apart from yankee spelling from the journo) that it is laughable.

More regulation? Listen, dearie, if your lot hadn't legislated a legal business out of every other avenue of promotion, this wouldn't be happening. If you need someone to shoot, try turning the holier-than-thou gun on yourself, eh?

And as for the 'last thing that we need'? When you use the first person plural, please don't include me, or any of the other 11 million smokers, in your definition of 'we'.

Ms Rutter said: “This is another example of why we’ve still got a huge amount of work to do."

No, Ailsa, this is another example of why people like you should be strangled at birth. Just shut the fuck up.

“I’m not having a go at the girls at all, they are just doing their job, but the companies need to be regulated"

Oh. How incredibly generous of you, your tediousness. Let's turn that one on its head, shall we? I'm not having a go at you for being an interfering fucknut, as you are just doing your job, but those who employ you, and those who pay for 'services' such as yours, should be taken somewhere dark and quiet and given a kicking of biblical proportions. Seeing as we are all equal under the law, I'm sure you will concede that my opinion is as valid as yours, yes?

“I would argue that there needs to be a proper licensing system. We need to be limiting the number of outlets that can sell this product and we’re calling on the Government to do everything in its power to tackle this."

There is that 'we' again. 'We' need to do nothing of the sort.

That aside, you're calling on the government (no capitalising from me when it isn't deserved) to do so, are you? Well, that would be quite simple seeing as you are entirely paid for by them. I believe it is called 'Astroturfing', a term you like to apply to groups such as Freedom2Choose who receive no backing whatsoever, whilst simultaneously benefitting from exactly such patronage yourself. A bit ... err ... devious, wouldn't you say?

Can we take it from this, then, that banning legal companies legally selling their legal product to legally entitled customers on legal premises, will be on the agenda of the next 'smokefree everywhere' wankfest?

Considering we will never get any semblance of common sense from any smokefree dirtbag, it is probably best that we finish with incontestable logic from the tobacco industry instead.

A spokesman for Japan Tobacco International, the parent company for Benson and Hedges, said: “It’s not illegal to sell tobacco products. You have to be over 18 to buy tobacco and that’s why they were visiting an over-18 venue.

“All of our staff are fully trained on challenging for ID - we have a policy of no ID, no sale.”

Not much to argue against there really. Might I also add that Japan Tobacco generate their funds from willing purchasers, instead of leeching off enforced and unpopular taxation, like certain bigoted, state-sponsored prodnoses I could mention?

Deluded fuckwit of the century

I know it's only 2009 and we have 90+ years to go before we call time on the 21st century, but can anyone truly envisage anything more delusional being spouted in the next nine decades than this?

The CIEH has refuted claims by a new campaign that smoke-free laws have caused pub closures across the country.

But CIEH policy officer Ian Gray said there was insufficient evidence to back these claims. He said: ‘In advance of the introduction of smoke-free laws around the world the tobacco industry and its surrogates has generated a myth that smoke-free laws result in closures and a reduction in trade. There is no independent evidence of this actually happening anywhere in the world.'

Dictated from his padded cell.