TICAP AND THE BRUSSELS DECLARATION ON SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY

TICAP (The International Coalition Against Prohibition) came into fruition in May 2008. TICAP was founded with the British Smoking Ban Experiment in mind, but not exclusively, because the founding members saw the writing on the wall, they knew this did not exclusively include smokers, they knew that drinkers, and those that do not fit into the BMI factor, would be on a “hit list.”  of the “I hate you” brigade.  They knew that this was an international war!

About TICAP

We are regional, national, and international organisations, now bound in solidarity against the damaging prohibitions which in most cases serve to enrich special interests through scientific fraud and political manipulation*, where adults are treated as children and freedom of choice is brushed aside.
Following the planning conference in Holland of May 2008 that produced the Aldebaran  (Aldebaran is the boat where they signed the treaty) Treaty, we now have the vehicle with which to cooperate, nation with nation, group with group, and people to people, united and yet different, against a philosophy that sees the state as the dispenser of rights and social discrimination and the citizen as merely an obedient production unit.
Such a conception of state and citizens diminishes us all, and TICAP will fight for a free and just society where individually established quality of life -­ not collectively established quantity of life -­ is the paramount value of that society. Where the individual - ­ not the bureaucrat -­ establishes the rules of personal behaviour and where the parent -­ not the state or the school - has the power to teach our children the ideals and values that will shape their dreams and futures.

(The signatories to the The Aldebaran Treaty. The only people I can recognise, because I’ve met them, are, left to right: John Gray (standing) Bill Gibson (sitting and waving) behind him Nick Hogan,  and wearing the glasses is the Chairman of Freedom2Choose, Andy Davis)

TICAP held their first world conference in May 2008 which was due to be held in the European Parliament Building but the Anti Tobacco thugs, who did not want to hear from dissenting scientific voices (where have I heard this recently?), and banned the conference from going ahead a few days before it was due to start. That did not stop freedom of speech, a nearby hotel was only too willing to have us there. So much so that [the conference] was a roaring success!  TICAP cannot be stopped, it would appear, as they have just announced there second world conference on the 15th of March 2o10, all are welcome.

* Talking about “scientific fraud and political manipulation” here is something that I, as an ordinary person on the street, who took scientists at their word, say… no more, especially after the Climategate fiasco, where the scientific community have come into disrepute!  And they are in  disrepute, there is no argument about that.
Even that bastion of political integrity, the BBC? in their news programs, they, have belatedly decided to listen to the public about Climategate, first reported on the blogosphere, and had to listen to the public in the end.  But they [the BBC]  still cow towed to their paymasters…no, not us, the licence payers, the goberment! What’s new then?
Well there’s TICAP, who not only moved on to the next World Conference but have made The Brussels Declaration !

THE BRUSSELS DECLARATION
ON SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY

In the global crusade against alcohol, tobacco, and “unhealthy” foods, health politicians have drawn on alleged scientific evidence that does not adequately meet minimal scientific standards. The following Declaration reminds us of these
standards. The Declaration also calls upon politicians to avoid abusing questionable statements by selected and sometimes quite biased “experts” in order to deprive people of their free lifestyle choices. A prohibitionist society cannot be a free society!

Whereas science and the scientific method have been responsible for the unprecedented progress of knowledge about the physical world during the last few centuries, and for the consequent unabated progress in the material, intellectual, and
social conditions of humankind.

Whereas objective evidence is the key for the success of science and the scientific method, and whereas this paramount feature of science imposes a new ethical standard of objective evidence in the assessment and presentation of material evidence in social human affairs.

Whereas in free societies the policies and regulations pertaining to physical realities must be objectively validated according to the requirements of the scientific method.

Whereas conjectural statements wrongly claimed to be based on objective and validated scientific evidence are increasingly made to encroach on public opinion, government policies and regulations, legal proceedings, educational curricula, and
individual choices and behaviors.

Whereas this trend gravely compromises the integrity of science, and is the harbinger of dire consequences for the intellectual progress, the material welfare, and ultimately for the individual freedom and the physical and mental health of people on this planet.

It is thus resolved that we, the signatories of this declaration, pledge ourselves to defend and promote the objective scientific integrity of public statements presented as being scientific representations of events in the physical world, and that affect
government policies and actions, the media and public opinion, legal proceedings, educational curricula, and other activities of individual and social significance.

To this end we, the signatories of this declaration, highlight here certain fundamental concepts that characterize the nature and the integrity of science and of the scientific method, which we hold to be true and self-evident principles for the identification of authentic, objective, testable, and valid scientific statements.

Principles of scientific integrity

1. 
   Science and the scientific method move from observations to the formulation of cause-and-effect hypotheses, leading to study designs that objectively and honestly test the validity of those hypotheses.
2. 
   Science and the scientific method rely on the language of numbers and mathematics in order to attain the needed quantitative precision.
3. 
   Science and the scientific method do not claim to obtain absolute truths, but rather best estimates within the probability limits of explicit margins of error.
   
4. The quantitative precision of science and the scientific method depends on measurements that are accurate and precise with margins of error small enough to be inconsequential.
5. 
   Science and the scientific method depend on measurements that are relevant to the task at hand, and that warrant to be authentic representations of what it is said to have been measured.
6. Scientific observations and experiments must ensure that observations and effects are specific and internal to the matters at hand, and are not confounded, corrupted, or biased by spurious externalities or by financial and political interests.
7. 
   Valid observations and cause-and-effect conclusions must be reproducible by independent investigators.
   
8. Studies should be properly published and open to peer and public scrutiny before their results are released to the press for political purposes.

We, the signatories of this declaration and its annexes pledge ourselves to publicize detailed examination of the scientific validity of public policies and statements, to suggest remedies compatible with valid science where possible and appropriate, and to act politically to ensure that only scientifically validated
statements and policies are promulgated by governments and other public institutions.
Your rights, your constitutions, your very lives are being played around with and taken off you without you realising it and what for?…The better good???  Think again, think TICAP!
Intel: http://brusselsdeclaration.org/pages/press/ http://brusselsdeclaration.org/pages/home/ and http://brusselsdeclaration.org/pages/home/
Declare yourselves here: http://brusselsdeclaration.org/declaration/sign/

E-Petitions...and what they produce!

Reproduced with the kind permission of Dick Puddlecote

State Denialists

As quite stunning lies go, this nugget from the response to a Number 10 e-petition suggesting the provision of separate smoking rooms in pubs and clubs takes some beating.

Survey data, anecdotal evidence and reports in the media seem to indicate that the impact on the hospitality trade as a whole has been at worst neutral and in many cases positive. We have seen no significant evidence to date that implies that smokefree legislation, either in this country or in others where it has been in place for some years, will create any long-term economic problems for pubs or the hospitality trade in general.
(I have used green as I am truly jealous of their ability for producing outright lies!)
I just add here that this is exactly the same tripe that was spouted pre-ban, even though 2 countries (Ireland & Scotland) had already been slaughtered!

Yep. Nothing but positive news from the hospitality industry since July 2007, eh?

And, of course, according to Number 10, the disaster for pubs, which kicked in well before the economy imploded, has certainly not escalated since.

UK pubs closed at a rate of 52 per week in the first half of the year - a third more than the same period in 2008 - the British Beer & Pub Association said.Yet while all but the most bigoted anti-smokers within the industry admit that the smoking ban has had a deletorious effect, the Department of Health are still rigidly clinging on to a hearts and flowers view.
Try not to laugh as I repeat this bit.

"... the impact on the hospitality trade as a whole has been at worst neutral and in many cases positive." (oops! green again)

Now, it was always clear that such a petition would be ignored, despite the fact that the provision of smoking rooms could do nothing but improve the chances of pubs staying open. Moreover, there would be no effect on the health of non-smokers as they would have no need to be in the vicinity of smoking should they choose not to be. It is a 100% win/win.

But a little more honesty in the reply would be desirable (not to mention actually tackling the meat of the petition rather than merely responding to the first sentence).

Why not instead say, truthfully, that the EU & WHO are committed to blanket bans and it is out of Westminster's hands? I dunno, perhaps it's an idealistic view, but isn't the point of a democracy the fact that the electorate should be given straight and honest answers by their representatives and assistants? Or are bare-faced, transparent lies the order of the 21st century?
Actually, don't answer that.

Money & Power =Misery-for us!

A quick note to let you all know about the "Obama Deception". My son found this on U-Tube and although lengthy you seriously need to listen to every single word.

This is so horrific that I now truly fear for my childrens futures-and if they are daft enough to produce their own there is no hope for them!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw

Permission to Speak and The Relevance Paradox

Once again I am drawn to the writings of Frank Davis and once again I feel compelled to share his words with our readership.

The piece below reaches out to me on so many levels.

Permission to Speak

By Frank Davis

A day or so back Tom Harris quoted from a Labour List piece by Michael Merrick - Culture clash: how Labour can look to reconnect with the poor -, wondering why people were deserting Labour and what could be done to get them back.

Often, the response is that the party needs to reconnect with its core vote, that it needs to reach out to those who feel abandoned. I absolutely agree. The problem is that any return to the 'core vote' is only ever conceived in economic terms. Whilst there is undoubtedly value in this strategy, it can only ever have limited impact, because it only ever addresses a limited part of the problem. The truth is that for those who feel alienated, pushed to the outside of public life, the dispossession is cultural every bit as much as it is economic...

Whole communities feel dispossessed, trapped in a country that is changing at a rapid pace - a transformation that affects the poorest communities more than anyone else, but over which they feel they have had less of a say than anybody else.

Further on Merrick writes about New Labour's new ideology:

the disillusionment of the electorate is at least partly down to the fact the Labour Party has embraced an ideology that actively undermines the beliefs and culture of ordinary working people...
the general beliefs of vast swathes of the electorate are demonised and ridiculed by an elite interested only in securing the dominance of their own particular worldview

He identifies the problem as a clash of cultures:

[This] does little but demonstrate with crystal clarity precisely what it is people are angry about - 'these are our concerns, but none of you will listen'. And of course they won't. Because at root this is a clash of cultures.
...the Labour Party has chosen to sacrifice its traditional roots in defence of a shiny new social creed it likes to call 'liberalism'. Truth is, the cultural underpinnings of this creed, originating in the post-1968 student 'resistance' movements, are thoroughly middle-class, individualistic and bourgeois...

So there all these ordinary working people who feel culturally dispossessed, and nobody in the Labour party will listen to them. It's not just about immigration that they're not listened to, but also school/parental discipline, capital punishment, patriotism, euro-scepticism, and morality. And the reason that nobody will listen to them is because the Labour party has abandoned its traditional roots for a liberal (that'll be 'liberal' in the American sense, and not in the least bit 'liberal' in the traditional English sense) ideology which grew up in the aftermath of the 1960s.

 
I won't disagree with a word of that. I think it's almost exactly right. The Labour party has been taken over by latte Guardianistas and champagne socialists who have little or nothing - and want little or nothing - to do with the working men having a beer inside (and a cigarette outside) a traditional English pub, and who voted Labour into office 12 years ago. A cultural war has been launched by the New Labour establishment upon the Old Labour voters they're supposed to represent.

But as I read the piece, it was the smoking ban that came sharply to mind. For what better exemplifies that cultural war than the smoking ban? The smoking ban has been the very spearhead of that cultural war. Yet it wasn't mentioned at all by Merrick. But then, the smoking ban is never mentioned anywhere ever. Immigration? That's a genuine, valid issue. The EU? That's another one. Schools? Another biggie. The health service? Certainly. But the smoking ban? Ha, ha. You must be joking. You cannot be serious. The smoking ban is trivial by comparison with the weighty issues of immigration, the EU, housing, education, healthcare, and so on.

 
But is it?

I'm single, childless, in good health, not quite penniless, and I live out in the Devon countryside. So my interest in schools and education is approximately zero. And my interest in hospitals and healthcare not much greater. And my concern with immigration is nearly zilch. And my interest in the EU is pretty minimal as well (yesterday excepted). None of these things have much of a real, tangible impact upon me. My interest in them is abstract. In order to think about them I have to ask myself: What if I had children? What if I was unwell? What if I lived in Bradford? What if the EU did this or that?

 
But the smoking ban has had a colossal impact on me. It's estranged me from my local pub and its little community. It's taken away a sense of belonging. It's made me feel like a stranger in my own country. It's made everyday life extraordinarily uncomfortable, as I look for places where I might enjoy a smoke. It's cut me off from friends who no longer go to the unwelcoming pubs. It's divided me from non-smoking friends in ways I never was before. It's bringing me a gradually deepening isolation and alienation. In my entire life I've never known anything so profoundly cruel and divisive - and so utterly unnecessary.

In my life, the EU doesn't matter much. Nor does education, healthcare, or immigration. In my life, the smoking ban matters more than all of them put together. What can the EU do to me? Take away my country and its traditions? The smoking ban already has already done that. What can immigration do to me? Fill up the country with aliens and strangers who usurp my place? The smoking ban has already done that too, as I sit outside banished from my pub. What does it matter to me what becomes of hospitals and healthcare? As a smoker I'm likely to be denied any access to them anyway. What concern should I have for education and morality, when schools are places where children are taught intolerance for smokers (and little else as far as I can see)?

The smoking ban gave me a whole set of problems where there weren't any problems before. And it hasn't even stopped me smoking, like it was supposed to. Nor even reduced it in the slightest. In fact it's made me determined to carry on smoking regardless. It's made me angry, and when I'm angry I smoke more, not less.

 
And the smoking ban has made me not only angry but also increasingly intolerant. Why should I continue to be tolerant now that I am no longer tolerated? Is intolerance a one-way street, so that only antismoking bigots are allowed to practise and promote intolerance, while smokers must suffer in silence? No, of course it isn't. The intolerance of antismokers for me results in my reciprocal intolerance for them. And official state-sponsored intolerance of smokers has made me intolerant of the state and of officialdom in all its forms. And particularly this parliament and the MPs that voted for the smoking ban that's made my life so hard for me. And the EU too, which just looks like another layer of crushing bureaucracy. In fact the smoking ban has made me more intolerant of absolutely everything. I don't have any genuine immigration problem in my life here in rural Devon, but I'm less tolerant of it anyway. And I'm markedly less tolerant of Islam, even if it's another personal non-problem. The health service and the medical profession? Don't talk to me about that crew of rabid antismokers, or I'll burst a blood vessel.

So if anyone came and asked me what I thought about immigration, Islam, the health service, the EU, the UK parliament, I'd come out with markedly more intolerant and hawkish views than I would have only 3 years ago, when I was a tolerant Lib-Demy sort of person. But it wouldn't be because I had a real problem with any of them, but because the smoking ban has made me into a generally far more intolerant person than I once was. But nobody will ask me what I feel about the smoking ban. People with clipboards will ask me my views on immigration, Islam, the EU, and all the rest of it, because those are regarded as genuine issues of concern. But the smoking ban is not regarded as something that merits equivalent attention. It's supposed to be just a successful public health measure, which everyone loves, particularly smokers.

And everyone knows that they're not supposed to mention the smoking ban. It's supposed to be a trivial non-issue. Not as important as real, bread-and-butter issues like immigration and the EU. People don't feel they're allowed to talk about the ban. Asking his constituents about immigration, Tom Harris reported that

...they’re talking about their concerns now because it’s only now they feel they have “permission” to do so.

Why do people feel they need, like Corporal Jones in Dad's Army, 'permission to speak'? Because everybody knows what they're supposed to think. They're told every day by the righteous on TV and radio and in newspapers. And while they don't have permission to speak freely, they'll just parrot what they've been told they should think, rather than what they actually think. And if they think that they now have permission to say what they feel about immigration, that's because a few politicians (mostly BNP) have been brave enough to drag it into the public arena of debate, and in so doing 'permitted' everyone else to speak their minds.

 
But nobody has permission to speak about the smoking ban. That remains a no-no. No politician has managed to haul that one into the public discourse as a serious issue in its own right. Any politician who tried would probably get howled down by irate health lobbyists and doctors, much like climate change sceptics today. And Michael Merrick didn't mention it either, although he must know about that particular elephant in the room.

 
And yet my own guess is that the smoking ban has had by far the greatest cultural impact upon Britain over the past 3 years than anything else. It's been during that time that UKIP and the BNP (both of which are against the smoking ban) have begun to make significant electoral progress. It's been during that time that the public esteem for MPs (who voted for the ban) has collapsed. And EU scepticism has continued to mount. And respect for authorities has plunged.

One day people will get 'permission to speak' about the smoking ban, and say what they really feel rather than what they're supposed to feel. And I bet there'll be an eruption of protest at it. All sorts of horror stories will be told. And I also bet that it will be found that, just like with me, anger at MPs' expenses and the EU and immigration and everything else will turn out very often to simply be 'impermissible' anger at the smoking ban redirected at 'permissible' targets. And maybe then politicians and pundits and media will finally wake up and realise what how enormously socially and culturally destructive the smoking ban has truly been.

The Relevance Paradox link provided by WS on the comments section at Franks place.

Blogger Tags: Frank Davis, Permission to Speak, Relevance-Paradox, Smoking, Bans, people, denormalisation, Politics of the anti-smoker