Tea and Cigarettes

CARTER WHIP ROUND UPDATE

2012-01-26T22:29:00.001Z

Big thanks are due for the cash raised so far in the Chris Carter whip round but we need to give this a final push and ask if you could just dig a little deeper.

We are about half way to the target of £1250 by Saturday with £767. 30 trawled in so far. Not bad in five days without full blogosphere and media support but we can get there with more help and show those who stand up for us that we will stand up for them.

Grateful thanks are due to Dick Puddlecote Leg-Iron and Captain Ranty and everyone else who has highlighted Carter's plight.

For lighting up one cigarette at the front of his local council town hall in protest at a draconian law based on dodgy evidence, and in hope he would get his day in court to scrutinise it, Irishman Chris Carter faces 47 days in jail unless he finds that cash by this coming Saturday.

The UK Column is astounded that a decent hard working member of the community is being treated worse than a paedophile or murderer and says a fuller report on the case will be written as it unfolds.

The blog asks people to get in touch if they are concerned about the cozy nature between those who made the law and those who blocked Carter's appeal for the evidence to be heard at the Supreme Court :

"we can tell you that we have uncovered the following facts. Firstly, the Smoking (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 was made on 14th November, 2006 by the Privy Council. Counsellors present included Sir Brian Leveson and Elish Angiolini. Secondly, the judges who blocked Chris Carter's submissions from reaching the Supreme Court have also been found to be Privy Counsellors. If this raises your concerns please write and let me know martin@ukcolumn.org"

I couldn't be more skint at the moment but I'll throw in another tenner to the fund. I don't know how else to bring this scam to the attention of a proper independent scrutinising committee independent of Govt quangos.

It's a shame we don't have the funds of groups like ASH but we do have something better - real grass roots support of people willing to skint themselves for what they believe in rather than hold a gun to the tax payer's head to demand money with menaces to force through their own world view.

To donate and fill the whip round pot by Saturday please visit here : Smokersjustice.co.uk

UPDATE OK - so I'm crap at maths. I'm told there is just that last £500 needed to meet the target. We can do this and we should.

ONE LAW FOR ALL - ANOTHER FOR SMOKERS

2012-01-21T22:58:00.001Z

Most people in the UK and Ireland are allowed to call witnesses to prove their innocence unless they happen to be smokers and then they are excluded from the same judicial process as everyone else.

That's what Bangor man Chris Carter found when he wanted to call the Irish health minister so that he could be cross-examined on the alleged evidence that SHS is harmful.

Bearing in mind that no one ever mentions health as the reason why smokers are excluded now, but rely instead on insults that they make those who don't know how to wash their clothes "stink", or that smoking should not even be seen, there seems little basis in fact in what has become a national scandal.

Carter is a brave man who wanted to use the last resort of aggrieved citizens - the courts - to expose the scam of SHS but because he is a smoker he has been denied the right to test the case in the highest court of the land.

His fight for it to be heard in the Supreme Court has been rejected "because no point of general public importance had been established."

I would have thought that lying to force through political ideology to be exposed is very much a general point of importance, but as we know Britain's 15 million smokers are barely deemed to be human let alone part of "the public" so it's not surprising when you think in the same bigoted terms as the Irish and British Govts.

Carter is now prepared to go to jail because of his principles that smokers are people too and the public they are not part of deserves to know how they have been misled on the scam that is SHS. He wanted his day in court to prove the basis of a discriminatory blanket smoking ban was dishonest and not necessary because it's basis is fraudulent and does not stand up to scrutiny.

Carter's heinous crime was to smoke at the front of Bangor Town Council offices in protest to make his point.

Although Carter is prepared to have his freedom stolen by a health fascist revengeful council, SmokersJustice.co.uk is not and has thrown out an appeal to help raise the £1250 needed to enable him to be freed from jail early and continue his fight with the next step - an appeal.

If 100 of us managed to each put £10 in the collective pot the money could be raised quickly to help Carter's cause which in turn would help every smoker currently treated less equally than everyone else in this country.

Please do what you can. Every little helps and we friends must stand together united or fall separately one by one.

Meanwhile Carter has been ordered to surrender his freedom and dignity and report to the local police station next Saturday so he can be locked up.

Because he is a smoker, this hard working and decent former member of the community, has been reduced to the status of a criminal simply because he wants to know the truth.

THANKS FOR THE PASSION Ms JAMES

2012-01-21T16:29:00.000Z

YA GOTTA LOVE FARAGE

2012-01-20T23:55:00.001Z

Teflon UKIP leader Nigel Farage had a monumental lucky escape in 2010 after being in a plane crash but it isn't the first time he has faced death, got up, brushed himself off and got back on with the job.

As a 21 year old he was involved in a terrible near fatal car crash but in usual fashion he just wanted to get on with things.

In this interview he talks about being a cavalier, religion and politics.

As usual he carries the torch for civil liberties but note how the interviewer cuts him off dead when he mentions the smoking ban.

Nice try Nigel and we love you for it.

REALITY, FANTASY AND DOWNRIGHT DISHONESTY

2012-01-20T19:16:00.001Z

I've had more than my fair say over at LibDem MP Stephen Williams' blog post full of utter nonsense regarding plain packaging for tobacco products but it is like talking to a brick wall.

He is a true Believer. I don't blame him for that but I do wonder what kind of public representative is content to be spoon fed lies and misinformation from Big Pharma uncharitable "charity" front groups to the exclusion of ordinary citizens and consumers who just want to try and inform him that he is being led by the nose into a very dangerous situation that will do more harm than good.

I particularly object to his stance of allowing libellous comments on his blog against ordinary members of the public, who as consumers will be affected by this scam designed to further shove them out of their community while giving rise to Black Market sales of contaminated tobacco to children.

His only defence against honest criticism of this plan is to dismiss both his concerned constituents, and others who sought to give him the heads up that he is being shamefully used to further the Smokerphobic agenda, as paid for tobacco industry stooges.

Further, he permits an anonymous poster to repeat the same allegations several times on his blog - knowing that ordinary citizens are priced out of being able to take legal action against him and the anti-smoker who uses the MP's protection to spread further untruths about people who just want to be heard.

Perhaps I am naive but I thought Williams' job as part of the All Party Parliamentary Health Group on smoking is supposed to listen to all genuine sides of the debate.

Apparently not, however. He is only allowed to listen to wealthy, high paid anti-smoker activists like High Priestess of Tobacco Control Cecelia Farren and Smokerphobic Social Engineer Simon Chapman who doesn't even live in the UK and should have no say on what our parliamentarians decide to do.

My issue with plain packaging is that it won't do a damn thing to stop youth and child smoking but it will drive sales of tobacco underground that won't be regulated but will be contaminated with all kinds of harmful things, including lead, and smoking will become even more dangerous for my grandchildren than it was when I began as a child smoker 45 years ago. Gone too will be the protections afforded to my children because of sensible rather than ridiculous legislation.

Bearing in mind that the WHO's 50 year tobacco control plan admits that black market sales will overtake legal sales I can't help but wonder why the BHF is lying when it claims that such moves as over regulation will lead to a fall in black market sales

The BHF's claim that the price of tobacco is affordable is pure fantasy and of course how would they know? They don't smoke and have stated openly that they don't want smokers coming any where near them. It's propaganda not even based on a good guess.

As readers of this blog know, I buy my tobacco abroad and I have started growing my own because I will not pay ASH's wages nor contribute to the funds of Big Pharma via groups in the anti-smoker industry that claim to be "charities".

But I know of many low income adults who have no pleasures other than a smoke with a cup of tea who haven't got the money up front to go on cheap baccy trips to buy six months supply in advance. They are moving more towards the black market than the corner shop while man with a bag waits til their kids come out to play with their limited pocket money - and maybe he'll offer them a spliff or two thrown in for free until they get that habit as well which will bring him even more custom in the long run.

Indeed, man with a bag full of entirely affordable crap that looks genuine from the outside, because he still has to go the trouble of counterfeiting the packaging until Mr Williams gives him a business boost, has approached me in the past and on being questioned where his product has come from, he has slithered away into the crowd to avoid scrutiny.

I don't often visit the tobacconist counter in supermarkets but today I found I had time to spare so I decided to put Mr Williams theory to the test that kids who approach for sweets suddenly find themselves goggled eyed by the "glitzy" packaging on the shelf which includes dead bodies, diseased throats and dying babies.

The tobacco was actually next to over the counter medicines in the shop I went to. The sweets were at the front of the big counter about the height of my knees - or the height of a small child who can't even see over the counter. I asked the assistant how many young people stare goggle-eyed at the tobacco display and how many children. She said none at all. I asked her if she had ever sold to young people or children without ID. She said never.

We then got into a bit of a discussion about smoking - bearing in mind that Mr Williams later changed his mind about the reason for hidden displays and plain packaging. First he said children had to be protected further from buying in stores where tobacco is displayed next to sweets, then he changed his mind and said it was to protect them from the packaging once the product was brought home.

This lady told me she was one of five children of two smoking parents. Only one of the five had taken up smoking which she believed as a non smoker was personal choice. This proves my point that children and young people are already protected and over regulation will do more harm than good because that protection will be removed and replaced by the black market that won't ask for ID and will ensure the product is brought to the attention of children and young people.

Suffice to say as a lifelong never smoker she never got ill as a result of her parents smoking neither did she feel abused by parents who loved her and was rather insulted by the suggestion although I hastily pointed out it was not mine.

The real reason for the tobacco display ban and plain packaging was revealed in that debate on Williams' blog as revenge on an industry that lied in the 1960s and to further social stigmatisation of an unpopular consumer of the product.

It's also interesting to note out of the 300+ comments, only a couple come from Mr Williams' own constituents and they are asking why he doesn't do something more useful for them and their town instead.

Cecelia Farren obviously has an interest both as a resident of that area and a businesswoman whose income depends on anti-smokerism.

I have to say that I admire that woman and she is my inspiration. Back in 1971 she didn't like something so she got off her arse and did something about it. I am sure that back then money had nothing to do with it and her motivations were entirely honourable.

But I fear that now 40 years on, she supports the very thing she used to hate. Big Industry muscling political support to drown out the little voice, any measure of dissent, and she appears content to support lies and misinformation to ensure what has become an ideology continues even if it means more harm to those she says she wants to protect.

As she went into pubs in 1971 to ask people what they thought about smoking and smoke free areas, so I took a leaf out of her book and did the same. I have found in the main that customers are really not bothered. Those that hate smoking are content for smokers to have their own places to meet or have a smoking room in the same pub, and other non smokers really don't give a damn whether smokers are around them or not.

It is really only a small minority of smokerphobics who don't like washing their clothes who want to be free to go anywhere and everywhere they want - even those places they will never go - without sight or sniff of a smoker within a mile of them.

One thing that came out of that debate, though, was news that our own expert David Atherton has been accepted at University to do a PHD on causes of lung cancer and, I believe, specifically looking at the P53 gene.

I wish him success but I wonder if just because he is not willing to get paid to lie if he will be taken seriously by the likes of Mr Williams or Smokerphobic Simon Chapman who appears to have nothing to add to the debate but false allegations and insults.

But I think what really is offensive is that Chapman and his paid for activists, who visited an English MP's blog from Tasmania, accuse people who simply want to be left alone in peace without harassment and free to socialise with their own kind as "extremist". If that is extremist then one wonders what "moderate" is - a brain lobotomy perhaps?

21ST CENTURY "NIGGERS" ?

2012-01-15T03:13:00.004Z

A story once told by the father of Smokers' Rights Gian Turci struck a chord with me and made me realise that I was no longer a person who smoked - I was a smoker. Something I'd never considered myself to be before.

In 1995 Gian was flying home to Italy to be beside his dying father's bedside. Naturally stressed as he waited for the long flight ahead, he used the Canadian Airport's smoking room. Inside was filthy. Ashtrays overflowed. It had obviously not been cleaned or decorated in a long time.

A Janitor cleaning outside of the room was asked if he was going inside to clean it. The janitor replied that he was forbidden by order of the management.

"Smokers must be made to see the filth they create," he said and shook his head sadly.

Gian, with some courage because the man was black, said :"Smokers are the new niggers of the 21st century, don't you think?"

The janitor did not reply.

I thought about this the other day when I was in town at my pre-ban favourite cafe. Smokers used to sit upstairs. Ventilation was on, the window open in summer too. Ashtrays and tables always immaculate. Non smokers downstairs never complained.

After the ban, the owner provided adequate facilities outside but the social experience of a chat over a hot coffee and a warm bacon and brie baguette turned into a race to finish it before it got cold so I went less and less.

It now has a new owner. The downstairs has been changed into the comfy leather settee and coffee table layout and I immediately sensed smokers were not welcome because of it's middle class atmosphere.

The outside area at the back was still accessible but it was filthy and neglected. Dirty ashtrays filled with old stumps and water from earlier rain sat on the tables. "The Smokers' Area" wasn't a place I wanted to be but we'd already ordered coffee and I haven't sat inside anywhere since July 2007 because I simply don't support discrimination.

I was many things before that ban - a sportswomen, a cleaner, a farm labourer, a sales assistant, a cafe assistant, a barmaid, a student, a writer, a journalist, a mother, a wife, a friend, a daughter, a sister, a colleague, a resident. I liked smoking. I liked many other things. People didn't ask if I was a smoker, they asked if I smoked.

I became "a smoker" without realising it because I got labelled by Tobacco Control and it's uncharitable "charity" front groups.

All of the things I'd been and been good at in my life were suddenly hindered by studies that said I was of lower intelligence, disabled, lazy at my job, a burden on the NHS, a child abuser, a murderer and undesirable in communities.

Now the same sort of people as me - sportswomen, cleaners, farm labourers, sales assistants, cafe assistants, barmaids, students, writers, journalists, mothers, wives, friends, daughters, sisters, colleagues, and lots of other decent, hard working, loving, generous, people of all races are being discriminated against openly because they will not allow other people's choices not to smoke to be forced upon them.

Smokers are not the ones unwilling to compromise. Smokers are not the selfish ones. If non-smokers have rights - and they have been recognised for 40 years - then so do smokers. A bit like you can't have rights for people of one race and not have rights for people from another. You can't tell one social group that they can have everything and you can't tell another that they cannot.

Those were the basis of cruel societies that decent world Govts fought against - not funded.

Gian Turci was perceptive when he saw this coming and to be honest my own objections to enforced public smoking bans with law, rather than choice, was because it singled out one group of people, now defined by what they do, as a precedent for legal discrimination and social mistreatment to follow unabated and unrestrained.

And when it gets to the stage where smokers are segregated in housing complexes, and on the bus jailed just for being smokers and denied the right to earn a living then decent societies should be questioning why smokerphobia is legal and why is it being funded?

UPDATE : I should point out here that I mean no offence with the title of this post to an oppressed race that has suffered hundreds of years of violence, death, oppression and degradation because of prejudice and racial hatred.

I make that declaration after a "friend" on FB deleted me and called me "sick". I didn't like him much anyway after he told me once that if he saw a pregnant woman smoker in the street he would punch her in the face. He's a self-shamed smoker but a regular quitter and very overweight but worse, he has a small mind and he doesn't want to expand it.

I hope the more intellectual among you don't take offence with this post and recognise that the offensive word is not mine but used to highlight the mind of a bigot while questioning and challenging the current mistreatment of a modern group of socially moulded people declared fair game for a legal kicking.

I make no apologies for that.

DOCTOR CALLS FOR NHS CARE, COMPASSION, EQUALITY

2012-01-14T16:34:00.000Z

Image from here

Via Belinda over at F2C Scotland, I hear that a retired medic is so outraged at the mistreatment of smokers in NHS hospitals, he has been driven to write to his local press and complain.

John Nolan, FRCSI, wrote in disgust to the Irish Times regarding the inhumane treatment and degradation of smokers who deserve the same care and compassion as non smokers. (After all, we do pay more for our healthcare than they do.)

He said :

"... deliberate deprivation is an act of wanton, indeed wicked cruelty at a time when he or she is most in need of cherishing and comforting.

"I have looked in dismay at the degradation heaped on smokers in our hospitals in recent years. Forced to huddle under an outdoor lean-to roof for a drag on a desperately needed cigarette, often with intravenous drips in their arms and frequently wearing only pyjamas and a dressing gown on a cold, wet day, now even this solace is to be denied to them.

"Lepers in the dark ages received greater care and more love than our enlightened age allows to the poor, old, ill smoker.

"If Minister for Health Dr James Reilly is worth his salt, he will overturn this appalling ruling immediately. Indeed he will go further and require hospitals to provide safe, warm and properly ventilated indoor smoking rooms for those sufferers who need them."

I entirely disagree with his assessment of smokers as drug addicts but I agree that on humanitarian grounds people who are ill should not be forced into dangerous situations because they find comfort in a legal product that the general public has been taught to despise and fear.

This is not about health but hate and punishment. The Irish health dept, and indeed the whole UK NHS, should remember that its duty is care and compassion for all. In the days when space was made inside for smokers they didn't bother anyone else, and with today's 21st century technology in air filtration systems, bans are completely unnecessary on the grounds of phobic fears that a wisp of second hand smoke can harm anyone - indeed the studies do not support this vile socially divisive propaganda.

If smokers continue to be denied the same healthcare and respect as their non smoking fellow patients then it is about time Govts stopped screwing the smoker with such high tax.

This is not about health. This is a national scandal. Staff currently working in hospitals around the country really should begin to stick up for their smoking patients - especially if they smoke themselves.

They could find themselves next on the hit list

PUBLIC HUMILIATION

2012-01-13T18:17:00.000Z

I'm guessing that millions of pounds of tax payer's money has been spent on producing leaflets, signs, notices, and public literature, to ensure it is written in a variety of different languages with larger print alternatives for those with sight difficulties.

We do live in a multicultural, diversity driven, equality assured, society after all and so the law demands it - unless any one of the above is a smoker who is a legal target for public abuse.

Y'see the aim of the impending Tobacco Display ban is not about protecting young people from the clutches of tobacco advertising. It is about further public humiliation of lifelong smokers who will not quit and clear the way for this new socially engineered vision of Tobacco Control, backed by its uncharitable "charity" front groups.

Why else would the list of tobacco products be made so small that the older generation, the majority of smokers, will be forced to struggle to read it?

It's not about health. It's not about youth smoking. It is about further public humiliation for the smoker, and backing for the black market, forcing a rise in underground childhood smoking to ensure the anti-smoker industry has a new market in the future.

What else can it be? Studies tell the WHO that it won't make a jot of a difference to young people taking up smoking and the WHO must know this because it is expecting Tobacco Control to be still be around in 50 years' time to manage licensed smokers.

The logic of the anti-smoker industry just doesn't add up. The stupidity of Govt in falling for yet another divisive scam is no surprise.

THE 80,000

2012-01-12T22:20:00.000Z

Warning - contains gratuitous violence

A couple of years ago Birmingham North and East PCT decided it would be an awfully good wheeze to make a viral video to show a smoker getting beaten to death. This, they said, would force smokers to quit but we argued it would be highly entertaining fodder for bigots and give a dangerous message to Smokerphobics.

David Atherton from Freedom2Choose, a local UKIP councillor and I went in person and demanded the video be taken down.

It was, but, in the sea of absolute hatred drowning out our collective, small, and unfunded voices, the graphic violence covertly calling for smokers to be shot, beaten, humiliated, and abused continues unabated from all parts of the world under the directorship of Global Governance hitch-hikers from the WHO to the EU, the UN and the IMF.

With the best will in the world, and the passion, the enthusiasm, and the energy, little old us wouldn't be able to sit across the table from someone like Herman Van Rompouy to register our complaint as we did with the ladies at the PCT for the very reason that we are the little people and all that is denied to our status.

This hatred that the Global legal drugs cartel promotes is based on the fact that they want to save, in the UK at least, 80,000 of us 15 million smokers who they say die each year from "smoking related illnesses", from an overall population of 60 million.

80,000 of 15 million, of 60 million. I just had to repeat that in my head and I still don't get why it justifies such an aggressive and violent campaign against smokers. Impartial health information I could understand for such a relatively low number but the public cost of all this seems completely out of perspective to the threat.

The Birmingham PCT video cost £10,000. How many of these things are out there and how much collectively have they cost tax payers in a time of severe austerity. Is hatred really worth more than Govts can afford?

And if it really is about health, about how much they care for us poor citizens in danger of getting ill or dying, then why do they not address motorists in the same way that they target smokers?

Tens of thousands of people die each year from traffic fumes - let's say 80,000 because plucking figures from the air is perfectly acceptable to their side - and that's not adding in the number of fatal traffic accidents or people committing suicide in their car - sometimes taking their children with them.

Why doesn't the Govt show traffic fumes slithering along the road, through the hedgerows, into the back garden of a nice suburban middle class semi, in through the windows of the child's bedroom, over it's nose and being forced down it's throat?

The answer has to be it's not about health, it's not because they care, it's not that they don't want us to die. The 80,000 nameless, faceless, anonymous, impersonal number is simply a tool to make people believe that their loved ones have died from something "smoking related" when they could have died of anything

It's very difficult not to conclude that it's all about the money and control of the highly profitable tobacco crop.

Tobacco control, which is deeply embedded in all nation state and global government, is really about control of the tobacco market using smokers as the pawns to achieve it.

The WHO et al admit that they are creating a climate where illegal sales of unregulated, contaminated tobacco will overtake legal sales. All of their previous good work will be waste ground and they don't seem to care.

Their support of the black market with tobacco display bans and plain packaging, to further denigrate smokers and tobacco with world Govts sick at losing revenue, means that my grandchildren will not be protected in the same way my children were. That is the real scandal of the vested interests of Tobacco Control.

Why did the WHO predict in 2000 that there would be an economic crisis 10 years later when, as far as we have been told, our Govt didn't see it coming until the crash of 2007? Did the WHO know that the war on smokers, lack of sales revenue, lack of related sales and income such as pubs, restaurants, cafes, jobs, would lead to an economic crisis via the knock-on effect?

The WHO also predicts that ~~smokers will be identified at birth~~ people can be indentified at birth at being at risk of "smoking related illnesses" so that smokers can be targeted before they've even put that first fag in their mouth.

That would be a huge benefit in terms of health information and people "genetically" at risk from tobacco would never take up smoking. But then why would the WHO want a minority of 80,000 non smokers in a population of 60 million in one country to be the only non-smokers in their vision of a world that doesn't include smokers unless they are under fanatical Tobacco Control.

THE FUTURE FOR SMOKERS

2012-01-12T02:29:00.001Z

The World Health Organisation has a vision for the future which gives some insight into tobacco control's regulatory thinking.

The WHO predicts smoking will rise, people prone to "tobacco related diseases" can be identified at birth, illegal sales will overtake legal sales, no tobacco will be grown in the USA, no duty free with the price of tobacco to be set around the world, and tobacco will be genetically modified as a highly profitable medicinal crop.

It seems smokers will be still needed as cash cows, fodder for jobsworths, and guinea pigs in the WHO's future, which also includes plain packaging, but we will be licensed as drug addicts.

Some of the things included in this 50 year wet dream include those things that one assumes did happen between 2000 and 2010 like Tobacco Companies buying into Big Pharma and the industry seeking regulation on its own terms.

Of course the ~~reason~~ excuse to keep the funds pouring in is the chiiildren and third world poverty and whatever it is they are planning - without any democratic process involved at all - will not involve asking smokers what they think.

Do check out the link above because I haven't time this to write about the whole thing. Someone drew my attention to it and it appears to be something we can do nothing about thanks to Labour selling our soul to the FCTC

MOUTH. BIG. FOOT. IN. IT.

2012-01-12T00:34:00.001Z

It's been a week of apologies and now it's my turn to eat humble pie for launching the keyboard into action before really putting my brain into gear to think about the bigger picture.

Y'see I'm not so much a politician as I am a Passionately Pissed Off Person and I did something Politically Incorrect in the sense of the phrase that should be it's true meaning.

Rare it is that a mainstream politician ever listens to me so when one did - my own Constituency MP Karl McCartney - I was rather overwhelmed with admiration and support and said publically that I'd vote for him.

Only on reflection, and after the letter was fired off to my local paper, did I realise that I am a committed UKIP supporter. I'm a member of a local branch, made up of a host of people I am proud to call my friends. Every member - even those not keen on smoking - have been 100 % behind me on the issue of lifestyle choice and smoking choice particularly, Nigel Farage has kept this issue alive when other Party leaders want to bury it, and so my heart on sleeve declaration seemed disloyal.

Maybe I went too far , but, nevertheless, Karl deserved encouragement and support for sticking his neck out in questioning ASH's funding on my behalf as his constituent, which inevitably left the way open for him to be attacked in the local press as a "Big Tobacco Stooge" after he accepted - fully declared - tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show from a tobacco company.**

But I won't be voting Tory because Karl's view that smokers are somebody too is not shared by his party. It would be my pleasure if Karl came over to UKIP, like so many former Conservatives have done, and I'd still like to see people like Carl Minns and Simon Cooke in my party. That might be wishful thinking but many good people are leaving the LibLabCon as they realise that UKIP is the only party truly speaking with the Libertarian voice.

UKIP does represent more closely my views on other issues too especially gaining our lives and civil liberties back from those who would bypass democracy to control us in Global Governance and Common Purpose. And I want real social progression - not just regression redesigned and packaged as progression when everything about it takes us socially backwards.

I felt at the time of the General Election in 2010 that if the 15 million smokers put their vote behind UKIP then it would have been a very strong message to any incoming Govt that the public wants it's freedom back and an end to the Socialist and Paternalistic policies.

Now I can see that the fear of getting Labour back by lost Tory votes was too much of a risk to take in the scheme of greater issues of importance. But imagine if that had happened and UKIP was now part of the coalition instead of the LibDems who appear to have betrayed everyone? What a vibrant, active, and useful Govt it would be and it isn't an impossibility given that the Guardian was speculating a few weeks ago how the next election could turn out given the LibDems evacuation of support.

If I'm ever tempted to vote for Karl it would be the same fear of getting former Lincoln (Labour) MP Gillian Merron back that would decide it. But then, as a lost Labour supporter, my vote has never counted in helping Tories to win. It's just skipped from voting Non-Tory to voting Non-Tory and I'd hope that many other Lincolnian Labour and LibDem supporters wake up and see that their champagne socialist modern party does not represent them and they should give their vote to UKIP instead.

Labour certainly does not consider smokers as constituents. Gillian Merron demonstrated that during her time as a local MP and in correspondence with me. She only represented smokers who wanted to quit. The rest of us were dismissed as irrelevant to her Party's Social Engineering Plan.

My other half, however, despite my persuasions did give Karl his vote in 2010 to avoid that same fear of getting Merron back. He swore that if Karl as an MP proved to be as selective in who he represented as his predecessor then it would be the last time the Conservatives got his support.

Suffice to say Karl impressed him last week too - but my UKIP banner is still in the window and it will stay there. One thing we both agree on, the real danger to society and our enemy is Labour so we still have something politically in common.

*** Disclaimer :

I have no commercial ties with the tobacco industry other than being a consumer of a legal product. Karl's tickets from Japan International were worth something like £1,300 - a fraction of the cost borne by the tax-payer for personal items including a bed and a TV claimed by former Lincoln Labour MP Gillian Merron.

UPDATE : I had a very nice letter from Karl this morning thanking me for my support. He makes clear that he has never been lobbied by any tobacco company and accepted the tickets because he likes gardening, a good number of his other constituents attend the local horticultural college who do gardening courses and horticultural design, and he is, after all, a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Gardening and Horticulture.

He said : "I was shocked when I was eventually told that lunch invites and tickets to the show were required to have a "cost price" of over £1000 and to be registered as such - but those are the rules and stated costs and so I duly registered the benefit in kind as such."

Karl also asked in the HoC if the aim of stopping people smoking was in any way helped by the Chairman of the all-party group on Smoking and health (LibDem) MP Stephen Williams using a private letter sent by Karl to to the press which then castigated him with untrue allegations.

Of course Nanny Anne Milton avoided the question and just spouted the usual blah, blah, blah, 80,000 smokers die each year, blah, blah, blah.

What an utter contemptuous waste of good Parliamentary space and what a shame that excellent constituency MPs like Karl McCartney are brought down by the woolly-headed nonsense of a woman obviously lacking in any kind of intellectual ability or idea of what fairness, truth, or justice is.

PUBLIC HEALTH HATE CAMPAIGN WAS DELIBERATE

2012-01-11T00:35:00.001Z

Deliberate stigmatisaion and character assassination of smokers was always Tobacco Control and anti-smoker activists long term plan - even before one single study had been done on the invented passive smoking and health scam.

They had to invent it, promote it, repeat it, and keep on about it until it became part of the public psyche. Public compliance in hatred against a minority group could not be achieved without it.

They studied homophobia and stigmatisation of people with HIV and aids and designed a template from that to use against people who like tobacco.

They fully intended to hound smokers out of families communities, homes, and jobs

Anti-smoker Michael Siegel says Tobacco Control is now a smokerphobic obsession and considering the disciples' jobs, wealthy lifestyles and never-ending supply of funding depends on inciting public fear against us we can only expect it to get worse.

The next move in this stigmatisation was, of course, to get hard working, decent, and respected members of society who smoked declared as "addicts" based, as far as I can tell, on a anti-smoker nutter who injected himself with watered down pure nicotine - not at all the same as smoking a trace of the same natural component found in many of plants and herbs we use daily in our kitchen including vegetables.

We learn today that the myth of addiction is false from "studies" that show NHS (10 times more likely to quit) Big Pharma NRT is an utterly useless con.

So, for those who want it and think they need it, there is no help but the stigmatisation continues as Tobacco Control ensures its back is covered when decent, humanitarian non-smokers begin to notice something nasty in the air :

"... Acts that seek to limit the contexts in which smoking is permitted are different from those that restrict the right to work, to access health or life insurance, or to reside in communities of one’s choice."

No - they don't. Smokers - and their non-smoking spouses - are prevented from applying for jobs just because they are smokers. They are paid less in many American companies than non smokers even though they work as hard. They have been sacked once employers learned their terrible secret - they enjoy a cigarette in their own time. They are also denied housing because of the false assumption that they would not abide by landlord rules on smoking, and the slanderous claim that all smokers are dirty.

"Some commentators have also expressed concern about a process that seems to blame smokers rather than the industry that has ensnared them."

I wasn't "ensnared" by the tobacco industry as a child when I nicked that first cigarette from my older sister's packet, and if I was, then I resent punishment now as an adult because I haven't died and I haven't quit.

I smoked then and now because I like the taste of tobacco, which I have found has not harmed one single person associated with me during my lifetime, and the cultural art of smoking which has been a part of almost my whole life. Perhaps other people like the taste too but think that is "addiction" because that's what they've been shamelessly been led to believe.

I am now described by Smokerphobics as "hard core." Tobacco Control is pushing the centuries' old social culture of smoking as a "deviant act" committed by "deviant people". This fits very well with it's move to brand smokers as child abusers - a short step away in language from "hard core porn", and "deviant sex offender" - you can kinda see where this is heading and you should be very afraid.

If the smokerphobic band-waggon hitch-hikers get their way, then smokers will have to be licensed to smoke - a short step to equating them with licensed drug addicts, or registered sex offenders.

Tobacco Control is planning for this move to become law in the next decade. First, eventually, will come licensed public premises where the "smoker deviants" can associate - that helps paves the way (the next logical step) for individual licensing, and helps in identifying who to target.

Public health knows that the stigmatisation of people with Aids was counter-productive in saving lives and altering "risky" sexual behaviour, but led by the nose by Tobacco Control it believes that hate campaigns can be used against smokers because they can get away with it.

The academic study into the stigmatisation of smokers warns that it could do more harm than good but Anti-Tobacco Controlled Public Health is content to continue with the programme anyway:

"... to the extent that stigmatization limits smoking behavior, it is to be deployed rather than eschewed."

"... the moral question of how to balance the overall public health benefit that may be achieved by stigmatization against the suffering experienced by those who are tainted by “spoiled identities” is virtually never addressed.

"The issue becomes all the more pressing as stigmatization falls on the most socially vulnerable—the poor who continue to smoke."

The socially vulnerable are those that Tobacco Control targets most because they are easy to bully into submission.

These people and their representatives - and not the champagne socialist self-claimed fake representatives - should be the ones directly involved in discussions about how their lives are to be controlled.

Their real, life-tested, cultural expert knowledge could bring down smoking rates rather than just being held up as the target for more abuse because they won't quit - if this was really about health and we know now that it is not.

Don't think for one minute that stigmatisation and Tobacco Control has nothing to do with people who don't smoke. It has everything to do with them as Tobbacco Control admits:

"And what is true for smoking may have broader applicability for other individual behaviors deemed unhealthy such as “overeating” and illegal drug use."

Tobacco Control is an unaccountable, socially violent and socially divisive monster that has bypassed democracy to push forth it's fascist ideological beliefs. It has the morals of a bestiality orgy in a pigsty.

The silly Anne Milton and subservient Andrew Lansley, Govt heads of the scam that is the UK Public Health Dept, are merely puppets on a string. They don't make policy, they do as they are told. The Conservative Party has embraced this very sinister policy on social control which was signed over to nameless, faceless, unaccountable and prejudicial smoker hater activists by Labour.

First they came for smokers - they will be coming for you next. Count on it. The template is set.

IN THE STOCKS

2012-01-10T21:44:00.001Z

Right. That's it. I was going to steer clear of news that celebrity chef Anthony Worrall Thompson had been done for shoplifting but after hearing all the cries of : "No one else would get off with it," I thought I'd throw in my two penneth worth and a bit of knowledge from experience.

I note for starters that anti-smokers have delighted in taking the piss. Is that a pack of cigs I see photoshopped into this familiar image of AWT - a friend of smokers - people who enjoy the Bohemian atmosphere of restaurants, as well as pubs, which AWT recognises is enhanced in every sensory sense by the addition of smoking.

Those who moan that anyone else getting arrested for stealing would be treated harsher by the criminal justice system really should go and sit down the local magistrates court for a week. It's a real eye opener.

"Stealing" is described in many weird and wonderful ways in our legal system and has many degrees of seriousness from shoplifting to robbery with violence from the person. I don't recall reading that AWT mugged an old lady and stole her purse.

Shoplifting, despite the big noise that the big corporate supermarkets and global companies make about the millions it costs them combined, is still a petty, minor offence in the scope of those that come under "theft".

It is usual for first time offenders to get a police caution - more than once. If they repeatedly offend, then the next step is a lower court appearance - and usually a conditional discharge. If shoplifters re-offend, the court moves through a whole gammet of sentencing options from community service, drug treatment, curfews,and probabtion supervision before it jails anyone.

If AWT is being treated differently then it is because as a celebrity he is fair game. I'm cynical as to how the story got out. Police cautions are not done in open court so someone reported to the press that AWT had been arrested. Tesco staff maybe? Tesco customers? The police?

Joe Bloggs, the everyday shoplifter who appears many times daily in court, would have had his privacy assured when he got his first cautions. Depending on the details of the incident, it's likely he wouldn't even have got more than a couple of paragraphs as downpage to fill a gap in his local paper.

The real punishment for all shoplifters is public humiliation. As a court reporter for many years, I felt like my job was really just the modern version of sticking people n the stocks. I think AWT got the worst of the rotten vegetables.

Anyone would be hard pushed to remember the every day shoplifter's name a week after they read it in the paper but celebrities' wrong doing usually stays in the public mind for a long time although it's not long before they are forgiven

I don't condone theft, incidentally, any theft - even legal theft by Govt from citizens, big business from customers, or penalties imposed by self-interest quangos on appointed targets.

DON'T BLAME US

2012-01-09T00:53:00.001Z

Oh my, this creep thinks he's so amusing but he makes his joke at the expense of smokers who have been marginalised since July 1, 2007, and we all know what he is alluding to with his allegory.

I've always found it strange that the weirdos prefer the smell of farts to smoke but each to his her own own.

Forgive me for being a bit po-faced about this one but I've rather lost my sense of humour on this issue when stigmatised people have had amputations because of being forced into sub-arctic temperatures when room could easily have been made inside for them.

What the creep is saying is that we should accept the ban and move on or fuck off and stay home and he doesn't appear to accept that it works both ways.

I fully understand the difficult economic plight of the pub at present but if the pub trade had stood together at the beginning rather than leaving a handful of supportive landlords to their fate, including Nick Hogan, then maybe our position and their's would be better now.

I know some were scared to stand up and fight - especially the small pub owner - because the onus was on criminalising the landlord if smoking was allowed and not the smoker who smoked. We respected and that any protest we have held has avoided mass light ups in pubs. Smoking protests therefore have been held in other public places like council offices, bus stations, and railway stations.

We who do our best to fight the ban have no funds and no help - especially from the exploitative PubCos - and more landlords really could have helped us if they wanted to. The industry still could and some owners have had the sense to do that which is why they have signed up to the Save Our pubs and Clubs amend the smoking ban campaign and other campaigns.

But to blame smokers for the pubs demise because we won't stand in arctic temperatures, or often in filthy conditions because of the failure of landlords to keep areas clean or provide adequate facilities, is really below the belt. We have had no other way of registering our protest at our treatment than voting with our feet.

Too many landlords still have their head in the sand about us one in five smoker former customers. The desecration of the pub industry will continue as pubs not able or willing to cater for smokers comfortably will go to the wall. It is fair to say smokers' pubs, the traditional community pubs, are already dead.

The strongest of the pubs left will survive, evolve, diversify to this new market created by the social engineers - and of course they will do it without any thought to the smoker customers who have spent their hard earned wages propping up their bars since the day their pubs were built.

However, despite the awful attitude of the pub industry at large, I still support the right of those landlords who have lost their pubs to be compensated for this draconian bad law that put them out of business. It was not us.

THE BELIEVER'S COMMON PURPOSE

2012-01-08T23:21:00.001Z

I think Frank Davis is being a bit harsh on anti-smoker Michael Siegal but I do agree with much of what he says in yet another brilliant incisive piece of writing.

I am no fan of Siegal because I'm really not sure what side of the fence he is on but I am grateful that he at least examined his conscience enough to get this information out into the public domain :

1. Some anti-smoking groups really are lying to the public.

2. The smoke-free aspect of the tobacco control movement has largely become an attack on smokers, rather than a battle against tobacco smoke.

3. At a national level, the tobacco control movement has waged a war on smokers, rather than on the tobacco industry and its most hazardous products. It is working to help entrench the most risky existing tobacco products, protect existing cigarette market shares, and fend off Big Pharma from competition, all at the expense of the health of smokers.

This is something that smokers have always known but the general public, that has bowed before the alleged "superior knowledge of the experts" in Tobacco Control, have not and it is vital that they do so I thank Siegel for coming out and for his honesty.

Where Siegel differs in his view from mine is that he doesn't believe smokers should be left in peace if they don't want "help". He believes they should be made to see the error of their ways and quit. I wouldn't even have a problem with that as long as it stayed as his belief and didn't become public enforcement which if course it has - and that is why I have a problem with Tobacco Control.

Smoking was a moral issue, a genetics issue to the original white supremacists who believed the pagan Indian weed degenerated race, it became a health issue 60 years ago and has now gone full circle back to being an issue of morality.

As Frank says :

It’s perhaps the Original Dishonesty of the antismoking movement that it attempts to disguise a righteous moral crusade – a truly Punitive War on Smokers – as a medical intervention to “help” smokers.

I've watched 40 of those health issue years develop. I always thought that if that's what people believe it's up to them, if they want to stop smoking and believe they need help, that was up to them - as long as that didn't affect me.

I feared that one day that their choice would affect me, as the propaganda hyped up and became more ridiculous and bizarre, but I hoped it wouldn't, comforted by the fact that the battle between individual and civil liberties versus concerns on smoking and health were nicely balanced. July, 1, 2007 was the day when the anti-smoker movement's beliefs finally affected me. Completely. Whether I shared their beliefs or not didn't matter and the scale of fair balance was lost to complete and utter Authoritarianism.

The biggest anti-smoker cover up of all was that smokers didn't have to affect anti-smokers. The public knew it which is why market forces were sorting the issue out to the benefit of both sides before the draconian ban which was about social engineering - enforcing that belief, recruiting new believers, and gaining public support by promoting fear of an unfunded, unsupported minority of legal consumers.

This post is rather long but well worth reading and absorbing. It shows how believers cynically manipulated by corporate and vested interests were used to bypass the democratic process.

The whole idea of common purpose and global governance are concepts that the believers knew would be well over the general public's head. After all, most people didn't give a stuff how the anti-smokers amused themselves as long as they could meet their mates down the pub for a drink and a smoke.

Too many of us ordinary, real grass roots people have been thrown into the public arena and political domain because our pubs are now closed. That has forced us to take a look at what they have been doing. And we are shocked. The general public should be too.

We are so close to being criminalised for being non-believers. Our persecutors are only a decade or so away from reaching their ultimate revenge for our sin of choice.

Meanwhile, their tactical campaign to ensure their faltering credibility remains intact means they have to back off for now from pushing the scam of Third Hand Smoke further.

But the issue will be back. They just need the time, the money, the right on message junk scientists, the tobacco display ban and plain packaging.

Once they have us forced into the criminal category, then any old rubbish they put forward will be believed and their undeserved and fabricated credibility will be assured.

I would trust Michael Siegal more if he came fully over to our side, pinned his colours to the fence and said despite his beliefs on smoking and health, his belief in humanity is greater.

LONGEVITY

2012-01-07T00:10:00.000Z

Should I quit smoking tobacco and take up a new hobby which seemed to be the key to longevity for this woman.

A 125-year-old woman, said to be one of the oldest women in India, died at her home in Orissa, her family said Sunday. Fulla Nayak claimed that smoking cannabis every day was her secret to long life.

But then the grandmother also smoked cigars and drank tea so maybe we have enough in common for me to be hopeful that I'll live long enough to see my grandchildren reach their 70th birthday and my children enter their first state nursing homes.

Until it was recently amended, the law in Holland said you could smoke hash with your tea in a cafe but you couldn't put tobacco in the spliff. I could see a day could come in the future where we'd be smoking drugs in pubs but hiding behind closed curtains at home to smoke cigarettes.

With the nutty Public Health curently calling the shots about what we can or can't do with our own lives, I wouldn't be surprised if drinking palm juice becomes compulsory if they get wind of this case.

I'm sure they'd conveniently produce a study to say if this lady cut out the ganja and cigars and stuck with the juice as part of her five-a-day, then she would've lived to be 220 years old. Such is the usual quality of their thinking.

AN UPDATE TO FOLLOW SOON

2012-01-06T18:38:00.000Z

All you need to know at the moment is that we need all the support we can get for this stroll due to take place in London on March 31. It is a Saturday, please do your utmost to attend, help others to get there through car sharing, show support and put the date in your diary.

London has been chosen as the central location likely to be the easiest to get to for all smokers who want to show solidarity against the way we are being excluded, slandered, marginalised and stigmatised.

The smokerphobic anti-smoker industry is also trying to reclaim this powerful symbol of freedom as a tobacco control tool to stigmatise women smokers into quitting. We cannot let them take it from us.

The only thing that they have that we don't is cash - tons of it to waste on discriminatory policies that do nothing to improve anyone's public health but everything to do with creating more hatred of people who have enjoyed smoking almost all of their lives and wish to harm no one.

THE REAL COMMON SENSE VIEW ...

2012-01-06T18:17:00.001Z

click to view **

... and an MP worthy of support - if only the whole Conservative party ascribed to the same common sense view it might just win the next election with a landslide.

But as it's never going to happen, and as much as Karl is a great constituency MP, his view on smoking and choice is not shared by his party. He'd be much better if he crossed to UKIP - a party that I discovered after Labour abandoned me and one that speaks of a like mind on other issues important to me like drugs and the EU.

** H/T Judith Morris

OOH - LOOK AT THE MONKEYS!

2012-01-04T23:45:00.004Z

I just watched The Smoking Years on BBC 4 and I have to say it was worse than I expected.

It spoke about people who enjoy smoking as if they were some sort of sub-human animal species from the zoo for invited commentators to mock and vilify without giving any thought to the impact on real people's lives.

Apart from Chris Snowdon, actress June Brown and apologist smoker Barry Cryer, and former smoking ban warrior James Leavy who appeared completely out of touch with what today's smokers think, the rest of the programme was a hymm sheet for ASH Uk - and that awful woman Cecilia Farrow who had a chip on her shoulder about smoking and decided because she didn't like it no one else should do it.

The programme showed how it was in the old days - the days when I started smoking as an 8 year old child. They pretended like they cared - except those children, now adults, are treated worse than farmyard pigs** with BBC blessing for a choice they made that mattered to no one before they were forced out of communities and singled out for public humiliation in 2007.

Stuart Maconie was a complete knob. He talked about fugs of smoke on buses where "you couldn't see anyone at all - you couldn't even find your mates." Footage then shown of a bus with people smoking on it showed how much he exaggerated. So he didn't like going outside in the cold after 2007 so he quit. Good for him but that doesn't explain why he should feel justified in mocking and kicking the rest of us.

One thing that struck me, and fit with what I recall as a smoker in all of those years from the 60s until now, is that when non smokers began to speak up and say they didn't like smoking, we welcomed it, and in consideration we gave over more smoke free spaces without a single word of complaint. That is not a reason to single us out now as some sort of retard because the puritans are on the march.

The BBC language was barely different to that on Dick Puddlecote's psychotic anti-smoker page

But it was good of the ~~The Anti-smoker industry~~The BBC to remind us that cigarettes are still - more than ever before with civil liberties under grave threat - The Torch of Freedom.

With that in mind, someone set up and suggested we organise The Torch of Freedom ~~march~~ stroll on Saturday, March 31. It is exactly 82 years since people took to the streets in 1929 to end the stigmatisation of women smokers. And quite right too that both sexes should then, and now, be treated equally as all people should whether they smoke or not.

So who is up for it? Let's get bloody organised and do something to show them we will not be treated as sub-human beings, nor second class citizens, nor will we put up with further stigmatisation.

Meanwhile, I thought you might want to see that smoking is still a popular culture, still sexy and sultry, and the weirdos are still those who think they can live to be 120 by purging the body of pleasure.

I don't know if the gorgeous Nigella Lawson still smokes, but she certainly did at one time. So much for the ugly smoker "Monkey" as branded by smokerphobics and Comrade Beeb compared with the puritanical smokerphobic pin up girl Gillian Mckeith.

And feast your eyes on these Men and women smokers. They don't look like animals to me.

** The law states that farmyard pigs must be 90% enclosed. Smokers are allowed less than 50% shelter.

HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY CALLS FOR COMPENSATION

2012-01-03T19:48:00.013Z

A new petition has been posted on the Change.Org site calling for hospitality owners to be compensated for loss of income and property because of enforced smoke free laws designed by bigots and big business.

The Clean Air Quality blogspot put it up. I have no idea if it can force liars like Stanton Glanz and his Pharmaceutical paymasters to cough up for ruining people's livelihoods and stealing their individual property rights to further their own corporate interests but I hope so.

This petition may only be a symbolic move in trying to hold Big Pharma to account for what it has done to small business but it is also another great piece of news that demonstrates the new year isn't getting any better for the Smokerphobics.

I've signed. Please feel free to do the same and share it wherever you can. It might just make a difference.

UPDATE 21.13 : ... and while I'm on the subject of petitions, here's another worthy of support. MPs might get the message that we want our pubs back, if they end up losing their own. It's for their own good after all.

The All In It Together Parliamentary Bar Closure e-petition

Responsible department: Office of the Leader of the House of Commons

We the undersigned in the spirit of togetherness petition that the government legislate in the interests of preventing social disorder and injustice, health and safety in the workplace and fairness to all in these times of national austerity the banning of the sale and/or the consumption of all alcoholic beverages with-in the present day boundaries of the Palace of Westminster.

CANCER RISES AS PROPAGANDA GROWS

2012-01-03T15:33:00.001Z

I've been looking through some of my drafts I never got to post for one reason or another last year. A few stories put out about the rise in cancer since the war on tobacco companies moved to the consumer is one worthy of looking at now because for all the propaganda and controls on our lifestyle by The Church of Public Health, we are still not seeing any decline in serious life-threatening illnesses.

More people are getting cancer according to CRUK who also claims that more are surviving

The ~~charity~~ self interest group notes that : "Lung cancer in middle aged men has dropped from 6,300 to around 2,700." which sounds like good news but then according to the ~~charity~~ self interest group The RC Lung Foundation :"Lung cancer remains a devastating disease and the most common cause of cancer death in England."

No wonder we are sceptical when contradictory statements such as these are bandied about by groups that depend on propaganda and public scaremongering for their survival.

But hang on a minute. It seems that smoking, drinking, and eating isn't going to kill you with cancer unless you live in the wrong area".

It seems that despite the drop in smoking rates during the last decade, the public smoking ban, the harassment of law abiding consumers and legal industry, cancer is definitely on the rise. Macmillan Cancer Support says : "there are so many more people with cancer today than even ten years ago."

Could it have anything to do with other pollutant factors that hide the damage they do behind tobacco - including smokerphobics like Milton, Lanlsey and Arnott killing us all with their filthy cars?

Maybe cancer is on the rise because medics are being selective about who they treat according to their own moral and religious beliefs according to a survey by Journal of Medical Ethics. Too many don't like smokers and we've all met the doctor who refused to help unless we quit.

Or maybe it is actually true that there are healing properties in tobacco and the truth is that SHS can have a protective effect against asthma - a condition said to scar the lungs and a factor for developing lung cancer later in life.

Maybe the Church of Public Health should be wary of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and maybe the truth is that despite the billions of public funding thrown into lifestyle ideology, the best hope we still have to beat cancer is to pray for a cure.

And they call this "progressive?"

GOOD NEWS TO START THE YEAR

2012-01-03T15:28:00.000Z

It's rare but nice to see some good and positive news about smokers in the biased media - particularly the BBC which appears to have taken down a smokerphobic comment by some humbug who believed that smoking ban warrior and artist David Hockney should not have been honoured with an Order of Merit because he is a smoker

In true bohemian style, Hockey told the organic fart sniffer the Guardian newspaper that he had no comment to make on the award : "...other than it's nice to know they are not prejudiced against the older smoker."

More than that, it appears the honour is a hugely prestigious award bestowed by the Queen without ministerial advice. Good job the phillistine Health Ministers Bully Lansley and Nanny Milton weren't making the decision then - and maybe this signals that the Queen not only likes damn good art but also has some sympathy with our cause to be left alone without fear, harassment or prejudice.

Certainly Mr Hockney is a great ambassador for us and a man who stands by his prinicples. He is not ashamed to to say he is a smoker nor apologise for it.

Then over at the Moose's blog I learn of Lord Howe's interest in hearing what the other side of the debate has to say. Of course the unelected political lobby group ASH, that runs the DoH, is squealing like a stuffed pig that someone in Govt is not prepared to treat legal industry as a criminal cartel and as Moose says :

The commercial and vested interests of the tobacco industry may do harm to public health policy. That's ok with me because the commercial and vested interests of public health policy has done immeasurable harm to liberty. Something which I value a lot higher.

Me too.

Mr P also gives us good news when he writes about how the E-Cig is showing up the Smokerphobic anti-smoker organistions as the bigots that they are.

I do hope he is right when he says that their objection to something that is not proved to be harmful can only make them look like the bunch of bigots that they are and can only have a positive outcome for those of us who choose to continue consuming the real McCoy - natural tobacco.

I also hope Mr Puddlecote is right when he says 2012 could be our year.

Let's hope so. It's certainly got off to a positive start.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2011-12-31T22:03:00.000Z

... to all bloggers, readers, fellow smoking ban warriors and rebels.

The blog may be closed for a couple of days. No doubt tomorrow I'll be cooking and with what's left of tonight, I'll be getting pissed.

Monday will be spent with family and friends and so blogging will be light at least until Tuesday.

Whatever you're doing or where ever you are in the world, I wish you hope, peace, strength and prosperity for the New Year.

The fight continues.

BHF DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD

2011-12-31T21:42:00.000Z

It seems obvious to me that the BHF's latest campaign can only be a catalyst for the problem of child smoking to get worse because if the "charity" gets its way life for the black marketeer will be easy.

Tobacco in plain packaging will be far more readily available at cheaper prices than ever before - and counterfeiters won't even have to go to the trouble of faking brand designs.

Several people, and some not normally that interested in the smoking debate, brought my attention to this latest piece of propagandic junk.

The general view is that it's outrageous nannying by a fussbucket self interest group trying to cling to whatever cash comes it's way in return for help in stigmatising the smoker.

One person even remarked how the BHF obviously has too much money if it has cash to waste on the promotion of this kind of hysteria:

With around 200,000 children and young people in England starting smoking each year, and more than two thirds of the UK's existing 10 million smokers started before they turned 18, it's critical we close this advertising loophole and protect our children and young people from getting hooked on a lifetime's addiction.

Cigarette packets have huge graphic health warnings on them and if the BHF thinks kids find diseased throats and dead bodies glamorous and cool, then there is something very wrong with its thinking.

Certainly its view that smokers should steer clear of the BHF means that this alleged "charity" only extends to people who are not smokers - the very people likely to depend on this uncharitable charitable organisation at some point in their lives.

The BHF reckons it surveyed more than a quarter of young smokers to find out that Big Bad Tobacco is trying to entice them into a life of "addiction" - but then no one is ever allowed to see this so called research which has always been cherry picked or peer reviewed before being released to the public saying exactly what the paymaster expects it to say.

To say I'm sceptical based on what I know from a lifetime of smoking is an understatement. I disagree with just about everything this alleged former ~~child smoker~~ short time smoker says.

All the usual hyperbole clichés are in there but it really is just the stupid and the smokerphobic who believe them. General tolerant, fair minded non smokers and smokers are not convinced.

It seems that moves to steal legitimate tobacco companies of their brand logos - while the anti-smoker industry rides for free on the back of their product - could well be illegal.

Somehow I think that there is one law for tobacco companies and their consumers and another for everyone else but I hope this fascism is stopped in its tracks. It is the last demand before smokers are criminalised and tobacco is prohibited.

History shows that prohibition leads to crime waves and ruthless profiteering in a black market that sells a contaminated unregulated product to anyone of any age, often using children as runners as is currently being done in Ireland.

In reality, when crime gets organised there is very little that can be done to stop it. If it could, and plain packaging or tobacco display bans worked in reducing the number of people who use the product, then we wouldn't have a drugs war would we.

Heroin and cocaine are not on display, and they come in the plainest of packs, and yet the numbers of people using both drugs is still on the rise. If it doesn't work in stopping young people use those drugs then it won't stop young people smoking.

But then the BHF should know that - shouldn't it?

CREATING HATE - DRIVING EXCLUSION

2011-12-31T18:50:00.001Z

I can't comment on Frank Davis's blog because for whatever reason I can't log in to post a comment or reply.

But I was interested to see that he'd also recently read Debs Arnott bragging back in 2007 in the Guardian that smokers would be forced to become second class citizens and the indoor smoking ban was the first step needed to achieve that aim.

What offended me more about that article was that Arnott acknowledged openly that smokers would be marginalised after 2007. It was never about health. It was always about hate.

After smokers were singled out for social exclusion, their right to complain as a group was also denied along with any claims that they were a group at all. The right of smokers to voice concern at what was being done against them was also taken away when Big Tobacco Control decided smokers didn't exist - except in the imagination of the Mythical Big Tobacco Child Catcher Corporates.

Deb's feigned concern in the article that smokers should not be marginalised are extremely hollow. The claim appears to be made to cover her own arse for the hate she must have known would be unleashed after 2007 on many elderly, vulnerable and law abiding consumers who just wanted to be left alone.

She's even taking that concern for smokers to be marginalised further by pushing for smokers to be thrown out of their own homes by encouraging their communities to bully them and their neighbours to fear and harass them.

I feel entirely sorry for those people who keep fit, eat well, don't smoke, don't drink alcohol or only occasionally, who do everyhyting the medics say they should to live to be 120 years old, and who then end up with something as awful as lung cancer like 10% of smokers do.

I realise that these unfortunate souls need to blame someone or something to enable them to come to terms with what has happened to them. Anger is eased when directed as hate towards someone specific and people have been taught to hate smokers with a passion.

Scientists who aren't paid to produce results for Big Pharma corps or self interest lobby groups know that smoking is only a factor along with many other everyday all around us factors that can trigger lung cancer and sadly for all the good pure life that one lives, it can also be a genetic time bomb just waiting to go off.

Not one single study on the passive smoking fraud has ever shown anyone died of lung cancer and lying with tax payer funds or big Pharma cash does not make it true. The third hand smoke scam has been invented to explain smoking as the cause of something when nothing else is near to hand to blame.

The fitness freak in the linked article above may just as easily developed lung cancer from jogging past traffic on his daily runs, something gross in the sea he surfs in, or from some chemical air-fresherner somewhere he has spent a lot of time, or from the cooking oil he uses, or a host of all sorts of other things. He chooses to blame his neighbours because they are an easy target and he is prejudicial in his view both towards them and to tobacco smoke generally.

Smokerphobia - a recognised mental health condition - is now at hysterical levels because of organisations like Debs' ASH UK.

The Citizens Union for Safe Smoking group is also very disturbed at the rise in Smokerphobia and Govts willingness to pander to those who really need psychiatric treatment at the expense of law abiding people who just want to be left alone in peace without harassment.

CUSS Says : "For millions who have discovered their identity as smokers and have been brave enough to come out and let others know, there is an inescapable daily fear of reprisals, of prejudice, of violence, of mockery and criticism.

"Smokophobia hinders the ability of smokers to contribute to society and even destroys the lives of many smokers. The shortened lifespan of most smokers is a sad testament to the adverse effects of repression and persecution. All of society pays a heavy price when we allow fear, ignorance, and hate to hurt so many."

The Nazi No-Smoking signs should themselves carry a warning : SMOKERPHOBIA HARMS YOU AND OTHERS AROUND YOU.

Maybe Steven Simon can print it on a T-Shirt for the Smokerphobics spouting bile on the article that reports how the pro-choice campaigner is planning on doing something for smokers.

Steven might also like to consider our other slogans WE DESERVE TO BE HEARD and IT'S NOT ABOUT HEALTH.