Labour are the biggest losers
Saturday, July 12, 2008 A lot has been written about the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, much of it negative, but Iain Dale - David Davis's former chief-of-staff - makes some good points on his blog HERE:
[Davis] won with an overwhelming 72% share of the vote (the highest in a by election since 1997) on a 35% turnout, which was far higher than most of the so-called Westminster village 'experts' had predicted. Considering he had no real opposition, I think that is a very creditable turnout in the circumstances. It is roughly the same as the turnout in Sarah Teather's by election in Brent East in 2003, but far higher than Michael Portillo's (29%) or Hilary Benn's (19%). When you consider that 9,000 students were away, it is the summer holiday season, and it rained, I am not sure anyone could have expected a much higher turnout than that.
In a few weeks we may have forgotten all about the by-election, and the point David Davis was trying to make. I hope not. Civil liberties deserve to be near the top of the political agenda. For years we have been sleepwalking towards a more restrictive type of society. If DD, and allies such as Bob Geldof (who wrote a spirited article in the Daily Telegraph this week), can keep the issue alive, they will be doing everyone a huge service.
The real losers, meanwhile, were not the 23 candidates who lost their deposits, but the Labour party. Refusing to put up a candidate, the governing party showed themselves to be cowards, unwilling to defend in public a policy they were forced to gerrymander through parliament. The Haltemprice and Howden by-election may have resembled a pantomime at times, but by declining to take part I believe that Labour gave up their right to run this country.
PS. There was good news and bad news for Hamish Howitt, the anti smoking ban campaigner. The bad news? He got 91 votes and (like most of the candidates) lost his deposit. The good news? He got ten times more votes than Tony Farnon, the anti-smoking candidate who got, er, eight.
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He got 91 votes and (like most of the candidates) lost his deposit. The good news? He got ten times more votes than Tony Farnon, the anti-smoking candidate who got, er, eight.
I didn't know there was an antismoking candidate. That makes the result rather more interesting. It's perhaps the first ever electoral test of the relative strength of anti-smokers and pro-smokers.
And without wanting to be described once again as an "obsessive-compulsive mathematician", I'd like to point out that Hamish got more than ten times the votes of Farnon. He got eleven times more. In fact, over eleven times more. 11.375 to be exact. (see by-election candidates and results) Or, for every 1000 dedicated antismokers there are in the country, there are 11,375 dedicated pro-smokers.
Hamish came 13th out of 26 candidates, just behind David Icke. Farnon came joint last.
Well, I suppose I'm glad that David Davis won - but has his 'victory' done ANYTHING to help the poor, bloody Smoker ?
I would suggest that smoking is as much a 'Civil Liberties' issue as ID cards, CCTVs, and all the rest of it - and in PRACTICAL terms it probably affects a great many more people than the spectre of detention without trial (28 days, 42 days, five years..............) EVER will.
A freedom is a freedom, and no less so because only a minority choose to avail themselves of it.
And, yes - I DID write some e-mails to the Davis campaign team, and no - I DIDN'T get a single reply (I know, I know Peter - but I'm a busy man, too !).
I see the real losers here as the smokers, much more than Labour.
For so long we have seen post after post on here, telling us that the reason for Labour's downfall has been the smoking ban. Surely this by-election proves otherwise?
We had one person representing the smoker, which was good old Hamish Howit, a man that puts his money where his mouth is, and he got a paltry 91 votes, which shows you just how much the average man and woman on the streets think about the smoking ban. Simon says that the good news was that Tony Farnon, the anti-smoking candidate only got eight, so Hamish got ten times more votes than him.
This, as we all know, is utter rubbish. All the other candidates were anti smoking, or if they wasn't, they certainly didn't make any noises about being otherwise.
People want Labour out because they are fed up with ALL their useless policies, the smoking ban being just one of many. We are fed up with their high taxes, their lies, their deceit, their nanny state policies, their bullying behaviour, their education system, they way they have ruined the NHS, the list is endless.
Anyone who seriously thinks Labour's demise is due to the smoking ban alone, is living in cloud cuckoo land, and would surely benefit from a brain transplant. I wish it were that simple, but it just isn't. Be honest with yourself, if you had a simple choice between two parties, one who said they would overturn the smoking ban, and the other who said they would give your child a better education, who would you vote for?
I certainly know what my answer would be, and I think the vast majority would vote the same.
If we want to win this battle, we need to re-educate people. Many people see smokers as a selfish bunch who care only about themselves and their "addiction", for want of a better word, to tobacco. Well I for one, am certainly not addicted to smoking, but what I am addicted to, is freedom, and that is what I am fighting for. I am not selfish either, I do not smoke around children, even though I do not think it will harm them, I don't smoke at a table while people are eating, and I always try to keep any smoke well away from other people, even if they are themselves smokers.
I think we need to show people the new, passionate side of smokers. In fact we shouldn't even call ourselves "smokers", we are just people, the same as everyone else, but we do like to sometimes smoke tobacco. I have never heard of people who chew gum being called "chewers", or people who spit in our streets being called "spitters". The word "smoker" is being used against us in the propaganda war as a derogatory term which we need to change.
There is no doubt about it, this is a war against smoking, and we are loosing it. I know Simon doesn't like mentioning the Nazis, but if the similarities are there, what are we supposed to do? When the Nazis started their hate campaign against the Jews, they pictured them as vile creatures who contaminated their cities, like a plague of rats, they caricatured them, showing them with evil looking faces. Germany would only be a better place, they said, once the evil Jews had been wiped out. The rest is of course, history, terrible history which most people today just cannot comprehend, and it was allowed to happen through ignorance and through children's acceptance of "facts" which are thrust at them from an early age.
This, I am afraid, is how people in the UK are also as accepting of the "facts" against smoking, they accept everything which is thrust upon them in a very similar way as which the Nazis used all those years ago. So what is the point of us saying that we know we are right, so it will all come out right in the end? All sane people must have known that the Jews had right on their side, and that the Nazis were wrong and evil, but that didn't stop them getting away with it for years.
We need to polish our image, we need to show the world that we are not monsters, we are not evil, we are not intent on killing everyone around us. We are the man and the woman next door, we are the doctors and nurses, and firemen, and politicians, and soldiers, we are people who might one day save the life of the non smoker nest door.
When we do this, then and only then, will we be able to see by-elections and general elections changed or even won, by people who want to oppose those who advocate oppression of one section of society's freedom.
I think that you make an excellent point about the use of the term 'smokers', Peter. I've long being saying that smokers are only non-smokers who smoke sometimes. Every moment that I don't have a lit cigarette in my hand I'm a non-smoker, if you like. I think, in fact, 'experts' in quitting smoking make exactly this point to try to effect a change in attitude. I came across an American website (I think via F2C) which also graphically made this point. Couldn't begin to tell you how to find it, though.
I agree also with your remarks about Nazism. I appreciate that it appears to be distasteful in the extreme to compare modern anti-smoking attitudes and techniques with those in Nazi Germany but the fact remains that they are remarkably similar. It is unthinkable that Antis could go as far as Hitler did in his solution to the problem of 'undesirables', yet Simon Clark on the 'Sex in the City' thread suggests that, in years to come, smokers might be accused of gross depravity and I agree. Once those in positions of trust and authority demonise a group of people, it isn't difficult to reinforce the attitude and obtain tacit consent to any treatment suggested by the authorities. It's already happening with, for example, social services refusing to place children in homes where people smoke: in the public mind smokers become child abusers.
I do think you're mistaken, however, in believing that people who loathe New Labour do so only because of the smoking ban. It provides a prime example of the flavour of this Government. It's extremely unfortunate that people seem unable or unwilling to connect the ban and the broader issue of civil liberties.
WRT the votes polled by Hamish and Tony Farnon and what we can deduce from this, I'm afraid I've indulged in a little fallacious reasoning, myself, on another blog to make the point that only a minority want a blanket ban. The reasoning might be fallacious but I believe the conclusion to be sound.
You misread me Joyce, I did not say that people who loathe New Labour do so only because of the smoking ban. In fact I said just the opposite. See below:
People want Labour out because they are fed up with ALL their useless policies, the smoking ban being just one of many. We are fed up with their high taxes, their lies, their deceit, their nanny state policies, their bullying behaviour, their education system, they way they have ruined the NHS, the list is endless
I know Simon doesn't like mentioning the Nazis, but if the similarities are there, what are we supposed to do? When the Nazis started their hate campaign against the Jews, they pictured them as vile creatures who contaminated their cities, like a plague of rats - Peter Thurgood
The similarities are not just to be found in the current antismoking persecution, whose science originated in Nazi Germany, but elsewhere as well.
What are the roots of modern environmentalism? These also can be traced back to Nazi Germany. See The Secret History of Environmentalism.
The books make clear the Third Reich was a radical environmentalist regime. The Nazis promoted organic farming, reforestation, species preservation, naturalism, neo-paganism, holistic science, animal rights, sun-worship, herbalism, anti-capitalism, ecology, anti-urbanism, alternative energy, hysterical anti-pollutionism and apocalyptic anti-industrialism.
And what about the Olympic games, which we will very soon all be forced to endure? Well,..
The Olympics' modern themes: nationalised competition, the political impartiality of sport, the cultural supremacy of Ancient Greece, amateurism, drug-free bodily perfection, and the emphasis on grandiose theatrics all have their roots in the traditions of German Naturism and early fascism that was the focus of the 1936 Berlin Olympic games. The events theatrics as established by Leni Riefenstahl and Joseph Goebbels are arguably the single greatest cultural hangover from the politics of the Third Reich.
Nazism is regarded as a horrible aberration, a temporary madness that afflicted Germany for a couple of decades in the last century. What if it wasn't an aberration at all, but one of the central streams of European thought? What if, even though decapitated and crushed, it reconstituted itself as a loose consortium of 'New Age' doctrines which, taken separately, seemed innocuous enough, but which in toto comprised a more or less unreconstructed Nazism?
Oops, Peter, my apologies - trying to post in a hurry!
Funnily enough, Idlex, while writing my earlier post my thoughts were wandering along the same lines. Perhaps it is simply that the root of authoritarianism lies in hunger for power and that different ages just present different opportunities, only nowadays, with modern technology it's quicker and easier to harness that power (common purpose?).