Saturday
Mar072009
That was the week that was
Saturday, March 7, 2009 Stories that (almost) passed unnoticed ...
1. Cabinet split over cigarette display ban
2. Smokers charged 50p to light up
3. Secondhand smoke can cause depression
4. Dubai bans public smoking of shisha
5. France acts over binge drinking
6. Alcohol guidelines usher in 'a new era of caution'
From the blogosphere ...
1. This is no laughing matter (Burning Our Money)
2. Submitted as a complaint to the BBC (Devil's Kitchen)
3. Then they came for the fatties (Dick Puddlecote)
4. My early day motion to save the great British pub (Bob Russell MP)
5. More on pubs and why they're closing (Kerry McCarthy MP)
6. Gordon Brown is wrong (The Last Ditch)
Reader Comments (82)
Kerry's blog was interesting. After getting the academic and professional evidence from myself on the smoking ban, and published, she had the same debate without the smoking ban being mentioned by her choice. She specifically did not want F2C to get involved, nor Forest people. My impression is that Labour conscieniously know it but are in denial. So I can just imagine the scene.
Captain to seaman, "Full steam ahead"
"Aye, aye Captain"
Captain then said "crew please, re-arrange the deckchairs"
Then the Titanic hit the iceberg marked smoking ban.
I have a strong feeling that the health zealots at the DoH and their client fake charities are running the health agenda with Alan Johnson rubber stamping their work.
It looks like a scene out of Yes Minister.
I sent in quite a detailed comment. Jam-packed with numbers it was.
Obviously it was too terrifying to publish.
I sent a follow up asking why the comment wasn't published. That was ignored too.
The Labour party take ignorance to new heights.
I will repay the favour when the polls open.....
These days, I generally don't bother commenting on nulabor MPs' blogs at all. It is always a wasted effort and the best comments are usually deleted [or altered, as in the case of Paul Flynn].
And neither do I big-up their Google-factors by linking to them. Kerry Mc Wotsit is worth a glance very occasionally though, just so I can remember how the enemy think of themselves. Why are the pubs closing? she asks, all wide-eyed, whilst instructing her admirers not to mention the smoker-ban and the sevenfold increase in closures from 2007.
Hey! Don't go there!
Fuck off Kerry, you troughing harpy and take "Monika from Friends" with you..
Students and people who under normal circumstances, one would think, would question what is being said to them in the name of science and "good health", are now seeming to accept blindly, these ridiculous "facts".
In the article "Smokers charged 50p to light up"
One student says: "I don't smoke myself, but at the end of the day they are being forced to outside, why should they have to pay for the privilege of having to go outside and do something that is going to kill them anyway?"
She starts off by sounding half sensible, and then retreats into the indoctrinated hell of the New Labour propagandists. What on earth makes her believe that "all" people who smoke are going to be killed by it?
Hasn't she ever met people of great age who have smoked all their lives, and are still living, in as good health as their fellow non smokers, and loving every minute of it?
I certainly have, I have met and known people in their nineties, who smoke, and drink on a regular basis. Winston Churchill was a prime example.
Students, especially, should be the people to stand up and say "why?" They are fast becoming the people who sit down and say "I give in".
That's because Peter, students these days are fucking useless. I know cos I've just recently graduated and I can tell ya they just blindly follow their dumbass tutors who have what i like to call the "University mentality", which basically means they think everything is black and white and don't live in the real world. Plus there's not much decent rock bands and students have all grown up with their parents "protecting" them from all the nasty things in the world, until of course, they get to uni and fuck it all up! :P
My view concerning Kerry McCarthy's blogsite is mixed. She is not as good as Tom Harris, but like him, her blogs are not pure politics. I have read some of her blogs, and been quite amused. I have also left comments on blogs of hers which are nothing to do with smoking.
Kerry visits the F2C forum, I know because she used one of my posts on there as a blog! It was not unkind, in fact, quite friendly I suppose.
http://kerry-mccarthy.blogspot.com/2008/12/normal-guy-with-sense-of-humour.html
I even discovered that she had visited my youtube channel.
I put a comment on the blog mentioned, "5. More on pubs and why they're closing (Kerry McCarthy MP)". She had specifically asked for no comments about the smoking ban, which were in another blog not far behind. I did send one however, which was not particularly polite about the Labour Party, and against my expectations, it went up. I find it hard to believe that a site I keep away from, Labourlist, which Dave A directed us to, also put up the same comment.
I try to keep an open mind. There are many people in NuLabour, especially at the top, who I find quite evil and blinkered in their views. I do not think however that Kerry McCarthy or Tom Harris (who voted against the complete smoking ban) are the enemy. Being controversial, I do not even think that Paul Flynn is, he is just crazy, pompous and a bigot, which he knows because I have told him on more than one occasion on his blogsite.
Maybe you're right Tim. I was having a ragey minute there. TH is okay, Kerry is... borderline, Flynny is, as you say, a pompous bigot and someone who'll rewrite history rather than admit personal fault.
Another problem I have with our Kerry is that I sorta half-fancy her. But there's no way I'd do the nasties on the Right Honourable Bristolian under what I might suspect her Rules to be.
Yes Basil. Despite the fact that KM is a non smoking non meat eating vegan with a good dose of feminism and 'mother knows best' mentallity, she does at least do a heck of a lot of work in her constituency, which is more than a lot of MPs do. I suppose this can make her strangely atttractive, and I have noticed that she can be a teeny bit of a Right Honourable Flirt!
Yes, a glance at her site indicates that she is a good egg with a sense of humour (never found in zealots of any kind). In view of her constituency work it would seem unfair, indeed, if she lost her seat because smokers had a casting vote in an election which swung heavily to the Tories. And when amendment, not repeal of the ban, was all that was being asked.
I believe if not know that there is software that can pick up references to your blog and name should it be published. Kerry must have it too, also Professor Carl V Philips who has suffered at the hands of the anti smoking Stasi picked up my article in Devil's Kitchen after I mentioned him. It also maybe a sign of how aware he has to be of Glantz, Seffrin and Thun at the American Cancer Society.
My guess, and for the sake of clarity have no direct knowledge is that Labour and KM know what the smokng ban has done to the pub trade. Blogging is becoming a very powerful tool in politics. Instant dissemtination of information and read mainly by articulate and often influential people. My impression again is that they have taken aback how us pro choicers are erudite, well researched and reasonable.
They thought the smoking ban would go away, it is up to us to keep it on the agenda. An amendment won't happen under Labour in a hurry but the UK's 12 million smokers should damn well try their best to make sure that Labour is reduced to a fringe party at the next election. Apparently in the 1997 election the corridors of the BBC were strewn with champagne bottles after Labour were elected. Perhaps they can give me the details of their shipper.
I managed to get a comment on Kerry's blog by mentioning though not mentioning the SBE (twice) and she agreed with the comment!
As for PF I think he was saddened by the loss of a local pub and did mention the SBE as part of the reason.
I disagree with both their views, yet by presenting information in a way they understand, perhaps progress can be made.
The thing is we have a large number of Walking dead MPs (likely to lose thier seats) and so we could make an impact on them.
Both Kerry and PF are less likely than others to lose their seats though that is not certain as they are in 'safe' seats. Even so, I believe PF knows opposition and Kerry may not.
PF does seem concerned about the impact of lobbying and this is something we can agree on.
At least both publish my comments [I did once have one changed to make me look a bit dim - no hard at the best of times]. Honeybee MEP person does not seem to publish mine though.
west
----
I won't forget though, that just 646 people in this country got to vote for the total smoking-ban. Kerry used her vote to impose her will on the rest of us.
But I guess that if you're a Somali living in her constituency, her office would be very helpful.
I see she's now banned commenters from using the words "snout" and "trough" on her blog. Loves her rules, does our Kerry.
Speaking of Honeyball, our favourite troughing Euro-parasite has now deleted well over half the comments on her "Tory Smokers" post. Just 44 remain.
"I believe if not know that there is software that can pick up references to your blog and name should it be published"
Funny you should say that Dave A, I mentioned the ASA and a commercial news-gathering service picked it up within an hour.
Still no confirmation or reply to my complaint.
Why, Basil, do you bother with people like this awful Kerry woman?
Where I live, we have an absolutely rotten neighbour, who's sole purpose in life, seems to be making other people's lives, hell!
Our rotten neighbour thrives on confrontation, and this, I believe, is what the ghastly Kerry woman gets off on.
People like this should be ignored. They are like naughty children who scream and shout and don't care if they are chastised, because to them, any attention is better than none.
Don't feed their egos Basil, they are not important enough to warrant it.
Peter I have to disagree I am afraid. Most of the political class live in a haematically sealed world where nodding dogs are endemic. Having a blog interfacing to the real world is their reality check from us trolls and proles. I get the impression KM enjoys reasonable debate but is sensitive to critcism, especially personal.
I think it has come as a complete surprise to the Labour establishment the opposition to the smoking ban and how persistant we are. Also not quite my cup of tea, some of the blogs on immigration where the left play the "race card" and yet still people are not put off by epithets.
If we left them alone they would be even more righteous in their policies.
Hoping this isn't entirely off-topic......
A small piece in Friday's 'Daily Telegraph', entitled "Great-granny stops smoking after 70 years".
It goes on to say:
"A Great-Grandmother who has smoked more than 200,000 cigarettes over the past 70 years has finally given up the DEADLY habit. Mervyn Fielding, 84.........." (etc etc)
Clearly, the 'reporter' of this breathless piece
has had an Irony Bypass Operation.
Funny sort of 'deadly' habit which enables you to indulge it for SEVENTY years before adverse effects compel you to quit.
Before 1900, most people were lucky to survive past FIFTY.
Or am I missing something.............?
Peter, I'm afraid I have to disagree as well. Dave A and myself have become regular visitors and commenters on Kerry's blog. She is not only an MP, she also has a human side, and blogs about all kinds of stuff. She enjoys a good banter, and can laugh at hersrelf, as can be seen from the comment of the week, which is Daves, (second week running). She has been made aware of F2C and what it stands for as well, and has also been made aware that not only can they make valuable arguments against the severity of the ban, but other things as well.
It is unfortunate that a light hearted comment of hers was possibly taken the wrong way by those who have not got to know her via her blog and now twitter. She found one of those 'it could only happen in America' crimes, some guy who made a device so that he could give his unruly cat cannabis to calm it down. She put it on, and her blog was "I think even F2C would draw the line at this". Dave knew this was a joke, so did I. She knows about F2C, she knows that they are sincere smokers and non smokers, she knows Dave A and timbone. I don't know what comments people made on that blog, she has removed it, it was obviously misunderstood.
Kerry McCarthy may be a vegan, but she is not a fanatic. I have never once seen her make fanatical comments about eating meat or dairy products. She is not an anti smoker either, she is just a non smoker who does not understand what is being done to us, well, she didn't, until she was flooded with comments after speaking about the success of the ban on it's first anniversary in England.
I think that part of the struggle is to make inroads with the KMs and the TH and even the PF, which I can assure you that people like Dave A and timbone and others are doing.
"Most of the political class live in a haematically sealed world where nodding dogs are endemic. Having a blog interfacing to the real world is their reality check from us trolls and proles. I get the impression KM enjoys reasonable debate but is sensitive to critcism, especially personal." - Dave Atherton
No, no, no!!!. And no again!
I'm never going to forget that this vegan feminazi was one of the MPs who voted for the the complete smoking ban, and who shows absolutely no sign of regretting it. Same for the druid Paul Flynn. These are people who have been spearheading Labour's assault on Britain. And they do it because they hate traditional British culture, and because they hate everything that nurtured and shaped them, and can think of nothing better than to undermine the world that made them.
People like vegan Kerry McCarthy and druid Paul Flynn simply don't give a damn about anyone who isn't part of the inverted and irrational culture to which they belong. And druidism and veganism is inverted irrationality. They might be said to care about absolutely everybody except their own countryfolk, for whom they have utter contempt, and whose culure they have no compunction about destroying in order to advance their own perverse values.
Nobody who genuinely loved British cultural life would have ever banned smoking in pubs. Only people who hated that culture could ever have done such a thing. These people are vipers who bite the breast that nursed them. They are people who have profoundly betrayed the country in which they have lived and prospered (they both became MPs!).
And just so that it's perfectly clear that I'm not making a purely party political point, I'll also say that my Tory MP, Angela Browning, also betrayed her country and her culture when she voted for a total smoking ban. And, in the same act, she also betrayed her smoker father who fought for his country and was imprisoned in Nazi Germany.
British culture is something that is created by the British people. It is not something that a few MPs or doctors or busybody health experts can co-opt for their own ends. It has a life of its own.
The British people are a tolerant people. They don't want minorities of any sort to be persecuted. Not even the tiny minority who are druids and vegans. But they did not make way for these minorities so that they - the British people - could themselves become an ignored and despised minority in their own land, evicted from their pubs and clubs, banned from their customary practices in small ways and large.
Kerry McCarthy and Paul Flynn (and Angela Browning) showed themselves to be devoid of tolerance when they voted for the complete smoking ban. And with their Act of Parliament they brought an end to a long and illustrious era of toleration. And so let them themselves meet in turn the intolerance they have unleashed upon this country. Druids? Ban them and flog them! Vegans? Ban them and fine them and prosecute them to the ends of the earth! These people have shown no tolerance or compassion. Absolutely none. So why on earth tolerate them? Or feel the slightest compassion or understanding for them? Why even pay them pensions? Why even allow them continued British citizenship? They should be exiled from these shores in perpetuity.
These bigots are going to pay a heavy price for what they have done. The Labour party which betrayed its own working class roots is going to pay the full price for it. And so are these meddling doctors who have got far too big for their boots. And so too all these fake charities, like BHF and CRUK and ASH, will pay the price too. They will be gone like eddies in the wind.
There is no point in cultivating Kerry McCarthy or Paul Flynn or any of these non-entities. They are all wretched little nobodies. And they will anyway all be gone soon. But the enormous damage they have done will live on long after they are forgotten.
Idlex -
As our American cousins would say: 'Way to go !'
Contrary to the myth perpetuated by certain Silly Foreigners, we British are a PASSIONATE race - albeit that our 'passions' (animals, gardening, sporting activities, various 'hobbies' etc etc) are engaged with rather less fuss and arm-flailing than one is apt to see in sunnier lands.
So, bravo to YOU for demonstrating one of YOUR passions - the passion for Freedom, which you correctly identify as a vital component of our culture.
Sadly, this seems NOT to be the case with a growing number of my fellow-countrymen.....
And yes - I'm sure that Kerry McC is a Warm And Wonderful Human Being Who Really Cares. Well, perhaps she should consider becoming a social worker, home carer, or probation officer: that way, any crass decisions she makes would NOT have the unintended (?) consequence of making MILLIONS feel miserable, angry, socially isolated, guilty, and afraid.
Unfortunately, such a move would necessarily involve giving up her well-appointed office in Portcullis House and gold-plated pension - to say nothing of that intoxicating sense of self-importance that drives so many of our parliamentary 'representatives'.
For people like Kerry - and all those quislings in the Tory Party who voted for the Ban - a dolphin trapped in a net is probably a matter of greater concern than the plight of the lonely and elderly fighter-pilot who's no longer free to go to his local (without risking pneumonia, that is).
HE risked his life to SAVE these islands from bureaucratic tyranny.
SHE risks a little ridicule to IMPOSE a new bureaucratic tyranny.
If Kerry represents the Future (aka 'The New World Order') - then I'm outta here.
At least you could SHOOT the Nazis !
Profound words of wisdom, Idlex. How much of a readership will they reach? The likes of Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg should read them.
May I draw attention to Colin Grainger's equally profound words on F2C today, regarding anticipated Rage Riots being planned for this summer?
I really fear the BNP and their underlying policy of race hatred and violent demonstration. A look at any of their videos shows packed audiences of beefy beligerent men, "rarin' to go". This is what could lie ahead in the coming months.
I know they will split the vote which could have been for UKIP in the June 2009 EU & Council elections. The Tories, who maintain the status quo, could be elected by default.
The BNP are very powerful now and seem to have unlimited funding. They can afford a compelling website. Where does their funding come from? I suspect it could come indirectly from the EU.
It would only take one day to establish Martial Law in this country. We would be flooded with heavily armed Europol police in addition to our own armed forces and police forces being set against our own people.
Gordon Brown has signed the Lisbon Treaty. This allows arrest without reason, imprisonment with no destination stated, no trial by jury - in fact, no trial at all.
With Martial Law established, there would be no general election in 2010 - or ever again, perhaps.
As Colin Grainger says, we must try to keep our heads down and weather the storm of this coming summer of discontent. How CAN we get this message out to people?
Perhaps it is time for our popular leading personalities like Stephen Fry, Jonathon Ross, French & Saunders - in fact all participants of Red Nose Day, to speak up LOUD AND CLEAR. Persecution and deprivation in the U.K.is everywhere. The smoking ban and its destruction of traditional social meeting places, is more than just a joke to be referred to obliquely from time to time.
We do NOT want riot and mass protest. We want awareness of the crucial danger we are in. The advice should be patience, no civil disturbance, and peaceful progress to the next General Election.
Have a think about this, all those who stand up for the ghastly Kerry woman. We are now even debating her on here!
Can't you see that is exactly what she wants? Instead of us looking at important issues, and debating how we can take these issues forward, we are now (yes, including me), talking about a worthless MP, who is being paid with our money, to make life as bad for us as she possibly can, and as if to rub salt in our wounds, she is even befriending some on here, and making them believe she is normal.
This woman isn't normal. She is at war with humanity, just the guards in Nazi Concentration camps were. She smiles now and again, and makes a crass joke here and there, well bully for her, that doesn't make her human in my eyes.
Real human beings care for their fellow creatures, and do their best to make their lives better, people like Kerry, care only for their own personal doctrines, and if people have to suffer for her beliefs, then it means not a jot to her.
She puts a false face on and tries to make you believe she is human, and from what I have read here, her guise seems to be working with some people. "She's not bad really, and she has got a sense of humour".
I'll tell you what her sense of humour is, it is being able to laugh at the likes of the people who go onto her blog, at their own expense.
Has anyone ever thought, how this so called MP manages to find so much time to run a full time blog, and now, as someone pointed out, to "twitter" as well? And we're paying this "woman's" wages!
Idlex, I do not hang around Kerry McCarthy's blog just to ram my point home on the smoking ban. I have a general interest in politics and there are other things I feel are important and worthy of comment. Her blog is 3 dimensional and has many different subjects. She wrote a post a couple days ago "What is a women's issue" which I thought was extremely well written and fair despite my dread of a wimin bias. I posted a highly complementary comment and her reaction to me was "Oh Dear".
I can well understand the desire on the part of some commenters to engage with the likes of Kerry McCarthy, perhaps in the hope of persuading them that they have made some sort of mistake.
I doubt they will make any headway. People of this sort are utterly convinced of their own rightness, and cannot contemplate the possibility they might be wrong. The refusal of Kerry McCarthy to even contemplate the idea that the smoking ban for which she was responsible might be the cause of the closure of so many pubs shows exactly what her attitude is.
Antismoking is, as I have said before, the new antisemitism. People like Kerry McCarthy and Paul Flynn sort of know that antisemitism and homophobia and racism is 'wrong', and they ostentatiously flaunt their moral credentials in this respect. None of this, however, will deter them from defaming and persecuting anyone who is not on their list of People Who Must Not Be Persecuted. They simply haven't learned to universalise morality, and see that nobody should be persecuted.
They will only stop persecuting smokers and drinkers and fat people when, in a few years time, all sorts of horror stories finally get published about what happened to such people in these dark years, and a new list of People Who Must Not Be Persecuted is drawn up for their use, which will include smokers and drinkers and fat people (and quite probably paedophiles and muslims as well). The Paul Flynns and Kerry McCarthys of the 2030s will then ostentatiously demonstrate their 'caring' and 'inclusive' character by befriending smokers and drinkers and muslims and paedophiles, and campaigning loudly for their rights. But since black people and Jews and homosexuals will most likely have been dropped from the list of People Who Must Not Be Persecuted, they will cheerfully start persecuting them again instead.
Such people are not truly moral people at all. They are utterly superficial. They simply go along with the trend of the times, and with what "everyone knows" at that time. They are primarily concerned with what other people think of them, rather than with what actually is right and wrong. And they persecute people because, in doing so, they can feel good about themselves.
History is repeating itself as our banks crash and depression looms, and our politicians and pundits demonstrate that they have learned absolutely nothing from 200 years of booms and crashes. But history is also repeating itself with the rise of a new Nazism, which is just like the old Nazism, but with slightly different targets for persecution. And today, just like back then, our new Nazis are filled with the same moral fervour as the old Nazis, the same desire to purify society, and cleanse it of 'poisons'. Only the 'poisons' are different poisons this time. They are tobacco smoke and carbon dioxide. And, just as in the Nazi era, the whole apparatus of the state and the mass media is being applied to the furtherance of this witchhunt (for witchhunt it is) regardless of the suffering it causes (which is anyway completely ignored, but will emerge into the full light of day in a few years time.)
The best that can be hoped is that, in illo tempore, after yet another Nuremberg trial, Kerry McCarthy and Paul Flynn will be hanged, and lots of new Kerry McCarthys and Paul Flynns will declare "Never Again!" before going on to do exactly the same all over again to some as-yet-unknown and blameless minority onto whom their evil eye happens to fall.
Dave,
I hate to disagree with you, but I have to.
She is a vacuous mare. Her blogs has little substance that I can see. In fact, if I didn't know she was an MP I would, at first glance, have assumed that the blog was written by an immature teenage girl. I don't mean to be nasty to her, but she is so welded to the party line that it is difficult to communicate with her. In much the same way teenagers cannot be reasoned with. Like Paul Flynn, and the rest of the 646, they work for me. When I have a complaint, or a desire to engage with them, I do not expect infantile statements like "The smoking ban debate is over". Clearly if I, and thousands like me, want to discuss it, the debate hasn't ended.
Added to this is the fact that she, and the drones like her, threw me outside in the cold. For no good reason that I can think of.
I will never forgive, and I will never forget.
"With Martial Law established, there would be no general election in 2010 - or ever again, perhaps."
I had been wondering, Margot, what excuse our unelected PM Brown would use to suspend elections in 2010 to enable him to hold onto power and become Britain's first and ultimate dictator. That'll be it!
I really hope I'm being paranoid when I say that I worry we will never see another free election in this country again.
Margot,
Thank you for your kind words.
Mostly, my commentaries flow. That one did not. I found it hard to write and I checked and re-checked the sources until I was certain. Then and only then did I publish.
I remember Toxteth, Brixton, the poll tax and the miners riots, and more recently, the Asian riots in Oldham.
With this new law stating that the police cannot be photographed or filmed, how do we record events? How do we apportion blame if all we see is a blank screen? Naturally, the government will blame the rioters, as will the police. And with nothing to see, to help us decide, many people may well be hurt or jailed on evidence as baseless as that which they used to justify a smoker ban.
Dark times.
Dark times indeed.
I do not hang around Kerry McCarthy's blog just to ram my point home on the smoking ban. I have a general interest in politics and there are other things I feel are important and worthy of comment. - Dave Atherton
I'm sure you do. But the reason you first went there was, if I am not greatly mistaken, because of the smoking ban. And Kerry McCarthy knows that perfectly well. Which is why you aren't going to get anywhere.
Kerry McCarthy's opinions about anything are simply the opinion of everyone she knows in her vegan wimmin's clique, meticulously summed and averaged. She will only change her mind about anything when her friends change their minds. But since her friends are just like her, they won't change their minds about anything until their friends change their minds. The result is that nobody changes their minds about anything, and instead feels more and more certain in their beliefs, which are continually being re-enforced by everyone they know - all of which is a sure-fire recipe for extreme dogmatism and bigotry.
And, conversely, anyone who doesn't share their mentality is a non-person, someone to be ignored. And since you are probably a smoker, and most likely neither a vegan or a wimmin, you're nobody. And because you're nobody, you're wrong about everything just like she's right about everything. Which is why she says "Oh Dear" when you agree with her about something - because her natural instinct to ignore what you say logically entails ignoring or discounting her own opinion.
One day Kerry McCarthy will find that all her "friends" have deserted her, or taken up smoking and drinking, and her monstrous and bloated self-esteem - which only feeds off the approval of other people - will collapse as she starts finding that more people who "count" in her eyes have begun to disapprove of her than approve. This will probably coincide with her losing her seat in Parliament.
But by all means waste your time over on her blog. Who knows, she might become the next Prime Minister before her star fades. Stranger things have happened.
Idlex, I do take your points. It is a philosophical debate as to whether altruism exists. I am sure that if in a parallel universe I had the power to make her Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary or Chancellor she would be battering the doors down of Alan Johnson and Gerry Sutcliffe demanding the smoking ban be amended. I also concede that someone with very limited influence like me is probably a nuisance and nothing else. She certainly like all politicians never admit they are wrong in anyway, never says “I understand your point even,” which I think is Colin’s thesis, so agreed. I hope I am not guilty of hubris but on another matter totally unconnected with smoking she did quote my views in Parliament and three weeks ago pushed out the possibility of making NHS rooms available for the consumption of methadone. She was particularly interested in the views of the Tory reader, i.e. people like me. Also if you read her blog usually 2/3 of the comments she gets are critical of her and Labour. Lets be cynical I am sure I may well be her “useful idiot”.
On veganism I believe she is very sincere. On her blog she has never promoted it but is happy to answer any questions and any excuse to get some "cute" pictures of animals on the blog. Certainly on political correctness we are poles apart and will always agree to disagree. Kerry, from my brief interactions is typical of virtually all politicians of all parties. Cynical, manipulative, selfish and out to improve her career, no different to anyone else in Westminster. However I have exchanged private emails with her and Kerry maybe the least worst out there, that or I have mug stamped on my forehead.
Dave Atherton says: "Kerry maybe the least worst out there, that or I have mug stamped on my forehead"
You can remove it Dave, with "All New Improved New Labour", it reaches those parts where other cleaners don't even think about.
"Such people are not truly moral people at all. They are utterly superficial. They simply go along with the trend of the times, and with what "everyone knows" at that time. They are primarily concerned with what other people think of them, rather than with what actually is right and wrong. And they persecute people because, in doing so, they can feel good about themselves."
Everything you say idlex, including the above paragraph, is very sound and I totally agree. I am not sure whether anyone reads my comments anymore, maybe I give the impression that I have been cut from the same cloth, hued from the same wood, forged in the same vat. Maybe I am like the weakling who tries to get the approval of the bully by feeding their ego, the fall guy, the one who lets them abuse me and says thank you.
I don't know. What I do know is this. I am a player, writer and publisher of music who smokes cigarettes. I have and never will be the same person I was before I woke up and went out on 1st July 2007. I only go out when I need to. I keep my sanity by sometimes trying to have a day off looking at the latest way in which I am being persecuted for something I choose to enjoy.
Kerry McCarthy? I first visited her blog when Simon mentioned it on here because she was applauding the apparent success of my persecution.
I went there again when she ran a blog about Godwins law and smokers' references to the Nazi persecution of smokers.
Yes, I still visit her blog occasionally. Yes, I think sometimes what she says is interesting. Sometimes it is annoying. Sometimes it is funny. Am I doing something wrong? Is she the antichrist?
I admit that I may have put a comment on her blog which in retrospect looks foolish. I do that here as well, and on the F2C forum. All I know is that I am what I am, I say what I say. You all know who I am. They all know who I am. The most important thing is that I smoke cigarettes, I enjoy it, and I am absolutely disgusted by the way me and my millions of of 'friends' are being treated. Readers of blogs and other sites where I have an avatar will know that whatever I am talking about, I am a smoker, I am proud of that picture caught of me pontificating with a cigarette in my hand.
I have and never will be the same person I was before I woke up and went out on 1st July 2007....
The most important thing is that I smoke cigarettes, I enjoy it, and I am absolutely disgusted by the way me and my millions of of 'friends' are being treated.
I'll echo that. 1 July 2007 was a watershed in my life. Ever since that day I've been more or less permanently angry. The anger sometimes subsides a bit, but it's always there. I think my friends have hoped that I would get used to the ban and learn to live with it. But in fact my anger only gets deeper as time passes.
If I understand you rightly, you're saying you're just like Kerry McCarthy in seeking the approval of your peers. That's no surprise. Everybody does that, to some extent. How else do you think I would be able to describe the psychology, if I didn't know it in myself?
But we don't always have to go along with what everybody else thinks, in some sort of mutual admiration society. We are all of us able, to some extent, to step outside that kind of social conditioning. We are still able to say "This wrong!" even if everybody we know disagrees with us.
Maybe I am like the weakling who tries to get the approval of the bully by feeding their ego, the fall guy, the one who lets them abuse me and says thank you.
You know best the answer to that question, not me. All I can say is that I can still remember my school days when I was subjected to what, in retrospect, seems the mildest of verbal "bullying". My initial response was to try desperately to befriend the bullies, to show them that I didn't deserve their unwarranted contempt. It didn't do any good. In fact, they became even more contemptuous of me. And so one day, very reluctantly, I decided that there was nothing for it but to give up the attempt to win them over, and instead set out to destroy them like they were trying to destroy me. It was a tremendous uphill battle, because I didn't want to be as vile as they were. But one by one, I gradually reduced them and silenced them. Ever since that time, I have always attacked anyone who showed any signs of being an overbearing bully.
And Kerry McCarthy is a bully and a petty tyrant. So also is Paul Flynn. Who knows, maybe everyone who goes into politics is some sort of petty tyrant who wants to ram their own opinions down everybody else's throats.
But who cares what their reasons are? In my view, Kerry McCarthy and Paul Flynn are simply something that must be destroyed. I have no wish whatsoever to win them over to my point of view. I simply want to destroy them in the same way that I set out to destroy the bullies at my school (who, I eventually realised, were only bullying me because they were so very scared of me).
But, that said, I realise that neither Kerry McCarthy nor Paul Flynn are the real major players in this nasty game. They're just bit part players. And I'm still looking for the real movers and shakers behind this modern Nazi persecution. Maybe it's the medical establishment? Maybe it's the Church? Maybe it's International Communism? I simply don't know. But I will find out, little by little.
You will do what you think is right to do, and I do not wish to stop you doing it. I have simply wanted to say that I think it's a complete waste of your time to try to win the likes of Kerry McCarthy over to your point of view. She'll only feed off your attention. It's the only thing she wants. And she will anyway be torn to pieces in her own time.
I think you should recognise that some people are simply enemies, and there's nothing for it but to fight them. I know you don't want to do that - because I didn't either.
Thank you Idlex, I am so pleased I am not alone out there.
With regard to your statement: "I realise that neither Kerry McCarthy nor Paul Flynn are the real major players in this nasty game. They're just bit part players. And I'm still looking for the real movers and shakers behind this modern Nazi persecution. Maybe it's the medical establishment? Maybe it's the Church? Maybe it's International Communism? I simply don't know. But I will find out, little by little"
This is one thing I think everyone has been missing out on for so long. We know we are being persecuted, we know who the bit players, (or guards) are, but what we don't know, is who is behind all this, and more to the point, why.
I have tried many times to look logically at this subject, and have asked myself, what will our government gain from all this? And what indeed, will governments all over the world gain from it?
Almost the whole world is in a recession, with Britain in deeper than most, yet we have our government turning masses of revenue away in the form of tobacco tax, and on top of that, they are also spending huge amounts on advertising to discourage us from smoking.
It just doesn't make sense as far as I can see. If they loose all the revenue from tobacco, where will they replace it from? They tell us that by cutting tobacco sales, it will save "millions" of lives. Again, if this were true, where are they going to get the money to look after all these extra lives that they say they would save?
There is absolutely no logic behind this ban. Their theories and outright lies have been pulled apart time and time again. It is costing us all money, ruining thousands of businesses, and breaking up communities.
Lurking somewhere in the background, there must be some sort of masterplan. We need to dig deep, and get the right people on our side, in order to find out exactly what their ultimate plan is, and why? Once we have this answer, we can put up a real fight against them, without having this knowledge, it is like fighting an army of terrorists in the jungle, they are the unseen enemy, who pop out from behind trees and shoot you in the back in the middle of the night, and then retreat to their rat-holes to stock up and blast you again when you're not looking.
We need investigative journalism on our side, we need MPs with a conscience, and we need financial backing. Simple isn't it? (like hell it is).
“And I'm still looking for the real movers and shakers behind this modern Nazi persecution.” said idlex.
I see this as a rhetorical statement. You know the medical professions are the prime movers and shakers. Prior to the 1950’s, thanks to good honest science, cures for the world’s killer diseases had been created. Vaccines, usually given at birth, wiped out dyptheria, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, measles, polio, etc. Safe living accommodation and sufficient healthy food were available to the majority in the civilised world.
The majority of people smoked and the health benefits of nicotine were a part of the…. atmosphere breathed in by those who didn’t. No one gave a damn about smoking, one way or the other; smoking was not a topic of conversation.
As the civilised world became healthier and healthier, the medical profession was beginning to lose out. Especially the pharmaceutical companies. They began to look at the situation to see what could be done. They already used nicotine as the basis of many of their drugs. If smoking could be made to seem unpopular, even harmful, they could attempt to mirror the benefits of smoking within even more drugs. To cloak this, they invented new names for nicotine, i.e. Niacin, Nicotinic Acid, Vitamin B3.
And so the war against smoking began.
THEY conducted the research into the dangers of smoking. THEY produced the bogus scientific results. THEY invented the bogus statistics. People trusted the medical profession; it was what stood between them and pain, even death.
Now they have won the war.
… They have brainwashed the world’s population, including themselves.
The vast unlimited wealth now in the hands of the pharmaceutical companies makes them the most powerful body on earth. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Into their charmed inner circle they can buy the world’s leading politicians and all who have control over the world’s population. They too, of course, have been brainwashed and probably believe that smoking kills. No thought is given to the fact that history shows us it obviously doesn't. All illnesses can be laid at the door of smoking – because the medical profession says that this is so.
With absolute power in their hands, they can look leisurely at the world and see what could be done next. Even a cursory glance could show that the world is over populated and eventually may not be able to support the human race from its own natural resources.
So the next step is to cull the population. To ensure that the charmed inner circle can continue their life of luxury.
Quite an interesting programme has been started on TV regarding Darwin’s theory of natural selection. I don’t know how far they will take this. Simple ordinary folk like me generally do not crave excessive riches. All we ask is to be left in peace to nurture our families and enjoy our gardens and social meeting places. To pay for this we want a job we believe in where our skills are appreciated. We all had this in the 60’s. We loved our happy lives with the misery of the First and Second World Wars and the threat of Nazi domination still vivid in our minds. We were aware of the suffering in the communist controlled dictatorships within Russia and China and rejoiced when these seemed to come to an end.
I believe in Darwin’s theory of natural selection. If a weed grows more powerful and crushes out the smaller weeds, it too will reach the end of its life. The smaller weeds will still continue to push up in the place it once dominated. This world can sustain all life on it provided that power mad greedy dictators do not interfere with the natural order of things.
Now we are faced with the same sort of dictatorship and there is no world power to come to our rescue. So we must do it ourselves, as idlex and Colin Grainger say, picking off the enemy one by one with word and quiet example. Where we can enlist support from voices more powerful than ours, we’ll endeavour to do so.
As for you, dear highly intelligent Dave Atherton, if it gives you personal satisfaction to correspond with the likes of Kerry McCarthy on sundry matters, do so. But bare in mind you could be used as a Patsy so please do it on your own behalf, and not as an official representative of F2C or the smoker’s lobby. Methadone Clinics? For God’s sake! What has that to do with smoking?
"Methadone Clinics? For God’s sake! What has that to do with smoking?"
Margot, I made the point that on public property, with public money the government is allowing class A drugs to be consumed. Which I do not mind if it stops heroin addicts from going out on crime sprees to pay for their habit.
However, I did note the bitter irony that a legal drug is now banned on private property which you have to pay for and accused her and Labour of hypocrisy
We know we are being persecuted, we know who the bit players, (or guards) are, but what we don't know, is who is behind all this, and more to the point, why...
It just doesn't make sense as far as I can see. - Peter Thurgood
It doesn't make sense to me either. But perhaps we're not dealing with any sort of rationality here, and it genuinely is utterly senseless. There was always something rather insane about Nazism, in my view. And what we're facing now seems to me to be a new variant of it. And we need to fight a new war against it.
I suppose that for the most part I think we're up against an alien ideology which is part-religious, part-political, part-medical, and which has been gathering strength for many, many years. It's an ideology which has "infected" more and more people, and has gained greater and greater power as time has gone by. Our enemies are the adherents of this ideology.
Lurking somewhere in the background, there must be some sort of masterplan. We need to dig deep, and get the right people on our side, in order to find out exactly what their ultimate plan is, and why? Once we have this answer, we can put up a real fight against them, without having this knowledge, it is like fighting an army of terrorists in the jungle, they are the unseen enemy, who pop out from behind trees and shoot you in the back in the middle of the night...
I see what you mean, of course. And maybe the ideologues do indeed have a master plan. They are certainly extraordinarily successful, organised, and well-funded. And they sweep all before them. But I don't quite agree that they are an unseen enemy. A great many of them parade around in full sight of everybody. I'm thinking of Sir Liam Donaldson and Sir Charles George. Or, more internationally, people like Gro Harlem Brundtland. There are lots of these people, and they even hold conferences in which they openly speak of "denormalising" smoking.
I suppose that, for the most part, I generally identify the principal locus of this ideology in the medical profession. I don't think it's entirely accidental that all of the three people I have identified are doctors. Something seems to have gone wrong with the medical profession, so that people who should be the first of our servants are now trying to become our masters. And I have heard rumours that the BMA got taken over in the 1990s by some sort of clique, and this led to the resignation of many doctors from it. But I've only read of this once or twice, and may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick.
Anyway, the medical profession seems to be a good prime suspect as the culprit. Modern medicine is half science, and half witchcraft. The science bit is the stuff they understand, and the witchcraft is all the rest, which remains by far the greater proportion. This can't be helped, because however much science there is - what people know and understand - there is always much more nescience beyond it - what people don't know and don't understand - And antismoking "science" is nescience and witchcraft. It's not really science at all. It just makes a fairly good fist of appearing to be science, with lots of numbers, tables, graphs, and so on. But they don't understand what causes cancer, or how to treat it. Smoking was just one of the "usual suspects" to be rounded up and put on trial, simply to show that the authorities were in control of something that they had actually lost control of.
So the medical profession may be said to be made up of honest scientific doctors and dishonest (or at least delusionary) witch doctors. And it looks very much like the witch doctors are now in control of the medical profession.
The medical profession is also the most respected of all the professions. And a great many people take "doctor's orders" far more seriously and unquestioningly than other supposed authorities, like churches and poltical parties. The medical profession has, in this respect, enormous political influence. And this now appears to be being used by the powerful witch doctors to influence and even to control people's lives far beyond the previous limited remit of the medical profession.
And what is it that these doctors want? Why, they want good health! Gesundheit uber alles. And that is what they want to ram down everybody's throats, whether they want it or not. One only needs to spend a little while reading Dr Michael Siegel's blog to realise that the only thing that matters to him is health, and that nothing else really matters at all. And it's not really terribly surprising that many doctors should feel this way. That's what their profession is all about producing. If they made and sold carrots, they'd probably believe that carrots were the only things that really mattered in life. But it needs to be asked whether good health really is more valuable and important than anything else. It is something that should be very carefully considered. It is not quite as simple as it might seem.
And so there is my outline suggestion of what we're up against. It is the ideology of healthism, in which good health is more important than anything else, and which demands that not only should people stop smoking and drinking and eating, but they should be made to stop doing so. And the prime movers behind this ideology are a number of doctors, usually very senior ones. But these doctors are also witchdoctors, whose healthism is based upon a number of crackpot beliefs rather than any sort of solid science. And they have become, in effect, politicians seeking to direct the society which they should be serving. And, of course, nobody elected them to this role.
The connections of all this with historical Nazism are direct. Nazism was itself a form of racial healthism and doctors played a key role in the Nazi movement. Exterminating Jews was a public health measure, like getting rid of infestations of rats or lice (which is how Sir George Godber regarded smoking). In addition to these shared ideological roots, it's also of course the case that most of the early anti-smoking research was carried out in Nazi Germany. There is, in short, a direct connection between the historical Nazis and their modern descendants.
There is much more to be said. There are also puritanical elements to healthism. It's always rather remarkable that everything that is identified as 'unhealthy' is invariably something that is pleasant and enjoyable, And there are political elements to healthism, in which it is felt that people have a duty to society to be healthy. This also was a Nazi doctrine.
We need investigative journalism on our side, we need MPs with a conscience, and we need financial backing.
Those things would help, of course. But in their absence we can do a very great deal of investigative journalism ourselves. And we can put our own money and our own consciences into it. All the rest will follow in its own time.
What seems to me to be more important is to find out more about this strange medical profession of ours, which seems to be filled with Nazi doctors. I wish I knew a few doctors that I could talk to about their profession and what's being going on it. All that would be needed to find that out would be a few pints of beer, and a few cigarettes.
I'm sorry Margot. I've only just read your interesting comment. To make a few quick responses.
I see this as a rhetorical statement. You know the medical professions are the prime movers and shakers.
Well, since I've just posted a long comment to this effect, I can scarcely disagree. But I don't think any of this is simple or straightforward. I think there are all sorts of strands and influences at work.
If nothing else, it seems to me that exactly the same sort of thing is happening with global warming. There seems to be the same junk science, the same scare-mongering, the same claim that "the debate is over". But neither doctors nor pharma companies seem to have anything to do with all that. Is it entirely accidental that this is happening? And I don't mean that in any conspiracy theory sense.
Now they have won the war.
No they haven't. They've just won all the battles so far. And the BEF has just managed to struggle back from Dunkirk, and Britain is being defended by us lot in Dad's Army.
And they don't like it up 'em!
There seems to be a major flaw in your argument Idlex, which is your reasoning that "the principal locus of this ideology is the medical profession"
The medical profession are only employed by the government, they do not run it!
My question still stands, which is why are the government cutting off their noses to spite their face? They do not allow outside groups to determine their sources of income in any other respect, so why, if you are correct, are they supposedly doing it with the tobacco industry?
Our medical profession are not nearly so strange as what one would imagine. They are like most industries, who have to rely on government funding. They know they need to come up with the right answers or struggle for their existence.
It is the government, the government, the government, who are at the source of all this, but once again, the question remains, Why?
P.S. on your comments regarding Global Warming.
"If nothing else, it seems to me that exactly the same sort of thing is happening with global warming. There seems to be the same junk science, the same scare-mongering, the same claim that "the debate is over". But neither doctors nor pharma companies seem to have anything to do with all that. Is it entirely accidental that this is happening? And I don't mean that in any conspiracy theory sense" Idlex.
I am in the midst of doing some research on London and Thames, and in doing so, I just came up with the following:
"On 9 February 1791 the mighty Thames rose to an amazing height and the Strand was flooded, the wharfs which stood here at the time were overflowed and rendered useless and where you see buses today there were the same amount of makeshift rafts ferrying lawyers to and from chambers while bedraggled swans swam through the swamp"
As the civilised world became healthier and healthier, the medical profession was beginning to lose out. Especially the pharmaceutical companies. They began to look at the situation to see what could be done. They already used nicotine as the basis of many of their drugs. If smoking could be made to seem unpopular, even harmful, they could attempt to mirror the benefits of smoking within even more drugs. To cloak this, they invented new names for nicotine, i.e. Niacin, Nicotinic Acid, Vitamin B3. - Margot
As best I understand it, it's only been comparatively recently that the pharma companies have got involved in all this, and it was principally to sell ex-smokers "smoking replacement therapies". This scam involves making nicotine in cigarette form more or less illegal so that smokers can be sold nicotine in the form of patches instead. I think these first made their appearance in the 1960s or 1970s. And I think nicotinic acid was first isolated in the 1940s. But the Nazi/medical war on smoking goes back to the 1930s, when I don't think pharma comapanies were involved at all.
And as the civilised world got healthier and healthier, they just started to die of different things. Like cancer. For which there was no cure. And still isn't any cure. Cancer is not well understood. And lots of other things are not well understood either. Like dementia. Or even the common cold.
I'd say that it's because modern medicine is so very effective in so many ways, and really does fix things like broken hips, that people are demanding more and more medicine, and it's this that makes doctors even more important than they already were. The paradox of the rise in health and longevity in the developed world is that health has become more important rather than less important. Time was when people would retire aged 65 and drop dead aged 70. Now they're all demanding to live to 90. And all deaths have become "premature deaths". This puts the medical profession under enormous pressure.
The vast unlimited wealth now in the hands of the pharmaceutical companies makes them the most powerful body on earth. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Into their charmed inner circle they can buy the world’s leading politicians and all who have control over the world’s population.
Well, they are obviously very rich, but I can think of plenty of other candidates for the most powerful body on earth. Let's just say that they're very powerful. And corrupt. And they are now beginning to rapidly replace Big Tobacco as a byword for such wealth and influence and corruption.
So the next step is to cull the population.
Which would, of course, complete their transformation into full-blown Nazis.
But, reading an anti-smoker like Dr Michael siegel, he really does seem to be concerned to improve people's health, even if they lose their jobs and friends and money and security in the process. It seems to me that medicine is likely to become murderous when it has become like this. Once health has become all-important, and the only thing that really matters, then sick or unhealthy people's lives can easily become "lives not worth living", and instead of curing people doctors start murdering them instead. But it's always "the next logical step", not an intended goal from the outset.
The medical profession are only employed by the government, they do not run it!...
It is the government, the government, the government, who are at the source of all this, but once again, the question remains, Why?
Might it not be a case of the tail wagging the dog?
You must have seen those episodes of Yes Minister when Sir Humphrey Appleby neatly manipulated the hapless minister into one or other course of action against his better instincts. The whole comedy was about the way the 'tail' of the civil service wagged the 'dog' of the elected ministers. Do you think it was unrealistic?
And of what does a "government" consist, but a few hundred more-or-less ordinary people who have been elected to Parliament, some of whom will become ministers, and one of whom will become Prime Minister? We have been discussing on this thread a couple of them. The vegan Kerry McCarthy whom Colin Grainger has aptly described as an "immature teenage girl". The druid Paul Flynn. How many of such people are any match for the real Humphrey Applebys in the civil service (or the medical establishment). They must all look like so many lambs come to the slaughter.
The Government consists of ordinary people who are as brainwashed about smoking and global warming as anybody else, and who have swallowed the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker, again like more or less everybody else. They don't understand science. They don't understand medicine. They don't really understand anything at all. And they are being gamed and spun and manipulated by professional lobbyists and interest groups who know how to do it. Read Deborah Arnott gloating about her confidence trick that was employed to garner support for the smoking ban.
You might like to think that "the government" is some sort of omniscient and omnipotent organisation. I have no such illusions. I think the present government is the most utterly incompetent government Britain has had in many decades, and which has made one crass decision after another, of which the smoking ban is just one. And everybody knows it. They even know it themselves.
Idlex.
Thanks for your extra comments. I'm almost sorry I put in my belief regarding natural selection. Being a bit warm hearted, I hate ending on a note of seemingly hopeless despair and not try to offer some hope. I do, however, believe that the world can sustain the life it has created. Only brutal greedy dictatorships have prevented the poorer countries from having access to the knowledge and advancement the civilised world has made. With knowledge and freedom, they too could have created irrigation systems and be growing the food they need in their barren wastelands.
By the term natural selection, of course, I include those who prefer to sit in the sunshine and do no work. Let them perish as a result! But their opportunities to put things right and access to knowledge should have been the same as ours.
BTW, I like the term “Witchdoctors” – a very neat summing up of those who prey on fear of the unknown. Regarding the mystery of the latest witchdoctor myth of global warming and cutting of carbon emissions; yes, it may seem to bring no apparent profit to the pharmaceutical industries. I proffered the view that the medics, through their clever and systematic war against smoking, were the architects of global control and that would-be despots and dictators then joined their inner circle. That such an inner circle has existed for a very long time cannot be in dispute. Call it the Fabian Society or Common Purpose or Masonic Societies or the established churches or by any other name, there have always been close-knit communities of the have’s exploiting the have not’s.
One could even say that the old adage of “if you can’t beat them, join them”, could apply. There could even be gullible people like Mrs Thatcher who were persuaded that a benign dictatorship would be for the good of the people.
Whatever its origins and I do believe it was based on profit for the pharmaceutical companies, the systematic persecution of smokers has indeed now produced a worldwide dictatorship with its reign of fear and intolerance. And it is not over yet! The Nazis did it and many other dictatorships throughout history. There was even a Middle Eastern dictatorship some centuries ago, which had the death penalty for anyone found smoking. [See the thread Benefits of Smoking in the F2C Forum,
Lounge Bar section.]
Smoking has always been such a popular pastime, they might as well ban people from eating food and drinking alcohol. [Oops, forgot for a moment that they are also doing that now.]
So profiteers of the global warming scam would naturally join the inner circle of global control. In many respects it is as great a scam as anti-smoking. Most of us here know that true science shows CO2 emissions are the major component of the ozone layer. Without it, the sun would burn us up. It is called the ozone layer because it is mainly composed of evaporation from the seas. CO2 is also a valuable part of the natural plant world. Plants and trees breathe in CO2 and breath out oxygen.
So huge profits are to be had from the auction of carbon emission permits and the granting of the permits themselves. There are other ways of making profit from this scam – too numerous to mention. Above all, however, it is a valuable tool of global control.
That air pollution is a major health problem in our modern industrial world is without a doubt. Smog used to be a nasty health hazard in the inner cities and was virtually abolished in the U.K. through use of smokeless coal. Similarly, carbon monoxide is a deadly poison and the next problem to tackle, in a benign but not dictatorial way, is replacement of petrol and other carbon monoxide creating fuels by a cleaner healthier product.
Of course you already know all this, idlex, and in a more profound and meticulous way than I. However, one point you make is the new “healthist” doctrine and obsession. All I can say is that we are not healthier as a result of anything the medics have bludgeoned us into in recent years. Our hospitals are full to bursting and you can’t get an appointment at a doctor’s surgery without proving first that you cannot explain your symptoms by telephone and have a prescription waiting to be collected. I can’t remember the last time I saw an actual real life doctor. Incidence of heart disease has risen, not lessened, since the smoking ban.
The greatest killer of all is stress. This is an epidemic now due not just to the disenfranchisement of smokers plus closure of their social meeting places and the unemployment caused, but also to the sudden, very quick, closure of so many businesses due to the governments’ propaganda that the world is now broke.
Ah well – more profit for the pharmaceutical companies. More opportunities of stringent legislation to keep the masses from erupting.
I wonder what our Kerry McCartney has to say about all this. I wonder what our concerned Prime Minister has to say? I wonder what equally concerned David Cameron has to say? Or Nick Clegg. Or concerned Lord Mandellson. [I absolutely can’t be bothered to learn how to spell his name.]
Sorry this is so long, folks. As Bernard Shaw once said, “If I’d have had more time, I’d have written a shorter letter.”
You are of course quite right in the narrow sense, Peter, that it was indeed this "government" of Kerry McCarthys and Paul Flynns that voted for the smoking ban by a large majority.
But did they know what they were doing? Did they know full well that this ban would destroy communities, close down pubs, and signal the start of the general persecution of smokers?
If you can show me that they knew all this perfectly well in advance, and went ahead deliberately to cause this mayhem, I will be forced to agree with you.
But I don't think any such thing happened at all. I don't think that any of them really had a clue what they were doing. It was simply that most of them no longer smoked, and saw an opportunity to "do the right thing" by banning smoking, and they had been assured by ASH that millions of non-smokers would flood into the pubs, and by the likes of Sir Richard Peto that millions of lives would be saved, and millions of smokers would gratefully take the opportunity to give up smoking. I doubt if many of them even spent 10 minutes thinking about it.
And, furthermore, they still don't know what they've done. I doubt if there are more than a handful of MPs in parliament who know anything at all about the effect of the smoking ban. Why? Because it's not reported in the news. Our news media are as complicit in this crime as ASH or the BMA. Why should MPs be expected to know what isn't being reported.
And so when they learn belatedly that pubs have been closing in droves (something I knew about 18 months ago), they go casting around for some reason other than the smoking ban to account for it. Because they simply can't contemplate the possibility that "doing the right thing" with the smoking ban could possibly have resulted in this. They are in denial. And all you have to do is read a bit of Paul Flynn or Kerry McCarthy's blog to see them in open denial.
In time of course they will realise what they've done. But by then it will be too late to save them.
I agree much more with Margot. The real culprits are the medical establishment. These people have been working relentlessly for 60 years and more to "denormalise" smoking. It has been the single life goal of a great many of them. Such a goal was never a central plank of any of the political parties, Labour, Tory, or Lib Dem.
And this is a serious discussion. We have to get it right. We have to know who is behind this persecution if we are to set about seriously attacking them.
'First do no harm.' I wonder how health professionals square this principle with individual depression, destruction of communities and strife within families that their blanket propaganda has caused. As to isolation and exclusion from bars and clubs experienced by old, lonely and frail people, I suspect that the zealots, if challenged, would admit that they see them as unavoidable casualties in their campaign to create a sterile, dirigiste 'Utopia'.
"As best I understand it, it's only been comparatively recently that the pharma companies have got involved in all this, and it was principally to sell ex-smokers "smoking replacement therapies" - Peter Thurgood.
No, Peter, I watched the pharma's start their "research", about thirty to forty years ago. I talked and wrote and read much about it. How I wish I had kept all that!
You are right to say that Big Tobacco was the most powerful organisation then. I recognised the pharma's attempts to discredit smoking as the beginning of a commercial war between the two organisations. So did others! I've watched it gain momentum over the years but never did I envisage the result would be a world-wide smoking ban. Nicotine replacement therapy as a bi-product of their success came only very recently. Their nicotine based mood enhancing and many other drugs are much older than that.
What is a slightly knottier problem is how come the Nazis and other dictators, going way back, hit upon the banning of smoking as a way of controlling the population? It couldn't have been a war between the pharma's and the tobacco companies - or could it? How far back does scientific knowledge of the benefits of nicotine go? I suppose that to remove a pleasure, especially one which has health benefits the body has become used to, could become a way to penalise people who did not comply, therefore giving greater control over them. However, let's not forget that Hitler had some very powerful scientists on board. For example, they developed the first rocket propulsion and many worked later at Nasser. Let's not also forget their cruel research experiments on living Jews.
As to the belief that our medical profession is funded by government solely from the taxes we pay them - Oh come now! Our medical research establishments are funded directly by pharmaceutical companies and proudly bear their names. ASH, CRUC, old Uncle Tom Cobley and all, are funded by the pharma's. Almost everything the government has created of a medical nature is funded by the pharma's. No secret is made of it.
The EU is also heavily funded by the pharma's. Simon witnessed it himself when he attended one of the anti-smoking meetings there last year. .
"As best I understand it, it's only been comparatively recently that the pharma companies have got involved in all this, and it was principally to sell ex-smokers "smoking replacement therapies" - Peter Thurgood.
Actually, I wrote that, Margot.
"As best I understand it, it's only been comparatively recently that the pharma companies have got involved in all this, and it was principally to sell ex-smokers "smoking replacement therapies" - Peter Thurgood.
Wasn't me that said that (above) Margot!
Going through your post, it suddenly struck me, something which you said, and which I and many others have said time and time again, about the Nazis being the first to start a smoking ban.
I am not saying you are wrong, as there is plenty of documented history on the subject, but if you are like me and watch the History Channel a lot, you will have no doubt watched documentary after documentary, about Hitler, the Third Reich and the Gestapo, and in all these, you will see many shots of both officers and men in the German army smoking. Even when meeting Hitler at his mountain retreat, they are there smoking.
So, I wonder what happened to Hitler's hate of smoking, and what happened to the Nazi smoking ban, does anyone have an answer?
Sorry, Peter and Idlex. Put it down to senility, [I'm allowed.]
Posts are coming so thick and fast on this that by the time my efforts are posted I've always missed a few.
Loved Norman's apt little comment.
I don't know what happened to the smoking ban in Germany, Peter, but as with our own Parliament building and the EU Parliament building, perhaps the "no smoking" was just for the masses.
I agree with your comment, Idlex, that the likes of Kerry McCarthy and most politicians who voted for the total ban, simply didn't realise the full implications. They thought they were agreeing with popular public opinion. Complete government/EU/Global control of the media since, means that they probably still don't know.
Jesus said, "Forgive them Lord, they know not what they do."
So, I wonder what happened to Hitler's hate of smoking, and what happened to the Nazi smoking ban, does anyone have an answer?
I'll provide a few links for you, in no particular order [1] [2] [3]
Very roughly, the Nazi smoking bans weren't anything like as draconian as our current UK ban. They tended to be piecemeal and a bit arbitrary. There were bans on women smoking. There were bans on smoking in public buildings. Soldiers were forbidden to smoke in public view, and had their tobacco rations progressively cut as the war went on. The Nazis were actually very sensitive to German public opinion, and backtracked on several bans when they proved unpopular.
The Nazi smoking bans didn't have much effect on German smoking rates, which climbed until the war began. In addition the SS (I think) marketed their own cigarette brand, which is fairly typical of the contradictory and self-defeating character of the Nazi state.
Adolf Galland, one of the German fighter aces, had an ashtray fitted in his plane's cockpit.
Hitler himself was of course a non-smoker, and gave gifts to those of his minions who gave up smoking. Neverthless Goebbels carried on smoking. And several other prominent Nazis as well.
Famously, after Hitler's suicide in the Berlin bunker, the response of many was to light up.
Modern Germans are, unsurprisingly, far more aware of their Nazi antismoking past than many others. Germany (along with Holland0 is in some ways leading the resistance to smoking bans in Europe, with a number having been overturned.
I am now almost officially a burnt-out and disenfranchised doctor and person. Disenfranchised from the UK population by smoking legislation and disenblahblah from the medical profession by itself and my views on choice. My hitherto unmatched tolerance and patience has transformed into a twittering shaking astonishment.
I can no longer muster up any enthusiasm in my belonging to this wrecked vestige of a profession. Serial governments have organised the decline of the health service from a golden jewel of medical excellence to a pile of gingoistic vomit. They have done this with the medical profession's tacet negligent apathy and naviety.
The BMA is an impotent joke. Doctors just talk a load of disparute crap. The whole NHS thing is a fuck up of such monumental proportions, I can no longer talk about it without foul language.
Please be in no doubt that it is my opinion that the medical profession should have known better and owed it to the UK population to defend the NHS and it principles. Proper, individualised, appropriate, expedient, non-judgemental and timely medical care and advice are a forgotten dream. However you can get your shit medicine within a target time.
Public health medicine is largely to blame and needs to be ditched.
No one labour politician will help us climb out of this sewer.