Thursday
Jul232009
Save our pubs and clubs open thread
Thursday, July 23, 2009 
Further to yesterday's news that 52 pubs are closing EVERY WEEK, I am creating an open thread today so that people can comment on our campaign to amend the smoking ban. This also coincides with the distribution, this morning, of e-bulletins to supporters of Forest and Save Our Pubs & Clubs. Please keep your comments short and to the point.
To receive occasional e-bulletins from Forest, sign up HERE.
If you have not yet registered your support for the Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign, click HERE. To date over 1250 people have signed up, including 250 publicans.
Update on Friday, July 24, 2009 by
Simon Clark
Simon Clark
As a result of Thursday's e-bulletin a further 249 267 286 301 people have joined the campaign.
Reader Comments (138)
Joyce -
Herr Jobsworth's "Only doin' me job, Missus" (aka 'Befehl ist Befehl') was rejected as a defence against war crimes at Nuremburg, as I recall: if only there were also an international law against Official Crassness.
You didn't mention the Most Important Point - namely, whether he was wearing the Luminous Yellow Vest of Authority. If so, please be VERY careful in future: the wearers of such items - ESPECIALLY if worn in conjunction with the Yellow Hard Hat of Invincibility - are reputed to possess dark, magical powers which they are apt to use against ANYONE betraying signs of a Sense of Humour, Common Intelligence, or a Willingness to Question.
You have been warned !
Helen -
Thanks for bothering to look.
Yes - have you EVER read anything quite so attrocious happening in England's Green and Pleasant Land ?
Like you, naturally, I hope that there IS a happy outcome to this pointless tragedy. I also hope that Heads Will Roll - though Mizzz Thinlips will doubtless intone that she merely 'followed the usual procedures' etc etc. That is to say: "Just doing my job".
My own instinct is to SHOOT THE BASTARDS (my licence is in the post).
When IS the Great British Public finally going to wake up and cry - with one voice - 'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH' ?
Junican -
Thanks for the correction re my reading of the Act.
I believe your bus station example is Old News already: some time ago, as I recall, four policemen were summoned to just such a venue when an intransigent smoker (or two) selfishly -and illegally - lit up.
The problem is this: people have become SO compliant in this country (and in the States) that almost ANY piece of legislation is likely to be obeyed.
The odd thing - as you've probably noticed yourself - is that almost EVERYONE you speak to says the same thing: the World Has Gone Mad (etc).
No wonder that the 'conspiracy theorist' William Cooper referred to the Masses (whom he was desperately trying to awaken from their torpor - before being shot dead by a SWAT team just after '9/11') as 'SHEEPLE'.
Well, it sounds better than it looks.........
As for the WONDERFUL Christopher Booker, he'll be the first one to be invited to join my Council Of Sensible People when I become Protector of the Realm. Most soi-disant 'journalists' (ha! ha!) don't even come up to his boot straps IMHO.
And ANYONE who pisses George Monbiot off gets my vote, anyway !
Joyce I can beat that. I have been banned from 6 pubs in Brighton for smoking inside and I managed to get my self banned from one pub twice because the first time I did it the manager decided to ban me "for life"!?! So I went back to the same pub a few weeks later, smoked, and got my self banned again! So I think it should count as seven bans. I also got chased out of Brighton train station by a police officer, after refusing to put it out(more of a mock chase really). I would like to point out that prior to 2007 I had never been banned from any pub for any reason as is consistent with my warm and fluffy nature! It's easy to light up in pubs even today but it's somewhat trickier to keep them alight.
Peter - I stopped being nice when I realised that the dangers of SHS were bogus and that smokers were being wrongly demonised. Once, had someone passed the usual comment about the financial or health costs of smoking, I would have smiled it away. Not now! Oh no, they're told (although very nicely) that many things are bad for you and that this is a risk that I'm entitled and prepared to take and that it's my business and no-one else's what I choose to spend my hard-earned money on.
Martin V - Of course he was wearing an HV Vest, he couldn't have bustled without one! Put one on and the wearer magically bristles with legitimised officiousness - but the magic disappears when the wearer is challenged (the secret weapon that defeats the magic Vest!)
Fredrik - it takes nerve to light up in a pub but real brass neck to light up in a pub from which you've been banned for... lighting up!!
Bullying by agents of the State now seems to be part and parcel of life in Britain but I think that there's a hidden element. I rather suspect that there are children who are bullying their parents about smoking. I've come across quite a few elderly smokers who won't smoke in front of their children and I wonder if - shamefully - there is a tacit threat that these people will not see their grandchildren if they smoke en famille.
Joyce -
I shall adopt your mode of attack-defence when I next encounter Yellow Vest Man.
As to your:
"I rather suspect that there are children who are bullying their parents about smoking......."
Naturally - The Children now belong to the State (something many parents seem NOT yet to appreciate).
And it's not just about cigarettes, of course.
Consider Npower's 'Climate Cops' programme, for example: a 'fun' (previously - 'enjoyable') way
to bully your parents into complying with The New Orthodoxy:
"Over 52 pupils in years 4 and 5 were involved in the Climate Cops Academy which helps children learn how to become greener at home and in school in a fun and engaging way. The highly interactive day was filled with activities.............etc etc"
And DO please check out the following groovy link:
http://www.climatecops.com/
If THAT doesn't make you throw up, nothing will !
Does Daddy smoke ? Tell him he'll die of CANCER !
Does Mummy use old-fashioned lightbulbs ? Tell her she's DESTROYING THE PLANET !
Been threatened with 'a thick ear' ? Phone the CHILD-ABUSE Hotline on..........
Are there any funny hook-nosed people near you ?
Tell the Kids' Liaison Officer at your nearest Gestapo headquarters - a 'fun' way to SAVE THE RACE !
Talk about 'The Midwich Cuckoos'.........
My eldest daughter and her husband live in the South of England. I live in the North West (Bolton). My grandson, who is seven yrs old, said to me, "Grandad, you should not be smoking."
Now, believe it or not, your brain is quite capable of accepting and processing information very rapidly. I mean, in a fraction of a second. If I tried to describe all the thoughts that went through my mind, in an instant, when my seven year old grandson, in my house, which I have worked all my life to get to own outright, and which his mother, in due course, will get to share a part of the value thereof, etc, it would take hours. Obviously,at the time one thinks, "Do I want to, in some way, say to my seven year old grandson that smoking is a good idea? Well, no I do not - essentially, because it is expensive in this country and there are better things to spend your money on.
What alarmed me about his statement was how, at the age of seven, he came to have such an opinion. How,at the age of seven, did he come to be aware that smoking is not a good idea?
I am fairly sure that my daughter and her husband would not have mentioned it to him, and so, it is reasonable to ask how the matter of SMOKING came to his attention?
At his age, there are only two possibilities. Either, he has seen something on CBBC, or similar, or he has been told it in school.
Next time I see him, I have in mind to ask him. It would be interesting to know why he made the statement.
And so we see how messy and how complicated these things become. There is NO WAY that I would have said to my father or my grandfather, "You should not be doing...whatever". No way.
So, who is poisoning our children's and our grandchildren's minds? It may be correct in respect of smoking, I do not know, but where does it end? If the powers-that-be are introducing into schools some sort of politically correct curriculum, which includes the evils of smoking, where is it going to end? How about the evils of sweeties, conkers, playing in the rain, swimming, etc? Where does it end? For example, there is always going to be some special interest group (because a particular child drowned in a lake), that want to drain all lakes! It will always be so. It is human nature to become blinded to reality. For example, have we not seen mothers of soldiers who have been killed, appearing on the TV and complaining that the Ministry of Defence did not, majically somehow, arrange things so that their sons did not get killed?
SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS ARE POISON TO THE BODY POLITIC!!
And so, we see that special interest groups, like ASH, are poison. Why? Because they want to BAN, BAN, BAN!
We Foresters are not a special interest group in that sense because we do not want to ban anything.
To take the idea to a reasonable extreme, why is the Gov so ademant that Cocaine etc should be banned? What does it matter to the Gov whether people take these drugs or not? We have to be consistant.
I do not know, but I can reasonably see that a person, high on drugs, driving about in a motor car, could be extremely dangerous. Is this the reason for the class A drugs ban? I cannot see any other reasonable reason.
And so we see that we do not really know, because nobody will tell us, what the REAL reasons for various bans are.In the case of smoking, one cannot help but feel that it is all about the NHS.
Junican -
Re the Knowledgeable Brat Problem:
Some years ago, whilst in the building trade, I was doing some work for a middle-aged primary school teacher (quite intelligent, even so). I lit up a fag in the garden, when her ghastly 4-year son petulantly enquired:
"Why do you DO that ?"
To which I replied - with a certain demonic gratification:
"Because it's GOOD for you !".
Mother overheard, and went into a Middle-Class Screaming Frenzy:
"DON'T tell him THAT !!!!"
There is NOTHING in life quite so forbidding as the Middle Class Mum whose fashionable pieties have been challenged.
The episode, however, left ME feeling strangely Byronic.
I'm dying to be presented with a similar opportunity today...........
Perverse ?
You'd better believe it........(STOP APOLOGISING, people !!!!)
As to Politics:
Ah yes, the 'Special Interest Group' - the EXPRESSION of democracy - or the DENIAL of it ?
Discuss................
Well, when you see what Congress has become in the States, the answer (even for 'A' Level students) is abundantly clear.
Such lobbies (esp charities) are better informed, better organised, better funded, and (by definition) more agenda-oriented than the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who will eventually be affected by the 'issue' at hand.
Much easier for Mr Mediocrity MP to 'consult' them than the amorphous 'electorate'. And much easier to be bullied by them, too.........to say nothing of 'bribed'.
Add to the above the undoubted loss of MOST of our law-making powers as a once-sovereign nation to the Grey Men of Brussels (and beyond), and it's no wonder that 'Politics' in this country in particular, and in the West in general is (essentially) DEAD.
What crisis in our national life will suffice to revive the corpse, I wonder ?
Can you remember the last time there was a REAL debate in the Commons ?
Can you remember the last time any major political figure said anything remotely INTERESTING ?
"Well, Jeremy/David/Jonathan, that is a very good question...blah,blah,....on the one hand....blah,blah....on the other hand.... blah, blah....there are no quick fixes....blah, blah...schools....hospitals....blah, blah, blah."
We're a LONG way from the days when I heard Cyril Smith (remember him ?), in the course of a rather contentious 'Any Questions' debate about immigration on R4 say - in a tone of measured exasperation:
"Well, if they don't like it, why are the BUGGERS over here in the first place ?"
And that from a LIBERAL, too !
On practically every front, the Government is vulnerable: the Constitution, the Economy, Climate Change Idiocy, our diminishing Freedoms, Foreign Affairs, Europe, Education, the Surveillance Society, our suffocating Bureaucracy, Defence et etc. It is an army with no real officers left - just a pitiful bunch of Little Corporals.
Make that 'Lance-Corporals'.
They're a MESS.
So WHERE is the massive assault on this pathetic rabble and its disgusting ideologies by Leader Cameron ?
WHY are the guns so quiet ?
Answers on a postcard, please............
What really worries me, Martin, is that if those who are horrified at the way things have gone don't kick back soon, the chance will have been lost. The dumbing down of our education system and the indoctrination which passes for education under NuLabour will snuff out the capacity to even realise that something's very wrong.
Joyce -
I'm in full agreement (as usual).
Education IS crucial, of course - and an effective system does NOT require billions to be poured into a bottomless pit, either.
But We don't want the Slaves to start getting uppity - do we.....................?
I recently asked a pretty intelligent (but WOEFULLY ill-informed) work colleague - a father of three - what he understood by the term 'Big Brother', and its provenance.
You can guess the response.
And my reaction.
And HE is 36 !
Need I say more........................?
I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that we need a Spartacus For The New Age.
Either that - or a return to the Classical Liberalism of the past, which helped to mould some of the greatest minds of the 19th Century.
Neither seems likely in these costermongers' times..................
"it takes nerve to light up in a pub but real brass neck to light up in a pub from which you've been banned for..." Joyce.
Not really!! I just light up and politely say "No" repeatedly. I only light up in souless chain pubs that I could not care less about. In these places the staff have no clue about their customers. On one occasion where I did not get banned but was asked to leave, the bar man ran outside and gave me three cigs in compensation for the one cig that he had asked me to put out! I pointed out that I had in fact only put it out because I had finished it but he was very insistant that I took them and would not take them back from me!?! What a nice chap! On only one occasion have I managed to light up with out having to leave but it was with two friends who lit up as well and in addition two people near us lit up when they saw us do it. Despite there bieng about 30 people in the pub and about 50 outside, no one said a thing and nothing happend! Sweet victory! Allthough it does help that all three of us were clearly fit,serious and built like tanks. All the other times have been lock ins or closing down parties, there are a lot of them these days, mostly thanks to this very damageing law. One of my fave Pubs in Brighton has been turned in to a hotel since the ban. Brighton has enough hotels as it is (IMO). Very sad.
Re Givenchy and chanel - I gather that in (parts of?) Canada, it is forbidden to wear perfume in offices!
I have just been having a little think. The question that came into my mind was why is it that the Gov and MPs in general are so bothered about the people's health? I came to the conclusion that they are mixed up.
We must differentiate between Public Health matters such as clean water, decent sewerage, good hospitals, etc and INTERFERENCE IN PEOPLE'S PREFERRED WAY OF LIFE. The two things are quite different.
Surely, MPs must know this? If so, why are they so hell-bent on interferring in the way in which we conduct our lives?
Could it be that they think that if only they could stop people from smoking, then the demand for NHS services would be much reduced? If so, then they must be even more stupid than they already seem to be. I mean, it is obvious that if people do not succumb to 'smoking related diseases', then they will succumb to other diseases. At best, the NHS may gain some temporary respite, if that.
I will throw this thought in.
I think that after the next general election when we have got rid on the free-loading, stupid numbskulls who are currently driving us all round the bend, one of the first things that David Cameron should do is SPLIT UP THE HEALTH AND SAFETY EXECUTIVE. Health and Safety are NOT part and parcel of the same thing. They are quite different.
The juxtaposition of these two different things is causing no end of problems in the body politic.
Junican -
If you CONTINUE to pollute these pages with your Common Sense, you'll be getting a visit from your friendly (local) S.W.A.T. team !
As for the HSE - don't 'split' it up: get RID of it completely (as a prelude to the abolition of several other useless too-big-for-their-boots agencies I could name).
After a sensible review of its powers, the NECESSARY ones could then be transferred to the various relevant 'authorities'.
In fact, isn't it time we had another Domesday Book ?
This time, listing the powers (and the COST) of 'government' in all its nefarious forms.
THAT might shake the Sleeping Masses up a bit....("Ooh, I never knew they could do THAT !").
Re Givenchy and chanel - I gather that in (parts of?) Canada, it is forbidden to wear perfume in offices! Jenty
If that is true Jenty, it might, just might, be a way of making other people see how wrong the smoking ban is.
As we all know, the biggest moan about smoking is always the "stink". They don't like the smell so it should banned, which of course is absolute crap!
But having said that, maybe it's a good idea to ban all smells in offices, pubs, restaurants, workshops etc etc.
Impossible of course, but think of the "stink" that would create (pun intended). If they ban my tobacco, I want to ban their perfume. In no time at all, all bans of such a silly nature would have to be abandoned, and we would all be happy, apart from me of course, as I hate perfume!
I do not know how it can be done, but, somehow, the idea that second hand smoke is a killer has to be destroyed. The evidence for the idea is too unutterably miniscule.
For once, it is possible to turn the arguement on its head. One might reasonably say, If SHS is so awful, why is it not true that MILLIONS of people have not succumbed to this plague in the last two or three hundred years? In this case, the statistics surely show that SHS is NOT dangerous - the statistics prove it.
How can this idea be be put over to the politicians, I wonder? The statistics PROVE that SHS is not dangerous.
Junican,
The anti smoking lobby has failed to prove that smoking causes diseases to SMOKERS but this has not stopped them.
There is great volatilty between tobacco consumption and trends in cancer and yet high correlation between cancer and cancer. For example
in this study (Figure 3.) Skin melanoma mortality and (Figure 4) Lung cancer death rates in Sweden.
How can smoke in the lung cause 90% of lung cancer when the rise melanoma show an almost identical trend , independent of tobacco consumption?
Despite the wealth of statistical evidence in our favour, would the best POLITICAL option not merely be to confront the Antis REPEATEDLY AND REMORSELESSLY with the following two simple questions:
1) Are you in favour of CHOICE for Smokers and Non-Smokers alike ?
2) If so, will you work with us to achieve the best methods of implementing that choice ?
I fail to see HOW they could answer 'No' to the first (or the second, come to that) WITHOUT casting themselves ENTIRELY in the role of bigoted fanatics, blind to all reason.
Getting involved in an epidemiological 'debate' with them has proven quite fruitless - and is potentially endless.
I would contend, however, that we have not - until recently - pushed the CHOICE option with SUFFICIENT vigour, relying perhaps TOO much upon countering their Junk Science with our True Science.
It's time to force THEM into a corner - for a change.
After all, we're merely requesting FREEDOM for EVERYBODY - save the fanatic.
This is not merely AN argument in our favour.
It is THE argument - surely ?
TOO simple......................?
"Getting involved in an epidemiological 'debate' with them has proven quite fruitless - and is potentially endless."
Maritin,
I disagree, very few antis engage in epidemiological debate because they would like to say the debate is over - epidemiological debate scares most of them. Debate is what they don't want, they want complience - which they are not going to get.
Fredrik -
That is PRECISELY the point I was striving to make !
My suggestion:
Push the FREEDOM/FREEDOM OF CHOICE issue again, and again, and again - RELENTLESSLY.
Then (if you wish) BACK it up with the Sensible Science.
In a nutshell: let's try and get the 'debate' moved onto OUR ground, for once.
And thereby deny them the cover of a phony Expertise............
EVERYONE (inc the wider non-smoking public) 'understands' about freedom - don't they ?
It's the LATTER we need to influence.....
EVERYONE (inc the wider non-smoking public) 'understands' about freedom - don't they ?
Do they?
In a time when our freedoms are being eroded on every side, nobody seems to be much bothered by it.
For example:
UK Government To Install Surveillance Cameras In Private Homes
The UK government is about to spend $700 million dollars installing surveillance cameras inside the private homes of citizens to ensure that children go to bed on time, attend school and eat proper meals.
No you aren’t reading a passage from George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, this is Britain in 2009, a country which already has more surveillance cameras watching its population than the whole of Europe put together.
Now the government is embarking on a scheme called “Family Intervention Projects” which will literally create a nanny state on steroids, with social services goons and private security guards given the authority to make regular “home checks” to ensure parents are raising their children correctly.
Telescreens will also be installed so government spies can keep an eye on whether parents are mistreating kids and whether the kids are fulfilling their obligations under a pre-signed contract.
Around 2,000 families have been targeted by this program so far and the government wants to snare 20,000 more within the next two years. The tab will be picked up by the taxpayer, with the “interventions” being funded through local council authorities.
Another key aspect of the program will see parents deemed “responsible” by the government handed the power to denounce and report bad parents who allow their children to engage in bad behavior. Such families will then be targeted for “interventions”.
The real killer:
The opposition Conservative Party, who are clear favorites to win the next British election, commented that the program does not go far enough and is “too little, too late.”
Idlex -
Re the 'freedom' issue, of course - I agree.
I was being somwehat ironic (it's the only way to stop myself CRYING at all this lunacy).
Time to arm the populace, I think............: I'd hate to think that the only 'civilised' people capable of making the ultimate stand against a fascist State were the Americans and the Swiss..........
And the NEXT person who makes some sneeringly dismissive comment about 'conspiracy theorists' gets a kick in the backside................
Better that than a 'boot stamping on a human face - FOREVER'.
This thing about camera in private homes is too much for me to understand. I can only understand it if the headline actually read, "...cameras in SOME private homes". IE, perhaps, in the homes of some people who have a history of illtreating their children. In that case, I could understand the rational of it.
At the end of the day, we have to ask, "Who is going to decide to put cameras in?" Obviously, it is going to be the Social Services backed up be the Family Courts.
Both of the above are extremely tainted by the nazi ethic of 'the perfect, ayrian family'. It is a matter of fact, and must be resisted. Will our Dave, when the Cons are elected, resist? I do not know.
Junican -
The cameras are a monstrous invasion of an Englishman's Castle - period.
And - with respect - I can understand the 'rational' of concentration camps. That doesn't quite JUSTIFY them, though.
If the parents are THAT bad, then the children should be taken into care.
This is a dangerous precedent - and only a complete dummy could fail to see it.
As to your:
"Will our Dave, when the Cons are elected, resist....................?"
Well, THAT is another question I shall be putting to Central Office (assuming that there's a Grown-Up present at the time).
ANY equivocation on their part will lose them my vote (which is by no means certain, even now).
But perhaps you have already answered your own question - subconsciously:
'DAVE' and 'CONS' in the same sentence....................!
Let's hope that my cynicism is misplaced.
The lugubrious - but usually correct - Peter Hitchens put a simple question to the Tories some time ago:
"WHY aren't you MORE angry ?"
No satisfactory reply was forthcoming.
THAT worries me (deeply) !
Martin V
I have just tried to post a reply to yours and the machine has interrupted me and demanded that I log in. so, all my post was lost. I feel that I am wasting my time. Do you read this? Over.
It's a bit odd, Taking Liberties. I find that if you press ESCape, you get asked to Log In. It's happened to me dozens of times. Weird.
I'd pay more attention to Peter Hitchens if he wasn't in favour of the smoking ban.
Junican -
Loud and clear........
Frustrating - isn't it ?
PS:
Hope it was a KIND post: I'm suffering terribly from the Norwegian Bat Flu that's doing the rounds in Hampshire at the mo.............
Idlex -
Re: "I'd pay more attention to Peter Hitchens if he wasn't in favour of the smoking ban."
Yes - a Black Mark, indeed.
Perhaps a remnant of his misguided Marxist youth - or yet another way of putting some daylight between himself and his pro-tobacco twin brother (now, sadly, a US citizen to boot) ?
Clearly, a belief in God AND La Diva Nicotina is still not big enough for BOTH of them to share !
Christopher got Tobacco.
Peter got God.
Probably a fair trade-off..........
He still merits 8 out of 10 from me regarding the other things that matter, though (esp the Cameroons, Socialism, and Grammar Schools) - and that ain't bad.
Yes, I was listening to him on Question Time or something, and he came over very powerfully outraged. Good chap, I thought.
...And then I read a column by him somewhere lauding the smoking ban, and my enthusiasm entirely drained away.
Anyone who is in favour of the smoking ban automatically gets a Go To Jail card, in my book.
Martin V et al
I assure you that the reply was indeed kind!
I think that I complimented you on your 'Dave Cons' quip (what politician doesn't?), and I think that I developed the idea, "Why are you not more angry" further.
Can't remember really.
It would not surprise me if I did hit 'Escape' in error. Ah well......
Junican -
Re:
"Can't remember really."
Pity - I'd have liked to read it...........
Next coffee break, perhaps ?
Idlex -
Re:
"I was listening to him on Question Time...."
Probably the ONLY time nowadays when 'Question Time' is WORTH listening to.
Hitchens is the nearest you'll get these days to the 'characters' that used to be the norm on that programme.
A typical 'panel' in 2009 consists of:
Some Liberal you've probably never heard of
Some Labour Minister you WISH you'd never heard of.
Some Tory Backbencher you HAVE heard of, but thought was in the Labour Party.
Some Woman-With-An-Unpronounceable-Name who works for an organisation you've never heard of, and couldn't care less about anyway.
Radio Mogadon, in fact........("On 92 to 94 FM").
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.............
Apart from that (and The Jenni Murray Hour), STILL the best communication channel in the World nonetheless - IMHO.
Well, yes. There's a bland uniformity of opinion. The political parties only differ from each other in slightly nuanced ways. Other than that, they're all reading from the same script.
Some Woman-With-An-Unpronounceable-Name who works for an organisation you've never heard of.. She'll be called Shami or Shipta or Sherpa or something, and she'll be about 15, and can talk the hind legs off a donkey. She won't actually know anything about anything, and is only there to represent 'inclusiveness' and 'balance' and 'equal opportunities'.
I maybe wouldn't mind if the script they were all reading from wasn't utterly bonkers, but it is. In these days of 'consensus', in which 'the debate is over', the consensus is barking. For example, it is the settled consensus view among everyone present that Anthropogenic Global Warming is happening. Everybody is agreed about it, and 90% of the audience as well. The difference between participants is minuscule. The Liberal panelist wants pink liberal windmills, and the Labour panelist wants cooperative and inclusive windmills, and the Conservative panelist wants free market windmills to cut our 'carbon footprint'. Meanwhile, the climate has been cooling for the past 10 years, and it's becoming perfectly clear to anyone who follows the debate that AGW isn't happening. and that the manufactured consensus is entirely fraudulent.
One just wonders how long the mad charade can go on.
I used to watch 'question time' religeously some years ago. I used to hang on to every word that the panelists spoke. It took me many, many years to realise that all the panelists were just BLATHERING. Once I realised how totally insignificant the programme was, I stopped watching it - it was distorting my mind.
I bring your attention to this blog on Freedom2Choose:
"On July 29th 2009 suddenly and inexplicably one of the most popular groups on the social networking site of ‘Facebook’ disappeared without trace. The group was called ‘Can we find one Million people who DO want smoking back in pubs’ (the ‘Do want’ group) and it had just under 800,000 members before being taken down. It disappeared without any fanfare or explanation. Coincidentally, earlier that day, there had apparently been a short item on BBC news; it mentioned "a social network group has been deleted as it was inciting others to protest”. (or words to that effect) It did not identify a specific group. Other than this report, which may or may not refer to the removal of this group, there was nothing – zilch, apparently a non-event!"
For the full article:
http://freedom-2-choose.blogspot.com/2009/08/mysterious-and-intriguing-case-of.html?showComment=1249945676065#c6208412310718670362
I believe that we should take up this possible violation of our fundamental human right to freedom of speech with our MPs.
http://www.writetothem.com/
There is something surreal about John Savage's post. A group named "Do Want" has 800,000 members and disappeares without a trace and without any of the 800,000 members complaining? So you want us to write to MPs about it? Why can't the 800,000 members write to their MPs?
Tell me it is some sort of joke!
Re:Junican's comment.
Isn't it a British trait that 'we don't complain'? Not even against the anti-terrorism legislation being used to eject hecklers at Labour party conferences or to convict dog owners allowing their dogs to foul the footpath? Or the Serious and Organised Crime Act being used to crimiinalise a peaceful one-man protest against government policy?
It may be 'surreal' now but how REAL will it be in a few years' time?
We renovate houses In MD.
Interior / exterior remodelings,
reasonable prices,license,
references,photos,estimates,
also buy houses to renovate:
http://www.renewhouse4u.com.
Thanks.
There is a precedent of sorts to relaxing the ban in pubs.
Hotels, here and even in the the most anally-retentive places like California and Canada, are permitted to offer smoking rooms. The official 'reasoning' behind this is that a hotel room is considered a temporary 'home'. I suspect though that the real reason is that governments did not want their hotel and tourism industries going the same way as the pub trade here.
As the landlord of a pub I used to frequent regularly (now sadly boarded up) used to say 'Make yourself at home'.
[b]Delta Skymiles Credit Card[/b]
There are a number of variations on the [url=http://www.delta-skymiles-credit-card.com]Delta SkyMiles credit card[/url]. Each of the Delta Skymiles Credit Cards offers the same basic reward and interest rate, but each offers different upfront mile bonuses, mileage earning limits and annual fees. Delta Skymiles Credit Card provides information on which delta skymiles credit card works best for you and provides the best skymiles rewards points.
http://www.delta-skymiles-credit-card.com