Thursday
Jul292010
Open thread
Thursday, July 29, 2010 You are welcome to comment on a wide range of issues while I am away (see below) but please don't abuse this thread. Comment moderation can be activated should the need arise ...
Update on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 by
Simon Clark
Simon Clark
Thanks for all your comments. I've just read them and there's some interesting stuff. I might make this Open Thread a regular feature!
Reader Comments (250)
Four press interviews for Freedom to Choose (Scotland) on the issue of hospital smoking ban as explained here: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1851417?UserKey=
http://f2cscotland.blogspot.com/2010/08/freedom-to-choose-live-nhs-grampian.html
Bloody hell Belinda. Good for F2C for getting in there - but seriously... somebody stop the world, I want to get off.
It's as if someone released a juggernaut, and news like that just makes me wonder how on earth it's ever going to be stopped. Could these people please look at more than one set of data? Is that too much to ask?
Damn it! I just went to the sites indicated by Belinda and, as usual, could not resist posting a comment, even though it took me ages to provide my life history (well, it might as well have been).
The important thing in this matter (smoking in the grounds of hospitals) is whether or not a hospital owns the atmosphere above the ground. Curious one that, isn't it? But there is at least one precedent which suggests that that could be the case. I refer to the 'clean air acts'. Frankly, however, I could not see such a precedent holding up in a court of law; one, because the clean air acts addressed a serious, all embracing danger and, two, because, since the clean air act was an act of parliament, it was, in effect, an edict from the Queen - who IS supposed to own the atmosphere.
Very strange.
Sorry for my negative comment above. I'd been feeling so encouraged and hopeful that things were going in a better direction, and that story put me in a state of shock. More positively, I read a comment from an anti this morning who felt that the restrictions on shelters were ridiculous. At least that's an inch in the right direction. If the new government would at least start by conceding that the level of restriction we have in place is disproportionate to the 'threat' - much as they see the level of CCTV cameras as too invasive and disproportionate to the threat, then perhaps we'll be on the long road back to sanity. Perhaps, in time, this era will be viewed by historians as the era of extreme overreaction.
Liberty
we have not had a political change in Scotland!
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1854556#commentAnchor
An idea... I was watching Undercover Boss last night, the one with the chief executive of Tower Hamlets (I'd recorded it). He mentioned that all councils will have to make massive cut backs - we should all write to our respective councils and demand that they cut all provisions for enforcing the smoking ban. If someone really wants to complain - they can call the police. Once councils stop enforcing it - it may start to collapse.
Mark Butcher: Precisely. As well as seeing people lighting up on Hospital grounds and in shopping centres as I've mentioned before, I also recently saw somebody leaning on the door frame of a Pub, smoking and talking to people inside it. During this process, he was blowing smoke back into the pub. No reaction whatsoever. Nobody cared.
Slowly but gently we go. Frustrating it may be but it's happening. It's never easy to break the bubble that the righteous exist in and pressure in many forms must be kept up.
a reprieve has been won
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-10851431
Just been over to the ASH site…this should wet the frilly panties of any self respecting aSHITE. In China – where else – 10 people were imprisoned for 5 days for smoking in internet cafes. They can be fined or imprisoned for 5 days as part of their newly revised fire control law.
Got to be a winner over here wouldn’t you say? Why just 5 days…why not a whole month with daily beatings thrown in for good measure.
Aw shucks…how about 1 years hard labour…daily thrashings…gruel…and hourly recitations of the Godber Blueprint!
Coming to an internet café near you – very soon. I'm sure that TRASH are hard at work on this right now!
http://www.ash.org.uk/media-room/news/ash-daily-news/:ash-daily-news-for-03-august-2010
Belinda I read your link and was struck by the hypocrisy of the Unite union.
'but the Unite union said it was unfair and unworkable'
This is the same union that fought for a ban in the workplace including pubs and cost tens of thousands their jobs. Now, because a ban would mean doctors and nurses having to leave the grounds or face disciplinary action, they are against it.
Are health workers' freedoms more important than the livelihood of hospitality workers?
Michael ... yes, not a lot of thought for what landlords had to put themselves through in observing the smoking ban. What goes around, comes around. I thought it was only a matter of time before the smoking ban would cause a union issue ...
Have some fun and wind-up the anti-smoking control freaks by using these stickers ... do yourself a favour at the same time and take heed of the message ... oh, and join! xxx
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=134523323251711
Justine -
Absolutely brilliant: many thanks for the link !
Shall do as you suggest.
Sod the whole bloody tribe of purse-lipped, thin-blooded, bedwetting health-ninnies.
And their friends....................................................
Nick 'damaged goods' Clegg's "consultation" descends into farce as not one suggestion is accepted. Language alert on Dick Puddlecote tomorrow.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1300049/Government-rejects-single-suggestion-asking-public-thoughts-coaliton-programme.html
@DaveA - Well, that's the honeymoon over....
Another Peter
I just read this great little piece about Peter O'Toole in this morning's paper. Now what was it that the likes of ASH keep telling us about unhealthy living and dying young?
Actor Peter O'Toole, who turned 78 on Monday, is still inundated with offers for work. He is currently shooting two films, the first of which, a Mexican epic called Cristiada, is due out later this year.
He has no doubt as to the secret of his longevity. 'I can't stand light,' he says. 'I hate weather.
'My idea of heaven is moving from one smoke-filled room to another. The only exercise I take is walking behind the coffins of friends who took exercise.'
I have noticed recently in the city I live in, more shuttered up shop units, restaurants, small businesses, and more and more empty Apt/office buildings, hotels and pubs and a dearth of tourism,
But an increase in the amount of beggars and clutches of druggies and drunks out of their heads, on various city streets.
And an increasing number of, what used to be called the 'better off', smoking in their SUV's and outside places they would never have been seen dead in, before the money ran out.
While a recession is always a bad thing for everyone, in one way I think it couldnt have come at a better time for us smokers, by bringing our enemies - the high flying worried well PC brigade, who fed off our blood in the heady days of full employment with their makey-up jobs at our expense and freedoms and who are now more worried about their empty coffers than scowling at us and pointing the finger.
And in another way it gives everyone a chance to step off the merry-go-round of the fantasy world we were being forced to live, and start to take stock of where we go from here.
Hopefully this new world of crushing debt and unemployment will revert brains back to reality and the way we were!
"Nick 'damaged goods' Clegg's "consultation" descends into farce ............."
If only St Nicholas had had the good sense to post a List Of Acceptable Suggestions in advance of the exercise, it might have proved more fruitful.
I always felt that MY idea of restoring Child Labour for the over-8s - to help cope with the shortage of teachers AND reduce UK manufacturing costs - was a
non-starter, somehow.
I've learned my lesson now...................................
@Martin V
Be in no doubt this will do Nick Clegg damage. You do nor have consultations and treat you contrutors with such contempt. Douglas Carswell's Great Reform Bill, I hope will be reserected if only as a stick to beat Clegg with.
Media Bias?
You will of course notice that the Telegraph, Guardian and the Mail did not refer once to the most popular sugestion on the Freedom Site...that being the smoking ban.
"the most popular sugestion on the Freedom Site........."
Good point, David R.
If a rather depressing one.
BTW, do we know EXACTLY (well, more or less 'exactly') how many of the Freedom Site suggestions related to the Ban ?
I think it high time that we started tackling the MSM in the same way that we have the politicos: they're as much to blame, after all - whether through complicity or complacency.
Let's start harrying the Hacks, and ask THEM some Uncomfortable Questions for once.............................
Up here the Tartan Taliban are arguing amongst themselves how to make us drink less.
So wee Nicola has been beating her breast about her marvellous minimum pricing idea, although its seems all the differently coloured-rosette MSPs aren't in agreement as "Dr." Nicola is yet to pronounce her figure, which she is hard of thinking to pluck out of her fair wee heid.
Nicola claims such an interference in free trade and restricting freedoms would be in the vanguard for a UK-wide alarm call for all the legislators to follow siut, after all didn't they all get suckered in by our glorious pioneering blanket smoking ban?
Yes, they say drinking rates in Scotland are the highest in the UK, what else could you expect from being dictated to by such a pathetic cabal of miserable sanctimonious wankers?
Obviously something "MUST BE DONE", - about them not us I mean...
PS - Nicola once said in an interview she was often mistaken for the lovely American actress Holly Hunter, - just shows you what colour the sky is in her world, or maybe anyone who asked her was in serious need of the beer scooter to extricate themselves home.
Joseph K -
Is it possible that the 'drinking problem' up there is really just a continuous celebration - Caledonian style - of the joys of living under an enlightened government since Devolution ?
Well, it's a possibility, I suppose..............................
Martin:
No.
Trust me I was all for devolution, it worked fine till they decided to treat me like scum based on my lifestyle choice(s).
Hey-ho, its just a microcosim of the all embracing nannyism from the UK and the EU now, with pond life like Mc-Con-all "my greatest achievement was the smoking ban" parking his arse on the red benches soon.
My one consolation is I scraped enough money together to renew my passport.
Chin chin!
You are free to smoke in Wandsworth! Wandsworth Council have instructed its Environmental Health Officers not to enforce the smoking ban.
Therefore you are free to smoke in Wandsworth!!
http://www.crashbangwallace.com/?p=170#comment-178
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-10869171
I see that there is now a massive shortage of foster parents but they are blaming the Baby P case. Maybe the fact that councils have banned smokers from fostering may have actually been a larger factor.
Given that approximately a quarter of the adult population smoke and in many relationships only one partner smokes, the number of people who cannot foster must be in the multi millions yet they only need 10,000 to plug the gap.
I remember Jon Gaunt getting sacked for calling a councillor a Nazi when this ban was first introduced. He could have called him a lot more because we now have the situation whereby many thousands of vulnerable children are forced, at great expense, to remain in council care when there are many people out there who could offer them a home and some stability.
However, because they enjoy the odd puff makes them unsuitable as carers. This is so wrong.
'Passport'.
That reminds me.....................................................
PS:
I'd rather like Devolution, too - for England.
Or rather, full-on Independence (from you-know-what).
It just strikes me as rather odd that, two and a half centuries on from the start of the Industrial Revolution, and the creation of the greatest empire in history - together with a goodly portion of the Modern World - and having fought and beaten almost everyone else on the planet, that the British, of ALL people, should now be forced to wear nappies and undergo continuous potty-training well into advanced adulthood.
Historical Karma ?
Or just something they put in Nanny's gin (and she in our milk ) ?
My money's on the Aliens-poisoning-the-water-supply theory.
I see no other explanation that really works.......................................
"This is so wrong."
No, Michael:
It's positively WICKED.
And I don't give a flying toss about Good Intentions, either.
After all, even Heinrich Himmler had THEM.......................................
Carlisle ,4th Aug. Yesterday evening. Yours Truly has his obligatory fag outside after a meal. He finds a fifteen year old girl staring at him ten yards away. 'Whats up' ? asks Yours Truly. She exclaims..' You are smoking ' !!! Shock horror to Yours Truly.. But he replies....' Don't be such a pathetic whimp and grow up' !!!!. She scuttles off with mobile phone glued to the ear...
The above is true folks.
Does anybody really and truly belive this government or any govt. for that matter are going to amend the smoking ban after they have spent millions upon millions brianwashing people. Especially...The Children! ???
The last Government spent millions brainwashing the public into believeing in Labour PJ, but that didn't exactly work did it?
Where there is a will there is a way!
" You are smoking ' "
You have to admire her powers of observation, though !
Given today's educational standards, I find that pretty damned impressive.
And without the benefit of Multiple Choice, too................................
Re brainwashing, I've just been speaking to a teacher who tells me that 'community cohesion' - whatever that is - has to be introduced into every lesson, even Mathematics. I didn't dare ask what OTHER issues have to be introduced into every lesson. It was a sensitive subject in that social context. But I rather fear I know.
You have to laugh. My wife was flickling through the August edition of some trashy mag called "Pick Me Up" . She began to laugh and informed me what was funny. IT was in the health section, three ways to control your bladder. 1. Pelvic Floor Exercises 2. Drink at least six glasses of water a day and 3., (yes, that's right) STOP SMOKING!! hahaha the reason? Regular coughing can put pressure on your bladder.
"Regular coughing can put pressure on your bladder."
Unlike their recommended two-thirds of a gallon of water ?
Interesting.
So, once again, it seems to be assumed that all smokers have a 'regular cough'.
Well, in 40-odd years, I've never developed one, and neither has any of my friends.
What's wrong with us ?
"'community cohesion............even Mathematics............."
So what IS the Marxist (sorry, er, 'Communitarian') View on quadratic equations ?
I've often wondered.................................
For those of you registered with F2C could have a read and comment whether you felt alamed and distressed at the BMJ article contained in the thread. I did and I am very upset.
http://www.freedom2choose.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5090
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Eric Pickles the Local Government Minister annouces new restictions on public sector lobbying.
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2010/08/pickles-announces-new-restrictions-on-public-sector-lobbying.html#tp
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Maybe its just the silly season, but Simon would need to get back soon before ASH start advertising their nicorete patches.
Want To Buy Some Crap?
I didn't realise Simon was running a jumble sale!
Go and have a look at this article about sixth formers who are going up to smokers in Chatham and taking their cigarettes away. Violent state approved persecution of a minority. Extemely nasty.
http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/news/Students-bust-smokers-action-packed-movie/article-2489342-detail/article.html
Simon T -
Thanks !
How wonderfully 'now' our very own version of the Hitler Youth seem, when compared to those ghastly Germanic types in their silly boy-scout-style uniforms.
And everyone's clearly having so much FUN (THE Really Important Thing).
What's more, Smokers are SO much easier to spot than Jews (who often seem uncannily like Normal People).
More of them, too.
And whom do we have to moblise all this youthful energy and creativity ?
Why, one 'Rachel (sic) Noxon' ('Noxious Rachel' to her friends, no doubt) - Medway's very own 'Tobacco Control Strategic Co-ordinator'.
Tobacco Control Strategic Co-ordinator.
Gosh.
I bet she has a big map with lots of liittle coloured pins, too - back at her Tobacco Control Strategic Co-ordination Command Centre (South East Region).
And what of Commandant Noxon's 'vision', one wonders ?
Ah, here we go:
"“We’re trying to get tobacco seen as COMMUNITY issue and, quite often, small voluntary and COMMUNITY organisations can reach people in a very meaningful way.”
Absolutely, Rache; how we miss the stocks and the gibbet and the ducking-stool and all those other quaint symbols of COMMUNITY disapproval !
A foretaste, methinks, of Dave's Big Society.
Makes you PROUD to be British, doesn't it ?
Come on, admit it..............................................................
(And THIS has 'Common Purpose' written all over it: welcome to The Future, folks !)
Well it does seem to go to great lengths to explain that it was stage managed, and that in a real life situation, they would get a very angry response. Am I misreading it or did they say that they spoke to a 67 year old NON-smoking lung cancer sufferer who also said he would end up in nick if they'd done it to him(?)
I don't think it's the future - I'm hoping it's the dying embers of a ridiculous stage in our history. Very encouraged by the link above regarding the lobby group issue. I get the feeling things are going to improve - it'll just take a bit of time. I hope so anyway.
Let's teach children how to steel - such good role models these people.
Happy slapping was also considered 'Fun'.
off course 'steel' = 'Steal'
Liberty,
Read this account from another local paper. paint a clearer picture of the antics of these people and their attitudes to smokers. One quote says it all, “The final idea was to go out and literally ambush smokers and take their cigarettes off them. The adverts don’t work, so we are going to make you stop smoking.”
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/medway_messenger/news/2010/august/2/ciggy_busters.aspx
'Ciggy Busters': What a pile of childish crap! If they're serious, they'll be in for a nasty surprise. The law doesn't normally take too kindly to taking people's property without their consent, even if it's a prank. I love the 'even the smokers think' bit. Typical ASH type bollocks.
If they're down to this sort of level, its pretty desperate stuff. Keep this Kindegarten stuff up, it fills me with optimism.