That slippery slope that doesn’t exist?

Like a soft drink do you? Well get ready to be de-humanised for it over the next few years.

Smokers such as myself have already experienced it. But is only just starting for the lovers of soft drinks.

For smokers it first started with colossal rises in tax on tobacco products.

Guess what, soft drink lovers, it's going to happen to you in the near future.

Thousands of cases of diabetes and cancer could be avoided, saving the NHS £300million, by putting a health tax of 12p a can on sugary drinks, it is claimed. (My bold: They don’t actually know)

Academics have calculated the likely reduction in consumption caused by putting up the price of full sugar drinks like Coca-Cola and Pepsi and the resulting health benefits.

The work by experts at the University of Liverpool and the Children’s Food Campaign will fuel the growing campaign to extend the principle of a duty on unhealthy products from cigarettes and alcohol to some types of drink and food.

The start of your fall from grace begins there. They actually admit to wishing to follow the tobacco control template

Health campaigners and doctors have controversially likened sugar and its contribution to obesity and ill-health as the ‘new tobacco’.

Next will be horrendous images of diseased kidneys, rotting teeth, and pictures of ill people in bed  covering your can of delight.

The next step will be to of course will continue with fizzy pop being hidden behind screens for “THE SAKE OF THE CHEEEELDREN”.

You tell me what comes next….

SOURCE

I told you so.

Remember this post from a few days ago where I stated the obvious?

Even if readers here are non smokers. Be afraid. They'll be after your guilty little pleasure next. The bansturbators pleasure will be you next.

Like a soft drink occasionally? You sinner, you.

Just ONE can of fizzy drink a day increases heart attack risk by a third - and could lead a STONE of weight gain over a year

• New campaign challenges 'damage' caused by Coca-Cola and Pepsi
• Campaigners say consumers are unaware of the risks of these drinks
• The campaign called GULP – Give Up Loving Pop – has been created by the Health Equalities Group and supported by NHS and local authorities
• Also highlights links between drinks and tooth decay and type 2 diabetes

They’re coming for you now, you pop fanciers. Soon they’ll be bans on fizzy drinks in pubs. This will be followed by bans in public parks and play areas. Soon to be followed by bans in all public areas. We must think of the “Cheeeeeeeldren”.is the cry. (As a smoker I got used to it).

Of course this is another state funded socket puppet masquerading as a charity.

This article is dedicated to the commenter who posted this under my last article on bans. Here’s his words of wisdom.

Anonymous12 February 2015 at 01:03

I doubt it, probably just ban smoking and that will be it. At worst they will go on to ban other distracting things while driving. But hardly going to be the next USSR. Non smokers can relax I think. Smoking ban never affected them either, only the inconsiderate behind the times smokers.

ReplyDelete

Do you understand now that the state hates you as well as smokers?

The voters that the politicians forget.

Who could that be do you think?

The answer is the 20% of those who smoke.

It amazes me that with a general election coming up, politicians of all colours are rushing through a bill on plain packaging of tobacco products.

It basically boils down to that they have to be seen to be doing something emotive that will catch the public eye, whilst distracting from most of the obvious failures of the main parties. It’s an easy distraction as the majority of the population have been so brainwashed that politicians feel that this will burnish their halos.

What they don’t seem to realise is the majority of non smokers won’t give a toss as the law won’t affect them in the slightest. It’s only the nu-puritan ANTI-smokers who will trumpet this nasty little bill.

There is an excellent article by Dominic Lawson in the Daily Mail today that explains how the war on smokers is wrong.

What I’m trying to say here is that if one of the major parties were to at least support smokers in a small way (Wink Wink: UKIP), then they might find that their voting share might rise considerably.

Smoking bans

Smoking bans started creeping in long before 2007. When I first started in the world of work there were relatively no bans in force. Even in college you could smoke in the classrooms as long as you supplied your own ash tray.

When I joined my first ship, smoking was allowed any where, except if the vessel was an oil tanker or was carrying bulk ammunition. (Stands to reason. Big bangs hurt).

Then the mission creep started.

Ban in the engine room. Although trying to set light to marine diesel oil is difficult at the best of times.

Ban in duel occupancy offices became the norm.

Then no smoking in any offices.

Soon after, no smoking in internal alleyways.

No smoking in the Machinery Control or on the Bridge. Even though you had to be there for four hours at a stretch

No smoking in dining areas even when no food was being consumed.

No smoking in bars where food could be consumed. Bars sell crisps was the reason.

Finally. No smoking in cabins, even though your cabin was your home for four months.

Enough was enough.

I retired.

Smoking ban (Part 2763)

I see the latest wheeze by the bansturbators in parliament is to ban “smoking in cars with children”.

They just can’t help themselves can they? However I fail to see how they can enforce a ban with so many loopholes in it. Here’s a couple.

What if the car has tinted windows like mine. How will they know if there are children in the car? Will they set up roadblocks?

How will they know if someone has actually smoked while the kiddies were in the car? The smell could have lingered from a previous journey?

Why is there a need for this anyway as:

‘Smoking in cars with children has been in decline for years. Today very few people do it because the overwhelming majority of smokers accept that it’s inconsiderate.’ (Simon Clarke from Forest).

I suspect that is the slippery slope to banning smoking elsewhere. If they can start banning it in your own private car, why stop there?

Ban it in peoples own homes will be next. Don’t believe me. just wait.

If you’re a smoker…….

and you want to help a fellow smoker sue the Scottish government you might want to go HERE .

We have a warrior, a warrior with balls I might add, as Alan Auld from Aberdeen has decided that enough is enough and wants to challenge the legal system for he says that “the smoking ban has totally ruined his social life” and has set out to sue the Scottish government for the princely sum of £1,000,000. I applaud him.After all, we already know, from a Scottish MSP no less, that smoking bans had nothing to do with the health of bar workers or anyone else for that matter!

You might want to donate to his fighting fund. If nothing else it force the PTB to realise that there are a lot of people (20% of the population) that really hate them.

Outside with you.

 

Of course I couldn’t even think of inflicting that, as I’ll never be a rabid Anti-smoker.

I could tell I was back in the UK when…….

As I was exiting the airport terminal into the open air, and commencing to light up a ciggie,  an officious prick in uniform passing in the opposite direction  through the entrance way tells me in a loud voice, “No smoking in the terminal”. FFS

It really goes to show what a rigid, almost police state we seem to have become.

It was an absolute joy being on Crete for two weeks. No petty officialdom anywhere in sight. Smoking is hardly restricted at all. The average grecian is not the slightest bit bothered whether someone smokes or not. Ash trays are on the tables in tavernas and if you stub out a cigarette in one it will very shortly be replaced with a clean one.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain as I’ve just found out that the identical house to me, next door, is being solid for £150k more than I thought the houses were worth.

Maybe I’ll sell up and move to Greece.

Plain packaging

If you’re a smoker and are fed up to the back teeth with the war against smokers, then you need to take a stand against plain packaging.

I would bet my boots that our prime monster will incorporate plain packaging into the Queen’s speech in order to be “seen to be doing something” in order to distract the voters (and non voters, peace be upon you) from the drubbing that the conservatives received in the euro election.

Any smokers and non smokers for that matter, should hasten over to the Forest site and sign the letter which will be sent on your behalf, to David Cameron.

You can reach it HERE.

Remember the dearly departed

Dearly beloved, let us join together to remember, and to mourn, the many victims of the War On Smoking.

Let us take a few moments of quiet contemplation to commemorate the ultimate sacrifice that was made by them, for the benefit of mankind. Some of their names will not be known to the current generation, since their demise happened many years ago, but most shared our lives until recently, and just a few are with us still, but not for much longer. Let us at this time speak together their names, that their memory may be carried forth to future generations who will otherwise not know of them.

Let us remember Truth, Justice, Fairness, Goodness, Compassion, Logic, Honesty, Tolerance, Humanity, Good Sense, Forbearance, Empathy, Virtue, Perspicacity, Clarity, Simplicity, Decency, Morality, Integrity, Rectitude, Honour and Righteousness.

Let us remember Freedom; of Choice, of Expression, of Speech, of Thought, of Science, and of Information.

And, as we humbly remember their names, let us also remember that those who sought in the past to erase their memory have themselves been brought to account – usually violently, and with much rejoicing!

Smoking and cars

A bit late for this as I should be discussing plain packaging of cigarettes by now. But I thought my readers might be interested in this info graphic.

I would like a volunteer from amongst the Anti-smoking fraternity to step up for this experiment. Don’t all run forward at once as my garage will only fit in about one hundred. (No pushing to the front of the queue, Debs Arnott).

The cost of prohibition.

…..Of tobacco products. I just thought I’d highlight the costs involved with the eradication of tobacco smoking.

To start with I’m just going to bring up the facts of costs on the NHS supposedly from tobacco related diseases and the taxes raised from the sale of tobacco.

First is the very loose costs that are estimated to be a cost on the NHS. Supposedly the following list of ailments are associated with tobacco smoking:

Smoking causes about 90% of lung cancers. It also causes cancer in many other parts of the body including the:

• mouth
• lips
• throat
• voice box (larynx)
• oesophagus (the tube between your mouth and stomach)
• bladder
• kidney
• liver
• stomach
• pancreas

Smoking damages your heart and your blood circulation, increasing your risk of developing conditions such as:

• coronary heart disease
• heart attack
• stroke
• peripheral vascular disease (damaged blood vessels)
• cerebrovascular disease (damaged arteries that supply blood to your brain)

Smoking also damages your lungs, leading to conditions such as:

• chronic bronchitis (infection of the main airways in the lungs)
• emphysema (damage to the small airways in the lungs)
• pneumonia (inflammation in the lungs)

(Just thought I’d scare the shit out of you). However the costs seem to be very woolly. They don’t really seem to know how much it costs to treat smokers with those alleged smoking related diseases.

If current research is anything to go by, smoking is likely to be costing the NHS between £2.5 and £6 billion in today’s prices, although there’s a considerable degree of uncertainty to the estimates. SOURCE

Bearing in mind that most of those diseases are prevalent in non smokers as well, and any one admitting to being a smoker when visiting their GP/A&E, is automatically added to the list of smoking related patients. In my calculations I’m going to plump for half the higher figure. IE, £3 million.

Next we must have a look at the tax take.

The government takes in a total of about £9.5 billion in tobacco duties, and the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association estimates another £2.6 billion goes to the Treasury in VAT. So the Treasury is taking in about £12 billion directly from tobacco sales.

(Before the anti-smokers jump on the phrase “Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association”, just look at the graphic below.)

Anyway lets jump to the mathematics.

So we have a total of £12 Billion in taxes and a cost to the NHS of £3 Billion. Therefore a net taxation surplus of £9 Billion. Quite a tidy surplus for the treasury.

However Anti-smokers (and vapers), what would be the consequence if smokers gave it all up tomorrow?

Well the latest population figures for the UK are 63.7 million.

So if we divide the Net receipt of tobacco taxes of £9 Billion by 63.7 million people (Man, Woman, and child) we get a figure per year of £141 per head, of extra taxes. Or for the typical family of two adults and two children, £565.

So I’ll leave it up to you Anti-smokers. Do you really want to see the end of smoking?

Then of course they may ipmose a tax on vaping to make up for the loss of tobacco revenue. Have you thought about that, vapers?

The voice of reason

An article by Brendan O’Neill on why second hand smoke really isn’t as hazardous as those who are hard of thinking think it is.

If there really were such a thing as a bullshit detector, a machine that bleeped upon encountering nonsense, it would probably go into meltdown whenever someone talked about second-hand smoke.

In the modern public sphere, there are few issues that are as riddled with myth, misinformation, contradictory claims and outright claptrap as the scare about what smokers' foggy puffing is doing to us innocent non-smokers.

In recent years we've been told that second-hand smoke, or passive smoking, as some people call it, is as bad as smoking itself and can give you lung cancer. And apparently if you are surrounded by it in a car that has its windows closed that is like being in the most smoky, nicotine-stained bar you could ever imagine (if such bars still existed, which of course they don't).

Yet it turns out that these claims about the toxicity and cancer-causing powers of other people's smoke are either untrue or unproven. So how do prissy anti-smoking campaigners and health-freaky politicians continue to get away with churning out tall tales about second-hand smoke? Why won't this panic die under the boot of actual facts? What gives it its Michael Myers-like ability to keep coming back, in a crazier form every time, wagging its warning finger at humankind?

The evidence-light nature of the second-hand smoke scare was on full display during British politicians' recent mean-spirited attempt to outlaw smoking in cars in which children are present.

Last week, the House of Lords, our unelected second chamber, gave its nod of approval to a new Bill that would make it an offense to smoke in a car with kids, even if the windows are open. The Bill is now working its way back to the House of Commons, and if a majority of the members there agree that coppers should have the right to stop and threaten with arrest any motorist who has that apparently deadly combination of a lit ciggie and a child in his vehicle, then the Bill will become law and another bit of Brits' everyday freedom will be stubbed out.

Do read the rest of the article at Reason.com. It’s a cracker

E cigarettes and smoking in cars.

Last week the House of Lords voted to ban smoking in cars carrying children.

It’s interesting to note that at the same time the anti-smokers are campaigning  to have E cigarettes banned from enclosed public spaces. 

It might seem a coincidence, but I feel that their slippery slope of bans would come to a halt without a ban on E-cigs. After all how can you tell that a driver passing you with a child onboard is smoking or vaping?

As we all know this ban is just the start. I personally think that the ban on smoking in cars with children would be impossible to police anyway and would soon be amended to no smoking in cars at any time. Just to get around the vaping issue. That’s why they have to ban vapers from enclosed spaces.

As others have pointed out this is a major erosion of liberty, in the fact that they are at last managing to get their jackbooted laws into peoples own private property. Of course this will soon lead to “Think of the cheeeeeldren” in smoky homes. Your home will no longer be your own when the Nu puritans have the full force in law to inspect your home at a moments notice.

Be warned, other anti everything enjoyable groups are watching as this template unfolds.

So if you like a drink, sugar, soft drinks or anything else that public health deplore, then you will be next.

Count on it.

Lies, damn lies, and fiddled statistics.

“Science is not always a neutral, disinterested search for knowledge, although it may often seem that way to the outsider. Sometimes the story can be very different.”

This should be required reading for all those rabid anti smokers out there.

How times change.

Smoking and health have been the subject of argument since tobacco was introduced to Europe in the sixteenth century. King James I was a pioneer antismoker. In 1604 he declared that smoking was "a custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse." But like many a politician since, he decided that taxing tobacco was a more sensible option than banning it.

By the end of the century general opinion had changed. The Royal College of Physicians of London promoted smoking for its benefits to health and advised which brands were best. Smoking was compulsory in schools. An Eton schoolboy later recalled that "he was never whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoking". As recently as 1942 Price’s textbook of medicine recommended smoking to relieve asthma.

The times they were a changing (Apology to Bob Dylan).

Then we had the Doll and Hill study.

These strong opinions for and against smoking were not supported by much evidence either way until 1950 when Richard Doll and Bradford Hill showed that smokers seemed more likely to develop lung cancer.

But were their study results correct?

Sir Ronald Fisher, arguably the greatest statistician of the 20th century, had noticed a bizarre anomaly in their results. Doll and Hill had asked their subjects if they inhaled. Fisher showed that men who inhaled were significantly less likely to develop lung cancer than non-inhalers. As Fisher said, "even equality would be a fair knock-out for the theory that smoke in the lung causes cancer."

I’m not going to further plagiarise the document but suggest that smokers and anti smokers both have a read of the article. I think as an antismoker you may be disturbed, if not slightly guilty about your persecution of smokers. I leave you with this:

But the continuation of Hammond’s work, with its demonstrated faulty methodology, was used by the Australian authors to deduce that smoking causes premature death to the extent of 17,800 per year in Australia. Their conclusions should be compared with the results of a survey by the Australian Statistician in 1991 of 22,200 households, chosen at random. This showed "long term conditions", including cancer and heart disease, to be more common in non-smokers than smokers.

Hah.

Is this the real cause of the rise in Lung Cancer?

If so this should frighten the living daylights out of the Antismoking fake charities such as ASH.

The question to be asked is this:

Are Diesels More Dangerous than Cigarettes as a Cause of Lung Cancer?

I’ve written this post as the WHO have just come out of the closet and admitted that outdoor air pollution is maybe the main cause of lung cancer.

A major environmental health problem

Air pollution is already known to increase risks for a wide range of diseases, such as respiratory and heart diseases. Studies indicate that in recent years exposure levels have increased significantly in some parts of the world, particularly in rapidly industrializing countries with large populations. The most recent data indicate that in 2010, 223 000 deaths from lung cancer worldwide resulted from air pollution.

The most widespread environmental carcinogen

“The air we breathe has become polluted with a mixture of cancer-causing substances,” says Dr Kurt Straif, Head of the IARC Monographs Section. “We now know that outdoor air pollution is not only a major risk to health in general, but also a leading environmental cause of cancer deaths.”

 However a research scientist  came up with a study in 1998 which if was true should have turned the prevailing orthodoxy on it’s head about cigarette smoking.

Here is a few facts from her work:

• tobacco smoke contains no carcinogens, while diesel fumes contain four known carcinogens;
• that lung cancer is rare in rural areas, but common in towns;
• that cancers are more prevalent along the routes of motorways;
• that the incidence of lung cancer has doubled in non-smokers over past decades;
• and that there was less lung cancer when we, as a nation, smoked more.

And even more damning is her summary.

"Since the effect of the anti-smoking campaign has been to prevent the genuine cause from being publicly acknowledged, there is a very real sense in which we could say that the main reason for those 30,000 deaths a year from lung cancer is the anti-smoking campaign itself".

Over to you ASH.

Freedom of speech. Hah.

Pub smoking poll.

Just a quick poll.

Be truthfull. (Actually you can tick whatever floats your boat).

If Pubs had a smoking room, would you visit them more often?
	Most certainly
	Maybe
	No
	I hate smokers so I would boycott the pub.
	Drink is evil. I would never cross the doorstep of a pub
	No. I prefer to get pissed at home.
	Undecided
	Refuse to vote on this poll as I'm like that.
pollcode.com free polls

Why the Neo Puritans are killers.

Just been reading an article on conservative home written by an MSP, Brian Monteith. In the article he takes the Government of today to task about their zealous continuation of labour’s anti-smoking campaign.

For example:

Whatever one thinks of Europe and its hunger for more and more regulations, this latest assault on the buying and selling of a legal product in Britain is entirely self-inflicted by our own government. Who would have expected a Conservative-led government to take Labour’s public health regulations that restricted the availability or consumption of tobacco and the campaigns that demonised smokers – and seek to make them even more punitive?

The Conservative Party had originally suggested that, if elected to government, it would not follow through with the removal from sight of cigarettes and other tobacco products that Labour had planned to introduce before its defeat in 2010.  With an eye on protecting the fragile incomes of small shopkeepers vital to local neighbourhoods, such a costly and invasive policy did not appear in the election manifesto or Coalition Agreement. And yet the Coalition succumbed to the tobacco control lobby, and soon carried on with the policy regardless.

Just goes to show that politicians of all colours couldn’t give a flying fuck about the voters who elected them. All they see is a bandwagon that has to be boarded.

However this is not the reason for the headline. That is caused by one of the comments underneath the post from Anna.

I'm close on seventy years old. In all that time the only health problems I've ever had were associated with sporadic attempts to abandon the dreaded death sticks. Mostly I realised for myself that I'd done it long enough and did the sensible thing. On the last occasion, at the anguished pleading of my then teenage daugher, I lasted five years. By the end of those five years I'd developed virulent psoriasis from stress, was three stone overweight, at severe risk of developing the type 2 diabetes inherent in my family and on such strong prescription anti-depressants that they themselves were sending me insane. Eventually the daughter who'd begged me to give it up begged me to take it up again. I did, thirteen years ago. 20-a-day later I'd ditched the anti-depressants, the psoriasis cleared up and I needed no more expensive NHS treatment. I rapidly returned to a healthy weight with no prospect of diabetes and I've never had a day's ill-health since.

Says it all really.

Put that in your pipe….

and smoke it.

Interesting little video showing the lack of knowledge at a NHS smoking quit line.

Sorry about the music.