poster

 

Death by a thousand cuts.

Well not quite as many as that.

I’m afraid this is about smoking again. My history of the slow strangulation of smoking rights.

I’ll start at the beginning of the slow but sure campaign by the anti-smokers.

In the mid sixties, I was a callow youth just starting out in my career as a Marine Engineer. In those days you could smoke anywhere. Even in the classroom. The only rule was that you supplied your own ashtray.The top deck of buses were set aside for smokers, as was the back end of aircraft. Trains had nearly half the carriages designated for smoking. Believe it or not, you were actually allowed to smoke in pubs and clubs.

Then came the rise of the nu-puritans.

The first to go was smoking on aircraft. Smoking carriages on trains were reduced to one badly maintained area which you would be prosecuted if you decided to transport cattle in it. Buses followed suit.

Smoking in workplaces was severely curtailed by having one smoking room.

Just as an aside to the general point of this article. When I was on secondment to a department of the ministry of defence about 12 years ago, I used their smoking room. At the time it was just at the end of the Irish troubles but we were expected to work in civilian clothes in order not draw attention to who we were. In that smoking room I met many people, of which I had no real idea of who they were, although after a while we all surmised what our respective  fields were.

A few of us formed informal relationships, in that we were of the same age group and became friends because of that room.

Imagine my surprise when we were all ordered to wear uniform again in a drive to boost recruitment for the forces. I suddenly found that I was friends with people who were stratospherically higher in rank than my pay grade. Captains (Naval), a vice admiral, and the head of the defence fire service. Rank notwithstanding, we remained informal friends in that room.

Back to the topic I started with.

Slowly but surely I saw more changes. On ships, smoking was banned from alleyways (corridors in lay parlance), The Bridge, and the Machinery control room, and all offices.

After that came no smoking in areas that served food. Fair enough you would say. No.The bastards in charge included the bars as, wait for it, crisps served there, counted as food. The only place left to smoke was in your cabin.(my main place of residence for 2/3rds of the year. The other 1/3 being on leave at filthy mansion).

Of course when the smoking ban came in in 2007, even smoking in cabins was banned. Instead smoking was only permitted on one area of usually windswept and badly lit deck. I’m waiting to hear that someone will be washed overboard one dark and stormy night. And although I will feel sorry for the bereaved, I hope they sue the pants off the MOD under HSE regulations.

Could ASH be indicted as well for colluding in pre-meditated murder?

The Smoking ban was the only reason I retired when I did. Up till then I loved my job. After the ban I hated it.

Sorry for the rant ruining your Sunday evening.

The Raccoon is back.

Anna Raccoon is back running the bar at The Raccoon Arms.

A fascinating tale of international intrigue.

Out of the mouths of babes….

I don’t do serious on Fridays. But then again we must think of the cheeeldren.

I won’t cry for you Argentina

The TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) is calling for the British Government to oppose any further World Bank loans, underwritten by British taxpayers, to Argentina. They have launched a new campaign with an e-petition on the UK Government's official website (http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34551) and published new research (http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/argentina.pdf) looking at the scale of the funding.

British taxpayers' money is supporting loans to Argentina on a substantial scale. This is despite recent attacks from the Argentinian government on British interests, including advocating a boycott of British goods, and disputing the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. Moreover as a middle-income country, Argentina has no pressing humanitarian need for aid.

THEY hate bloggers

By THEY I mean all those nannying tyrants such as Tobacco control. Alcohol concern, the greens, and the econuts who espouse useless wind turbines and pathetic solar panels. To name a few. Over the last few years the supine Main Stream Media (MSM) have been led by the nose to believe everything they’re told. Instead we should be casting those prod noses down to the 9th circle of hell for their lies and obfuscations,

What they haven’t been able to cope with is Bloggers.

The nanny statists are conditioned to think as a group, and this is where their demise will begin. Their groupthink doesn’t allow for dissenting voices, questioning the status quo.

Bloggers are so different. bloggers are like a swarm of bees, each one acts independently gathering nectar (information) but are linked with each other in a myriad of interconnecting Hyperlinks. This is where the likes of the Tobacco control industry will lose the war. They win the battle by influencing the MSM with their Groupthink, but eventually, given sufficient resolve, Bloggers will win the war.

It will be a long war as bloggers have finite resources, and are not funded from the public purse, or are set up as fake charities, like some.

The one thing that bloggers like me and many others have, is an enquiring mind. When I started this blog I was on my own. Over the last three years I’ve managed to garner a mass of information. I’ve looked as a smoker into second hand smoke and seen through the haze of untruthfulness  I’ve looked as an engineer, and seen the great enlightenment of AGW, slowly being exposed as  a money making scam by the idiots that want a catastrophe at all costs, to raise it. I’ve seen the medical profession trying to tell me that I’m drinking far more than their made up level of units that I must not surpass.

By now if you’ve read this far you’ll probably be thinking, what a conceited fool.

But the point I am making is that I didn’t come to these revelations alone. It was the fact, that out in the blogosphere there is a vast amount of information and research that is never produced in the MSM. The MSM don’t see it, they’re too busy being tucked into their comfort blanket.

Anyway enough of that. I’m going to turn on the heating, light up a cigarette, and have a large whisky.

Free Speech

You must be joking.

Anyone for Golf?

Pity I don’t play.

Are you sure I’m speeding Officer?

 

The swarm

Smokers marching on the headquarters of ASH (Action on Smoking and Health).

Maybe this will happen in the future. With that many marching they won’t even need flaming torches and pitchforks. The cowards at ASH will have long fled the country. Mind you though Debs, I wouldn’t flee to Bulgaria.