Lies: Labour's Modus Operandi

I've been away this weekend. I visited a couple of friends in the Midlands, we had a great time but I'm afraid we indulged in some very un-Labour practices. For example, I would venture to suggest that we didn't drink responsibly. It shouldn't be surprising seeing as two of us run our own business which is a tough task in the current financial climate, the other of our trio is an IT professional with a not unsubstantial number of staff to manage. As you can imagine, she is worried that she may have to let people go if the current climate persists.

This was a weekend so I'm sure our Labour dictators will be OK with a little steam-letting under the circumstances.

So we went to the pub ... oh hold on, no we didn't, all three of us smoke so a night out wouldn't have been that relaxing after a week of business pressures, it was very cold and wet outside. So we stayed in, enjoyed our Sainsburys-bought beverages and ordered takeaway.

That's about £30 per head that the local pub lost from the three of us. I feel for them, I really do, but if they can't offer the relaxation (not their fault, they were doing fine before), what chance have they got to make any money? That is the point of pubs, they are exclusively in the relaxation business.

I feel no guilt whatsoever though, seeing as the Labour Government was there well before me. The pub shut six months ago, one of the 2,500+ that have closed since Labour started their puritan crusade. There were others nearby but we similarly didn't feel the need to go to those either. One way or another, the hospitality industry lost the distribution of our income, and it's no fault of the owners. The blame lies, in this case, with 646 idiots in a building over 120 miles away.

... and as The Daily Mash has touched upon, the whole lot of the fuckers lie as a matter of course. Lying has become a national pastime. Most especially by those who like to tell us what is good for us.

We've already seen over at the Devil's Kitchen how lies are being used to formulate Government policy,

The extraordinary support for the Department of Health (DOH)'s recommendations can only be explained by looking at the "stakeholders" who got involved. Of the 96,000 responses, only a handful came from private individuals. The rest came from block-voting by state-funded pressure groups and charities.

It's not a first, in fact it isn't even a two-hundred-and-fifty-first, these liars have been taking the piss for quite a while. Look at this load of crap from Patricia Hewitt in 2005.

Ms Hewitt said the ban would protect everyone from second-hand smoke, while making it easier for smokers to quit.

"The scientific and medical evidence is clear - second-hand smoke kills, causing a range of serious medical conditions including lung cancer, heart disease, and sudden infant death syndrome," she said.

"This legislation will help to prevent the unnecessary deaths caused every year from second-hand smoke, and recognises that there is absolutely no safe level of exposure."

Really? The smoking ban in pubs would lead to a decrease in cot death? (swearblogger on) What a fucking cunt you are, Hewitt!(/off)

The "no safe level of exposure" one is also dead easy to stuff into the lie box, it has quite simply not been studied. If it had, there would be a safe exposure limit like every other substance known to man, including radioactive materials. The anti-smoking jihadists backed off quick when that was mooted and now claim there is no safe exposure limit. Simple misdirection. If you believe that, you're probably a moron who plays 'Find the Lady' and wonders why you keep losing your cash.

Lung cancer? Full-time smokers have less than a 1% chance of contracting that. Seriously, look it up. Even with shonky stats (which have been rubbished in a US Court) conducted by highly-funded single-issue fanatics, they still can't find anything more than a 19% increase in risk for non-smokers who are surrounded by it every waking day of their lives. 19% of almost fuck all is still fuck all. It's even more fuck all when applied to pubs where you go for maybe an hour or two of your week. Hewitt has been spewing the same laughable lie for three years. Either she is woefully stupid, or she knows she is lying. Your choice.

The heart disease lie has been thoroughly debunked many times, in many countries, most recently with this.

So, not one iota of truth in anything the stupid cow had to say on the matter.

It now seems that the so-called 'public' consultation on hiding tobacco from those who wish to buy it, which The Filthy Smoker rightly exposed as being rigged, was rigged even more than we first thought. These are lies upon lies we are talking about.

In a report on the Future of Tobacco Control consultation published on Tuesday 9th December 2008, the Department of Health appears to have deliberately omitted evidence offered by the Tobacco Retailers Alliance.

Ken Patel, Leicester retailer and National Spokesman for the Tobacco Retailers Alliance, said: "First the Minister refused to meet with retailers, now they have censored our formal response to a public consultation."

Campaign Manager Katherine Graham said; "We are not listed as one of the respondents although our response was submitted by email and also sent by post, so we can be certain it was received. For some reason the views of 25,000 shopkeepers just seem to have been air-brushed out of the consultation report."

So let's get this straight. The Government pays its own bodies to provide the stats that they want, and then ignores anyone who dares to object, to the point of effectively destroying the evidence?

That's democracy is it?

And how about these lies too. It seems the reasoning behind the hiding of tobacco, that is, the fact it was really successful in Canada and Iceland (?!?). Yep, that was a load of garbage as well.

Iceland

The Icelandic ban, introduced in 2001, has failed to achieve its aim of reducing smoking rates in the country’s under 18s.
In fact smoking prevalence among 15-19-year-olds actually increased from 14.4% to 17.5% in the year that the ban was introduced, official figures from Statistics Iceland reveal.


In 2002, smoking prevalence among this age group was the highest it had been for five years at 17.%. Today at 15.2% it still remains higher than it had been before the ban.

... and Canada

Since only four of Canada's thirteen territories had enacted any sort of a tobacco display ban prior to 2007, it makes it extremely unlikely that the decline in teen smoking between 2002 and 2007 could have been due to such legislation. It should be noted that the rate did not drop at all between 2006 and 2007, thereby ruling out a possible effect from the two territories who brought in a ban during 2007.

There is one Labour MP who has decided to cease lying about it though. Enter stage left, Alistair Darling (the one who denied the VAT cut to smokers, natch)

Mr Darling told journalists at Westminster "there is no doubt the smoking ban made a difference" in killing off boozers after the British Beer and Pub Association told MPs the number of failing pubs is now "accelerating rapidly."

Ahem ... the only people that hadn't worked that out by now were either in a coma, or dead. Still, I suppose we should congratulate Mr Darling for finally stating something as obvious as grass being green. We can only hope that his fellow Labour MPs will one day also start to understand the country that they purport to govern.

OK, perhaps I'm ranting, so I shall calm down by reading again the Times article that has succinctly presented a stark summary of the devastating damage that Labour's shit law has caused. Get this, all the pub closures, all the damage to the social lives of hard-working people, all the job losses, all the anger and division of the public over a disgusting law, and the net result is ... smoking prevalence has increased.

The smoking ban was introduced in England on July 1, 2007, to improve the health of those working in bars, restaurants and other workplaces through passive smoking. However, ministers also hoped it would help them meet targets to reduce smoking rates, particularly among those from more deprived backgrounds.

When she introduced the ban, the then health secretary Patricia Hewitt said: 'This is an enormous step forward for public health. It is going to make it easier for people who want to give up smoking to do so. Over time it will save thousands of lives.'

But polls carried out before and after the ban show it has not had that impact.
The number of cigarettes smoked by men aged 16 to 34 has increased by one and a half cigarettes a day, from an average of 10.9 to 12.5 a day. The percentage of females who smoke remained constant at 21 per cent, while male smokers rose from 23 per cent to 24 per cent. One in three smokers said the ban had encouraged them to stay at home, where they could still smoke. The numbers saying the ban would encourage them to quit dramatically fell after it came into force.

It's the same in France and it was the same in Ireland, all documented. When will these people learn?

Of course, there is still a great big porkie in there, the Government can't resist it.

'The legislation was never intended to be a measure to reduce smoking prevalence.'

One need only to quote the Government spokesman when the Health Act was proposed,

The government predicts about 600,000 people will give up smoking as a result of the law change.

Oooh, you fucking lying bastards.