Friday 1 May 2009

Do Lies (Upon Lies) Get Bigger Than This?


One of the most curious aspects of the stance of uber anti-smokers, ASH, is their continual insistence that the tobacco industry is infested with liars who are perpetually manipulating data to suit their own business ends. They may be correct, but it pales into insignificance when one considers the jaw-dropping, bare-faced, superlative lying which emanates from the nation's archetypal fake charity.

An article in tonight's Evening Standard highlights both Labour's insistence on only asking for guidance from those who are guaranteed to agree with them, as well as the quite staggering nonsense which is spouted as fact by the world class fanatical liars at ASH (paid for by your taxes, I might add).

The rancid paws of their lying cunt-in-chief head of policy, Martin Dockrell, look to be all over this latest putrid perversion of the political process.

A critical vote in the House of Lords is looming next week for small newsagents who are being seriously threatened by plans to prevent tobacco products going on display across Britain. Cigarettes would have to be sold from out of sight under the counter under new legislation.

The vote is due next Wednesday, and retailers are extremely upset. They say the move will damage their businesses — especially as it could cost £1500 to install a special gantry to store the products.

The Ministry of Health asked anti-smoking organisation ASH (which is hardly a disinterested party) to check on the cost, and it claimed the figure for the gantries was just £120. This figure was sent by health minister Lord Darzi to every member of the House of Lords.

When the supplier, 4 Solutions of Canada, heard about this, it pointed out the individual cost would be approximately £450 — and this did not include any of the installation costs, which would be around £1000. They also pointed out that the costs of the gantries for all the outlets in Britain could be over £30 million.

Neither ASH nor the Ministry of Health has corrected the information they have given to the members of the House of Lords in advance of the vote.

My local Tesco Express were measured up for their new display a couple of months ago. I know this as I was stocking up on filter tips while the consultant was employing all manner of infra-red gadgets, behind the counter, to estimate how big a display needed to be hidden, and jotting all the measurements on a surveyor's pad (while wearing a hi-viz jacket, natch). So there's £120 spunked up the 'power' wall already.

Any idiot with a brain will be able to work out that the £120 figure is farcical and could only be dreamt up by a single issue cunt with psychotic tendencies. By deduction then, Lord Darzi must be an idiot without a fucking brain.

By comparison, the accusations towards the tobacco industry on the very same subject are pretty hypocritical.

Britain's tobacco giants have been accused of 'dirty' tactics after it emerged they created a supposedly 'independent' campaign group for small retailers to lobby against government restrictions on the promotion of cigarettes in shops.

Laughingly, the Guardian chose to elicit reaction from ... groups created by the government to appear supposedly 'independent', to lobby for government restrictions.

Dr Janet Atherton, Chair of Smokefree North West, which works to tackle smoking among children and young people, said: 'Everyone had a right to be heard - nearly 60,000 members of the public in this region signed up for stronger measures. These people will feel a little cheated that the tobacco industry, when having its say, chose to do in such a misleading and dishonest way.'

Smokefree North West. Such an austere body. And funded by whom? Well, according to their communications officer, Vicky Mills, when I asked her ...

We are part funded by the Department of Health and part funded by all the PCTs in the NW.

So the government have set up bodies which are designed to appear independent, but which are entirely funded by themselves, to comment on how tobacco companies have done the same. And they acuse the tobacco companies of dirty tricks?

Fair enough, it's what we have come to expect from Labour. But did you notice the lie from them too? I did. Rewind a little.

Everyone had a right to be heard

Well, actually Janet, you lying tart, no they didn't. Only ones who agreed with the government did.

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."

In summation, we have a government who hide public consultations from those who may disagree, but use organisations funded by them to spread the word to those who will agree. If anyone proffers an opposing viewpoint, their input is omitted.

Then, having zig-zagged around the process of pretending that the electorate have had a say, the government ask for further evidence from a collection of lying cock-sockets who wouldn't be able to run an office if Labour didn't pay their overheads. When the truth is presented to them by experts who don't merely pull a figure out of their state-sponsored derrières, Lord Darzi ignores it entirely as it is deemed inconvenient.

Let's get this straight, and on record, right now. Martin Dockrell and ASH lie for a living. Lord Darzi has derelicted his duty, having perverted the course of democracy with his actions, and should be put against a tree and shot.

If the Lords vote for this bill to be passed next Wednesday, their doing so will be advocating the use of mendacity, self-lobbying, and the abandonment of any form of democracy or public accountability. But it won't be their fault, quite simply because they have been fed shit by a procession of disgusting affronts to decent society. ASH and their ilk shouldn't be attending receptions and press conferences talking about how others lie, they should be in front of a court being sentenced for their own desertion of the truth.

This issue doesn't personally affect me, I know exactly what I smoke, and I know exactly where to get it (abroad). What does affect me, though, and should make you angry too if you believe we are living in an equitable system, is that government in the form that we have to suffer under Labour, is not democratic in even the loosest sense. You may well agree with this particular measure, but you should be horrified at the way it is being bludgeoned through both houses.

If you aren't, I will ask you a couple of questions. Can you be certain that the same process isn't being used for every aspect of your life? And how much of what you believe is true are you certain not to be a state-peddled lie?

Think on.

UPDATE: Incredible that a Staffordshire Labour MP is sucking up the lies and vomiting them out. Shouldn't she be sorting out the mess of her local hospital, which despatches souls by the hundred, and which Alan Johnson accepted was a steaming pile of festering NHS effluence yesterday?

[Charlotte Atkins (Labour, Staffordshire Moorlands)] The evidence suggests that this measure would be manageable for small businesses in Staffordshire Moorlands because it could cost under £200 to refit a standard UK small retailer display.

Are all Labour MPs stupid?




9 comments:

Old Holborn said...

Can you be certain that the same process isn't being used for every aspect of your life? And how much of what you believe is true are you certain not to be a state-peddled lie?


All of it

Gawain Towler said...

Bloody disgraceful

Will see if I can get our LOrds onto it

Mark Wadsworth said...

"lying tart"? How about "devious crack-whore"?

As OH points out, these fakecharities butt into everything else as well (drinking, global cooling, speed limits, child related stuff, taxation, welfare, financial system, drugs, fishing, fox hunting, you name it).

Dick Puddlecote said...

Exactly Mark, even as a smoker, the smoking restrictions have very little effect on me. Quite simply, they are irrelevant to my life. I could just shrug and ignore them as I'm not personally disadvantaged.

I don't though because, having researched, the insidious way that such restrictions are bulldozered through is alarming.

This is one tiny part of government interference, it's just the one I have watched, amused at first, then alarmed as it dawned on me that it is probably the same process with every minute detail of the British 'democractic' experience.

It's why I blog.

Witterings from Witney said...

Agree with every word DP - without reservation.

Looking ahead to the time when we have used every lamp post for the now accepted, adapted purpose - what do we do? For my part I shall probably revert to my previous hobby of 'horizontal jogging' to fill my time.

Spartan said...

lt's things like this that piss me off. lt's not that Labour and their buddy so-called experts are doing it because l've got used to that ... it's there's not a fucking peep from from the opposition parties.

Who is supposed to hold these people to account? ... they get away with it time after time with total impunity.

l feel like a King Canute trying to hold the tide back.

Ah... fuck it. l'll have a smoke (bought from Spain of course)

vincent1 said...

Superb Dick, thank you for making people aware.
Old Holborn, interesting you should say that.
I have a non-smoking, was almost a believer of the filthy propaganda against smokers.
OK, she does not like smoke. But after showing her today, some information, about Johnson&Johnson baby products, (formaldehyde) and the adverts she remembers, just directed at smokers. The morgue one, now, she understands why I am so angry.
Peddled lies, by those who help to peddle them, I believe, ie; the J&J (formaldehyde) babies (I call them) is the lowest of the low.
The antis are scaring the kids to death, we smoke it, they bathe in it. Now is it really fu**king harmful or what?
Probably not, when it comes to them using it, the drug companies ect.
State peddled, fu**king lies by a few charities,
The whole "denormalisation" experiment, is a joke Gawain, for what the antis are basing it on.
As for Stanton Glantz, either there is a safe level or there is not!
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5500/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1090 snip~ We want to reassure parents that JOHNSON’S® Baby Shampoo and all our baby and kids products are safe, gentle and mild products that they can trust and use with confidence".

With thanks to Marcus - snip~
As I have stated in an earlier post, the http://www.rwjf.org/about/founder.jspfounder of RWJF (the source of hundreds of millions of dollars for smoking bans) was none other than the founder of Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical; but the ties to the pharmaceutical industry don't end there.
Current Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) board of trustees:
Lots more information on Michael Siegel blog about them too.
Look out for MJM and sheri, half way down the page.

I sent the following and variations of it to US News & World Report and a number of other outlets and boards a few weeks ago when the story about formaldehyde in baby shampoo broke:


Smoky Shampoos...
According to this story in the Wash. Post, they found formaldehyde concentrations in baby shampoo of up to 610 parts per million(ppm). This was described as "tiny" or "low" amounts of the chemical.


But let's consider a rather small (400 cubic meters) and relatively poorly ventilated (6 air-changes/hour) restaurant, with 30 customers, ten of whom light up twice per hour. Would you be worried about taking a child there after all the frightening ads and news stories about things like formaldehyde in cigarette smoke? You'd probably whisk your baby out of there faster than a waiter could pick up a tip.


According to the Surgeon General's figures those ten smokers will emit a total of 17 mg of formaldehyde into the air per hour. That formaldehyde is diluted in 2400 cubic meters of air, giving a concentration of .007ppm.


That "deadly threat" you'd normally whisk your child away from is 87,000 times safer (at least in terms of formaldehyde) than the baby shampoos described as having "tiny" or "low" levels of formaldehyde. Of course smoke has other chemicals as well, but their "threat concentrations" according to the EPA are usually significantly less than formaldehyde.


Meanwhile the FDA now wants to vastly stretch its workload to include regulating tobacco. There's clearly a problem here. Either the threat of wisps of airborne smoke have been greatly exaggerated, or the 87,000 times more deadly baby shampoos should have wiped out virtually every child in America. In either case, adding tobacco regulation to the FDA's workload seems like rather a bad idea.


Reference: 1979/1986 SG Reports, 1999 Massachusetts Benchmark Study: .856 mcg/cigarette total formaldehyde emissions, sidestream and mainstream (multiplied by 20 cigarettes per hour to equal 17 mg emissions per hour)

87,000 times the concentration of the "deadly toxin used to preserve dead bodies" that RWJF grantees and Center for Tobacco Free Kids scream about, but Johnson and Johnson talks about "trace amounts" and "unnecessarily alarming parents" when they're specifically found in BABY products?

Michael J. McFadden

Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
Michael J. McFadden
Sorry Dick, but I get angrier by the minute. Thank you for allowing us to vent our spleen.
And thanks to Michael McFadden for this information.


freedom2choose.info for smokers and non-smokers alike, fighting for choice and TRUTH

Large Melot Please said...

The good news is that at least Debs, Mart and Mand at ASH are not getting away without us correcting them.

Methnks they will continue to be on the backfoot.

ranger1640 said...

Nu-Labour are lying shit scum.

I work as a works officer dealing with maintenance and new works and my aunt runs a small news agents and she also sells cigarettes form a secure display.

I was asked to give her an estimate on how to refit her shop in anticipation of this new law. In essence to put in a new under counter cigarette case that will hold stock and when the shop is closed secure the stock. I estimated the cost at around £2500, and this is for a under counter of 1m high X 2m long.

The estimate was for the modifications to the counter, new support timbers for the new under counter stock holder and roller shutter, moving of the under counter electrics, finishing’s, fitting, making a new stock case for the existing stock that was below the counter and making good after the removal of the old display case. This does not take into account the disturbance of the shop when all this work is going on.

To say Nu-Labour are a bunch of lying shit scum for peddling this lie of £120 is an understatement. Not only that but if this is how they come up with figures for the changes to shops no wonder the countries finances are fucked up with them in charge!