I'll air-paint one mark for me then as they're not even hiding it anymore.
Alcohol Focus Scotland, ASH Scotland and Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems are pleased to announce a joint conference which will consider what progress has been made in alcohol control and tobacco control and explore what each sector might learn from the other. Chief Executive of AFS Evelyn Gillan and Chief Executive of ASH Scotland Sheila Duffy look forward to hearing your views and ideas to improve Scotland’s health. A report with policy recommendations will be circulated to delegates and to the Scottish Government.To all those CAMRA binge-drinkers (oh yes you are!) who so loved the smoking ban, see what you spawned? The smokefree coalition is now so flushed with success that they're branching out in other areas.
And why not? They have comprehensively conned politicians into passing hideous laws before, and are now able to offer their expertise to those who want to denormalise the lives of people who freely enjoy other vices. That'll be yer average beardy, cardie-wearing beer festival goer, then. You were warned, you know.
Gotta laugh, eh? Well, not you fatties, of course ... I'm sure you'll also be targeted by this snowballing 'coalition of the hideous' sometime soon.
In light of the rank incompetence exhibited by CAMRA and the BBPA, it's worth rolling out this sage piece of advice again.
It's like a bunch of folks on the scaffolds complaining that the other guy's noose isn't quite tight enough. Y'all might instead direct your attention to the hangman sometime and try helping each other cut those ropes.How many warnings do drinkers need to recognise ASH as a threat to drinkers as well as smokers? They have a coalition, we 'unapproved' have a set of self-regarding idiots allowing the righteous to run wild because of personal prejudice.
It's time the hospitality industry and their lackwit afficionados woke up, the alarm has been ringing for quite some time.
24 comments:
It is because the hospitality industry did not speak out against the smoking ban (because they'd just sold their soul to the State Devil to get 24-hour licensing), that I have not spent a single penny in any pub or restaurant since July 2007.
Nor shall I until that ridiculous law is fully repealed.
And thousands of pubs and clubs have already closed, with more to follow - if they can't act, they don't deserve our trade.
Well put overall Dick! Loved this:
"It's like a bunch of folks on the scaffolds complaining that the other guy's noose isn't quite tight enough. Y'all might instead direct your attention to the hangman sometime and try helping each other cut those ropes."
The casino folks over here in the US are learning this lesson the hard way. In state after state they let the bans go through for bars thinking it'd just mean better biz for themselves. Whatever few thousands of biz they picked up are now being offset by the loss of tens of millions. The Antismokers played off of people's greed and fears with their "divide and conquer" approach and then moved on to playing off their desperation with "the level playing field" promises.
The idiots ignored the obvious until too late, and at this point, even as they start getting the bans reversed,they'll still have lost so much that it'll take years upon years to recover.
- MJM
o/t but you will have noticed that they have now started on red-meat eaters.
Red meat is fine they say, as part of a combined diet, just cut down a little bit.
"70 grams a day is probably alright, about 3 rashers of bacon per day".
Oh really? How very nice of you to allow that. 1 pack of Tesco thick cut back bacon rashers = 300 grams and half of that makes for a very nice bacon sandwich which means I've already had twice my allowance before getting dressed.
>Chief Executive of AFS Evelyn Gillan and Chief Executive of ASH Scotland Sheila Duffy look forward to hearing your views and ideas to improve Scotland’s health
Try getting private sector jobs and recommending the same to your countrymen, you self-serving, worthless, vinegar-titted harridans.
You'd be amazed at how having a real job, with real responsibilities, compels one to keep in shape and moderate his vices.
I really don't want to laugh but for the past four years I've seen comments on various blogs (The Pub Curmudgeon, Raedwald to name but two) where the drinkers have been lauding the smoking ban.
"It's great not to have the smell of tobacco when I/we, sit/stand, to sup/slurp/quaff our drink/s."
"Going to a restaurant is now soooo pleasurable without the reek/stench of smoke/smokers."
Well suck it up you morons. You're next, you've always been next. You were just too stupid to make the connection.
As I don't visit any licensed premises anymore I don't care if they all shut tomorrow.
The site of CAMRA followers, publicans and foodophiles crying into their empty glasses will make my day/week/month/year.
I wasn't going to laugh but... Bwahahahahahhahahahahahahha.
Now, fuck off and die.
Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.
AE,
Great poem! Did you write it yourself, or is it by someone very, very famous that I should know - but don't ....?
Let the drinkers hang. They stood by and applauded, now their natural turn next comes in due course, as the poem points out.
Anon at 02:03, I wish I had that much talent. The Hangman was by Maurice Ogden, who wrote it in 1951. There's a short animation of it here
Anon at 02:28, I can sympathise with letting them hang as per the poem, but of course the poem ends with everyone hanged. How many do we let be targeted because they deserve it and when do we finally say stop?
It’s a dilemma, isn’t it, for those of us smokers who actually aren’t regular drinkers and for whom restrictions upon drinking would have little or no effect. I’m torn between sitting smugly on the sidelines, saying “Told you so! But you wouldn’t ‘ave it, would you? Bet you wish you’d supported the smokers now!” and not wanting to sink to the same, self-centred level of non-support as non-smoking drinkers showed smokers in the several years’ run-up to the ban, of which I have always been very critical and, at times, scathing. Decisions, decisions .....
Oh, well - at least it’s nice to have a choice this time around .....
To think that all of this bitterness of thought, closure of pubs, loss of thousands of jobs and the fracturing of society could easily have been avoided by simply giving us choice.
I will never forgive the bastards that did this.
Thank you for the poem! There's also a YouTube version that lets you view it full screen.
I'd actually seen it once before, a very long time ago when I was working on building a Peace Studies program at my college. Very haunting combination of verse and stark animation.
While visiting YouTube I found another video you might enjoy -- more of an anti-violence theme, but done in a very humorous way by the people who did some of the best Avatar sequences:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCP2qbHDGIs
Love the comment by KaiKipBT7:
"Heh heh. Breast physics. No matter where no matter when, in every animated medium, I always can't help but laugh when I see gravity defying jubblies jump."
:>
MJM
Good find. Sort of confirms what we all suspected.
I've just noticed that 'hideous' it one letter away from 'hide out'.
"The creaking tumbrel which carted King Alcohol to the gallows has been turned around and started back after Lady Nicotine," the Cincinnati Times-Star reported in 1919."
Because prohibition was such a disaster and the story so well known around the world,they would never have got away with it if they had moved against alcohol first.
So this time they just reversed the order, and clearly, some people fell for it.
Rose
WIll those CAMRA types recognise what has been done? What will be their reaction?
They were warned, yet chose to rationalize using things such as the recession and super markets.
It will take courage to admit being duped. It will also take some restraint from those who were initally sold out.
There is indeed a tempatation to say 'told you so, and this may help some, it doesn't solve the on-going problem.
Yes the likes of CAMRA should feel guilty and ashamed for the support they gave to ASH et al. Now they need to speak up on how they were taken advantage of and mislead.
Some of those CAMRA types may still have a problem though as, it seems, they did not want to accomodate people who smoke regardless and this is a major issue. They will need to choose 'Live and Let Live' or lose out themselves.
It's amazing really, the lack of understanding by people like CAMRA. There are still so many people in our society who fail to grasp what is happening. They earnestly debate and discuss the "issues" wuthout realising that they're up against a fanatical Temperance Movement.
Alcohol is the last legal, socially acceptable drug in our society. How could anybody believe that the temperance wallahs would leave it alone? I can remember these people a few years ago when I or others pointed this out saying, "oh no, it's just tobacco because of the floaty-about thing". And we said, they were lying, and of course they were.
I don't drink intoxicating liquor any more. I sort of lost interest, and now when I do, it tends to trigger my migraines. So, on a personal level Prohibition won't affect me a single jot. So I have to admit, there is a small part of me that feels a grim revengeful pleasure at this. When they find they can't have a beer with their meal in a restaurant because the State decided to "break the link between eating and alcohol", when they have to go outside for a glass of wine, and then, to a hidden place so children won't be led astray by seeing those stinking, wife beating alcohol addicts indulging their addiction, I hope I will be decent enough to have the sympathy that was so sorely lacking when it was done to the smokers.
But then, that's what it's all about isn't it? Divide and conquer. In the Brave New World, we do not take pleasure from our own triumphs, but from the immiseration of others.
Also, was reminded of GK Chesterton, writing about 90 years ago in "Eugenics And Other Evils"-
But it is none the less relevant to remember that, as his masters have already proved that alcohol is a poison, they may soon prove that nicotine is a poison. And it is most significant of all that this sort of danger is even greater in what is called the new democracy of America than in what is called the old oligarchy of England. When I was in America, people were already "defending" tobacco. People who defend tobacco are on the road to proving that daylight is defensible, or that it is not really sinful to sneeze. In other words, they are quietly going mad.
DP
I’ve left some comments on Frank Davis regarding eugenics. Many are not familiar with the fact that eugenics, although notorious for its breeding/heredity dimension, also has a behavioral/environmental dimension. Along this dimension is the obsession with anti-tobacco, anti-alcohol, diet, and physical exercise. The typical eugenics personnel are physicians, Public Healthers trained in the medical model, biologists, zoologists, statisticians, behaviorists. These are typically physicalists/materialists/biological reductionists.
Post-WWII, it is this behavioral dimension of eugenics that has progressively come to the fore. In the 1980s, this obsession with the body was referred to as “healthism”. However, this is just a deflecting name for behavioral eugenics. And it is the same eugenics personnel that are pushing the current insanity. Isn’t this what we’ve been seeing. The Godber Blueprint is standard eugenics-speak. Those operating under the auspices of the WHO were/are typical eugenics personnel. They embarked on an eradication program using denormalization - standard eugenics goal and methodology. The eugenics mentality dominates government health bureaucracies around the world. They have gotten their respective politicians to hogtie their nations to the WHO’s FCTC.
The temperance movement in the USA was lobbying the legislature for anti-tobacco and anti-alcohol policies for decades in the late-1800s. They had made no inroads with the legislature. The eugenicists came along in the very-late-1800s. Eugenics was funded by the mega-wealthy and was erroneously viewed as “scholarly and scientific”: It was elitist. The eugenicists had major influence over the legislature. Where the temperance movement had had no success, within just a few years there was sterilization and anti-tobacco legislation. Within a little over a decade there was Prohibition. Sterilization laws usually came first or in close temporal proximity to anti-tobacco laws. And Prohibition came much after sterilization laws. It indicates what was advising the legislature on sterilization, anti-tobacco, and anti-alcohol – eugenics.
Eugenics “legitimized” the temperance movement. It used this movement for its own agenda. There were even religious groups that bought into eugenics. There was a whole network of eugenicists in the USA up to the end of WWII. They didn’t just disappear. They dropped the breeding/heredity emphasis and shifted it to the behavioral dimension, and careful not to use the “E”[ugenics] word.
We need to start using the word “eugenics”. Eugenicists don’t like the word for obvious reasons. By using the word, we have a better chance of getting the attention of more folk.
Lucy Paige Gaston te anti tobacco comtempory of Carrie Nation.
Oddly enough she died from throat cancer usually associated with drinking and smoking she did neither.
Scary looking witch aint she ?
Ooops sorry the link
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2008/The-Smoking-Gun/
And DH has released a list of new fake charities to help with the Righteous cause...
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/MediaCentre/Pressreleases/DH_124693
Well DP,
Here's some soppish expatriate that seems to see a different broad image of his origin:
http://www.news-leader.com/article/20110329/OPINIONS03/103290310/Broader-view-smoking?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s
Perhaps you might remind him of the sacking of Blair & Brown and that the
Tories now have the NHS over the coals.
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