Monday 21 November 2011

I Have A Dream

You know that the BMA have seriously cocked up when even Ben Goldacre decides he can't ignore their shoddy nonsense. He is the 'Bad Science' guy, after all, even if he quite enjoys bad science in anti-smoking matters.

Just the act of denouncing provable lies obviously made him feel quite dirty, mind, as he spent the rest of the day assuaging his guilt by whipping himself into a frenzy with numerous anti-British American Tobacco tweets such as this.


See, the United Dreams of Europe is a "British American Tobacco front group", according to Goldacre. How they can be a 'front group' when the about page openly states "since 1979 the independent non-profit Foundation for Future Studies – an initiative of British American Tobacco – has conducted scientific and statistical research into current attitudes and behaviour across a range of social and political strata", I just don't know. I always thought a 'front group' was something which hid the identity of those funding them.

Goldacre has a different idea about shadowy enterprises than me, I suppose. I would have said that an organisation which had been in operation since Goldacre was struggling to understand how Lego works - and has never hidden it - would be eminently transparent. But hey! What does a 'tabloid' blogger know about words and shit, eh?

Still, it's good that he pointed this site out, as my 'European Dream' is for righteous arseholes to wind their necks in and leave us the fuck alone to live how we see fit.

So I posted such a dream here.


15 comments:

Ben said...

It's interesting that almost all commentators dream about how other people should live there lives. Don't they have lives of their own that are worth a dream?

Dick Puddlecote said...

Ben: This is where I think we can make the world a better place. You know, rise above it by posting our own dreams about how we'd like such people to fuck the fuck off.

Not in so many words, natch. ;)

Xen said...

Yep, some real good ones there. I particularly liked this one:

409 Ant

I dream of a world where anyone who smokes can legally be euthanised under Protection of the Environment measures.

You'd really like this one for a friend wouldn't you. Anything he/she/it disapproved of and zap instant euthanasia's gonna get you.

Frank said...

What a pile of infantile twaddle! When are these dinosaurs going to realise that bread and circuses are no longer relevant. In fact they only ever were as long as we were receiving the 'corn dole' and we're, certainly, not now.

Bloody childish fools.

Ivan D said...

“One thing that always fascinates me, as I tug on my pipe in this armchair,”

Ben Goldacre from his Guardian column back in September 2007

Either Ben was up to something that I would prefer not to think about or he was smoking something back then.

I assume that he is a member of the BMA so would love to know how he feels about its Head of Science and Ethics claiming scientific consensus for a claim she then had to retract.

Anonymous said...

I dream of an arsehole free world.
Soon these fuckers tax funded blood supply will run out.

Lyn said...

I posted a dream but before I worked out how to read the ones already there, so was very polite and restrained - silly me!

Anyway, have just managed to post another one, but I was still polite!

Anonymous said...

My dream is for anti-smoking groups, like ASH, to tell the truth for once
Chas

Anonymous said...

@Chas 14.52 - Dream on...

jay

Starship Fighter said...

I decided to jump straight in and post my dream before having a read at some of the joyless bastards who have posted their bile about smoking. Consequently, it was more of an idly speculative ramble about being left the fuck alonse to live my life as I see fit, and not a direct response to those twatters. So,to the chap who would like it to be legal to slap smokers in the street, you give it your best fucking shot, Son. If you're lucky, I'll only break the fingers on any hand you lay on me.

Lyn said...

Starship Fighter - I was able to make a second post on I have a Dream, so you may want to try another one - and sock it them good!

Ed Butt said...

As Golacre is always banging on about evidence based thinking, I have evidence he is just a front for the Thought Police.
Did you see him on QI. Everybody else knew its a comedy show, he thought he was there to lecture us on the difference betweek good science and bad science. Sad.

Anonymous said...

It's probably been said before but it seems that it's their own mortality which anti-smoking zealots fear and loathe. They find relief from that in projecting it on to others, people whom society tells them they can legitimately despise - and in fact gain a sense of virtue and an (illusory) immortality by doing so. And thus a mass emotion is ripe for political manipulation and a new intoxication: power. I think we're in the midst of a human trend which has manifested itself in various forms over the centuries.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Oh, it's nothing new, Lleweton. The difference is that fun-stealing bores like Mary Whitehouse used to be laughed at and roundly ignored. Now it's the vogue to be an effete, hand moisturising lily-liver whose personal prejudice leads one to crave destroying the lives of others.

Busybody curtain-twitching is the new black.

Anonymous said...

'hand moisturising lily-liver.' Nice.