Thursday 5 July 2012

The Little E-Cig That Could

Quite. Incredible.
A fake cigarette prompted armed police to swoop on a coach on the M6 Toll road and close the motorway for four hours.

Forty eight passengers on the Megabus Preston to London service were led off the coach and forced to sit apart in a cordon on the opposite carriageway.

The road was closed between junctions T3 and T4 near Lichfield before police said they were no longer treating the incident as suspicious.

Jenny Lister, who was on the coach, said when she got off "there were armed police aiming at us".

She said: "We... were told to sit in rows and not talk to each other. There was a small area of the motorway where we were told to sit and stay. It was probably 45 minutes to an hour that we were sat there.

Military personnel, police dog handlers, firefighters and other specialist units were also at the scene.

Staffordshire Police received a report from someone who saw vapour as the coach was near the M6 Toll plaza at Weeford, near Lichfield.

The force said on investigation they found the passenger had an electronic cigarette which produces a visible vapour.
You know that saying, "you couldn't make it up"? Well, yeah. That.
A force spokeswoman said, given the credibility of the information received, officers "responded swiftly and proportionately".
This country descends further into farce each passing day.


32 comments:

Jay said...

Big Broken Society

Thomas Hall said...

How in God's name did it get this far down the chain of command? How did we manage to waste such a huge amount of police resource on something so bloody trivial?
You know what- as soon as I saw this story, I knew it would be another farce. The "but if even one life is saved then it will have all been worthwhile" brigade can sod off... 

Pavlov's Cat said...

It sounds like a staged event to add more power to the campaign to ban e-cigs .  They can now point to this and say look how much Police time this wasted and if e-cigs catch on this could happen again and again and cheeeldren may die as there are no Policemen around 

Steve K said...

Just imagine what kind of response there would have been had it been a real cigarette.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

The description of the response as "proportionate" is some of the most jaw-dropping spin I've ever seen.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Sure. Rather than encourage awareness, they'll no doubt go the dickhead's route of banning instead. 

Dick_Puddlecote said...

The SAS would have been mobilised, I should think. ;)

JonathanBagley said...

This person was probably trying to hide his ecig use in a shifty way so as not to cause alarm. ASH are going to love this. Doesn't help that it is being described as a fake cigarette.
The worst nightmare of the anti smoking industry has come to pass. I have just yesterday taken delivery of one of these devices - a jacvapour VGO. Since last evening I have had no desire to smoke a cigarette. I was very sceptical, having tried one and found it useless about four years ago. If I'm not climbing the walls after not smoking since 11.00pm last night, then nobody would be. These things really do work. There lots of fun flavours. And if you fancy smoking a real cigarette once a day, you can. Also, they are very cheap to run. Expect a massive and bitter battle over ecigs. Billions of Pharma dollars are at stake and ASH is about to become an irrelevance. Dare the Government bring in a £4000 fine for possession of nicotine solution as the Queensland Parliament did?

20Rothmans said...

  Jonathan - yes, they are good - but what if you actually _like_ the smoke?
 
My ecigs get a workout on flights. They are black and resemble a ballpoint pen which I happen to be using simultaneously to do crosswords. Carefully used, the ecigs don't produce any visible vapour.

Proportionate is the new acceptable. This stupid cooze might come out with this mumbo-jumbo, but I hope that someone gets a bollocking.

Clive 50 said...

Sounds like a Government false fag lol""

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Funny enough, ASH have warmed on e-cigs recently. Heard reports that Deborah Arnott was talking them up at a seminar in the city recently. She just doesn't want tobacco companies selling them, what a surprise, eh? They're still criminally irresponsible regarding snus, though.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

I've used mine on BA (who have banned them, the stupid sods) and in Wetherspoons (I went there specifically for the purpose) so I understand entirely. Of course, they should be openly legal everywhere.

JuliaM said...

Pure security theatre ...

Shhh! Don't mention the Olympics!

Andy Jackson said...

I used to ask the pub landlords before using one (most of the good pubs don't mind) but when you are trying to explain to a twenty something year old managing a Wetherspoons type pub, apart from the eye-glazing moment, the look of fear and uncertainty and lack of critical thinking soon have them declining my polite request.

Nowadays I just use them anywhere and have had no problems since.

Quite amusing though: some waitress sympathetically put an ashtray in front of me once.  Made me laugh...

Tom said...

I wonder if some people will think this an entirely normal thing, if it was reported with a straight face as normal, then that must mean there are large numbers who will agree this should be normal police response and will bad-mouth the e-smoker instead of the government or the busy-bodies who made this an issue by calling it in in the first place. Sad day and this is just what the Anti-Tobacco/Anti-Smoking Industry has created, this type of world, where the economies can fall apart, society can crumble to pieces - but all the resources are focused on only one thing, which is go after "the smokers" and in this case, "the e-smokers" as extension on the first "big success" of the smoking ban. I don't know even in SF if they would go this far, but there was a recent story of another periodic huge police crack-down on outdoor smoking in the parks, where they were readily handing out $100 to $500 tickets for outdoor smoking, including amongst the 80 and 90 y/o's who like to smoke outdoors in Chinatown area. It was a local PR event designed to scare everyone back into the closet, in case anyone began venturing too far out of line and smoking outdoors in public again in the parks or along the sidewalks, which are all banned.

Best said...

What do the Australian Gov. do about e-juice that does not contain any nicotine ?  Many 'juices' are nicotine free and contain just glycerine and flavouring.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Nice story about the ashtray. :)

The point you make otherwise is a good one, though. If being reasonable has been thrown by the wayside, the only option is to treat the rules as inappropriate and just ignore them by any means possible. We're at that stage in many areas of life now. Politicians have lost all respect, and so has the daft idiocy they have engendered. 

Whereas people used to follow rules to the letter, knowing they were written for the right reasons, we increasingly find ways round them because we know whoever brought them in to be fucking stupid. 

None of these idiots seem to have read "The boy who cried wolf" as a child. 

Smoking Hot said...

lf there are any terrorists, do they actually have to do anything to cause mayhem in the UK when we have our own muppets in charge doing the job far better than they ever could? 

The Keystone Cops look positively competent compared to this lot!

penseivat said...

Sadly, this incident is another victory for the terrorists.  A small one, admittedly, but still a victory.  If thet can have the authorities in this country so paranoid that they act in this manner for every little so-called suspicious act, then they will have the opportunioty to act for the big scenario more or less with impunity.  The fact that this is allowed to happen can be laid at the doors of the 'all ethnic minorities are misunderstood' brigade (yes, Labour and Lib-Dems, I'm talking about you).  There is so much fear in upsetting any of the millions of 'special groups' that we are rapidly losing sight of the main aim.  To protect this society and if any of its enemies are injured, or worse, then tough!  Where is the strong leader we need right now, rather than this bunch of EU led, reality shielded, financially independent oafs we are suffering from at present?

moonrakin said...

BA have more than their fair share of half witted thin lipped power drunk bansturbators on the payroll.

I recall in the 90's a recorded announcement at least every 15 minutes on a LHR >> Bergen flight (including taxiing at both ends) hectoring the SLCs about the dreadful consequences of being caught smoking in public in Norway's first *failed* smoking ban and intoning that "all BA flights are non smoking due to customer preference" - like they would know....  Continuing the Scandinavian theme I'm an ABBA fan (Anybody But British Airways)

Smoking Hot said...

A final point ...  if this person was a terrorist bomber, what in God's name do they expect to happen if said suicide bomber is surrounded by the muppet police force? There's a clue in the word 'suicide'.

The security circus rolls on ... with the only performers being clowns! 

moonrakin said...

The "who called it in?" thing isn't getting much airplay is it?

A conveniently timed opportunity for boys 'n toys...

 

Dick_Puddlecote said...

You nailed it with the Keystone Cops reference. ;)

Dick_Puddlecote said...

I hope they get charged with wasting police time and landed with a huge bill. Might send a message, eh? ;)

Twistedroot said...

Paranoia bordering on mental illness - with added guns.

Andy Jackson said...

Totally agree.


There's still a high propensity of feeling amongst people that "rules are rules" and just because "an authority" decrees it, then they shall obey without question.

Makes me fecking mad.

Which is probably why the UK has got itself into this situation in the first place.

When you first turn around and say "No" to someone, it is an extremely liberating experience.

When I was cycling back home there was a massive traffic jam.  Of course, being on a bike with a cycle lane I was quite happy to meander through the jam to make progress until some of those embittered types that sat in the queue were determined to block my progress by deliberately positioning their cars into the cycle lane.  So I simply followed the motorbikes down the middle of the carriageway.

Got to the source of the problem (a t-boned motorcyclist) and cycled slowly to the officer present to ask what was going on.  He just stared at me then shouted "There's a reason why we've blocked off this road, take your bike and go that way to the left".

I replied: "But that's miles away from my house"

He said: "Take that turning NOW"

I looked and could see others walking around the site on the pavement, so I got off my bike and walked ahead on the pavement thinking: what the hell is this idiot going to do?  Arrest me for walking on the pavement?

He shouted "I SAID, TAKE THAT ROAD ON THE LEFT!"
I had a moment of clarity, stopped, looked the young policeman in the eye and spoke one word very calmly:"No."You should have seen his face, screwed up in hate, anger and resentment.So turned my head and ignored him and carried on my way and got home relatively promptly.And that pretty much sums up what I've been doing for the last few years.  And it's amazing how easy it is when one doesn't conform to "fake" authority.

Edgar said...

The absurdity of police reaction to this bollocks means that anyone with a warped sense of injustice can create chaos by slipping a sliver of dry ice into someone's bag at a railway station. Penseivat says this is a small victory for the terrorists: maybe not so small ...

SadButMadLad said...

It's a good thing no one was in the office when I had a quick look at the news and saw that the terror incident was nothing of the sor, I laughed out loud. I suspected that it might have been a bit of an overreaction, but this kind of overreaction is stratospheric.

I'm just trying to work out why it took so long. Following procedures and such like only goes so far. All the stuff with the hazmat and chemical shower seemed to be brought out late in the day when it should have been known what the cause was.

Can it really have taken so many hours to interview 40 odd people and find out who made the original call to the bus driver and ask them who was the one with the "smoking bomb" and then to pick that one person out.

Anyway, the "terrorist" himself speaks - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4gPT6MoIF4&feature=player_embedded#!No idea if it really is the guy or if it's some marketing gimmick.

Thin Red Line said...

Phantom Vaper shuts down Midlands
Mama,we're all crazee now
159,000 illegal immigrants "gone missing"
half million unaccounted for
Terrorists ,gangsters,sex slave masters,paedohiles,racketeers,pickpockets,
drug smugglers,tax dodgers,murderers,rapists, all flowing in by the bus and truck load
What is Parliament,the police,the Army,RAF Royal navy,ASh,Nato,The Eu ,
United Nations ,BBC and Guardian all a fluster about
A lone Vaper on the M6 and this old buzard with a few packs (4) of
rolling tobacco daring to buy abroad
If the authorities start banning E Fags it will prove beyond doubt the smokining ban had nothing to do with health

Meanwhile we all succumb to folly,we doff our caps to fools,
we turn away,we look down,we hide,we allow the rodents to make
lions into sheep


Bless em all

starship fighter said...

The thing that puzzles me about this is the reference to someone sneakily blowing vapour into their bag. As a regular e-smoker I can't believe that there was enough 'blow off' for anyone to notice, never mind to suspect it was an explosive device. When I want a sneaky vape without alerting anyone (in the cinema is where it usually stands out the most) I can achieve almost zero exhalation by holding the vapour in for a couple of seconds longer, and what is emitted lasts barely longer than 'breath vapour' on a cold day. No, this is a story about hysterical overeaction and state-sanctioned bullying rather than e-cigs. Although I now expect them to be banned on every bus and train in the country within a couple of weeks. I shall have to continue using my nice healthy diesel car then.

John said...

 No chance they are in Syria!... allegedly...

John Pickworth said...

"A force spokeswoman said, given the credibility of the information received..."

I thought at the time this was a odd statement to make. So who phoned it in. An off-duty cop? Whomever it was I'd suggest that the 'force' perhaps considers that any future reports from sources such as these are given less credibility. They're clearly not reliable!