Wales Proposes Ignorance-Based Policy-Making

Yes, it's about this twat

The massed ranks of anti-smoking extremists have previously introduced us to tactical ploys such as policy-based evidence-making and science by press release, but today Wales's cranks have declared that they intend to position their country as a world leader in a new disipline. Ignorance-based policy-making.

From the BBC:

People will be banned from using e-cigarettes in enclosed places such as restaurants, pubs and at work in Wales, under a new public health law.

I don't know how people who are quitting or reducing smoking being "exiled to the outdoors" (© Deborah Arnott, 2008) can be considered a 'public health' measure, but the term has been so bastardised in the past decade or so, it's not a complete surprise.

It has been announced by pie-devouring cocksocket Mark Drakeford (pictured above), a dribbling imbecile I've written about before. Here's what he was wibbling about in his press release.

Announcing the measures at the Two Hearts Tattoo Studio in the Welsh capital, the health and social services minister, Mark Drakeford, said the laws aimed to protect the health and wellbeing of people living in Wales. 

He said: “The Welsh government has a responsibility to create the conditions which enable people to live healthy lives and avoid preventable harm to their health. Wales has a strong tradition of using legislation to improve public health and I am confident the measures in the public health bill will continue this."

Yes, he is confident that sending a huge message that e-cigs are potentially dangerous is a great way to "create the conditions which enable people to live healthy lives". Now, I've mentioned before that it's natural that smaller populations will naturally produce less talented politicians, but Drakeford is in a class of his own for incompetence and dog whistle fuckwittery on this matter.

The BBC, as is their wont, led with the story on every platform and saturated the airwaves on their monopolistic network of regional radio stations today, and in every one they had a spokesman or woman in favour of the ban who was astoundingly ill-informed about vaping.

For example, in Lancashire we had Mark Temple - of the lie factory known as the BMA - declaring that "they sell them as e-cigarettes therefore they are cigarettes" and that "if you spill e-liquid on a child's hand it can kill them"; in Devon the presenter insisted on saying e-cigs are smoked despite vape being Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year in 2014; and on 5 Live some idiot from PHE Wales was citing an aircraft mechanic's debunked junk science as fact. The displays of desperate ineptitude were stunning.

This, of course, attracted spittle-lipped anti-smokers to the telephone lines up and down the country to declare what a great idea it was. The underlying justification amongst these revolting, intolerant, anti-social narcissists was that their seeing someone exhaling a harmless vapour is 'irritating' and they don't care for it much so, naturally, it must be banned. On that basis - if the proposed Welsh ban were to be realised - this is a precedent which would mean absolutely anything could be banned by government diktat.

We've known for a while that politicians worldwide seem to have forgotten how important freedom is, and are more than happy to extinguish self-determination and personal liberties for a few headlines, but this is a hideous new development in state idiocy trampling on the rights of its citizens in favour of short-term fame.

You see, for a start there was a "public" consultation on this proposal - hilariously sub-titled "Listening to you: Your health matters" - which I wrote about in November.

Well, they're officially called 'public' consultations but - as I've mentioned many times previously - these would be better described as public sector consultations. Most of the public don't know they are even happening but fake charities, state-funded bodies and quangos are paid from our taxes to write responses to them.

This one is no different, which you can see for yourself by reading the whole thing here. Except for one particular question, that is.

This is a result of 64.6% of the 525 answers having been submitted by the public. Novel, huh? What's more, it doesn't include another 279 which weren't received by the deadline - if they had, the percentage would have been 86% against the stupid proposal.

It should be the end of Drakeford's nonsense, shouldn't it? I mean, if you ask the public a question in a democracy and they overwhelmingly tell you to go boil your head, that's pretty final.

But just you watch them wriggle away from such an inconvenient statistic, because there are signs in the document that they're already working on it.

I'd boast that my political antennae were working well that day but it's all too predictable these days, isn't it?

As you can see from today's media frenzy and Drakeford's obese, jowly, punch-inviting face gurning through interviews, he has completely ignored the public. What's more, he has also ignored the overwhelming evidence that shows that e-cigs offer no gateway to tobacco smoking or any possibility of harm to bystanders, and dismissed indisputable facts presented to him by genuine experts on the subject. He has acted like an unaccountable dictator and seems genuinely proud of it. Welcome to 21st century 'democracy'.

I'd also like to remind you that ASH and their fellow tobacco control hysterics - who are ironically on the side of the angels in this debate - bear personal responsibility for this state of affairs. It is they who created this tsunami of self-centred stupid and they who empowered every curtain-twitching fuckstick in the country to complain about irrelevances and demand state bans to destroy property rights and allow the world to revolve around them. It is with the tobacco control industry's tools and useful morons that Drakeford is able to write a message to the 2.6 million e-cig users in the UK - according to ASH's own research - that their experiences are irrelevant and they will be "exiled to the outdoors" on the whim of the most disgusting in society. ASH should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, but then that's only if they are truly the vaper's friend, which a few politely-worded statements today don't prove very much.

Still, there's always time for something to change and you can read a knowledgeable summary of how the legislation may pan out here. Additionally, Wales online also reckon the ignorant Drakeford could have bitten off more than he can chew.

It was clear early on Tuesday that the there was little support among opposition parties for the move in the Public Health Bill, introduced to the Senedd on Tuesday.

However, the damage could already have been done. Today's avalanche of BBC led negativity has already deterred thousands from considering e-cigs while simultaneously encouraging the most naturally vile in society to proudly air their obscene prejudices with full encouragement from the state.

You see, this is what happens when a politician who is woefully inadequate is given power to table legislation based on snobbery, myth and narrow-mindedness, fuelled by the bigoted rantings of a tiny few busybody neo-puritans with more taxpayer cash in their possession than brain cells.