Seriously, It's Cruel To Laugh

I've kinda giggled a bit at Punch 'the smoking ban is a huge opportunity' Taverns in the past, on more than one occasion. So by way of update, here's a bit more hilarity.

Future of Punch pubs in balance

The UK arm of Ambac, a bond insurer, has hired debt restructuring experts ahead of a battle over the future of the indebted pubs group Punch Taverns.

Just as a reminder for those who don't investigate all linked text, let's reproduce this graph of their share price I first published in 2009 (click to go large, as per usual).


As Rolf might say, d'you see what it is yet?

In contrast, some busineses are doing extremely well right now.

Tobacco stocks have returned more to investors in the last decade than any sector in the IMA universe, a new study from Financial Express has revealed.

The FTSE 350 Tobacco has returned 539.43 per cent in the last 10 years, outperforming the FTSE All Share by 495 per cent. The best performing IMA sector in this time period, China/Greater China, has returned less than half of this figure to investors.

Talk about backing the wrong horse, eh?

H/T F2C

Nice Can Of Worms You Have There TfL, Care To Open It?

Whilst checking the Transport for London website on an unrelated transport matter, I came across this live consultation on proposed new regulations for the Private Hire Trade ('minicabs' in old money). Most of the suggestions, it seems to me, will have little impact on the public apart from raising operator/driver costs and, consequentially, increasing fares.

However, I think you'll agree that page 14 details a particular eyebrow raiser.

Driver Proposal 5

That TfL introduces a condition in private hire drivers’ licences that ‘Drivers must not make any remark of of a sexual nature to a passenger. Licensed drivers are not permitted to become involved sexually, or have sexual contact, even with consent, whilst in a licensed vehicle.’

Is this really an administrative ban on flirting and innuendo? What could possibly go wrong, eh?

And, considering the sexual contact part mentions licensed vehicles but not specifically passengers, one presumes that a driver could lose his licence if it came to light that, while off duty, he and his wife had recreated the frisky fumblings of their youth in the car that he legally owns.

Is being miserable a genetic thing for the public sector, or are they trained?

The State Of Civil Liberties In Modern Britain

After only a tiny bit of begging, I was invited up to the HQ of Big Brother Watch on Wednesday evening for the official launch of their new book, The state of civil liberties in modern Britain. Having now finished all 300 pages, I can report that it's a right scary read.

Consisting of 27 essays from an impressive line-up of authors - including MPs, respected journalists and barristers - the book is an eminently readable catalogue of the destruction of our freedoms and liberties in all spheres of life which, when put together in one tome like this, paints an appallingly oppressive picture of Britain today.

Readers of this blog will be most interested in the contributions of Brian Monteith, author of The Bully State featured in the right sidebar (which is where the BBW book is headed once I can remember how to do it), along with those of Philip Johnston, Josie Appleton, and Mark Littlewood. All chapters, however, are illuminating in their description of runaway state control and incessant interference in our everyday lives by local, national, and supra-national politicians.

Depressing though this publication is, departing BBW co-founder Alex Deane (left) should be congratulated for compiling a comprehensive account of how the state has shamefully abused its authority and systematically derogated the lives of all UK citizens by way of legislation, opprobium, surveillance, denormalisation and a total destruction of personal responsibility and self-reliance. The book lays down a marker by which to measure the future progress - or lack thereof - towards a respect for personal liberties previously believed to be enshrined in seminal laws passed by historic politicians who - unlike the current hideous crop - cared for the public's freedom over and above their own self-importance.

This contrast between a state which takes our civil liberties into account and the hideous mutation of governance we now suffer on a daily basis is starkly illustrated in the culmination of Leo McKinstry's chapter. In articulating the abject nature of authoritarian modern government, he points to a sadly prophetic quotation by Liberal PM, Lord Rosebery, delivered in 1908.

The modern cry is, 'Let the Government have a finger in every pie, probing, propping, disturbing. Every day the area of initiative is being narrowed, every day the standing ground for self-reliance is being undermined; every day the public infringes - with the best intentions no doubt - on the individual. The nation is being taken into custody by the state.'

We are, indeed, now presumed to need guarding and cocooning from our own self-determination - whether we like it or not - by those we elect to serve, rather than master, us. It's high time such an invasive condescending attitude was challenged, so all credit to Alex and BBW for doing exactly that.

The book is available here for less than the price of a couple of pints of Guinness. I can heartily recommend its bite-sized format for the train, bath, bog, or wherever else you choose to do your reading.

Link Tank 05/02

Is it Saturday already?

There's an environmentalist in your dishwasher

Cheating the tax man, in a good cause, for £1.15 a day

Man's life saved by being hideously drunk

How the Irish play the tobacco game

Ogling women makes them worse at maths?

Denmark government approves an 18 mile underwater road tunnel to Germany

Hawaii moving to ban kids from buying toy guns

Americans are more stressed now than the average psychiatric patient in the 1950s

Economic theory as you've never seen (or heard) it before

The ten craziest plane landings caught on video

A Tale Of Two Wittys

Hmmm.

The BBC has apologised for remarks made on the television programme, Top Gear, that caused outrage in Mexico.

In a letter to Mexico's ambassador in London, the BBC said it was sorry if it had offended some people, but said jokes based on national stereotyping were part of British national humour.

Now, I wonder why the Beeb didn't use the personal description defence? You know, this one.

The comments made by David Baddiel were quite clearly his personal description of Mr McWhirter’s political allegiances.

The Alan Davies Show is a live, light hearted, entertainment programme and in this context we are satisfied that no broadcasting guidelines were broken.

So let's get this straight. A non-PC, middle class, right of centre TV presenter makes what is clearly a joke, about a Mexican car, on a programme well-known for its ribald sense of humour - and the BBC rush to apologise.

Whereas a right-on, lefty comedian makes a bald assertion, not intended as a joke, inaccurately defaming the late Norris McWhirter, and by association the libertarian Freedom Association, as a "posher version of the BNP" - and the BBC refuse to apologise or even admit that the claim was wholly incorrect.

Yes. Yes, I think that's about the sum of it.

They Will Not Control Us

There's a new* blogger on the block, and he's rather talented. Top choon, well treated.

* Or perhaps not so new, really

Bring On More Thirdhand Smoke Studies

I'd like you to meet Simon Chapman (left). He's a world class anti-smoker of the upside down variety, plying his vindictive trade as Professor of Public Nannying at the University of Sydney. Chapman has been writing anti-smoking fiction studies since the very beginning of the hysterical crusade against tobacco enjoyment, so is a fully paid up member of the tobacco control irritentsia.

However, despite Chapman's longstanding dedication to making up stuff evidentiary tobacco control, it seems that the laughable nature of the current drive to bedevil thirdhand smoke is just too ridiculous even for him. And that's really saying something.

Responding at the British Medical Journal to a study conducted by the arguably insane Georg E Matt, Chapman has this to say on the idea that moving into a home once owned by smokers is a health hazard.

[...] the soup of gases, fine and ultra-fine particles in tobacco smoke that include irritants, toxins and carcinogens has much in common with smoke emitted as pyrolisis products from the combustion of other organic matter: when you breath wood smoke, cooking smoke or petroleum smoke, you are exposed to many of the very same irritants and carcinogens that are also in tobacco smoke.

So why did Matt et al consider only nicotine? There is not a house anywhere that is not finely carpeted with many of the very same pyrolysis compounds "that go along with" nicotine but which originate from everyday activities like heating, cooking, candles, electrical appliances, and leaving windows and doors open to allow household exposure to motor transport fumes. Had they done so, equally "alarming" information about all our houses would have emerged to give their findings some important perspective.

Just to translate: that's academic-speak for "you're talking crap, mate". But then, all but the most gullible will have worked that one out already.

For someone so wedded to demonising smokers and smoking (Chapman once warned that Muslims would be inhaling pig's blood if they smoked) to speak out, though, would suggest that there is considerable unease in tobacco control circles at some of the execrable nonsense being spewed about thirdhand smoke. In fact, his denouement makes exactly this point.

It is important that research documents residuals from tobacco smoke. But it is equally important that consumers and policy makers are not led to believe that the chemical compounds thus located are somehow unique to tobacco smoke.

No. That would be lying and tobacco control organisations wouldn't dream of such a thing, now would they?

The omission of this information in such reports risks harming the credibility of tobacco control.

OK, funny though that is, calm down and stop giggling please, you're putting me off.

That Chapman is speaking out should be evidence enough that the thirdhand smoke scam is, well, a scam. But in doing so, he kinda puts some much-belated perspective on the hysteria surrounding passive smoke as well.

He points out that wood smoke is twice as dangerous as that emitted by cigars and cigarettes; that diesel emissions dwarf the dangers of smoke in a casino which allows it; that passive smoke exposure is on a par with emissions from clothes dryers, popcorn poppers, candles, irons and toasters; and that nicotine itself is a benign concern.

If thirdhand smoke studies - which are so far-fetched that rubbishing them is like shooting fish in a barrel - elicit such responses from anti-smokers worried about their reputations and funding ... perhaps we need a lot more of them.

Bring 'em on!

H/T Dave Atherton