The US election threw up some very odd debating points, but none as batshit crazy as the racist chairs.
From the beginning, then. Republican booster Clint Eastwood made a speech talking to an empty chair which was supposed to signify Obama's poor record in office. Obscure, yes, but that's the way of politics these days, I suppose.
Republican voters, however, seemed to like the concept and used an empty chair as a symbol of the Romney campaign. Problem is, they hung them from trees in their front gardens as a show of support ... which is quite obviously, err, racist.
Three "lynched" empty chairs with signs that read "Nobama" were found hanging at a home near a public park in Centreville, Virginia.
Douglas Burger, the owner of the home, told Patch.com the chairs were just a reference to the internet meme popularized by Clint Eastwood's bizarre speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention.
"It's just Eastwooding," Burger said.
Burger also denied the chairs were being "lynched" or had racial overtones.
"Not at all. They're up because otherwise people would steal them," Burger said.
You don't get away with it that easy, you racist bastard! It doesn't matter what you thought you meant, only the offence that was taken. Understand?
As such, I am pretty sure that Obama voters will forthwith be boycotting Facebook in their many millions because this is quite blatant!
Shame on you, Zuckerberg, you racist chair-lynching psychopath!
Following the fairly emphatic public rejection in the UK of the tobacco control industry's latest fund-justifying scheme, it's interesting to watch the same nonsense being played out in New Zealand.
A month after consultation on its plain packaging regime for cigarettes closed, the Ministry of Health will not say how many submissions it received.
The government has agreed in principle to introduce plain packaging laws for tobacco products, subject to the outcome of a consultation process.
Yet the October 5 deadline for submissions passed unannounced, suggesting the number received in opposition could be huge.
You too, New Zealand? Oh dear.
While the public health racket down there is unusually silent, opponents of plain packaging are the ones demanding answers.
One of New Zealand’s leading retail organisations today issued a challenge to the Ministry of Health to release the initial results of the submission process as businesses face more costs if this proposal for plain packaging of tobacco products is adopted.
“We are astounded that it’s been over a month since the Government’s much heralded consultation on its ‘Proposal to Introduce Plain Packaging of Tobacco Products’ and there been absolutely no comment from either the Ministry or from the Associate Minister of Health Tariana Turia,” said Roger Bull, Chairman of the New Zealand Association of Convenience Stores (NZACS).
“We are aware that nearly 4,000 retailers have expressed their opposition to a measure that they feel will do little aside from increase costs onto their businesses. This is a huge number representing about 71% of the approximately 5,600 retailers that sell tobacco in New Zealand,” said Mr Bull.
It would seem that plain packaging isn't producing the tidal wave of popular opinion that tax-sponging tobacco controllers hoped it would (yes, the NZ campaign benefited from public money too).
It's not too surprising, if you think about it. Their shouting "look at me, look at me!" has worked many times in the past as they point to some urgent law that they have worked out needs applying to keep the cash rolling in. However, it seems that the incessant waving and whining to attract attention, but then only being able to point to something as disappointingly uninspiring as plain packaging tobacco, doesn't really float many boats with a jaded public.
There are only so many times you can incentivise people to get excited for the sake of your bank balance before they just switch off. Crying wolf once works, crying it over and over - when the positive results are never forthcoming - just doesn't engender the same urgency as the time before.
It just leaves New Zealand's brand of public health troughers, so used to an easy win in these circumstances, struggling to spin the numbers. If the support had been overwhelming, you just know that they'd be shouting it from every available rooftop, without a doubt.
After the Department of Health in the UK desperately tried to corrupt the public view of huge opposition to plain packaging - while simultaneously having cheated, lied and misled throughout the consultation - their New Zealand counterparts look like they're intending to employ the same grubby tactics.
The scene inside the NZ Ministry of Health could be similar to this chucklesome clip from Nannying Tyrants.
Perhaps they'd all be happier if the public weren't allowed to express inconvenient opinions, eh?.
I mentioned Phil Mellows a couple of weeks ago commenting on the 'evidence' for minimum alcohol pricing comprising what he termed "spurious cost savings".
He is correct, of course. The Sheffield University justification for Cameron's pet plan is pretty shoddy, and their staffers less than competent. But Mellows' latest article has pointed out that even anti-alcohol campaigners are in agreement!
But it’s Thomas Babor, who makes perhaps the most candid contribution, appearing to agree that such studies are “not scientifically credible” but “serve other functions” contributing to a “well-planned paternalism with a human face”. “In a democracy, politicians and policymakers often need to be shamed into doing the right thing, and costs to society have the ability to shame, blame and even defame… It is the simple, single monetary figure that captures public attention more than anything else.”
Do go read the source material, admittance of alcohol control mendacity is all there in black and white.
Just to boil it down to tabloid shit like we wot dwell 'ere find of interest, I think he's saying that he doesn't care if the 'science' is sound, as long as politicians are conned into legislating the way alcohol prohibitionists would like them to. Economists just get in the way.
You see, for yer unfriendly-neighbourhood bansturbator, the only figure they care about is some computer-generated 'cost' to society they have manufactured by feeding in all the bad stuff and ignoring the good stuff, as mentioned in 2010 by one of those pesky economists.
The value to the person purchasing the alcohol of purchasing the alcohol must be higher than the amount they spend on purchasing the alcohol. If it weren’t, then they wouldn’t purchase the alcohol now, would they?
Now yes, this might be diminished by the costs they also bear in cirrhosis, drunken fights and waking up to one of the Two Fat Slags on vomit stained pillows. And it would be right to take those costs into account as well. But as our first order estimate of the consumer benefit of alcohol our lower bound simply cannot be any lower than the amount that people are willing to spend on purchasing alcohol.
The BBC tells me that this number is £38 billion a year.
The UK alcohol market also enjoyed the biggest rise in value, with sales estimated at £38bn – up 15% since 1999.
That’s a fairly large number to put against that £2.7 billion a year cost to the NHS (however strangely calculated that was).
Indeed, especially since the value of alcohol to society has since risen to £42.1 billion.
It's very interesting, though, that anti-alcohol campaigners are now admitting that their figures are “not scientifically credible”, and that their emphasis is not on balanced cost/benefit analysis, but instead “well-planned paternalism with a human face”.
As seen above, how damaging to enjoyment of life their endeavours are comes a distant second to their ability to bypass public preference and install laws which enhance their egos and, by extension, their bank balances.
If you want to truly imagine the paltry level of alcohol that prohibitionists consider acceptable, here it is from one of public health Australia's favourite blogs.
Of people aged 18 years and over, 19.5% of drinkers consumed more than two drinks per day and 44.7% consumed more than four standard drinks at least once in the past year. These behaviours exceed the National Health and Medical Research Council’s lifetime risk guidelines and single occasion risk guidelines respectively.
The only surprising thing about those figures is how incredibly low they are.
According to the Australian government, a pint of Stella is the equivalent of 2.25 'standard drinks', so it is contrary to their guidelines for anyone to enjoy two pints at a wedding, Christmas, birthday party, barbecue or even the Melbourne Cup ... once a year!
This, apparently, is why minimum alcohol pricing is desperately necessary in Australia.
Please never be be fooled into thinking these people are sane or rational, will you? Because they aren't.
It may have escaped your attention - because that's precisely what it's designed to do - that the World Health Organisation is convening in Seoul on Monday at the start of a six day conference.
Despite never having received a single vote from anyone, anywhere, one of the items on the agenda is to massively ramp up tobacco taxes. Not just in a few countries, but in all of them.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a global excise tax of up to 70 percent on cigarettes at an upcoming November conference, raising concerns among free market tax policy analysts about fiscal sovereignty and bureaucratic mission creep.
This initiative was under the radar until just a few months ago, but having now started to leak out in many places the WHO are furiously spinning to convince us that they're just having a laugh, really. It's not going to be mandatory. Oh no, not at all.
[WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarveic said] "implementation of national tax policies remains the full sovereign right of the Parties"
Err, so why discuss adding it to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control if you aren't intending to apply pressure on sovereignty of national taxation?
This is how these unelected bastards work. Hold a meeting that no-one knows about (with prawn sarnies and much more provided by pharmaceutical companies); pass a resolution; send it out to heavily-funded tobacco control minions worldwide to bully spineless governments into submission.
That's modern democracy, folks.
Of course, as with all hysterical anti-smoking initiatives, this would smash open the door of national taxation for any number of single issue cocktrumpets to quote as a precedent. It's bad enough that the EU is firing compulsory directives from Brussels which our parliament is only empowered to rubber stamp, without yet more unelected bureaucrats taking their slice of our self-determination.
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps he plans to take to ensure UK sovereignty over the setting of excise duty rates, and use of that revenue, during negotiations on the draft guidelines for the implementation of Article 6 of the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, in Seoul in November 2012.
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove, Conservative)
Article 6 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and the draft text of the guidelines for implementation of that Article make clear that the guidelines currently under negotiation are non-binding and that States Party to the Convention retain full sovereignty over fiscal matters, including how revenues from tobacco taxation are spent. The issue of a threat to UK sovereignty over the setting of excise rates and the use of that revenue does not therefore arise.
Duly noted, Sajid. That's firmly in the memory banks, sunshine. "The issue of a threat to UK sovereignty ... does not arise", is something I hope we never have to quote back to you in the future.
If that's the last we hear on the matter, I'll be surprised, though. The time when anyone could trust politicians as far as we can throw them died around the time Giant Haystacks did.
Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston said Ms Dorries should resign, telling the BBC: "I was horrified, frankly. I think it just makes her look ridiculous and it brings politics into disrepute."
Err, to bring something into disrepute, shouldn't some good repute actually exist in order for it to be dissed?
