Public Consultations To Be More Accessible, Apparently

Lord Norton, posting on the House of Lords blog, reckons he has helped solve the problem of rigged propaganda posing as democratic process the mistrust of public consultations.

The minister responding was Lord Davies of Abersoch, from the Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform. He defended what the Government had done so far in respect of consultations, but he did deliver one notable piece of good news. By the end of this year, it will be possible to find on one site a list of all government consultations being undertaken and that material will be available in machine-readable form.

Lord Norton describes this as a "major step forward". If he means that hiding public consultations in a less secret place than where they were before is better, I can agree, but it couldn't be classed as major IMO.

To be fair to the esteemed peer, at least he is tackling the issue. Public consultations, which are punted out to just about every state-funded quango and single-issue lobby group, but not the public unless they possess a gargantuan Google magnifying glass, are a tool that Labour have found to be very useful in their successful campaign to exclude the entire electorate from decision-making.

It's a step, but not a major one. Even if this collating web-site does appear this year (might be worth scheduling a 'Where is it?' post for 00:01 on 1/1/2010), where are the proposals for consulting with the non-netted up, or even those who are online but go no further than Facebook? Is there to be £millions spent advertising it? I sincerely doubt it. And will convenient e-cards still be set up on government-funded satellite sites to harvest 'correct' responses, as is virulently prevalent now?

Unless the public, and the public alone (not stakeholders), are consulted, it appears to be more spin and more minimal consultation of those who actually have to live by changes in legislation.

Let's see how this move will work with some recent examples of the thousands of dodgy consultations over which Labour has presided since 1997:

1) On hiding of tobacco displays. If state-funded organisations aren't barred from taking part.

Yet only a handful of those 96,000 respondents came from individuals submitting their personal views. Almost 70,000 came from those collected by pressure groups entirely funded by the Department for Health.

Not only that but also ...

For some reason the views of 25,000 shopkeepers just seem to have been air-brushed out of the consultation report. We are not listed as one of the respondents although our response was submitted by email and also sent by post, so we can be certain it was received. For some reason the views of 25,000 shopkeepers just seem to have been air-brushed out of the consultation report

So Lord Norton's trumpeted improvement would have made no difference to that consultation. Because simply giving consultations a centralised online presence doesn't pull up any trees if quangos are still invited using public money, and valid objections are ignored.

2) Likewise the consultation (or lack thereof) on anti-photographer laws.

What is remarkable is that Jacqui Smith has seemingly failed to consult those with expertise over this issue. The Royal Photographic Society - established in 1853 - ought to have been at the top of the list of organisations consulted of how the law would work in practice. Yet the society, which has a Royal Charter, tells me that it has unsuccessfully been trying to meet Miss Smith over the past year, despite the encouragement and help of a backbench Labour MP.

What guarantee is there that their views will have been taken into account under the new proposals? There may well be a web-site, but as the corner shops found, that still isn't a guarantee that those submitting will be listened to.

3) And likewise again, the consultation on councils being asked to name senior staff and provide a full breakdown of their salary, pensions and rewards.

The civil servant's letter asks specifically of councils that "you could ensure that copies of this letter are shared with officers / employees within your organisation who may have an interest in the proposals (i.e. have details about their remuneration package published).

The new web-site will have little or no impact if those with a vested interest are alerted, whereas the public (only those with broadband and an enquiring mind, at that) have to find it for themselves.

4) State-funded lobby groups will always be listened to, of course. Even if they bastardise their own surveys, replying to skewed documents riddled with lies.

5) And if all that fails, some bent Lord could always ignore even the most vehement objections by side-stepping the consultation completely, and reporting fake charity untruths to Westminster, without challenge.

Merely providing a central hub for consultations is pretty irrelevant unless the public is afforded more creedence in their responses than those in the government's pay. Moreover, the concession apparently gained by Lord Norton doesn't tackle the issue of responses which are ignored, nor does it negate sabotage of the results presented to legislators, as shamefully illustrated last week by Lord Darzi.

Ironically, and despite his best intentions, it could be that Lord Norton has been the latest stooge to have fallen for Labour's pretence of welcoming opposing views, only to fob off such concerns with well-practiced misdirection.

Clueless Nonsense That DOES Receive Attention In Public Consultations

It speaks volumes about the vast duplication of resources in the lucrative public health industry that I've never heard of The Association of Directors of Public Health (@ADPHUK) before today.

However, if you responded to the Scottish consultation earlier in the week - or if you find it sinister that the public are elbowed out of public consultations - you might be interested to read ADFUCK's effort. You see, theirs is the type of response which is taken very seriously by governments despite their membership clearly not being very bright at all. They certainly should in no way be considered 'experts' on anything except bullshit delivery. For example, they want all e-cig advertising banned, because ...

... advertising and the promotion of the points above could encourage individuals to begin or continue to vape.

And why is it bad to vape?

Many nicotine vapourisers look similar to regular cigarettes, therefore sending mixed messages to the public about acceptance of smoking, with the potential of re-normalising smoking behaviours. Evidence supports the need for consistency in messages in trying to support behaviour change and culture change. 

Vaping is not smoking - the public know this very well, as does the Oxford English Dictionary. It is only the highly-paid - Lord knows why! - professional miseries in public health who seem too stupid to notice the difference.

Additionally, do you remember when 'public health' used to pretend their moral panic against tobacco was something about harming bystanders and that they had junk science studies to prove it? That's so last decade. Now mere "concern" is enough.

We are concerned over the second hand effects of vapour on those with respiratory conditions (such as asthma), particularly when nicotine vapourisers are used in enclosed and substantially enclosed public places.

Enclosed public spaces, did they say?

In our survey, 78% of Directors of Public Health who responded said that the restrictions and regulations relating to the use of smoked tobacco products in public places should also apply to nicotine vapourisers.

Except that they also want 'tobacco products' - a category which clearly includes e-cigs judging from their brain-dead 're-normalisation' theory -  banned in wide open spaces and car parks.

By introducing this legislation, into all hospital grounds, this will ensure the NHS in Scotland is in line with the recommendations set out in the Tobacco Control Strategy for Scotland, which also encourages NHS Scotland to demonstrate clear leadership regarding the creation of smoke free premises.

And who do ADFUCK think should enforce this, indeed what should be the penalties?

We believe that this should be a cross-cutting exercise involving the Scottish Police Service, NHS and Local Authority enforcement staff. 

We recommend that there should be an on the spot fine for those who are non-compliant.

Just think about that for a moment and consider a scenario. You've accompanied your family member to hospital where they are either gravely ill or have suffered a sudden hospitalisation. You're stressed, upset, worried, perhaps even grieving.You go outside to collect your thoughts and leave the hospital building way behind, take a draw on your roll up or e-cig in the car park ... at which the police rock up and hand you a £50 on the spot fine.

These people truly disgust me. It's surely time for governments to stop listening to them.

Today's Labour Health Recipe: Reheated Snobbery In Envy Sauce

Today's Labour "New Approach to Public Health" must be the most disingenuous and spin-fuelled document I think I've ever read, and that's saying something.

It reads like it was written in Islington by a bien pensant yogic chakra-chasing millionnaire surveying life outside their window with disdain and revulsion at how the unwashed choose to enjoy themselves. This, apparently, is what the modern Labour party thinks will chime with working class people currently deserting them en masse for something more honest. Elitist snobbery with lashings of lefty anti-business envy thrown in for good measure.

Do have a read of the document here, it's a dog's breakfast even before you factor in the spelling and grammar mistakes. But if you can't waste your time on it (and I wouldn't blame you) I'll save you the trouble by pointing out some corkers.

If the 20th century challenge was all about adding years to life, then the 21st must also be about adding life to years. 

As was much discussed on the media today, this is Labour's war on "alcohol, sugar and smoke", all of which are enjoyed by many many people. It's how a significant majority of us add life to the years we have on this planet. By deciding that these free choices are bad for us so we should be stopped from enjoying them as much as we have chosen to, Labour are simply "adding years to life", so how exactly has anything changed? Orwell would have pissed himself laughing at Labour's shifty and clumsy attempt at hiding that.

Changes to diet and lifestyle mean it is all too easy to lead a less healthy life than in times gone by, and we all risk taking on more sugar, fat and salt than is good for us 

It kinda depends on who is deciding what is good and what is not good for us, doesn't it? At the moment, we mostly decide for ourselves, but Labour want to change that. However, it's not finger-wagging, oh no.

[T]o avoid accusations of a ‘nanny state’ approach we need to set out clearly what we see as the proper limits to government action. If policy makers fail to address the ‘nanny-state’ claim, it could in the end undermine public support for making progress on public health. A negative tone, perceived as telling people what to do, can turn people off.

Would "telling people what to do" include, for example, mean demanding that they quit smoking whether they like it or not? Of course.

The ban on smoking in enclosed public places is an example of how big social change to improve health can be achieved with broad public support.

There was never broad public support for the ban we had imposed on us, in fact there was majority support for exemptions. Labour ignored them and wagged their finger anyway. Or, to be more accurate, their finger was wagged by the tax sponging quangos and fake charities which I often think must have compromising pictures of Labour politicians dogging or something, so obsequious are they to public health extremism.

It has been left it (sic) to Labour, from the Opposition benches, to lead the public health debate with the move to ban smoking in cars with children and proxy purchasing of cigarettes.

Debate? What debate? Public consultations are a sham and no legislation on smoking which we currently suffer was included in manifestos before we could vote on it. Which brings me on to plain packaging, because Burnham and Berger are ignoring the debate on that too.

In the face of prevarication from the Government, it was left to Labour, from the Opposition benches, to push forward the legislation to enable the introduction of standardised packaging of cigarettes

Or, to put it another way, it was left to Labour to ignore the largest public consultation response the UK has ever seen ... which roundly rejected plain packaging. Not to mention their adherence to public health extremists who perverted the whole debate by using taxpayers money to rig evidence, employ corrupt practices and lie.

This, I suppose, is what Labour would call good information.

We will empower people with better information and support to make their own choices, rather than the finger-wagging ‘don’t do this, don’t do that’ approach that can make people switch off.

No sign of that with Labour. Choice and education have long since left the building in favour of bullying legislation. By Christ! Labour are even universally opposed to e-cigs - a perfect example of how people can and are making "their own choices" - as was proved with the EU Tobacco Products Directive where every attempt at engagement was ignored and destroyed by Labour MEPs. The left-wing public health extremists who advised Labour then and undoubtedly did so for this document are still doing the same thing now by destroying "better information" and saying "don't do this, don't do that".

Towards the end of the document, they give a nod to e-cigs. Now, how do you think this is going to turn out, be honest.

We will continue to monitor the emerging evidence on the appropriate use of devices such as e-cigarettes in smoking cessation and take action if required.

The party which is advised by far left activists posing as 'public health' professionals are promising to monitor evidence? They don't know the meaning of the word. Their evidence will come from the same people who are promoting misinformation in order to keep their snouts in a lucrative tax-funded trough. The "action" will be to ban e-cigs, thereby removing the chance for vapers to "make their own choices".

The rest is much the same ... but often even more sinister.

The Government has an obligation to protect children from poor choices that may be harmful to their long-term health.

No, Labour, you're confusing the word "government" with "parents". Parents have an obligation to protect their children, not some Tim-nice-but-dim with a PPE degree who has never met them.

Whilst we are clear that the Government has a responsibility to protect and safeguard children and has an important role to play in tackling health inequalities, we are not in the business of telling people how to live their lives. 

Yes you are, that's exactly the business you are in. Who decided that alcohol, tobacco and sugar needed controlling? Not the public, because the public freely choose to buy these products.

It is not something done to people by experts.

No, it really is.

Instead, we want government to be on people’s side

Then fuck off and leave us alone.

If people want this nannying crap, they are quite capable of tackling the businesses themselves. The 21st century population has more access to businesses producing their food and drink than any in history.

Facebook groups, Twitter, e-mail, you name it, it's there. Unlike politicians who try to imprison critics, or 'public health' liggers who block us, consumer-facing industries welcome the feedback. The products which are on the shelves are not some evil conspiracy to make us all fat, they are there because industry spends billions finding out what people want to buy - they wouldn't be able to sell the stuff otherwise. The fact that these products are on the shelves is proof positive that the public want them, or else they wouldn't buy them.

But this is where the Islington yogic chakra-seeker comes in, you see. Just because the public has moulded what they are sold is not good enough. It is what highly-paid idealists consider acceptable for the plebs which is important, and that is the message Labour will be taking to working people in May.

Seriously.

Badly advised as they are, ball-gagged Labour gimps still feel that they have to give something back to the wealthy public health execs who have played them like a fiddle. Hence these disturbing footnotes.

We will make public health a licensing objective and we would like to include the Director of Public Health as a key consultee in the creation of a licensing statement.  

We will ensure public health is engrained (sic) throughout the licensing system so that measures promoting public health (which could range from measures such as plastic glasses and bottles to a ban on superstrength beer and cider) are included in the licensing statement.

The only possible result being to close down pubs, because 'public health' will never say there are too few. Remember that next time some Labour MP says he cares about your local. Definitely not finger-wagging, nanny state, or telling people what they can and can't do, now is it?

And straight out of the finger-waggers playbook ...

Health in All Policies 

We will adopt the internationally accepted ‘Health in All Policies’ approach – putting health concerns at the centre of our programme for government.

Yes, as demanded by the unelected WHO, the first priority of the Treasury will not be looking after money, it will be pandering to health extremists; the Department for Education will ensure children are given health propaganda before learning to add up (like prohibitionists from the discredited past); and the Department for Business will vet every profit-making entity to ensure they have policies on fatties, smokers and vapers while making sure they don't object to 'public health' demands which harm the economy.

Remember the days when Labour used to defend working class people against snobbery, disdain and bullying from a rich elite? It seems a lifetime ago now Labour themselves are the snobs, elitists and disdainful, doesn't it?

New Boy Nick, Righteous Prick

You've heard of the unseen 'elephant in the room', I take it? Well, how about the unseen 'people in the country'? Because Labour's newly-elected provincial pillock, Nick Smith, seems to have completely forgotten us already.

Speaking in the summer adjournment debate, just 17 minutes after his colleague, John Cryer, had described it as a platform for "whingeing gits", Smith gittily whinged that government simply wasn't heeding quangoes and fake charities enough in stamping on the people he is elected to serve.

And he whinged at length, too.

Despite its shortcomings and omissions, I am proud of Labour's record on public health, especially with regard to tackling smoking in public places.

Oh dear, not a great start, is it? This, of course, is the blanket smoking ban that no-one voted for; that a majority didn't want according to ONS stats; and which has divided and destroyed communities nationwide. Nick, though, is proud - proud, no less - that no heed was taken of the public's reservations.

Because, you see, once he has gone through the rigmarole of getting votes, the only people that matter to Nick are lobbyists and his fellow Westminster navel-gazers.

However, I am dismayed by the coalition Government's recent abdication of their responsibilities on public health.

There are no responsibilities on public health for government to abdicate. The only, and I do mean only, responsibilities government should be concerned with is doing as we - his employers - ask.

Yet Smith barely mentions the public in the rest of his speech. Here are a few nuggets of 24 carat professional politico brainwash-speak.

Only a few weeks ago, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence set out proposals to curb excessive drinking. However, its recommendations of a ban on alcohol advertising and a minimum price for a unit of alcohol have proved controversial. Indeed, the Secretary of State for Health has already ruled out minimum pricing [...]

No-one voted for NICE. No-one asked for NICE to start dictating on lifestyle choices. No-one wants alcohol adverts to be banned. Very few want minimum pricing, and those who do have ignored the fact that it won't work; that it contravenes EU rules; and that collective punishment is not a valid government response to the small minority who drink at hazardous levels.

The Secretary of State says that he is worried that minimum pricing disproportionately affects the poor, but so do public spending cuts and increasing VAT, and that has not stopped the Government, so I doubt that that is his main reason.

No, Nick, the real reason is that people don't want it. Remember the people? You saw a few of them prior to May 6th.

Indeed, we do not know whether that is true. Academics argue that the better-off spend far more on alcohol than the poor. Logic leads us to believe that young people have the least to spend on alcohol, so raising the price might mean that they consume less. Surely that would be a worthy public health outcome. The fact that Tesco has come out in favour of a minimum price is a helpful start. I would like a sensible discussion about minimum pricing [...]

We've had the discussion, Nick. The majority don't want it. Academics? Tesco? Err, hello! People here ... waving at you with both hands!

[...] because I believe that it would gain the support of the majority of the public.

Woo hoo! We get a mention. But only as something to be manipulated.

Nick understands fully that we, the public, are against minimum pricing, but we are wrong so must be persuaded by discussion. Of course, by 'discussion', he means a wide-ranging spunking of government funds on advertising, more quangoes, pressure groups, and assorted righteous fucknuts in order to convince us that people like Nick know better than people like us how to live a 'proper' life, and that we all deserve to be soundly punished for the behaviour of a few.

The Labour Government gained such public support over time for their ban on smoking in public places and then, with the universal support of the medical profession and health campaigners, they legislated to remove cigarettes from public display and to ban cigarette vending machines from pubs. However, the introduction of those public health initiatives has stalled.

They gained support 'over time' by ignoring objections, paying for biased 'evidence', rigging consultations, and pumping out propaganda. Then, when there was still no majority, they just ignored the public again ... as Nick did in that entire paragraph, while simultaneously hanging on every word from state-paid medicos and fucking 'health campaigners'.

As for tobacco displays and vending machines ...

Labour prefers to tackle the challenges of smoking-related deaths and illness, and their devastating human cost and costs to the national health service. As Action on Smoking and Health has said:

"After all the election promises about public health, surely the coalition can make a better start than by caving in to the tobacco lobby".

Err, no Nick. They caved due to a distinct lack of support from the public - large scale objection, in fact - and because both ideas are fucking stupid, as well as potentially damaging to businesses and to young people.

Nick seemingly didn't feel that mentioning the views of 25,000 directly-affected shopkeepers, many of them from his own constituency, was more important than quoting a bleating cry from eight state-funded lobbyists in Shoreditch.

Oh yeah, and get your calculator out, sunshine. I know you're from Wales, but even a dullard like you must know that £10bn duty is larger than the £2.7bn constantly trumpeted as a cost to the NHS. We'll leave the VAT and pension provision figures for now, eh, seeing as you're new and still finding your feet as a professional fuckstick?

Of course, the coalition Government have given in not just to the tobacco industry, because the food industry's advances have also been successful. [...] Linked to that, the Government are to weaken the Food Standards Agency.

Boy, does this lad love his quangoes, and no mistake?

Again, the public has repeatedly shown where their preferences lie, they do so whenever they visit the supermarket yet, again, Nick prefers to defend the interests of wasteful public sector busybodies rather than respect the choices of his electorate.

I don't know where Labour found this guy - perhaps they run fuckwittery academies or something, I dunno - but he is everything that is wrong with politics and a perfect example of Westminster ignorance and lack of respect for those who pay their wages.

As such, he'll undoubtedly go far, the righteous prick.

Heads The Public Sector Wins, Tails The Public Loses

As anyone who follows me on Twitter will be aware, I was out of the country on Thursday when the government finally announced its latest pretence at listening to the public over plain packaging two months late.

The previous one showed that a significant majority think the idea to be pretty silly [pdf pg 31] ...

... but since when were the public listened to in a public consultation, eh?

What happened after the original consultation was that the Department of Health ignored all those hundreds of thousands of rejections and only focussed on what they called "detailed responses" for their big announcement.

Many thousands of responses to the consultation were received, and the views expressed were highly polarised, with strong views put forward on both sides of the debate and a range of organisations generating campaigns and petitions. Of those who provided detailed feedback, some 53% were in favour of standardised packaging while 43% thought the Government should do nothing about tobacco packaging.

Lo and behold, a majority in favour! It's almost like magic, isn't it?

Of course, if you were to download the full report, the true view of the public - which was ignored in the official statement, and about which Anna Soubry claimed ignorance - is crystal clear.

In total, 665,989 campaign responses were received from 24 separate campaigns. Around two-thirds of campaign responses received were from people who are opposed to the introduction of standardised packaging (total of 427,888 responses) and one-third of campaign responses received were from people who are in support (238,101 responses) as shown in figure 5.1 (that's that pretty pie chart above - DP). 

Hence the gerrymandering by only quoting the detailed responses in official communications.

However, by way of contrast, let's look at what happened when the government 'consulted the public' about banning tobacco displays in 2008.

Over 96,000 responses were received ... the largest ever response to a consultation of this kind. Responses overwhelmingly supported removing tobacco displays in shops, and tough action to restrict access to vending machines. Since the ban on tobacco advertising, retail displays in shops are the main way in which tobacco products are marketed to children

No mention of "detailed responses" back then, because the result went the 'correct' way. Or, as the Filthy Smoker observed at the time.

Of the 96,000 responses, only a handful came from private individuals. The rest came from block-voting by state-funded pressure groups and charities. 

Sure enough, SmokeFree NorthWest - with 49,507 votes - is entirely funded by the DoH. Direct Movement by the Youth Smokefree Team - with 10,757 votes - is entirely funded by SmokeFree Liverpool who are entirely funded by the DoH). SmokeFree NorthEast - with 8,128 votes - is entirely funded by...yes, the DoH. 

Weighing in with a further 1,562 votes were SmokeFree Action. 

Not so much a public consultation as a public sector consulation.

And that's not even mentioning the fact that the DoH airbrushed out 35,000 responses that they didn't like, as admirably reported by Medical News. 

So, what we can gather from what modern politicians laughably call public consultations is that if a postcard or quick click response is in favour of what they and their pet powerful vested interests want to do anyway, they'll shout it from the rooftops. But if it's not, it's time for plan B and to only look at the "detailed responses" which - of course - are mostly submitted by organisations whose only job is to do so on state-supplied wages. 

It stinks, as I'm sure you'll agree, and not something restricted to just this issue - this kind of abuse of democracy is happening every day in any number of different government departments, most of it beneath the radar of anyone but those who are paid to lobby Westminster. This is why, as well as adding your name to the No Prime Minister campaign if you haven't already, you should also consider adding a "detailed response" to this new second consultation. Regular readers of this blog will remember that many of us did exactly this for the original consultation back in 2012, which I'm sure had an impact in restricting the biased farce to only a narrow 53%/43% split.

Just like last time out, when I'm less busy I'll be drafting a consultation response on this site for anyone who wants to crib, or you can just go ahead and submit your own. You have a few weeks to mull over exactly how you want to word it as the process runs until August 7th, but do make sure you seriously consider doing so. The alternative is that, yet again, the state-funded public sector gets to dictate terms to the rest of us without fear of being challenged, and politicians get to find yet another way of lying to us ... as they repeatedly illustrate with their sham ploy of public consultations.

Full details are here (in many languages), with the online submission form available at this link. Do go have a look. 

Politicians, Look In The Mirror

As the hysterical finger-pointing drags on and on after the EU referendum vote, there was a tiny glimmer from Nicky Morgan on the Peston show yesterday morning. Here's what she said.

"I just think actually that it's time that we treated the British people more like grown ups"

And the truth will set you free!

Yes, someone up there in the Westminster bubble finally seems to be getting it.

In amongst the cries of how "stupid" the public were for making the 'wrong' choice; or the accusations that anyone who voted to leave was quite obviously racist; or that such decisions shouldn't be entrusted to the little people, instead it should be career-minded politicians only to decide such things, here - at last - was someone actually understanding the problem.

She'll sink without trace, I'm sure, because it's almost heresy to harbour such thoughts amongst the grinding atmosphere of self-enrichment and ladder-climbing enjoyed by her peers, but she's correct.

Just read that comment again. Isn't it quite astounding that she should even have to say it? Jaw-dropping that the attitude of politicians has sunk to such a level that they do actually treat us all like children.

We know this attitude very well on these pages. The tobacco display ban, for example, is such a ludicrous policy that it is openly laughed at by everyone you speak to at any supermarket tobacco kiosk. The public know very well that plain packaging is a waste of everyone's time, and the public also knew that the ban on smoking in cars was unenforceable as the police have now confirmed by saying it “hasn’t been thought through”. Well of course not, because it wasn't imagined to further the interests of the public, it was brought in to swell the pockets of bureaucrats and parasitic grant-seeking lobby groups.

Politicians haven't listened to the public for a very long time. 'Public' consultations ceased to be about consulting the public yonks ago, and political policy has shifted instead into ordering the public around at the behest of taxpayer-funded prohibitionists, self-installed moral guardians and repulsive snobs. They want you to pay more for your booze because you're not grown up enough to make a choice for yourself; they want to stop you smoking because, well, they just don't like it; and they sure as shit don't want you eating or drinking anything with sugar in it so they're going to slap a tax on things you freely choose to buy, mostly because you like them and the companies which sell them.

These are just examples in the policy areas we discuss here, but it's the same condescending and smug attitude in every department of government ... the people are too stupid to make their own decisions, therefore those decisions must be denied them. By overwhelming force if necessary and always with a threat of impoverishment and/or incarceration. The politician and his trusty tax-leeching bureaucracy must be satisfied, the public can go fuck itself.

Of course, if you complain about any of this you're instantly described as selfish and irrelevant. Who amongst vapers who read this place has been dismissed for their hatred of the EU because "vaping is a tiny issue, not worth throwing our whole EU membership away for"? I'd guess very many. Because, you see, it's only the sages, those with wisdom, that can see the bigger picture. Yet you can bet that every other irked group with a valid claim to have been marginalised and ignored by the EU and its strangling paper-pushing self-perpetuation will have heard the same daft argument.

When every grass roots group is hearing that their cause is irrelevant, it suggests that the bigger problem is the overarching arrogance of the state. It's not the small matters and those who advocate for them who are at fault, it is the "bigger picture" that has been painted by a blind political class!

When every area of policy strives to silence public dissent is it any wonder that the public strikes back? If the political elite didn't want that to happen, perhaps they should not have taken the piss out of us for so long. If the political establishment want to apportion blame for the Brexit vote, perhaps they should take a long hard look in the mirror.

Because democracy, believe it or not, should actually be about the people as Ronald Reagan explained when he was on his way out and had no reason to spin.

'We the People.' 'We the People' tell the government what to do; it doesn't tell us. 'We the People' are the driver; the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. 

When did our country, a proud early adopter of democracy, forget that?

So well done Nicky Morgan for beginning to work out that the public don't appreciate being treated like kids and that - despite all the fear-mongering and emotional rhetoric spouted recently - we are actually quite happy to have voted out one level of wasteful, self-serving, bureaucratic, public-hating, aloof, uncontrollable and unaccountable drains on society and free choice.

The next step might be to actually do something about it, so when is that going to begin. Exactly?

Hypocrisy Doesn't Get Any More Blatant Than This

Quick quiz. Who said this in 2009?

The Government has been accused of fixing the outcome of public consultations on health policy after it emerged that reviews were flooded with block votes from groups funded entirely by the taxpayer.

[...]

[Mr X] said the disclosures summed up Labour's "cavalier" approach to consulting the public.

[He] said: "It will come as no surprise to us if the Department of Health has funded organisations that provide the responses to consultations that the Government is looking for.

"The public are understandably cynical about the way Labour consults the public - it's time we had a Government that treats the public and their views with the respect they deserve."

Who was that courageous, people-oriented champion of decency and correct use of taxpayer receipts, just itching to come to the rescue and end such wasteful and corrupt practices?

Why, it was Andrew Lansley, who is currently engaged in forcing plain packaging legislation through with the help of - you're getting ahead of me here, I can sense - "government-funded organisations that provide the responses to consultations that the Government is looking for".

I'm sure he'll be popping up on TV soon to furiously condemn £468,000 of public money being spent by his government to lobby him.

Yep, won't be long now.

How The Public Are Elbowed Out Of 'Public Consultations'

"Government agencies and councils in England that spend public money on lobbying ministers face a crackdown. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said it was wrong that taxpayers' money was being spent on political lobbying." - Eric Pickles, August 2010

Having been very busy, I'm late to the subject of the all-too-predictable rubber-stamping of an upcoming ban on smoking in all cars - because, yes, that's what it will very soon morph into - and a lot (not all) of what I would have wanted to say has already been said elsewhere.

However, it has been a textbook example of how government routinely makes damned sure the public is not listened to in any meaningful way - On any issue - but the people they hand our taxes to are. As you can see for yourself from the government's consultation response published earlier this month in the section entitled ...

Limitations to elicit representative samples of public opinion

This is where the state machine makes it crystal clear that allowing the public to advance their opinions really isn't the point of a 'public consultation'.

2.15. The consultation process was not intended or designed to elicit representative samples of public opinion, instead it sought information, comments and views on the draft regulation, impact assessment and equality analysis.

Yes, you can comment on what they intend to do, but not whether they should do it. For why? Well, you might say the wrong thing.

2.16. It is in the nature of open consultation exercises that, generally, it is only those who already have an interest in the subject respond to the questions. The nature of consultation exercises means that respondents are self-selecting, and cannot therefore be considered to be a representative sample of public opinion.

God forbid smokers themselves might respond, eh? They, or people who may have read blogs about the subject, perhaps, or those who believe the state should not be setting a sinister precedent by poking their nose into private property. You know, that type of pesky ne'er-do-well who doesn't believe an omnipotent state is a perfectly brilliant thing.

Because, you see, they can be so tiresome, can't they?

The responses from members of the public displayed mixed views on the draft regulations in general terms.

For 'mixed views', read raising of many valid objections to a particularly stupid and pointless law. But despite 30% of the 201 responses being from switched-on and alert individuals, without exception all were summarily ignored.

By strange contrast, the same caution about the "self-selecting" views of state-paid organisations specifically set up precisely to demand such laws is not even considered. Of course.

Over 90% of the responses from organisations supported the proposed approach set out in the draft regulations. Local authorities and local tobacco control alliances made up the biggest proportion of organisations who responded. 

Now that's what the state calls a "representative sample"! If you want to see what the poor impoverished David against the tobacco industry's Goliath looks like, you can see the 'representative sample' - including the perfectly impartial and representative of UK opinion smokefree cars advocacy campaign group of New Zealand - listed on page 18 here.

In the face of so very many highly-paid professional lobbyists, and with an adjudicator intent on suppressing any and all dissent, the public doesn't stand a chance. A situation which government, its politicians and the tax spongers they lob our hard-earned to are very happy about.

I mean, why should the people who have to live under these laws to have any input, eh?

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.

How Dare Members Of The Public Respond To A Public Consultation!

Regular readers here will know that I often describe the tobacco control industry as 'extremists', and there is a good reason for that. You see, their methods are remarkably similar to those of totalitarian dictatorships.

Their policies consist entirely of lies, intimidation and suppression of debate and - rather like ISIS - they demand that what they say goes and for any dissent or opposing view to be silenced and/or ignored.

So this document which has just come to light won't come as much of a surprise. I've embedded it at the bottom of the page, and you can see that it is a letter from Florence Berteletti-Kemp demanding that EU President Jose Manuel Barroso ignore tens of thousands of responses from members of the public to the public consultation on the Tobacco Products Directive. Incredibly, one of the justifications she gives is that there are too many objections, because such consultations only usually attract about 20 responses, and she complains that there are organisations encouraging people to make their voice heard! I mean, how disgraceful is it that people should be urged to engage with the democratic process (such as it is in the EU), eh?

The pre-consultation report is here and, as you can see, included sections not only on conventional tobacco, but also snus and e-cigs. Considering the huge number of people across the EU who use such products, it should have been welcomed that so many wished to express their thoughts on early proposals, however briefly. I wrote about the consultation at the time in order to drive responses their way, as did former influential blogger and now LBC radio presenter Iain Dale and many others. But tobacco control has never been in the business of debating and will always try to silence any opposition to their insane self-enriching policy-chasing, so there's no way they want to hear from the ghastly public.

There is evidence that these vile anti-democratic and transparency-phobic creeps - including Debs Arnott in the days when she was still honest about her intention to medicalise all e-cigs, along with Anna 'Rent-a-junk-study' Gilmore, CRUK head Jean King, Monika Kosinska, Luk Joossens, Luke Clancy and other well-known fanatical prohibitionists -  got their way too, as we can see from this article in 2011.

The EU Commission, however, dismisses a significant portion of the responses from the 82,000 citizens on the grounds that two-thirds are from Italy and Poland, where tobacco merchants organised petitions.

This isn't an unusual tactic either. We saw the same with the tobacco display ban in the UK in 2008.

Ken Patel, Leicester retailer and National Spokesman for the Tobacco Retailers Alliance, said: "First the Minister refused to meet with retailers, now they have censored our formal response to a public consultation." 

Campaign Manager Katherine Graham said; "We are not listed as one of the respondents although our response was submitted by email and also sent by post, so we can be certain it was received. For some reason the views of 25,000 shopkeepers just seem to have been air-brushed out of the consultation report."

And it was also attempted during the plain packs campaign in 2013, again sneakily involving letters to politicians to demand the public is ignored.

It piqued my interest as I was rather intrigued as to what had been discussed at this meeting, so I submitted a freedom of information request. The response was a brief note which you can read in Scribd here, but this is the part which I found most interesting.

"On plain packaging, the APPG expressed concerns that results of any consultation could be skewed if consumer/retail groups were used to inflate responses. They also wanted to know when decisions were likely to be made."

Now, I don't know about you, but that does seem to suggest that the delegation of MPs Stephen Williams, Kevin Barron and Bob Blackman (not Paul as in the document) - along with Deborah Arnott their ASH secretary - were urging Anne Milton to ignore responses from groups such as Hands Off Our Packs, the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, The Association of Convenience Stores etc. In fact, any organised group who are opposed to plain packaging. 

Note that they were not concerned about organised groups of any stripe collecting signatures which, of course, would have ruled out CRUK responses as well as SmokeFree South West's government-funded campaign. No, they were only addressing campaigns organised in opposition. 

Of course, there were no questions whatsoever about the signatures raised in support of the policy by state-funded fake charities, Cancer Research UK, and even the plain packs campaign itself, even though they were gathered using exactly the same methods. The stark hypocrisy of these odious creatures is stunning. 

All of which goes to prove that tobacco controllers are not just enemies of tolerance and freedom of choice, but also of the right of the public to have their views counted and, therefore, an enemy of the democratic process itself.

You can read their grubby letters demanding public responses be ignored at this Scribd link or scroll through it below. 

Tobacco Control Complains About Public Responses to a Public Consultation on Scribd

Fighting For Harm Reduction

I've commented a number of times, and at length, on the tendency of health-related public consultations to be engineered in such a way as to marginalise the views of the, err, public.

There are many ways of doing this, the most popular ones being the straightforward exclusion of the public, the flooding of the process by state-funded pressure groups, the manipulation of responses to avoid the 'wrong' conclusion, or the use of clever wording designed to encourage the respondent not to object.

My! Having just re-read that ... we are East Germany, aren't we?

Anyway, back to the point. Of the methods described above, it is the last which is being employed by public health bodies in an attempt to ban e-cigs despite their carrying no risk whatsoever, as illustrated by this extract from the recent MHRA 'consultation' exercise.

In order to ensure there is no risk to public health from unlicensed products on the market that have not been assessed for safety, quality and efficacy and in the light of the developing extent of their use and familiarity we are consulting to elicit views on whether and how to bring all products containing nicotine into regulation.

Option 1 – Whether products containing nicotine should be considered by the Agency to be medicinal products by function and, if so, whether all unlicensed NCPs should be removed from the market within 21 days. Currently, MHRA operates a strict practice regarding the period of notice operators are allowed to comply with under the Marketing Authorisation Regulations following the classification of a product as medicinal. Given that these Regulations do not make explicit provisions for a staged withdrawal from the market of an unlicensed medicinal product, immediate cessation of the sale or supply is usually required by the Agency, with written confirmation of the same within 21 days.

Option 2 – Whether products containing nicotine should be considered by the Agency to be medicinal products by function and, if so, whether a notice should be issued to manufacturers that all marketing must cease by a certain date e.g. June 2011. After this date enforcement action would be taken against manufacturers not holding an MA for any such product on the market. This would effectively allow manufacturers a year from the end of public consultation to produce relevant evidence to support an application for an MA, submit it to the MHRA for approval and get the newly licensed products on to the market.

Option 3 – Do nothing and allow these unregulated products containing nicotine that have not been assessed for safety, quality and efficacy to remain on the market.

The MHRA’s preferred option is option 1, which is in line with current practice.

You see, e-cigs are a great tool for many who wish to quit smoking. It is also unarguable that they are safer than cigarettes so offer harm reduction potential. Unfortunately, though, they are not - tut, tut -manufactured by public health's chums in the pharmaceutical industry, plus e-cig users look like they're smoking. And that is just too offensive a sight for the righteous.

Still, e-cig users continue to fight for their right to 'vape' and, on Wednesday, delivered a hefty petition to Downing Street as a reminder that there are many who are quite happy to risk the non-existent dangers.

I wish them the very best of luck.

It will be interesting, in this new 'enlightened' era of the coalition, to see if the government are serious about personal liberties and decide to kick this ban proposal into the long grass, or whether they will continue with serially-proven public health policy failures like Labour.

Learn more at the UK Vapers Forum.

Us Versus Them

The Welsh Assembly recently held a public consultation on their 'public health' white paper, and the results are now in!

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.

ASH Fire Up The Statmobile

With quangoes and high-profile public sector agencies dropping like nine pins due to government cuts, some have floated the idea that state-funded anti-smoking organisations might be a tad worried right now.

There has been a flurry of self-righteous indignation from our medical profession overlords, of course, but little so far from the likes of, say, ASH. Perhaps - considering their usual modus operandi of producing cleverly constructed 'statistics' to 'prove' whichever departure from sanity they are promoting at any time - they just haven't any defence for their utter uselessness right now, so are laying low.

Yes, there was a puff piece last month regurgitating their prior sleight of hand [pdf], but nothing to convince the coalition axemen that ASH themselves are vital or in any way popular.

You know what they need? Figures to show that the public really love them. Yes, that would do it. I dunno, maybe something like a survey directed at those most likely to give the correct responses (and mailed out on Thursday), for example?

"I am writing to ask you to take part in ASH’s public reputation survey, a tightly targeted piece of quantitative market research designed to help us understand perceptions of ASH and its effectiveness among people who are important to our work.

The research findings will be presented to the ASH Board of Trustees summarising the issues and challenges facing the organisation."

So who would these 'tightly targeted' people be? Perhaps question 1 of 20 addresses that (emphasis mine throughout).

What is your main connection to ASH? Tick more than one if appropriate.

- ASH staff
- ASH Board member
- PCT employee
- Academic
- Local authority employee
- Member of the Smokefree Action Coalition
- Member of general public/general interest
- Stop Smoking counsellor
- Other (please specify)

Yes, ASH staff and board members are being asked how the public view them. Along with those whose salary relies on government funding for anti-smoking initiatives, and the odd member of the public ... tightly targeted, of course.

Question 3 gets to the point.

How much would you agree or disagree with the following comments about ASH?

- insufficiently resourced
- factually credible
- influential
- reasonable
- effective networkers
- aggressive
- professional
- evidence based campaigners
- assertive

Now, when you're finally finished sniggering at some of those, can we move on to question 18?

Which of the following would you see as important priorities for ASH over the next five years (The most important - tick one only in this column. Important but not most important - tick as many as apply)

- Coordinating and leading the work of the Smokefree Action Coalition
- Working to ensure sustained funding for tobacco control
- Campaigning for continued government support for a comprehensive tobacco control strategy
- Supporting implementation of the Health Act legislation to prohibit tobacco displays at point of sale and sale of tobacco from vending machines
- Supporting local advocacy
- Revealing tobacco industry malpractice
- Maintaining a reputation for impartial advice
- Promoting tobacco control to the media
- Providing up to date information on tobacco issues
- Producing reports on key issues in tobacco control
- Responding to consultations on public health issues to ensure that tobacco is taken into account in the development of public policy
- Commissioning research to add to the evidence base for tobacco control (e.g. opinion polling, economic reports etc.)
- Supporting development and implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
- Supporting tobacco control implementation at EU level
- Other (please specify)

Yep, I reckon that with their selection of respondents, the mere mention of funding to those who are no doubt worried about their state-financed mortgages, and the exclusion of all but the most trusted members of the public, they may well be able to cobble together something to convince dullard MPs that ASH are more popular than Jesus and therefore indispensable.

Me? I find it satisfying that ASH are at last admitting that one of their main purposes is simply to justify their very existence.

The MHRA Kills The Golden Goose

Proving yet again what is fast becoming a certainty of life along with death and taxes, the MHRA today finally concluded their deliberations on e-cigs by completely ignoring public responses to their {cough} public consultation.

All nicotine-containing products (NCPs), such as electronic cigarettes, are to be regulated as medicines in a move to make these products safer and more effective to reduce the harms of smoking. 

The UK Government has decided that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) will regulate all NCPs as medicines so that people using these products have the confidence that they are safe, are of the right quality and work. 

Smoking is the biggest single cause of avoidable death - killing 80,000 people in England each year. Making safe and effective products available for people who smoke can help them cut down or quit.

This is wordplay and sophistry of world class proportion.

The Guardian report that there are now around 1.3 million e-cig users in the UK, which makes it quite clear that e-cigs are an incredibly successful tool to "reduce the harms of smoking"; that 1.3 million people find that they "work" and "can help them cut down or quit".

The MHRA should know this from their own public consultation back in 2011 during which they received 1,217 responses from the general public. An overwhelming majority of these - if not all of them - were from satisfied e-cig users pleading for the MHRA to leave the devices alone and allow vapers to, indeed, "cut down or quit". On the other hand, they received just 9 responses from the usual bansturbatory elite demanding medicinal licensing.

In the face of such a landslide - and identical to the process employed for the EU's consultation on snus -  the MHRA chose to side with the 9 and toss out the views of 1,217 members of the public. Because, you see, the term 'public consultation' is a bit of a misnomer; the description they are seeking is more like 'organised fraud with a pretence of involving taxpayers and electors'.

The MHRA know very well that their proposals will do the exact opposite of helping smokers to "cut down or quit". They also know that medicinal regulation will make e-cigs considerably less "effective" by stifling innovation, raising prices and obliterating choice, thereby vandalising the very incentives for a product which has huge market support - and which has cost the taxpayer nothing. In short, they won't "work" any more.

Instead, what we are now promised is - be in no doubt about this - an effective ban on e-cigs in the UK, as explained by E-cig Politics.

I refer to pharmaceutical licensing as a ban, because it is. There are at least 5,000 products on the market now, the majority being refill variants. All will need to be removed from the market immediately licensing comes into force (within 21 days is the usual requirement). A license can only be applied to one product or product combination: a single hardware model, or a single liquid type/flavour, or a single device plus one liquid type. There is no possibility of a single license for several products. Each single product takes at least 3 years and at least £2m to achieve a license for (as that is what it has cost Intellicig in time and money to get their license so far, with no result as yet). Intellicig famously underestimated the cost and timescale, and have had to modify their time plan by a factor of 2 (initial estimate was 2 years), and their cost estimates by a factor of 20 (initial budget was £95,000). And it's not over yet. 

If either the EU or the MHRA achieve a ban via the pharmaceutical licensing or tobacco product classification routes, legal e-cigarette sales are finished in the UK, and a huge black market will ensue.

Quite.

But then it has all been so predictable, hasn't it? Once the revolution of e-cigs took hold, those who claim to be interested in health have clutched at multiple straws to deride, demonise, smear and undermine them.

We've seen attempts to invent passive and thirdhand vaping as a concept; heroic conspiracy theories claiming that millions of successful quitters are just an illusion; attempts to rig legislation at EU level; and junk science promoted as fact.

In the end, the pharma enthralled tobacco control industry have fallen back on justification so weak as to be laughable. That they vary in quality and that kids might use them.

ASH welcome regulation to stop kids using e-cigs despite their own study finding 0% of kids using them; the BBC seeks out a head teacher who banned e-cigs in their usual agitprop coverage, despite no student ever having been seen using one; and everyone else cites obscure and unrepresentative negative studies while ignoring the overwhelming benefits to health of over a million people cutting down on tobacco consumption.

It was all telegraphed beforehand too. With the MHRA abomination looming, state bodies redoubled their denialist efforts. The NHS Choices site - purporting to be a neutral fact-checker - displayed the underlying agenda perfectly by publishing this article yesterday.

Carefully cherry-picked junk science - and even this absurd Guardian article - were presented as proof that pharma produced NRT was absolutely brilliant, while e-cigs were dangerous and useless.

Written by someone who doesn't have much understanding of the devices (e.g. they all look like cigarettes; are triggered by air flow; batteries only last 2 to 5 hours), it contained 'neutral' info which clearly showed which side of the fence they were coming down on.

It’s not certain whether e-cigarettes deliver as much nicotine as forms of nicotine replacement therapy such as patches, so they may not be as effective at curbing nicotine cravings.

Hence why 1.3 million smokers have shunned e-cigs in favour of NRT with its 98.4% failure rate ... oh, hold on.

If you want to try a safer alternative to cigarettes but are concerned about the uncertainties surrounding e-cigarettes, you may wish to consider a nicotine inhalator.

A product which has been so successful that it hasn't attracted millions worldwide like, err, e-cigs despite being free and backed by saturation TV advertising.

Because e-cigarettes can be smoked in public places such as bars, restaurants and public transport, some people feel they may be normalising what has come to be seen as an unacceptable activity.

For 'some people', read 'a tiny minority of state-funded lobbyists and fake charities'.

And just in case you didn't get the message, they produce a neat infographic to make sure you make the, ahem, correct choice.

Today is the apex of tobacco control industry stupidity. Ultimate and resounding proof of what I have been saying for years. It has never, ever, been about health. And now they have illustrated it beyond reasonable doubt.

Anything that has gone before can now be disregarded, they have negligently provided all the evidence needed.

So they installed a smoking ban, so what? They have produced rules which could force 1.3 million vapers back to smoking. They banned vending machines. So what? They are effectively banning a revolutionary product which was reducing tobacco harm worldwide. They banned tobacco displays. So what? Their lapdog big pharma loyalty is the best thing tobacco manufacturers have heard for a long time. They intend to bring in evidence-free plain packaging. So what? They are also intending to obliterate a smoking alternative which carries global, real life evidence of overwhelming success.

It can never again be claimed that these people have any care for health. Ever. Just as we can now conclude with 100% confidence that public consultations are nothing but an elaborate and costly sham.

As one tobacco industry observer put it today, they have "killed the golden goose" before it's had a chance to lay many more priceless public health golden eggs. It was, as ex-Director of ASH Clive Bates dolorously described, "a good day for the cigarette makers".

But what does the tobacco control industry care? It was never about health anyway.

Public Consultations That Are Anything But

Ever wondered where the likes of clinically obese Liam Donaldson get their quite astoundingly false figures? They are always via a 'public' consultation ... to which the public are not invited.

Clever, huh?

Well, we are invited, but you'd have to be Sherlock fucking Holmes to find them. You also need a computer, an internet connection, and an incredible ability to trawl the bowels of government web-sites for the merest sniff of one.

Some examples. If you live in Scotland, did you know that there are two such consultations, on various issues to do with smoking, which close in the next few days? Plus one which closed two days ago? Nope, thought not. Not much of a surprise really seeing as it's not the point of the exercise. They are circulated widely to groups who agree with whatever legislation is being planned, dissenting views aren't very welcome.

The public do tend to get in the way of a good, new-fashioned, public sector consultation. The professional busybodies, fake charities, and health stalinists are invariably lining up to give their view on what the government have paid them to ask for. The only thing generally missing is the public being aware of what is going on.

So, what's on the menu for you Jocks at the moment, then?

Well, firstly, we have that much advertised 'consultation' on "Achieving smoke-free mental health services in Scotland", the deadline for which is Monday 6th April. Psychiatric hospitals are exempted under the terms of the scottish smoking ban, but this just irks the righteous so very much. Best ban that then, but just not where people can see it and object.

This document is so packed full of lies and leading statements, it is absurd. For example:

The researchers also interviewed mental health professionals in Scotland, and found them strongly in favour of moving towards smoke-free environments. It was felt that allowing smoking to continue - when almost all other workplaces are smoke-free - would:

reinforce the stigma attached to mental ill-health

How so? This is purely opinion is it not? Where is the research?

We would like to hear what you think about achieving smoke-free mental health services in Scotland, and how best we could reduce exposure to second-hand smoke in psychiatric hospitals and units.

So that's what everyone wants, is it? I thought you were consulting here. It very much appears that the 'consultation' has a pre-determined outcome it wishes to achieve.

Data from a national evaluation of the smoke-free legislation indicate that it has been a great success. After the ban was introduced there was:

a 17% reduction in heart attack admissions

Cough! No there wasn't. This was a selective survey by Prof Jill Pell on cherry-picked hospitals. It didn't compare like with like (it omitted two months of the year to bolster its propaganda), and picked and chose which heart attacks it wanted to include in order to reach the conclusion that was desired. What's more, it was a sample study prior to actual hospital figures being released, and guess what? The true statistics showed nothing of the sort.

Yet this is presented as fact. It's a fucking lie, pure and simple. Even the BBC said it was crap FFS!

As for the flurry of excitable headlines, what appeared to be hard medical evidence now looks more like over-hasty and over-confident research, coupled with wishful political thinking and uncritical journalism.

Christ, I could go on all day pointing out the nonsense in this 'consultation', it is riddled with it. There is a heavy use of the words 'may', 'could', and 'likely', but, unlike that which bloggers are required to do to be taken seriously, no linking to any sources or solid evidence.

The whole exercise is a farce. An exhibition of how your tax is being thrown around on illiberal ideals by vacant, overpaid shitsticks who should be given no more responsibility than a lollipop and a zebra crossing.

You may not know about this process, but these cunts make damn sure that their chums know about it. It is circulated amongst a whole host of other professional righteous whingers.

NHS Boards
Local Authorities
Public Participation Fora ( PPFs)
Patient Focused Patient Involvement groups ( PFPIs)
Scottish Recovery Network
Mental health service user groups
Carers organisations
SAMH
RCN
VOX
HUG
ACUMEN
Alzheimers Scotland
Depression Alliance.

Now, forgive me for being a bit obvious here, but shouldn't the very first people to be consulted be those who have to live in these institutions? And what's more, their views should be weighted heavily over and above a 'medical professional' considering the former is not entitled to leave the premises at will, while the latter is afforded choice?

I mentioned one which closed two days ago? It was on behalf of the Grampian NHS Trust and dealt with banning smoking on any hospital grounds. Again, it was kept hidden from all but those who are likely to agree. Fortunately, a union actually did something useful for a change and objected. Big time.

Unison said it issued a survey to its members and other staff, and that the response showed that 87% of those who took part had concerns about the proposed total ban.

Bows and arrows against the lightning I'm afraid, UNISON. This is happening, no matter what those who are affected think of it. They'll simply blast you out of the water. You are just one group, amongst a dozen or more, who are paid to respond to such documents. You may even find that your response has been erased anyway if it isn't on message. It wouldn't be the first time.

Members of the Tobacco Retailers Alliance, a coalition of 25,000 independent retailers, have expressed outrage that their views were excluded from a Government report into retail displays of tobacco.

There is another squirrelled away on the Scottish Parliament site regarding tobacco displays, which ends on Wednesday 8th April. Didn't know that? Probably not. Because you're not supposed to.

This is just a tiny snapshot of modern British 'democracy'. There are hundreds of these consultations at any one time, all hiding away from the people who will be affected by them. On all manner of subjects, all with the same objective, to screw you before you know you've been royally fucked.

It's not now enough to get your vote on a certain manifesto promise and then change the terms, that is too obvious. The fashion under Labour and the SNP is to simply change the rules without even bothering to ask you. If you complain, they can point to your lethargy in not finding out about it, even if buried under a mountain of deliberately-placed bullshit.

Or, as Arthur Dent found out in The Hitchhikers Guide.

"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine month."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display ..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."

Still think you live in a democracy? You're wrong. It's a cuntocracy.

UPDATE: Raedwald has another one to get angry about. Same story, government washing their dirty laundry out of the public view.

the consultation as issued has an inbuilt bias against implementation; the civil servant's letter asks specifically of councils that "you could ensure that copies of this letter are shared with officers / employees within your organisation who may have an interest in the proposals (i.e. have details about their remuneration package published). Individuals' views will also be considered in response to the consultation"