Charge!

Phew, that was a close one!

A longstanding 'public health' lie came close to destabilising the NHS over the weekend.

A move that could have seen obese patients refused surgery in an attempt to save money is to be reviewed after national NHS bosses intervened. 

A proposed restriction by the NHS Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group would have seen non-life threatening procedures delayed by a year for those with a body mass index exceeding 30. 

The rule would also apply to smokers. 

NHS England, which can intervene as the CCG is under special measures, said the group had agreed to rethink the move.

As Snowdon has already noted, this is not how most people would expect the NHS to operate.

Rationing healthcare on the basis of lifestyle was never part of the NHS's plan in 1948. It it had been, there would have been even more resistance to the nationalisation of the industry than there was. But after years of wrongly scapegoating smokers and fat people for the NHS's spiralling budget, it's no surprise to find the service being turned from a free-at-the-point-of-need Ponzi scheme into a tool of outright coercion and punishment.

Indeed.

It's what happens when health nazis torture statistics in order to play on bigotry and prejudice and pretend that smokers and the overweight are taking more than their fair share of NHS resources. Because that's exactly what this is all about, as alluded to in the BBC article.

"They are trying to lose weight in the vast majority of cases and to deny them treatment that they need on the basis of their weight, without then offering them effective help to help them lose weight is rather like discriminating [against] a segment of the population on the basis of their colour or religious persuasion."

Besides which, it has, quite simply, never been true (like almost everything you ever hear from 'public health') that unhealthy lifestyles unnecessarily harm NHS finances. Whenever economic costs of socialised healthcare are calculated, it is always the 'healthy' - and not those who choose riskier lifestyles - who put the most burden on health services.

It should be obvious, especially since 'public health' wants to simultaneously tell us that smokers and the obese live far shorter lives. Healthcare costs for those who are considered healthy are more expensive to the system both short and long-term, and the largest financial commitment any government commits to - pensions - are hugely more costly too.

When tobacco controllers, or any other 'public health' charlatan, tell you that x costs the NHS y amount of money, they are lying by way of only giving you one side of the equation.

It's not hard to understand really.

While smokers and the overweight are often criticised for the financial impact of their unhealthy lifestyles, an obese person's medical bills actually average 10 per cent less overall than those of a person of normal weight. 

Smokers require even less treatment, say the researchers. 

The reason is that the healthy tend to live longer and so, while they might not have to battle lung cancer, heart disease or diabetes in their fifties, they may need long-term care for illnesses of old age such as Alzheimer's. 

As a result, any "savings" made by them being healthy when young are more than offset by their being ill in old age.

Tobacco controllers - who know better than the rest of us that smokers don't actually cost the NHS more than anyone else, quite the opposite - usually counter this incontrovertible fact with shrill straw men such as "so you're saying that governments should encourage smoking because it's good for the country's finances?". Well no, we are just arguing that 'public health' lobbyists should stop using outright lies to push their agenda.

The result of all this wholesale lying by health lobbyists is daft policies like that proposed by the ignoramuses at NHS Vale of York. To save money, they have taken the stance that the best thing to do is penalise the people who cost them the least amount of money in the long run. It's why they are not handling budgets or performing actuarial calculations in the private sector .. because if they were they'd be sacked.

Restricting treatment is just one stupid policy recommendation that 'public health' lying creates, the other is the regular call - which you may have heard from the most easily-gulled in society - to charge smokers, drinkers and the obese for NHS treatment. You know, because it's self-inflicted, innit, and why should they pay for the healthcare costs of others.

This is very dangerous ground for the NHS. Once you get into that line of thinking it renders the NHS unworkable. There's little need for those lucrative sin taxes now, is there Mr politician? Just think of all those treatments the NHS provides which the public regularly object to, and there are very many. If we can pick and choose who is treated and who is not, there are going to be a lot of green ink letters from Mr & Mrs Disgusted of Cheltenham.

There are also dozens of dangerous activities anyone could name that might end in long-term and incredibly expensive palliative care, why should the public collectively pay for extreme risk-taking? And you know that unwritten contract we have whereby we pay our taxes and you promise to treat us accordingly? Well, there is just the taxation now, if the benefit is being withdrawn for large sections of the population, we'll see those taxes dramatically cut so we can source healthcare elsewhere at our own cost, Mr Politician Sir, or we'll see you in court.

You can't have a protection racket without the protection, now can you?

It only takes one successful case and the NHS could be holed beneath the water line. Imagine the free-for-all as those most able to negotiate the red tape and best-placed to afford it opt out of a portion of their taxes and go private. Oh joy!

I've written about this kind of backward thinking from NHS administrators (who ironically are the biggest direct drain on the NHS) before, and whenever I do I find myself thinking "bring it on!", just before health service grandees intervene and tell the local idiots to shut the fuck up and stop trying to derail the gravy train.

Just like this weekend.

Oh well, these instances are becoming more and more frequent, so better luck next time, eh?

As a footnote, Snowdon also mentioned the appalling 'nurse' Jane "They'll just have to die" DeVille-Almond in his piece. If you've not heard her contribution to the "do no harm" principle of the medical profession before, you can listen to it below.

Anatomy Of A Charlatan

As a perfect example of how 'public health' can be run on ideological lines with no care about health or misleading the public, here is an interesting recent timeline involving the Faculty of Public Health's screaming lefty Director of Public Policy Simon Capewell.

Last week, the Lancet published an editorial designed to sling mud at Public Health England's positive report on e-cigs, I wrote about it here. Now, there would be no problem with a health publication debating some of the conclusions but The Lancet didn't do that, instead it merely hurled innuendo and ad hominems around which didn't really amount to a hill of beans, as described in the Speccie.

With wearying predictability, The Lancet launches into an ad hominem attack on two of the 11 authors of Nutt’s study. The editorial notes that one of the authors has consulted for a distributor of e-cigarettes and another has been a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. Since Big Pharma does not make e-cigarettes and sees them as a rival to their own nicotine products it is debatable whether the second of these is a competing interest at all, but it is nevertheless there in black and white in the original study, as competing interests always are. 

According to The Lancet, the declared interests of two out of 11 authors of one study cited by Public Health England ‘raises serious questions not only about the conclusions of the PHE report, but also the quality of the agency’s peer review process’. This risible attempt to make a mountain out of a mole hill suggests that The Lancet is less interested in assessing the scientific evidence than in groping around for anything that might help blacken the PHE report’s name in the eyes of the public.

The Lancet editorial was published anonymously but it has been revealed since that Capewell was one of the authors. It created hostile attacks on e-cigs in the Daily Mail, Telegraph and Guardian and much foreign coverage complete with hyperbolic idiocy from activists, such as this from a blinkered nicotine-hater in the US.

“One of the studies used to make this conclusion was done by someone on the e-cigarette payroll,” [Erika Sward, the American Lung Association's assistant vice president of national advocacy] alleged. "What we’ve seen from the beginning since e-cigarettes have come out are unsubstantiated health claims by the industry and this is just one more.”

A quite ludicrous leap to get to that from a baseless slur but thank you for smoking America, do carry on.

Scroll on to Sunday and an obscure American online news source publishes an appalling click-bait article on e-cigs entitled  7 reasons e-cigarettes are bad. Considering it cherry-picked long-debunked junk science to make this misleading point, it was easily rubbished by Jacob Sullum of Reason in his response entitled 4 reasons this article about e-cigarettes is bad. It was also ripped to pieces by Mike Siegel.

The rest of the story is that most of these seven claims are false, all are misleading, all seven points actually demonstrate the public health value of e-cigarettes, and all seven arguments are taken almost verbatim from the propaganda being disseminated by colleagues of mine in the anti-smoking movement, demonstrating that their campaign of deception regarding e-cigarettes is working.

"Campaign of deception" is a very good description, because many in 'public health' are no longer working for the public good, they are just sitting on fat salaries and pumping out any old crap to enforce their absurd snobby prejudices on others, irrespective of health.

One of them is Capewell, who chose not to take into account a response to the Lancet by the authors of the Public Health England study, but instead to tweet to like-minded charalatans and fellow travellers the shite article mentioned above.

7 reasons #eCigs pose dangers to our health? #toxins #addiction #gateway etc @SimonChapman6 @theBMA @martinmckee http://t.co/laEMy0lBEl

— Simon Capewell (@SimonCapewell99) August 31, 2015

The Inquisitr article is utter junk - as Siegel's critique very ably shows - and can only mislead and spread baseless fear and confusion. Yet Professor Capewell decides it is more worthy than the considered views of public health colleagues!

Capewell enjoys a position of power in the UK public health network, yet appears completely uninterested in whether he is adversely influencing the public and seems to delight in spreading fear and confusion.  At the same time, he is aggressive and dismissive towards people who are actually listening to consumers and trying to eliminate the confusion, and doing so by smearing his own profession with ad hominems and deliberate abuse of declarations designed to show transparency. Capewell is not interested in whether or not e-cigs may be beneficial, he is just a policy advocate for the policies a guy called Simon Capewell would like to see.

And what's more, he is unelected, unaccountable and - as was shown in the case of fellow FPH nutter John Ashton - entirely immune to censure by his own organisation. He'll keep his job no matter how much nonsense he spouts and no matter how many people continue to smoke due to his bigotry, despite the Faculty of Public Health claiming to want smokers to quit. It's akin to someone working in KFC, openly spitting in customers' food and being given a pat on the back for it.

I only post this by way of explaining why I often say it's not about health, because a lot of the time it really isn't. It also explains why I sometimes use tags like 'shysters', 'health nazis', 'liar', 'troughers' and 'there's something very wrong with this country', because all of those apply to Capewell and many others who claim to be working for the public.

In reality, they couldn't give a shit.

On Being On The Side Of The Angels

Things have been hectic in Puddlecoteville and beyond recently, so there is a lot to catch up on. I thought we might start with this from Brendan O'Neill in Newsweek at the weekend.

Commenting on Oxford students demanding a statue of Cecil Rhodes be removed, O'Neill pointed out that such denial of history is something only tyrannical regimes would even consider.

[ISIS's] English-language magazine Dabiq justified the destruction of artifacts at Mosul Museum in Iraq as a means of "erasing the legacy of a ruined nation." It boasts of having "laid to waste the...legacy of a nation that had long passed from the face of the Earth." 

What ISIS and the Oxford lot share in common is a Year Zero attitude, a desire to rewrite history. It’s a deeply authoritarian instinct: not merely to discuss the past and challenge its events and ideas, but to cleanse all remnants of it from the present. It's cultural cleansing, disguised as an Islamic duty by ISIS and as radical anti-racism by Oxford students.

I couldn't let this pass without adding another hideous set of intolerant re-writers of history to that list, they being psychotic anti-smoking nutcases.

There are too many examples to choose from to illustrate this phenomenon, it occurs occasionally when some rancid smoke-hating inadequate allows the red mist to descend and shows themself up to be incapable of living in decent society. I wrote about just such an unknown pathetic individual from the past in 2010 which you may be interested to read if you're new around here.

By the same token, a statue of Oscar Wilde in London has been so regularly vandalised by anti-smoking cocksockets that Westminster City Council gave up.

Suffolk artist Maggi Hambling's sculpture of the Irish poet, playwright and author in London has been targeted three times by vandals who have sawn off the cigarette he holds. 

Hambling, who lives near the Suffolk coast, has said she will not replace the cigarette for a fourth time until Westminster City Council installs CCTV to ensure it is protected. 

But the council has now said it cannot justify spending money on security cameras because there is not a “serious problem” with vandalism in the area. 

[Hambling said] “The way Oscar Wilde held his cigarette completes the sculpture as a piece of work. It's vitally necessary and very seldom was he seen without a cigarette. It's very much part of the portrait of Wilde. 

“It's very sad indeed if someone thinks a sculpture of someone from the past must be crucified like this because of the anti-smoking fanatics about. 

“Are people going to start airbrushing Winston Churchill's cigars or Humphrey Bogart's cigarettes?"

Well, it's funny she should say that, because that's exactly what some ungrateful socially-deficient obsessive did a couple of years after Hambling said that.

Which serves as a very apt juxtaposition. Andrew Marr, in his Making of Modern Britain documentary in 2009, suggested that "the greatest Briton of all time" would have been firmly on our side if alive today.

One phrase that would certainly have resonated with the old boy is 'health Nazi' - the interfering busybodies who instruct us on what is good or bad for our health. 

He never drank quite as much as he pretended to, but his consumption was still oceanic compared to modern recommendations, and life without cigar-smoking he would have regarded as barbaric. He came from a big-eating, heavy-drinking, tobacco-consuming generation which paid for their pleasures by dying earlier but - it might be argued - had a happier time before the final call.

Lined up with us against intolerant fascistic fucknuckles are the type of people who fought fascism; abhor censorship; condemn falsification of history; and reject denial of reality, while those ranged up against tolerance and freedom of choice can comfortably be compared with a certain smoke-hating former German dictator - who Churchill defended Britain against - and ISIS in their methods.

This is why when I say we are on the side of the angels here, and that tobacco control tax spongers deserve prison time for encouraging such hate and division in our population, I really do mean it.

The Lost Ethos Of 'Live And Let Live'

It's not often you find common sense in the pages of CiF, but here's some.

I think the whole weight-centred approach to health is extremely unhelpful. It stigmatises people who don't fit into the "acceptable" range, regardless of whether these people are healthy or not. To hold weight loss up as the path to health can be dangerous.

Instead of demonising people for being fat we should start focussing instead on health. [...] We may see a reduction in obesity rates, we may not – but isn't it the obesity-related illnesses we really want to reduce, rather than simply berating people because their bodies don't fit in with guidelines, which are currently in doubt?

We cannot continue to take a one-size-fits-all approach to health. The idea that we simply cut consumption by X number of calories isn't leading to the expected benefits. Could it be possible that we don't know precisely what causes the body to lose weight and maintain that loss?

Well, quite.

But, of course, Graun commenters - being the credulous souls that they are - have no doubt whatsoever. They're all smugly confident that something they read - somewhere they can't quite remember just now, but it was an 'expert' wot wrote it - makes them an unimpeachable source of knowledge in nutrition and exercise.

You see, for those who truly believe in one-size-fits-all, top-down state diktats based on homogeneity of humanity and ecological level epidemiology, we're all the same. Metabolism is constant, individuals are not diverse as in other pet statist areas, and those who are fat have quite obviously brought it on themselves.

The condescending bile rains in on the author who, for some reason, was tempted to write at CiF, probably on the basis that she was talking to 'thinkers'. Well, that's the way they like to view themselves anyway. The truth, as evidenced by this stuff - and believe me, I was rather surprised at the pitiless attitude exhibited by people who, on any other thread, would be bleeding their hearts all over their keyboards - is that they're just as devoid of thinking as the Mail commenters they despise.

They believe 'live and let live' is a shonky Paul McCartney hit from the 70s, rather than an ethos, and derive great enjoyment in pronouncing judgement on the lives of others. Only in this instance, mind, as they're privileged or assiduous enough to be fit and lean (and don't some of them crow about it).

Tomorrow, they'll be back pouring shame on the 'privileged' rich who they see as inflicting the same uncaring scorn on those who can't climb to the same level. In that case, you see, everyone isn't equal or homogenous anymore, and it's the Mail lot who are insensitive and arrogant.

But then, like the child seeing the Emperor, someone more understanding wanders in and breaks the spell.

This is just a prediction, but here goes...

Step 1 - An interesting, informed , balanced and thought provoking article

Step 2 - The tidal wage of ignorant, smug, abusive comments about how easy it is to lose weight, how people only have themselves to blame, how people who are heavier than the government says they should be are disgusting and so on.

I struggle to understand why so many people seem to actively hate overweight people. Is it perhaps because 1) they are easy to identify visually, and 2) they are one of the last societal groups it is still OK to sneer at and feel superior?

Do you know what? I think he's onto something.

While Guardian readers like to portray themselves as more erudite and discerning than Mail readers, they are all occupying two sides of the same coin. Perfectly willing to peer into the lives of others; to condemn anything they personally disapprove of; and eager to shout it loudly.

It's a microcosm of the country, I'm afraid. So comfortable are our lives now that vast swathes of our population have very little to worry about except what other people are doing. Immune to the thought that they might be being manipulated by vested interests - which they are - the UK is a seething mass of people who seem incapable of realising that 'divide and conquer' has worked on them beautifully.

Individuals have always harboured pet hates, the difference between the past and now is that it is increasingly acceptable to exhibit them rather than employ tolerance ... a fast disappearing quality which used to be valued.

In the past, Mary Whitehouse had a following of a few thousand for her curtain-twitching ways. In the 21st century, her brand of interference in the lives of others is embraced by millions.

What a big fat shame.

Public Health Snobbery

In a piece I've been meaning to highlight for a few days, Reason's A. Barton Hinkle has gone all uncharacteristically prohibitionist, so he has. And boy does he make a good point.

Isn’t it about time America banned soccer? Not because of British hooligans or the vuvuzela that has now made it into your local dollar store, although Heaven knows soccer has plenty to answer for on both those scores. No, the question at hand is whether soccer should be banned because of the other costs it imposes on society.

This comes up thanks to a little story from a few weeks back about a new study finding that “heading” a soccer ball can lead to traumatic brain injury.

Okay, so perhaps we don’t need to ban soccer outright. Perhaps we should only require players to wear helmets. But what about sports in general? In the aggregate, they cost society a tremendous lot of money.

According to the National Center for Sports Safety, more than 3.5 million children receive medical treatment for sports injuries every year. Sports and recreation account for a fifth of traumatic brain injuries among young people, which the CDC says have increased 60 percent in the past decade. Overall injury rates for various sports are surprisingly high: 28 percent of youth football players get hurt. So do a quarter of all youth baseball players, more than a fifth of all youth soccer players, and even 15 percent of all youth basketball players. Even gymnastics is responsible for tens of thousands of injuries a year.

Obviously, this imposes huge costs on society. Those injured players who are insured drive up premiums for everybody. Those who are not insured receive charity care, which drives up hospital rates. People who play sports are engaging in risky behavior that hurts us all, for their own selfish enjoyment. Somebody needs to put a stop to this.

Very reminiscent of Joe Jackson's Dog Ban proposal, isn't it? It should be, of course, as both articles sagely lampoon the same selective hypocrisy, as Hinkle succinctly points out.

If you think the preceding paragraph is a barrel of 180-proof rot, good for you. But this is precisely the sort of argument that is being made in other areas of what is subversively known as public health.

Do go read the whole thing as it is delightfully drawn, highlighting as it does a particular inconsistency in the way different behaviours and choices are viewed by those we expect to 'serve' us.

You see, no matter the perfectly transparent nature of costs against benefits that modern statistics gathering affords us, the benefits are ignored only in areas where the state chooses to.

Sport is considered a 'win' because of the intangible benefit to the nation of enjoyment and health. This, of course, despite the fact that healthy people arguably cost every nation more than those who are unhealthy. In Jackson's article, dogs are even harder to justify except by the satisfaction factor - they are also a luxury apart from a few exceptions.

Yet satisfaction and other intangible benefits are routinely ignored where lifestyles of which the state disapproves are concerned.

They're easily measurable, too.

With alcohol harm costing us an estimated £25 billion each year, MPs must act now.

And what a delightfully made up number. However, as has been pointed out many times before, there are costs and benefits to all things. People drink because they like it, the pleasure of the booze is worth the pain purchasing it brings on in the wallet. Thus the value to the populace of booze must be higher than what the populace spends on booze. Over£50 billion then.

We get twice as much out of booze as booze gets out of us, even by your absurd and inflated figure.

So, how do we find ourselves in this position whereby one set of choices are derided as being a financial burden by way of strategic dismissal of plain benefits, while others are lauded thanks to the dismissal of all mention of costs?

Well, it helps if self-interest dictates that vast soundbite-spouting departments would be on the dole if starved of the cash handed to them by the same ideologically blinkered politicians who change the rules with every disingenuous utterance, of course.

But when you boil it all down, there is a massive dose of class condescension and snobbery involved too, as Snowdon recently identified in the case of fat taxes.

As for reducing consumption of "sugar-sweetened beverages" by 7.5ml a day, there are 400 calories in a litre of Coca-Cola, so a reduction of 7.5ml works out at 3 fewer calories per day. This, of course, assumes that people would replace their Coke with water or nothing at all. If they substituted something "healthy", like an Innocent Smoothie, they would wind up consuming more calories because a typical litre of smoothie contains more than 500 calories. (But we don't mention that because middle-class people like them.)

Y'see, the severity of sanctions against practices which 'cost' the NHS is directly correlated with how they will impact the middle class and upwards. When it comes to lifestyles identified as enjoyment for the working classes, the cost is described in terms like 'epidemic', 'crisis', disaster', and 'time bomb', whilst action to be taken against such pleasures is 'urgent', 'vital', and 'essential'. It's awful to see working class people enjoying their little sins, isn't it? Even if that very enjoyment is an intangible benefit in itself, as is the tangible monetary saving.

Whereas, if it concerns something not seen as predominantly for the 'common' or classless - like sport, for example - the same costs are either meekly accepted, or ignored altogether.

Goes some way to explaining why we have politicians of widely differing ideologies all proposing laws which dismiss verifiable evidence in favour of sentiment, myth and blatantly manipulated poppycock, doesn't it? Detached and dispassionate though they believe themselves to be, their self-control is so weak that they simply can't mask that hideous in-built bigoted snobbery.

It's Not Poisonous When WE Profit From It

Following swiftly on from Saturday's article highlighting the effete lily-livers amongst us - for whom even the exhalation of e-cig water vapour is too much for their limp, soulless personalities to deal with - comes news which could finish the poor, self-centred, wheyfaced jellyfish off for good.

"We wanted to replicate the experience of smoking without incurring the dangers associated with cigarettes, and we wanted to do so more effectively than the nicotine replacement therapies currently on the market," said Jed Rose, Ph.D., director of the Duke Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research where the technology is being developed. He presented the data today at the Society for Nicotine and Tobacco Research (SRNT) in Baltimore, MD.

Duke's new technology employs a unique method to deliver nicotine to the lungs. In today's presentation, the researchers show the new lung delivery technology results in rapid absorption of nicotine that provides immediate relief of withdrawal symptoms and also re-creates some of the familiar sensations that are pleasurable to smokers.

Hmm, sounds very much like an e-cig to me.

Duke's new technology combines the vapor phase of pyruvic acid, which occurs naturally in the body, and nicotine. "When the two vapors combine, they form a salt called nicotine pyruvate," explains Rose. "This reaction transforms invisible gas vapors into a cloud of microscopic particles which is inhaled, just like a smoker inhales from a cigarette."

Semantics aside, very much like an e-cig, in fact.

More research is needed to examine the safety and effectiveness of prolonged use of the inhalation system, and to assess its role in helping people quit smoking. But, Rose says if all goes well, he anticipates the product could become commercially available within three to five years.

And this is a really good thing, apparently.

Strangely, current consensus amongst the batty ranks of sociopathic anti-tobacco crackpots is that e-cigs are dangerous, and useless as an alternative to smoking.

• Nicotine is a highly addictive drug, research suggests even more so than cocaine or heroin.
• Nicotine raises blood pressure and cholesterol, increasing the likelihood of a heart attack or stroke.
• Exposure to high doses of nicotine can be fatal for adults; the lethal dose for children is just 10mg.
• Nicotine promotes insulin resistance, also called prediabetes, which is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

• There is no legitimate scientific evidence that e-cigarettes will help smokers quit or reduce their use of any tobacco product.

Yet the same concept, employing the same principle, is mooted by someone in the smoking cessation industry (otherwise known as the pharma R&D department) and all of a sudden it's promoted as a potential silver bullet in the war on tobacco.

These people get more absurd and delusional by the day.

It's the wrong suppliers syndrome again, you see. All one needs do to understand the motives behind manufactured tobacco control hysteria is to follow the money. It was never about health.

Unfortunately for wimpy, addicted finger-waggers, this new development could signal a future of bars and restaurants generously populated by people happily vaping away to their heart's content with full state approval. That's going to cause a right rumpus with the terminally anti-social, and no mistake - there will be tantrums galore!


Can't have people avoiding self-righteous smoker hatred, now can we?

H/T TAB

Fear And Loathing In Orlando

If you enjoy tobacco, here's some holiday travel advice ... don't bother with Florida this, or any other, year.

An erudite Orlando cigar store owner explains recently installed policies in Orange County, including the criminalisation of tobacco products (lit or chewed) on state owned outdoor properties - which includes parks and pavements - and a four cigar per year limit on state employees in their private lives, at pain of a $650 deduction of salary.

Needless to say, there is no valid health reasoning behind any of it.

God bless the 'Land of the Free', eh?

H/T SCB

Sticks And Stones

F2C have covered the story of Jon Gaunt, who yesterday lost a court case after calling Redbridge Health Nazi Councillor, Michael Stark, a 'health Nazi'. They are carrying a recording of the subsequent heated Radio 5 interview with Richard Bacon where the latter defends Ofcom's right to censor radio presenters like, err, himself. Well worth a listen if you have 15 minutes or so to spare.

The Beeb have another go at the story on their website today, in an article entitled "Is it ever OK to call someone a Nazi?" where Mike Godwin (Godwin's Law creator) is quoted thus.

"No-one can justify calling someone a Nazi simply because their views differ on matters of healthcare policy," he says. "When you get these glib comparisons you lose perspective on what made the Nazis and the Holocaust particularly terrible."

'Fraid I have to disagree with you there Mike, old chum.

You see, whilst the use of the word 'Nazi' as an insult may be clunky, lazy and even a bit crass, employing the above logic to argue for not using it is rather simplistic.

The slang term 'Nazi' was used by the allies well before the true horrific nature of Hitler's regime was evident. It described those who were members of the party and who, presumably, subscribed to the policies of that party. The Nazis didn't start by rounding up Jews and gassing them, that was merely the long term aim - the final solution. However, prior to that, Jews - and other minorities - were marginalised and judged as a homogenous group based on illegitimate prejudice.

Yes, yes, yes, Dick - I hear you say - we all know that. What's your point?

Well, Godwin is conflating the holocaust (which was, indeed, particularly terrible) with the Nazi ethos of marginalisation of minorities, which was by no means nice, but isn't comparable with later atrocities. There is a difference.

Prior to the concentration camps, Jews were, for example, held up as mean-spirited, ugly and harmful to other citizens via their business dealings. That was a Nazi policy ... to exorcise Jews from polite society whether they be decent people or not, purely on ideological grounds.

Similarly, Michael Stark's policy of excluding smokers as foster parents took no account of the nature of the prospective foster parents, nor did it consider the potential threat to the health of the children. He merely homogenised smokers as a group to be marginalised, and excluded, for dogmatic reasons.

It is very much a Nazi-esque policy.

Add into the mix the fact that Stark also suggested during the interview that Gaunt's aggressive nature could be attributed to the fact that his foster mother was a smoker, and the insult is even more understandable.

Rejecting the term 'Nazi' on the basis that it is supposed to compare with the murder of Jews, rather than the inherent bigotry that led to there, is deep into straw man territory, in my opinion ...

... though some may very well disagree.

UPDATE:

The ASI suggests that Jon Gaunts loss is Britain's too.
Longrider says Godwin can stick his law 'where the sun don't shine'

An Irrepressible Rage

There's bluster aplenty in the Mail comments at news that Churchill's cigar has vanished.

Spot the difference: How today's airbrushing PC censors decided Churchill could do without his cigar

In the original photograph the war leader has his cigar gripped firmly in the corner of his mouth. But in the other image - currently greeting visitors to a London museum - his favourite smoke has been digitally extinguished.

There have been other recent examples of iconic pictures being airbrushed to remove tobacco from the sight of the terminally-nervous, most notably in France where Coco Chanel and M Hulot have been similarly treated.

Therefore it's only natural to assume that this is all down to political correctness.

Allen Packwood, of Churchill Archives Centre, said he had never known of the leader's cigar being airbrushed out before. 'The cigar is part of what makes Churchill an iconic figure and of course it was very much part of his image as war leader - it went hand in hand with his victory salute and the uniforms he wore.
What's politically correct for 2010 was not politically correct for 1940.'

One commenter attempts to offer a less risible reason for the missing cigar.

I know who did this!

It was not due to Anti smoking it was simply he image was very low res and he took the decision to remove the cigar as it looked better in his opinion!

I guess we will be producing another one soon!

- JZ, London, 15/6/2010 14:25

This doesn't really stack up, though, considering that the 'after' picture looks a hell of a lot less like Churchill than the 'before'. In fact, the post-airbrushing is more reminiscent of Benny Hill rather than Winnie. If that was truly the justification, then he/she must be a woefully incompetent photo editor.

Since the Mail is unable to track down the perpetrator, one can only guess at the real motive, but it may well be down to a rather gross characteristic of the anti-smoker ... pure, unadulterated, vindictive spite.

For example, let me introduce you to Rosie O'Neill, a famous New York socialite at the turn of the 20th century. Here she is pictured in 1907.

Now, if you click on the picture to enlarge it, you may just notice that a cigarette has been crudely scratched out (on the negative) of the fingers of her right hand. This was in the period where puritans and zealots were in the ascendancy prior to Prohibition and tobacco illegality in 15 US states. The irrepressible righteous rage which must have motivated someone to do something like that is bordering on the psychotic.

Remember too, that this was decades before any science had been conducted into the harm caused by tobacco. There was no more to this desecration of a tranquil photo than stark hatred.

The more extreme tobacco haters have always possessed this trait, but now the anti-smoking juggernaut has reached top gear, they have a handy 'health' peg on which to hang their vitriol and bile. It's never been about health, though. This sentiment has always been there, as the picture of Rosie O'Neill proves.

It's why talk of sealed smoking rooms or separate smoking pubs can't be tolerated, even though there is no threat to the health of anyone except those who choose to use them. It's why even the suggestion of an amendment motivates anti-smokers to scuttle from the woodwork spitting condescension, insults, loathing and bigotry.

In a civil society, one would expect such behaviour to be frowned upon, but instead government feed and nurture it against all notions of common sense and reason.

We may never know why Churchill's photo was messed around with, but seeing as there is no valid reason why it was done - and that history, and the present, illustrates the dog in a manger mindset of the rabid anti-smoker - one can't rule out base, naked spite as a motive.

As for Rosie O'Neill, there is a charming end to the story of her photo portrait. Fellow jewel robber David G, who e-mailed me her story, is a superb photo restorer. He said:

"I hand-colorized the original B&W photo and added the cig back into her hand, thus restoring her spirit to its rightful truth of the actual way she wanted to be depicted in the world, post-humously of course since this was her back circa 1907. May her soul now rest in peace."

I think Rosie would heartily approve, don't you?

Anti-Smoking Kills

A while back, I mentioned in passing the death of one of the most prominent American anti-smoking advocates.

Ronald M. Davis, MD, the immediate past president of the American Medical Association and a longtime advocate of healthy lifestyles and ending health care disparities, died Nov. 6 of pancreatic cancer. He was 52.

Well, recently, an equally world-renowned anti-smoker, but one who is especially relevant to the UK, has also passed away.

Tribute to anti-smoking campaigner, researcher

Professor Konrad Jamrozik was Head of the School of Population Health and Clinical Practice at the University of Adelaide and was a tireless campaigner against smoking.

He died as a result of a sarcoma.

Most will never have heard of him, but Jamrozik's four years at Imperial College London culminated in his producing the first research to declare categorically that bar workers were dying as a result of passive smoking.

It was fraudulent nonsense, of course, and easily ripped to pieces considering he employed an astonishing torturing of statistics, and quite laughable mathematics, to come up with his fantasy conclusion. However, it was this study, more than any other, which conned dull-witted politicians into voting for blanket smoking bans in all provinces of the UK.

Jamrozik was 54.

Both died of conditions which have been categorised as 'smoking-related', so therefore in statistical terms, they are counted as one of us.

Sometimes, one must wonder if God really doesn't like anti-smokers very much.

Burn The Fat Bastard!

Unhealthy! Unclean! Untermensch!

40ft effigy of boy eating burger [...] will be burned as part of healthy eating drive

The 40ft giant effigy - which will cost several thousands to make - is to be paraded through the streets of Barnsley as part of a healthy eating drive.

It will form part of the mayor's parade and summer gala in July before finally being set alight to symbolise 'the shedding of unhealthy elements of our lifestyles'.

The controversial idea was dreamt up by NHS and council bosses in the town to fight some of the highest obesity rates in the UK.

So, having achieved denormalisation and pariah status for smokers, and with similar plans for drinkers currently being hammered out, it's time to begin on the fatties.

Not a burning effigy of the food itself, you notice, but the fat boy who succumbs to evil. He must be cast out, demonised, and made to recant from his wicked ways by the Church of Health's state-funded crusaders.

If this is supposed to scare fatties into submission, it's not likely to work according to another professional body this week. Following swiftly on from the British Psychological Society stating that scare tactics backfire, comes the same conclusion from PR professionals.

Audience Communications chief executive Ed Gyde told a group of public health experts at the end of last month that campaigns that used shock tactics to target young people on public health issues had little impact on changing behaviour.

Yet sick-minded, state-paid health authorities continue with appalling initiatives such as burning the fat boy, or deliberately making fat people suffer, and those cuddly Change4Life ads will no doubt soon be abandoned for something more 'hard-hitting' (ie, psychotic) as the cries of 'something must be done' become more and more hysterical.

Organised hatred is not a fascist 1930s excess anymore, it is government policy. And it is being promoted by all three main parties.

I really can't find words to express the extent of my disgust at what these people are doing, what Labour have encouraged, and what opposition parties are quite happy to perpetuate.

It is hideous state-sponsored bullying, pure and simple. This latest effigy idea, especially, has massive potential to result in harm for fat kids, just as previous irrational righteous health drives have led to violence and death.

The picture above is of terrified health freaks burning Jews, whom they blamed for the black death, in the middle ages. Modern health nutters can't get away with physically burning those they hate anymore, but they can fantasise about it, so what better way to satisfy their sick urges than by seeing a burning effigy of a person who offends their holier-than-thou sensibilities.

There is only one way to describe them. Cunts. Every preachy, self-righteous, interfering one of them.

Niemoller has never been more relevant.

There Is No Longer Such Thing As Society

Margaret Thatcher's oft-repeated, out of context, denial of the existence of society generally raises hackles in many. The implication being that the public cherish such an intangible entity and would rue its passing.

Too late. It's long gone.

A headteacher has unlawfully fined the parents of pupils caught smoking in their school playground.

Margaret Peacock, head of Elliot School in Putney, wrongly claimed powers under the 2007 smoking ban to issue the £50 penalties.

Ms Peacock sent letters to the parents demanding the £50 and warned them that if they did not pay, the school's governors would face a £2,500 fine. In the letter, she wrote: “The law, which came into force on 1 July 2007, prohibits smoking on public property.

“Your child was part of a group of girls seen on CCTV who were involved in smoking on the school site and therefore a fixed penalty fine of £50 has been imposed.”

She added: “The governors, as employers and owners of the property, have a duty to enforce this law and have the right to fine any person £50 for breaking the law.”

Yes, she's an arrogant empire building bastard, but that's not the point I'm aiming at here. Just check out some of the appended comments

"I'm disappointed that such a law does not actually exist. What a shame"

"OK,2 things here. She's 14 years old. She was caught smoking in School (be it the playground). I don't want my own children hanging round people like that. I hope aswell as the fine, the child got a hefty detention"

"This story is beyond belief, I can't believe the evening standard actually believe an injustice has been done."

"The teacher should have got a medal instead of a fine"

"I think that head teacher shoudl have been awarded something for such outstanding public service - and the fine should most certainly stay in place"

"What a smart headteacher. And what a dumb Evening Standard ! Whose side are you
on ?"

Forget divide and conquer. The division is now deeply embedded and, if comments such as this are a guide, the public has been comprehensively vanquished.

The debate is no longer whether society exists or not. We've now got to ask ourselves if the British public can be bothered to protect it anymore.

Let's talk about the teacher for a moment. She has massively exaggerated a minor problem, hugely over-estimated her powers as a teacher and, in doing so, misrepresented a legal statute to extort cash from parents. If she did so on purpose, she should be arrested and charged with attempted theft, fraud, or deception. If she wasn't aware of how wrong her initiative was, she is clearly not fit to impart wisdom to kids. Either way, she fully deserves to receive her P45.

Yet many are willing to overlook her woeful incompetence because they hate smokers, young blacks, or incredibly, traffic wardens.

I had some sympathy till I read the mother is a traffic warden, she now knows what it's like to receive an unfair fine.

Irony doesn't get more egregious than this. Yes, the mother is a traffic warden, so therefore it's payback. That appears to be the frame of mind of these odious cock sockets. Hmmm, let me just delve into that particularly perverted logic. A traffic warden imposes hefty fines for fairly trivial matters to raise money for the local authority, which is unfair however legal. So it's perfectly OK for a teacher to bastardise the law and ... illegally impose hefty fines for fairly trivial matters to raise money for the local authority.

Government have divided us so completely that this is the level of self-centred debate now. Do we wish to be beaten with an authoritarian club encrusted with nails, or with glass?

And while everyone goes all Daily Mail, the fact that an ignorant fuckwit has thrown another illiberal stick on the country's bonfire of common sense is almost entirely ignored.

Fuck the law, fuck standing up to horrendous local dictators, in fact, fuck society and community in general. Who needs it?

Alcohol Denormalisation Update

Let's talk again about that 'denormalisation' thing.

That the marginalisation of UK citizens, based purely on whether they smoked or not, was an unspoken policy of Labour prior to their 2005 general election manifesto must be difficult to deny now.

That they lied in said manifesto (repeatedly and in so many areas) is dramatically evident.

Parties lie, they always have done. OK, not as egregiously as this particular collection of incompetent bastards, but it kinda comes with the territory of being ruled by self-serving career fuckwits. MPs with an axe to grind who are fed up with merely flicking rubber bands at each other, spending all day on Twitter, or using our money to dine at Mezzo's, will inevitably turn to their own prejudices if they aren't allowed, by law, to pursue others.

It's the 'denormalisation' thing that is so hard to stomach from a party who profess a need for society to be bettered by a lessening of friction based on fairly irrelevant criteria.

Discrimination by way of race, gender, sexuality, age and disability has now quite rightly been outlawed. As such, the human condition requires five new categories of perceived lesser beings to ostracise.

Smokers are already installed at number one, and Labour - the party of equality - have set in motion, thanks to their fake charity chums and Department of Health truth-benders, a system of green lights to bring other perceived wrongdoers into the denormalisation process.

What is staggering is the swift nature of it all. One minute you're a constructive member of society who just happens to enjoy tobacco, next you're a pariah. A stain on society and someone who should not be allowed to be touch children.

Likewise is the startling advancement of denormalisation towards number 2 on the list - people who enjoy alcohol.

Consider, for example, this story of life in a northern town (eh-oooh-ma-ma-ma).

Parents in Barnsley have been criticised by police for drinking alcohol when dropping off and collecting their children from school.

Complaints have been made about drinking in the street around Doncaster Road primary school in the town.

Councillors and police are to meet to discuss banning drinking alcohol in the streets around the school.

If the ban is implemented police will have the power to confiscate alcohol and drinkers could face a £500 fine.

Det Insp Mark Spooner, of Barnsley's Central Safer Neighbourhood Team, said they had been getting reports of drinking in the streets around the school and also of parents drinking whilst waiting to pick up their children.

He said: "In my view that's clearly not acceptable. It's not acceptable in a modern society and we will put a stop to it."

Ambush Predator covers this well, but it still begs the question "Which law is being contravened here?".

The answer, of course, is that there isn't one. Hence the requirement for a new one to be created.

Not because there is any law-breaking going on, but for the simple fact that people are exercising their right to drink a legal substance where the righteous don't think it is appropriate.

This is why it is deemed 'unacceptable'. Coca-Cola is acceptable, but not anything which consists of a single figure percentage of alcohol. There is no talk of flatulent drunkards turning up at the school gates, merely those whose refreshment choice isn't of the approved kind.

So how does one sell such a daft policy? Why, with a frantic search for a victim, of course.

Officers surveyed 230 residents in the area and 200 of them said the streets were being blighted by problems with drinkers.

And how many of these transgressors were parents dropping their kids at school, one wonders? I guess at nil.

Other issues included under-age drinking, people urinating in streets and alleyways, late-night noise, damage to vehicles and property and litter.

None of which would seem to have any relevance to the story being discussed.

There is a pointed reference to people drinking at 8:30am, which would appear a bit chavvy admittedly, but seeing as the article mentions that the area in question is one of 'deprivation', it might be fair to say that there could be at least one or more parents who are night workers, doing those vital jobs which the righteous no doubt believe are performed by mysterious elves, for whom 8:30am is the end of a fucking long arduous shift. A beer before going for a long sleep, after dropping off the kid you rarely see, would put an entirely different slant on the matter, would it not?

So, still no law broken; still no hint of armageddon by someone quaffing a Carlsberg; still no realistic victim; still nothing, in fact, but a second front of denormalisation.

Best try to pin it all on the sellers of the alcohol then. There is a victim to be emphasised there if you're devious and determined enough.

ORDINARY consumers are subsidising binge drinkers because supermarkets increase the cost of everyday items to make up for discount alcohol sales, a leading doctor has said.

Liver specialist Dr Chris Record said a minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol should be introduced, a move he claimed could lead to a reduction in the cost of a weekly shop.

There it is! The dirty drinkers are costing us all money. It's passive alcohol buying.

Bingo!

Burn them. Damn them all to hell.

So, with number 2 nicely installed on the denormalisation hall of fame, it's next stop number 3. Those disgusting, anti-social lardies.

Don't Labour make you so very proud to be living in such a tolerant, bully and prejudice-free country?

Sick Note

The healthist amish are getting bolder. Letters to The Times, no less ... about a clothes shop in Cheltenham.

Sir, In Cheltenham a branch of a clothing retail chain, Jack Wills, was decoratings its window display with records, bottles, clothes — and cigarette butts. We challenged such a strategy as lacking corporate responsibility in its implicit promotion of smoking. Jack Wills responded that it simply reflected “real life” for the 18 to 22 age group and it is not promoting cigarette smoking. Indeed, four months later — as very much younger teenagers pass daily, gazing at the window and shopping at the store — the cigarettes remain. What message is Jack Wills sending them?

Far be it from me to contradict the wimple and hemp-attired advocates of the new social religion in our fair country, personified in the six interfering busybodies who co-signed this incredibly arrogant windbaggery, but what the fuck has it got to do with them?

Might I remind you god-fearing guys and gals (may the word of our Lord, Smithkline Beecham, be praised), that Jack Wills is a company entirely reliant on its own funding for what it does, and has done for decades. It employs its own capital and reserves to back the business, it pays taxes on its profits, as do the other industries which are reliant on its custom. It is entirely self-reliant and is a profit-making benefit to the country. Out of these profits, it employs lots of staff on a decent salary, one of the obligations of which is to make an employers' contribution to national insurance, on their behalf, at the rate of 12.8% of everything they earn above £110 per week.

In short, Jack Wills and their kind pay your fucking wages, you cunts. In spades.

Listen, you've had your say to a private business, they replied with something akin to Arkell v Pressdram, as they are quite within their rights to do. They have broken no laws, are legally sound, so let it drop, eh?

But no, these astonishingly pompous pricks send a letter to the Times, and a particularly poor one at that, when it comes to concealing certain political leanings.

Jack Wills declares its platform as being “fabulously British”. It is an embarrassment to Britain that a national brand so easily ignores the responsibilities necessitated by its promotional privileges.

Who's embarrassed, you deluded, insular cretins? I'm pretty damn sure - in fact, scratch that - I'm fucking certain, that Jack Wills' order book is rammed with foreign nationals wanting a bit of Old English style. Why else would there be a detailed overseas shipping policy on their web-site otherwise?

No embarrassment there, as far as I can see. But then I'm not a righteous, vindictive, lefty leech like these hideously rotten prodnoses.

Perhaps it is unsurprising that Jack Wills’s perspective is distorted, given that it aligns reflecting “real life” with its declared position as “outfitters to the gentry”.

According to a small, blinkered clique of state-sponsored public sector money pits, the gentry are now not part of real life. Quite why the pompous shitstick who drafted this letter should feel that such a spiteful and class-led comment is in any way relevant should be as alarming as it is insulting.

Right, I'm calling you all out on this one. Guglani, you're a cunt and no mistake for agreeing your name to be headlined for such shit. Likewise Kate Gegg, state-paid Tobacco Lead (cunt) of NHS Gloucestershire, Sister Anne Elyan (cunt) and, it would seem, her cunt relation Dr Sean Elyan. Plus two other NHS Gloucestershire cunts, Dr Sally Pearson and Dr Shona Arora, also paid for by taxes contributed by extreme right wing capitalists like Jack Wills.

Regardless, such advertising, and the persistently flagrant disregard of the local health teams’ concerns and requests to the contrary, is an indictment of corporate sensibilities and a clear ethical failure.

Jesus H Christ! If they wish to disregard the concerns of local health teams, flagrantly or otherwise, it's none of your cunting business. Corporate sensibilites? None of your business. Ethical failure? Listen, when they are mitigating the drain on public resources that you disgusting curd-suckers and mung-chompers present, guess what? None of your fucking business.

Taking this down to basics. These hysterical, overweening, socialist doom-mongers are outraged that, on a high street, kids may see cigarettes and fag butts and be driven to the dark side. So scared were they of the sky falling in, that they put their empty heads together and green-inked the Times ... with a bit of green class envy thrown in for good measure.

So, I expect they must have had palpitations at the huge increase in cigarettes and fag butts visible in every high street up and down the land after the implementation of the smoking ban. But strangely enough, they didn't see fit to write any letters about that.

Guglani. As hypocritical, wasteful, bigoted, class-led, condescending letters go, your collective effort is a doozy.

Fuck off and play chicken with the traffic on the M5, the fucking lot of you.

BNP Still Collecting Labour Own Goals

This is very wrong.

BNP to use EU taxpayers' money to fund chosen causes

Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons, the party's two MEPs, will skim off part of their expenses and salaries to fund a party-controlled "community chest", they told the Daily Telegraph.

People in their European constituencies – North-West England and Yorkshire & The Humber – will then be able to apply for the money in order to fund "worthwhile" local projects, including St George's Day celebrations.

Mr Griffin said: "When we've got money left over, we're putting it back into our constituencies. We've pledged to do so, and we will do so. It will be good for people in our area."

A spokesman for the European Parliament said: "That would not be allowed."

This, however, is perfectly acceptable [1].

Charities are being hijacked and turned into pawns in Labour's class war

And how! Save The Children, Oxfam and Barnardos have all campaigned recently for higher welfare benefits or lower taxes; a Barnardos poll found that 78 per cent of nine and ten-year-olds thought 'the Prime Minister should never break promises'; Christian Aid lobbies strongly against 'trade liberalisation and privatisation' in developing countries.

People who give money to these charities do so in the belief that their donation will go towards the relief of individual suffering. They do not give in order to fund a highly ideological campaign for a particular economic policy or political point of view.

Yet this abuse of 'charity' is said to be in accordance with the law.

Don't forget that our taxes are the sole reason why many of the 'charities' favoured by Labour are allowed to exist at all.

What's more, Labour have relaxed rules on charities to make sure that those they like are given carte blanche ...

The fact is that charity is being hijacked and turned into a branch of politics. For example, last year the Commission relaxed the rules so that charities can now go in for political campaigning.

... while simultaneously stifling the options of those who Labour see as 'undesirable'.

For the truth is that the Charity Commission has been turned into a major weapon in the Government's armoury against independent schools by threatening to force them into actions that would bankrupt them.

Last week, the Commission picked upon two small private prep schools which it said weren't doing enough to 'ensure that people who cannot afford the fees can benefit from what they do'.

This was an act of ideological spite.

Now, who is more wrong here? The BNP who have pledged to return taxpayers' money to the taxpayer, or Labour who not only use taxpayer funds to prop up fake charities of their choosing, but also alter legislation to make sure that only charities with which they agree are allowed to benefit from charitable status?

One is frowned upon for being a spiteful and hate-filled party with a covert agenda to disenfranchise large swathes of the British public on ill-conceived, dogmatic and puerile grounds ... the other is the BNP [2].

Boom, boom.

[1] Yes, comparing the EU with parliament is eggs and cheese, but considering Labour are fully behind the European nightmare (and share the same authoritarian nature), the comparison is valid IMO

[2] Obligatory 'I really detest what the BNP stand for' disclaimer. But for fuck's sake, is it any wonder people vote for them when Labour make it so difficult to distinguish between two parties who both trade on irrational prejudice?

The Ban That Isn't

Via Old Holborn, I see that Lord Darzi has obviously done all the lying he was asked to perform for Labour and has now fucked off, on a fat salary and with a permanent peerage for his trouble.

But before we finally wave a happy adieu to this healthist fudge-packer from the Lords front benches, let me just point out one of his last pronouncements before the Woolsack.

Lord Laird (Crossbench)

To ask Her Majesty's Government what proposals they have to ensure that people do not have to smoke tobacco passively in public places which are in the open.

Lord Darzi of Denham (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Health; Labour)

There is no intention at this time to extend the smokefree law to any outdoor places. To make any non-enclosed place smokefree would require new regulations to be made; that would usually happen only after a process of public consultation.

Really Darzi? Are you sure? Cos the Corrupt Borough of Tower Hamlets* has done just that, apparently.

A PARK in the East End is to become the first outdoor public place in Britain to be made smoke-free.

Parts of Mile End Park in Tower Hamlets will be off limits to smokers from Monday 20 July, with warning signs appearing around the park this week.

Tower Hamlets council will therefore be the first local authority in the UK to extend the smoking ban to open public places**.

All about health, they always said. So, considering there isn't a shred of evidence of harm from secondary smoking outdoors (nor will there ever be), what is the reasoning behind this?

The Mile End Park ban will apply to the children’s area, and is aimed at preventing children from taking up the habit, as well as protecting them from the effects of "passive" smoking.

Beg pardon? Are we talking about the same Mile End Park which extends over the Mile End Road?


And these righteous cocks are worried about a few wisps of smoke? Good grief with frigging bells and whistles on.

This is the kind of hysterical over-reaction that Darzi and his ilk have helped to foster in the feeble minds of empire-builders and bigoted rubber band flickers the length and breadth of the country.

Presumably, the 'preventing children from taking up the habit' bit is that kids seeing people smoking will make them want to do so as well. An insignificant concern at the time of implementing the smoking ban which necessitated hundreds of thousands of smokers being thrust into the view of kiddywinks nationwide, but now vitally important, it would seem. Nothing like a consistent line of argument, is there?

Of course, what the Corrupt Borough of Tower Hamlets failed to mention in their triumphant piss release is that the measure is entirely unenforceable in law. It is therefore an oxymoron, a voluntary ban. On that score, Lord Darzi was correct.

Having travelled through Tower Hamlets just last month (it's a toilet, sorry), one would have thought they would have more to tackle than something so irrelevant, pointless and arrogant as this. But then, while the money is being chucked their way by Darzi's righteous, socialist cock-munching pals, for such schemes, they're going to spend it, aren't they?

* Readers of Private Eye will be well aware of how council leader Lutfur Rahman is turning Tower Hamlets into an exclusively Bangladeshi Borough, and other abuses.

** Not strictly true. A Lib Dem London Borough have already been as stupid.

"They'll Just Have To Die"

At least the fictional DeVille only wanted Dalmatians dead, the real one (above) is happy to see humans dying in order to save a little bit of NHS money.

The clip below is what Jane DeVille-Almond (not only unspeakably evil, but a nut too) came out with on live radio this morning. Anti-smokers have always been bigoted, hateful cunts, but I think this woman has reached new depths, don't you?



She describes herself as a 'Nurse Consultant' on her web-site, where she advertises her services.

Jane runs training courses for nurses, doctors and other health care professionals throughout the UK and has also worked in Europe and the Far East.

Yes, that's right. She advocates a policy of allowing people to die and she trains nurses and doctors. I'm not sure the National Death Service blog quite intended the description to be as literal as that, but there you go.

This anti-smoker jihad, because that's about the only way to describe it, is reaching fanatical proportions now. When someone, anyone, feels that it is acceptable to talk about allowing others to die simply because they disagree with their lifestyle, we are talking a new healthist religion based on pure hatred and the power of money over humanity.

It wouldn't be quite so stunningly vile if there was any credibility in the mathematics. As Mark Wadsworth quite rightly points out, these are merely one-sided statistics designed to further stigmatise a perfectly legal activity. Smokers pay many times more into the tax system than they take out.

The originators are the British Heart Foundation, by the way. You may wish to remember that the next time someone asks you to sponsor them for the London to Brighton bike ride, or when one of their little red tins is rattled in your face outside Tesco. Your pennies would be better spent on a proper charity which doesn't stir up prejudice and bigotry on the back of over £4m of our taxes.

On the plus side. A thick, blinkered shitstick, as is Cruella, will be blissfully unaware that setting off along this road is a start to a completely privatised health service where demand for her services will be more strictly monitored. Once the precedent is set, drinkers, those who eat the wrong foods, participants in dangerous sports, all are fair game for extra charges. Then onto those who injure themselves doing something they shouldn't ... and how long before not adhering to health and safety directives makes your injury 'self-inflicted' and liable to an extra charge?

If it brings down the archaic structure of a health service that is 60 years out-of-date and unfit for purpose, in favour of something sensible which cuts out waste including, dare I say it, idiotic 'nurse consultants' who add no value whatso-fucking-ever, then I'm all for it.

In the meantime, though, let's hope this disgusting, arrogant, hideous cunt, who has made her living leeching off the NHS, is repaid for her trousering of our taxes by contracting something MRSA-like and dying painfully on a trolley in a hospital corridor which hasn't been cleaned due to budget cuts.

Considering her earlier comments, I think I'm being quite generous there.

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"

Skewed Priorities

Unashamedly linking to a post by a certain Dick Puddlecote on the National Death Service blog regarding this story.

Royal Bolton Hospital 'Lose' A&E Patients' Personal Details

More than 1,000 patients of the Royal Bolton Hospital have been contacted after their personal details were lost near the hospital grounds.

The hospital said the documents fell from a waste container which was taking them to be destroyed on 30 January.

The documents contained the names, addresses and dates of birth of patients who had recently attended A&E and other departments.

The hospital has assured patients their care will not have been affected.

Great. It may well lead to an identity theft though.

It's amazing how little information a criminal needs to steal your identity. These are some of the most commonly-used items:

Your full name, date of birth and address – data you are likely to carry in your wallet every day on items such as your driving licence

Or just might be picked up off the ground from a Bolton hospital. Why did they not just shred them?

How could this happen? Surely patients' details should be paramount?

Maybe, except that this was what the same hospital was spending its time (and cash, no doubt) releasing to the media the day before the data loss story hit.

Total smoking ban at the Royal Bolton hospital

SMOKING will be banned from the entire Royal Bolton Hospital site from July 1 this year, health chiefs have revealed.

Patients, visitors and staff are already prohibited from lighting up in any of the buildings and under canopies at entrances.

But the new rule means they will no longer be allowed to smoke anywhere in the grounds of the hospital. Hospital bosses say they have taken the decision because they want to promote healthier lifestyles.

Followed by blah blah smoking bad, rhubarb rhubarb non-smokers more equal, wibble wibble we're right-on.

Fail