To Play The Game, You Should Really Understand The Rules

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but then some with very little knowledge have made a lucrative living on the back of their ignorance.

Take Simon Chapman, for example. Fresh from a triumphant tour of Europe including a London stopover - on expenses, natch - chatting to a dozen of his pals, the increasingly irrelevant fossilised tobacco control brick-brain has been pouring forth again. This time about the upcoming industry GTNF conference.

Ahem, Simon, here is what that link says.

"... in setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, Parties shall act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law"

Parties, Simon, parties. In this context, parties are national governments, not individuals.

Looking down the list of speakers to which the geriatric Aussie plonker links, there is not a single one who is affiliated with any national government anywhere in the world! So his pointing to the WHO's article 5.3 is entirely irrelevant, as is mention of 180 nations who are collectively sending no government officials there.

We should be careful not to be too harsh on poor old Simon in case this is a dementia thing, of course, but it does kinda help if someone involved in the tobacco control scam were to actually know something about the rules that his grubby profession created. Doncha think?

I do sometimes wonder where these strict tobacco control scruples disappeared to when UK and hundreds of other national government officials attended COP6 in 2014 in a country which had just blasted a packed passenger plane out of the sky and was under worldwide sanctions.

It's a puzzler, isn't it?

Crazy Of The Week

As part of a not-even-occasional series, the impromptu Crazy of the Week award goes to ... {drum roll} ... Dr. Michael F. Pesko of Cornell University!

Via the Cornell Chronicle:

Flavor variety is an important component in young smokers’ decisions to switch to e-cigarettes, new research from Weill Cornell Medicine indicates. 

That's a good thing, right? Smokers switching to far safer e-cigs, I mean. Well, apparently not, according to Dr Mick.

The study, published Jan. 20 in Addiction, found that young adult smokers were significantly more likely than adult smokers ages 25 and older to choose e-cigarettes available in an array of flavors. Currently, there are no prohibitions on e-cigarette flavors, which include fruit, candy and dessert – additives that may be especially appealing to teens. Limiting flavors, therefore, may be an effective way to prevent young smokers from becoming “vapers,” while not significantly reducing the use of e-cigarettes among adults trying to quit smoking, suggested lead author Dr. Michael F. Pesko.

Yes, it seems he - a doctor, so be slightly afraid - actually wants to stop young smokers switching to vaping instead! Now, I've seen some ignorant choddery about vaping in my time but that takes the entire biscuit factory.

E-cigs, don't you just love 'em, eh? Exposing stupidity and vacuous 'public health' groupthink for a decade and counting.

H/T Deputy Chief Jewel Robber Sarah

Martin McKee Just Doesn't Get This Liberty Thing

The redhead has posted a fine filleting of Martin "bubblemug" McKee's most recent extremist cockwaffle in the BMJ, I can heartily recommend that you go read it.

However, I think it's useful to add that he also seems to have learning difficulties when it comes to  the concept of freedom of speech on Twitter.

For those who advocate for healthy public policies, social media are both a blessing and a curse. They offer a means of communicating instantly to large audiences. Yet they also offer the opportunity for those seeking to undermine public health to undermine you.

Yes, this is the very essence of freedom of speech Martin. You and your pals have the freedom to pump out your nonsensical garbage and promote it on social media, and those who disagree have the same freedom to object to it via the same medium. It's how freedom of speech works, it's a two way mechanism, d'you see?

If you don't understand that basic tenet of freely accessible social media, perhaps you shouldn't be on there.

Your words are taken out of context and twisted. You are insulted and abused on Twitter.

Completely different to McKee's approach, of course. He'd prefer to twist, insult and abuse in the integrity-free, paywalled, lefty tabloid BMJ.

Some seem to be deeply troubled individuals, who in the past might have spent their days on a soap box in the marketplace, holding forth to anyone who was prepared to listen to them.

Yes, and very useful those individuals in the past were too, I'm surprised committed socialist McKee is so dismissive.

The Chartist movement used Hyde Park as a point of assembly for workers' protests, but no permanent speaking location was established. The Reform League organised a massive demonstration in 1866 and then again in 1867, which compelled the government to extend the franchise to include most working-class men. 

Although many of its regular speakers are non-mainstream, Speakers' Corner was frequented by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, George Orwell, C. L. R. James, Walter Rodney, Ben Tillett, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and William Morris. Its existence is frequently upheld as a demonstration of free speech, as anyone can turn up unannounced and talk on almost any subject, although always at the risk of being heckled by regulars. Lord Justice Sedley, in his decision regarding Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions (1999), described Speakers' Corner as demonstrating "the tolerance which is both extended by the law to opinion of every kind and expected by the law in the conduct of those who disagree, even strongly, with what they hear." The ruling famously established in English case law that freedom of speech could not be limited to the inoffensive but extended also to "the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome, and the provocative, as long as such speech did not tend to provoke violence", and that the right to free speech accorded by Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights also accorded the right to be offensive. Prior to the ruling, prohibited speech at Speakers' Corner included obscenity, blasphemy, insulting the queen, or inciting a breach of the peace.

In the late 19th century, for instance, a combination of park by-laws, use of the Highways Acts and use of venue licensing powers of the London County Council made it one of the few places where socialist speakers could meet and debate.

Once again, we "deeply troubled individuals" find ourselves firmly on the side of the angels - with history in our corner too - while McKee prefers to ally himself (accurately, as it goes) with those in the past who would bully, censor, disenfranchise, abuse human rights and deny political debate.

You can read the rest of his incoherent explanation of how - because a book was published in New Zealand - everyone who disagrees with him in the UK is paid by the tobacco industry here.

Know A Decent Pub Garden? Shhh, Don't Tell

Via ASH Scotland, this written question exchange between a Green MSP and Scotland's anti-smoker in chief is highly amusing (I think even he was probably struggling not to laugh when he read it).

So, apparently, telling smokers where they can smoke comfortably is now considered to be tobacco advertising by the Green Party. In fact, I think I might have transgressed this imaginary law myself by promoting a pub in Bognor last year.

Fancy being an outlaw? Well all you apparently have to do now is post something online saying that some pub or other has a decent garden and you're advertising tobacco. Voila!

We're still discovering how very intellectually bankrupt and absurd anti-smoking lunatics can be, I wonder when we'll reach rock bottom.

Good grief.