Health Guidelines Are A Weapon Against Choice

Be afraid, be very afraid! 

On Friday evening, I went to Maxwell's in Covent Garden for a pre-theatre meal with a friend. The place has been in business for over 30 years that I know of and describes itself as "the home of the freakshake". I'd never heard of a freakshake before I booked a table and I didn't eat one, but plenty of healthy-looking young things around us did.

Today, a vast number of other people found out what a freakshake is for the first time thanks to those hideous health fascists at Action on Sugar. Via the BBC:

The campaign group Action on Sugar is demanding a ban on freakshakes and all milkshakes with more than 300 calories. 

It surveyed milkshakes sold in restaurants and fast food shops in the UK and found they contained "grotesque levels of sugar and calories". 

Freakshakes are milkshakes that also contain chocolates, sweets, cake, cream and sauce. 

The Toby Carvery Unicorn Freakshake came top of the survey with 39 teaspoons of sugar or 1,280 calories. 

That is more than half the daily recommended amount of calories for an adult and over six times the amount of sugar recommended for seven to 10-year-olds.

I'm late to the party as Snowdon has already pointed out that - as is obligatory with 'public health' lobbyists - Action on Sugar and its supporters are blatantly lying about these products in just about every claim that they make. I recommend you go read how jaw-droppingly shameless they are about it at his site.

I'd like to highlight, though, once again the naive and gullible fallacy of believing that health guidelines are nothing to be afraid of and are actually just giving us information. I wrote about it two years ago in response to this tweet from a 'public health' apologist on (mendacious, natch) alcohol advice.

My take on new alcohol recommendations. Which are just that - RECOMMENDATIONS! https://t.co/fr52FyrsoF do what you want, but know the risks!

— Dr Suzi Gage (@soozaphone) January 8, 2016

I only need repeat what I said back then.

This idea that these are just recommendations, and that's all, is incredibly naive. Have these people been sleeping for the past 30 or 40 years? When have guidelines ever remained guidelines without leading to more and more coercion? 

With sugar, the guidelines had barely been altered downwards by the WHO before there were calls from 'public health' that the public isn't following them so we need a sugar tax and TV advertising bans on certain foods. 

There used to be guidelines about what food kids should be given by their parents to take to school, now we have packed lunch inspections and unapproved food being confiscated, while many openly talk about mandatory school dinners because the 'guidelines' are not being adhered to. 

These are just a few examples of many many others I could have chosen (add more in the comments as I'm sure you will know plenty of other examples). This is how health nags work, people, if you haven't noticed that where have you been? 

As a result of these 'guidelines' that we are apparently free not to follow - you know, they're just fuzzy-wuzzy friendly advice, that's all - a whole new door has been opened on alcohol nagging. 

Soon there will be campaigns by the usual suspects to say that the guidelines are not being adhered to. It will not be because the public have taken note of the advice and chosen to ignore it, instead the legions of public health parasites will say that the 'guidelines' are just not working and something must be done about it; that big industry is blinding drinkers to the harms; and that - how convenient - there are now so many more people drinking over the recommended guidelines that government must crack down hard!

And what have we seen today? 'Public health' parasites saying that the 'guidelines' on sugar are just not working and something must be done about it and that government must crack down hard.

By banning a dessert milkshake! We're well beyond the fucking looking glass here aren't we?

We are not free to ignore recommended guidance all the while vicious, draconian, career-puritans like Action on Sugar and their similarly arrogant, sneering elitist chums are indulged by government agencies instead of being recognised as the anti-social cunts that they really are.

As Snowdon describes today, there is not likely to be a ban on Freakshakes, politicians aren't that stupid ... yet (even though we did once see two parties fighting over which was more determined to declare war on a fucking chocolate orange). But it opens an Overton Window which Public Health England will likely exploit.

Public Health England, in its madness, wants to cap calories in milkshakes to 300 per serving. It is Action on Sugar's job to make Public Health England seem relatively reasonable. To that end, they are calling for it to be a crime to sell a milkshake with more calories than this.

Quite. There may not ultimately be a ban, but there will definitely be coercion, and that is because the guidelines or recommended daily amounts are not produced to give us information and then to be left alone - as Suzi childishly tweeted two years ago - they are intentionally produced in order to be a weapon with which to beat us into submission.

We should all be appalled at the very suggestion that any dessert - not drink as Action on Sugar claim - should be subject to a ban, yet this kind of story appeals to the most repellent in society who succumb to the powerful urge to dictate what other people choose to do with their lives. If we want to live in a free country we shouldn't be pandering to such obnoxious and nauseating people, we should be treating them with contempt, yet Action on Sugar - and any number of 'public health' activists in other areas - do precisely the opposite.

If government wants to educate the public with recommendations and guidelines, that's fair enough, but anyone who believes - with the 'public health' industry wildly out-of-control as today proves very much that they are - that those guidelines are just advisory and we are perfectly free to ignore that advice is, quite frankly, a cretin.

Prior to 2007, the very idea that government should be in the business of dictating what businesses can or can't allow their customers to enjoy in their private premises would have been anathema to the country as a whole, but once tobacco control legitimised prodnosery with the smoking ban, it opened the floodgates. Now you just have to harbour some sneering contempt towards what other people are doing that you disapprove of and a 'public health' lobby group - somewhere - has got your back. It doesn't even matter anymore that the only possible harm can be to yourself, the sugar tax proved that. It now also doesn't matter that you are given information to make those choices for yourself, because 'public health' doesn't want you to have those choices available at all.

People who work in 'public health' often bristle when they are referred to as health fascists, but can you think of anything more fascist than dictating how big your pizza is, how much bacon you are allowed to consume, or whether or not you should be permitted to eat a milk-based dessert? After today, the debate is over. It's well past time government stopped listening to these horrendous organisations and starved them of funding; that or drown the miserable bastards in a butt of Marmsey for glorious ironic effect. 

If nothing else, politicians should take away the weapon of 'guidelines' if they want to say we are a liberal country with a straight face. Make it clear that the recommended levels are exactly that, recommended, and that if we choose to ignore them we should be left the fuck alone. 

None Of Your Business, Boston Council

It is odd that recently the establishment seems pretty confused as to why the public despises them. They don't seem to understand that if they act like petty dictators, sooner or later they will piss the entire population off in some way.

Here is a perfect example from Lincolnshire.

Council discuss banning market traders from smoking and vaping at their stalls

We're only on the headline but unless you're an arsehole you should already be thinking, erm, why is it any of the council's business? Well, here's why they think it is, anyway.

Councillors in Boston have discussed whether market traders should be banned from smoking and vaping while working on their stalls. 

The suggestion to ban smoking and vaping from the Boston market was suggested by students from Boston Grammar School, Haven High Academy, Giles Academy and Boston High School, during a recent consultation.

Can you believe that? Market stall holders are taxpayers and also pay rent to the council; their customers are taxpayers; kids at fucking school are not taxpayers. Who did the council listen to? Yes, the ones who don't vote and don't pay taxes.

It is also another example of authorities who are clueless as to current recommendations around vaping. They are entrusted with power at a local level but are exercising it without even bothering to read up on the subject matter.

That aside, this is still quite insane. It is absolutely no business of the council what market stall owners do with their stalls, they are beholden only to their customers. There is no law against smoking or vaping outdoors and Boston Borough Council have no power to implement one. So what fucking right do they think they have interfering?

June Rochford from Frampton said: “I don’t think people should be smoking behind their stalls, especially if it’s a food stall. But then it is still a public place where people can smoke. I have seen a few traders smoking but they often move from behind the stall. 

"If this was imposed they would have to stop everyone from smoking in the Market Place as it wouldn’t work."

Well, yes June, you'd think people entrusted with running a council might have the brains to work those things out for themselves, but they obviously can't.

How this ever reached the level of becoming a council proposal beggars belief. A bunch of propagandised kids think up some hare-brained nonsense and the local authority leaps gormlessly into action despite it being an utter absurdity.

Now, do you think they consulted the market traders or their customers before embarking on such a wild goose chase? No, of course they didn't.

Fortunately, the idiotic policy dreamed up by a load of spotty indoctrinated kids has been shelved because the thick-as-shit council eventually had to concede that it was a waste of everyone's time and money to even consider it. But doesn't it show you the mentality of the modern politician? It is now a definitive them (who think they know better) versus us (who they see as ignorant and incapable of making our own decisions). No wonder voters all over the country are increasingly eager to give the political class a kick in the balls when we get to the ballot box. One day they might get the message and start respecting the people they serve. I'll repeat that, the people they serve.

As one trader pointed out, instead of a daft policy which will require rigorous enforcement, why not just leave it up to a natural - and free to taxpayers - method of regulation which has worked for millennia. That is, the customer is always right.

“Customers will enforce that – if somebody is selling goods and they have a fag-end hanging out their mouth then customers will make their own decisions.”

Quite. If customers are still buying regardless, they are obviously not bothered and the council are just dreaming up makework to justify their existence. Readers at Lincolnshire Live certainly don't give a penguin's pecker about it.

It looks like Boston is another council which has far too much time and money on its hands and could do with more government restrictions on their budget. Slash away, Chancellor, on this evidence there is still much more council waste left to cut. 

Jamie Oliver And Other People's Children

Over the weekend, the Telegraph published an retch-inducing obsequious puff piece on Jamie Oliver which - inadvertently, I reckon - gave an astonishing insight into the dictatorial mind of the sanctimonious snob. It's behind a paywall but here are some hideous lowlights.

The night before I’m due to meet Jamie Oliver there are whispers from his headquarters of a big announcement. ‘All will become clear!’ they say. The next morning, news duly breaks that the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, will ban junk-food advertising on the capital’s Tube and bus network, as well as the opening of hot-food takeaway shops within 400 metres of schools – the culmination of 28 months of close collaboration between Oliver and Khan. 

‘It’s a mega day,’ Oliver tells me at Jamie HQ

He is happy, apparently, because a clueless attention-seeking Mayor has proposed a pointless ban on advertising - which will have no effect whatsoever except to kill advertising revenue and reinforce the idea of censorship while reducing public choice - and stated that he is intending to all but eradicate new takeaways in the capital unless they are to open in a park or the river Thames, as you can see by clicking to enlarge the graphic below.

It won't surprise you to learn that evidence to date - you know, that evidence thing that politicians like to pretend they look into - shows that all this will do diddley-squat for obesity rates in London.

Mega, huh?

No care for the businesses which will be affected and no care for the choices that he - in his misplaced ignorance - is depriving the rest of the public. Still, it makes his multi-millionaireship happy, so screw everyone else, eh?

But, incredibly, that isn't the astonishing bit. How about this?

‘I’ve been through five prime ministers. Mr Blair was the first person to admit that the state was responsible for children’s health between the ages of four and 16.

The state is responsible for children's health? Not parents? Can you think of anything more repugnant than that? Well, fear not because Jamie can.

The state was doing nothing about how this group are fed, while being right on the case of dog food.’

Did he just compare other people's children with dogs? Or was he comparing a Big Mac with a can of Pedigree Chum? Sometimes you just can't tell with obsessed hysterical extremists, can you?

Anyway, let's crack on.

He’s been accused of being the ‘fun police’, running a ‘nanny state initiative that penalises poor people’, of endangering the revenue of advertising agencies, being hypocritical, upsetting American mothers, and failing to understand what it is to be poor and unable to afford healthier food.

All of which is true, I'd say, apart from the affording healthier food. Healthy food is far cheaper than less healthy alternatives, but hard-working people (who are not paid to be in the kitchen throwing together recipes with ingredients they just have lying around the house like Jamie) make a trade-off with the time they have available. It's the time they can't afford, not a 45p cucumber.

‘Yes,’ says Oliver. ‘I don’t like [the criticism]. I got my arse kicked left, right and centre for 10 years. It makes me feel sick, but defending my position is more important. On the whole,’ he adds with some irony, ‘all of the people I care about most – obese children and their parents – are the ones who don’t like me.’

Well maybe that's a hint, Jamie old boy, that they'd prefer you to leave them alone to make their own choices. Reason being I think they know more about what's best for their families than you fucking do. 

Why don’t you just sell the lot and become an MP and continue your fight in Parliament? The suggestion seems genuinely to shock him; indeed, he stops talking for at least three seconds. ‘But you wouldn’t want me in Parliament,’ he says eventually. ‘I’ve done nothing clever in 15 years,’ he says. ‘It’s all common sense. All I’ve done is create conversations that newspapers report on. Having my own children changed me. It made me realise that those annoying kids down the street were someone’s children, and so they mattered.

I think the operative words there, Jamie, are "someone's children" as in not yours.

Childhood obesity is the first thing and the last thing I think about every day, which isn’t normal.’

No it's not, it is obsessive and you should seek help for your addiction to snobbery and bossing people around.

However, the most stunning part in the entire article has to be this.

Oliver’s obesity campaign faltered when Theresa May’s 2016 legislation (Chapter One) included a tax on sugar content in drinks but nothing about restrictions on junk-food advertising. ‘It’s absolute bollocks that parents are totally to blame for childhood obesity; incompetent legislation is to blame.’

Let's turn that round a tad. If parents are not to blame, he must be saying - in his knuckle-dragging way - that they are not to be judged responsible for what their kids eat. That, instead, the state should usurp parental choices and - as Oliver's daft policies show - dictate the food supply without even a nod to evidence, practicality, efficacy or financial reality. Nope, just feels.

For Oliver to say - with a straight, albeit slack-jawed fat-tongued, face - that the state is responsible for what kids eat, and not parents, is incredibly sinister. Once it is accepted that the state can involve itself in something as fundamentally private to families as what parents feed their children - in fact that it has more of a role than parents themselves - we are almost through looking glass.

I mean, Christ, give them that kind of power over parental choice and politicians will want to name kids next! 

"their children, Poppy Honey, Daisy Boo, Petal Blossom Rainbow, Buddy Bear and River Rocket". 

OK, not a great example.   

Screw Bar Workers, What About Middle Class Diners?

Remember that there smoking ban that was all about protecting bar workers from the terrors of secondhand smoke? Well apparently now it's more about protecting middle class pub diners from being slightly inconvenienced. But then we kinda knew that all along, didn't we?

Smoking ban to be extended to outdoor areas where food served 

The Government is to extend the ban on smoking where food is served to include outdoor areas.

Fine Gael Senators have tabled a private members motion calling on the Minister for Health Simon Harris to change legislation or issue directions via a statutory instrument to address the gap in current legislation. 

The initiative was spearheaded by former minister for health James Reilly, who has said it should no longer be acceptable for people to smoke where others are eating.

Personally, I don't know why they don't eat inside if they're that bothered. They were given every fucking indoor space in Ireland in 2004. It seemed quite important to them back then.

An unintended consequence of the smoking ban has been the prevalence of smokers in the outdoor areas of bars, cafés and restaurants, Mr Reilly said.

It was quite obvious that this was the only possible consequence. In fact, it was a feature of the legislation, not a bug. Who's to blame for that you hideous prohibitionist fuckstick?

“Anyone spending their hard-earned money in a restaurant or café should be entitled to enjoy their meal in a smoke-free environment.”

Why? Do they own the business? Why are they 'entitled' to anything more than other customers who pay the same money for the same goods and services? Smoking outdoors is not harmful so it should be up to the business to decide, not a sweaty, gurning, obese dangle-belly politician with a pathological downer on smoking.

But the idea he should butt out of business decisions "horrifies" this particular odious walking heart attack.

Forest’s John Mallon told RTÉ’s Today with Sean O’Rourke show that the market should decide if restaurant owners are willing to make this decision. 

However, former Minister for Health James Reilly, who is calling on the Government to extend the ban on smoking where food is served to include outdoor areas, said he was horrified at the suggestion that the market decide health policy. 

Mr Reilly said it was no longer acceptable for people to smoke where others were eating.

No it's not. Most people couldn't give two shits about it. Only vile bloviating pissbags care that much. And if their limp sensibilities are offended so much, perhaps they should go have lunch with Aunt Maud in the local day centre instead, a pub is really not the place for them, or shouldn't be anyway.

But this, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the pièce de résistance in the latest piece of anti-smoking lunacy dressed up as health concern.

Mr Reilly said he was not saying there shouldn’t be outdoor areas for smokers, just that the area should be separate from where food is being served. “This is a killer product.”

So it's only a killer product when there is food around? Do these cretins ever listen to themselves?

It's quite simply just yet another 'public health' attack on things that those 'common' people enjoy. It's a class war by the elite directed at those who they find a bit icky. Snobbery of the very worst kind, driven by a nasty overweight fascist who should look in the mirror occasionally and sort his own health out before passing bullying legislation against others. They never cared about bar workers, it was just a ruse. Now they care so little about them they are happy to see their employers go out of business so middle class snobs can enjoy their one two-for-a-tenner meal once every two months without being bothered by those frightful regulars who keep the pub afloat.

The Augean Stables had nothing on the amount of effluence swilling around 'public health' circles at the moment. It's going to be a Herculean task to rid the corridors of power of nasty dictatorial arse-wipes like Reilly. Where are the brave politicians who will stand up for the people and just say fuck off?

May God rot every one of these vile meddling bollock-chinned bastards. 

The Sugar Tax Con Trick

So the sugar tax was introduced on Friday and on social media many are starting to wake from their slumber as to what it all means.

We are already seeing smaller chocolate bars being sold for the same price, popular drinks that have been national favourite for decades being effectively discontinued, and meal deals being wrecked at the altar of 'public health' fantasy.

The public are being screwed out of their cash for no good reason, and - as Mark Littlewood writes today in The Times - it is hypocritical government which is doing the screwing.

[I]nterventions such as the sugar tax undermine the government’s narrative in other key areas. As leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband struck a chord when he campaigned on behalf of the “squeezed middle” and talked of a cost of living crisis. In the early stages of her premiership, Theresa May said she would be a champion of “just about managing” households. With real wages having been obstinately flat for years and house prices staying high, politicians of both stripes have been keen to empathise with families whose modest budgets barely allow them to purchase the essentials of life. 

Consumption taxes, such as the levy on fizzy drinks, have a measurably regressive impact. They chew up a relatively high proportion of the incomes of those least able to afford them. According to the Office for National Statistics, these types of taxes account for nearly a quarter of the disposable income of the poorest 10 per cent in British society, compared with a more manageable 13 per cent for the richest decile. The next time a Tory spokesman sympathises with those who are struggling to get by, the electorate may ask why the government is gearing the tax system to make it more difficult for those on budgets to afford staple products.

If an industry conspired to ramp up prices in an entire sector as this tax does, it would be condemned as a cartel by government and be subject to scandal and heavy scrutiny. We might expect to see price caps and business owners would likely be prosecuted for fraud.

Yet the government is the one doing the price-gouging and impoverishing the poor, so apparently it's OK. It's not OK and is a national scandal that the government should presume it ever has the right to decide what we are allowed to eat and drink!

But what I find most interesting about this whole grubby affair is the huge con trick that has been played on the British public.

For example, we are told that this measure is required due to the spiralling levels of child obesity. Let's look at those from the latest HSCIC figures, shall we?

The increase - if there is one - is minimal and even that is tempered by the fact that the NHS admits the stats up to 2009 were under-estimated. There really isn't a "crisis" in child obesity.

And even if there is, it has nothing to do with sugar.

And certainly nothing to do with soft drinks consumption either considering it has remained flat for over a decade, with low sugar alternatives making up a greater proportion of that in recent years. If, like me, you are a child of the 70s and 80s, you will remember that we drank much more fizzy drinks than kids today and there were far fewer low-sugar options. We had a lot more tooth decay than kids today but we were - according to the health 'experts' - far slimmer. So how can anyone say it's the sugar causing this mythical obesity crisis? It's quite clearly not.

Yet we are told there is enough evidence about the evils of sugar in food and drink to fleece the public to the tune of £240m to £500m, depending on how trusting you are in the power of the coercive state to make predictions.

It's complete arse-biscuits.

Instead, what has happened is that the public has effectively been brainwashed into believing this fantasy, led by 'public health' cranks with an agenda to promote and a bank balance to feed with grants and advocacy salaries.

Which is why we have the bizarre situation where even articles like Littlewood's, which calmly debunks this paranoia and government over-reach, are always followed by comments from people who just can't get their head around how they have been comprehensively conned. And, to be honest, it's because many of them really want to be conned; they are eager for the poppycock they are fed to be true.

They fall into three camps, but all are based on good old-fashioned selfishness, ignorance and class hate.

Firstly, you have the look-at-me virtue-signaller. These are the ones who will boast about how they always cook food from the healthiest ingredients at home, will ban their kids from McDonald's and never have poison like fizzy drinks in the house. Oh no, they are a better class of person, not like those common oiks they see in the High Street. They are so much better than you and can't wait to jump onto radio phone-ins to explain at length how very perfect they are compared to the rest of society. They will often also requisition your kids as their own by saying action is necessary to save "our children". Ironically, these holier-than-thou types were banging on in the 90s about how they give their kids orange juice not Coca-Cola, but will never admit that now that orange juice has been demonsed too.

Secondly, we have the ones who claim their interest is because they are being unduly taxed for the sins of other people. They will scream about the cost to the health service as if this is costing them personally. The cost to the health service argument is shonky at best considering we're told the obese die earlier than those fine, upstanding healthy people thereby saving a fortune in government's biggest expenditure, pensions. But it always amuses me to think there are people around who honestly believe if everyone was slim they'd get a reduction in taxes. Of course they wouldn't. These people are actually arguing that the sugar tax is good because it will cost the NHS less (which it won't) and that might benefit them (which it won't) so are happy to see the government whack taxes on products that they may buy (which definitely will cost them). They should look up Parkinson's Law.

And lastly, we have the type who knows very well that this is a load of bollocks but just like the fact that sin taxes are regressive. They will leap on any old nonsense to justify a tax which punishes the poor, for the simple fact that they hate people who are not like them. They don't care whether the sugar tax will work, they are simply a modern version of a Victorian aristocrat who would sneer at the choices of the poor. It is now considered shameful to advocate an income tax rate for the low-paid which is higher than that for the rich, but positively encouraged by government to support disproportionately gouging the less well off for products which the rich can afford quite nicely, thank you.

It should be repellent that so many people support this assault on their fellow citizens, but politicians have been conned as much as the rest of society has. The facts show that sugar consumption has been falling consistently for decades; that sugary drinks consumption in the UK has been declining; that taxing that consumption - which makes up such a tiny proportion of our diets - will have little effect on what we buy let alone our waistlines; and it has proven to be a failure wherever it has been tried.

But we still try it because ... snobbery, as Alex Deane described at the time it was announced.

Virtue-signalling politicians, bureaucrats and celebrities feeling tremendously good about themselves because they’ve bossed the rest of us around, and imposed a stealth tax on those least able to afford it.

Still, it's only a small imposition isn't it? The government punishing the poor over fizzy drinks will be the end of the matter. Well not really, no, and if you believe that my local pub has a smoking room you can buy at a decent price.

The sugar tax is born out of the same vile and scum-infested middle class base as the smoking ban. The only difference being that back then it was smokers, now it is the overweight. The precedent was set a decade ago, a precedent which gave a green light for the most hideous in society to point fingers, criticise the choices of others, publicly vomit insults, and demand government force be brought to bear on people who they feel offended at seeing. That's all, just seeing!

The sugar tax proves that an entire population can be conned into the most grubby of sentiments purely by the repetition of lies designed to prey upon hidden prejudices. History has seen this before with disastrous consequences. 

The Illiberal Ruinous And Pointless Smoking Ban

As we approach the tenth anniversary of the smoking ban in the UK - otherwise known as "literally a confidence trick" by Debs Arnott - there will be a hell of a lot of unadulterated garbage in the media about how it has ushered in a world of rainbow-coloured unicorns and a national breeze of pixie dust.

So it's good that Forest have today released a report detailing how it has wreaked carnage on businesses, freedom of choice and property rights for no valid good reason whatsoever, you can read the report here.

Written by Rob Lyons, it runs through the major issues with the ban, and is fully referenced including this quote from Lord Lawson which sums up the whole ignorant charade perfectly.

"Passive smoking is an example in which [government] policy demonstrates a disproportionate response to a relatively minor health problem, with insufficient regard to statistical evidence."

Of course, there is no decent evidence whatsoever that passive smoking harms the health of others, however much the massed ranks of state-funded tobacco control industry parasites try to pretend it does. It's simply a pre-determined and long-concocted lie to bully smokers, and is backed up with junk science from soothsayers, mouth-breathers and snake oil salesmen waving shrouds while burying their snouts deeper into the trough of taxpayer cash.

The ban on smoking in private places - yes private, to say it is on public places is just another mendacious tobacco control sound bite - has also, as Lyons points out, never enjoyed popular public approval. There was no demand for it amongst the public, with the ONS data consistently showing that there was little support for the draconian and fascistic blanket ban that the hospitality industry had imposed on it, as I have written about many times before.

Since 1996, they have split the responses between those who approve of an outright ban, those who favoured some restrictions, and the numbers calling for none at all.
The figures up to 2005 were: 

2003: 20%, 70% and 8% respectively.
2004: 31%, 63% and 5%
2005: 33%, 61% and 5%  

Note that the first figure is those in favour of what has now been inflicted on us. The significant majority didn't want it.

Data taken from the ONS here

Lyons also comments on how the ban has had almost no discernible effect on smoking rates - the true reason for its implementation if you talk to any tobacco controller privately, it certainly wasn't about the health of bar workers - with evidence actually showing that, if anything, it slowed the long term decline in smoker prevalence.

He also runs through the barking mad and scientifically impossible 'heart attack miracles' and other trademark tobacco control industry junk science thrown together to try to justify the ban, but his assessment of the damage to the hospitality industry is truly damning!

- The smoking ban has however had a major impact on pub closures that increased significantly following bans in Scotland, England and Wales. 

- Since the introduction of the smoking ban in England in July 2007 over 10,500 pubs have closed, almost 20% of the pub estate a decade ago. In Wales over 860 pubs have closed, approximately 21% of the pub estate in 2007. 

- Pubs hardest hit by the smoking ban were in urban, inner-city or economically deprived communities. 

Far from 'celebrating' the smoking ban in a few days time, we should be appalled that something so illiberal, regressive and incredibly socially damaging was passed without public support - and without any credible scientific evidence to back it up - all at the behest of a small clique of greedy elitist snobs working to continue being in receipt of state cash, or as Lyons put it:

In effect, those who seek to prohibit smoking are placing their own views and prejudices ahead of those who choose to smoke. Not only do anti-smokers have an aversion to smoking – a perfectly reasonable question of taste – they also think other people shouldn’t smoke, that it is wrong to enjoy something they themselves dislike or have weaned themselves off. 

Lyon's Forest report doesn't forget to note the huge role the ban played in greasing the slippery slope, either. Can anyone, for example, imagine that e-cigs would be banned in pubs if it weren't for the fact that cigarettes have been. Yet it is increasingly more difficult to find pubs that allow vaping. As vaping ban after vaping ban is implemented in bars, clubs, hospital car parks, beaches and squares up and down the country, tobacco controllers who claim to be supportive of e-cigs remain totally silent. For them, the jewel in the crown of the smoking ban is too precious for them to lift so much as a finger to protect vapers.

This is why I continue to say that the Health Act 2006 was the most socially destructive legislation the country has ever had to suffer. It wasn't about bar workers, it wasn't about health, it was about a small bunch of prohibitionist fucksticks taking control of civil society and ripping apart the fabric of tolerance and free choice. Lyons make the very same point.

What we are seeing is creeping prohibition driven by the precautionary principle, the idea that if something is potentially harmful it must be regulated out of existence regardless of the evidence or concepts such as choice and individual freedom. Whether we smoke or vape, consume alcohol or sugary drinks, adults must be free to make informed choices for ourselves. Moreover it’s in the interests of non-smokers to support the right to make informed choices because once we establish the principle that governments can intervene to prevent us from doing perfectly normal (albeit potentially ‘unhealthy’) things like smoking we’re on a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to further restrictions on personal choice.

Quite.

The report ends with a call for a more liberal and sensible policy, and for a properly independent assessment of the damage the ban has caused rather than the disgraceful tobacco control industry whitewashed farce that tried to pass itself off as one.

As Snowdon quite rightly observed yesterday in his article astutely entitled "10 years of lying about the smoking ban":

There is nothing to celebrate in this act of cultural vandalism. We should be having a wake. 

Indeed we should.

Do go read the Road to Ruin report in its entirety by clicking here, it is highly recommended. 

An Outbreak Of Truth On The ASH Twitter Feed

Unless the cleaners got hold of ASH's Twitter feed on Good Friday or something, was this a fleeting glimpse of real life intruding on the fantasy economics they usually try to present to the world?

The influx of cheap, illicit cigarettes into Malaysia has taken a heavy toll https://t.co/3VCfEbjSrL @MsiaChronicle

— ASH (@ASH_LDN) April 14, 2017

Indeed it has, as the article they link to describes.

THE numbers have reached a staggering level. For every two cigarettes smoked in Malaysia, one is an illicit cigarette. 

In other words, the share of the cigarette black market has reached 57.1 per cent as at December 2016, based on Nielsen Cigarette Study 2016.

By Christ! How could this sorry state of affairs have happened?

Right now, illicit cigarettes are priced between 17 and 25 sen per stick at the retail level. 

This compares with 85 sen per stick for legitimate cigarettes. This includes the excise rate of 40 sen per stick. 

No wonder the industry volume for legitimate cigarettes has been on a sharp decline. Last year, the volume fell 25 per cent to just eight billion sticks from 2015, much less than the number of illicit cigarettes.

Perhaps that is the part - about tobacco companies not selling as many legal cigarettes - which attracted ASH's attention, I dunno. It's true to say that the richly-funded tobacco control Goliath's emphasis has long since become a crusade against industry rather than having anything to do with health, so that would fit very nicely.

Except it's not the whole story (emphases mine).

One worrying effect is that the number of smokers is on the rise, not on the decline. 

Seven out of 10 youths are buying illegal products, according to the Health Ministry. 

According to the Health Ministry’s Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2011, the number of smokers in Malaysia was 4.75 million. 

Subsequently, the ministry’s National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2015 – Reports on Smoking Status among Malaysian Adults reported that the number of smokers increased to five million. 

However, cigarette prices during the same period increased by an average of more than 30 per cent. If cigarette price increases really do have a correlation with smoking cessation, the percentage of smokers would have dropped.

Blimey! Do they mean that applying excise to cigarettes to an extortionate degree inevitably leads to a burgeoning black market? But ASH have always said this is nonsense, a figment of the tobacco industry's imagination in fact!

Still, I suppose in Malaysia there could be a partial solution to this 'problem' with the advent of risk reduction products like e-cigs, couldn't there? Yeah, well kinda.

Looking at the treatment of vaping in Malaysia is like entering a frightening 1984 world of doublespeak. The Deputy Education Minister is quoted as saying: “We must go to schools. And parents must be aware that e-cigs and vape are no different from tobacco products… We must ‘de-normalise’ smoking.” 

And as if vape replacing smoking wasn’t denormalising smoking to begin with, the paper repeats the hysterical calls from the Association of Adolescent Health: “[We] urged the Health Ministry to take aggressive steps to protect our youth from the harmful effects of using e-cigs or vape, by implementing a complete ban on the manufacturing, distribution and marketing, of the devices.”

So, faced with too many Malaysians smoking, both young and old, the response from the country's government - which apparently doesn't like the prevalence of smoking though you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise from their daft policies - is to ramp up tobacco taxes to ridiculous levels and stamp hard with a steel toe-capped Doc Marten boot on any potential alternative.

Now, considering ASH are the most vocal organisation in the UK for punishing the poor by demanding eye-watering tobacco tax rises; were frenzied in their support for the EU's TPD which puts huge concrete blocks in front of vaping as an alternative; admitted they don't give a shit about collateral damage; and have been utterly silent as vape ban after vape ban is introduced in the UK, I suppose we should find it refreshing that they are tweeting about articles proving their approach is irresponsible and not even remotely to do with health.

And if they are going to choose a weekend on which to repent on Twitter, admit their sins, and illustrate why their policies are counter-productive, self-serving, mendacious and retarded, the Easter one is as good as any.

Meanwhile, it looks like we here are still firmly on the side of the angels because, for years, we have been warning that price prohibition and over-regulation will have this effect. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, huh?

H/T @d4nno_

More Limp Vaping Support From ASH & PHE

The ASH Twitter page believes in quality over quantity, which is why they proudly linked to this article in one of only two tweets today.

Public Health England: Vaping in the home: advice for parents - by Jo Locker https://t.co/oaxtcEvCnC

— ASH (@ASH_LDN) October 5, 2016

Here are a couple of interesting snippets.

In contrast to the known harm (yeah, right - DP) from secondhand smoke, there’s no evidence so far of harm to bystanders from exposure to e-cigarette vapour and experts have assessed the risks to be extremely low.

So therefore, an article entitled "Vaping in the home: advice for parents - by Jo Locker" should consist of a few lines after that saying it's none of their business, doncha think?

Course not, because this article was written by the £500m per year tax-draining Public Health England, and they have to be seen to be doing something with the money. So what does this guidance entail?

A parent who quits smoking in favour of vaping is one fewer smoking role model. However while they will no longer be modelling smoking, they will be modelling vaping.

Erm. And?

For those who find that allowing vaping indoors helps maintain a smokefree home, they might find it helpful to permit it. But those who don’t have a problem in keeping their home smokefree might want to consider what can be gained from permitting vaping indoors.

How about the fact that it is polite to allow people to do things they enjoy, and if - as the previous assertions imply - there is no harm, where's the problem?

They may as well be saying "be utterly selfish, do what you think is best for you and you only in your house, fuck visitors and anyone else who vapes". But then, as I've said many times before, tobacco control is built on selfish prejudice and greed and preys on the opinions of anti-social bigots, so it's hardly surprising.

More to the point though, is why PHE even thought this was a good way to spend our money. Why the blithering fuck is it any concern of theirs to tell others what they should be doing in their own homes? If householders are worried about vaping it's up to them to research it themselves. It might result in perverse outcomes from those sad enough to seek out the scaremongering stories just to suit their own prejudices, but how on Earth do PHE (and ASH) think that advice is going to counteract such attitudes?

They have just supplied two fantastic excuses for bigoted individuals to cite in banning vaping in private homes, and they can now say it is sanctioned by an authority such as Public Health England. This is how ASH's 'support' of vaping generally goes. It is half-hearted at best, mostly insipid, and always offers a nice option or two for those of a prohibitionist mentality to seize upon. PHE's is generally a load of over-cautious and unhelpful horse-cock too.

In other news today, ASH Scotland were asked to object publicly to a hideous policy from Aberdeen Council which bans smoking and vaping outdoors and has no other goal except to bully smokers and vapers.

@ASHScotland @NHSGGC Will you please speak out against the inclusion of vaping in this? Goes agnst good work done.. https://t.co/6p6E6R1lFe

— Andy Morrison (@GMFCfantasy) October 5, 2016

Here is the 'vape-friendly' organisation's robust and outspoken response.

So, having subtlely changed their mission statements in 2010 to include nicotine in their definition of smoking and stay clinging to the gravy train, the Action on Smoking and Health collective have morphed into Inaction on Vaping Bans (and if you want to install one we won't get in your way, in fact we'll quietly hand you the tools and even "fully welcome" them).

I despise these so-called 'friends' of vaping, but even I didn't expect they'd eagerly tweet advice which advocated occasions where vaping bans are appropriate in private homes so soon. The plan must be coming along nicely if they're all that comfortable.

Remember, we're the angels; they're bound for hell.

Home Smoking Bans: The Next Confidence Trick

Back in 2009, Deborah Arnott was caught off-guard and revealed the true extent of her prohibitionist ambitions.

It must have caught the fake charities as cold as it caught Forest though, as they were all wibbling at cross purposes.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), said the charity was in favour of a ban on smoking in cars.

The risks were not just to children but to adults suffering from conditions like heart disease, she said.

That's the problem with being caught off-guard, Debs wasn't able to tailor her junk science quickly enough to the nonsense in hand so had to just grab what she was working on at the time - the total ban on smoking in cars, with or without children present. An interesting view into the future, I thought.

At the time, she was selling a policy of banning smoking only in cars containing children. She was very clear about that and would have told every MP who would listen that it wasn't an assault on property rights at all, oh no, merely an issue of protecting kids from a mythical exaggerated danger that her and her professional bansturbators fabricated to keep the gravy train going.

That unguarded comment in 2009 revealed that she may have had it at the back of mind but we now have proof positive that she was lying to politicians back then; a total ban on smoking in cars has always been her long-term plan.

It was never about children just as it wasn't ever about bar staff, @ASH_LDN are incorrigible liars https://t.co/r3k5KAbvJq pic.twitter.com/vgajR2On42

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) October 1, 2016

It seems that she has now let slip, via The Guardian, another future policy goal; a ban on smoking in private homes.

Deborah Arnott, the director of Action on Smoking and Health, said: “While the ban on smoking in indoor public places resulted in significant health benefits, thousands of children are still exposed to smoke in the home and elsewhere. Growing up in a smoke-free environment is one of the best ways of ensuring that they are not attracted to smoking and lured into a lifelong addiction and ill-health.”

We all knew it was an end-goal no matter the oleaginous weasel words Arnott and her pals like to spew about their respect for personal rights. But that's the clearest sign yet.

Arnott once proudly boasted of the "confidence trick" she employed to con politicians into depriving private businesses of their right to determine their own policies on smoking in their premises. I hear that at the recent Royal Society of Medicine event, which Simon Chapman's fans all avoided, she was equally gushing about how she had conned parliamentarians into going for plain packaging.

Which begs the question. How do you think Arnott is going to convince MPs that banning people who own their own homes from smoking in them is a wholesome and liberty-loving idea?

She'll have a con trick up her sleeve no doubt, liars always do.

A 44 Year Monopoly

Via this blog's esteemed mascot, it has been revealed that ASH has yet again been thrown a wad of our taxes with which to bully smokers and generally be a right royal anti-social and destructive pain in the arse.

The figure this year - a regular annual occurrence since ASH's inception in 1972 - is £160,000.

You can view the award letter below.

ASH Grant Award Letter 2016-17

As usual there are a couple of laughable clauses in the document, most notably ... (emphases mine)

This award has been made under the provisions of Section 64 and may not be used for lobbying or to fund original research and consultancy services must not be offered under this grant. ASH has confirmed that the grant will only ever be used for tobacco control delivery and not for any activity that could be considered as lobbying, nor will it be used to fund research or provide consultancy services.

This is political sophistry of the first water! An organisation like ASH does very little else but lobby, it is exactly what officials and staff at the Department of Health set it up to do in the early 1970s.

This was most evident recently with the monumental lobbying effort Deborah Arnott and her fellow tax-spongers put in to convince politicians to bring in the pointless tobacco control gravy train-perpetuating plain packaging policy. They were in and out of Westminster tapping up MPs so often that they would have felt less exhausted if they'd pitched tents and sleeping bags in committee rooms instead of commuting!

It will also come as a hell of a surprise to vapers that ASH don't involve themselves in lobbying considering the extraordinary and sustained lobbying campaign they have directed towards first trying to get e-cigs banned, and then ensuring Article 20 of the TPD was rammed through in the face of perfectly logical and entirely reasonable objections.

Quite simply, if ASH didn't lobby, there would be no need for them to exist.

You might also be amused to read this condition of the award.

[T]he Department [of Health] has no commitment to renew financial support after the term of the grant;

Well, erm, considering this is the 44th year in a row that ASH has received free cash from taxpayers - without any kind of competitive tendering process as is supposedly required for all government-awarded contracts - we can take that one with a pinch of salt, can't we?

You may have noticed a familiar name signing off the award letter too, that of Jeremy Mean, the former head of pharma-funded MHRA who so nearly succeeded in strangling vaping at birth. Perhaps, then, this part of ASH's grant application appealed strongly to him and his former associates.

"Identify and communicate opportunities for local enforcement to support the effective implementation of the TPD including Article 20 on electronic cigarettes."

Yep, if you thought common sense and a new direction from PHE & RCP towards harm reduction might lead to a blind eye being turned towards the daft TPD regulations, think again. ASH is there to make damn sure any transgressions are properly punished, and promised to do exactly so when they were holding out the begging bowl.

Additionally, since Mean is now Deputy Director of Tobacco Control at the DoH, he could feasibly form part of the UK's delegation to the similarly pharma-funded WHO's COP7 jamboree in Delhi in November. You know, the organisation which currently wants to see e-cigs banned worldwide. Nothing like being given another bite of the cherry, now is there Jeremy?

There really is no other racket quite as blatant as the 'public health' racket.

Pretend Harm Reductionists

Having been busy, I only yesterday read an excellent article published by Carl Phillips on Friday. This section in particular is very well drawn on the subject of harm reduction (emphases mine).

But notice that the IHRA/HRI definition — and that of anyone else who really believes in harm reduction — refers to also reducing the “economic” (read: financial) and social costs of drug use. In the case of tobacco use, as with many drugs, the great majority of the financial and social costs come not from the drug use itself, but from government actions. Smoking is expensive because of taxes and restrictions on the free flow of goods. More social harms from smoking are caused by government restrictions than by the act itself. Unlike with illicit drugs, few people are imprisoned or executed over tobacco (though not none), but unavoidable punitive taxes are not necessarily less harmful than rolling the dice on a small chance of getting arrested. 

And yet, many people who fancy themselves supporters of tobacco harm reduction actively support most of those caused harms. They actively support punitive taxes on cigarettes, social opprobrium heaped on smokers, prohibitions against publicans being able to offer smoking sections, etc. Indeed, those individuals often celebrate or advocate for the caused harms because they create further incentives for the only aspect of harm reduction they actually support, switching products. It reminds me of the Orwellian themes of about half the anti-smoking propaganda I see these days: “Quit because it is so expensive and forces you to take breaks from hanging with your friends!” Um, yeah, and whose fault is that? It is the same as those messages of “if you smoke weed, you might lose your student financial aid and future employment prospects, so don’t go saying it is not bad for you!” Needless to say, you will never hear a peep of condemnation of this hypocritical “concern” for users’ well-being from the faux supporters of harm reduction. 

The bottom line is simple: Anyone who supports punishing smokers does not actually believe in tobacco harm reduction. None of those “but for the greater good we need to…” protests changes this. Causing harm is not harm reduction.

Indeed.

This is what happens when you have a colossal state-funded machine which views life solely through the lens of health. Other pleasures and benefits in consuming the products in question are completely ignored, therefore the prohibitionists simply cannot comprehend the huge social and financial damage their rancid policies are causing ... as I have mentioned before occasionally.

1.1 million people in England are in poverty because of tax policies demanded by @ASH_LDN https://t.co/4Yvx03yUE1 pic.twitter.com/kG1fL91NxS

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) November 3, 2015

... along with others.

ASH admit their tobacco taxes have plunged a "dramatic" number of smokers into poverty. https://t.co/YL5uPZDVQH pic.twitter.com/6egbGAdA3G

— Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) August 5, 2016

But I'd go further than that. You see, tobacco controllers are also often very happy to land body blows on even the one part of harm reduction - switching to low risk products - that they claim to support, as long as it means increasing the harm they wish to inflict on smokers. Pointlessly bullying smokers is considered far more important than supporting products which deliver reduced harm.

Here is ASH Scotland view on smoke-free children's playparks.... https://t.co/CkfFTr2JK9

— ASH Scotland (@ASHScotland) July 12, 2016

The full tobacco control fake charity set is complete when you remember that ASH Wales also "fully welcome" bans on vaping in outdoor, windswept settings for the purposes of denormalisation. No, these are not my words, they are theirs.

And, as far as we know, ASH Wales's logo still proudly and shamelessly sits on a "No Vaping" sign on a beach in Pembrokeshire.

Nothing is too extreme for these people. They will happily throw vaping to the wolves as long as their drive to impose harm on smokers by any means necessary is protected.

No-one, but no-one, in any of the three UK ASH branches can ever claim they are supportive of harm reduction while these vile priorities still prevail. They should be reviled every time they try to pretend that harm reduction is in their future plans. They may believe they are supportive, but - as Phillips rightly says - they betray themselves and reveal the truth every time they stigmatise and inflict harm on smokers with financial punishment, prohibitions and ostracism.

Other tobacco controllers are even worse! Not only are they happy to turn a blind eye to the junk science which is behind the harm visited on smokers, but certain Scottish/Canadian tobacco controllers, for example, also want to extend that harm onto the lives of those who enjoy a drink and those who choose to eat food they disapprove of. And they are far from alone!

As Phillips explains very well, none of these people can ever claim to even understand the concept of harm reduction, let alone say they are supportive of it or are advocates. All the while their only approach is to punish the public for making free choices which 'public health' believe to be wrong they are anything but.

Puritans, yes; prodnoses, yes; prohibitionists, yes; hypocrites, yes; ghastly bullies, yes; repulsive anti-social arseholes, yes; but supportive of harm reduction? Absolutely fucking not!

The Real Deal; A Fatal Attraction

There's been a bit of misguided excitement of late about an Early Day Motion on the subject of the negative effect of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) on e-cigs.

I say misguided because EDMs are the laziest possible thing an MP can do, they mean absolutely nothing and will achieve nothing. I have met MPs who have been unaware that they have even signed them because EDMs are such a low-level priority that they leave it up to their staff to handle; the political equivalent of routine filing. So irrelevant, in fact, that many MPs have a policy of refusing to sign them no matter the subject for the understandable reason that they are utterly pointless but could rebound on a politician if something changes in the future and their name is on a document supporting a cause which could harm their career.

They're a relic of the past and mostly now only a tool to appease those who don't know anything about politics and convince them that their MP is really working hard for them (even though he/she isn't). Plus they're notorious for having a negative effect, if signatures are low (and with many MPs excluding themselves that's not difficult) it can be used to say there is no support for the idea. The potential harm far outweighs the non-existent chance that it will do any good.

The particular EDM which has caused the misguided excitement also promotes probably the most egregious example of tobacco control industry junk science (the full Monty, it even cited vape-hating Glantz) I've seen in all my time in the blogosphere. I wrote about it here, and it was also rubbished in the MSM as well as here, here, here, and here. After the furore had died down, the bungling bellend who wrote it and his formerly well-respected employer parted company; you can make of that what you will. Far from supporting such a pointless and absurd motion, I'd be far more inclined to urge my MP not to sign it.

However, yesterday saw the tabling of a completely different motion, and this one is the real deal. A proper stonker which has the potential of delivering something quite extraordinary in modern politics.

†Lord Callanan to move that a Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016, laid before the House on 22 April, be annulled on the grounds that its restrictions on product choice and advertising of vaping devices were devised before evidence had accumulated that vaping was enabling many people to quit smoking, run counter to advice from the Royal College of Physicians to promote vaping and are so severe that they could force vapers back to smoking and create a black market with harmful products (SI 2015/507).

The important word here is annulled. This signals that this is a bona fide 'fatal motion' being presented in the Lords. There are others which are regretful or just want to make a note, but the one presented by Lord Callanan today seeks to (as the name implies) kill the Statutory Instrument (SI) behind the entire EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD). ECITA has written a good explanation of the process at their site here.

Far from shilly-shallying like an EDM inevitably does, this is an attempt to sling the TPD back in the face of government for having the temerity to even present it. There is no room for compromise, it's a yes/no thing and, if successful, would kill the enabling mechanism in parliament for the TPD to be ratified by the UK.

As things go, this is a very big thing compared with other big things. It's the Daddy of big things!

In practice, it won't be the end of the TPD (sadly) but a vote by the Lords in favour of the fatal motion would force the government to consider re-issuing the SI without the provisions on e-cigarettes. This, of course, is where the politics comes in.

You may have noticed that there is a referendum on the EU coming up soon, there has been the odd article here and there about it. Well, one of the main justifications for leaving is that we are hog-tied by EU legislation with our parliament not able to do anything about it.

This motion can derail the entire TPD so will have to be taken seriously by government, but what can they do? If they remove the provisions on e-cigs they are still going to be caned by the EU for not enforcing compliance on daft rules coming from the EU. Quite delicious, isn't it?

It's also worth mentioning that only 9 member states out of 28 have made moves to implement the TPD. As usual, though, the UK is bending over backwards to hurry through our instruments to be perfect British bulldogs Brussels lap-dogs.

So we have a scenario which is hard to judge. It's quite clear that the mood in Britain is that e-cigs are a good idea, Public Health England (PHE), the body overseeing national Stop Smoking Services and the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) have all come out in favour of encouraging their use. But being placed in front of the Lords is a SI which contains regulations which do quite the opposite. It's quite natural for them, therefore, to oppose it.

However, it also contains the (equally daft) provisions on tobacco so many Lords will be quite content with defending the SI and would consider e-cigs as collateral damage for the greater good, even if they support the idea of tobacco harm reduction (THR). There is also the tangential concern - again amongst Lords who would agree with vaping and supportive of THR - that if the fatal motion is passed then it would embarrass the government in advance of the EU referendum. The EU might have their hand forced to punish the UK for standing up to principles and endorsing the views of the RCP and PHE. Erm, doesn't look good does it? If you're a Lord who is keen to stay in the EU, you might find that a compelling reason not to vote in favour of the motion even if you agree that e-cigs shouldn't be in the TPD.

On the other hand, there are also reasons why Lords who prefer to remain in the EU might want to vote in favour of the motion. It would help show that the EU is not in charge of the UK's self-determination; that we can still stand up to dictators; and that this would give them ammunition for saying that we still keep a bit of sovereignty. Of course, if the Lord is an advocate of leaving the EU then this is a good chance to refuse to comply with an EU directive that shouldn't have been passed in its current form.

What is absolutely clear, though, is that ideologically-blind and stupid anti-smoking lobbyists along with vacant politicians have contrived to put the UK government in one hell of a pickle. At any time since around 2012 e-cigs could have been excluded from the TPD but instead ignorance and pomposity prevailed, they were told what would happen but smugly ignored it.

Labour MEP Linda McAvan should be a swear word within government circles at the moment, so should political lightweight Anna Soubry who thought so little of the e-cigs debate that she didn't even concern herself with learning about it. Likewise ASH who lobbied forcefully throughout the TPD negotiations to ensure that e-cigs should be part of the TPD and removed from sale unless by prescription. They have all been made to look utterly pathetic and have caused the government a thumping headache with their arrogant stupidity of turning their back on what they were being told by the public.

So what can be done to ensure this motion is taken seriously? Well, for a start sign this petition, at time of writing it was up to 26,000 signatures in just over a day.

This petition is requesting the House of Lords to back Lord Callanan’s motion to stop harsh regulations on e-cigarettes which would force vapers back to smoking. We urge our House of Commons to debate the implications for public health of the Tobacco Products Directive on e-cigarettes.  And we plead with the Prime Minister to use his influence in Brussels to get a British opt-out from Article 20 before the EU referendum so this issue does not affect that vote.

And it will influence the vote, as I've written before. It even commands its own page on the Leave.eu site.

You can also make a noise on social media.

But most of all, write a personal message to your political representative to show that they should be supporting this motion. It doesn't matter what the Lords allegiances are towards the EU, whether they're in favour of remaining or leaving and how it will affect their vote on the fatal motion is something for their own consciences to decide. You don't need to concern yourself with referendum politics in your letter, all you need do is show the strength of opinion opposed to the TPD, and send them the strong message that the only right thing to do is vote with Lord Callanan and send government away to think again (here is the full list of Lords but you could start with these ones who have expressed a previous interest).

As I understand it, the debate must take place by early June, so there isn't a lot of time, and the motion offers a modest chance of success. However, at least it has some chance of succeeding, and your voice could help bring that about. So do something positive today, stand up for our free choice and get stuck in.

Draw A Line Here

Operation Oh My God That's A Lot Of Work is well underway at Puddlecote Inc and it's been all hands to the pumps of late, hence the sparse content here this week.

I did, however, manage to sneak out to attend Forest's Battle of the Brands event at the Churchill War Rooms on Tuesday night accompanied by a couple of regular readers here. And very good it was too.

After the initial reception, one of the dark rooms where Churchill's top level aides planned how to protect Britain from the extremism of a tyrannical dictator was lit up by a short film describing how the extremism of the modern day tyrannical dictatorship - that of self-serving 'public health' tax spongers - is irrelevant, contemptuous of the public, and arguably counterproductive.

The film was followed by speeches by Simon Clark, along with representatives of the Tobacco Retailers Alliance and the British Brands Group. The latter two emphasised the damaging effect on business that plain packaging will have for - as any smoker will be able to tell you - absolutely no benefit whatsoever. It hasn't worked in Australia - predictably, and no matter what junk science tobacco control concoct to try to spin it otherwise - and won't work anywhere else either. It will, though, quite clearly harm businesses.

Not that politicians will listen, though. As we see from Guido Fawkes today (and which I will be writing about soon too), ASH have been caught lobbying the Department of Health with our money directly (something which is contrary to the terms of their government grant) and they couldn't give a flying fuck about businesses failing as long as the tax-funded wonga keeps filling their personal bank accounts. They should be in prison for fraud and economic vandalism but instead the government listens to them while completely ignoring law-abiding businesses big and small.

The last contribution in that film from Mark Littlewood is particularly well noted. It's very clear that all manner of prohibitionist campaigners (aka scum) will be looking at plain packaging of tobacco with envious eyes. In fact, they already have, you only need to search 'Myth 7' at this site to see dozens of examples of grey-faced bottom-feeding 'public health' plankton jockeying for position to apply the same kind of thing to their own particular snooty prejudice.

As Littlewood says, it's time to draw a line here. His argument is that the fact such an absurd, illiberal, and utterly pointless policy as plain packaging has been allowed to be applied to legal businesses, in a supposed free country, should alarm all us.

Well, apart from the repulsive anti-social snobs who infest our society, of course. They're an argument for the reinstatement of transportation.

Institutional Snobbery

One of the best and most entertaining political writers ever in my opinion, even while as an elected politician himself, was Tom Harris as I've mentioned a few times before.

Now, however, freed from the shackles he loosely carried as a Scottish Labour MP, his writing just gets better and better. He let rip quite beautifully in the Telegraph yesterday about his party's incredibly stupid decision to ban McDonald's from the Labour Party Conference. Here are some highlights.

Snobbery towards McDonald’s is nothing new on the British Left. You only have to mention their name on Twitter to provoke a deluge of self-righteous comments from people living in London who wouldn’t dream of letting little Marcus or Louisa sink their perfectly aligned incisors into a Big Mac or a McChicken Sandwich.

Snobbery is a perfect description of this kind of thinking, as I've termed it myself when talking about the vile, mega-rich, smug, oleaginous, distended, blown out sweatsock Jamie Oliver and his poor-bashing sugar tax.

Osborne didn't usher in any new success for 'public health' yesterday - for the simple fact that a sugar tax has never worked and, as admitted by those who favour it, never will - but he certainly delivered multiple orgasms to the most deranged and repugnant in our country; the type you would hide behind the sofa to pretend you were out if you saw them park outside your house. If pandering to the vile and intolerant was the purpose, the upper class boy Osborne did exceptionally! He enthralled his fellow pompous and snooty middle class minions and stuck it to the less well off good, so he did.

Or, as Alex Deane succinctly describes it in The Telegraph.

Virtue-signalling politicians, bureaucrats and celebrities feeling tremendously good about themselves because they’ve bossed the rest of us around, and imposed a stealth tax on those least able to afford it.

It's not a step forward for the health of the nation, but instead a triumph for repulsive anti-social snobbery and the most obnoxious human faecal matter we have the abject misfortune to share our everyday lives with.

Yes, it's quite plain that middle class snobbery is at play, and Harris goes on to object to his chosen party trying to pretend it is something to do with health ... which it isn't.

Lastly, there’s the handy, media-friendly excuse for stopping McDonald’s having access to delegates when they meet in September under Labour’s banner in Liverpool: health. That a Big Tasty with bacon and an extra large side of fries followed by a Cadbury’s Caramel McFlurry is not classed as health food will be as big a shock to diners as the revelation that the Pope does not practice the Protestant faith. 

But to defend the existence of McDonald’s in our local High Street is to invite accusations of being an enabler of childhood obesity. It’s not up to poor, ignorant parents to tell their kids “No” when they ask for a Happy Meal; rather, it is up to McDonald’s themselves to offer only non-fried, non-meat-based, non-tasty food, probably in a safe space…

Quite. If you try to inject some semblance of proportion into debates on fast food, fizzy drinks or any other substance which attracts wild exaggerated scaremongering from snooty middle class pricks who just like looking down their nose at their perceived inferiors, you'll inevitably be met with Lovejoy's Law.

This is because, as Harris points out, it is very important for privileged snobs to always divert attention from benefits of the things they are selfishly and pompously trying to demonise.

When a branch of McDonald’s opens up in a local area, particularly in one with few amenities and even less economic activity, the erection of the yellow arches is an unalloyed blessing. New jobs are created, new skills are learned and parents, often harassed after a long day’s work and often with little time to prepare a full family meal, have access to food that – oh, heavenly miracles! – their offspring will actually eat. 

Such people, the people who work there, who buy food there, who can give the occasional treat to their children for less than a tenner, these are the people Labour is banning from their hallowed precincts. 

Labour can probably live without the attention and affection of former US presidents; it cannot hope to survive if it displays such narrow-minded prejudice against popular high street chains, their customers and their employees.

Nope, but then Labour long since discarded any pretence that they were interested in defending the choices of working families; in practice their policies in the past ten years have focussed entirely on sneering at, restricting, banning and destroying everything which working people - their core support - favour and enjoy.

However good Harris's article is though (do go read it all), it's not a solely Labour fault. We now have a hegemony of political parties all over the world who seem to think that pandering to middle class snobbery by contemptuously shitting on the choices working people make is perfectly acceptable.

In Australia, for example, eye-watering tobacco taxes have been correctly described as "the insatiable greed of governments underpinned by middle class snobbery", leading to "the poor, indigenous, prisoners, and mentally ill, paying for the untargeted spending which is of most benefit to the middle classes", which effectively means "robbing the poor to pay the rich".

Likewise minimum alcohol pricing - considered by David Cameron himself and aggressively pursued by left-of-centre Scottish Nationalists - which even its most ardent supporters admit is a tax on the poor which will not affect the better off one iota.

We are faced with this new political landscape where snobbery about the choices of others has become entrenched as policy by all parties as somehow acceptable. An institutional snobbery at the heart of government policies worldwide and the theft of resources from the less well off endorsed as perfectly fair.

Simon Cooke sums up the vile principle very well here.

People who drink beer (the cheap session beer they sell in working mens' clubs and discount supermarkets), smoke, vape and enjoy fatty burgers or sugary sweets, these are the people who aren't welcome in today's Labour Party. Indeed, it's hard to think of anywhere that these people - millions of them - can find a political place that doesn't treat them like some sort of pariah. It's a sad state of affairs when the persistent lobbying of a few - a tiny few - fanatics has resulted in the lifestyle choices of millions being condemned as unhealthy, unsightly and unfavoured. 

The 'few' dictating to the overwhelming majority of the public who make their choices quite clear by buying the legal products they enjoy. Snobbery as government policy; snobbery institutionalised and encouraged to empower the most disgusting and condescending in society.

I have nothing but contempt for the rancid people who hold views such as this. Anyone who is such a snob that they think it acceptable to dictate to the poor about their choices - and deliberately punish them on that basis - are the lowest of the low and I hope God rots every one of them.